 That's what's really pretty interesting is if you actually look at... Thank you, I'll finish. You guys all set? That's fine, we'll carry on, Mike. All right. I can read this agenda the first time this is called a meeting to order. Changes to the agenda, any changes to the agenda? Public comment, period. No? Happy to see you. Nice to see you, Madam Mayor. Christine is one. Oh no, but you gotta be, you know, formally. Formally, I think it is Madam Mayor. Madam Mayor, okay. Well, congratulations again and welcome. Thank you, that was great. Let's see. A previous meeting minutes. In the material at the table for you all from our last meeting on the 28th of February. Anyone ready to make a motion to accept the minutes? So moved. Second? Second. Any discussion on the minutes? There are none. All those in favor of approving the minutes, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Initial review parking standards. All right, so at our last several meetings, we went through a list of various items that have, that I've been identifying since I've been here on. Regulatory updates that we should potentially explore. One of the items that was identified was regulations. This is also kind of, from the options and regulations in 2016. There was some discussion as I, as I've been told anyway, some discussion of the form-based code when that was included in the regulations that there was some need to update the parking standards. But at that time, it was decided to not go forward with trying to figure out parking in order to get the regulations adopted and in place so that we could start getting the development patterns we were looking for and that we would revisit parking at a later date. So in your agenda, I included a memo on just some thoughts and directions we might want to go in. I was originally thinking that I would prepare some language to bring to you tonight, but then I got to thinking that that might not be a direction you all want to go in. So I figured it might be better to at least start the conversation with several options that we could explore and have a discussion on various options that we might want to look at. We could go to parking. So in the memo of options, and then actually I was thinking of a sixth option that might be something we want to consider as well, which would be a fee and rule option. So let me interrupt you and can you review with us the existing parking ordinance? Sure. So right now, so downtown is a separate entity for parking. There's separate regulations for downtown that are, I will say, fairly similar to our other parking standards. So right now, for our residential districts, we require, I believe it's two spaces, two off-street spaces per unit. Is that just if they're being redeveloped or is it? So that would be for a new development. If you were to build something now, and I'm going to grab my phone here because I can't. I think we talked about two years up to a certain number and then lesser as you had no use. So for multifamily, that's the case. I can get to them quickly here. And I will tell you exactly what they are. So in our residential districts, yeah, we require two spaces per dwelling unit and one space for every accessory unit. Regardless of how many bedrooms there are. Correct. Regardless of the bedrooms in all of our other residential districts. No, I was just going to ask you kind of following Terry's question. Existing properties are grandfathered in. Correct. But if I have a property and I'm going to add units, make some kind of a change, then I would have to meet these. When does that kick in? So it's an interesting question. Those things where it's if it was a nonconforming use, we would want you to become conforming and that would trigger some of the parking standards. But a residential use is not a nonconforming use. It's a conforming use in our residential districts. So it's an interesting question. I don't think we would require redevelopment or addition to a home to conform with the parking standards. Right. But I guess where I was going is if someone wanted to put in a cottage unit or a... In a case like that, yeah, we would, yes, yes, we would look at that probably as the accessory unit and make sure they had at least one space off street for that unit. But would we require them to come up with the two for the first... You know what I mean? I don't think we would do that. If it was an existing home, an accessory building, for example, I think we would only look at them making sure... I think we would only make sure that they had parking for the accessory dwelling. And I guess then that leads to the question of an accessory dwelling is, I believe, is a right by law. It is. So if I have a single family house with absolutely no parking and no way to get parking on that parcel, I have the right to put an accessory dwelling and our hands are tied in that case, right? Or can we... Well, so there's provisions for how to meet parking. I mean, we do allow for off-site parking. We allow for other options like that. But that's not realistic for a single family homeowner who may have a large lot but no accessible parking, like a narrow lot with a... Potentially, there's on-street options. Well, that could be used. It's not ideal, but... How do you... How do on-street spots, like how does that... So we do not dedicate on-street parking to any one property or any one use. It's part of the general parking inventory for the city. So aside from like handicapped spots or 15-minute parking spots, everything is... So you're saying like if someone wants to build an accessory unit, they can say I want to count a public space as my space is what you're saying? So in some instances, we allow commercial uses that are near the downtown, for example, property across the street just redeveloped as a hair salon. Oh, I thought you... No, no, no. Sorry, not that way. This way. At 35 West Island, just redeveloped as a hair salon, they have a residential units in the building that are being served, that the parking that's at that property serves those residential units. So I believe there is only one or two additional spaces, if even that, on the property for the use. And so we allow them to include the parking across the street, on the street, as part of their... To meet their parking count. Can you imagine doing that with a residential single-family home with part accessory? I mean, potentially if there's on-street parking in the neighborhood, we would probably look at that. It's hard to really say, but the level of non-conformance is really the question, though, if a property is adding a unit, if they are... If they would have to come into conformity with the parking standards, for example. I mean, I think there would be other factors that would lead them to develop first, which would be... So to go back to a statement, you may... Accessory dwellings are allowed in all of our districts, primarily... That wasn't the right way to say that. They're basically allowed in all of our districts, but you also have to be able to meet the standards of the district. So you can't just develop it because you can develop it. You'd have to still meet the setbacks. You'd still have to meet the lot-covered requirements. But it is an allowable use by right. It's not... It would be... The opposite would be a conditional use, where it would have to go before the DRB to be reviewed and get conditions placed on it. So we could put in there a requirement for... If you're putting an accessory unit into your existing residents, we could put in there that you have to now meet on site parking. We could. Yeah, we could. We could. So to go continuing on with our existing... Our existing standards for residential uses that are not in our residential zones. So basically in our commercial zones or other districts, it's one space per dwelling unit plus a half a space for units that are three bedrooms or larger. And then for every four units, calculated in increments of four, it's one additional space. For guest parking. For guest