 This is the Monday, February 14th meeting of the Montpelier Planning Commission. First thing we have to do is approve the agenda. So I'm going to remember the planning commission's ready. The motion to approve the agenda. Our cell is in theme for the day. I'll move to approve the agenda. All right. You should have said I would love to. Love to approve the agenda. There you go. We have a second. I'll second. Second for Mario. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Gender approved. Let's proceed. Next we have comments from the chair. I don't think I have any comments. I mean, my, my thoughts about tonight are. That we need to get through. This memo and we're going to be doing some rebotes on the. On the zoning changes that. That we want to do. I think we're, we're obviously mostly in agreement on everything, but we. Have some amendments and some tinkering that we're doing last minute. And then we'll be handing it off to the city council. The memo is for city council and also for the public's benefit. So this, this memo is, is we plan to distribute. As widely as we can so that people are aware of what's going on. That's the main order of business for tonight. We also have the economic development chapter of the new city plan. Frankly. I'm not sure we'll get to it and. I don't know. I'd be better to put it off to give it. It's given full attention at the proper meeting next time, but we'll see what. What happens. You guys can tell me what you think about how you feel about that. As things unfold here. Does anyone have anything to bring up before we move on. Yeah, I think we're going to move on. I think we're going to move on. These at the last meeting, which I missed some. Amendments came up to which, which items or. It's, it's new things. It's no one's like, we haven't changed course on anything that was decided before or anything. It's, it's just new stuff has come up. Okay. But we're going to learn about during that. Discussion. Yeah. Yeah. The list is kind of laid out in the agenda of what, what are the items for consideration. Okay. So I'm going to move on to general business. There are a few people that Marcella had brought up. There's a parcel near video or avenue that seemed like it should be moved into a different. Neighborhood. So it was related to what we were looking at before. We didn't end up doing anything about it. Mike suggested that we should. And we were all cool with it at the time. Stuff like that. So. Okay. So with that, I'm going to move on to general business. So we're going to move on to the next item. And then we'll move on to the next item. And we're going to be in the meeting right now. We're not planning commissioners. So. If anyone has anything to bring to our attention or anything they'd like to bring up, that's not on the agenda already. It's not related to zoning changes or economic development chapter of the city plan. Now would be the time. So. Just let us know. So Doug and Alan are here for the riverfront district boundary commission meeting. So Dan hates, I was going to mention this at the, in the comments from the chair or I can mention now for general, but as Dan is the intern that I mentioned at the last meeting, that's going to be working with me over the spring semester. So I invited him to sit in on our planning commission meeting and just kind of see how these things are run and handled and kind of familiarize himself with who we are. That's wonderful, Dan. We're glad to have you here. I'm glad to have your help too. So we appreciate that. Okay. Is there anything else you had Mike before we move on? Sorry, I didn't mean to. Okay. Didn't mean to charge ahead. So it looks like we don't have anything for general business. Looks like no one's in the room with Mike. So let's move on to. Review and. To discuss the zoning amendment memo. The first thing we are planning to do is. To have a motion to reconsider the zoning amendment forwarded to the city council on January 10th. So Mike, you listed those things in order like that because you, you think we should, we should open up. The amendment. We could do them in whatever, we could do them in whatever order, but we, um, we should have a motion to reconsider. Um, again, just so everybody's on board and on the same plane. Okay. Um, any of these times we go through these processes, processes, they become very, um, litigious at times. So even though we have no reason to believe that this is going to be challenged at any point, we do want to make sure that we dot our eyes and cross our T's to make sure that somebody doesn't come back later on. To try to get a procedural violation. So because we already voted to forward the amendment to city council for consideration. Um, we're not going to open it up. They haven't opened anything. So it's appropriate for somebody. And it was unanimous. So it doesn't matter who, um, uh, according to Robert's rules to reconsider something. It has to be somebody who was in the affirmative to reconsider it. And then, um, so. We've just looked for a motion and a second to reconsider the memo. Um, the amendment and then we can reopen the conversation on the various elements. So I think, I think the simplest thing for us. Uh, I think it would go the smoothest if we just walk, if Mike, if you'll walk us through the memo, walk us new, these walk us through these new items. As you're doing that. And then after we have all of the information, we'll just do all of the motions one right after the other. After we've already heard everything. That way we don't jump the gun and, and. Vote on