 Okay, it is 702 so I'm going to go ahead and call us to order. This is the public hearing process, part of the process for looking at bylaw amendment for the Wilson town. I have a lot of paper. And I just want to make sure that I have things correctly. Okay, so this is a public hearing to consider a proposal to adopt a form-based code for the Taft Corners Growth Center and to establish an official map for all of Wilson. I just wanted to get that correct. So our first item is actually public comment and this is for specifically things that are not on the agenda. So if you're here to talk about form-based code or related items, I ask you to wait until that, until that part of the meeting. So are there any public comments for things that are not on the agenda? Please raise your hand and I'll ask you to state your name. Okay. Just a reminder, please mute yourself unless you're actually speaking. There's a lot of, we have a great turnout tonight. And so we have a lot of feedback, potentially background noise and so forth. All right. Well, I will go ahead and officially open the hearing. It is 30 seconds early. Since we didn't have any public comment. So we're opening officially at 704. So thank you for coming to the meeting tonight. I'm Megan Cope. I'm the chair of the Wilson planning commission. And I'd like to introduce the commission and staff. So if you could please turn on your camera and wave. When I say your name. Chapin Caner is our vice chair. Thank you, Chapin. Kate Lamar. Thanks, Kate. Shayla Livingston. Hi, Shayla. Great. Alex daily. And my screen is. Exceeding. I have, there's too many people from my screen, which is fabulous, but I can't see everybody. I'm waving. Okay. Thank you, Alex. And then Jill Pardini. Let's see. I know she was here. Yeah. She was waving. Hi. Thank you. Okay. And there is one vacancy on the commission. So if you're interested in replying to join us, please let the town staff know. So now I'd like to introduce those town staff. So Matt Boulanger is our planning director. I'm here. I'm waving at the meeting. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then we have Emily Han here. From. From the town staff as well. And I know she's here. Hello. I'm here at the meeting. I will as being a little finicky tonight. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. And let's see. And then our Taft Corners consultant team is also here. That's Jeff Farrell. Hi, Jeff. And. Taylor Newton from the regional planning commission. Hi, there's Taylor. Hi. Great. Okay. So the purpose of this. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Did you get Melinda? Melinda is also in the. Oh, I'm sorry. Melinda, are you also here? I, my notes say. And Simon is zooming in. And Simon is also here. Fabulous. Okay. Yeah. My, my notes said. Did not include that. So I apologize. Okay. So welcome everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I see members of other town boards. I see members of the public. And the development community. And obviously our planning commission and staff. So thank you for coming. The purpose of this hearing is to consider amendments to the Williston united unified. Development bylaws in accordance with the goals and policies of the public. So. We are going to start with a staff report from Matt. And I will mute. At this point. Perfect. Thank you. As Megan Pope said, this is a public hearing to consider amendments to the Williston unified development bylaws. And this is a public hearing to consider amendments to the Williston comprehensive plan. And on the agenda. Public facilities, including streets. Bike paths, sidewalks. Transportation hubs and parking facilities and other planned public facilities. This is a project. To amend the bylaws that is called for by numerous goals in the current adopted town plan, and the comprehensive plan. And on the agenda webpage and in the commissioner packet, we've shared our memorandum to surrounding communities. As well as the state of Vermont and the regional planning commission that enumerates the ways in which this project fulfills the goals established by the town plan. And I'm just going to focus on a very few of those. I'm going to focus on the comprehensive plan in the land use chapter under the discussion of Taft corners in the growth center. The town of Williston will encourage and support a design conscious, pedestrian friendly mixed use development and redevelopment pattern in the Taft corners area. The town has worked toward this objective by successfully obtaining growth center designation in 2008 and revising the unified development bylaws in 2009. The town will continue to support this objective by encouraging the construction of planned infrastructure in the growth center, concentrating new development in the growth center and examining and monitoring the effectiveness. Of its bylaws. And that's a little bit of how we got here tonight is the ongoing examination of the effectiveness of the current bylaws and achieving those goals of blockability. Mixed use down the road. And in particular a sub goal under the one I just read. That says consider developing and adopting a form-based code. The town should consider making greater use of form-based techniques in the growth center. As a means of refining the town's current development standards. We'll be talking a lot about the draft form-based code tonight. Not so much me, but our consultant. We'll be talking a lot about the draft form-based code tonight. We'll be talking a lot about the draft form-based code tonight. Not so much me, but our consultant. Team and CCRBC chip and county regional planning commission staff. But very briefly for those of you who participated in the earlier visioning process for tap corners. Or have participated in the town planning process. Or even if you're brand new to all of this. When we're talking about a form-based code, we're talking about a type of zoning. We're talking about building design. Building architectural design as well as shape and form. And building placement. On the street and in its relationship to the public realm. So as opposed to the zoning that will list and has. Most of the town and currently has tap corners. Which is quite heavily based on what uses are allowed at what levels of intensity. We're talking about the form-based code. It's the building and the site that are more heavily controlled. The uses just have to work within that building and site. And that's as brief as I can make it. When it comes to form-based code. I want to take just one more minute before turning it over. To Jeff Farrell, our consultant lead on this project. To reiterate something that we sent out in an email. We sent it out on Friday to everybody in Williston, who we had an email address for. Anybody who read front porch forum on Friday. And all I want to say. And repeat from that message is thank you. You have our sincerest gratitude from the staff. To every citizen who participated in this project. In every way that they did. And to our. Hardworking planning commission members. And to all of you who have been here. To the commission. And to those who have been here. Through the arc of this project. We had over 2600 visitors to the my tap corners. Website. 961 email subscribers through the my tap corners. website. 711 subscribers in town to the planners. Corner newsletter. We had 10 hours of community meetings. Plus with 168 survey participants. 338 comments on our map of the growth center for over 9,000 words, 129 unique participants in our online events, 70 participants in our kickoff, tap corners vision event, we had 36 participants in our design workshop and 62 vision plan update participants after that. Hours and hours and hours of planning commissions following that, working on the draft code that we're going to discuss tonight, more than 15 hours over 12 planning commission meetings, 12 hours of planning commission site visits to neighboring towns and municipalities to look at their form-based codes as well as to examine code effectiveness and tap corners. Just endless examination, work, careful reading, trips by planning commission members to the office to pick up new binders full of revised form-based code draft that we wanted them to look at over the weekend before their meeting. The numbers I just expressed are just a small representation of the amount of work will Estonians have put into the product that we're taking to this next phase of review tonight. Again, thank you. Thank you to the entire community for all of your active participation and hard work on this project. I'm happy now to turn the presentation over to Jeff Ferrell, our consultant lead, to give us all an introduction to the draft code and how it works. Thank you. Have to be muted at least once. Thank you very much. First thing I want to say is, Jeff Ferrell is listed as the consultant on this, and I want to make it clear to everyone, we have a large consultant team of the best people that I depend on. It was a great team as was your staff. A great effort. We're really proud to be part of. First of all, I'm going to explain the form-based code. I think the best way to explain it is to start off and present it to you as if you were a resident or a property owner, how you would use it as a private citizen. I'm going to get myself on here. First, looking at a location, Taft Corners, it's a small part of the town of Williston, but actually a large part in what it can do for the future growth and I'll say tech space. This is something one of our clients once came up with. The idea that for the form-based code, as a citizen, there are three easy pieces. First being the regulating plan. I can't over-stress how much this is fitted to the site. This regulating plan is really fitted to the site. What's there? We looked at ownership, topography, wetlands, etc. We had a ton of information. We wrestled with it all. Here's what the regulating plan looks like today. We're going to zoom way in on a particular spot, talk about what all the lines and colors on the form-based code mean. We're going to look at this one particular lot. Lines and colors, the first thing you'll notice, that dashed line, that's the required building line. You know, whatever building is built there will start, will have its face on that line. Along the block and along the street, within a couple of feet, they'll be lined up consistently. The second thing tells you what's not going to be there. That's a parking setback line. In any construction and Taft Corners, you'll never be walking past a parking lot. That parking setback line tells the builder or developer, you can do anything you want with your parking behind that line. Just don't put it forward of the line, parking setback. Then up in the right-hand corner, you notice there's a little bit of a dashed area there. That's showing an alley. That doesn't mean the alley goes exactly there and exactly that shape, but it does mean that there will be an alley coming from that block face out to the other side of the block. The configuration can change, but basically you have to be able to get an automobile, a bicycle or a pedestrian through the middle of the block from one side to the other. Deliveries, parking services, all from the back of the lot inside the block. Now the other thing you see there is the different colors that are occupying the street space. That color tells you what the rules are for the construction of a building on your property. If you're fronting this, I call it a kind of a mango color or cantaloupe color, that tells you that when you see the key on the regulating plan, the frontage standards are called urban general two. That sends us to the second of the three pieces, the building form standards. They tell us what to do