parking, yeah. And then for commercial retail restaurants, things like that, it's three spaces per thousand square feet. For hotels, it's one space per bedroom... Sorry, one space per room. Theors, it's a quarter of a space per seat. For industrial uses, it's three spaces per thousand gross... So as far as we go, as far as the number of spaces. So what have been the issues that have popped up? So primarily where we've seen issues are in the gateway districts, where we are getting redevelopment and where we've decided as a city that that's where we want the redevelopment to occur. We want the intensity and the density along the corridors. In a lot of cases, in order to make those uses work, the parking spaces that are necessary are larger than the area they have available to redevelop. So they're getting into a situation. Some of the developers that we've met with are getting into a situation where in order to meet the parking requirements, they have to scale the building down, which then makes it... It pushes their numbers to the point where they may not even afford to do the building. So as I recall, in the gateway zone, there is a provision for shared parking. So I guess what I'm imagining is that we haven't had enough development yet of adjacent parcels to take that into... make that happen. To some extent. I mean, so shared parking is permitted anywhere, really. I mean, in the... Let's see. The provision that we have in the regulations right now is for shared use, sites over 10,000 square feet in non-residential gross floor area may be applicable for shared use of the required reserve parking spaces. But no more than 60% of the reserve spaces may be shared. So that would be a situation where if it's a larger commercial development, non-residential development, we could get into some shared parking. In the gateway, there is a provision to try to connect parking areas in the buildings to kind of create a frontage road almost so that people don't have to get back out on the main road. But there's not anything specific about number of parking spaces for shared parking. There are some general provisions for tandem parking and things like that in the gateway, but the number of spaces that are needed come back to these regulations. And so the issues we're popping up against in the gateway district is that the lots aren't big enough to support what people are trying to do to get on-site parking for the use. Yeah, or it's becoming too cost-prohibitive to do underground parking or things of that nature, where they'd be able to get some more of the parking, but it just becomes a cost factor where it's not worth them trying to do it. I mean, two spots per unit is a lot, especially considering the size of some of the apartments that are being built. So in the case, it would be one. It would be one plus one for every four, because the gateways are technically non-residential. One up to three and over three. Up to three bedrooms and then an additional half. Yeah, and then units that are three bedrooms are larger. It's a half a space. So if you have a four-bedroom and you have one and a half. Yes. So a three-bedroom or a four-bedroom is one and a half spaces. So if you have one and a half spaces, do you have to give them two? Is that how it works? Typically, yeah. You give them a half a car? Yeah. Right. Yeah, we generally round up with parking. So do we think a guest space is necessary in a gateway district? I mean, that's... There was a long, long discussion about that. Really? Yeah, very long discussion. And we met... I think census should be parking, but should it be for six or eight? What's the cut-off? And we went four, because the parking in that district is one per unit. We figured that, you know, you're going to have guests. So we need to have some extra parking there. But then again, there is... I guess it's not true in all the gateway districts. Most of the gateway district areas have ample street parking options. Well, I was going to say, one of the issues that's popped up on Upper Main Street is that they're doing so well those restaurants up there that they're taking all those spaces on Main Street. So the people who have other retail spaces are getting blocked out. So that's where we get into is you record all on the street or you give them some kind of a waiver, if you will, of the requirements and let them use on-street parking. But as you get more and more commercial uses and more and more successful, you run out of parking. It depends on what you're trying to achieve. I mean, if you think about downtown Burlington, how many people do you know who live in condos or apartments down on Burlington that have guest spaces? Most of them don't. Well, I think guest may also be used here in sort of a liberal term. It may actually, in effect, be serving households that have more than one car. I mean, because how many people have here been partnered that also has to be a client. That's a fair point. Right. So I just... I'm curious... I'm assuming the developers are raising these concerns. Is it about the commercial requirements or the residential requirements? Like, is it one or the other? I don't know if it's really focused on one or the other. I think because we've had some developments where it's strictly residential and based on the pro forma of the development, the kind of the expectation is that they're smaller units, people are going to be walking more, taking the bus, or they'll be marketing the units towards people, for example, that are going to be at the hospital. So they'll be at the hospital for 12 hours a day, so they won't need that space during certain hours so that that could be shared with other tenants. So there's... Presumably. I think there's a lot of... Presumably. Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. There's also the opposite of that too. For instance, people work at the hospital or not because they're... Exactly. Exactly. But so in some cases, we do allow for some reductions in our total parking. We do allow for off-site parking up to a certain amount within a certain distance of the project. So there are... We do allow for some relief right now from the parking standards, but I think in a lot of cases, when you're looking at the non-residential uses and the residential uses together, that nice mix that we're really looking for, if it's a successful business, then like what we're seeing as Mike mentioned on Upper Main, there's a lot of pressure on the parking there. Right, which is... I guess I'm sort of arguing that we shouldn't be changing this because if there's so much pressure... And I heard it... We broke up into groups a couple weeks ago when we had... or a couple meetings ago when we were talking about the bike stuff. Yep. And I think that's saying that there wasn't a fun street parking. There was some talk about that. And if that's the case, then I don't think there's an argument for having less parking that's provided by the developer. And if you recall that, the Main Street project has removed some of the parking from the front side of the street. Right, and that was... I think that was what triggered his comments. I can't remember if it was about that or something up here on Allen Street. But in any case, I mean, you're even seeing in the neighborhoods now, like my neighborhood where there never used to be cars parked on Allen Street. Now, Allen Street, there's cars on both sides of the street now. And so I think the more pressure there is around here, the more it's going to be in the neighborhood. So I don't think we should be relaxing these standards. I really don't. Part of my concern was also that a lot of the initial designs that were laid out for the Main Street were frozen on assumptions about form-based code being implemented in the district was that they were proposing eliminating a lot of the on-street parking because they said, well, these projects have been approved with a quota of parking for the number of units. So I'd be kind of worried if we're leaning up on this while