something prematurely. That sounds good to everyone. Okay. So I'm just going to hand it off to you, Mike, um, to give everyone some background, Mike drafted a memo. We discussed it last time. I made some changes to the memo, send it back to Mike. Mike had some things to change. Uh, so he's just going to walk us through the current state of it, which should more or less be the final version. But we'll still have chances now to point out. Um, some of the things that we need to do. Um, underlining and things like that that need to be polished up. Yeah, more than, more than happy to make any more of those, those amendments to this. Um, those we can make afterwards if we have to. To the memo. Um, I think at this point, well, I'll just hand it off to you to, to do a final edits or whatever. Um, Okay, go ahead, Mike. Um, I think when Kirby went through and did a strike out version, I did, uh, you know, accepted all of his changes with a few minor edits. Um, and then went through the, um, the three items that needed to get reconsidered. So the first one to get reconsidered, and we'll get this pretty quick so we can get to Doug and Alan. So we can hear their, um, hear their pitch, but just so we get through these other two really quickly. So the first was to consider adding six with your, uh, with your Ave to, or with your street to the Harrison Ave. Map amendment. So we had talked about maybe what I should have done is open this up. Earlier. Nice request. Sorry. So you guys are able to kind of see this, maybe make it a little bigger for you. Yeah. So if you can see my cursor. What we, uh, so this is what, what I did to the memo is I added in both current and proposed. So what we have is here's Harrison Ave. That is currently in purple. And in the revision, it will be yellow. What we had approved was everything except for this parcel here, which kind of noses in. So I had, we had approved it before with 19. And what we will be doing is adding in number 20. And that's this little parcel here. And the reason for that is, um, the house that this, this sits on is actually sitting about where my cursor is. It's, they have a big parcel and they squeezed their house on the little tiny, um, peninsula that sticks out to Whittier. So it wouldn't make any sense to have somebody on that street be part of, um, be part of the college street neighborhood. And, uh, I think Marcella pointed that out. And at the time we kind of just let it go. But afterwards I kind of thought about it and took a look at things and said, no, we should add number 20 in. So that's my first one. I would want you guys to reconsider is adding that parcel in to, um, what is number one on the, the list. Um, so that was the first change. The second change we'll consider is a clarification to the wetland hearings requirement. Let me roll down to that. And it's, let's just go by it. Hold on. So it's right here. So the clarification on hearing for state wetland permits of specific amendment, this draft would add a few words to note that, uh, to note when a hearing, um, qualifies for an exemption. That when a hearing that when an applicant qualifies for an exemption, that they also do not need a hearing. Um, so the revision and it's a little clearer in the strike out, we'll remove number one from under 3007, uh, six point B and instead insert a new number one under 3006. And I'm going to regret not having grabbed my zoning regulations. So 3006 point B is applicability, which basically says what needs to meet these requirements. And initially, what had been discussed is a little bit in the background. The intent of the section has always been that the city only regulates wetlands and vernal pools that show in the national resources inventory map. We also exempt any project from needing, um, to meet these rules if they receive a state wetlands permit. Unfortunately, these rules also state all projects needing impact wetlands, uh, that impact wetlands need a hearing. So it was unclear when you get a permit. So that's a little bit of the confusion. The issue, if you were to actually look at the rules in the strike out version is that we started to get so many exemptions that we had, we started to talk about exemptions, but we had exemptions of exemptions and exemptions. So what we did is 3006 B talks about applicability. Who needs to get a permit? So that's just going to be clear. The provisions of this section only applied to lands identified on the wetlands and vernal pool map on the natural resource inventory. At the initial filing of the permit. Period. So there, there it is. That's the only thing that applies to applicability point C is the section that talks about whether or not you need a hearing. So that's why when we go back up here. So we removed all those exemptions. We had initially jammed all those exemptions under the applicability statement, which really kind of. It wasn't very clean and we probably shouldn't have. So what we did was we took it out from under the applicability. We made the applicability nice and clean point C talks about hearings. So that stays the same development subject to this section shall require a hearing, require approval of a waiver under the DRB meeting standards of blah, blah, blah. And what C now would have as an exemption. That says. If you're exempt, I don't know if I've got it specifically written out here. That says development that is required to obtain state wetlands permit shall not be required to hold hearing unless the project impacts a verbal vernal pool. But of course those are vernal pools identified on the