 I'm going to call to order the September 25th meeting of the Montpelier Planning Commission. We've approved the agenda, so take a motion to approve. All right, motion from Brian. Do we have a second? I'll second. Second from Maria. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, gender approved. Next, we have comments from the chair. My comments. What I have in mind is related to the meeting from last time, so I'll just save it for that. Did anyone else have any announcements or comments or anything? Okay, Aaron had sent us an email about. An A and R event happening in October, but he's not here yet, so. We'll just move on. So the next item on the agenda is comments from the general public about something not on. The agenda seems we don't. Have any of those. It's all planning commissioners here, so we're going to keep going. And next is our discussion. I can click on the right stuff. So, debrief of the listening session, the agenda says, we can make any decisions on what to add to the zoning. Amendment, but before we get to that, I was just going to kind of open up the floor and see what people's thoughts are. In line of everything we heard at the last meeting where we had the listening session relating to. Density and the zoning regulations. Do you think that this is a notion that we should that some people said that we should wait on. And this is not my feeling, but do you think that the notion that we should wait on. And he's owning until. You know, while everything settles down after the flood. Is something that has legs beyond just a few comments that the thing like politically, or do you think. I defer to you guys, you know better than I do. I, I mean, my, my take on it is. That things happen all the time and zoning changes are being considered all the time. And so I don't see any reason to. Stop planning and thinking, I mean, we don't. Take action all the time when we take action, something we bring to city council, which happens. Really, once or twice a year. So. You know, any work we're doing right now, it's not like we're charging ahead and making. Things that are actually becoming laws for the city or anything. We're just. Deliberating, you know, and and and learning. So, so no, I don't, I don't. That doesn't mean a lot to me because I don't think it would be helpful. For us to do nothing, you know. But I mean, I get that we shouldn't rush in anything, but I don't think that's happening either. To anybody else. Yeah, I just think like a lot of that zoning stuff, as Mike, you says, technical. Let's go over the list, but. Some of the more controversial. I didn't I didn't know if that's something that has traction beyond what I mean. I'm with you, but. The larger picture, I didn't know. I don't know if anybody's been participating in, you know, those working groups that are they're talking about, you know, the downtown and housing. And I know there's a bunch of different working groups working on different things. I was I was tied up in the first two and not really sure where where they're out currently, but I can understand there being a desire. We heard a couple people feel, you know, feeling like that, you know, maybe it makes sense to wait. I would think that those things are future looking like whatever they're working on now. If those are things the city is considering and we're going to consider those are future looking. Whereas all the things that we're talking about are sort of incremental. And I and I get it like that. There's like this whole debate, like, you know, I think like you got called out on it in the listening session, right? It's like, OK, so we do this and what's what's going to happen to housing? Well, probably nothing, right? That's the reality, right? Nothing, nothing is going to happen. So why do it? Well, because if we want to do everything, but if we did it all at once, everybody would come to city council and say everything's going to get demolished because there's nothing protecting. And so again, I think, you know, I heard that and I understand why that would seem like the common sense approach. Like let's but I think they're really what they're talking about is the future state, like what do we need to do in the future? And I think those are things that I look forward to hearing what they're talking about and things we should consider. But I don't I personally don't think it impacts the stuff that we're talking about now. That's a good point, Gabe. And one thing I wanted to bring up and it's a little related to what you're talking about is, Mike, when you have a chance, could you send me the I mean, maybe I don't know if I don't know this is publicly accessible info is why I'm asking. You know, we had Emma Zavez, who is the chair of one of the housing committees show up and she was a little surprised. It seemed that, you know, what we were talking about. And I think part of that just has to do with the different roles each of us has. I don't think anyone did anything wrong, but but the truth about Montpelier is we've got a lot of subcommittees. We've got a lot going on. Gabe just made reference to some non housing committee, like discussions that are taking place and some planning, like it's kind of all over. And sometimes we aren't always talking to each other. So I thought I would one thing we could do to respond to Emma's surprise is for me just to at least touch base with. The committees that are most related to housing, which I know that there's a new one that's related to, like, that I think that I believe Diane Sherman is is chairing and and then there's the committee that Emma's chairing and there may be another. But get in touch with those groups, get the contacts. If there's any of these future planning stuff like what Gabe's talking about, maybe include them too. But what I'm thinking and you guys tell me what would be preferred. We reach out and just to connect on an informal way to get to know each other. Maybe we could do something like have a meetup event with all of the people from all of those different groups there so that we can at least. Like advantage there, we could just informally learn some of the background about what's currently being worked on. We could on the other hand, we could do a formal thing to we could have just a planning commission meeting say where we invite those people and give everyone a few minutes to present on what they're doing. You know, I see bonuses or advantages to doing it either way. It's really just to catch up with each other, obviously, not to make any decisions or do any planning. That's why I was thinking of the informal thing. Just to be clear, this would be OK. I think it would be OK with open meeting law because it wouldn't be a meeting. It would be a just a like, you know. Getting getting to acquainted type thing. Just I don't know. What do you guys think is needed or what are your thoughts about that? I mean, I'm all for it because it seems that. All of us are kind of working in our silos, you know, and not really talking to each other much and we're not going to each other's meetings. Like, I don't know if you guys go to the housing committee meetings. But I think it does make sense for us to. I don't like just work, at least know what other committees are coming up with and what they what they would like to see happen. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think there's only there's only one committee. Emma, so Diane Sherman, I think is moving or something. So she had to step down from being chair. So I think Emma think it's the same committee. Just Emma's now the chair. OK, and it's the it's the regular housing committee, right? Yes. And I thought in it, I thought. There was like a special thing created for like like the housing crisis or something like that, like an emergency type thing created. Am I mistaken? Am I no? Not not that I know of. I mean, the the meetings that gave had talked about created a a separate thing. I don't know if they've got a housing piece in in that. It's kind of outside city government kind of do some thinking about resiliency. So that may be what you're thinking of. But I don't know if there is a housing piece with that. Just to be just just so I can like there's there's things. I feel like there's things I know that are going on and things that I don't. So so maybe it's helpful to lay it out there. I'm aware of the the flood meetings that have been happening that are organized by yes, not the city, but just. I don't actually remember the organizations involved, but. Technically, the city was a piece of it. The city of Montpelier, Montpelier alive and the Montpelier Foundation, the three groups came together to go and host the resiliency discussion meetings. OK. And then throughout that, there was the voting that said, we don't want to have it have this be another city set of committees. So it's going to kind of spin off onto its own thing, which we're not exactly entirely sure how that's going to work. But we'll be watching and seeing how it goes. OK. So so no other housing related committees come to mind. OK, that's well, that's I guess that's good. That's good, because I know at one point we had what a house. There's a housing trust fund for it. I would would the kind of thing I'm talking about even be relevant for them, though, to be pretty. Yeah, I'm trying to remember now. If we did we our recommendation was to merge that with the. House committee, I'm not sure how that ended up settling out in the end. I'd have to go and talk to Josh where to see where that that finished out. But we did have we did have a housing task force and a housing trust fund committee. And our recommendation was if they were going to form a housing committee that they dissolve both of those and put both of those duties under the housing committee. And I thought that's what they did. So I don't think we have a trust fund committee anymore. It's a subcommittee of the housing committee. OK, well, that's that's good. So it's not as messy as I was thinking, but nevertheless, probably good to connect with them to does anybody have thoughts about whether we whether connecting like that's a good idea and whether we should do it formally or informally. I think it's good. I agree with Maria and you. It's a good idea. I would say formally, I'm sorry, I was going to say formally. It's probably better. I mean, we we have tried to do a social gathering that with the Planning Commission, and that didn't we didn't get a great attendance on that. Maybe maybe the weather, maybe better weather for all people out. It was like that's why I was thinking if we invite like 14 people, we'll get a better showing than if I said, I don't know. That's kind of I'm kind of shaming the other members of the Planning Commission right now, but we didn't have. We didn't really really noted, Brian, duly noted. OK, so maybe formally too, because you want a captive audience, got it? I don't know. I don't know. I just thrown it out there and someone had to say it. Sorry. Yeah, OK, even with the informal thing and only one or two people from the Housing Committee show, it would at least be informative. But yeah, I do I do it. OK, maybe we can I'll reach out to them and ask their thoughts. Does anybody else have anything else like thoughts to share? Or just I'll just I'll reach out to Emma, though, in the near future and see if there's a preference there. