 It has a sorting hassle. The official JK rally. You have to fill out a question. I'm going to deem it a crew, comments from the chair. John Adams wasn't feeling well tonight, so he's going to miss our meeting. And I also want to just mention about scheduling. The next meeting would be on Christmas Eve, but I think the end of the discussion is out of meaning I didn't attend. I don't intend to call the meeting. You don't plan to be here for December 24th. Unless we have anything pressing that we need to have done for the new year and can't accomplish tonight, then I think it's fine to skip the meeting. I would like to get the landscaping recommendations out today if we can. And if we can, we should discuss the end of the meeting whether we feel a sense of urgency to meet before the new year on a date other than Christmas Eve to do that. A short special meeting could accomplish that if needed, but I'm hopeful we don't have to do that. So assuming we don't need to do that, our next meeting will be on January 14th. I believe that calendar doesn't show May 19th, but. The 14th. So I just want to give everyone a heads up. We're going to, this is our last meeting in 2018, and then we'll meet on January 14th unless we decide otherwise. The other general business or the other comments from the chair I wanted to mention is Eric Gilbertson from the Design Review Committee and Historic Preservation Commission reached out to me, said that they were working on a proposal for guidelines for changing the bylaws about the design review criteria. And so he asked to just have lunch with me and give me an update on where they are. Haven't had that yet, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of a progress report from what I've heard. I've invited Kirby to attend the meeting with me. So anything I forget, Kirby can help keep track of. That's it. So moving on to item four, general business. This is where we invite members of the public who want to speak about something that's not on the agenda to offer comments. So I don't know if you have anything. I'm here to talk about, I guess, the slopes and the landscaping, so which is both on the agenda. OK. All right. Do you want to just come introduce yourself and give us your general thoughts first? Yeah, sure. Anyways, my name is Will Sheabaum. I live here in Montpelier, and a general contractor. And I've been in front of you before speaking about the slope issue. And I came tonight just to see my understanding is that you're sort of trying to fast track the slopes and the landscaping. And I see that as an agenda. And I'm just curious what that, as far as an interim zoning thing, what that mean basically is like there will be those will be adopted prior to all the other stuff that you're working on. Yeah, we've identified those as two parts of the zoning bylaws as drafted that have proven administratively challenging. And so the idea is that we want to prevent as few future permit applications as possible from being impacted by some of those challenges. So if we could put forward a proposal to change the bylaws for the city council to review that, we want to do that as soon as possible. OK, well, that's great. I guess that was my reason I'm here is just like, is that happening? As a contractor, I've got a few people that are asking me because then we have projects where it's like a small portion of it touching 30% slope. And they're just kind of like, when can we do this? And I was like, well, I don't know. Yeah, it's the top item on our agenda tonight in general. So basically, you'll be voting tonight to send those. Well, I can't guarantee anything. But that's what we're hoping. That's the hope. We'll be voting tonight on a recommendation. As a contractor, I remember the public saying, if you can, then it'd be great. Do you have specific feedback for us to consider? I mean, I think I've spoken with Mike about, and I've seen the sort of draft, at least for the slopes, and I haven't perused through the landscaping stuff. That's a lot more involved, I think. I think it all makes sense. And I agree that, yes, having development review, board review, anything over 30% in engineers, that makes perfect sense, depending on size. A lot of the projects that I deal with are very small-scale. It's like a 600-square-foot cottage that's on a small hill. Or just an addition off the back that touches a hill. So I'm not putting up condo units on Sibley Ave or something, you know? So I think all in all, it's where you're headed to the red direction. And I just wanted to see when it was going to happen, and hear what you had to say about that. Yeah, so even once we vote, it would just be a recommendation for city council that would then have to. Then they would have to adopt it. Yeah, and I believe they'd have to have a formal hearing process. So even if, best case scenario, we vote on something tonight, it could still be a couple of months. Yeah. I understand. Yeah, best case scenario would probably be end of January. Yeah. As far as when the potential to, say, apply for a permit under that, in terms of zoning regulations would be? Yes. Yeah, I mean, it could be end of January, early February. That's perfect, yeah. Yeah, my understanding is that once changes have been warned, then any new applications have to meet the modified laws, although they also have to meet the current laws, right, at the same time? Yeah, it makes a mess of things. So it's best to avoid that. State laws, state laws, awful. I've been there before, where it's like, right before the current regulations, it was like, well, just wait until we do these ones are in place, because then you'd have to apply under two statutes and they don't want to do that, so. But yeah, so I just wanted to get a sense of, like when I could sort of expect to let people know they could do their projects. Yeah, we're doing the best we can. Okay, all righty, well thank you. Yeah, if you have other comments, just raise your hand and we'll invite you back. I probably want to stick around for too much longer, but I just wanted to get a sense from you and put in my two cents. So, all right, thank you. Great, thank you. So item five, we can jump right into the substantive discussion, reviewing the draft landscaping and screening standards. So the version that I provide you tonight is, has a couple places where there were changes made. So the first one, we had voted at the last meeting to take out on page 358, number three, it's highlighted in yellow. I shortened that up, John Snell, I let John Snell know that we were talking about this and what the recommendation was, that the tree board should adopt something. So he said he was gonna put it on their agenda for December and hopefully have it adopted in January. So it may just be a placeholder, but he is looking at the NTA 300s and not the best management practices. I know Ms. Abbott talked about potentially that they were, the recommendation from the creators of these is that it may be that the best management practices would be best, but it sounds like from John Snell that the tree board may be just looking to adopt the specific A300 standards, so. I pulled up A300 for our last meeting and there are many categories. Most of it's not relevant to planting, so it really isn't a portion of these standards. And I think it's specific enough where it says plantings that it's not like we're trying to say that the all of the standards apply, that we're specifying that it's only the planting portions are pertinent. Yep, yes. And so can you pull it up on a website? Cause like, no, I'm. You can look at the listings, but you can't look at the contents. Right, so some, we're gonna have a copy it. Yes, if we adopt these, we will have to have a copy downstairs. So I guess what I pulled up was like the table of contents, which was like 11 different categories and one of which was planting. Yeah, can we scan it and put it online? Probably not. He ordered a copy, so I was just gonna, I was contemplating whether I should order it and then I figured I would go and see what their direction was before. I mean, they're relatively cheap. They're like $20 a copy. But they weren't too bad. So if people ask about this, we can really be sending them to the tree board or just telling them you want a copy and they can come look at it? I think what it's gonna end up being is we will have a copy and depending on the project and depending on what it is, depends whether we would, a lot of times we have what are called TRC, technical review committees. And so when we have the TRC's applicants come in and we invite everybody in, I think if we had a project that was gonna have a number of plantings, we would just have either Jeff Beyer or somebody from the tree board be there to go and answer questions of the specifics of the plantings if they're not already familiar. As we said, with the A300s, the advantage of those is a professional probably already knows those standards. So that's what the advantage is they can, at least from the engineering firms when they're printing out their plans, they can just go and pull up the A300 tree planting. Yes, here it is. So that was the first one. I didn't delete it, I just put in a kind of a placeholder that reflected that. So the next set of changes were actually on 361 where we get to the total site landscaping, but just above that, which is number seven, and this appears twice. This is just for the non-conformities for screening. You'll notice highlighted 3%. Those did say 5%. And so what this says where a site is non-conforming with respect to screening, the applicant shall be required to come into compliance, less to cost of compliance will exceed 3% of the total cost. The reason why I dropped that from 5% to 3% is I was actually looking at our zoning that was in effect from 2006 to 2018, that we just replaced, and that one actually had a cap of 3%. So we were trying to guess, I was like, well, some people do 2%, some people do as much as 5%. Well, actually we used to do 3%, so I just thought I would pick that. We can certainly go back up to 5% if we wanted to, but if we wanted to be consistent with what we had been doing for the past 15 years in the past, it was 3%. Do you have any knowledge as to why 3% was the standard for this? A lot of, like I said, a lot of communities have these caps. It just really comes down to what do you do in the Cates where somebody is coming in to put in a 300, to put in a $10,000 deck on the side of a restaurant to do some outdoor seating, and they have a lot of non-conformities. This just gives us an idea of how we can handle that. We know we want them to come into conformance, but with a $10,000 project, are we gonna make them to do $10,000 worth of landscaping? They may not do the project at all. This just caps it at 3% to go through and say you're gonna have to do, apply 3% of the project cost, whatever it is, to improving that non-conformity. So it will, over time, come into compliance if you're not a project at the time. Who designates where that 3% goes in terms of how much they come into compliance? In this case, it would depend on whether it's a major site plan or a minor site plan. So it would just be a review process. If it's a minor site plan, it would be the zoning administrator. If it's a major site plan, it would go to the development review board. More pushes, less trees. I mean, basically, it's kind of a choice like that. Yeah, I mean, when you're looking at cost, it's really gonna come down to what is effectively, and this is really talking about screening. So in a lot of cases, this is talking about somebody's building a deck, but they have a dumpster that was never screened. So we're gonna kind of know where it's gonna go. You have to apply at least $300 towards that requirement. I don't know enough about what it costs to do landscaping. How much screening is $300 to get you on the $10,000 deck? Maybe not a ton, but it's, as we said, we're looking at a percentage of the cost that's gonna be going on top of that. You're gonna be able to get some work done for that. But like I said, it's just an overall cost. I think it depends what you're... I mean, I imagine you could get at least a couple of shrubs planted for $300. But a lot of projects we get are, you know, up to $100,000 worth of stuff. So as I said, it could be, we can do whatever number that you'd like. The issue we have right now is we don't have any regulations to help us with non-conformities. So if somebody comes in with a deck and we're left with, I guess, yeah, if you've got $50,000 worth of landscaping needs, you're gonna have to do 50,000. And so we just needed to have some way of regulating how we're gonna do it. This is a typical way of doing it, 3%, 5%. You can make whatever percentage number you want. Do we want to set some minimum? I mean, you know, a small project, but could have a significant non-conformance. Well, what are the, I mean, so one would probably, having a lower percentage would mean that you're accurate. I don't feel like I understand this well. So this one is looking... Yeah, this one's looking at non-conformities from the standpoint of strictly with this screening. And I think total landscaping has a similar 3% except they have an additional requirement, which we will go over. We should look at these all together. If you can get through all the changes. Yeah, so