natural resources map. And then under D we talk about specific standards. So under here is where we talk about development. That is required to get a state wetlands permit is as assumed to meet these development standards unless the project impacts a vernal pool. And that's just because the vernal pool rules at the state are different than the local. We have stricter vernal pool rules, but they still only apply to vernal pools on that map. So, so that's maybe a lot of stuff I just glazed a few people over with. But really what it was was we had all these exemptions jammed under B and we've broken them out to make it clear by putting one exemption under C and one exemption under D. Nothing has really changed. We haven't changed the rules. We've just changed how we talk about them. So it's clearer in the in the written text. So that's those two. The third and final one I will introduce and then I will, you know, let Doug or Alan comment if they want to. So on the memo I sent you guys on Friday and I think I put a reference in there. There is now a number 11. So we had our one through 10 that we had public hearings on we now have an 11 and 11 is adjustments to the riverfront boundary and savings pasture and the specific amendment is to change the adjusted boundaries. And I can move up here. There is adjustments. So map change to adjust the eastern boundary of riverfront district 40 feet to the west and to bump out a 500 foot section of the riverfront boundary by 90 feet. And there's a image below the background savings pasture is an undeveloped 100 acre parcel near the eastern end of Berry Street. This privately owned parcel has been subject of development proposal in the past and has been debated publicly many times back in 2017. The city council debated how to zone savings pasture and I think we talked about this a little bit before and they eventually decided that the lower pasture closest to Berry Street to be zoned riverfront and the remaining to be zoned rural and a set of lines were roughly sketched out to match that request. So that is the proposal planning commission had sent to city council was to have it read six which would have resulted in about 400 units across savings pasture. City council didn't like that so they they decided to have a high density zone near in riverfront in a lower density up in rural and the calculation when you do the math on that is roughly 400 permits or 400 parts of units. So that was kind of how they came out with that 15 acre number. So recently a development team has started to pull together a proposal to develop the lower pasture and they found three things. Some of the land set aside in riverfront for development is not developable and other land that is developable is in the rural area. And second their parcel boundary on the zoning map was not accurate on the western side. And therefore they did not have full 15 acres. And the actual amount of their land in riverfront turns out to be only 14.1 acres. So their development proposal identifies a good building site on the northern edge of riverfront but the building will cross the line into the rural district thereby prohibiting its development. So they have a set of buildings that they want to build one of which would overlap the rural line. So their proposal is therefore to bring in the eastern line 720 which is 720 feet long by 40 feet. So if you're looking and it's a little gray on a lot of maps and maybe I can make this a little bigger again if it doesn't mess with people too much they want to there's a yellow line that's roughly kind of going along here this is Barry Street down here Caledonia Spirits is across the street if you're trying to get perspective so you'll see the yellow line kind of comes up that's the zoning line currently unfortunately see this gray line I'm not doing a good job following it that's their actual property line so they kind of don't own this piece in the middle that was part of their 15 acres so what they wanted was not to make this any bigger area wise what they just wanted to do was to get the 15 acres that city council had kind of agreed they should have so they want to bring this line in 40 feet bonk and they want to extend this one by 90 feet and this is 500 feet long 500 by 90 and 40 by 720 so that is their request the building site that they had proposed up here that I think roughly would have put a building in this area kind of has the room to get built with a little bit of flexibility so if they have to move the building slightly they don't have to come back with another request they have enough room and that's really the nature of their request so yellow line is current green is proposed the final revised district will be 15 acres or slightly less public comment is none this request was submitted after the close this is the memo to city council so the public did not get an opportunity to comment as a result the planning commission recommends to council do additional outreach regarding this proposal and then I staff is recommending approval of this and I've highlighted you guys if you guys want to approve this then we can make this approval so that's why that is highlighted so I will I don't know if somebody has questions on that or if Doug or Alan wants to correct me on anything I said yeah I was going to ask if Doug or Alan would like to provide any info and then after that the planning commission could ask Mike whatever questions they have be glad to good evening Mike you did a fantastic job of summarizing appreciate it very much for the commission's knowledge the modifications