also kind of removing some on-street parking to promote bike lanes and all the other things that came along with that redevelopment project. That's true. But I do think we have a vision for what we want the gateway districts to look like. And we have to realize that if the requirements are too onerous or it's not possible within the space on the lots to develop that aesthetic vision, I mean, I imagine from looking at the form-based code like storefronts on ground level with apartments or that piece of steel. That's what I think. And it's going to get first-level approaches that you're going to walk through in a lot of cases because that's all that will be accessible, especially on some of the more narrow lots. And it's going to change the feel and character of the city. And I understand these are complicated issues because we all would like the convenience of parking, but many cities have chosen to make parking a little bit less convenient in order to have that urban density, walkability, lively street facade. And I just think we have to think about that. I mean... I'm kind of wondering is is it a complaint or is it actually... is this actually restricting growth? Like are developers complaining about this or has this actually prevented significant projects? And I mean, if we look at it, development is going on so I'm not sure it's restricting it. And I'm not sure if it's something that you said, Paula. I believe... I'm probably wrong, but the Gateway District, like the downtown, you can't have a parking garage open to the street. You can have the entrance on the street, but it has to be... It has to be hidden, right? Right. It has to be hidden behind the door. The street has to be stored for you. It's going to be covered in the art armor. Right. So Eric, what are you saying? All the projects have been... Yeah, I mean, I think it's... It is a challenge to create that multimodal atmosphere with development while still giving the opportunity to drive more. So I don't really know what a good balance is necessarily, but I think in order to... I think in order to kind of get people to just park once and then walk everywhere, we have to make sure that we have enough parking in the right spots for one, but at the same time be sensitive to the fact that we don't want cars being pushed into the neighborhoods and then just parking all over the place. So I think it's a good balance. And I don't... I mean, a lot of it is, from the commercial side, I think that's always a challenge because you don't know how good or bad the business is going to do. So you could have 50 spaces for a restaurant and nobody ever goes to it. So you've got an empty parking lot the whole time. Well, but if no one ever goes to it, that restaurant's going to go away. Right, exactly. So you might see a lot of turnover in some circumstances, but you also, you know, you might get a situation where you've got a line out the door trying to get into the place. So I think in those cases, you're never going to have enough parking that's quote-unquote convenient for people that want to be right there. So it's really a matter of how inconvenient do you want to make things for the non-residential component. Yeah, and I think that, if you take a look at the vision of this, as I said before, connected parking lots at the rear of the properties with like a, you call it a frungery street. And curb cuts, only a limited number of curb cuts along Main Street. So if it was all built out, it may be that there would be enough parking because you could park, if not on this property where my restaurant is, the next one over there might be extra spaces, you know what I mean? So you can drive, it's a back road if you, an alley. So, but we're not there. So we're finding this crunch because you've got this finite parking area with nothing, you know, to the east or south adjacent to it. I just also would like to point out that Main Street, we are seeing a number of projects, but, and one of our streets, where we haven't seen as much, there are probably multiple reasons for that, but their parking potentially might be one because there are very narrow lots currently on Malletts Bay. And I wouldn't want to discourage especially small development on some of those narrow lots, there could be, I don't know, I think, I just wouldn't say there's a lot of development, sometimes we're talking about very specific areas and this conversation is a broader conversation about the entire Gateway District, so I just want to keep that in mind. And I will also point out the option that Eric mentioned, option seven, which is not on this list, is potentially the fee and lieu option, which if there were a compelling project that came along that perhaps parking was not feasible, if we had a fee and lieu, that could potentially still exist. In exchange, the city could have share funds that could be potentially used for public parking improvements, that kind of thing. Wouldn't that really, I'm not dismissing the idea, but wasn't the initial discussion that developers were saying that the costs associated with allocating that level of parking was making the projects not feasible, so wouldn't that mean that it was a matter of just paying to the city to use their on-street parking? Well, the cost doesn't have to be equal. I'm not saying the cost would be the same. I think they would choose the fee and lieu option if it were more economical. I think the reason Eric's saying that the cost would be prohibitive is that he's talking about underground parking, which is much more complicated than if they have the space to just have parking on the back of the lot. They'll probably build a parking on the back of the lot. But if they don't have that space, to pay in whatever it would be typical developer to build on a lot. If they had space in a back lot, they could just pay that into a fund that could be supporting their parking. And that could be better than just seeing somebody buying an adjacent parcel to level the structure and then put the parking there. I think you have to be careful because again, if you let someone do something and pay a fee and they don't have parking, now where all the cars go that are going to be frequenting that property. You're talking about going to residential neighborhoods. It's just going to keep pushing out. And Mallins Bay Avenue is a good example of that, where there's not really enough room to put on-street parking on Mallins Bay Avenue and the lots are small. So if you have a pay-and-fee, where are they going to park? Well, I think the O'Brien Community Center has plenty of parking. It could be developed to have more regular parking. There's lots of parking, especially if you put it into a fund so that that could be managed. Yes? We have an exploratory agreement with Champlain Housing Trust to use part of that lot. Oh, really? There would be less parking there in the future. Now you get further development? Yes. So they're interested in developing some affordable home ownership on the front of the lot? I don't know how much that is, but it would reduce the size of the parking lot that's there. But the city hasn't agreed to that. That's just something that is... Well, I will tell you that the plan was always to have something developed along Mallins Bay Avenue on the O'Brien lot. That's kind of always been talked about. The problem is once you start digging there, they buried the Richard's furniture plant underneath there. I know when they did I think when they did the O'Brien lot took some borings there was some they ran into, you know, steel and gaps and crevices and stuff. But anyway, that's another story. But again, I think we got to be careful about, you know, eliminating parking there. Where does it go? And the other thing is if you're... I don't know what the distance is, half a mile from a parking lot, people won't use it. There's a certain distance that people won't walk even though it's close. I remember having a conversation when we were doing the downtown house further from their