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. Whether it's formal or informal, I'd love to not meet on Zoom if possible. Just agree. OK, this is hard, though, right? Is it City Hall still recovering? Yeah, it's really hard because most of the places that were typical. Formal, if it's going to be formal, then it has to be ADA accessible and City Hall isn't ADA accessible. And there's a ton of places that have their elevators out of order right now. Can we use like school buildings? Like what type of. I mean, does it be a publicly owned building for us to meet formally? No, it doesn't have to be publicly and just has to be ADA accessible. OK, OK, well, I'll reach out to them and see what the thoughts are. But yeah, Mike, if you could point me toward in this contact info. Do we have any other thoughts about things that were said? I mean, we heard a number of things. A lot of it was related. We had a few things that weren't related. One of the things was a discussion of the difficulty in for develop of someone doing a development and having to pay for utility hookups. And I'd be interested to know more about that topic because if there is something that we could do at City can do to help with that, that might be. I don't know if there's room there to be helpful or what. Could you do some of those may be changing. I don't have the details of it. The Home Act, I think, changed some stuff. A lot of times people get concerned there. There is a public works has a connection fee, which isn't. Which isn't my understanding isn't that outrageous. But what becomes an issue is the state charges. Even though it's the city's wastewater plant, the state charges. Fees based on usage and the state takes those fees. Even though we're the kind of the ones that own and operate the sewer plant. So it's kind of this weird weird system where the state kind of collects up all this money and so I think in the Home Act, there was supposed to be some readjustments of that to try to go in because it was becoming a significant barrier to some people. And maybe Gabe knows more. He's put a few houses in and might have some idea of. But there is there is one that's a city hookup fee and that's to help cover the costs that the city incurs. But then there's also the usage fee that the state charges and that's usually significant. So it can be, yeah. And for a smaller project like an ADU, you know, the fee for the extra usage can be you know, a more significant charge. You have anything to add about that? I don't know, like you'd have to go. I'd have to go look through fee schedules. I don't feel like that in and of itself is an insurmountable obstacle. I think it's all those things in combination, right? It's like, it's like, oh, you're changing use. So therefore, you know, you've got to upgrade all your systems. The fire system, you know, it's like when you added it all up, that's where it's like, whoa, this is the numbers don't make any sense to do. And, you know, we're not going to change the fire code, right? That's sort of out of our hands. The parking thing is something we could address. You know, we've kind of talked about it before. I don't think in the lifting of the density, there's there was no discussion of extending the no parking was there. Did we talk about that? I can't remember that we talked about that on and off over the years. Because I think for that one state building that Peter Kellman was talking about, I think that would have been an example of one of those issues. So even if density requirements were lifted, right? And there was the ability to put six units in instead of four or whatever. It was I can't remember his example, right? But it was capped. You couldn't do it because of the parking requirements. Right. So maybe that's something we should also talk about. If we're going to lift density, if we do agree to do that at some point, maybe that same area shouldn't have parking requirements. So I think just in combination of all those things, I don't mean again, I'd have to go look at the numbers and stuff. I don't I don't think it's just the the water hookups that are, you know, like owners, it's it's the whole process. Yeah, I think the I wasn't going to take. Take up a debate with Peter. It was a listening session, so I wasn't going to push back on a lot of his claims. So Peter's. Project there he wanted to he described what he wanted to do as a project, and he said there was nothing we would do. And what we told him was, in fact, you'd have to go to the development review board. Our zoning is really set up. If you do everything that we want, we will issue a lot of our permits administratively, so things are really designed for, you know, if you're not going to be in, you know, in the water setback and you're not going to, you know, you're going to meet all the parking requirements and you're going to meet all these requirements, you're going to meet the setbacks. If you're going to meet everything, it's an administrative permit. If you want to waiver. To that setback for your garage, and you want to waiver for the parking and you want an exemption for something, you have to go to the D.R.B. And Peter didn't want to go to the D.R.B. No, I don't want to go to the D.R.B. I have to go and spend my money that I used. I have only six months to spend the money and I don't have time to go to the D.R.B. You need to go and waive this. And we said, no, we can't and we won't. But there is a process and he easily would have probably received the waiver. Had he gone to the D.R.B. and asked because there's a lot of things about proximity to bus to public transit. I mean, that place is right next to public transit. He would have easily gotten an exemption there. So there were a number of exemptions. Would he have gotten approved? I don't know. But he certainly had a number of cases that he could make to go and say, I've got a lot of opportunities here where my residents don't need to have parking spaces. So I don't know. So he had other other issues, same thing with his project that he had up on Northfield Street that he complained about that he wanted to subdivide and we wouldn't let him subdivide and do it. And he he he absolutely could have. He just had to go to the D.R.B. And he didn't want to because he wanted to spend his money now. So he went to Williamstown and good, good for him. Good for going to Williamstown's town that doesn't have zoning. You can do whatever you want without following any permits. And that is probably what would work best for him in his case. You know, we've got the rules and the rules. You know, you can talk to a number of people who are builders. Nobody likes to zoning. Nobody likes going and getting permits every day. But, you know, the the other scenario of not having any rules would create a lot of problems. So we set up rules that say if you can meet what it is if we want you to do, you can get your permit usually in 24. 72 hours, depending on whether you need site plan. But he didn't want to he didn't want to go to the D.R.B. So what's the what's the delay time between someone applying for something that needs to go to the D.R.B. and then getting a D.R.B. here? Do you do you immediately get on the list for the next D.R.B. hearing? For the most part, yeah, we don't get a lot of D.R.B. here. It used to be in the past. We used to so before 2018, 50% of all permits went to the D.R.B. So we had 140 permits issued every year. About 70 of them went to the D.R.B. and 70 of them were administrative today after 2018. We've got that number down to about 20 that go to the D.R.B. and 120 that are either administrative or have to go to might have to go to DRC, which is a much quicker turnaround. But for the most part, these would be fairly fairly quick. So the difference in time is a D.R.B. hearing is required to have a 15 day notice. So because you've got to put that notice in the paper, you're pushed out to 21. So between 21 and 28 days after we have a complete application, because they meet every other week, you get on the D.R.B. agenda 21 to 28 days. Then we'd have to write a decision 35 days. So after you apply, so you're looking at our goal is to have all D.R.B. applications in and out in 45 days. That's longer. But if you were looking in other communities, a lot of other communities have multiple, you might have you made it. They only meet once a month. So you might be pushed even farther. So but that's just the minimum. That's the fastest you can go under state law is about between 32 and 45 days. So let me just throw out your, you know, to Peter. And there was another gentleman. I actually had a couple of people on this point, right? Talking about some of the administrative costs associated with conversion. And I think as we have these conversations, you know, I will say the entire process is very expensive. You know, if you're going to a D.R.B., you're paying an engineer's time, you may have a couple of engineers, you may have a traffic engineer, you might have an attorney if there's a lot of opposition, right? So just think every, you know, that's a thousand bucks an hour, $1,200, $1,500 an hour. And then the other thing that you find at the D.R.B., there's a lot of room for discretion, right? So something goes to Meredith and it's, and it all meets the, you know, the lines and the engineers all say it's good. It just, that's it. Things are done. But within the D.R.B., it'll be a lot of requests for things to be done that are, are they part of the code? Are they not part of the code? Those things all add cost. And so for people who are trying to develop workforce housing, it becomes almost impossible. I mean, there's a lot of reasons it's hard. It's not D.R.B.'s fault. But certainly all of those layers, so if there are things that we can do to say, look, there are things that just as of the right, like I think of the homeowner that wants to add a couple of apartments inside of their, you know, like those, you know, $10,000 for this and $5,000 for that. I mean, these things start getting really expensive when you get a quote from a contractor that says, oh, it's going to be, you know, $120,000 just to do this refit that you want and get the utilities put in. And then you have these administrative costs. I think the more that we could do as right, the better off we are. It just will reduce some of that friction. So we have a great D.R.B., Mike. I'm not complaining about the process. I'm just saying that they're definitely cost. Okay. Well, that's something for us to think about. Yeah. And I was going to say, we definitely have thought about that. That's why we did as many changes as we did back in 2018 was to shift as much as we could out of those, you know, what does the D.R.B. really have to look at and try to shift as much as we can to be administrative permits because there's no reason to warn all these hearings if people are doing what we want them to do. So that's why we kind of box them into these things of, you know, if you meet the parking requirement, you don't need to go to the D.R.B. So that's why we have administrative site plans and D.R.B. site plans. So, and we could, you know, we could talk about making more things administrative, but that was one of the big pieces and it did make a big difference. As you can see by the numbers going from 70 to 