result in a zone district of approximately 14 and a half acres well under the 15 and once again I'm available for any comments or discussion that anyone would like to have thank you okay thanks Doug do any of the planning commissioners have any comments or questions right now you know I just I don't know Mike if you remember but why did the city council make the original decision where they did for that 15 acres so the original the original part that they wanted was to allow the higher density development in the lower pasture and so I roughly tried to lay out the lower pasture on this yellow line I guess I gotta use this mouse or you guys don't see it and kind of put that out as a presentation this was a really fluid time I mean we had lots of proposals lots of people with ideas for in a lot of debate about whether the planning commission's approach was right maybe this all should be in rural maybe there should be a separate Saban's Pasture Zoning District that would have its own rules eventually the planning commission didn't like that approach and eventually staff succeeded in saying that that's really not fair to kind of give them their own unique rules they should be zoned similar to some of their surrounding neighborhoods and so that's what won out so that lower pasture idea was just to have greater density closer to Berry Street where we already have some density that's the bottom yeah I think that sounds about pretty well okay so the actual where the line is by 40 feet or 60 feet was not there's no scientific purpose to it there's no water issues or anything else no there's no issue like that I tried to approximately put that line the yellow line where I thought the edge of the wooded area was I didn't have the benefit of the aerial photo and so Doug having the aerial photo you can see for those of you can kind of see where the gray changes that's where the field changes to the woods the woods is the woods because it's really difficult to develop so you kind of see there's this rough line and that was actually kind of where I was hoping to put the parcel but I put the line much farther into the woods where this is mostly undevelopable pieces of land so my can you can you give us an idea of the so for the upper pasture which is zone rural what percentage of that zone would this new strip make five percent was it five percent cutting into a five percent one percent well fortunately to it's a hundred acre parcel so 85 percent of this parcel is currently zoned rural and 15 percent is currently zoned you know approximate numbers 15 percent is zoned riverfront so this adjustment will actually only make a point four percent difference in that in the actual amount of land because currently it's 14.1 percent riverfront and we're going to make it 14.5 percent riverfront and the city council was trying to have it 15 percent riverfront okay but but sounds like maybe a half a percent of the entire thing is going to be more on the upper parcel than than city council originally planned I wouldn't say they originally had planned on having 15 acres and when I drew the line it roughly had but if you look right you've got this wedge that they don't own and we've sent this in to get this boundary correct so you're getting out another important piece of information which is the sounds like the city council did not have a specific upper boundary in line they just asked you to give them something and this is what you did yeah they asked for for a boundary and I took what was on the tax map which is this yellow line which is wrong this gray line here is the more accurate line and therefore because you know in the rezoning we rezoned that part that ended up not being laying that they owned so that sounds like the final exam in a property law course doing over the tax map yeah so had the tax map been right we always try to tell people out there that's what you pay taxes on in this case the tax map should be corrected and I believe Doug is submitting that to the assessor's office so they could send that because it is surveyed I mean this is the gray line here is the surveyed line so we know this is the correct line okay can I just ask a procedural question so I understand right this is an addition to what we already approved so if we approve this tonight this will just be bundled in with those other packages the other changes we asked for yes so it's there was originally a thought that because they had a little bit missed the window of the first public hearing that we would send this and present this first to city council and what that would mean is city in either case at the planning commission level after the public hearings you are allowed to amend the zoning before submitting it to city council there's no requirement of re-warning new hearings if there's a significant change it goes to city council city council can hold the hearing and they can make whatever amendments they want whether they're in the amendment or not so we were going to add it into that process under state law is if they made a substantial change like voting to make this amendment it would have to come back to you guys you guys would have to have a meeting not a hearing but a meeting to discuss this change before making comments and submitting it back to city council for them to consider it further so because as we're doing it now if we agree on this tonight yeah because we hadn't and we were already going to vote to reconsider it we're kind of like well let's talk about it now then that'll save that loop go back and have it reconsidered we can