with the building in three dimensions, what we may do. They're composed of both intent, there's an intent part that gives you an idea of what, a big idea of what you're supposed to do, example images and text. Now there are four intensities in the form and taff corners. That melon color tells you it's the urban general two frontage. So you go to that section, again, intent examples and images, pictures, as you'll notice, they're quite a bit different, but they have something in common that's the form-based code isn't a straight jacket, but it gives you a set of parameters. Along with that, we have these set of configuration diagrams, kind of like tofu diagrams. These are showing what the freedom that you have behind the frontage on the lot. A lot of people don't understand when they first look at a form-based code, actually how much flexibility there is in it. Second is the other half of the rules are more than that, are diagrams and texts that give you rules. And those are laid out in placement, height, elements, and uses. The first one placement is a site plan. It tells you things that you must do, like that required building line, you must start your building there. It also tells you things you may do and parameters. There are setbacks to the rear, sometimes to the side, where you have a lot of flexibility within that. The height, talking about minimums and maximums, relative to the street. This particular one, minimum two stories, maximum four, and also specifications for how high the floor, floors are and the ceiling heights have a minimum. Those are for quality of life and long-term value issues. Elements, and I wanna stress that the form-based code concentrates its regulations on the front of the building because that's the part that faces the public and makes the public realm. What happens inside the building and behind the building, there's a lot more flexibility. It's a much lighter hand on so that the builder and the occupants can do what they want, respond to the market more easily, et cetera. And then the uses. Form-based codes are much less prescriptive in their uses. We tend to deal in broad categories. And the idea is it's very easy. It's a lot easier to change uses. We're not trying to micromanage exactly what you do in the buildings, but form-based codes still deal with uses. We don't throw them away. Now at this point, we're looking at the third of our three easy pieces is the architectural standards. Excuse me. Up to this point, you know where the building's gonna sit on the lot, you know, and you can walk across the street to that required building line. There's gonna be a building there. You know, minimum height, maximum height for the building. It's a little bit like if you've ever seen in a department store in back on mannequin before they had brought it up front dressed. You know the form, but you don't quite know the character yet. That's where the architectural standards come in. Obviously they deal with a lot of elements of the building. Again, mostly concentrated on the facade of the building. We call it the dress code. It's certainly more important than that. It's not just like having a bow tie or a straight tie or no tie. But some of these elements are functional. They're really important to the character. And I'm not gonna talk about all the elements right now. Here's an example page and it's important to look at. There's two facing pages here. The one on the left is part of that intent section and the one on the right are the rules. We think you can talk about this in terms of having a playbook and a rule book. The intent pictures give you an idea of what we're talking about, but the rules are there on the right hand side and we're very clear about the difference between the two. So to recap, if you're a citizen and you've got a lot on the block, you wanna know what you can build on it or what the owner across the street can do, you look to the regulating plan, find where to go in the building form standards, and then look at the architectural standards to get an idea, pretty good one, of the kind of building that can be built there. Now, if you're the government, which you are and collectively, everybody on this call is we the people government, there are more parts to it than that. We're gonna look at each one of these very quickly. I'm not gonna read through all of those as they flash on there. First is the introduction, talks about how to use the code. It also has a small set of special definitions. Because this code is a form-based code and it's dealing with the physical form of things, there are words that need to be used very precisely that don't exist in normal planning and zoning. So we've defined those, we try and keep it limited, but there's some special terms. Whenever you see something in the code in small caps, that means we mean that in a pretty precise way. The second part, the regulating plan. Now, if you were in Taft Corners as it's a going concern and you have a lot and you wanna build on it, you probably wouldn't even need to look at this section. It really is more important for the large landowners which we know we have a few, who have really large tracts of land that are gonna need to subdivide it with streets and blocks. This has parameters for how that is done and keeps things organized. Third part, a big one, the building form standards. These tell you what the rules are for private development in three dimensions, form and in general terms and function. There are four levels of intensity in Taft Corners or four kinds of intensity. First, urban general, this is really the biggest part of the Taft Corners form-based code. Storefront, frontages, that's really about only what happens on the street. So anyone in urban general, there's a lot of the, well, there's only one area and I think it's about 800 feet long right avenue where we're requiring storefronts to be built. We know that the United States, every bit of it has way too much retail. A lot of it, the wrong kind of retail. So we're being very miserly in where we say you really need to build a storefront. In the urban general though, that's an option. You're allowed to do that. It's letting the free market rule at your own risk. At your own risk. The other two types are, there we go. The remaining two types, urban general two, which we looked at earlier and the neighborhood frontages are places where the intensity and the scale step down in small increments. So there'll be less urban neighborhood. The yellow frontages on the regulating plan will be some of the less intense. As you get to the orange, there's more activity, more intensity. Again, we talked about the architectural standards of the dress code. We spent a bit of time on this with the Planning Commission and before with our architects and with local architects, trying to be careful about what is the character of Vermont buildings. It's an interesting problem and that's what we're after here and they go through signage. I can't see because somebody's been admitted to the building. Windows and doors, entry features, street walls, building walls, all are controlled, looking at what happens in Vermont. Even though this is new construction and it will be when it's first built, shiny and bright, but we want to get it into a New York frame. Sorry, Vermont frame. Thank you for laughing. I was thinking of that song, New York frame of mind. Vermont, a new Vermont frame of mind. Thank you. And then the public realm standards. Now the public realm, we're talking about everything from the face of the building across the street to the next building, streets, squares, greens. The public realm standards cover the pedestrian part of that street space as well as the automobile part of the street space. A great pedestrian realm, wide sidewalks, wide tree areas so the trees will grow, taming the automobile, but not eliminating it. We don't have any carless streets, but we have a lot of the streets where the cars are really controlled. And bicyclists, here's some of the street sections. This first one is what we might be able to do, actually what we can do I think, if, and I'll say when the town takes over to A, notice the bicycle dedicated bicycle lanes separated from the cars and also separated from the pedestrians. That's an important separation as well. Some more narrow streets. This street space, 86 feet, building face to building face. Notice the bicycle lanes again. This is the street section that runs through Taft Corners and knits the four quadrants together and also connects with existing bikeways that are shown on the town plan. The official map. And then here's a wide street space, 80 feet, wide sidewalks, wide tree lawns. In all these streets in Taft Corners, the street trees are going to grow and thrive. They will not get rootbound and die. It's a small technical note that this is also a place you can pile the snow. But it's also gonna be a place that as the trees take root, they're gonna get better every year and be glorious in a pretty short order. And then parking loading on the face of it, maybe kind of a boring area, but actually because of interest in how much parking works, is a pretty hot topic. This stresses smart parking. The entire design of Taft Corners is creating a park once environment so that parking is more efficient. And form-based code addresses residential parking, commercial parking, and you've got on-street parking pretty much everywhere. And by the way, with the block sizes in most of Taft Corners, there's a lot of room inside the block for surface parking. Building functions, big point, don't micromanage uses, let the market decide to a fair degree. Form-based codes use broad categories of use. And there's an idea that you add to that. You don't ignore things, you have common sense, nuisance controls and protections. And finally, the administration applications and appeals process, I'll only say, well, two things, one is address any questions to Matt and staff. They can answer them better than I can, but it's a straightforward and very transparent process. And finally, I'll say the form-based code is a way to, and it is designed very specifically to implement the town plan, which I believe you've had for about four decades, and also the division plan, which the citizens created, which you've not had a decade yet, just not even a year. The form-based code is all about making that a reality. So it is the way that you, through a combination of public infrastructure and private investment, a partnership really, you make the town plan really happen to the benefit of all. Okay, and is that completed? Okay, thank you, Jeff, that's great. Okay, so now we will move on to our question and answer section of the hearing. The purpose of the Q&A is to help the public understand the amendments and establish the facts. So we'll now answer questions about the standards of the new form-based code, how the form-based code works, or how the code complies with town plan. We're going to ask specifically that statements of opinion or position will be taken after the Q&A section. And lastly, that questions and responses should be directed to me. We will ask you to raise your hand and state your name if you have a question. So please keep in mind that I can only see about half of the attendance at a time. So perhaps the staff can also help me by alerting me when someone's hand is raised. All right, I see Jeremy Matosky. Go ahead. Hi, Megan, thanks for hosting this. I own a property in Blair Park. It's my engineering business. And we have about just under two acre lot and it happens to be almost pie shaped. So it has a radius as a frontage. Within Blair Park, there's a lot of curvilinear streets. And our first look at this code indicated that there's no