30 to 20 D.R.B. hearings a year. So I think I have to weigh in on the parking things. I really don't like the parking requirements. I feel like, I mean, does that, do you have a sense of whether that is something that comes up often in front of the D.R.B. that people are looking for parking requirement waivers? It's just, it seems to be throwing like a wrench in the system that does not need to be there. So when we changed the parking rules in 2018, we made up a number of changes, not only to the number of parking spaces, it used to be 1.5. We went down to one. We also allowed stacking of parking and a number of other tricks as well as the parking waivers. We opened up a number of parking waivers. So if you have, let's say a driveway that's 60 feet long, you have three parking spaces according to the zoning because we allow stacking. It used to be under the old zoning, every parking space had to have a free and clear access back to the road. So a driveway was technically only one parking space because no matter how long the driveway was, you were not allowed to block in another car and have it count. You could use it that way. You could always stack it with the number of vehicles if you want to, but as when we're counting them for zoning, you couldn't. So there's a lot of things people can do if, and I don't know anything about that Baldwin Street property, but if somebody has a property and you measure out your driveway and like, oh, my drive is actually 60 or 80 feet long, that's for parking spaces. Yeah, as a single family home, I'm only only need to have one or if I wanted to have a duplex or a triplex or quadplex, if I have an 80 foot driveway, I can have a quadplex and it's up to the landlord to figure out how everybody's going to park in and how everybody gets in and out, but people do it and we used to do it, when I moved to Burlington long, long time ago, we used to just park on the street and then at the, because they had the parking bands, we would just pull in and park in the correct order. We knew everybody in all the other four apartments and we knew so-and-so leaves first. So I've got to be parked in because they'll leave before me and then I can get out when I have to go to work at eight because they leave at seven. So there's no sense having them pull in first and have me block them in because then I'd have to get up to let them out. So people just figure it out. Why do people need to park in a driveway? I guess I don't fundamentally understand why that is necessary. It's been, usually it's been the argument that has been made at the council has been that it is hurting the lower income renters, especially folks on like Barrie Street and other places like that. I'm pretty sure most of the planning commission, I'm certainly willing to go in a number of, in a number of neighborhoods to say they don't need to have parking standards at all. There are a couple of places where it's tough, it's tight and we just need to figure out whether we just leave it up to the market to figure out. But the concern that's been raised at the council is that landlords are just going to put in more, landlords who have a parking lot and a building, if we took away the parking requirement would simply build an addition onto their building and take away all the parking and force people to park on the streets and there's already no place to park. And it's just going to hurt low income people even more because now they won't have any place to park and they're going to get towed in the winter because they have a house to live on. Yeah. I mean seriously, like seriously that's the argument that comes up in council, like if that's the market we'll figure it out, right? Somebody's going to go rent a parking space, right? I mean, I don't know, that doesn't sound, that doesn't sound like a good argument, sorry. So why are they getting towed in the wintertime? We have parking bans in effect. So recently things have changed. When I got here in 2014, starting November 15th, I think November 15th, maybe. November 15th to May 15th, no on-street parking. Nobody was allowed to park on on-street overnight. That was it. And then they tried to go through and they've gone through probably four or five different iterations of how we can allow people to park because we don't have to plow every night. So if it's not snowing, why can't people park on the street overnight? So they went through and made some exceptions, but there are still nights where parking bans are going to be in effect and people have to have a place to put their cars. And that becomes the burden for the folks in certain neighborhoods like Berry Street, Berry Street in particular. It's usually called out for that, but yeah, I'm not entirely sure. That's the argument that has been made a number of times is that this is just hanging it on the low income folks. To tackle this. And immobility or low income basically means like 60 grand a year income because you're not living here if you're truly low income. But... So I feel like there's like, these like reasons being put forward that are, so the parking bans are there because the snow plows need to come through. That's the idea. And because... Yeah, a lot of communities have that. Okay, but I just, I'm just coming back to like, this is just, it keeps on like prioritizing streets and road traffic over people's homes and pedestrians. Like, why are we so focused on making it easier and easier and like, you know, there's like this whole recent conversation on front porch form about how fast cars are driving through Main Street, through Elm Street, through Northfield. I think every single like high traffic area, like somebody had written in from that neighborhood complaining about cars going like 50 miles per hour on their street. And yet we still have all these policies in place to make sure that it's easier for people to drive really fast on our streets. Well, at the same time, hurting people who are trying to live here, you know? Like it just seems like there's like this like prioritization that keeps happening. And it's like in like a, it's indirect, but it keeps benefiting drivers and single family homeowners. And it's just like, it's perpetual almost. And like, I don't know. Like, so this whole like parking ban, like so we're artificially reducing parking in a city. And then because of that, we now have to pave over yards and other areas that could absorb stormwater runoff so that we can house our car there, which could otherwise be used to house people and children and families. It's just like, I'm sorry. It's just like this whole thing just seems like this like circular conversation, but. Yeah, so there were a lot of proposals. There have been, John Adams has been a big proponent of trying to reduce or eliminate the parking standards. And the only, we've never had parking standards or it's been a long time since we've had any parking standards in the urban core. So urban centers one, two and three don't have parking requirements. We did get to expand it to residential 1500, which is some of the highest density ones right next to the core. That did pass to eliminate parking requirements in there. But I think we had a proposal to eliminate it in a couple other districts as well. And it just, it didn't fly. I think more than once we've made that pitch of eliminating the parking requirements. But so the last time this came up, Mike, it was just internally on the planning commission. And then we had, it was when Barb was on the planning commission and she was very adamantly opposed to making any more changes to parking. And so it was something that I decided not to try to pursue with a split planning commission on, honestly, but it did come up. It was probably around three years ago now that that discussion took place. So it's been more than three years since we, as a planning commission, have put something forward with the city council. So I think that since some time has passed since any changes were made to parking or any proposals were put out there, then maybe it's something we could revisit on this iteration of zoning changes. Maybe I think one way to go about it could be to go back and identify the places where we think it would make the least amount of impact on traffic concerns, which means not Barry Street, we probably would not propose to take away the parking requirement, the space requirement on Barry Street, but maybe some other neighborhoods. I think, like I live in the meadow, and I think we, I checked at one point and I'm pretty sure that we have it in the meadow, the space. Yeah, so there might be some places where that's not needed. So maybe if it's, what do you think Mike, and then also planning commission chime in if you don't like this approach, if Mike comes back with some suggested neighborhoods where we could remove that, the parking requirement. This would be in nature with the incremental approach that we've taken with so many things. It would be incrementally, as Mike said, like years ago, we lightened up on the parking requirements and this would just be a further lightening up, a further increment in that direction. Well, I think certainly in the areas that we are gonna lift density, right? I mean, it sort of defeats the purpose to have parking requirements there. We have this other issue about the proposed like four plexus on any lot, which I think the city is gonna get sued. I think some city will be sued by interpreting it the way that you explained last time, Mike. I think the legislature is pretty clear on what they meant. I've talked to some of the legislators and they meant that any lot that doesn't matter about density, any lot can have a four plexus and served by water and electric utilities. So, but that brings up a whole other issue, right? If you're gonna have the four plexus in any of these places, probably some of our neighborhoods still will need to have parking requirements, I would think. They just can't support it on street. A few things. I just sent everybody an article from the Atlantic from over the summer, by the way, it's about parking. The Atlantic's usually a good read. So just FYI, that's in your inbox. Gabe, what are your thoughts then about if we were, like are you in favor of lightening up on the parking requirements? When I say parking requirements, I mean the requirement that a unit have space. Yeah, I am. I almost feel like we need to figure out the other density requirements and then come back to it though. You know, I feel like without knowing if we're gonna support some of these other things. And then it could just be, it could be just a standalone too. And I do think Mike's team probably, I don't know. You probably did some of this analysis before, Mike, I would think, right? You probably already have places that you feel like, oh, we could do it here and do it there. Yeah, I mean, a number of the places that we talked about, I mean, some of the obvious cases which don't really make that much of a difference, but just as a point of fact, I mean, if you were on River Street or Eastmont Piliar or over on Route 302, that's still River Street. All of those don't have, you can't have on street parking. So really you could just go through and say, we're not gonna have a parking requirement. You can figure it out. However many parking spaces you wanna put for your business, you