office to where the parking lot was going to be and they didn't want to do that. There's a lot of psychology involved. Absolutely. Quick question. Maybe if you know this, what kind of direction of the city as far in the city? Like certain neighborhood streets are permitted parking. I know Platt Street is, I think Manchin Street is. Is that something that the city's continuing with or is that kind of a new practice? Actually it was a new practice when CCB was put in because the students were parking in those neighborhoods. So the council was requested to make resident parking in areas. And it's Barlow Street, Manchin Street, Platt Street. I know it goes up Hood Street. I believe some of, I don't know if it goes Leclerc and Hood, but basically an area around downtown to try to dissuade the CCB students from parking in neighborhoods all day. Okay. So yeah, as far as you know, those are continuing. Okay. Just curious like expanding or if that's what we're dealing with or because like if we did have the is a pay in lieu, like say for instance, there weren't very limited areas where they would direct that parking. And could we ever have a different approach for each road of the gateway? I mean because each road is very different than the other. So the Mallets Bay obviously is a tighter situation so maybe you wouldn't. Yeah, and the building standard for Mallets Bay is much different than Main Street. It's intended to be more as you go further out Mallets Bay. It's intended to be more of a residential detached housing situation, less density, less commercial uses, actually it's exclusively residential once you get certain things on Mallets Bay. Still I think it goes up to West Spring Street where in terms of like the four story commercial first floor. I don't know if any of Mallets Bay is so the I want to think that this area to Spring Street roughly is store front, I think you call it. Beyond that it's a town. It would be the urban general to begin with which allows for the option of first floor commercial the only place where we require first floor commercial is in kind of the center of Main Street. Otherwise it's an option in that standard. I don't really envision this as it's all very different depending on specific circumstances. But it is one of the options that we've found that there's been a lot of discussion and actually I was in a meeting recently with some developers that were talking about how they could make up their parking and they were looking at the properties behind them saying well we could talk to this owner to subdivide off this back piece because their locks really deep and we could bump out into that and put our parking in there. The conversations are going into directions where I don't think we want them to go as far as how to meet the parking requirements. When we're talking about potentially four or five spaces which definitely can be a lot of spaces I mean it can make or break a development and really shift things around a lot so I don't want to say that that's a small number but you know the conversations are being had is the point there. So it sounds with really in question here is this one guest space of every four units I can't remember the exact number can we get data from existing like existing multi-unit residences to how much of their parking they're actually using like based on the current requirements. I was wondering that myself like the the newest projects that we're seeing that have come like upper Main Street are those at full occupancy yet? Can we kind of see how the parking is working there? I think it's 348 where the Fodang and Juniors is located they're at capacity for sure they've actually they have an adjacent lot at 340 that I believe they took the house that was there down to use that as a staging area for developing 348 that we have a member and understand they can use that as local parking and that's that's because parking is not permitted use as itself we don't allow parking as a use except in downtown as a parking garage I didn't realize that well we could change that well true we could change that as well sorry I'm wrapping my head around that so like the parcel east down on the street like with Brian I know what I'm talking about a Melda Mahoney's house in between Russell Lee Katz and Defrains there there was a house that burned down a parcel that I believe redstone bought exclusively but because that's a downtown block that can be used so the parking that's there now you mean so that was actually developed as part of the the key development so that was identified to allow for to meet the parking requirement of redevelopment on this site and they I guess started moving forward with the parking development and then the strand project fell apart didn't go forward I don't know correct it was being developed to support the use of the redevelopment of the key bank building but then that redevelopment didn't happen so could I think what you were asking and if you were I'm asking since they were going to use that for parking could they still if they wanted to well so the lot that they've developed is parking currently yeah I mean it's already built as a parking lot I think they've got 50 some spaces it was approved it was approved for instance it's a situation like the they acquired to make parking that's a conditional temporary well I'm wondering the question that popped into my mind is if the same person owns both lots why don't they merge the lots and the development they've got a development of the lot and they using that as part and they could they could do that I do think that they that was acquired after they had but but the point is they the same entity owns both yeah so they could merge the lots yeah and and I don't see why they can use it as part the other thing that happened with with the East Allen street is that that was actually all permitted before the form-based code was approved okay formally so that that came in just before that was probably one of the last projects that was in the downtown it is it is now I believe it was probably in the commercial and central business district would be my guess but I think it was part of the downtown I'm trying to this all these downtown designations but the downtown the Tiff district it was included I don't believe it's included in that it is because it fronts on East Allen street so the Tiff district was anything that front on Main Street or East Allen street from the railroad tracks to the river okay so it was in the Tiff district so I'm wondering if that yeah so I don't know the specifics of it that all happened well before my time here so can I ask a question please so when they develop the form-based code for the gateway districts did they do an analysis of the parking in the back that it was actually possible or was it just an idea I guess I'm just curious and if they did they looked because this is a few pages but ultimately you could have accessions to the rule if the lot was a certain square footage like below a certain square footage then maybe it would apply for less parking or something to that effect but I guess I'm just curious if someone had done any kind of analysis to say hey we could get two bays of parking back in here I think I don't know if there was a specific analysis done in that regard I'm guessing there was some level of analysis because we do have a parking setback line where all the parking has to be behind it so in order to make that feasible then I would presume that there would have to be enough room behind that line to get the parking in so and a lot of those lots are I don't want to say they're really deep but there are deeper lots along along the road along main street in particular and I think though the answer is that I think it drew it out that it was adequate air parking but I don't know as they said okay this is going to need if we go four stories like this many units you're going to need this much parking there wasn't any type of build out analysis that was done and is there plans to do it I've