more than a 24 inch offset allowed back from the required building line. And so the building, were we to build another building on the lot would have to either be curvilinear to the match the radius of the street or have a sawtooth all over the 400 and something feet of the frontage. It's just over 400 feet of frontage. So I was curious how the code can address sort of those anomalies. I see a lot of the prototypes are all based on rectilinear straight angle streets where is there provisions for some flexibility when you have curved streets and even existing mature landscaping in that area that there's berms and landscaping already present there with very mature trees. So those are my questions. Okay, thanks. I am, that's very specific to a particular property, but I will ask Matt to address the sort of broader picture of when the existing infrastructure doesn't match the vision. How do we reconcile this? And I know Matt has put a lot of thought into this. So I'm gonna bounce this over to him. Sure, I'm happy to get it started, Megan. And then I may bounce it to Jeff for clarification, but Mr. Mitowski raised this point with us following the warning of the hearing. And so the hearing draft was out in the world and prior to us obviously being able to start really editing. So more broadly, I do wanna mention because I meant to do it before that as the Planning Commission is now in this hearing process, what is in part under discussion is the black letter hearing draft that's published on the webpage for this meeting and available for inspection at our office, but also what changes might be made to that document before it is transmitted to the select board. So we're keeping our ears wide open despite having born to the hearing for issues like this and others. A few of the Planning Commission even discussed last week between the warning of the hearing and the holding of the hearing and we've been working away at being responsive to those. So in brief, in addition to the discussion of the curvilinear streets, we've continued to consider some changes to what this hearing draft says about parking. We've continued to consider changes to the names of the form districts in order to give them a more Williston feel, a couple of other procedural things. And we did have time to discuss with Jeff what to do with curved streets because there are quite a few of them in Blair Park and also around Harvest Lane and elsewhere in the area. And we did come up with a couple of ideas the Planning Commission may wanna consider that would allow a certain minimum amount of a building to be a straight line where it interacts with a curvilinear street. So in other words, if you had, I think we settled on the 60 foot minimum frontage could be straight and would need to touch that build to line at its corners but could then just be a straight line. So actually a relatively simple more or less of text change and thanks to Mr. Matoski for bringing that up. I think that catches something that was likely to come up as an issue if not on the Trudell lot than somewhere else in the area that had a curb street. And Jeff, if you have anything to add, I'm all set there. Just to actually thank Mr. Matoski for bringing that up. We did look very specifically at your, literally your footprints but in a larger situation, you helped us fill in an imperfection. Thanks. Thank you. That's all I have. Hey, I see a hand up from Elizabeth. Okay, go ahead. Hi, thank you. I'm a resident of the Tafts Corners area and I'm wondering if the code addresses the protection of green space in the Tafts Corners area. And if it does, what are the specifics of that? And if it doesn't, where do we look at that in the development of Williston? Okay, thank you. I'm curious if, how much of the form-based code and the regulating plan you've had a chance to look at, Elizabeth? I looked at it, but it was a little too academic for me. That's a lot. Did I just? That is definitely a lot. What I did see, which was very clear and is my experience is living in the Tafts Corners area is that the little green space that we have left is on the outskirts and a lot of it is, it's not necessarily usable in that it's wet hands or whatever. Okay, great. Jeff, I wonder if you could walk us through this and I don't know if maybe we could share the, perhaps the regulating plan would be helpful. Yes, and of course, if I had, we should have already brought that up. I will be fast. While Jeff brings that up, let me just let you know, it was with everyone on the call that indeed green space is a huge question for us and absolutely a priority. One of our goals in all of our discussions has been that there is green space within a short walking distance to anyone living in this area and that it's accessible, not only in a physical sense, but also that it's not privatized or fenced or wet, as you pointed out. And so I'll let Jeff fill us in at this point. Yeah, thank you. I wish for the planning commission, I had a little slide set up showing a two minute walk area over all of the civic greens here. There are two or three different kinds of open space. One is a kind that I'll call squares or civic greens. These are, you might think of them as the town, in town parks, they're little pocket parks or larger that are, they're not natural areas, they're greens surrounded by trees, they're placed, people might go to Thrill Frisbee, play lunch, eat lunch, do whatever. In addition to that, and those are the little green areas here, you see on the screen. The scale is a little bit deceptive, but they're reserved so that within a less than a two and a half minute walk, you'll get to one of these from any place in Taft Corners. And I've got to say, Finney Crossing where I have a feeling you might live is a little bit of an exception. And that is because it's built, spoken for, I don't want to say done deal, that's kind of a nasty term, but there's just less opportunity to plan because it's already been planned. So there's less of that up here, but that's one kind is what I'll call the town or in town kind of green space for recreation. The other, see the darker green areas, those are wetlands, class two wetlands. So yes, they're not really for human occupation, but the other green that you see around it, these are spaces that we have created and reserved. This is the Burroke Park Hill, all this area here. That darker green is natural area that's created. It generally is paired with wetlands or features like streams because it's designed to be part of that ecosystem, but that's in a nutshell, the different kinds of green you see on this plan are those green areas. Any further question, Elizabeth? Does that help you understand that basic? It didn't really answer my question, which was can we, are we insured that the green space on that map is gonna be there? Oh, yes, and I maybe Matt should follow up on that. Yeah, Megan, is that all right for a second? Okay, so what's under consideration in this hearing is both the form-based code that Jeff described, as well as another regulatory tool called official map. An official map is a unique Vermont law provision that allows communities to plan for public facilities, including planning for public facilities that exist on what is today privately owned land. And once you have adopted official map, you may require a private landowner who's developing that property to incorporate their portion of the planned public facility in most cases here agreed into their development plan. If they do not incorporate it into their development plan, there is a process by which, number one, the proposal is initially denied. The select board is then brought in to determine if they would like to engage in a proceeding to attempt to purchase that green space. And only if the select board chooses not to purchase that space would the applicant be able to proceed without providing that. So it is proposed as part of this process that Williston adopt the strongest provisions available to it in Vermont law to guarantee the creation of these green spaces in the locations where they're shown on this map. It does not mean that those will always be free for the town. The town may at times need to budget some money to purchase them either through recreation impact fee or other sources. And we do have some other bylaw amendments to the existing zoning bylaw to try to really incentivize the provision of those green spaces. In the case of town greens or parks, for example, by offsetting recreation impact fee liability for residential projects when they do provide green space that has a value as part of their project. So we really tried to look at all of the various tools in the toolbox that Williston could take advantage of to ensure that the map green spaces are created as tap corners evolves. Great, thank you. I have one other question. Okay, go ahead. Does the code or the planning commission look at the percentage of mixed income housing development and has that changed at all as a result of this new form-based code? Meaning, are we going to be a better community by providing more lower and middle income housing in the task corners area? Yeah, so affordable housing has always been a question in our whole process. And to some degree, the overall supply of affordable housing obviously goes beyond just what is possible through form-based code. We do have a request into the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, CCRPC, for some assistance to essentially do a needs assessment, which is a first step for a larger process in being able to jump back into affordable housing. Of course, also if you just consider the fact that a great deal of the plan for this area is residential, it means that there would be increased amount of housing stock, which just through its availability would be one piece of that puzzle. As far as more specifics, I'm going to turn it back over to Matt because he has been thinking about this a lot as well. Sure, a common saying in the housing world is if you're going to build affordable housing, you need to be building housing. And so the form-based code does a couple of things that really encouraged the creation of housing in task corners in general. One of the main things it does is it regulates the intensity of residential development, not using the traditional dwelling units per acre metric, but by regulating building height, building form, and mass. So we're not counting up the number of apartments in any one building or on any one parcel necessarily. We're looking again at the form and saying what can be created there. So there are parts of this area that allow buildings that should be able to make much more efficient use of their parcels than the current code allows, creating a lot more opportunity for a whole mix of housing types to be built in the area at a whole lot of different levels of affordability. Another element that goes to affordability in the draft code is we do have parts of Williston today in task corners that have been built out with row homes. So these are attached dwellings in a sort of a row home or townhouse format like Finney Crossing. Today, somebody who had one of those row homes and had a finished basement would not be able to create an accessory dwelling unit in that lower level. Under the code, they would. So there would be this added type of housing that would have the opportunity to create accessory units. So all of those things say to me that the stage is being set by this code for the production of a great diversity of housing types into which any number of affordability models could be more easily brought than we have today. Some other things that make it easier to create affordable housing are some flexibilities that this code encourages around