the two 3%, so on the next page on 362, the same provision applies at Topic, that this one has an A, because we also need to address where a site is non-conforming with respect to impervious cover, the applicant and the applicant demonstrates that as a result of the non-conformity, the site cannot reasonably meet the total landscaping requirement. The Development Review Board may waive some or all the total landscaping requirements. So this just puts a second out in there because we have sites that you might be in Urban Center 2, and I can think of a couple of them that are 100% impervious. And therefore, you're gonna come in, you're gonna have to do a project, we're gonna say you gotta do 5%, 3%, whatever the number is, and they're gonna look out and say, I have no percent. I don't have any landscaping place I can put, so either I'm gonna have to tear up or tear down buildings, or I'm gonna need a waiver. So this just gives an out for the Development Review Board to waive some or all the landscaping requirements based on the fact that there's just no place to put it. But other than that, the percentage amount of money to spend is still tends to be in there. And I think both of these, whether it's for the screening or whether it's for the total landscaping, would probably have the same percentage. So in the tax world, because we're talking about like a chilling effect of something, like there's a lot of studies out there showing like a modest sales tax of 6%, it doesn't really have much of a chilling effect. That's like there's a lot of research out there on that. And that's kind of how I'm thinking of this. It's like 3%, 5%, because the increased 5%, the 5% is higher, would that have a chilling effect on projects? And yeah, I think of it as similar as like a sales tax. I don't really think it necessarily would have a chilling effect, that's my point of view. Yeah, I mean, it's probably not. I mean, we could, I mean, in theory, you could go through and say that all non-conformities have to be erased. I mean, legally, we could just go through and say you've got to bring them, if you're gonna get a permit, you got to come into compliance, but we get a lot of smaller projects and somebody says I'm gonna put a new propane tank in and we're like, great, you got to put in $5,000 worth of landscaping, then we'll give you your permit for the propane tank. No, I understand the need for it. I think we're all convinced about that. It's just a matter of what percentage is appropriate. And my first thought was, oh, I don't want to discourage some of the development that we want to see in the urban center, where there's not a lot of screening or landscaping, but then on the other hand, we want to have development that is aesthetically pleasing and contributes to the design and it's the whole part of it. So it does make sense to at least have some percentage set aside for those who like that. Barb, you look like you're right. No, I was just wondering when you were saying that, are there other regulations, criteria that they have to meet other than landscape screening, you know, in terms of mechanicals outside of building? If what they are putting in is a new propane tank or new dumpster, they would have to screen that dumpster. This 3% doesn't let them out of that. Okay. This 3% is just, you're putting in something that's separate, a deck, and now the question comes in, we noticed that you're also non-conforming with respect to your screening of your X. And the question is, do we make that happen? But screening is not just restricted to landscaping? No, it's not, which is why we don't worry about it. If it's 100% impervious, well, then you might have to put up a fence. So on the previous page, screening materials can be landscape buffers, but they can also be fences and walls, they can be berms. And that's, those are the three options that you have for screening materials. And then what has to be screened are parking lots, utility service areas, and building mounted equipment. And I'm comfortable with the 5%, I don't think that's that bad. I just thought I would point out the fact that previously we had 3% as a number. We're adding something in, currently we have nothing. And if we bring it in, there's a certain sales pitch you can give to go through and say, well, we're just going back to the way it wasn't in that. But if we want to go beyond it, that's, as you said, I don't think the difference between $300 worth of landscaping or $500 worth of landscaping is really going to go and take somebody's deck project out. Folks think 3% and 5%? I think that probably agree with Kirby. I do. I'm going to say that more definitively. Yeah. So increase it to something like 5% to 5%. I didn't, I suggested that. Yeah, I didn't think it was a very good point. I don't think that's the difference. Let me restate. I think after hearing Kirby's valuable contribution, I think 5% does not seem like a too harsher hurdle to put in. And landscaping seems like a, even if it's $200 worth, more landscaping seems like a positive thing. So that's my take on it at this point. I just have a quick question. You were saying, can you kind of give me just a ballpark? What's the range in terms of the price of these projects that we're talking about? Clearly there's like a $10,000 deck, but is that the norm? Are we talking? Most of our permits, we get a couple hundred permits a year. So most of them are going to be relatively small permits for changing windows in the historic district or a lot of smaller projects in those areas. And then from there, it ramps up to $5 million for French Block and some of these bigger projects. But some of them are going to be exempt because of being an urban center one or whatever. But we can, most of those big projects are already covering themselves on different points. So it's really how we handle the small ones. Yeah, I just feel like if there's not a lot of difference on the margins in terms of the small projects, which it sounds like it is, then the larger ones are going to be covered with different areas anyway. And this isn't going to really touch those bigger projects so much. 5% is proper fine. But frankly, I mean, this is sort of my first blush at it. I don't report to be. We just, even us, we make this, we put the other. This is fixing the previous proposal because we hadn't even thought of this until we started doing them. So it sounds like there's consensus for 5% for screening and total landscaping, total site landscaping. I did have, I was given one question this afternoon related to that on, is there a project that is just too small? Should we have a minimum project? Right, that's what Barb said. I was thinking more on the other side, though. A minimum amount for landscaping. Yeah, you were thinking a minimum amount for landscaping. The other one is, the other side is if somebody's doing a $750 project, are we requiring, I think that would be $75, $7.50. Landscaping. I mean, is there a floor to some of these where we just go and say, look, if landscaping is less than this, there's two options. One would be if it's less than this, you have to at least do X amount, which I think was what Barb was thinking. Or the other option is if it's less than this amount, we're not going to ask you do landscaping if the landscaping requirement is under a certain amount. What's an example of a $750 project that would be none? We'll get small projects that might come in. I mean, certain changes of use might just need a sign. It might just be a sign permit that'll come through. There's really no other changes. And so we're left with a, what does that mean? Plants and flowers around the sign. I don't want to screen your sign by nature of it being a $750 project. But you could screen the base of the sign, yeah. For $7, I mean, that's great. It's not a big flower. It's a small pot. Plants and seeds. That doesn't even put it in the ground. Just purchase it. Yeah, right. I think I'll just. Seems like it's a de facto exemption where it's such a de minimis amount on those small projects that, I mean, Mike, you're not going out in the field and enforcing, right? I mean, technically, we really shouldn't be writing rules that we have no intentions of going saying, well, we'll just ignore that because I'm not going to be enforcing that. So we should just put a de minimis where the landscaping requirement is less than $100 or 50? I mean, the only hesitation I have with any of these numbers is that I don't have a good sense of, I mean, what it costs for a landscape professional just to even come out and assess, I would assume that's. I just don't know what $100 gives you. So if you want just $100 and you need to plan something and you need to follow the ANCA 300 standard, and you're just one person that doesn't, right? You can't hire someone to do that. Right. That's, I sort of, there's some, yeah. I'm thinking it's probably going to be in the $300 to $500 range before anybody even takes any of that seriously. We may guess. I just don't know. You could put a substantial amount of landscaping in one specific area for $300. Six bushes, small, enough to shield something. So if we want to set a minimum, I think it's going to have to be small. The point I was getting at is like, I don't think Mike's going to be out there and say, that bush only is worth $80, not $100. That kind of thing. Usually, we're going to get that in the application stage. People are going to come in and go and say, what are you going to do? And we're going to come in and say, you need to be doing something. What are you going to be doing for this amount? So if we don't have a de minimis exemption, then people will say, well, $7, I'm going to buy a plant. But then you have to plant it following the $300. And it has to be replaced if it dies, because that's a requirement under any landscaping requirements. You're giving the book. So let's do a de minimis waiver. $100, I guess. At least it's a number. And if it comes back that it's not high enough, we can always come back and go and say, look, a bunch of these are just silly. And then we can always come back. But at least $100 gives us something. There's something there. All right. So as we get into the total site landscaping, I made a few tweaks to the administrative rules. Sorry, where are you? Still the same page, 361. Yep. Now we're into .j, the last of the total site landscaping. Where we got stuck last time. So we had some questions that came up. Previously, this had been talking about forested areas. And we had some discussion about whether we should or shouldn't be regulating forested areas. So I tried to do a little bit more massaging on this one. And the riparian rules talk about naturally wooded vegetation. So rather than create a new term of art, I just grabbed the old one and replaced it to make this one safe. So this is for calculating planting area, where an applicant demonstrates that naturally wooded vegetation is on the parcel, is proximate to the development site, and furthers to purposes outlined in section 3203.a. So that's the purposes of this section. The naturally wooded vegetation may count towards landscaping requirement on a 2 to 1 basis. For example, retaining 2 square feet of naturally forested cover or riparian habitat will count towards 1 square foot of landscaped area. So this puts the burden on to the applicant that they would have to demonstrate that it is on their parcel, is proximate to the development site, because some of these development sites can be rather big. And we don't want somebody counting something that's clearly the purposes of the landscaping requirement is to improve the aesthetics and to screen bad things and blah, blah, blah. There are four requirements. Well, if it's up on the back of the hill, it's not going to do any of those four things. So this kind of gives a little bit of room for us to count that, but at the same time, they don't just automatically get credit for everything. Perennial plantings may be used. Hold up. The point you're making there, where there's some discretion, administrative discretion, you're packing all that into the May that's there, right? Is that something we should make a little more explicit? Well, Hedda is proximate to the development site. It's arbitrary. It sounds a bit big. It's a little bit. Is proximate to the development site or not, is up to it? If we think we know how we could grapple and wrap that in, I mean, we talked about proximate with other accessory structures and some other things. I mean, there'll be a certain amount of gray when it's the administrative officer making that call, but I think it could also be appealed to the DRB if somebody believes the administrative officer has said that's not proximate and great and can appeal to the DRB. Yeah, if you think that your office will exercise discretion on this May, then I think maybe we should have a standard to apply. But if you don't think that in practice you'll end up doing that, then it's fine. Well, I guess if the applicant demonstrates, I guess the key is that should probably say shall. If we're looking at that May that's later in there, purpose outlined in section three of the Woody vegetation shall be counted. Because the assumption being that if the applicant demonstrates it, the administrative officer in the DRB always has to make the determination of whether or not