can figure it out. If you want a big parking lot at the wayside, you can have a big parking lot at the wayside. If you don't, because you're not impacting, your ability to negatively impact either the safety of the road or any of the abutting properties is zero because you're not on East State Street where all the parking spaces are taken. And now you wanna put a bigger use in there that's going to add a demand of 20 more cars onto A Street that doesn't have any space to accommodate it. Those are the situations. So a place that doesn't have on street parking shouldn't have any parking requirements, in my opinion. Just doesn't make any sense. It's up to you as the property owner to figure out how to accommodate it because you can't otherwise make your project work. So that's up to each project to figure it out. So those are obvious ones, but you also can get into some of the other ones that are, I think the lower density ones are real easy. So if you're up off of Northfield Street, if you're on Colonial Drive and these things like that, I mean, the lots are big. You got big driveways. I don't even know if people park on street on those. They're just, you know, Isabel's Circle. I don't think people are parking on the street. It's just, you've got big lots, you've got big driveways. Most people would prefer to park in their driveways and there's no real demand to park in the street. So I think there's a lot of these low density ones that are real easy candidates and they're ones where there's no on street parking. Those are easy. I think the hard ones are when you get to the East Montpelier, the East 8th Street, Berry Street, Elm Street in that section next to the Meadow. Those are places where the parking can be tight. And that's where I think politically, there's gonna be more of a pushback in those areas. Well, you know, the Loomis and the Liberties, there's, you know, for the school because the schools have no parking for the schools, all the teachers park on the street. So, you know, the Meadow kind of escapes a lot of that because they're not close enough to any of the schools. But if you're St. Paul, School Street, Loomis, I think, those get really hovered, those get really filled up, especially during the school year. So, again, that's, I'm not saying we should or shouldn't, but I'm just saying those are the places politically, when you see people come out of the woodwork and complain, those are the neighborhoods they're gonna be complaining about. I don't think anyone's complaining about, you know, farther out on Route 12 because there's no on street parking or, you know, coming street or those. So I think they're gonna be a handful of neighborhoods that we'd probably have to really consider because of the existing parking issues. From a political standpoint, that would be probably where you draw the line. Yeah, and I mean, a related issue was that the city, just in case anyone doesn't know, the city tried to build a parking garage and had funding with the hotel involved and, you know, very complex thing. And then there was a lawsuit from some residents and the lawsuit never really made it to the merits. It just was enough to tank the deal. I think that's correct me if my summation is wrong there. But so that's why we didn't have this big thing that would have been very helpful for, you know, but it'd be nice for us to not forget about, you know, the city's ability to alleviate parking issues and then let us change the zoning accordingly because the things kind of go hand in hand. Anyway, okay, so we can think about parking things later. I'll just jump in one last thing that I remembered. Maria was asking, what was the opposition to the parking? There were a lot of anecdotal stories of the people who have parking spaces and they can get home with all of their groceries and their kids and the lower income folks are gonna have to go and walk these, they'll have to walk a thousand feet because that's what, you know, walk a thousand feet with their kids, carrying all their groceries back to their apartment buildings. And this isn't fair to those folks that they can't have parking spaces close by. And again, I'm not saying right or wrong that those are the stories that were being told that pretty much, well, that did kill all of the proposals to remove the requirements. So it just happened to remember that that was another popular story. Yeah, so another personal application before Marcella, she was a renter and she was actually really concerned last time we discussed this because she didn't think there was some equity problems with renters, but I think that's the way she put it was just renters. Anyways, I think we should probably move to the big item here which is possibly vote on the density approach. And like Abe was saying, once we know more about our density approach, we can think about maybe adding some incremental parking changes that go along with it. So what do people think about the options that are out there or have you come up with any other ideas based off of all the feedback or in light of the feedback? I was surprised that we had some really great feedback by the way, which was, I mean, we knew theoretically that this should be helpful but then we actually had more than one landlord show up and say, no, no, no, this would make a very practical impact for me right now, which was really great, I think to know that, what are you gonna say Mike? Yeah, I was gonna say that the piece that came through for me that I thought was the clearest recommendation of the ones we had kind of listed as options was there seemed to be a lot of support for the four-unit idea. So if you've got a conforming lot, you can have up to a quad plex regardless of your density. And that goes a little bit to Gabe thinking that's what the legislators wanted to begin with. But we, as I said, our attorney said, technically no, it still has to follow the density requirement, but that could kind of go away if we go and make this recommendation as well that just goes through and says, because I think it's incremental, it's that stepped approach of going, say we're not eliminating density altogether, we're just saying, if you've got a conforming parcel and 90% of the parcels are conforming, then you can have four units on a conforming parcel. Assuming you have all the other requirements, including having four parking spaces as things currently sit. So, Mike, I agree that that's an easy win, basically politically, because, yeah, you've got state law that's coming and that we would be dodging a bullet with that anyway. So yeah, easy win. I'm out of the mind though that that's the only change we should put forward because I think it is important to start loosening up density and getting away from it in the long term or else this is going to be the conversation that's had every year or two until finally we stop doing it. I'd just like to save the whole city, save everybody a whole lot more time by also moving away from just the notion of density and that also is much more responsive, I think, to what our urbanism said and other things. I'm a fan of, you know, I don't know, in terms of how the votes go, Mike, right? Like we put all the layups up front, right? And then you get maybe to sign off on the things that we know are gonna be easy. I don't know, I think we certainly, I'm a big fan of our approach of this, you know, hey, wherever we have, what is the term? Design review, wherever we have design review that we don't need to have the density requirements, I do think that should go hand in hand with no parking requirements. I think that should all go together. But if we can't get it, at least we're having a conversation again. Like, you know, every time we have the conversation we're having the conversation again and it would be nice if in the same package, also, Mike, I don't know where we're at in this and I know, you know, you're right in the mix of all, right? We got HUD stuff happening or whatever's going on with the trailers and FEMA and all this kind of thing. I thought we were gonna try to have a designated growth area or NDA or whatever that term is, right? That was gonna go up Northfield Street and also go all the way down Berry Street up into the Country Club Drive. But I don't know if that got derailed with the flooding and everything. To me, that would be, if we had all that stuff in one package, you know, I think the fourplex is gonna be a layup, really. And we'll see what the rest of it, you know, we can have a good conversation about it. Is there NDA discussion in the works or is that we're just not ready for that? Yeah, well, it wouldn't be in the zoning. I mean, we already meet the zoning requirements for the NDA. It probably wouldn't be up Northfield Street, but probably there's a debate as to whether or not we do an NDA for some of the areas. It could make sense to just do the growth center, but they're also proposing making changes to all the programs. So we're not really sure exactly where we're at with all of the details. So really depends if there's value to putting in the application. The NDA is supposed to be within, it should be adjacent to and whatever with the existing designated downtown. So Northfield Street becomes tricky because it kind of has to butt onto the growth center. The growth center already goes out Northfield Street. So, but yeah, so, yeah, the fourplex was one proposal. The no density in the design review was another. And we can put these together. Really, it kind of comes down to, a lot of these come down to if this goes forward and it won't be difficult for you guys to go through and improve these, where it becomes a challenge is when it gets to city council, we need to make sure we've got more people there. I think in the past, sometimes we've done these proposals and it gets passed the planning commission and it kind of hits council and it's really Kirby and me. And we end up with about 10 to 15 opponents that really if we're gonna push, if we're gonna make a push for density, we will need to make a group push for density. We'll do better this time. I think we're all aware and we're ready. So I think we'll do better at that this time. Just to be just double check in, Mike, will you personally be supportive if we propose to get rid of density in the design review district? Yeah, I think we're gonna be in better shape on it. This time we have a proposal to amend the demolition requirements. And so we can make that push. I think the previous one, our previous proposal wasn't attached to the design review boundary, I don't think. And I think that was where I- The previous one was just, it was smaller. I mean, it was just one or two little neighborhoods down by the river. Yeah, it wasn't the design review at all. Yeah, riverfront was before, but only part of riverfront is in design review. So that was where I had the issue was that CNU's push was that if you have good design review standards, then you don't need to have the density requirements. And Barb pushed the fact that only part of riverfront is a large district and only a small piece of that actually has design review. So I had to agree with her on that fact that yes, there'd be no density in Savins' pasture, there'd be no density and no design review. And- There were also a lot of claims made by people from the public about what