talked about doing one in house so that we can help with the redevelopment of main street itself to kind of give the utility companies an idea of what they can expect for new customers but it's not a project that we've I mean it's it's something we'd like to do analysis we could the challenges is identifying what properties might be combined and what properties are going to end up by themselves and then kind of how to figure out what the use pattern might be you know a lot of it's the economics and what people want to build right but I mean there could be an exception there could be yeah I don't know if that's quite often or not there could be I know in I have a provision that allows for a waiver to a certain percentage of the parking requirements we don't have a waiver specifically but we do allow for reductions in the parking so for example if you can identify specific transportation demand management strategies like proximity to bus stops like ride sharing things like that you can get a reduction in your overall parking amounts we allow for offsite parking up to 10 spaces or 20 percent whichever is greater of your total number of parking spots that have to be a dedicated offsite area within about a quarter mile we allow for some there's other items like that already built in and even with some of those reductions people the development community talk about having challenges meeting meeting as you were talking about has a parking management plan waiver if you will where if you develop and you can do a parking management plan that includes public transportation parking I know a lot that you have control of the spaces on etc I don't know how well that's working over there sure but I know that there are projects that have been done and that are still planned that are looking at that type of thing where can we find offsite parking and I think they allow like in downtown Burlington you can use a public garage for a certain amount of spaces that type of thing yeah well and we do allow for as I mentioned earlier we allow for on-street inventory for a certain amount and we don't all the time is having a challenge meeting their parking and there's on-street parking nearby we might but I guess my what I'm driving at is if I buy a lot or a couple of lots and I want to put up a project and it's going to require that I have 30 spaces on site and I can only put 20 on site is there a provision where I can say to you okay I went to John Smith and have an easement to park five cars there I'm putting in you know five bicycle parking spaces that maybe can offset some of the parking that was needed yeah so we have those in place now for a certain you know so so but you know one of the options that was included was doing some sort of parking management plan and what I was envisioning with that was kind of on a project by project basis if a developer comes in and says I had my engineer put together this analysis that says based on the uses based on where I'm located in proximity to other parking that's publicly available this is what I should expect for a number of spaces that are necessary on my project and if they can if an engineer would sign and stamp that with their seal you know is that something that we would accept to say okay this will take this in lieu of meeting our parking standards because you've done the analyses to show what the parking demand might actually be for your project but that's in time it's not correct so it has to be one of the iterations well because I was also curious because we have done a parking study for the downtown area correct but have we ever done one for the whole city I don't believe I was going to say that too because I sort of feel like we're shooting in the dark I totally agree and I feel like we're looking at putting all of the solution like I do think we should take a holistic look at potential sites for public parking options around our gateway districts including lots I know where there's going to be a new lot next to the hotel and that's going to affect things and there might be other opportunities we've talked about such as in front of the O'Brien Center but also our existing street parking there may be opportunities to increase on street spaces I think a few sites that are pretty efficient at one point you could increase the spots just by painting the spots onto the around so that people know where to go Mike it seems like we're kind of shooting at a little bit of a moving target because a lot of our gateway redevelopments by and large what I was seeing was calling for reduction of on street parking so for telling people developers we're trying to be a little more lenient on their on-site parking while also diminishing the city inventory it's kind of like pushing it in the opposite directions and not really solving that that's one of the things that hit me right at the beginning is when the folks proposed the form-based code and they had the storefront district and they wanted to make parking on one side of the street and it's like well you want storefronts so you don't want to have parking because it doesn't make sense to me so I think you're right I think this conversation is going to take several meetings we have to get more information and we really I mean it would be nice to know what in fact the issues specific issues that developers are coming up with I know that when we when we talked about the developments at the time a lot of like residential and even some commercial putting parking under the building city lights you know did it and you see all over the place where there's parking under buildings that is an option I understand that but it is an option and it must be feasible in some sort of development it has the building has to be of a certain size in order for that to be possible so not every project will fit into that understood but at some point and I don't know what that magic number is but it's possible per site and it's just that scenario is so conducive for the way we develop here because we're such an urban space though I mean so I think it sort of speaks to our environment I mean outside of the downtown it's a little different but yeah I mean I'd like to see in our downtown right now we've got a lot of these huge buildings and it would be kind of nice if there could be some smaller buildings that would add a little bit but if our policies make it so that it only makes it feasible for large projects to happen if we're going to have but the way it's designed it can look at the smaller but I really don't know how they design the facade I do think you have a valid point otherwise we're probably just going to end up with these like monolithic developments exactly but that's the underground parking that's prior to 20 years ago we never used to see that in Vermont like that's kind of a creative solution that has emerged as far as because I remember when they put up the building on East Street behind the beverage warehouses that was like the first building I saw in Winooski that had most of its parking under the structure and that seems to be kind of what we've seen as the direction and the thing that's that hurts as a public entity the city is where do you put other public parking and to build parking garages is feasible they're but I'll tell you what it's expensive and I'm not going to put a lot of those up and it used to be 25 years ago there was grant monies that you could do that you do a multi-modal center and you get basically all the money in grants but they don't do that anymore after a couple of disasters in the state but the city doesn't own plots of land along Main Street or East Allen Street where they could pop down a surface lot but are there private lots that could potentially be leased by the city or is there that's why I think an analysis of the whole city is really important yeah and another thing so I moved here from Cambridge, Massachusetts a lot of people will say it's not a model of ideal parking but it is a good model of urban density and like a very walking and biking