it has been demonstrated. If you demonstrate its proximate, if you demonstrate it's on your parcel, and if you demonstrate it means these four purpose statements, we can count it on a two to one basis. And if we don't, it's because we're saying it's not. Think that covers it? So is proximate to the development site? I was just wondering, do we have a range? I mean, Stephanie's point is well taken. It's a little bit vague, but I think if you're looking at that proximate in relation to the purpose statement, because you have to meet all of them, so it's proximate, but it has to enhance the appearance of the built environment as viewed from a public vantage point, create shade alongside walkways, parking lots, provide landscape buffers between residential and non-residential uses, screening uses, and development that creates, that screen the land uses and development that create visual clutter and distraction. So I think if you kind of know what the purpose is, or maybe the proximate doesn't have to be there at all, if you can meet these four requirements. Yeah. I mean, you could say is proximate to the development site so that it furthers the purposes or something like that. But yeah, maybe we can just take it out. Take out the proximate. Yeah. If you look at 32 of 3A, yeah, if it's remote from the site, then, yeah, you wouldn't build them. It's going to be difficult to meet one of those four requirements. Yeah. I mean, how big a project, how site are we talking about? I mean, if we have a several acre site, it's possible that they could meet these criteria and still not have it be close to the building. Well, it's the development, yes, the development site that which can be the site or the site of the development. Yeah, and we had this discussion of whether or not we wanted to define site, because we talk about site plans. We talk about sites. And sites and parcels tend to be the same when they're small. I mean, if you have a quarter acre site, it pretty much is the whole entire parcel. The question is, at what point, should we have a different definition for site when it's something that's less than the size of the parcel? And that was the question that, administratively downstairs, we have been kind of chewing on a little bit to try to come up with, should we have a separate definition of site? I'm thinking about the distillery project. You know, if there was a landscaped area at one far end of the project, I mean, is it possible that it could potentially meet these four criteria and still not be proximate to the disturbed area? Yeah, and I think that's. I think that I'm fine with moving in here. I think it's going to get a call to center group. It's a nine acre parcel, and they're doing a little bit of work over here, and they're trying to count something way on the other side. Yeah, and I think that would be a good one. Think of timber frame, a nine acre parcel, and there's riparian buffer on the river on the back of this nine acre parcel. All their work is being done up by Route 12. Can they count that riparian buffer on the river at the back of the nine acres towards their landscaping requirement? And my thought was, well, it's not really proximate to the project. The project is in the front three acres, but it's on the parcel. And so that was where I was kind of, that was the one that was kind of rolling around in my head. So if we left proximate in there, that would at least give you a basis. I think it would give us a basis to saying no in certain cases where somebody wants to count. I have just, I don't mean to be contrarian, but I just disagree with that. I don't see the proximate verbiage as needed because you have the purposes outlined in 3203. If the woody natural vegetation is not proximate to the built environment, it's not going to be able to enhance the appearance of the built environment, which is the first prong of 3203A. It won't be able to create shade along sidewalks and walkways. It won't be able to do the things that 3203A is aimed at doing. And I just feel like if I'm the review board, I'm looking at, if I'm weighing an applicant's demonstration of fulfilling those requirements, and then you add an undefined term, such as proximate to the development without any standard for me to evaluate that, it just creates another level of uncertainty where I feel like if the board is going to be given discretion to determine whether or not those 3203A purposes are met by the application, I think it should just be enough. But I just don't know what a undefined term of proximate to the development site adds to that. The only case I can think of where something might not be proximate to the site but actually fulfill 3203 is number three there, where it says providing a buffer between residential and non-residential, which arguably the timber homes, natural vegetations, a buffer between that and the development in the river. So you could say that it meets A3 here but maybe still is approximate enough. Sure. Again, I think that's a call that the board can make if an applicant tries to make that demonstration. They can make that call. I think that the proximate question just adds another variable that kind of muddles the analysis. But that's just me. I can see the other side of the coin too. I don't get me wrong. But I feel like the 3203A standards give at least some quantifiable and objective standard by which the board can evaluate an applicant's demonstration of a counting the land, counting the land. I think you go either way. I think you go either way. Because the component of getting rid of proximate as part of it. So what do we got? Either way there. My initial point, and sorry for bringing this up and getting us some of the weeds on this, was really that I think if you keep proximate in there, there's a possibly, if you make a decision based on the proximate language, you get enough getting into some legal trouble with it. I don't feel that strongly. But then they can apply to DRB, right? They can call it DRB. Yeah, like the DRB. And they're the ones who make the decision ultimately, so. They can also be. Yeah. And they can also get into legal trouble when we're trying to interpret and apply approximately. So many elements of interpretation. Right. You know, all of them. You know, 1 through 4 are interpretation elements. Yeah, that's probably enough for them to handle on. So if we take out proximate, then we take out the possibility that there's all these arguments about it that we don't intend to ever happen. Or leave it and see what happens. Yeah. I guess that same argument could be used for the purpose, the elements raised in the purpose as well. So it's definitely a matter of interpretation. What's easier for your staff than looking at it? I mean, clearly from the decision making standpoint, if we don't have to make that determination of whether it's proximate, then that's one less decision we have to make. If we find we get ourselves caught in a position where we're approving things that we don't want to, because we don't have that, we can always come back and either define that term or, as we said, we're improving something that doesn't exist. So anything is an improvement over what we have. And I think, like I said, I was just trying to capture a little bit of those projects where people come in with some Malone properties on Gallison Hill that they've got a big industrial building up front, and then they own another 15 acres of woods and back. And I know the question is going to come up of, well, doesn't that just meet all my landscaping requirements? Well, but I guess now we've got the basis in there. Well, if you can demonstrate 3203A is met, then sure, you can count that. But do we want them to count that? I mean, is that the ultimate result that we want to see happen? Well, the purpose of our landscaping standards are to implement those four standards. So all of these standards that we've been reviewing are to achieve those four things. If there's something, if there's a fifth thing we should be adding, then I guess that would be the next question. Well, no, I mean, I guess it seems like it's splitting here is that potentially they could argue that it meets those four criteria, but it's still halfway across, you know, it's still acre away from where they're developing. So do we want the landscape standards to apply to the area that is being developed? Well, of course, and I think that the argument isn't about whether we want those to apply or not. The argument is about whether this achieves it with or without the term possible. Yeah, yeah, and I guess I can think of all kinds of different ways to get around it. So it's. But if it's a nine acre parcel and it's all in the back acre, is it enhancing the appearance of the built environment as viewed from the public vantage point? Right. Well, maybe the public. I mean, it may be, if you think about the state house, it may be yes, because that back hill is all forested and acts as a forested screen for the back. If it happens to be flat. It's called a development clutter. Yeah, but it's, well, it's whether it's meeting, when it comes to the next one, we're talking about the total landscaping requirement. I think for a lot of them, they're not gonna meet the first one. All right, so without taking an official vote on this, how, raise your hand, how many people want to strike the, the proximate aspect of this? I mean, I guess it'd be five, yeah. How many people want to keep it? Two people want to keep it? No, I'm just like, I don't, I'm not sure. To be honest. I think I talked myself into, if you can cover it without that. All right. All right, far view. Goes down. Do you want an official vote? No, I don't care. Talk about the dissent. Really, but I do, you know, I do have to say that I constantly think about these in different ways that I could get around them. That's good. In terms of site design. That's helpful. You know, so it's sort of like, oh yeah, I could easily do this in the, you know, the natural area would be half a mile away. But anyway. Yeah, we'll look and see how it, yeah, we'll look and see how it plays out in, Yeah. In the reality. And sometimes we just have to see how the DRB comes down on a couple of these because if the DRB starts being very consistent in, no, we're not gonna count that for X, Y, and Z, or we'll count only a portion in the front of it because yes, these first 50 feet are actually making a nice backdrop to the restaurant or whatever, but the last 750 feet of it are not providing any benefit and therefore we're not gonna give you any credit for those, but we'll see where the DRB plays it. Okay. So here's the change. Is proximate to the development site is gonna be strong. Yes. And then May is gonna be changed to Shell. Yeah. I'd be curious to see where some of the other DRB ones are, but we'll make those. What's that? Oh, I was just trying to think of it. Occasionally it's written with the DRB May approve where the applicant demonstrates. I don't think, but I'll put it as Shell because I think actually if the applicant demonstrates, I think legally, if the applicant does demonstrate it, we are kind of obliged to give them that. But the decision of whether they've adequately done it. Demonstrate that is up to the others. So B, moving as quickly in the next one, B actually just moved up from later on. I noticed that we talk about perennial plantings and then we have these administrative rules up top and it really should have been part of these administrative rules. So perennial plantings, when it comes to total landscaping, if you're planting perennials, they can be counted on a one square foot basis. And then C, I added in, because we've had a number of these questions that have come up and I think this will help clean some of the stuff too. To be counted as an existing tree or shrub for the purposes of this subsection, trees and shrubs must be healthy and have suitable planting area to support its long-term viability. Unmanaged or unmaintained portions of a site shall not count as landscaping unless the area meets the provisions of 3203J1, which we just talked about. Invasive species shall never be counted towards total landscaping. So the purpose of this is we have had people who've come in with applications and you'll have a tree growing sideways out of the foundation and then kind of turn and kind of grow up and they're like, well, I got a tree that counts as my tree. And we're like, well, yeah, it is a tree but, you know, or it's just brambles with a bunch of junk in there. And you're just like, is that really, should that really be counting towards our existing landscaping if it's not really landscaped? If you can, if you drive and look around, you can see between buildings on Berry Street and different things, you'll go and see that just in between the buildings, it's just grown up scrub. And does that really count as counting these things out and go through and say, I found seven maples in there, so. If nothing else, maybe it wouldn't encourage people to maintain them, the ones that are there. So that's the point was we would be able to at least, if we go and say, if you want to count as existing, do something to kind of make it qualify. We aren't obligated to take your tree as a tree. My other thought is with, we have a ash borer in a few years, we're gonna have trees that are not healthy, they're