was said in the CNU letter that were just the opposite of what CNU was saying. Like they were, you know? So I think everyone should have access to that in your email. And if you don't let me know, I can share it again with you, we should brush up on the CNU letter so that we're aware of what was suggested of us. They talk in a sort of academic way and they don't talk in the same way that we always talk in these meetings, just FYI about that. But I think it's pretty clear what they were saying and they were definitely suggesting big changes. Okay. So Mike, you're saying that you would be on board if we do that? Can I just ask, Mike, you mentioned this demolition change. Can you describe that? Because I know that was, it sounds like you're trying to take the foil out of the people who say, but it is some things over time need to be demolished too. So I'm interested to know what that's about. Yeah, so we've got a proposal. We had a project that had to go to environmental court for a demolition. And so the environmental court went through and had a review of our rules and had, didn't make recommendations for changes, but it was interesting to see how a judge interpreted our zoning as it was written. And so that kind of led us to make a number of recommendations for how to make adjustments. We're not entirely sure historic preservation will be 100% happy with it, but we were trying to strike a balance of being clear and allowing, demolition is gonna happen in one of the conditions in which it would be okay for a demolition to occur. And so that proposal is in there. So when we get done within the next, before the next meeting, I will post the strikeout copy of the zoning on the city website, send you guys the link to it, because it's really, I mean, it's like 35 megabytes because it has so much information in it. So I really can't email it, but that was a common complaint the last time we did the density was, which was, this was Sandy Vitium, Barb, people are gonna come in, they're gonna buy up the houses, they're gonna demolish them and they're gonna put in these giant flat roof buildings that cover the entire place. And there's not gonna be any parking requirements. So they're just gonna fill the entire place and dump all the parking onto the streets. And council goes and asks, is there anything we could do if they wanted to make that proposal? Would this be a permitted use? Yes, it would be a permitted use, they could do it, and there's nothing we could do to stop them. The reality is the market isn't there to do such a thing, but the argument as the Stromian argument there, just, I can't say, they're all administrative permits, so there literally is nothing I could do. If the rules are you don't need parking, then yes, I don't think anyone would. But I think if it's in design review, then we get to say, if we've got good demolition rules or better demolition rules, then we'd get to say on having that process there, whatever gets rebuilt would have to be in design review, so it would have to be made a lot better. That was one of the reasons I was thinking the four-plex rule should be very easy. Nobody's gonna tear down a Victorian to build a giant flat-roofed quad-plex. It's just nobody's gonna do that because their argument is people on Loomis Street, they could put a 16-unit building on Loomis Street, and it would be huge and ugly, and that's what the market would push for and that's what people would build. But I'm not an economist, I'm not a housing marketer so I can't push back on that claim. I can just go through and say, I just seriously don't think that's gonna be happening, but... I mean, it's never happened for once. I mean, that's one thing to point out, even in the places where we don't have density, I mean, in the downtown areas, they're a big tree and they're gonna be born down. They like to point out Cedar Street. They like to point out Cedar Street, yeah, which was, nothing was torn down there, right? There was an old carriage barn that was there. It was really not in good shape, but it was not in the design review district. It's the first property outside of the design review district. And on the old zoning... They created six new homes though, like... They created six new homes with a flat roof though. Had the flat roof and that was it. It's a perfectly aesthetically fine building. And that's the... Not according to the architects. According to those folks, it's the ugliest building in the city, which tells you some really nice things about our city, I guess. Yeah, so, okay. So those are the things we've heard before. I just wanna make sure we're moving along. One thing that's kind of, we kind of fell off the plate a little bit because it seems like we're trying to wrap up this zoning package really soon. There's a solar shading. Are we still thinking of talking about that and including it? Is that on your mind, Mike? I have that on the list as a strikeout. If somebody wants to not strike it out, we can not strike it out, but I'm willing to charge that windmill again. Okay, okay. That's all I need to hear. Okay, so we have that... We should just make sure John's gonna be at that meeting because when he rolls through the data, it's like crazy that you would, like, he just has to be there. I agree with that. I agree with that. I passed on like, I think, John and I threw together a memo like last minute that we gave to the city council that went through a lot of that same stuff. I don't know how much it was really read though. I mean, so yeah, if it... We have a new council. Yeah, it could be something that no one raises and it just flies through, but if a controversy does come up, yeah, we should be prepared on that one. So yeah, I don't need to spend any more time here though. I think we'll... Yeah, that was the previous council, the mayor and a number of folks were very much pro, pro, pro solar. And so the fact that we would not have anything that would be protecting, even though our proposal was to protect the solar, existing in proposed solar, they didn't want... They wanted to leave things as they were, but a number of them aren't on the council any longer. So I think this council may receive this recommendation differently. And I actually don't think it was a complete strikeout. I think I'll have to go and check. I think I kept the same proposal in and we'll have to decide whether we want to keep the same proposal or just strike all because I think the proposal was just to narrow it to protecting, existing, and proposed solar devices. I think strategically what I would advise is we propose to strike it, but then have the language to amend it ready. And so if they say, whoa, striking it's too much, we'll immediately be able to give them anything that's not so much. Okay. And I think they did that last time too. They asked for some new language and I was like, well, yeah, I can have it for you like soon, but they wanted it like at that present moment. So I think that that seems good. Okay, so do you want, does the planning commission want to vote on what Gabe was talking about as what we include? Or do you want to talk more about options for density resolution? I do want to make the point, I don't want this to obstruct anything, but I do have the personal opinion that the design review districts actually not very big and that it's really, I feel like the area around national life is I think where it's actually gonna matter if we make those changes, like future developments up that way, because all the other neighborhoods that are closer to downtown, like I don't know if there's a whole lot of room for growth there really, just some of the Victorians and stuff, maybe, but anyways, I'm just saying that if we go with the design review when we go with the duplex as a package thing, that's great, that's good, I'm on board, but maybe that's the smartest thing to do, so I don't want to obstruct anything. I just want to just throw it out there that it is small, like it's not, I don't feel like it's impacting a large portion of the city, but. Yeah, but maybe it's momentum. That's some victories, like Gabe was saying. Yeah, yeah, let's see it that way, and that's fine. Incremental victories, right? And the fourplex would be city-wide, so if we did both the fourplex and the no-density, I think the fourplex opens up a lot of room in a lot, well, for the entire town. Certainly in the neighborhoods. I mean, that was a solid hearing. We only heard from two landlords, I think, and I guess, Mike, there's some debate over the facts that they were giving us, but just those two people would have added like eight more units to the city. Yeah, six, something, yeah. Yeah. You know, multiply that. It seems like all these little one or two bedroom apartments here and there could really make a big difference. The no-density in the design review would have helped Peter Kelman for his Baldwin Street project that he talked about, that he could only, he wanted seven and he was gonna have to do the PUD. So yes, that's a much more complicated process to do a PUD to get that density. So if we didn't have density in design review, that's a good step. So I think that would be a very positive step for that part. So Baldwin Street is west of the capital complex out root two. So there are a number of neighborhoods I think that would benefit from it, but then there are a number of neighborhoods that are not design review. And we've tried in the past to expand design review and failed ironically from the same people who are worried that these things are gonna, bad things are gonna happen by bad developers, but we weren't able to expand the design review district to protect those neighborhoods from the bad developers. So we'll see that may be a proposal that comes in down the road. We do this step, we remove the density in this area, then we come back, maybe flop back the other way and expand the design review district a little bit more and kind of see a little bit of what we're hoping for or what we might see, I guess. Okay, so is that, oh, go ahead, Maratheon. There's like something that two people brought up that I found really troubling about how, but if we do this and we'll have more renters, right? As if that was like, and to me that was just like an overtly discriminatory thing that we were being presented with. And so I'm also wondering if there's like any city that has like a housing policy, like an anti-discriminatory housing policy that we will not, you know, prefer residents who are homeowners to renters. Like that's something very simple like that where like we cannot make regulations and zoning changes based on preferring one group over another. That it just seemed really beyond the pale that that would be a reason to do something. Did anybody else like? Yeah, I was glad the woman spoke up and kind of put him in this place on that one. Yeah, she shut that down. Yeah, she actually, she works for me and she's been faced with one series, you know, it's a series of housing issues for her being a renter in the city, you know, like the one owner moved back into their house and kicked her out. And then like, it's just been like a series of her having to find a place to live in town with her child. And it's just, it's really difficult, you know. And meanwhile, she is part of this community. Like it's not like, I don't know, we