parking and the provision of both reserved and shared parking for housing. Anybody who was at the DRB meeting a few months ago when Champlain Housing Trust was converting the hotel into affordable housing might recall that we spent probably 40 minutes talking about the difference between 96 parking spaces and 126 parking spaces. And really the approbability of the project was hinging on an interpretation of that. I can confidently say that such a project under the code as drafted would not get hung up on parking that way, but everybody would still have a place to park when they got home at the end of the day. So it strikes a nice balance there. Finally, what Megan alluded to in terms of future work, throughout the form-based coding process, we came across issues that we knew went beyond what could be addressed by this code. And one of them is whether the town would consider adopting more prescriptive rules requiring the inclusion of affordable housing in new projects or projects of a certain size, something called inclusionary zoning. Vermont statute says that to consider inclusionary zoning and adopt it, you need a housing needs assessment, something Williston hasn't really done. So we put in to get that work done so that that crucial next step has been taken if the town does wanna consider bringing inclusionary zoning into the mix following the adoption of the code. Thank you very much. Thanks for great questions. Chief, and go ahead. Yes, I wanted to add to answers for Elizabeth that the planning commission as a whole is really aware of this issue and on the whole believes that having greater density increases the opportunities for affordable housing. And one of the ways that we're aware of it is just that people who work in retail and Taft Corners in general can't afford to live in Williston and that's really not right. On the green spaces, we also are very sensitive about that and Megan, I don't know where to put this but I have made some specific requests to be part of the feedback part of this meeting and I have emailed them to Matt and I can read them when we come to that part of the meeting but one of them is about having more green space. Oh, and finally, we also have talked about and I think it's in the transmittal memo if not in the code that we in order to have this kind of density, stormwater will probably need to be managed jointly or even municipally. And so there's an opportunity there to create more green spaces out of better managed stormwater facilities. Thanks. Thank you, Chapin. Okay, other questions in another minute or two? Okay, in that case, we will move on from the question and answer section. Jeff, Nick is raising his hand. Oh, I couldn't, I see Jeff but I didn't see a hand, sorry. Go ahead, Jeff. Hi, Megan, thank you. I couldn't find the little icon hands. Real hands work too. If I have you on my screen. Well, thanks for this opportunity. I'm talking on behalf of Taft Corners Associates who owns a large part of this property on the North and South of Marshall Avenue. I think you all know on the west side of Route 2A. And I think generally we support these form-based code concepts. We think it's great, the increased density. You're right to point out the stormwater issue that'll have to be figured out. But we also wanna try to figure out what some of the unintended consequences might be. For starters, there's about 30 acres of land north of Marshall, 20 of those acres are either underdeveloped or undeveloped. And there's about 30 acres south of Marshall Avenue. The area south of Marshall Avenue where the big boxes are, you know, that's really auto-centric. It's on the way to Walmart and Home Depot. It would be very challenging from a market standpoint to develop that area today or in the near future to conform with form-based code. So we're not really supportive of this type of zoning on the south side of Marshall just because we know it's gonna be very tricky to entice anybody to build in that fashion over there. Some of the other things, I mean, generally, we think, you know, the building heights, higher building heights make a lot of sense. However, there are some instances where, and we don't know what some of these uses might be, but there may be instances where somebody comes in and says, you know, I just can't, you know, let's just use a bowling alley, for example, you wouldn't want, you know, they typically don't have second and third floors over those uses. Supermarket would be another example. As an example of how you all know Church Street, I did a quick analysis of Church Street in downtown Burlington. Roughly 26% if you count them all is a single story. If you don't count them all, there's five buildings that are single story downtown, about 38,000 square feet on Church Street is single story. So I think in the fabric of this type of development, you can figure out how to make a single building fit in the form that we're trying to do here. Sorry, Mr. Nick, do you have, is there a question? We're still in the question. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Are you afraid to ask a question? Well, I guess the question would be, do we need to go to the south side of Marshall? And, you know, could there be some consideration of single story buildings? And, you know, there's an example that I sent to staff earlier today of, we did a concept plan. And I don't know if I may be making it, if I should maybe jump in a little later in the meeting, is that what you're suggesting? Yeah. So yeah, the next section is for testimony. And so if you have something that's more along those lines, that might be more appropriate. But if you'd like, we could take just a minute to very quickly turn to your questions about south of Marshall Ave and the single story. Again, I'm gonna have to default to, I guess as far as Marshall Ave goes, that's more maybe a math question. Yeah, a couple of things. And then I may turf a little bit over to Jeff. One thing I think for folks to understand when we look at the form-based code overlay district map, the boundary of the district follows Marshall Avenue around the Walmart and Home Depot frontages. So if you think of, sorry, Marshall Avenue Harvest Lane. So if you think of Harvest Lane and Marshall creating that round undeveloped island, the island is in the form area, Walmart, Home Depot and the Food Science Building up against the highway or not. So one thing the Planning Commission looked at in developing this draft was what part of Taft Corner should be in the form area and what part should remain in its base zoning. So if you look at the graphic on the screen there and you can see the green area that's in the middle of the Harvest Marshall Island and then the white and green space from there down to interstate nine is not in the form-based code area. It continues to have for the most part either gateway south or mixed use commercial zoning as it has for the last 13 years or so under the current bylaw. So one of the tools for the Planning Commission to think about is the location of the boundary and the outer extent of the form area. And then you can see all of that area south of Marshall. So that's all of those light orange blocks that are south of the thicker orange street which is Marshall Avenue. I'm always typing in some locators where you can understand where things are on this map. This is the area that's most proximate to the current single story retail quote unquote big box development. It's an area with a number of undeveloped lots. And so what we're talking about is that on the dark orange streets in what's currently named urban general on the draft code, there's a minimum three-story height and a maximum five-story height for new buildings. And in the light orange, I believe it's a minimum two maximum four, correct me if I'm wrong. So what there's not is any new development allowed under the current draft that could be built with a one-story configuration. Possibly Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong maybe excluding some civic buildings. Don't recall if the form standard would apply to them. And so I think the commission struggled a little bit with this. This is the area that has this more sort of traditional drive to retail development pattern. It's on the edge of the area. It has currently proposed code very similar to a lot of the core of tap corners. So I'll leave it there, Jeff. And then if you want to follow up with any comment if that's okay with you, Megan. Okay. Yeah, I'll try and just respond to the things Jeff said. And Jeff, we appreciate your input and also note that I believe we've already reached out and made it clear that we are interested in having a kind of workshop session with landowners and developers to help them understand the form-based code. There are a couple of things and I'll run over really quickly. On building heights, two things. First, I would say any buildings that are here now, any businesses can continue in perpetuity. No one's gonna make you redo your building until you want to. They're triggers for how much you, like any code, how much you change or enlarge your building, the code will kick in. But you can continue those existing businesses until the cows come home. A second point, a little bit subjective, but it happens and this is all very normal stuff that I'm hearing. But the idea that some one-story buildings exist in a good part of downtown doesn't mean that they really are contributing or necessary to that being a good downtown. There are a lot of things on Church Street that don't make it the great street it is. So that's not really a reason to allow one-story buildings. And I would say we do. We are all the existing ones that continue. On the other thing on your letter, maybe I should leave that. You talk about, I have some comments. There's some other, I have your letter. There's some other things that I think, like on parking, I think you misread the code. So we should have that meeting so we can talk about what's there and what's not. But I do look forward to having that. Thank you. Okay, so I'm gonna have us move along since we're a little over time. And I do see one more question from Chris Snyder. And Chris, if just please, if you can make sure that it's a question, that would be great. Go ahead. Absolutely. One question, can you provide me or the group with areas where the street section at the widths that are being proposed in with, I'm sorry, with retail or restaurants on the first floor in residential above have been successful in, let's not truly suburban areas, but in these areas where at least here in Vermont in the two or three instances I've seen, they've struggled both maintaining residential and in retail on the first floor. So if you could give me an example of that. Okay. Yeah, go ahead, Jeff. Well, I just want to say, I know you don't own any land anywhere near where we're requiring ground floor storefronts, but we are allowing ground floor storefronts and restaurant bar in a lot of areas. But kind of wanting, what's your point? Are the streets too wide? Are they too narrow? And you may know of some place that they can't have people above a building, but I have a feeling we're talking about horses and oranges. It's not apples to apples. Yeah, I've just my perception of the, well, one, the road section I believe is at 84 feet is a very wide road section. And I believe at least the one of the slides that you showed this evening in terms of road right away. We're not requiring on any 84 foot section a storefront or retail. Okay. There's some 80 foot, there's some sections we allow it, but that's, shall I say, developer's choice. Okay. The one we're talking to is a 74, and that's building face to building face. The right of way actually is 66, I think. Okay. So it's not a really wide street. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. And I think, you know, I've just, I'm working in another form-based code district and that I just want to, I guess I need to understand and I apologize if I don't understand this correctly, but I, or what areas are specifically required to have commercial or retail on first floor and residential above, because I have worked in those zones and those are challenging when they're required. Yeah. I'd say to those of you who are working in some other form-based code, and this is my consultant conceit and pride talking, all form-based codes are not alike. And so, you know, please take a look at this one. It's not, they're going to be things that you're uncomfortable with. Otherwise, we'd all be worried, but it is different. And I know it's one thing. A lot of people who write form-based codes and new urbanists, they have this, everything is retail on the ground floor and housing above and that's not realistic at all. We know that. Perfect. I'll have to look more detailed into that. Appreciate it. Okay, thank you. And Matt, I see your hand up, go ahead. Yeah, quick follow-up and if we can show the regulation plan for just a second. I just, for everybody in the room might not quite realize what we're talking about and what Mr. Snyder brought up is this question of a lot of form-based codes really aspire to have ground floor retail with apartments above across a pretty broad geographic area. The code for Williston as drafted only requires a shot front configuration on the ground floor of new buildings along Wright Avenue, which is the red street in the middle of that map. And Wright Avenue, if you're not familiar, the corner of Wright Avenue and Route 2A is where CVS is. And then currently that street goes around kind of a mandatory left turn on the merchants row turns to the south, but Wright Avenue as a complete street would be built down to another new street contemplated for the area called Trader Lane. And I think Jeff mentioned it's about 800 feet. And so in the draft, the town has only chosen to ask for this sort of mixed use retail and residential main street configuration along those 800 feet in all of the other form areas. So the dark orange, light orange and definitely the yellow ground floor residential is perfectly fine. Okay, thank you so much for clarifying that. So I think at this point we're going to close the question and answer segment of the meeting of the hearing and we will shift to testimony and let me read the rules for that. So testimony will be taken verbally, but please raise your hand on the zoom toolbar, which is in the reactions button or comment in the chat if you would like to speak. Again, it is kind of hard to see physical hands, but if nothing else works, we'll revert to physical hands as well. So questions and responses should be directed through me again. And when it's your turn, please state your name and address and statements are to address the merits of the proposed amendment. Sorry, proposed amendment. So who would like to address the merits of the proposed amendment first? Shape and go ahead. I didn't intend to go first. I have a typed up document. Would you like me to screen share? Shall I just read from it? I have emailed it to Matt as well. Yeah, maybe if you can just give us a summary that would be really simple. Sure, I'll do that. So just to clarify for anybody who doesn't know, I'm on the planning commission and the things I have as input are not new. They're things we've hashed out and I am totally in support of this form-based code that it should move forward, but these are changes I would like to see at some point because they don't, I'm not fully satisfied with the draft as it stands. So if none of my changes were accepted, I would still vote for the form-based code. In the introduction and definitions under intent and key concepts on page five, I would identify the concept of solar canopies. They're not specified in the code because solar is regulated through the Public Utility Commission, but a theme of the growth center is described in section one introduction is that we are trying to do smart planning and technologies for solar gain. And I think some people may not understand the concept of solar canopies over parking that would go with the one picture we have. In the regulating plan, this probably dovetails with what Nick was saying, Jeff Nick's it was saying, Mr. Nick was saying, the harvest lane loop opposite gardener supply, I feel would have more value to the whole area if left open. Right now it's listed to be half residential and half a park. I feel it would improve the value of the land around it if it could be used for recreation facilities, ball fields, festivals, outdoor concerts, et cetera, for a number of reasons. And it could eventually revert to residential if that didn't pan out, but I feel as though that would as an area that would be better left as open space. Also in the regulating plan, I feel the same about the Alliance Church property and I realized that Chris Snyder has a proposal in for that property, but my opinions about that area were formed before I knew that and I still would love to see public facilities and open space there. Also the block on the southeast corner of the main intersection bounded by two way to Connerway and Sycamore Street. I would like to see reserve for civic structures. In addition to the indicated transit center, we may need a satellite library, police station, community center, playground, tourist information center, museum, et cetera, in that area and it's just the ideal place and it's already restricted because of this papal tree play stormwater pond. And so I would just like to see that entire block reserved for civic additions. If that impacts a developer in that area, it certainly would increase the value of the surrounding lands. So I'm not sure that it would be a problem. Then in 5.5 public realm standard street specifications, four of them have five foot door yards and I understand the desire to keep buildings from being too far apart across the street to have density and be more urban rather than suburban. But the narrowness bothers me even after the modifications made during this process, which I greatly appreciate. Door yards serve as space for plantings, a bit of grass in some areas and a space for outdoor restaurant seating or possibly street vendors or kiosks on a temporary basis in other areas and five feet just doesn't cut it for me. Given dog walking, snow removal and anticipated pedestrian volume, I'd like to see wider door yards. Seven feet seems absolutely minimal and that's the one that's on some of them. Five is definitely too small in my opinion. And just as a reference point, I'm not comfortable as a pedestrian in Manuski or Essex Junction where buildings have been built closer to the street. I am comfortable on Market Street in South Burlington. It has a better feel, although it isn't built out as much. Section six, parking and loading. I appreciate the photo for solar canopies over parking. I'd like us to encourage this even more. Although we can't regulate it, we can include a statement of intent in that section that use of solar canopies is encouraged. I could even see us going as far as defining dimensions for solar support structure as much as we do for lamppost. And finally, I'm not sure where this goes but I'd like to see more outdoor public spaces whether playgrounds, parks or just undeveloped spaces with TAS. The spaces in the regulating plan are great but they are a little bit small for my liking and a pocket park is not somewhere you can throw a Frisbee. And in short, I'd just like more such spaces within this district. Thank you very much for listening to this input. Thank you very much, Chapin, for your careful read on things and your ongoing commitment to this process. Would anyone else like to provide testimony? Okay, I see Al Seneca's hand. Go ahead, Mr. Seneca. You're muted. Okay. I was just trying to get unmuted there for a second. Oh boy, a lot is going on. This is very, very much to consume. There's a hundred pages plus to read, there's maps, there's all kinds of stuff. So I was gonna encourage the planning commission to maybe slow it down a little bit and help get us developers up to speed on things. But a couple of things I've written down and I'd like to say is, you know, there was a statement in there. I think it's on page two, where it says the code emphasizes the relationship between private development and public realm and promote the overall sense of place within Taft Corner as well. A wide variety of land uses. So that, I like the part where it's, you know, talks about working with the landowners. I think you guys have done a good job with that and involved us. But I would like to continue that involvement and learn more about this because there's an awful lot to learn. What else do we wanna talk about? Again, I just can't emphasize the way that you guys have worked with the public and the developers. South Burlington has gone through a similar thing. And I think that they pushed it a little bit quicker, a lot quicker actually and just kind of left us in the dust. You know, they didn't even contact me. I own land in South Burlington and I didn't even know this changes were taking place. If my neighbor didn't put in an application for something, I would have never known it was happening. So thank you for bringing me up to speed with it. The other thing I wanted to let you guys know is I said it on a previous meeting that there seems to be an awful lot of green space on the property that I own. I own about 80 acres next to Cottonwood, which we're building right now. And it looks to be somewhere around 40 of my 80 acres of green. So over half of my property has been designated as green. I know there's some wetlands on it. There's a couple of streams that run through and it ties into the Allenbrook. We know that, but you know, the part that we're calling Bur Oak Hill, I mean, there's 16 to 20 acres there that is probably some of the best-developable land because it's on the higher side. And then there's another chunk that abuts the interstate and the power distribution that Green Mountain Power owns and Maple Tree Place. There's an awful lot of green acres there that looks like it's just being given to the town or being put on this map, which I heard earlier that once this map is out on the street, so to speak, it's gonna be very, very difficult to change anything. And I just, I don't, I mean, I did say it previously that I wanted less green and it seems like this map has produced more green. And I just wanted to hear somebody respond to that and tell me what we have to do to maybe work with the town to give them some park. I couldn't agree more with having a park in a beautiful area like this, but half of my property seems a little bit excessive. And I'll leave it at that. Okay, thank you for that. Planning staff or Jeff Farrell want to respond at all? Sure. Go ahead, Matt. So, you know, maybe Emily, if you could bring up either the regulating plan or official map just so that folks can see what we're talking about. So the green area that you see that Emily's getting to there, to scroll, there are two things. There's the green area inside of the orange street layout. That would be a new sort of perimeter street coming out of sort of south of the existing network of streets at a Mabel tree place and then wrapping around the knoll where the water tower is. So I want to talk about that one first. It's identified in current town plan maps and regulatory documents as the borough knoll, a unique natural community. And there are some restrictions in Williston zoning about what