say alright we're going to look at it we're going to say it's okay with the caveat with the note that the city council should be aware and I will make them very aware of the fact that there was no public hearing on this I will be sending letters to all the abutting property owners prior to the new public hearing at the city council level I will be advising them that there was not a planning commission thing so they should take whatever extra input that they need on this if there's a lot of pushback from neighbors I look at this through my eyes and think it shouldn't be creating that much of an issue but maybe it does create an issue with somebody and they want to have a much bigger hearing process but at least we'll make sure that they're aware of it and they can make their decisions on what additional measures they want to take as they review it but it would at least cut out the fact that it doesn't have to get sent back to you guys okay anyone have anything else about this I mean a lot of our thoughts I could say that I'm I think this is reasonable I think that this is within the spirit you know a correction following the spirit of the city council's intention but with new information I agree Kirby and I think the parcel like the parcel next door has a spunky line through it as well and make it you know match the reality on the ground just seems pretty straightforward to me this is not I can't imagine that this is not we're not close to the edge of the parcel really now just seems reasonable anyone else have any thoughts anyone have any reservations about this now would be a good time to mention those okay well seems like that's easy enough Mike thank you so much for the added details we can go on to the next item I guess again we'll be we'll be I think approving things at the end yeah I just as a letter E consider any other amendments because I you know I personally don't have any other amendments but that would be these were the three that we were going to entertain as I was putting together the agenda as I said I put in any other just in case oh oh you don't have any new things nope these were the three I had to make three amendments okay Whittier Street the wetlands and the riverfront district boundary and then anything else people you know again we revised that we went as we said we had our congregations at the last meeting we made a number of revisions if anybody has gone through or if anyone wants to go through any of those changes I amended those maps as I said instead of just having one map that I don't know if this was any better but I at least went through that this is the current zoning map this would be the proposed boundaries because we do now have a proposed zoning map from CVRPC so I've added in those additional details yeah that's great did anyone have anything to ask about Whittier or or the wetlands changes the wetlands changes seem like there's hardly any there's not really anything substantive there just moving some things around but did anyone have anything on either of those did everyone have a chance to review the memo were there any anything to note for the memo does that mean we're ready for amendments okay well let's take it let's take it down the list then do we have first we need we need a motion to reconsider the zoning amendment that we've already forwarded to the city council anyone inclined to move that we reconsider our suggestions for the city council from January 10th I move that we reconsider our recommendations to the city council okay I second we have a second from we have a motion from Erin a second from Gabe those in favor of reconsidering our recommendations from January 10th say hi hi any opposed okay so we are reconsidering those suggestions we've heard a proposal to change our original recommendation related to 6 Whittier street and Harrison avenue do we have a motion to add 6 Whittier street to that neighborhood and Mike if you have a suggested way of phrasing this let me know no I think that's fine a motion to add 6 Whittier to Harrison av map amendment is fine okay I'll move to add that parcel to Harrison av map okay I'll move to add 6 Whittier street to the Harrison av map wait a second second second from Erin okay any discussion I'm bad about that step those in favor of the amendment say hi hi any opposed okay Gabe was that I said hi I think there was I'm okay okay so you were in favor okay it's good to clarify that okay so that motion passes unanimously 6-0 John Adams isn't here tonight and next motion we would need would be to amend our proposal to the City Council to clarify how wetlands hearings work and when they're required what's that Erin I see I'm looking for I was trying to see where it is in the memo but I see it I'll move the change okay I'll move to approve how how what Mike's proposed to clarify the wetlands hearing requirement second by Erin any discussion those in favor of the motion say hi any opposed motion also unanimous and lastly do we have a motion to amend the riverfront district boundary around savings pasture to adjust it as Mike has laid out I'll move for those adjustments at savings pasture okay second second from Marcella any discussion those in favor of the motion say hi hi any opposed okay another unanimous and I believe that's all the amendments we wanted to make um does anyone have anything else I was curious so when will the City Council have the consideration of this changes so City Council that has mostly been I believe Bill having conversations with the mayor about the timing of the hearing I didn't want to open the