want people like her here, you know, it just, yeah, so I don't know. I, after that it kind of made me think that maybe we need to have just like this basic anti-discrimination policy so that when something, when somebody says something like that to us in a public meeting, we can say actually we can't take that into account because, you know, our policy dictates that we can't prefer one group of residents over another, you know. Yeah, and I think a lot of this is, a lot of that discussion, like the big bad developers, it's all kind of coded, you know, to me, to prefer. Yeah, it's code, it's not even coded anymore. I mean, they always talk about dog whistles. It's like, there's no dog whistle anymore, it's just... No. Right. Even the stuff about, hold off and don't do anything because of the flood, to me there's some coded stuff there where it's just using the code using the flood as it can be an excuse to stop housing development. And, you know. I was going to say, I think that has, what you're talking about, Maria, I mean, I don't disagree with you at all in terms, I mean, that was a disturbing comment. I'm glad it was shut down, and I said it a couple of times, but like that has probably more to do with the kind of people we want to show up at the meeting where this comes to the council or the kind of people we want talking to the council members before we get to the council. Like that woman calling a council, a counselor, their word counselor and saying, it's softening the ground before this gets there. I can't believe we have to do that, but that sounds like something we... To get out in front of the demographic, you know it's going to be there, and saying those things. So, it might be just a more of a numbers game at that point, but yeah, I don't... That was not the... I can't believe they said, I can't believe they did come out and say that, and it plays like, maybe it's a city. Of course we have rent. I don't know, that was bizarre. Well, Maria, you should hold on to that idea, and I'm not sure the right channel, because that seems like maybe not a planning commission thing, but a thing to bring directly to the city council or something, but that is, I don't know, I think it's worth working on considering later. I will just say, and going to Brian's point, I don't know exactly how we marshal the people to be in the hearing. I was working, but I was coming back, I was dialed into that non-city, whatever they did in the state house a few weeks ago, and Sarah DeFelice gave a little opening speech that was basically like, pro housing and pro downtown, and we just have to buckle down and do things different, and she actually brought up the garage as an example of how we let a minority really come, and she got an ovation, like people were cheering, so it's not that people in the community don't understand, they're just not showing up to the right meeting. So there's something we need to do, and Brian, I think this is your line of work, we just need to figure out how we... Not anymore, not anymore, work for the secretary of state now. No, okay, cool. No, but it is, but no, you're actually right, it's like getting the right people to, at the very least to email the council, a volume, it would be a volume play because the council at the end of the day, they care about voters, so, and galvanize voters, but you're right, I mean, I think it's just, yeah, you're right, it's pounding on people to go, to the right people to go, or the right people to chime in to beat back the 10 loudest voices. So we'll be smarter about getting the word out this time. I gotta move us on, so we've got to, there's not gonna be anybody to get the word out for if we don't actually propose something, so we should vote on that. And Mike has a whole list of other things that like housekeeping stuff that we're gonna have to go through tonight too. So do we have a proposal we'd like to vote on for the density issue? I'll start with like what where Gabe was going before, the foreplex across the city idea coupled with removing density caps from designer review district. Is that the popular approach with everyone? Do you have a thoughts about it? Okay, I'm gonna make a motion that we vote, that way we just, everybody will know where we stand, right? So let's do it. I move that we as the planning commission adopt those two strategies for density, the foreplex across the city, wherever there's a conforming lot, I think that's the right language, right Mike? Conforming lot. And then secondly, in line with the council on new urbanism recommendations to lift density requirements wherever we have designer review. That's my motion. Okay, so we have a motion from Gabe, do we have a second? I'll start here. I heard Ariane first, so we'll say she was the second on that. Okay, and now we have to have. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not gonna do it. Oh, were you the other second Erin? Yeah, it's okay. Erin deserves it more way more than I do. Now we got a third. We'll just mark it as a third. For the record, Erin was joking. I don't want anything in the paper about how our density proposal caused the commissioner to storm out or something. That's not what happened there. Okay, so we had a second from Ariane and we have a discussion now. So now's the time if anyone has any questions, any clarifications, any anything, give anything more anyone. Did I get a clarification on what a conforming lot is? What's not, what would be non-conforming? So we went through and did an analysis of all the lots. So if you're in the residential 6,000 district, that means your parcel would have to be at least 6,000 square feet for you to have a conforming lot. So parcels have two requirements, frontage and lot size. So if you're non-conforming in one of those, then you'd have a non-conforming lot. But in 2018, we reviewed every single neighborhood and tried to make every single neighborhood be 90% conforming. So we would find out where that line was. If there were 30 houses in that neighborhood, then 27 of them would have to be conforming. And it made a big difference. I mean, the numbers that the, under the old zoning, it was like 60, 70, sometimes 80% of the properties were non-conforming. So it made, it was like one of those big steps, before we can really go to no zoning, let's go or no density, let's get to everybody being conforming. So the only ones not conforming right now are basically Town Hill. And we're gonna have to fix that, that's in the proposal because they're res 24,000. So everybody's non-conforming because they put up a big stink in 2017 and council said, the only way we're gonna pass the zoning is to give Town Hill what they want. And so they made everybody non-conforming. But now at state law, they have to come, they've got to become conforming. So that'll be one of the proposals. So conforming based strictly off of the lot size. Not like, for instance, you could have a deck or something that's non-conforming, but it's grandfathered, that kind of thing's not going to keep people from being able to have it. Not non-conformity's come in three types. You've got non-conforming parcels, non-conforming structures and non-conforming uses. We're only talking about the non-conforming lot and that is either it doesn't have enough frontage or it's not big enough. As long as it's got the frontage, as long as it's big enough and in 90% of the cases or more, the parcels are conforming. But if you have a non-conforming house on a conforming lot, you can still have a quadnplex. What would you say, Mike, about? I know you don't love doing variances or something like that, but having an administrative cushion when it comes to that, like, for instance, if this parcel's just shy, it's technically not conforming, but we see that there's nothing obviously wrong with the four plex going in at that place. I understand that the tension there is like putting too much work on your office, but I don't know, what do you think? So there's nothing to say, there's nothing to prohibit you as the planning commission to put into the zoning the requirement that any parcel and not talk about conforming parcel. We made the recommendation on conforming parcels to avoid having somebody be able to come in and take advantage of there's some funky parcels that you can end up with that are just, across the street from Agway, you'll see a little fence next to the bike path. There's a tiny piece of land in there that's about 700 square feet that somebody owns and he's got all this junk in there and we can't get him to clean it up, but without that rule, he could put a quadplex on there. So that was why we were kind of like, all right, well, you can do this and that, you can put a single family home on it if it's non-conforming, but that was strictly why that rule came into effect is because somebody could take advantage of it on some of these really small lots, but it's probably rare and I'm sure John Adams would say, well, wait till something weird like that comes up and then we'll address it because the reality is it's not probably gonna happen. So we certainly could go through and just say any lot can have four units and go from there. It would actually, I think it would technically be impossible in that example you gave, right? Because you wouldn't be able to do meet like setback requirements and stuff like that unless you were building, I don't know, a quadplex tree house or something. Yeah, it would be tricky. In that particular instance, it would be tricky, but generally you're allowed to build a single family home. And you're, okay, so is your recommendation Mike, is it based off of just perceived criticisms or what you think would be a better approach as planning director? Probably more to do a little bit of the perceived criticisms. I'm just trying to think where somebody could abuse. I always, as part of my nature also to look at, so many times we write rules and don't think about how people can abuse them. And so I spend a lot of time when I'm writing my zoning rules, we sit around and say, how would so and so take advantage of this loophole? Because you know there's gonna be people that do it and to try to see if we can't make sure that we protect ourselves against those. And that was a little bit of, you can always put a house on that, you can always put an ADU on that. So you can always get two units on a non-conforming lot, you can always get those two units, but maybe it doesn't matter. Do we have thoughts when we're in the discussion, we have a motion and this is the discussion and Gabe could potentially amend his motion if he wants to. But what are people's thoughts about whether we, because that was a good point from Maria and it's something that I hadn't thought about enough myself. What are people's thoughts about the conforming lot issue? Include it or not? And I think include it just like Mike was saying, just make these incremental changes down the line once people are comfortable with having four units per lot, then maybe we can chip away at the conforming part of it. My concern further down the line is just like, we have so many regulations and we have people say, oh, I would have done this project except for blah, blah, blah. And this is one of those things that potentially for someone's like, oh, I had everything lined up and ready to go, but my lot's only 