you can do with that property or at least portions of that property as it relates to impacting the borough community. Just what the regulations say. I want to go back to talking about the mechanisms that the draft code proposes for the obtaining of public green space. The provision of green space that's on this map is required under the official map. As much as you can ever require a private property owner to give you their land. And what that means is that we hope that we're setting up the incentives in the bylaw. And as I mentioned, an offset of recreation impact fees for the provision of public recreational land, et cetera. We hope we're setting up the incentives so that there's a lot of opportunity in the areas that are developable on a parcel like this that can offset the opportunity to create a natural area within tapped corners that residents would be able to access by walking. That said, what state law says about official map is if something's on the official map and there's a development proposal that's incompatible with what's on the official map, i.e. Al proposes to develop the borough canal. There's a process by which ultimately the select board has to decide whether they want to buy that property or not. Land is owned by people and it costs money to obtain it from them. Those are realities that this code has to operate within. And so I think, as I said in answer to prior questions this is every tool in the toolbox that the state of Vermont gives the town of Williston to try to achieve these open space goals. But there is still money and civic will involved and agreement between a private property owner and the town at the end of the day. So the hope is that a plan like this would be doable under just agreements as development proceeds. There are some tools that lead to a more pointed decision by the elected officials of the town if the town and the applicant can't come to terms. And ultimately what an official map says to your select board is if you really want it you gotta buy it. That's where it all ends at the end of the day. So I'm trying to say the exact same thing I said before which is it's the strongest set of tools there are but I'm adding the asterisk that at the end of the day there are decisions that have to be made beyond the adoption of this code should any of this privately owned open space on this map become public open space. Jeff, if you wanna go ahead and respond. Well, just one thing I would mention that you shouldn't forget about and Al the yellow streets on that you can build three up to three stories on the melon colored street you can build up to four stories on and the orange colored street you can build up to five stories on. So there's a lot of extra value here and this is you can build four stories on without wasting a lot of money on soft cost going through the process of all the meetings and all the roll of the dice with getting permission to do that. This is relatively by rights. So this code creates a lot of value for the landowner in exchange for building a place that's gonna be good for the town. Okay, Al, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, just a quick response and I appreciate that job. Like I said, I was in favor of this new form-based code. I think it's a great thing for the town and it's a great thing for the developers but I'm the only developer that is having to live with the fact that the town put half of my real estate on the green map and Matt says there's some tools and yes, I can go and fight this and we can arm wrestle and we can negotiate but wouldn't it be easier to work with a developer that wants to work with the town? A local developer that in my opinion I think I went way out of my way on the Cottonwood project I've designed a project that has the retail on the first floor. It's probably not the only but it's one of the only retail and apartment mix projects that is very, very concerning to me as Chris Snyder talked about. I'm having a very hard time leasing up that first floor. I'm making concessions like one would never believe to get tenants in there and they're coming slow. However, I've done plenty of negotiations with towns to give them land and I take land but I just think that this is very, very restrictive from a developer standpoint. I'd ask all of you to put yourself in my position. How many people would be willing to give up half of the property that they own to change a zoning that quite frankly the Cottonwood is not gonna have any impact on this new form-based code because it's already under construction right now. What am I gonna change at this point that's not gonna be more costly than just leaving when I've got going? But I just, again, I brought it up earlier and I wanna bring it up again that I just have a very big concern that I'm the only landowner that this plan takes half of Israel estate away. And I think it should be a discussion or at least bring me to one of those workshops where we'll talk about it, but I don't know. I'm willing to, I'd love to see a park there somewhere or maybe multiple parks. I'd be happy to do some paths along the riverways or the streams. I'd be happy to do something up on top of the hill. I'd be more than willing to preserve the burrowed trees or at least the majority of them. But I gotta be honest with you, I've talked with a plant biologist and he says that burrowed's are the most populated oak tree in North America. So it's not like we're not preserving them, they're everywhere in the country. Okay, Matt, do you have any final words on this? No, I do think that one idea we talked about a little bit is that we would continue to follow up with our landowner and developer community and workshop through some things that's certainly whether it's as part of this hearing process, prior to transmittal with select board or during select board process or after we're really very committed to making this an open, transparent and user-friendly process. Because as Al said, there's over a hundred pages here and you've got three people in the room here in the police station meeting room we're going to have to administer this thing. And I'll just add a piece of news that we recently received approval from the town manager to amend our contract with the consultant to help us develop the administrative tool kit that would go with this. So the user guide and application checklists and materials which will serve the applicant community, it'll help the staff do their job and it'll make sure that when projects are approved in this new form area, that that decision process is one that any citizen can come in off the street and understand why and how a project was approved under the code. That's great, thank you. Marcy Cask, can you, I'm sorry, I've been negligent in asking people to state their name and address. Go ahead if you could start that. I'm Marcy Cask and I live kind of on French Hill and I first want to make sort of like a disclaimer that I haven't read the whole thing and I'm just so like giving my two cents of as being, you know, Williston resident for 20, over 25 years that I just want to say that Al's, I want to like speak to Al that I appreciate the situation that you're in and I sort of like my kind of like street knowledge of other developers as they go ahead and do what they want first and then they worry about it later and it's my understanding that you haven't done that and I appreciate that. But I think the whole point of having this big project done is to make Williston is to change it. Cause right now it feels to me like Williston is all about development. And you know, my family goes to Essex, we go to Richmond and that's where we do our recreating and that's where we walk around. And when we go down, we go to Williston just to get what we need and get out of there. And I think that, you know, I don't know if you can turn into a monetary value, a community like wanting to spend time and enjoying their town, but, you know, so we live here and that's my two cents is that I am for the parks and I mean, maybe if there's more parks, it'd be easier to rent the first floor, you know, if there's green space around there, I don't know, but something's got to give and I just hope that this happens and Williston becomes more people-centric rather than car-centric and it becomes more of a place for the community to feel good about instead of just like a developer's paradise kind of. Okay, thank you, Marcy. I'm going to avoid having participants kind of talk to each other directly. And so I hope you'll bear with us, Mr. Seneca and we have other participants who'd like to speak. Jude, would you like to go ahead, say your name and where you live? Jude, you're muted. Jude Hersey, we can't hear or see you. Are you? Okay, let me just- Okay, now we can see you and hear you, go ahead. Okay, there's no limit, just disappeared. I was on the conservation commission for 18 years and I've lived in Williston for 23. One of the things that has always been really, really important to me is the sighting where Williston is. And I was listening to the whole plan today and listening to the developers and everything, but I haven't heard anyone mention viewscapes. One of the most beautiful views that you can get of Mount Mansfield, of course, is from Tev Connors. And that was one of the reasons when we worked with Finney Crossing, that we wanted to be sure that the commercial development there wasn't going to block that. And I know there's kind of an awe-inspiring view when you're coming east on Marshall Ave. And I can see Mount Mansfield from my house, but from Marshall, which is a couple of blocks away, it looks like it's right there, right? I mean, it just looks like you can touch it. And so when I'm listening about the height of buildings, and we're talking now four stories and five stories, I don't know whether anywhere in this plan that viewscape piece has been considered. Thank you, Jude. I will kick off the answer by saying, yes, absolutely, that is part of our goal is to preserve some of those amazing views that we have. Ironically, one of the best is to the West is from Hannaford Parking Lot. And one that I pointed out in this process to Mount Mansfield toward Mount Mansfield, which maybe what you're talking about is pretty much right about where Men's Warehouse used to be on Route 2A, right by the Stormwater Retention Pond. There is just an amazing view of Mount Mansfield. And so we have at least started that process. And I think it's definitely something we're aware of. I'll just say that as a member of the commission that we have frequently raised that issue. But for a more official kind of fleshing out of this answer, I'm gonna let Jeff Farrell fill some information in. And thank you, Ms. Hersey. And it's not that easy an answer because we are talking about, if there's a view from across Marshall Street, any buildings anywhere between you and that, at some point there's a view 100 feet down the road, 100 feet up the road in all directions. And so if there's absolutely nothing here, including no trees, you would always see the mountain. But that view is there's a need and there's a really incredible ecological value to having walkable, sustainable development here. So those two conflict a little bit. What we've done, and we talked about this a lot in the Planning Commission, there's a special provision in the code to make space for roof decks that are viewing platforms. And then there are also some limited areas where across the green, you will be able to see the mountain. One particular, if you know the existing retention basin in front of the grocery store on Two-A and Williston Road. I forgot the name. Are you starting your show? Yeah. Yes. That's the immense warehouse thing that I was talking