hearing so first of all once you open the hearing both sets of regulations go into effect it's a really messed up state law so you don't want to have these open for too long because it starts to mess up people's applications so we'll wait until the last minute to warn the hearings and what they didn't want to have happen or what they didn't know was how long it was going to take to have the hearing the council is pretty busy with the budgets and running for re-elections and either they would have to get through all the hearings and vote to adopt these before town meeting day or they're going to have to wait until after town meeting day to open the hearing and that's what they decided to do because at least one council member is not running for re-election so we didn't want to have some testimony given before and then have people who are new councillors who did not have so they've just been holding it so the first hearing I believe is going to be March 23rd don't hold me to that date it's somewhere in that area there's a council meeting and that's when they'll have their first they usually have a first meeting on it and I will give a presentation with a power point and I'll lay all these things out and then there'll be a second it'll be a warned hearing a meeting to present it to city council and then usually they'll take another meeting to take more testimony and then at that point it really depends on what they hear from the public if they get a lot of input from the public they might warn a third and boy you didn't want to be here in 2017 when that was I had 22 meetings with city council on that zoning amendment well that was a zoning adoption so that was a full revision but that was 22 council meetings they get that through this one I would expect would be two maybe at most three starting on March 23rd I guess the upside is that that provides a lot of opportunity for the public to see the memo to see the changes there's a lot of notice for people big window so that's good at least okay so to wrap this up we need a motion to approve all of the changes all the amendments that we've approved so far and to take those and to resubmit the entire proposal back to the city council so just does or I guess worded differently I move a motion to resubmit the city council as amended would be as amended with these three okay the motion from Gabe do we have a second I'll second second from our own do we have any discussion about this we move on okay those in favor of the motion say aye aye aye any opposed okay another unanimous approval and so there it is we're going to resubmit the city council with those amendments anything else Mike nope that is good for that one thank you thank you for your patience with that and with the memo so if you have any other clerical typo things Kirby on the memo you can just send them to me tomorrow or in the next couple of days I'll get that memo finalized so I can start building I've got to start building the website for the council and I can start getting this pdf and put up there so the public can start viewing it because so far it hasn't been a public document while it's been in draft form I left a note in google maps I think you'll be able to see it just one note let me know if you don't see it but yeah goes for all the planning commission so just let Mike know of any editorial like stylistic type things we're not talking about anything substantive just you know like the thing I marked was just a place that was underlined that it looked like it was a formatting issue that's all okay looks like we're good on that then thanks a lot for coming by and being on call Doug we appreciate that thank you for your consideration okay so the next thing we have is it looks like we do about an hour left to review economic development goals and strategies how are people feeling about that tonight do we have any like strong feelings where people be okay with just waiting and just tackling that the next meeting and making the full meeting about that that's just what I'm feeling but if other people want to proceed tonight and not lose the time then I get it I'm not opposed to waiting I might feel more prepared myself but I can talk tonight too I understand that we wouldn't necessarily want to lose the time is everybody else okay with just putting it off to the next meeting and calling a little early for winter break thumbs up from Ariane let's just do that Erin made a face what was the face better or different I don't know it was a good mafia type face okay let's just do that let's tackle it cleanly next time everyone read up on the goals and strategies is there any work that needs to be done on this mic or are they going to be in pretty good order to vote on yeah can we maybe just like a quick update of where we were and what we want to be prepared for to do next time so we can move it along fast and we were working in the revised template right you were working in the revised template so I think we had pretty much gone through and approved we'd reshuffled a couple of these goals we were all set with the aspirations I think shuffled a couple of goals we were pretty good with it we were starting to go through the strategies and I haven't gone through to delete these I think we decided we were going to get rid of meaningful work I think we had started to talk about potentially maybe getting rid of the livable wage stuff if I remember that conversation but then we kind of kind of got bogged down we hadn't really had much discussion and I think you guys were going to go through and start to review