not gonna count. Ash borers or another common tree. That's gonna get people to actually replace those trees. Yeah, trees of paradise, a couple of other trees. Sorry, I have a quick, three, two, three, J, one, C. Quick question. The second to last sentence, unmanaged or maintained portions of the site shall not count as landscaping. And the last sentence is invasive species shall never be counted. Why is there different verbiage? If one is shall not count as landscaping, the other one is shall never be counted towards total landscaping. Is there a reason why there's different? Probably should say not. Just shall not count towards. You counted towards. Sorry, I was just being overly, sorry. We lost a couple of lawyers, so we needed to get them back. Sorry, sorry, I just know. In relationship to that, so then they need, the owner needs to go into their area and determine if they're invasive species within a forested area. No, no, not, I mean, if they were doing, if they're going for the forested area, this is just for a site. And we'll get a number of them that will come in that are just even some of these Berry Street, Helm Street projects that, you know, it's just a small to 20,000 square foot lot. And there's just a section of something that's in brambles and this is questions whether they can count those as trees. But as they start mapping them out to go and tell us, we're gonna ask them, do you meet your tree requirement? And if they go through and say, yeah, I've got a tree here, I've got a tree here, and I've got two trees over here, and we can go and ask them, what are they? Because first of all, we need to know, because we have to determine, is this a large tree, medium tree, or small tree? And if they go and tell us, well, that's a X tree, we can go through, we can look, we've got the list, or know that while a tree of paradise is an invasive species and therefore doesn't count. Yeah, unfortunately, we have a lot of invasives, but so we have a clear designation of a list of invasive species that they can reference in the zoning. The state, and it's referenced in here. Okay, so the state list is referenced in the zoning. And I don't, this doesn't apply to the natural variety vegetation. That's when you're, this is when you're specifically counting the trees. What's existing. So if you have a native in the natural woody area, you can have this, it doesn't apply to that. Go and survey your two acres of wood itself. Yeah. Wow. All things we can get through just in five more minutes, so we have an hour to talk about slopes. All right. We didn't need it. So just skipping to the bottom of that, you'll see number four, we already talked about this previously, so I will make the changes that we have approved. The percentage and the wording of anything else. So we'll make those. So the last thing that comes up is backup on number two, which was what we left at. There used to be a two and a three. Yep. And the two talked about lots less than one acre three, talked about lots more. And John made comments that were absolutely correct. It really wasn't, I didn't have it right. I made mistakes. And so I spent a lot of time again, playing around with a bunch of more examples. And what I've put in here is a more complex one, but there are a number of ways of trying to get us to a number that works. But one possibility is to go back and move to a factor of .033, which you see is the requirement just for the 90%. And we just, if we just took that out and just said, look, we're just going to apply a factor of .033, it actually kind of works through all the districts. It does apply just a minimum. And you are, you know, you're not going to be able to go back and move to a factor of .033. Which you see is the requirement just for the 90%. Looking at it as a minimum, it works at no matter what the size of the parcel is. And I ran this all the way out to projects like Tractor Supply, which is a 20,000 square foot building with a 20,000 square foot outdoor storage area with another 60,000 square feet of parking. That one didn't have enough landscaping, but I think all of us could go out there and go and say it didn't have enough landscaping. But the biggest thing it didn't have was landscaping enough shading for the parking. So if it simply met its parking shading requirement, it would meet the .03 requirement. The other thing I looked at was we all kind of thought the shading requirement worked okay. So I converted that to our new system of impervious cover. That comes out .042. So that's not too bad. We're starting to see numbers all in the same area here of stuff that tends to work. The number that didn't work when I calculated out our current zoning, which has absurdly too much landscaping which is why we're redoing these rules. It came out to .19. So you start seeing, okay, well now that's an upper limit. .19, we don't wanna be up that high. So I played around with a lot of different examples from Tractor Spy, Caledonia Spirits. And looking at some of them and kind of giving an eye to them as to whether or not they really could have like Caledonia Spirits, I think we recognized could have had a little bit more landscaping. It would have been fairly easy to have provided more landscaping. And it's really started to come up with that the .033 would work as a across the board for any of them just get the impervious cover multiply by .033. That's the amount of landscaping you could meet. In certain cases, it might be a little bit on the low side. So the other options which you see here in number two, the most complex way of doing this is we looked at, you have the building size, you have your other impervious cover like parking lots. We already know the parking lot requirement gets up to .04 and that kind of works. So we could just go through and say structures have to meet this and the other landscaping has to meet the other number. And this just goes and says the other parking lot would be .033. So if you've got a parking lot that's basically smaller than 10 parking spaces, you're at .033. As soon as you hit 10 parking spaces, you're at .042. I don't have to say that here because the previous requirement would push it up there. And then the buildings would go from .033 to .0625 to .086 and then everything else would be at .1. That gets a little steep. So that's kind of the high end. Now we're requiring a more robust amount of landscaping if you went up to .1, we could stop it at .086 if we wanted to. So I was just trying to get some ideas out there for how the simplest and straightest just go for the .033 and that's the quick and clean way of doing it. It works for the small ones and it works for the big ones. Are we aware of any other cities that have different factors or different approaches for structures versus impervious surface? Not really. I haven't seen, some of the issues that have come up with landscaping is that a lot of times it is a strictly subjective standard. They will do a more of a performance standard approach. Most communities would go with take your purpose statement, pull those out, stick them in as performance standards and go and say, you have to demonstrate this. The problem with this, with that is we're trying to have a lot of our stuff be administrative. So we really wanna start to be a little more objective, a little less subjective in our rules so that way our administrators can go through and process because most of our applications, we get a couple hundred applications a year, 12, 15 of them go to the DRV. So if we send site plan and say all site plans have to go to the DRV, then we're sending a lot to the DRV to evaluate the reasonable person standards and the subjectiveness. So we tried, as we said, we tried some of the way Brandy's been proposing to do it. We think this new way kind of tweaks what she's doing, puts it on a better foundation because we're linking it to the size of the buildings, at least the footprint and the size of the parking areas because by linking it to impervious cover, we've got a more impervious cover, the more landscaping you need. It seems like a pretty reasonable. And previously we talked about the distillery, we all got that example. So I think a lot of us, it helps to talk about these examples for us. Because we can imagine how many trees in acreage, but it's hard to take the math and get there. So tell us what we're looking at now, how that would look compared with what we discussed last time with the distillery project, were we going to just have that done? Were they meeting the other requirements too? Were they meeting now that they have to do it? They didn't have to meet any requirements previously. So we were kind of taking it because they were under the old zoning. Would they have met, I guess, is my question. So would they have already had to add more for parking? Yes. Yeah, because that's part of it too, I think. If we look at that side and say this wasn't enough, well, this is in addition to those, if it's lower, right? No, these aren't in addition. These are the total landscaping. Yeah, you may meet your total landscaping requirement before you get here. This was kind of intended as, in our current zoning, total landscaping is actually kind of at the top or in the middle, and we kind of wanted to make sure it was clear. We put it at the bottom, we relocated all those standards to go through and say we've got screening, street trees, parking, and screening are the three requirements, but each one of them has exemptions. So you might get all the way through there and you don't get to go and say, yes, no landscaping. No, you do have a minimum. You have to at least meet this much. You may meet it through your street trees. You may meet it through. Right, that's what I meant. Yeah. Right, so if you've met the other things and you're already over this amount, you don't have to do it. Then you won't have to do anything. So did this end up applying to the Distillery Project or was it met already from this parking and other? And it sounds like if they had been under this rule, they would have to do more before this. They were adopted under old zoning, but. Oh, yeah. But if they were, they would have failed our new zoning. We have older zoning, old zoning. Yeah, we have old zoning, current zoning, and proposed zoning. But if we had been under this rule, not including this, they already would have had to do more because they wouldn't have met the parking requirements. Yeah, they would not have had enough parking shading. And I think looking at the site plan, we would have agreed, at least as planning commissioners, that it would have been reasonable for them to have provided more shading for that parking lot of that size. But this would give them a numerical number to use to say, okay, this is the area that needs to be provided as a minimum. And here's where it should be. Some of it should be shading the parking. Some of it should be in other locations. Yeah, they will meet the, they'll go through and meet those first three requirements. And then we will get to the total landscaping where we add everything up and see if they've met. And if they're still, if they're deficient, we'll have to add some more parking or add some more landscaping. Some more. In one of these six or seven places that are identified. So when you say these factors, you sort of work them out in your head and they make sense. What does that mean exactly? Like you feel like you look at examples and they have, I'm just trying to grasp with that, that they don't have too much of a burden of landscaping, but- In certain cases, I look at a project. So some of the new ones, I looked at Hunger Mountain Co-op, Caledonia Spirits, we had looked at before 184 Elm Street. We'd looked at before Tractor Supply was a new one that I looked at. Burger, Buddy's Burgers. That's the question. Yeah, thanks. For all of these ideas as we try to kind of flesh out these ideas, which numbers seem to make sense. So what I would do is let's say if I happen to be working on an idea of like maybe we do a .06 for the building and a .03 for the parking lot, I would run them through Hunger Mountain Co-op and go and say, well, what did the total come out to and what did they plant? And do I think, in my personal opinion, do I think there was enough landscaping there? In some cases if it comes out, it's like, they would be a little bit shorter. It's unclear whether those are medium trees or large trees. If those were large trees, then they would count and they would meet it if they're medium trees and they're not. So that's kind of how I looked at them. Like Hunger Mountain Co-op has 30,000 square feet of impervious, they have 22 medium trees and nine small trees. Now we can start adjusting the things. Is that enough landscaping in that parking lot? It doesn't count any of their riparian buffer that they have along the river. So would that meet the total landscaping as we have in this proposed version? In certain cases it fits, I'm gonna hear this calculator. So I think, I mean, Marianne's getting at it, which is there's two things to consider here. There's administrative ease of implementing these rights, which is very important and we leave it to you to determine the best way to do that. But then there's the substantive question of how much landscaping is the appropriate amount. And so in testing your administrative formula, we