about, Jeff. Okay, so we have conversations about, it's a little bit of a thing to preserve the view of the pretty environment. You would literally, there's a contradiction. So we're trying to make the two work together and provide for view sheds. Some view sheds, but mainly because this is gonna be a built up place with a lot of people living in a lot of things to do to get those, mainly they'll be wonderful roof decks with great views. Okay, moving on. Chapin, do you have something to respond immediately to that? Yeah, I just wanted to tell Jude that if she looks at the regulating plan, a lot of the greens that are specified on there are running east and west in order to facilitate a view to the mountains. Okay, great. Okay, thank you for raising that question. We will definitely continue to pay attention to it. Okay, I see Jeff, next hand. Go ahead. Thanks, Fagan, and I'm sorry for jumping the gun earlier. Didn't realize that was question and answer. So I mentioned this before, and I mean, we're also in the same boat as Al Seneca when we do need some more time to review this document. We're not all the way through it yet. But what we do know is that area south of Marshall Avenue, next to Pest Smart, despite the retail industry's troubles, we are talking to retailers that would like to be there. And there's really no interest from the retailer. And I just don't think the market is there for residential or office, certainly above that. The dye's really been cast there. It would really be troublesome to have to adhere to some new zoning like we're talking about in that area. And the same is true for that harvest lane circle. You've got your behind Pest Smart, you're across the street from a tire store, you're on the road with a lot of traffic to Walmart and Home Depot. You got to walk up the hill to get anywhere. If you want to walk, that's not pedestrian friendly for sure. I'm just not sure why at this stage of the game, maybe 20 years from now, but now that's really never going to develop. I mean, I've been doing this for a long time and it's just not there. As you just wouldn't build out that area, it'll remain vacant if this zoning goes into place. And the green area that is shown on that map, that's that land is right across the entrance from Home Depot and Walmart again. I'm not sure why you would want to park in that area. That doesn't seem to make sense to us, but so those are our concerns there. North of Marshall and that underdeveloped area. I don't know if Matt is, can you put up the plan that we submitted? We've done a little bit of homework. To show the planning commission, at least an initial idea as to what the area behind Hannaford might look like. And it's a little different than what you're calling for in the form-based code in that it does have an angled street to marry up the existing trader lane with the new trader lane that will come in and it's slightly offset. So instead of doing a right angle in a park, we've shown a 45 degree angle there. That's not to say that's how it would be built out, but that's just an idea at the stage of the game. We've got housing, we've got a hotel, we've got some ground floor retail. We're thinking could still work, but certainly not all of it. We're showing parking underneath everything. The area in the middle could be public space. It could be restaurants with great views. I think you would catch those views of Mansfields from that area in the upper level there. It doesn't allow for an alleyway through it. I mean, we could try to design it, but it's gonna be below grade. It's because of the topography. You're higher on one level than the other. So if you're gonna require alleyways, I think you need to build in some flexibility so it's not a hard and fast alleyway. You need to, there's certainly be ways to get through here for the public, but it wouldn't be quote unquote an alleyway with trash and truck traffic and that type of thing. So again, back to the unintended consequences, just I think the final form of this form-based code would need to be a little build in some flexibility because you never really know what's gonna come forward and you might really like something, but the form-based code might say you can't do it and then you're kind of in a pickle. So if you could build in some flexibility moving forward, that would certainly, I think, help everybody. And with that, I'll stay quiet, but I will offer, Al, if you wanna send over a bucket load of those acorns, we could plant some in the park, we'll build over here. All right, thank you. Hey, any responses to that from planning staff or Jeff? Yeah, Matt, go ahead. Really briefly, two points. One is, at some point, you may wanna see from us a comparison that sort of overlays the concept plan. Jeff just showed you with the regulating plan. Recording stopped. Front button. Recording in progress. Didn't wanna say anything that wouldn't be recorded, but suffice to say the Angle Street sort of cuts through the corner of what's conceptualized as the Trader Lane Green, which is a pretty big feature in the plan that the commission may recall has the sort of one-way street circulation around it and shown in the rendering. So there's a big difference there, and Jeff can probably speak to, Jeff Farrell can probably speak to some of the architectural building siting and dimensional standards that that concept might rub up against. And I say that just so the planning commission can kind of get an understanding of when they see a picture like that, how can they understand it compared to the words and standards in the code? So there's a couple of things. Jeff Nick raised the point of the alley, whether or not an alley is required. There's also maximum building frontage for any single building. We had a lot of public input about wide buildings and wanting buildings to have a little more diversity. Maximum allowed building footprints, which these are close on, but I think there might be a little bit there. And then of course architectural standards and there were some elevations that Jeff Nick provided as well that the architect put together what these buildings might look like when you're standing there looking at the walls. So there's a lot of interesting ways the commission might wanna talk about that, but I just wanted to offer that we could provide a basis for comparison. The second point I have is that there is a process by which the form-based code or the regulating plan can be adjusted. That is the bylaw amendment process. It's not a process that the planning commission does all the time, although they do it fairly frequently and in speaking with Jeff Nick and other tap corners associates folk, I do offer that with a comprehensive code like this that's as big and broad as this, I do expect from time to time the planning commission will find that it's talking to a landowner who says, hey, there's a piece of this code that isn't working for me based on a project I wanna build. And I would encourage the planning commission to listen to those requests and to take them up within the boundaries of what the town plan says about the goals for tap corners and what the vision document says about the goals for tap corners. There are some statements in the form-based code about sort of some minimum guidelines that the planning commission should follow when there is a request, especially to adjust the location of streets on the regulating plan. I'll use my last five seconds to say I just need to jump next door to the select board for a few minutes, I'll leave you in the capable hands of the remainder of the staff here. I need to go give them an update on our progress and I'm happy to be giving them one that goes up to the minute as we talk about progress on the hearing. Hey, thanks very much. I will turn this to Jeff Farrell in a second. I do just wanna mention, and maybe you can clarify this also, Jeff, that the form-based code foresees a sort of 30 to 40 year kind of prospect, 50 year, okay, 50 year prospect. And so everyone should be keeping in mind that this is not a five-year plan, right? Like this is looking long, far down the road and really trying to partly as Marcy said, to build a place where people want to be, want to spend time, feel like it's part of their community, feel attached to and so just let's all kind of keep that in mind as well. Okay, Jeff Farrell, do you wanna pick up where we left off? Yes, in some points, and I'm gonna try and mainly give you to things that Jeff said, but one overarching point I'd make to everyone on the, at the hearing. For the last, I don't know if it's 50 or 80 years, we've let our, I don't wanna, towns and cities or whatever, suburbs really be designed incrementally by developers, planning, the planning profession has really been the reacting profession. What we're talking about here, and it's a change that's happening nationwide, is a return back to when towns and cities were really planned and you really can't, if you, it really does not make sense to let what year town is be the result of incremental developer-driven projects. And it's simply the logic of being a developer. They have certain interests and short-term goals and needs, contingencies, bank loans, et cetera, that they have to live by. In addition to whatever high goals they may have, they've got some bottom-line realities that are really short-term, whereas a government and the citizenry can think long-term and try and set up something that's gonna work for everyone in the long-term. It's very important that this form-based code works for the private sector. Nothing's gonna get built if it doesn't make a profit. And we know that, it's no one's first rodeo on this call. A few things Jeff said. He talked about South Marshall. South Marshall, that side of Marshall isn't gonna go for a multi-story urban buildings. Not for a while, there's some retails behind it. Nobody's gonna build a five-story, four-story building in front of some of those buildings. And we don't expect that they will until those buildings maybe decide to redevelop and go for something because a lot of the big box retail is not doing that well. Some is, and we've got a place for it, actually 46 acres on the other side of the creek by the freeway, including I think some new land. So it's part of that idea that this is a long buildout. And one thing the town does need to look at, it may have some tools for kind of phasing to promote building in one area, like the building of Trader Lane is one example. That's really gonna help people build a long Trader Lane so there's a concentration and you start to get place-making and not little scattered things spread over the landscape. And Jeff, you said strange place to put a park on Harvest Lane. It's right by the Home Depot in the Walmart. Well, you should go there and look at it because when you're in the park, you don't see them. There's a great height change. The outside of that curve is up quite a bit and full of trees. So I think you'd see the Home Depot if you had a drone, but I've got pictures from when I was out there and I drove around it and you see a wall of green. So any Home Depot and stuff, it's quite in the distance from the new street on the North edge. A quick point about, well, first I'll talk about if you could put up the drawing of their proposal. I'm really pleased they did that. There's some things about it that are critiquable, but I really like it because I think it really shows that these guys can see the building of multi-story mixed-use buildings. A lot of the details are wrong. It's unfortunate. It looks like if it's planned that you can walk through that place from one side of the block to the other at several places, but then when you look at the elevations, I think all but one of