95% of the size it needs to be. And that kind of thing. I don't wanna create more of those, do we have any other thoughts about the conforming? How about if you wanna include conforming, give me a thumbs up. No, that didn't really work. Okay, so with lack of discussion, I'm gonna say that the people are seem fine with the emotion as it stands then. Is that fair? Okay. Do we have anything else to discuss before we go to a vote then? Okey-doke. Okay, so those in favor of Gabe's motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, any opposed? Any abstain? Okay, so that's the vote. That's our proposal on density. And from there, I'll hand it off to you Mike to go through some of the other items that you have for us. I might have to do something real quick. All right, so I will just go through this real quick. So some of you, probably all of you have seen this list before. A lot of these are just straightforward kind of technical changes that we needed to make. And a lot of these recommendations I've made. So exempting car chargers from needing to get zoning permits, adding public and private. So there are a lot of small things in here. So part two is really kind of, so part one's your introduction stuff. And then part two and what you'll get is a strikeout that will show what we ended up doing for all of these. And so I still need to get the highlighted one here. What we're doing to rezone Savings Pasture and Country Club Road. I have a proposal that was put into Regional Planning Commission to get that to me and they haven't gotten it back yet where they sent me a draft and I haven't had a chance to get in touch with them. A few other changes. This one here changed residential density to one per 8,712. So res nine because of the Home Act needs to be 8,712. So that changes in there. We had discussed this on the use table, splitting multifamily into two groups. So we have, right now it's five or more units as multifamily and what we'll have in the draft is a small multifamily, which is five to 14 and one that multifamily 15 or more. And the reason for that is the parking, not the parking, the traffic requirements, conditional use only has two requirements. Technically it has three, but traffic, community services and character of the area. So if the parking requirement or if the traffic requirement only takes effect with 15 or more units because of the way it's written and because under state law, there's some other exemptions that you can't use character of the area as an excuse to deny a residential project, then there really is no reason to deny the project. So we're gonna make it permitted for these five to 14 multifamily. So if you beat the requirements for five to 14, then that becomes a permitted use. We also, and this gets a little bit to Maria's comment about a fair housing stuff. We've made some adjustments to congregate living. So congregate living are, we've got two groups, we've got dwelling units, which have all five requirements of a dwelling unit and you own them or you rent them, but you have all of them within your walls. So you've got a bathroom, a kitchen, a living space, a bedroom, they're five of them came up, what they all are. In a congregate living, you share one or more of them. And so we've always had stricter standards for congregate living. And so we're gonna go and make the congregate living match the dwelling unit. So we're not discriminating against congregate living any longer. So if you wanna have a rooming and boarding facilities or some of these other ones where you might, you know, even some senior living comes in and has you own your, you have your unit that you rent, but you have meals together. That's congregate living. And that's held to a higher standard and a more difficult standard to get approved. And that doesn't make sense. So those changes went through. So we have a number of these and we'll go through all of these at the next meeting, but I did wanna, I sent this, I emailed this to you. And all of these, these were the B is the recommended changes. C means they're done or what the change was made. So we went through all these, the gray areas are ones that I've pulled because I just don't have enough time now. So that stormwater, I'm not ready to get the stormwater stuff fixed yet. There's a waiver, possibly a waiver to location of parking and loading behind front line of existing building. Reconsidering future. I can't remember what was the basis on that one. So this is the one I'm still working on. The major sign revisions needed. I have a proposal that I'm working with Meridethon. So I still need that. I need the zoning map and I need the signs. And I needed whatever changes you guys wanted me to make. So I can get those three wrapped up in the next two weeks before our next plan and commission meeting. I can get you the strikeout copy of everything. So this is the list. Anything in gray are things that are being held off. And we've got a couple of rezoning things here that have to get in as well. So for, I think it makes sense just for homework, for planning commissioners before the next meeting, you know, this table is like a summary. Mike said he was going to get an actual strikeout copy so you can read what the changes are specifically in the regs and we'll probably just approach it to save time by having people read in advance. And if you have questions about a specific part that we would just bring them up, those things at a time and probably not discuss every little thing. Does that sound good to everybody? Okay. Okay, this is good, Mike. Thanks, so did you have the solar shading in there? Yeah. Is that a thing that's done? I remember what the number was, 32? 32, recommendation, try to remove or revise the solar access and shading rules and the change was returned to prior proposal to allow protection only for existing and permitted solar facilities. So if you guys want me to do a strikeout, I can do the strikeout. I think that's a good idea. Do folks need to be caught up on what this means? I know we've had some mini discussion before for the newer people. Solar shading provisions were so inadvertently really so strict, or at least I mean that's the way I see it, so strict that you can actually stop or something can't be built if it's going to cast a shadow in many cases on just blank space because a solar project could go there, theoretically. So it's extreme, obviously. Before we had proposed to fix it so that only existing or proposed as in like in the works of being built projects could not be blocked. But so we're talking about possibly striking the shading where we're not regulating it at all and then if we get pushback that that's too far then have the language ready to amend it so that only real projects are blocked. And the policy reasons behind this are if you're not letting things, for one thing, John Adams has pointed out that something like 97% or so of the shading in the city is done by trees. It's not like building things is actually producing shading in reality. And then there's the argument that by building something new you're also creating space for solar panels because they can go on top of these new things that are being built. So it's the current state of things is not only like extremely prohibitive and restrictive but also feasibly stopping solar, like being self-defeating. So is everybody good with the start call to start? Yeah, okay. Looks good, Mike. All right, so I'll give one quick final thing on the zoning. So I will be at council on Wednesday because we need to do an emergency zoning amendment for the emergency housing on Country Club Road. So there are a couple of changes. They are on the strikeout list but they're being proposed now. So one was kind of working backwards in the zoning and the definitions. We have a use for temporary housing and that includes emergency housing and emergency shelters. So we're gonna strike that one. Then we're gonna create a definition for emergency housing and create a definition for emergency shelter. And the technical difference between the two is an emergency shelter is not intended for somebody to stay there more than 30 days. That would provide them residency and tenancy in that building. They become a resident of that building. In general, homeless shelters, they define themselves as shelters and they don't usually have people stay there 30 consecutive days for that reason. Emergency housing is housing that is built with the intention that people will be staying there as tenants. So that's our FEMA housing. And in our definition, we've limited it to government agencies. So somebody can sneak in and try to use this as a way of getting a back door into beating this zoning code. So if it's a state, federal or local emergency housing project, then it gets special provisions, which is that it doesn't have to go to the Development Review Board for any permits. It's a permitted use in every district and any site plan requirements or any Development Review Board requirements would be handled administratively. So the zoning administrator would make those determinations rather than the Development Review Board and that way the project would move forward because we will not be able to move and build the FEMA project by December if they have to go to the DRB in October. So this is, I'm reading it in because it needs a 15 day warning. So I'm reading it into them on Wednesday. So council understands it's an emergency order, which they can do in interim zoning without going to the planning commission. And then on the 11th of October, there's a second warned hearing where they would adopt the changes. So there may be some tweaking that goes along with the language, but that's the proposal that's being made. It's mostly just to pave the way for the FEMA trailers. But I wanted to give you guys a heads up so you don't seem blindsided that we're making a zoning amendment without letting you guys know about it. Does it help if we give you all our endorsement of this measure? I mean, does it matter? Obviously everybody wants it. It doesn't hurt. No. I mean, I move that we endorse the emergency zoning measure that Mike's gonna introduce. Okay, do we have a second for that motion? I'll second. Okay, a second for Maria. Any discussion before we vote? Okay. So those in favor of Gapes' motion to endorse these emergency zoning changes, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So there you go. So Mike can bring that to city council. Good call, Gabe. Anything else, Mike? None on the zoning. Mike, is there, has a plan come out for the country plug yet? Like a long-term plan? Yeah. There was a big process last year that the entire community went through and made a recommendation and that came out in May. There was a, should be on the city's website, the country club road master plan. It basically would have, as the plan was laid out, it would I think have about 300 houses, housing units up there. Most of it to the left of the country club building. So it kind of be up in the lower part. There would be five story buildings, which would include about 200 something units. And then the road would be going up and across the upper part and would include townhomes and other things. But there was an express interest of not having single family homes. And so there are a bunch of that. And so now we're trying to