kinda wanna know how did you arrive, how did you settle on this particular factor or were you looking at? And you're using your professional judgment and determining what was the adequate amount of coverage and landscaping. And that's perfectly acceptable, but we just wanna make sure we're having a discussion about it. Yeah, and that's, yeah, and it's hard somewhat. I mean, like in this case here, we're talking about Hunger Mountain Co-op, 30,000 square feet of impervious cover. If we just did .033 for everything, that means they would have to do 990 square feet of landscaping. Which for everyone who's not up to speed with what we're doing, a large tree would be worth 100. A medium tree would be worth 49. A small tree is worth 25. Shrubs are worth six or eight or 10. Perennial landscaping is one to one. So they would have more than enough because you said nine large trees and 15 medium trees. They would have enough. They have 22 medium trees and nine small trees, which is 1,303. So they would have met the minimum requirement. Now that doesn't, they may have been way over. If we looked at it from the standpoint of parking, we may have said, well, for parking, you actually needed to have more and bigger trees. They may have been required to have 1,500 square feet of medium trees or something depending on how big. So what I'm hearing, because again, I'm trying to conceptualize. I'm sorry, Barbara, but that's, but a .033 sounds like a small enough number for the total tree. That it sounds like it's going to usually be caught by parking before it gets to that. It sounds like point, what I'm understanding is a .033 is so lenient that it's probably not going to catch anything that's not already caught by the other standards. Is that, seem right? For certain projects, if we're talking about hunger mountain co-op, contractor supply, we're talking about a place that have big parking lots. So absolutely, they're a lot of their, if they meet their parking lot requirement, they're probably meeting most of their total landscaping requirement. In fact, I would almost guarantee they are because the parking lot's landscape is required at .042. So if you have a lot of parking and our requirement for total is .033, then you're going to probably meet it all. But Buddy's Burgers has no parking. It's just the building. They don't even own their parking lot, that parking lot's owned by the butters. So when they want to put a deck on their building and I calculated theirs, theirs comes out to needing 75 square feet of landscaping. And they have some small squares in the front. They actually have one crab apple tree. So we're like, all right, look, you put a crab apple tree here, you put a crab apple tree there and you have some use, which they do have. You could meet 75 square feet pretty easily in that. And that's about as urban as you're going to get. Probably 90 plus percent coverage on that parcel and they still could meet it. So it works for really small ones, the .033. But as I said before, when you get up to some of these middle sized ones, it'll probably be met through other things like parking. And it'll be a little bit on the low side. But then when we get to these really big sites, that was where we were coming to this point where we kind of have this, it's not a linear thing as the sites get really big. It becomes really easy to meet a requirement. And you also have a lot of these extra existing trees and you're like, oh, I need seven trees and I've got three acres. Which seven trees would you like me to pick? And that was where some of these ones just come up for the other extreme of the really big lots. And then I think these middle ones are where we make at Hunger Mountain Co-op. So that was my thought. And as I said, some of these, the numbers I pulled together, we had done the parking lot calculations and .042 is how that factors. So I think we kind of have a feel. It just depends a little bit of, you know, if we wanna have a minimum, here's some ideas to go with .033, .042. We had come about it in different ways and kind of came back and found these other numbers. I think we just need a number or, or as I proposed kind of in the written example, to split it between your buildings are gonna be factored at one rate and your other impervious at another rate. It's a little bit more complicated, but we can do it. Sorry, Mike, where was the .042? It's not technically written in here, but it, and I can always go back and convert it. If you were to look at the parking lot requirements, so the minimum planting for .8, which would be page 360, minimum planting requirement for number three, minimum shall be 40% of the area. So 40% of the parking area, I added the words including aisles and driveways because it was unclear, but B, each large tree shall be considered to be 1200 square feet, each medium tree shall be considered to be 600 square feet. So if you kind of take those 1200 and 600 and go to the 40% parking area and do all the math on it, it comes out .042. Cause I was kind of curious about the numbers would play out, so I knew, like I said, when I did for the existing zoning, if I building perimeters and the requirements, that came out .19, so that's much higher. So I think we're in a range that could work. It's just gonna be a has to be .033 for the 90% district. District. Because of the very small. Just because there's very little land that's left for landscaping. So I think that has to be there. So if we're gonna do something, it starts at that, maybe there's just, everybody is this except for that one district or 90% is this, 80% is this, everybody else is something else. I think if you want my recommendation, I'm somewhat tempted to go with the .033 and kind of just see how that goes. And it's written here. It's a lot cleaner, it's a minimum, it's a minimum standard. I think a lot of people are gonna need it in, I think it's gonna catch the ones we wanna catch, the people who don't have any or really insufficient. It adds a little bit more to a couple of projects that we have all recognized. You know, I think if I looked at .033 and it said Caldony Spirits is good, then I think I would be a little bit more likely to say, I don't know, I think we've all kind of agreed that needed a little bit more landscaping. On the flip side, though, it's direct, like taking the structures into account with the numbers you gave, airs on the side of more trees. Yeah, it would add more trees, yep. If we factored structures at a higher rate, then we would end up with more trees or more landscaping. Separating the two seems unnecessarily complicated to be the structures from other impervious. It's more difficult to do the building that it is for other impervious cover. They do have sort of different characteristics, different aspects to them. So I never thought about doing it separately, but. From the public's point of view, they tell you there's square footage for their structures and there's square footage for their impervious, right? They just give it to them the square footage they need for landscaping, right? Yeah, that's the way it would work, but right now we're not asking them to differentiate. We just ask them for an impervious cover. How much of your property's impervious cover? They don't split between the two. Which either way is still simpler, I think, if there's a way to do it. Yeah, and just for example, the Caledonia spirits, we had calculated that the site plan had 1,600 square feet of landscaping. With a .033 on everything, it comes out to 2,635. So they would actually have to add, with that factor, 1,000 more square feet. Which again, as we said, with that site as empty as it is, it. That's what I needed to hear, to be able to conceptualize what the .033 means. I'm sorry, so that was just a .33 applied? Yeah, there's no higher factor for the building. For the building, yeah. But ultimately, they need to be able to provide your, with the square footage of the building as well. I mean, maybe not. Yeah, for other reasons, but not for. For other permit applications, so it's not as if you're asking them for information. Yeah, the question that comes up at that point is once you start having structures, buildings, is where things fall into the gray area whether it's a structure or a building of a. So is your recommendation for all districts and all impervious cover the factor B, .033? Yes. As written here. It's not as written here. I would have to amend this. I kind of put the more complex version in here so you could actually visualize it and see it. It's easier to go through. We're just gonna strike it all back to number one and for A and the factors .033. So we get rid of B for D, and then the districts with maximum cover. A would be changed to just. Just the factors. The factor is, yeah. Colonel impervious cover. That's true, yeah. But so then that removes all the structure pieces. So in, I think you just add this to two to determine the square footage and planning area that will be required to multiply .033 with the square footage. Yep. I'm comfortable with that. Start with simple. If it doesn't work, we go to more complex later. So where it might not work, it sounds like it's in a more rural, larger project where the .033 might stand out because it might be too little landscaping. It's something that's big that's out somewhere. But in the urban area, it seems like, yeah, because there's already stuff crammed in that the .033 is gonna work fine. Yeah, I think where it will work the least is with somebody who may have a parking lot of nine parking spaces. So they miss out on the .042. So they end up in the total landscaping and I think there's some scenarios which could play out. But again, when we're looking at this, we're trying to look at it as a minimum. And I think a lot of cases come up, people aren't meeting even the .033 minimum. So I think this is already gonna push people up to a higher standard. And I think if we find there examples where it's still not being pushed far enough, again, we've already looked at three projects that were approved under the previous zoning that each one of which we said, oh, we would have probably wanted to see more different landscaping in those, whether it was Caledonia Spirits, even Hunger Mountain Co-op could probably, depending on whether they were large trees or medium trees, I think we would have been better about making sure their trees were more appropriate for shading those parking lots. So, how does this apply to, say, future developments where they have no parking? What's that? Yeah, like buddies. Yeah, or as we decrease the amount of impervious cover that we contribute to parking so that they're in that .033 is just applying to the building footprint itself. So in that case, it's lower than what you were proposing here because the .03 is lower than the structure. But I think in those cases, what you would find is, this is the amount that's landscaped. So if you don't have a parking area and you have your alternative is, you need to have certain amount of landscaped, the rest of it's gonna be grass. Because it's not impervious. It's not impervious and it's not landscaped. It's gotta be something that kind of falls into. So I think this is really looking at having a arithmetic way of being able to say how many trees and shrubs. So we don't end up with just lawn. We end up with some shade. I mean, the overall goal is to mitigate the surfaces, the urban heat island, right? So that depends on, I'm just trying to imagine how that would be affected as we reduce the amount of land developed as parking. So, I mean, it could still, could basically come out as a wash. Just wanna make sure we don't encourage more parking. That's all. Yes, and what we didn't wanna do is to have the factor get, and I mean, if it's decided, it doesn't really matter. We didn't wanna have the factor for parking get above the .04 because you're already meeting, because then we're having to make up more landscaping somewhere else for the impervious cover that's already been taken care of. And so people with a lot of parking lot may end up with lots of additional landscaping somewhere else to make up for the fact that their parking lot landscaping didn't provide enough. So that would be the maximum for the parking lot landscaping is that .042. But as long as it's .033, people may have more, we hope people have more, people may have more simply because they meet one of those other requirements under screening. And remember, if you've got a non-residential next to a residential, you have to provide screening to protect the residential uses that are next door. And you don't get to come into the DRB and saying, yeah, but you guys can only make me plant seven trees because that's all, no, works the other way around. You do your screening first, then we see if you meet your landscaping require, yeah. Yeah, and it might encourage you to meet your screening with landscaping and stuff, that's it. Yes. Yeah. If you have to meet screening anyway. Yeah, if you already have to meet screening and it gives encouragement for people to support planting street trees because your street trees count. So, I think we're good. Is everyone comfortable with that approach? We can revisit it if needed. Yeah, can I just, one quick question? Mike, I just want to say thanks. This is like a very elegant solution to a sticky problem that we've been grappling with the last couple of meetings. And I don't mean to, I don't doubt the rigor with which you've come up with these numbers, but I'm just curious, how many models did you crunch or how many hypotheticals did you crunch to come up with the numbers? I just, I would say at least, I would say between 10 and 15 different examples of pulling out site plans and counting the trees and what's out there and looking at examples. And this has been reviewed by Audra, who is the Assistant Zoning Administrator and Meredith, who's the Zoning Administrator and we've kind of chewed over the different. Yup. And they would throw out very specific examples. What about the problem on Berlin Street? We had a big problem on Berlin Street with this particular one and we would pull it out and say, well, under the old rules, they needed 14 trees and 87 shrubs under the new rules, it's this. And they're like, oh, well, that's actually reasonable. That's good. Yup. Thanks. Anything else on the landscape? Is that it? No, I think that's it. I'll make these changes. I think the only thing that would be pending would be what the tree board comes up with for that, which I may just have to make a decision on that. If it gets to the city council and the tree board hasn't made a decision, and I guess I would recommend that that get pulled, but otherwise I think we would keep it in there for now or do you guys want me to pull it and add it later in, because we have two processes, so everyone remembers. We've got this fast track on this one and then we've got the second one. I could always go and add that on the second one if we want. The second punch list, so that would just get struck. I like the placeholder that you put in. I think it's fine. 358. Yeah, I mean, I guess it must, hypothetically, they don't adopt something consistent with the ANSI standards. I can't imagine that, but I don't. Well, I think two, we can always recommend a change. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's something people can follow and I don't think it's gonna actually cause any administrative snags anyway. Do I have a motion to forward the revisions to the landscaping and screening section of the zoning with the modifications that we agreed upon tonight to City Council. So moved. We have a second. A second. Any discussion, any further discussion? All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Okay, and the motion carries. Oh, hey, we have a draft. Yes, Barb moved. All right, I'm seconded. We got it. That's item five. Moving on to item six. It's about a half an hour, 25 minutes. We have to get to our minutes. It's cold. The slope, the slope issue. So as part of the punch list of issues with the zoning that was recently passed, Mike brought up this issue of this prohibition on building run slopes over 30%. And it is, there are no exceptions to the rule as written right now. Waivers. Waivers. And therefore, there were certain instances where it was come up and it didn't necessarily make sense to deny the application like when, for example, a retaining wall is being built, that would naturally be a slope higher than 30%. So we had some discussion about that. And I think there's two parts to this. One is the prohibition on slopes. And the second part is the calculation of density. Previously, the intent was to have that calculation be built on the buildable area, on a lot. The proposal that we've received from staff would be to cut that calculation because the calculation was proving to be administratively very difficult with the data that we have now. That's my understanding of the issue, Mike. Is there anything else I missed? Nope, that pretty much. These changes are actually, unlike what you just went through. And if anyone doesn't have them, this still has the landscaping on the back half, but if somebody wants to see the slope ones, I've just got a couple of these left. What's the data? All right. Well, this was the 11-7. So the changes here are actually pretty straightforward. So this is kind of a strike out. So on this page, this just deletes under 302.cm. There used to be a section in there that would go and say, in all other districts, the maximum residential density shall be based upon the lots buildable areas rather than total acreage or square footage, which does not include any land with slopes greater than 30% is mapped on the attached map or wetlands or these other things. So that, in this case, the policy is very, I wouldn't say complicated. It's, that's what we're really talking about rather than wordsmithing because it really is striking that thing that says we're gonna use buildable area. And then two pages later on 317, the actual changes here go through and it used to say all development of land in this category is prohibited. And same with the engineered plans, all development on the slope is prohibited. What we've said is all development shall require hearing, all development in this land shall require engineered plans. So those are the pretty, I guess what's changing is pretty straightforward. The question is, should we make that change or not? Yeah, so staff recommendation was to, as far as the buildable area, just to delete that portion, right? Yes. And then as far as the prohibition on building on steep slopes, the recommendation was to make it so that you could build on slopes over 30% if you have an engineer has provided plans and DRV approval, right? Yes. I've read all these things, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting it accurate. Yeah, so we're not going through and exempting and not regulating it. We're simply going through and saying, we're taking away the prohibition to go through and say, okay, if you've got an engineer and we have a hearing. So Barb raised some concerns based on, well, there's the two different issues. One is, I mean, and they're tied together, because slopes are part of what we've classified as unbuildable area over 30%. So they're unbuildable then, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, but one is that we put forward these proposed density maximums in various districts to the public and propose this, and we were conveying this message that we calculated this with the idea in mind that you would have a maximum for your particular lot based on the unbuildable area. The actual number that you crunched would be based on that. So we would have the really, a lot with a lot of unbuildable area and then all of the density that you would get, if assuming it was all buildable kind of cramped in one area, that was the concern. And that's what we expressed to the public. And then the other part of it was with slopes, well, maybe you can articulate your concern with the slopes. I mean, it was that concern, and then it could get pulled in with slopes buildable that are no longer unbuildable. Right, I mean, those two issues can be separated, I think, you know, the question is, is it good practice to build on a slope of 30% or more? You know, under the regional planning, one of the members of the public brought up to me that the Regional Planning Commission recommends not building on slopes over 25%. So there is some, you know, there is a rationale that it's not good practice to build on steep slopes. So, but rather than prohibiting it, then Mike's proposal, it just says, we need engineered plans. The wording as written does not, you know, you could apply for a waiver, so it doesn't absolutely blanket, prohibit any development on slopes of 30% or more, but it just makes it much more difficult to do. So that piece becomes one issue that I think, to my mind, we can separate. My, and I see if we keep a tight control on it, then perhaps, you know, this idea of having engineered plans makes sense. It's the other piece that has me more concerned that if we eliminate what was kind of, to my mind, a sort of bedrock aspect of how we establish the densities in the first place and say, okay, a site that has a, you know, 30% or 25%, no, sorry, 30% slope and it's a half an acre is exactly the same as a site that is a flat site and half an acre and they should be able to have the same, a number of units built on them. That's where I think we get, to my mind, into concern and it brings back some of the example projects that had happened, you know, within the last year or so that were under concern with the public and particularly the issue of the Sibley Street project. And so I took a look at if we were to say that that site was just, you know, we were all gonna calculate the density based on the total footprint of that site, how many units could we put on it and how different would that actually be than what was proposed and very strongly reacted to against by the public. So before we get to further into the piece of it, I wanted to say, so the planning commission voted to adopt Mike's proposal, staff's proposal, but we also agreed that we should outline Barb's concerns and the associated with taking that approach to the city council as we put forward this recommendation. So I asked Mike and Barb if they could draft a memo to city council. We've got two different memos that we can either merge or for health separately. I would encourage us to merge our memos so that we're speaking with one voice. But that's what this discussion tonight is gonna be talking about. How do we wanna do that? And is it possible to come to some kind of a compromise that then we could actually bring forward with, you know, to at least from my standpoint with a common voice? Yeah, we can talk about your examples because that might help to illustrate. So Barb wrote a memo and Mike wrote a memo reacting to that responding to it. So let's talk about. Maybe. There's another one. Yeah. Do you want one, Kirby? Sure, thanks. Is starting place, do you mind? I mean, is there anything that you would wanna change in your memo based on what Mike's response? Well, I think, I mean, for me it kind of helps to kind of take a step back and say, you know, yeah, we can get into the weeds here. There's a lot of weeds on his reaction as well as my original. But I think the point for me is really to look at what do we want to be able to accomplish with whatever we determine is the best approach. And I totally agree that as we knew that when we went forward with this zoning that things were going to come up that were gonna prove to be very difficult to apply. And at least from my standpoint, I think one of the issues had to do with the scale of the development that was being considered. And that this 30% or the buildable area issue really comes up to my mind in terms of new multifamily development, not somebody trying to expand an existing house putting an addition or something like that on. So it really, you know, how could we modify this to apply to that in lieu of... Luminating that, did I interpret that? From the zoning standpoint, so when we calculated those district densities that are in our zoning, we didn't remove the buildable area when we figured out what the density should be. We looked at what's actually on the ground. So removing the buildable area will change the amount of building potential from the current zoning because you're no longer gonna be reducing that amount. But whether that makes a difference compared to what your neighbors looking at what's on the ground from the zoning standpoint probably not because the zoning was set up assuming we had flat buildable area in these neighborhoods when we found the 90% rules, we founded them. What does the provide that the other size scale massing requirements don't? Well, because I've been thinking about this that it to me, one of those elements of character of the neighborhood is the fact that historically, we've only built on relatively flat areas of a site. So we are not already building on steep slopes historically. And if we wanna maintain historical development patterns, which I heard pretty strongly from the public that that was a desirable thing to do, that that's one of those aspects that we need to be considering as well. That unfortunately, we wanna say that our other pieces, our other requirements define character of the neighborhood but they really don't. And that was actually the point of my doing the three examples that I did because we could meet every one of those other criteria that we say are defining character of the neighborhood. But is this really, do those developments reflect the character of the neighborhood? Is that? I'm not following it, it's my fault. No, I'm sorry, let me go back a bit. We had said, Mike said in his response that one of the, that we have other ways to make sure that development is consistent with neighborhoods, with the character of neighborhoods. One of them is footprint, one of them is setback. One of them is potentially number of units. Scale massing articulation, all of those aspects. And I guess my feeling is that those are not enough. And that was why I felt strongly that when we instituted the piece about buildable area, what that did was it reflected the density of the buildings that were occurring in an existing neighborhood. So it reflected the character of the neighborhood as well. That that, as well as all of those other characteristics. So if we remove that one and say, we remove that criteria and we are left with just scale massing articulation, footprint, all of that, is that enough to maintain