friendly city but one of the things that they did and I'll say like this is I understand why but what they did is they took some streets that had previously been two-way streets and changed them to one-way streets so they could double the parking capacity of the streets and that allowed them to have like small infill development without all the parking requirements now that is a really easy way to double your parking and like you have to be careful in your planning of which streets become a way that would be require a very delicate approach but that may be ultimately the way the city does just do it and surprise people you think roundabout I'll send up to that man it's all of those my ideas but you know what's interesting Burlington has just did a whole study in downtown like seven blocks and they analyzed every street all the width so there might be wide streets here that could potentially have more walking or such it's getting people far and have to walk and nobody wants to do that if people wanted to do that then people would be taking the bus, people would be biking people don't want to do that that's the problem from my perspective I do still think that Winooski is not entirely self-contained enough to be completely walkable yet we don't really have enough diversity in the services that we offer to be completely walkable and so we can encourage that but ultimately for people's basic needs they often need cars to leave the city and go get other things or do other things but we do need to kind of take into a car with the parking of something we live with and in order to get people out of cars it's a whole cultural change well I'm just saying talking about allowing people to park I mean essentially it's going to park in neighborhoods but I think what you were discussing is that people have to get out of their car and walk and people don't want to do that and that's what I heard this developer say in the meeting that there's not enough parking on the street for his businesses for these businesses so that's kind of a problem it is a problem it's a huge problem and it's like the downtown when we start the downtown you think about you're going to put up a 923 or whatever it is car garage and say holy cow we're never going to fill that you've got a problem which says there was success so you can never plan big enough because you monetarily financially you can't you can't build a million car garage you know but that's the problem as things succeed there's a bigger demand on parking maybe we should have made main street one way and weaver well you say that but if you really think about it if you were going to do one way like that that makes sense because it's not very far a distance the problem is weaver was not built there's a lot of traffic and there's a lot of traffic that would be put down that's true although there might be less traffic going no it's the same think about in the morning and then the afternoon for my own knowledge they'll in front of the beverage warehouse they'll I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think you might be right but I think I'm just going back to our previous discussion about lots as they're like conditional use and being solely for parking wouldn't that it's also again part of the downtown but isn't that that was once a separate parcel that's been developed unless there's some other project that's used to be a gas station there was a structure that was removed and it's now used solely for parking yeah and they've merged a lot yeah I don't know what they've it's something that like that is such a prime development spot that I would think you could only keep it as a temporary condition where there might be places where it could be permanent it's been that way a number of years now but I'm sure it's just a placeholder for future development down the road because the beverage warehouse is such a cash cow yeah think about it I mean an interesting thought is we'll throw it at the mayor so she can bring it to the city council but looking at especially on Upper Main Street, East Allen Street as things are happening now are there are there some spots that could be leased by the city and made into surface parking and is it something that is feasible for the city to do I mean there's going to be a cost associated with and you think well jeez there's a cost and there's a cost to maintaining it and all those things and so alright well is there demand today and do you rent those spaces how many can you rent so maybe that's where the fee in lieu comes into play right the fee in lieu might come into play like if developers are paying so that the city can then lease a spot from something else right so then it's do you do that or do you wait until you get the money the other thing is that a fee in lieu option could be used for not just parking it could be used for transportation improvements in general so that could be adding additional bus routes or additional trips for the bus or widening sidewalks to make it more convenient for walking or increasing the biking structure things like that so it wouldn't necessarily just be for parking but it's I think it's a great conversation good start a lot of things to think about so I think we have to keep going on there yeah I guess what I would just ask is what information would help continue this discussion I think can you get us the parking ordinance so we can all see what is there today if you could get us a list of the issues that have come up with respect to developers in the city not just the gateway but anyplace else trying to get where else in the city but anyway what issues have come up with developers so what the issues and what the problems are that we have to address and I guess examples of how other cities may have addressed this and like dealing with exceptions or things that we can start because I don't think I'm going to be a blanket to use the same way in every street I think it's going to really vary so I think it's really understanding the character of those streets Christine probably not and I know you've had one meeting as mayor but you were on the council for the last year so I'm assuming there has been no discussion at the council level in terms of doing any kind of studies like we've talked about there hasn't been the next meeting we should talk about well as far as I was going to say the next meeting we should have that conversation and maybe present Christine to bring to the council to have the discussion at the council because obviously we can't you know start a study has to be something the council does and maybe it's not maybe it's going to take us a few meetings to and if I think we need to have something like that right yeah I don't envision this being an easy conversation no by any stretch so that's why we get paid big bucks so just sort of related to this but a little bit not related to this um I don't want to go off topic too much but we talked a long time ago way before you were here about impact fees I just want to know where we're at with that because that kind of relates to this right so that's a good question we I believe through the regional planning commission and their unified planning work program the UPWP through their the metropolitan planning organization are funding an impact fee study for us or we're participating in the funding on the impact fee study fairly early in its development right now we are working so they're putting together some information for us to to review and to to identify next steps I'm sorry how do they do that study I mean what are they I don't really know I think they probably look at other towns what they're charging what the fees are and then there's also well there's also some fairly strict I think state and possibly federal regulations on how that how impact fees can be collected what they have to be used for when you have to identify specific projects where the fees are going to be allocated and things of that nature so it's I think they have to be the fees that you take for water and sewer