actually build that out to have more than just 300 housing units. We want to try to get up to 500, but right now we're gonna put the proposal right now is to have the lower pasture, the lower pasture, lower field there, the golf course to be, to have 36 trailers. FEMA and the state want us to put in, leave a space for one of those five story buildings and then we'll get a development partner who will build that building. It would probably take two or three years to get the building done. But when the building's done, then anyone who did not, a lot of people who are in emergency housing are temporary. They're there until their house gets fixed and then they're moving out. But there may be some people whose houses are permanently gone. They would have an opportunity to move into those things because we don't, you know, our plan was not to turn country club into a trailer park. It was to have, you know, a mix of housing types and so that's the push is to move those trailers as temporary housing out, but we would have new housing ready for them to move into. And 12 acres was set aside for recreation. So that's the other part of that. So the recreation actually paid a million dollars towards getting that project built or to buying the property. So the rec funds. So there is a portion of it that will be reserved for recreation. And the possible like road construction to connect downtown and the college green area over towards the country club, is that still to be done or? It's still in our plans to do because we think the best result from an urban design standpoint is to connect that. So it does go up and across the top of the golf course. There's a big gully. We'd have to build a big bridge to get over to Savins pasture. Then our plans to have the road go across Savins pasture across the top and go all the way to East, where East state matches college, you would just, the road would hook up there. And then there'd be another road that would dive down through Savins pasture and go to Berry street. So there'd be a little road network there that would allow housing, additional housing development in Savins pasture. There's still a proposal to have more parkland in Savins pasture. So we'd really be building out a large project there. Overall, there's three parcels that we would be working on for all that housing. That sounds great. It reminds me that a lot of the flood discussion from the community that I've heard involves an interest in kind of migrating a lot of downtown activity to the college green area. That's just probably, I don't know, something that I feel like is gonna come up in for discussion for us later. And it seems like it's connected in with this project because it seems like that's a bit of the vision with this project too, right? To just have a lot, like a whole, it seems to me like a whole court where there's gonna be a lot of development between downtown and the country club. Yeah, I mean, I think it helps from a lot of standpoints, transportation, natural resources, it's out of the flood plain. There's a new bike and shared use paths that would be connecting across. They're already proposed between the three parcels that are there. It wouldn't happen all at once, but maybe we could have 1,000 housing units and really make a big difference over the next 20 years, 25 years, maybe it's 30 years, but at least there's the potential to have some areas to kind of build out on sewer and water. We would have opportunities to connect utilities up to Town Hill. Town Hill only part of it has sewer. So we'd be able to run sewer down and fix a number of failed septic fields up in there. So there's just, it's a project that has so many parts and so many pieces and so many opportunities that we hope, if the flood kicks off, the FEMA trailers, which kicks off the development of country club road, maybe there's a silver lining to everything that lets us and the state is very, very interested. The governor is either is or has or plans to declare a housing emergency, maybe something to that effect. And we need to figure out and maybe that was what is going on to get the FEMA trailers, but they also are meeting with us because they wanna see our housing project on country club road move forward because they're like Washington County needs housing and this is the best place for this to move forward. So let's figure out how the state can help and really what we need to TIF district. So if they can help us do that, that would be a big help. So. But the TIF district being based off, obviously based off of the country club area. Yeah. Well, we'd want it for the whole area, but yeah, we could, we need to count on increment. And so we own the site so we can count on that. Okay. Yeah, that was a good, that was good catch up for us then. Yeah. So I'm expecting, yeah, like as things progress that there's probably going to be some zoning discussions coming our way and things that affect the city. Do we need to, do we need to actually amend the city plan before like, before we finalize it to account for all of this, the new like the country club project and the visions associated with it. Somebody's going to go and push that when we try to go and do stuff, but reality is no, we don't have to. Same with the zoning. You know, the people who want to oppose the zoning changes are going to go through and say, yeah, but we really should adopt the master plan first. So we should table this whole thing until afterwards. Like all I was saying was that we throw, like do we, should we throw in some, just take what we've got, but then throw in some extra, I'm forgetting the term no, the strategies for some of the areas where it's appropriate includes some strategies that are focusing on these areas. Just to put it in the plan to make sure that the plan is supporting, you know, the future. Yeah, we have to develop the land use plan and so that'll be a big piece of it right there. Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay guys, this has been a lot, Maria. I was just wondering if people had ideas about how, like what's the best way to spread their word was about these zoning changes and helping them pass. You know, like I think Kirby got my, I sent an email out to a bunch of people that I know that I knew would be supportive of it. But like, all right, what have you guys tried in the past that may work? You know, we haven't, as long as I've been on the planning mission, which has been too long at this point. The, there hasn't been a lot of the planning commission kind of taking the messaging, you know, into their own hands. Although I think it's hugely necessary given like the, just the dynamic of how things have gone. But anyways, my plan personally, so I can't help you with what we've done in the past cause we just haven't been good at it. But I just, I have plan to do what you did, like email people, but also reach out personally, especially the people who I know are very much interested, but they've got no good reason to go to a city council meeting because there's, you know, it's, you know, the people who don't want to see something happen are motivated. People who do want to see it aren't as motivated because we are all very busy. We all have most, you know, a whole lot of us have families and jobs and just we're very busy parts of our times in our lives. And just letting those people know that the, actually, yeah, please get motivated for showing up for this one thing and letting your voice be heard because there is a risk that it won't happen if you don't, you know. And the housing committee has been a good partner. So they're the ones who probably come out the most so far. So if we have a meeting with them before, we have our hearing that, you know, that might be a good thing to go through and say, hey, we really need your support. Not only it's planning commission level, but at the council level to make sure the council goes through with our recommendations. So I have, you know, I have 10, 20 people in mind who I know who are residents of Montpelier and who want to see this progress in these areas, but they're not people who routinely show up to planning our two city council meetings. I'm just gonna let them know directly and let them know it's important. I think it's gonna just, I think doing our own networking. We've already done our public, you know, we've done the bridge and I think we should continue doing updates on the bridge so maybe in a month or two, we should think about doing another, just keeping the discussion open to the bridge, keep doing those things, but I think that just, yeah, personal networking, I think is, it's a small city. I mean, if all seven of us got 10 people, that would be an overwhelming turnout. I was gonna say, right, I think the floor was five, like if everyone brought five people, that would be the floor, right? So that would be a great, I think it sounds like a great number, plus the leveraging the relationship you have with the committee and other, there's some housing activists in town. There were some, I mean, we had quite a few people on the call the other night, they weren't all haters and the listening section. I mean, there were people that were support. I'm thinking of Nathan. Nathan could drag along, alone could drag along, you know, three, four, five other people with him probably. Yeah, we need to do that. We just made like one big, we need one ask, we need to be like, go to this one meeting. You're gonna, to make a difference, go to this one meeting. But I think 35 or whatever the floor is five each. Yeah, even 35 would be a whole lot. The last time we had, and I don't, I mean, I don't know, maybe too much is made out of it. The last time that we went to city council, we had some zoning changes. We got some things through, we got some important things through the zoning that allowed the Habitat Project to continue. And other things, but there were two lightning rods. One of them was the thing related to density that Mike and I had worked on kind of as a side thing and we just threw it in there. And then the solar shading thing became a lightning rod. But then there were some big things that got through anyway. And in that case, I would say it was about, it was fewer than 15 naysayers, but there were no advocates there because we didn't try to encourage anyone to come. And I did my best to try to, I tried to be optimistic with city council and let's say like, everything's cool, everything's fine, but they were like, our voters are saying otherwise. And so, that's how I would say it that that went. So it wasn't, I mean, it was, I think it was bad with the amount of negativity, but it was still only 15 people. Yeah, 15. So there's seven of us, we all make sure we go. And I would encourage planning commissioners to speak out as planning commissioners, but also as residents, by the way. I think, you know, our voices should matter. And we should have, I think, I believe that we have credibility with the city council. That's why they appointed us. So there's that too. Okay, well, we're out of time. We had a big, I think we had a great discussion. Thanks everybody. I'll be reaching out to Emma and I'll let you know how that goes. Do we have a motion to adjourn? I move to adjourn. All right, I'll beat you again, Erin. All right, with that. It's going to be my life. With that, we'll adjourn.