the character of the neighborhoods that we feel strongly about? And so that's why I did the examples because I feel that it doesn't. It's the thought that, and the prohibition on slopes, it's going to result in a change in character of the neighborhood because they're building different slopes, is that it? Not so much the slopes, but yeah, if we again, separate those two issues. So let's set aside building on a 30% slope. Is it that different from building on a 25% slope? Probably not. So if we set that piece aside, but it has more to do with the density calculation and the fact that we represented it to the public, there was a lot of concern among the public that our densities were too high. And we said, but this is, we're going to make sure that any development that happens is consistent with neighborhoods because we've got this slope exclusion. But I think the density calculations were calculated without that in mind. Oh, but in the 90% rule was, yeah. But that was what people were coming up against and saying that they were. So people were upset about these that we proposed even though they were. What, that technically they, technically they reflect what's on the ground because it's an average. Yeah, right, it's an average. So we were saying that we have this extra step that came into the process to ensure that over development does not happen. So my understanding of that piece of the process, and Kirby, were you with us at this point? I was there near the end when this happened, what you're talking about. Well, let me be my perspective and then you can add yours or correct me. But, because I'm still not sleeping well and I just, my recollection is not as strong. I'm in my strong suit right now. But my recollection is that we assured the public that the buildable would prevent a really out of scale building from popping up in a neighborhood. You know, because everyone could just group, you could just group your density in a one little corner of your parcel and then you would have this giant building. And then we developed the other requirements, the scale size mass and footprint. And I, my thought was that that got at the issue. So that was, that was my understanding. My understanding was the same thing, that we have all of these other requirements that are getting at the character of the neighborhood issue, which is what people are, the heart of it, the public was concerned about the character of the neighborhood changing and density that's allowing distances, densities that are too high would change their character of their neighborhood. So density became a proxy for character of the neighborhood. And John Adams has convinced me at this point, he's talked about this a lot and others that I've heard talk about this or the planning background have convinced me at this point to say that density is really, it's a red herring as far as for character of the neighborhood. It's easy for people because it's a number. It's easy for people to look at density and say that's gonna determine what my neighborhood's like. But really it's all the other rules that we have in place that determine what your neighborhood's like. And density is just looking in the wrong direction. And that's kind of like where, but when this conversation played out, that's kind of where I ended up personally on it was realizing, because at the beginning, I too was thought that density had a lot of importance and now I realize it's actually a pretty poor proxy for character of the neighborhood. Why? I'm just curious. It's the number of people that can. It's like your, yeah, the number of units that are allowed on a parcel, you know. It's a poor proxy that gets split up into five units, but it looks exactly the same. And so that's, you know, it's no different character wise. Vectorian could get split into seven to eight. There might be more humans around, but yeah. But actually, yeah, but you would, I'm sorry. It might have parking, it might have some other, but we have our setbacks rules. We have a lot of zoning rules that just kind of put another real check on, it's very difficult to reach maximum density on any parcel. And the reason why we increase the amounts is basically this mic determined that we're out of conformance anyway, we're like way over the old density requirements in all our neighborhoods. So we were just changed it to reflect reality. So that's what I remember. The 90% rule was this test was done, so if 90% of the parcels in this district would be in conformance with this density, then that seems like that's a good gauge for where we are now, what we wanna maintain. But I guess I would argue with, you know, with Kirby's assertion that the number of housing units has no influence on the character of the neighborhood because it definitely does. I mean, even, I'll tell you that my neighbors know that I have a two-family house, not just a one-family house. It's really, and if I then suddenly took my house and trenged it into five units, that would have a significant impact on my neighborhood, which is mostly one and two-family houses. So that's- I think my reply to that in the memo was that that really, really, really sounds like a proposal to amend the use table. Not a, I mean, we keep getting off on this buildable area. You know, this is, I mean, this is her parcel, and I have to calculate her density on that slope map, and it's just- Oh, it's a slope map, okay. That's a slope map. All the red is slope, the darkest red is the slopes that are over 30%. 30%, right. So it really becomes, you know, how do you calculate such a number so we can enforce and administer those rules without having a large test? But really, if the concern is, having a multi-family will change the character of my neighborhood, right now multi-family is either a permitted or a conditional use, then the proposal should be, the problem isn't the fact that somebody's gonna have a 5,000 square foot house, it's that they're gonna have a 5,000 square foot house that's been broken into five or more units, because if your concern is five or more units is the problem, then change the use table to go and say you can't have multi-family housing in this neighborhood. Not, let's try to adjust the buildable area to the point that somebody can't, you know, if it turns out that most of Barb's parcel is 25% slopes, it's all gonna be buildable, and she can build it there, and officially you'd be saying, yeah, that's fine. As long as it's 25% slope, it's okay that I have eight units, but if that's 30%, then it's not okay for me to have eight units. Well, I know it's an arbitrary number, but it was a number that we determined was at least a reasonable level, and at least some portions of that site will be over 30%, so that would automatically reduce the three-quarter acre that exists now in terms of buildable area. If, so the sketches that I did, which I don't know if anybody actually saw, had to do with whether, you know, what the actual effects of that would be, and I'll show this to Erin because I don't know if you saw this. Yeah, I think that's part of this. It's kind of the memo, right? Yeah, so I mean, the issue being that, you know, given if that entire three-quarter parcel, three-quarter acre parcel was considered, and if we allowed a density bonus because it would be really easy to make it an infill PUD, then it would be possible to end up having a significant number of units, eight units on a site that is currently two. Surrounded by, as you'll see, that the numbers on the buildings surrounding it are the number of housing units in the neighborhood. And any of that development that's indicated there would meet any of the setback footprint, any of the other required parking as well requirements. And what I'm saying is that to my mind, that is too dense. It doesn't reflect, you know, without that, if it were, basically, if it went, if the slope exclusion was ignored, then about three units, you know, it would bring it down to four units. Does this comply with all the setbacks? Yep, footprint, yeah, the whole nine yards. And it's a 2,500-square-foot footprint, so two units per floor, you could end up with four units. And as you see, looking at the massing of the building, it's not that different from the two adjacent properties just down the street. So it's not as if it's totally out of scale. So I think, you know, so that's sort of where I started was, okay, does this, does it really make a difference what we're trying to accomplish here? And I think it does. I mean, I think it has a serious impact because historically, the whole three-quarters of an acre would never have built built on because it was a steep slope. Technically, now we could, of course, we could build on the back portion of that. But historically, it would not have been. That's why all the houses are along the street in the relatively flat areas. Most of these sites in the back, half of them, do in fact have significant slopes on them. And as I pointed out before, I mean, I recognize that administratively, Mike would like to be able to tell people, you know, what their slope percentage is, but if somebody's going to be doing a development like this, they would need to be getting an engineered plan in the first place. And so any engineer, even any site designer would be able to come up with the percentage that's over a third percent. I think it works in that situation, but I think the issue administratively is that for any sort of addition or porch, you'd have to get an engineer in this area. Well, and I think that's my point is that it's, to me, it's more significant in terms of if we're increasing the number of units on the property, not just if we're adding on to an existing. It's using it as a density designation. What if you're increasing the number of units? Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, but you're not changing the external appearance of the, well, I still think that there, you know, is, I mean, there's certainly a cost associated with that. There's a benefit to the property owner to add an additional unit to an existing building. So the, and to ask them to do a site plan is not unreasonable. And in some cases might already have to provide a site plan. So that's why I'm not sure that I understand that the requirement for having an engineer involved who could then designate what was 30% or greater. So I think I'm better understanding this question about whether the use table should, is the better. I mean, it sounds like there's a question of how to deal with this issue of character in neighborhood and whether it's gonna be through ends and calculations, what uses are allowed. But it's also a direct decision to be made, which I think is what I pointed out in the memo, which was that in her example, the only way she could do her example with that many, that much was to do a PUD, which would mean it would have to be, as we pointed out, the only way you should be able to exceed our densities is if it was a well-designed project. We spent a year or more working on our PUD standards to death. But to be what she proposed, it would have to be a well-designed senior housing living facility that will provide perpetually affordable housing units and hers rated facilities with a score less than 50, then you would be able to apply to get up to eight units. So it's not like everybody walking in gets to go and get this, you'd have to have a well-designed project to public hearings, character of the neighborhood and traffic are actual requirements. So if it doesn't meet character of the neighborhood, the neighbors are gonna have an opportunity to discuss this point. But those are not criteria that are that difficult to meet, frankly. I mean, a lot, most new buildings are gonna meet the hers rating. And it's not. It's professionally affordable. It's more challenging than you think. That's right. That's not one that I would necessarily choose. You know, there are eight different criteria to choose from. So you would only have to do one of those, the hers, well, not the three. I think there's two, three of them. I don't remember which one it is for that one. So the particular criteria, I mean, we were trying to allow a lot of flexibility. So it's, yeah. So perpetually affordable was not gonna be one of them, but 88, you know, accessible. Yes, you know, that kind of thing. So you have to do two of those to get a 25% density bonus or three to get a 50% bonus and that's the next one. And out of the eight. So, I mean, the affordable. Two of the falling next thing. So, yeah, I mean, I just want this. But if it gets to a point where it's, if again, if it's to the point where under no circumstances, so in other words, even if a hers rated senior facility with perpetually affordable housing is unacceptable, this still is not a buildable area question. This is, it absolutely shouldn't be allowed anywhere if we're not gonna allow it for a hers rating senior facility, perpetually affordable. Then it should just change the use table to say we're not gonna allow it in that neighborhood. And otherwise we're just- Not gonna allow what in that neighborhood? Multi-family housing. If you're gonna say you don't want a senior housing facility that's perpetually affordable and hers rated the best that we can do and you still are gonna oppose that, it's just not a use that you think should be allowed in the district. And