for example have to be spent on water and sewer and they have to be spent within a certain time period so there's a lot of there's a lot of the kind of the administration worked out to figure out how it is so anticipated timeline for that I'm just concerned because we talked about this before like as these these big projects that are kind of now being being filled were starting to come online we were talking when they were just being permitted we talked about this we talked about it in 2000 2004 well that was before but in any case we talked about this a long time ago these projects are happening it's most tax payers yep I can provide a status update on where we are with that at the next meeting so yeah just I'd like to know that that's going to be like something that's going to happen before this development is done the other thing that I'll do and I was I thought we had one of these documents and that's why I was just looking there was a parking study that was done in 2017 that I can review and see what yeah and see if there are any recommendations that might help yeah I can approve yeah it is focused on the downtown but it definitely incorporates like East Allen part of the case like it goes further out than just the Tiff district it's not the whole city so I can see if there was any recommendations specifically that might help with the conversation okay I'm going to move us to the next agenda item it's tough to get old when you have to go like the last of the big the large print here initial review with split zoning split zoning yeah so also in your agenda is a memo for me regarding split zoning and kind of the status of this so really what this is coming from is in 2016 when the regulations the land use regulations were updated it included the form-based code as a new district and kind of re city districts so all our parcels were within one zoning district and what's been happening with some of these redevelopment projects is parcels are being combined and in some cases they're combining properties in multiple zoning districts so we don't really have a mechanism in place that will address how those properties can develop when they are split by two different zoning districts so I did some review of other municipalities to see what they do and in two instances Colchester and South Burlington they basically do the same thing where they allow for one district to encroach into the other of the 50 feet I don't know if that's necessarily an appropriate approach for us to take I believe Joe at the last meeting you mentioned about the fact that you know we've spent a lot of time identifying a vision and a direction for the community where this density is to protect the neighborhoods so allowing that density to encroach into the neighborhoods are we going in the wrong direction there so I don't know if this is really going to be an issue in the coming up but it's something that I think we should be aware of and figure out what if anything we might want to do and if nothing else to state that properties that are split zoned would have to follow the regulations of each zoning district on their properties so do you that's what it currently is now that's the way I interpret it now but in reality there's maybe one property one or two properties that are in this situation because everything was every property had one zoning district with the latest update to the regulations so no parcel was split I'm in particular one parcel that is very far into a residential district yeah so that's a case where it might be appropriate to allow for some sort of a split well the other thing is when you brought this up I was thinking about really the block between Spring Street and La Fountain Street where you got deep lots on La Flair and Main Street I don't know what the depth is but again it goes to and I don't know what happens on this side of Main Street the depth of the lots on Weaver Street and Main Street are similar but allowing some kind of movement of the zoning line may help with the parking issue that we just talked about it could the concern I have is that we want to make sure we keep the frontage on La Flair Street and Weaver Street residential not being able to tear down a house to put parking on the way to La Flair Street so maybe it's looking at what the minimum lot size requirements of the zone or minimum depth of the zone and allowing for example if someone bought a lot on La Flair Street that bought it up to a lot on Main Street allowing the zoning line to go back towards La Flair Street to the point where there's a minimum distance depth from La Flair Street it's 100 feet, 150 feet I don't know what that number is it allows some flexibility but you gauge it on the distance from La Flair Street to where that new line is going to be Weaver Street do the same thing as opposed to the 50 feet because I don't know if it's going to bring it to the back of the house or what it's going to do so if I'm understanding what you just said to bring it a distance from La Flair Street to where the road can take where you measure from rather than the residential street the residential street it's almost like you want to maintain a minimum lot depth do we have a minimum lot depth we see if we have I don't know if we have really I'm sure there's a minimum lot size there is a minimum lot size there's a minimum frontage purely from my observation from experience La Flair Street actually has relatively deep blocks the homes on the west side of that street it's just it seems like you completely understand it as far as us talking about residential neighborhoods and preserving the character of our neighborhoods I would think that La Flair is one of our ideal streets and so I'm just thinking about if we were to make it that you could join lots it would threaten something like that and you can you can join lots so the question is if someone does it build it all the way out to the other street exactly so I own a place on main street and I buy the adjacent lot on La Flair Street and I rip down the house and I put parking in the back on La Flair Street or I use that I don't make a formal parking lot but all my people park there yeah so suddenly there's a parking lot between two houses on La Flair Street that makes sense I think that's a great idea but I think we should look at the plan and see where it's appropriate or not appropriate let's just do it I just want to take the map of when you skiing start going we do have a minimum of a lot of depth I thought we did just there in our residential district actually all of our districts downtown what is it it varies in the RA and RB it's 100 feet in the RC it's 60 feet in the central business district the C1 it's 60 same for the C2 as well as the industrial district it's pretty well so 60 but I think if we had a map and we could kind of look and see what 100 feet does because you could if you've got a residence on La Flair Street for example and a commercial residential thing on Main Street there's no reason you couldn't use the back area for parking for both those properties the thing is though I guess it would happen like that I would imagine we would require them to do a traffic study to make sure everyone wasn't pulling out that was parking lot in the residential I was going to say the thing you want to do is on La Flair Street if you've suddenly got 100 cars a day going in and out of there so I'm still wrapping my head around the news we got earlier that you can't have a lot in residential district to be used for solely parking so for instance if developer had property on Main Street acquired a subdivided parcel off from the back lot of a house in a residential district they couldn't necessarily use that subdivided parcel solely for parking the thing is we're trying to prevent parking is not a use except in downtown but they could merge that adjacent parcel potentially with the original parking parking is secondary to a use so we won't allow for parking to be the primary use on a lot except in downtown but in that