them actually is walled up because it's an entry to an underground garage. And I'll say again, the code does not limit surface parking, it limits reserved surface parking. So if it's shared parking available to all, you can have a lot of surface parking back there. And so you can't, and the buildings tend to be too big. The ones that are on the top look like there's a space between them and then two buildings. There's one that's sort of a U-shaped next to it. It's on Trader Lane itself, but actually they're connected and raised up. So that's basically, that's one really long building. And that's an issue. But, and by the way, Jeff, your comment about flexibility in the alleys, I would say, although they, I can't tell if this meets it or not. It looks like I don't think the alleys can be underground, but they can go, there's a great deal of flexibility, what you do with them once they come in off the street. So you do have a lot of flexibility. They can go this way and that way, as long as someone could come in one in and go out the other. So it's not quite as bad as you think. And the last point is I appreciate all the green inside, but that's really not a public, that's really not public green. That's really green for the people who are in those buildings. And what's not shown is the truly out public green that would be out in the open, shared by all the blocks around it, something that anybody who lived anywhere near there could walk to. And that's a fundamental difference, a green that's inside a block. It's really sort of similar to private and a very different animal than a green that is a part of a street network and accessible and obviously accessible to all. Thank you, Jeff, for helping us through that very particular example. I think that it's pretty clear that Matt's and Jeff Farrell's suggestion of an additional session for developers to kind of learn more about the code and understand it a little more, as well as think through how it might affect projects that they have in mind would certainly be in order. Okay, I wanna do a quick time check. It's getting pretty much close to the end here. And I don't see any additional hands at the moment. And so the, let me just give kind of a last call for testimony. Again, this would be discussing the merits of the amendment and is there any other final comment? Oh, Chris, go ahead. Thank you very much for your time. One comment I would like, and I know that this is a bit of an interesting dynamic, but because of the way the form-based code and the timing that is being adopted, we currently have a project that's being reviewed under the plan unit development and existing regulations and the, because sketch plan and because of growth management process, it was not, we were not allowed to where we haven't been able to vest our rights in the existing code. And so we actually have designed a project that meets the plan unit development and regulations. We're going through growth management and that we're actually gonna have to, from my understanding, redesign if the code is approved. And I think that that's a, legally, I understand how some of those things work out, but I think that that's not necessarily a fair situation that we're being put into because of the existing regulations. We would have submitted a application prior to now, except that we can't because of growth management. So I would argue that there may be some other options to figuring out how projects that are currently in the process. Okay, so noted. Thank you. Marcie, did you have something to add? I saw a hand come up quick. Yeah, you're muted. Yeah, I wanna, I guess I'll give four cents because I gave two cents before. I just, I hope this plan gets approved. I don't know what the process is, but I think that there's a lot of really great aspirations in Williston. And my experience of Williston is there's great aspirations and oh well, we just see like cell phone stores and banks and oh well, we have great ideas, great people, and just all this stuff, that's the reality. And so, and I would say that my sincere hope is that this gets approved quickly and that if there are some projects that are kind of in the works now, it's gotta start somewhere. And to my mind, if the concessions are to the developers, that's just more of the same of Williston. And I really hope that this form-based code really is something with tea or with that means it and that really gets to be. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much for that. Okay, I am going to ask that we finish up the testimonial section of the hearing and the Planning Commission has a decision to make. We need to assess the status of the discussion. And specifically our question is, do we feel that public testimony has been taken adequately and are there outstanding questions or points of clarification from the commissioners? So that's, recognizing that there is still an ongoing process of tweaking. So many of the points, for instance, that Chape and Kana raised can still be addressed. Our option, our choice at the moment is between two options. One is closing the hearing and the other is to continue the hearing to February 15th. Emily, do you have some guidance for us? Yes, I do. Excellent. I didn't mean to. I mean, my personal computer. So my recommendation for you guys tonight would be to continue for more mechanical reasons. One, I would recommend between now and the recommended continuing state would be February 15th. So between now and February 15th, Matt and Jeff and I can coordinate some sort of nuts and bolts workshop where we can, anybody can be welcome and invited. We can do a broader outreach to some of the development community about how does this code work? Jeremy, Jeff, Nick, Chris all brought up detailed questions tonight that I think would be better served answered in a work session. Two, there is some pink line text that the staff is recommending on a more mechanical level. And I think the correct procedure would be to review that in a public hearing on the 15th, give a last chance for people to comment on this code and then on the 15th do a close and transmit to the select board. Sounds like excellent advice. So let's have a vote of our planning commissioner members. I just want to make sure that I can see you all. If you turn your cameras on, it may prioritize you in my screen so that I can see, I see Shayla and Alex and Jill and Chapin, there's Kate, great. Excellent. Okay, am I missing anybody? Okay, great. Chapin, do you have a quick comment? You're muted. You're muted. I don't have the agenda in front of me, but I move that it took correct me if the language isn't right, but I move that we continue this hearing to the 15th and after it's seconded, I would like to make a comment. Thank you. Second. Okay, thank you, Alex, seconding. Chapin, go ahead with your comment. It's just I wanted to be sure that the developers know that our intention is not to be unfair in any way. But it is to try to move this in a different direction than it goes when it's each developer designing their own section. And so it's a hard transition and we recognize that. And I just, I'm really glad there will be a work session. And I feel like the outcome may not be that many changes to the code, but it is certainly a better understanding of how to work within it, if not, and where there are things that should change as there are, that it gets done. So I just want us to say that. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Any other discussion before we take a vote on continuing the hearing to February 15th? Okay, all those in favor of continuing the hearing, raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Okay, that's unanimous. So we won't bother with abstentions and so forth. All right, well, thank you all very much to the public and for all of you who have attended. If you would like to step off now, that would be totally fine, but the planning commission needs to approve a whole bunch of minutes. So if you folks could stay on for a few minutes, that would be great and we'll get three meetings worth of minutes, hopefully approved. And thank you again to our public participants and we appreciate your participation very much. Chef, did you have something to say before? Oh, you're saying bye. Okay, bye. Excellent, thank you. Okay, so I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of, I don't even remember the date, it was in December. December, should we go in order? December. Oh, I think you could do a motion for all three. Oh, for all three. Okay, so I'll entertain a motion for all three, but I want to specify the dates because there's one that we skipped because our last meeting, we did approve some minutes. Is that correct? Right, on January 18th, you approved the January 4th minutes. The outstanding minutes are December 7th. Right, so we don't have those. And so what we're looking at is the minutes for December 7th, December 21st, and January 18th. Okay, Chapin, go ahead. I'll move, we approve them as amended and I'll just comment that I have put changes. Some of them I couldn't do a change, it was a deletion, but I could do a change that was in addition. So then if I misspelled something, I couldn't fix it. But I put some things in the comments and one or two of the changes are vital like listening Megan is chair, but others are just clarifying and so if people are okay with them, I'm glad, but I did want to make note that I've done some changes in them. Chapin, I found the button for that too. It's our meeting minutes template is old, so I updated our templates. Hopefully that chair, vice chair bug is fixed. That's great. I did go through the minutes after you Chapin also made a couple of very small kind of editorial changes, clarifications and it's very, the minutes are very dense because most of it's about form-based code. And so sometimes it was just kind of flushing out a verb or something along those lines. I don't think I had any major changes of anything that would be needing review, as you can see as Emily scrolls through here, both my edits and Chapin's are pretty much fixing typos and so forth. Okay, so do we have a motion on the floor? Did anybody move to, oh, you did, okay. And then I made a comment, but it has a second, I shouldn't have made it. You're sneaking that in. Okay, do we have a second? Thank you, Kate. Awesome. Any further discussion? All right, all in favor of approving three meanings worth of minutes. Raise your hand. Okay, thank you all. Thank you for all of your work. My goodness for the past year and also for tonight. And we will hopefully see you again on February 15th and to do another comment, Chapin. I just wanted to say that because I knew it might be rushed, I wrote down my comments for the public hearing and I did summarize them some as I was reading them, but I send a draft to Matt just to what they are and none of them are new to anybody. They're all things that I've said during the process, but I'm happy to share that document or maybe Matt could attach it to the next, to the minutes or something. Okay. I don't know how this hearing will be documented, but I'm not trying to sneak anything by. Yeah, fair enough. Well, the thanks for going around, Megan. Thank you for chairing us through tonight's meeting and all of these other meetings we took the chair position during the probably the most complicated things since the 1980s, so. Yeah, I have to say this whole Zoom thing has been a little on the challenging side, but honestly, the staff support makes it so, so great and all of you have been wonderful. So I really appreciate that. And all right. So enough mutual appreciation. Can we adjourn? Great. Thanks. Thanks everyone. See you in two weeks. Good night, guys. Night. Bye. Record.