the rest of it is just a red herring that it's the buildable area that's the issue. It's not the buildable area that's the issue. It's the fact that it's multi-family. No, I don't think that's not the way I see it. Is that, no, I don't have any problem with multi-family if there was enough site area that was flat, that was reasonably, that it could accommodate that level of development, that number of units. So to me, it's not about the use, it's about the appropriateness of the development within the neighborhood. What if it's across the street where it's a little flatter, if I recall, liberty well enough? Not quite as steep as your backyard, right? No, it's steep over here too. There's not a little bit more flat, hypothetically. Hypothetically, let's say it is across the street and that it's slope issues taken out of it. So you'd be fine with the eight units going in and that same. Well, there are properties down the street where there are flatter. Yeah, I used to live in one of them. Yeah, the one across the street that has, I think, five units in it. And that's a, you know, it's a- On the corner of Liberty and Loomis, there's a six unit that I used to live in. And then across from that, which is also in the corner of Liberty and Loomis, the different corner, there's, I don't know how many units are there, it's huge. There's only, I think there's only five or six in that one. Yes, I know that that is part of the neighborhood is large, multifamily units. Yeah, except that that's not in the same district. That's not in our res, 6,000. It's in res. The corner of Liberty and Loomis is in a different one? Yeah, because this is the line, this is the dark line here, it's the divided point. Oh, you live on the divided line. Yeah, I do, sorry, I do. Yeah. So without the bonuses, fewer units should be able to be built on that side of the line. More units. No, she, without the density bonus. With fewer on her side. Yeah, right, but more on my neighbor side, by the way, who has a bigger flat area now. So just because they're in res, 3,000. So, you know, that's the kind of thing that I think to me it, this whole issue of buildable area reflects a characteristic of the neighborhood. So if we have a different way that we can get to that point without, you know, using buildable area as that criteria, then I'd be fine with doing that. It's just that somehow we need to be able, I mean, because people value the historic character of our neighborhoods, that's why they want to move here. How do we retain those characteristics while still allowing for additional infill development? I'm sorry, what's the core characteristic that you're seeking to preserve? Because that's what I'm not quite understanding. The characteristic of the neighborhood having to do with the pattern of development. And specifically along the street, the streetscape. You know, we could say, you know, there's a certain pattern, there's a certain size, which, and some of those elements are reflected in other criteria, such as footprint and setback and articulation and our other architectural criteria. But other elements of the building pattern that has developed over time, it's sort of like what Kirby and I were just talking about. You know, as you move through down a street, the development pattern changes. And appropriately, what happens is that the particular district that those properties are in changes as well. But historically, what's been reflected is not what we're proposing could be built now. And I think that what we're proposing is a significant change to what has historically developed. And I feel a little dense because I'm still not understanding either. I mean, Erin's question is hitting at it for me. Because what I see as the only thing that we're giving up is regulating the number of people. And that's why I feel, I mean, I feel like we've got all of the external regulations to ensure that buildings are near the street, facing that their front doors are facing the street, that they have consistent scale-massing. And I just get really concerned about saying that a certain number of people in a home reflects the character of the neighborhood. And that's what I'm... No, I don't, yeah, and I don't think that that's, it may, the number of family units, you might, is basically what you're saying. You're not really saying number of people, necessarily. And I agree that we can increase the number of family units. We can increase the number of family units in existing buildings and essentially have very little impact on the character of the neighborhood, which is what we were discussing earlier. That has minimal impact. But once we start looking at infill development, we have to be much more careful about that in terms of what's the impact. And... That's where we have all of those design standards. Right, well, I mean, you know, my other example was the Sibley Street. And I met every single one of the setbacks, articulation and footprint, and still ended up with, I can't remember now, 12, 14 units. 12, yeah. And those 12 units could be built if you consider the entire property and don't exclude the 30% slope of which there is a significant amount on that. So we're running out of time. Do you have one more follow-up question? No, I mean, I... We are out of time, actually. Yeah. So I'm gonna... Thanks, Leslie. I think first I want to know, do the commissioners want to reopen this discussion? I mean, there was a vote, there was a decision. Do we want to reopen that decision and continue this discussion at teacher meetings? That's the first question. The second question is, if the answer is no, how do we want to move forward with preparing a memo for a city council? So I just want to mention both parts to that question. Guys, I have a point of clarification. Yeah. The decision that we are looking to reconsider is specifically one. Yes. I think it's like, oh. Go ahead. Is it the 3002C change and the... What was the 3002? I don't have one. Sorry, no, sorry. The C is the buildable area one. Okay. Yeah. And the layer one is the... Yeah, the two that might teed up at the beginning of the discussion. So the decision was to recommend to city council that we eliminate the buildable area, so the density calculation is based on buildable area. Okay, so that's the 3002C and then this other... Yes. The hearing threshold. Well, yeah, and then we would allow for some buildings and slopes. Okay. But requiring engineering. Engineering. And design review board. Okay. Development review board. Because there's a design review board. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna make sure. It's confusing. So that was the decision. And then I asked for memos to be drafted and it's not pointing to time. So do people want to reopen the discussion to see if there's a different substantive solution? I know Barb does. I know she'll vote positively on that, but are others interested in that? The reason why I ask it like this in a formal way is because we've talked about this a lot. We've had an affirmative vote and I think it's important that we be conscious of our time. If we've had a vote and other people don't want to continue the discussion, then I want to respect that and move forward so we can draft a memo that cautions the city council of the risk of adapting this approach. I think that's perfectly reasonable solution. But if people do want to revisit this and have a little bit more background information, since not everybody on the commission was there for all of the public hearings, leading up to its own adoption, then that's certainly a welcome way to move forward to. Another point, the vote that we took that we... Do you weren't a part of? That I was not a part of. Does that include a requirement that we send memos to the city council? No, that's also what we need to vote on. Yeah, I think it was more we decided as a group that it made sense to... I mean, generally speaking, when we submit recommendations to the city council, Mike usually puts together a memo and presents and here's why we've put these together. In this one, we felt the need to be a little bit more involved in interacting with this particular... Especially since our concerns are shared by others in the public. For me, I'm not finding that I'm moving in my point of view on it, but I thought it was important for our to be able to have a platform. So I'm satisfied that she's able to plead her case at this point would probably be a favor of moving to the city council. I'm gonna abstain. Understandable, Erin, really. And Dominique Kirby, to try to interweave these memos a little bit in the face of you. And then to get Barb and Mike to review and sign off on that, is that... Okay, yeah. That sounds good. You're being volatile to do that. We use both semi-electronic versions of your memos. I probably already have them, but the latest electronic version of your memo. Word document. You do have it. But it's in Word. You can actually take it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a Word version of it? Yeah, you should have a Word version of it. Yeah. I'll find the latest one. I don't know if I sent PDFs or words. You could do that so that we could discuss it at the January 14th meeting. Yeah. We have something to do over the holidays, Kirby. Yeah. And if not, we can move it back but just to give us goalposts here. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I also want to mention that you have said that different members of the public have concerns. They should absolutely submit their comments or come in and provide them verbally because maybe there is something in their nuance. Maybe they'll say it in a way that is... Well, based on what they've said to me, I think that they're... We've captured everything. You've captured everything. Okay. Yeah. One clarification. We've got the landscaping moving forward so that can get fixed. Yes. If this is waiting till January, it's gonna miss the window for the adoption of that one. Did we want to... Is the excluding the buildable areas piece? I mean, because... And you can correct me if I'm wrong. It's the buildable areas piece that's really your concern. We could move forward the other two piece, the other piece that goes through on the table, adjusting the table to say you can build over 30% with a hearing and engineering. And flipping those two. There was something about flipping the tables. And flipping the tables. Yeah, it's the strikeout version. If you have to roll it that far, then I think that... Yeah. Then there's an alternative. At least I can start going up and getting that to change. And we... And if the buildable areas ends up on the long adoption list, then it ends up on the long adoption list. But that's up to you guys to decide whether you want to move buildable area forward. But I would at least go and move the engineered 30% stuff. Yeah, if we knew that, I would... Yeah. I mean, that would still require an engineer to be involved, but... Yeah, and we have engineers downstairs who do our reviews. I mean, just as there's stuff downstairs right now for proposals on College Street that can't get building permits until they get approval from engineers downstairs. But that would move those two forward and leave the buildable areas question as a separate item. Okay, yeah. So do I have a motion to the staff recommendation for the steep slope part of the zoning to City Council with the landscape? The steep slope aspect of the build... Allowing building areas up 30%. Right, because the steep slope is two parts. Right. Not sure that was clarified, but anyway, yeah. So we'll withdraw and restate the motion. And then the motion on the steep slope. All right. I mean, try to make it easy for everyone else. Yeah. Rather than say give me a motion. Yeah, right, right. You can talk with it. But, Barb, do you want to make the motion? What are you doing? How about the amendments to section 3007? Okay. Which is the steep slopes. 3007. Okay, so do I have a motion to recommend to City Council the staff recommendations for the revisions to 3007, steep slopes? That prohibited construction on slopes of 30%. Yes. To amend that section. Yeah, those are the only changes to sections 3007. The other changes are in 3002. Two, right. So the only changes in 3007 are to that table that prohibited. That table, yeah. Okay, and the areas, I guess I'd forgotten we did square footage area changes too. Yeah, well that was why just for simplicity of the motion, I said the changes that were proposed to 3007. Okay, all right. Then it encompassed some of those minor. Okay, do I have such a motion? I will move that motion. I said no second. Whatever that motion was. Second, second. Okay, any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed? All those abstaining? Okay. So the motion carries. That is item six, we're gonna go skip. Item seven, item eight quickly, let's look at the minutes. I just like to keep up these. There is Aaron's name. One kisiki wrong. It is still wrong. Got two of the three. We're getting there. Yeah, I usually make these fixes, so. Okay. I move we approve. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. The minutes are approved. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Second. I'll take it. All those in favor? Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you very much. Thank you for all your help. This is complicated.