example if you have a property on Main Street and then there's another house with a D plot half of that plot you could then merge the back half of that lot potentially with the original property on Main Street that would be an option and use it for parking we don't have a maximum amount of parking you can build as much parking as you want associated with a use but nobody does nobody does because it's expensive parking is expensive to build I'm assuming accessory parking to a primary use in a residential zone is allowed right because you have to hit a driveway for a house I'm not sure if it's specifically stated where I'm going is parking on your my driveway I have room for two cars the issue comes up what if someone buys that an adjacent commercial property and then puts 20 parking spaces in the backyard is that something that we want to see I think that also raises a different question I know Burlington has ordinances I've often wondered why Winooski didn't have them about creating impromptu parking spaces for instance a lot of the properties at Main Street have become effectively parking lots actually there is technically you're not supposed to park on lawn it seems to happen I know in Burlington it's enforced especially up in New York City even if you move your lawn for a certain amount of time that's considered to be used as parking that's a good point which is the fact that people are doing that indicates parking challenges they said otherwise they're not just doing it for fun I drove into my own house so I basically drew this example so here's Main and here's the Main residential this is a new commercial residential and they're able to come into this other property area but still maintaining a 100 foot setback on the street but just visually I need to see these things but it is true because when you get to this point should these people hang out in their backyard and be looking at a the other consideration is lighting and I just think of this from an example where we live that somebody built an accessory long unit and there's this giant light that shines in my house now and so with parking lots and things like this when you're encroaching on these neighborhoods and building parking behind and subdividing lots then they're lighting up these areas and then it's creating light pollution for that neighborhood so the way they address that is that you have to do a lighting study and you have to present photometrics and show that there's no light trespass onto the neighbor's lot and you have to provide a lighting plan and there's requirements requirements on lighting that everything be downcast and shielded so it's not spilling over except for next to your house actually I have the same problem with my neighbors as well I was on a castle 18 years ago there was a big issue where the person was doing it for spite right in the neighbors like really? yeah they should be reprimanded yeah but anyway I do think it sounds up to 50 feet like that could be I don't know that that's the exact metric that we want but that could be an acceptable solution I think we really need to look at what the lots are could you look at the next meeting could we get the map with those minimum lot numbers so that we can actually look at it yeah I can try to put something together for the next meeting to give you an idea of how deep the lots are and just configurations to see what it might look like and I think we're talking about between Leclerc and Main Street I think you can get lower class street higher they get narrower too but you could get consolidated and then yeah and that's why I think you need to look at the whole street right no I agree 100% but that's why I threw in the minimum depth from the residential street because if you go 50 feet from the existing line you may be almost entirely into the use of that residential lot I don't know if that's the case or not are we looking at all the gateway streets I think this is citywide this isn't for any one specific area granted there's only so many instances where we have well the commercial only applies to so many places right and so does the gateway but the gateway is probably where we'll see it the most I think I don't know is we have to worry too much about residential only because lots are established you have a lot size I couldn't cut off 10 feet my backyard and give it to my backyard neighbor because now my lot's not conforming you know what I mean and if I've got a lot that's 200 feet deep and my neighbor has one that's 100 feet deep and I sell them 50 feet as long as our lots are still conforming to the zoning that's fine you know what I mean and I don't know where the different I think the conflict is where there's a residential zone up against the commercial zone so maybe that's what we should concentrate on is where commercial and residential meet I think that's what we're largely thinking is in the gateway that's why we're focusing on that and I want to Well, just another thought in my mind because a lot of places there is a requirement in a commercial zone or industrial zone we do require buffer when there's a basically a residential on a non-residential there are buffer requirements I believe it is vegetated but distance and vegetated amount what I'm talking about between a commercial zone and a residential zone a buffer sub-kind so if we could get that language to see what that is is it is it part of the reason why we never adopted that with form-based code is that we don't really have the land mass to kind of have it in adopt what a buffer zone kind of I'm not sure that we did so there is in the form-based code there is a what we call the neighborhood matters provision so in areas where we do want to protect the residential areas wherever the neighborhood matters areas exist for 20 up to that you can park in that whole area so it's not as if it's a protected strip it's just an area that needs to be maintained there's certain stipulations for development that can't occur but can occur up to a certain distance and so it's there's some limitations on it but not everywhere in the form-based has those requirements I live right on the edge of the gateway district as development continues like the contrast might be pretty stark between the gateway district and the residential yeah I could so the gateway has some kind of buffer I want to think it's 20 feet to 50 feet it is depending on where you are the buffer area but we should look I think we should look at other but again you can still you just can't there is there is those areas also yeah fencing and landscaping could you just do a fence and park right next to it and not have vegetation there I there is but it's not it's not a lot of vegetation so it's not like it needs to be a 10 foot deep vegetated strip as well it's basically the fence and then a certain requirement for trees along that buffer so you in effect you could park right up to it yeah it is possible interesting something like that does it require to maintain that buffer because you could see we're just going to put these trees in and then never maintain them and then all go away and then I think there is a provision that they at least be kept alive for a year or two or something like that after the development but I don't know if there's an ongoing maintenance we can talk about the ongoing maintenance for it in good repair I said the vegetation is for me it's even more important because all that heat is going to just gather in that parking area without those trees it's going to just trees and shrug and whatever to be in your backyard next to a parking okay I can bring back some mapping and some other language on what we currently have for buffers for a future meeting I don't want to say the next meeting just in case it's a lot of stuff coming to the next meeting already but at a future meeting for sure yep alright anything else on the split zoning Madam Mayor you know you can join us at the table if you'd like I know it's only 10 minutes left of the things okay she's ready to begin