what I had put in here as drafts and started to come up with comments you know there's workforce development these ones that are in I guess called a peach color they were really ones that we and other chapters have talked about they're in the implementation strategy but we really don't leave them in the implementation strategy we talk about them in column it'll say use in chapter not implementation plan so so we had a number of things not all these are good ideas these are just ideas that are in here these little headers kind of tie back to the previous goals so the goals will have a discussion about resilient business environment and these are a couple things that a municipality can do to improve the and make a resilient business environment or at least in my opinion and if people have other ideas you're welcome to and I think I also if you notice in the column N see them on some of my computer here it's got goals these are what the goals are associated with 3, 4, 5 and 6 so that's all it's a bunch of stuff laid out and you guys are going to kind of review it not everything may stay and make some thoughts or comments of what you're thinking you know maybe hotel and parking garage project should stay dead it is dead maybe it should stay that way but this is a little bit of what we're talking about and I guess the last thing before I send you guys off to work on it and really so we're talking about the strategies in the revised template just to start reviewing them one of the big topics actually that's come out of the strategic plan strategic planning at city council is a push to do more economic development so I'm getting ready today I was trying to get the posting out I didn't so our community development specialist is going to be leaving and so we're going to be posting for his position to rehire a new community development specialist and the position title is going to change to economic development specialist so there's a push at city council to get and do more economic development now that MDC is no more so it's going to be kind of a little bit different position than it's currently been we're going to be working to hire somebody new to do that they also want to redo the EDSP so they've got money in the budget to do that economic development strategic plan that we talked about that's a very, it's kind of a fundamental document that most communities will do when you want to do economic development your EDSP and they want to do that they want to get me to have an RFP out maybe in September August time frame so we can get a consultant on board for next winter to start working on revising our 2016 one which had a lot of value and a lot of good ideas it also had you know it was a little bit it didn't have full support of the entire community had a number of pieces in it that people didn't support I thought it was pretty good I thought it's presentation didn't always come across right you know when we talk about trying to be a premium destination it wasn't that we were trying to be elitist and trying to avoid affordability and other folks it was more a reduction of our reality that our downtown is a very expensive place to start a business and therefore we really kind of need to make sure that it's a difficult place for an entrepreneur to just jump in unless you happen to be an experienced entrepreneur you know for example trying to rent space in our downtown to make cost $18, $22 a square foot you can go to Berry City for $5 to $7 a square foot and you know when you calculate those costs on an annual basis you know if you want to start a new business this is an expensive place and that was why that plan was looking at that being a premium destination because you know you need to be a business that's going to be able to generate enough income to be able to support the rents that currently it costs to be in Montpelier so anyways that turns out to be a longer discussion than probably you were looking for but just to give you guys a reference that we're talking about it now and even before our city plan is adopted what we are talking about at the next meeting will probably be you know this chapter may even be brought to city council before the city plan is even moving forward we may you know which we did with the housing plan we pulled the housing plan to city council and said hey this is the housing plan we've got a lot of stuff going on we've got to be moving we can't wait for this to be adopted let's have a conversation and they did I think we might do the same thing here with the economic development we can really talk about things really think about things think about what do we want to have if we were to have a meeting in say May or June with city council about economic development what is it we think is our goal what is our mission and see what they think of what we're thinking you know this one may this one may start becoming reality sooner than we think so when I spoke to Dan Groberg he mentioned us waiting to do this until after the strategic plan and I told him I don't think that timeline is going to add up because we're trying to get this city plan done because that strategic plan is a year a year for out right Mike yeah yeah we would have something in starting in September it probably wouldn't be till the following August so 18 months from now so unfortunately unfortunately there's going to be all this economic development work and consultation done that's going to be after we do this so and that thing's going to get a lot of economic development attention we're supposed to be doing the city plan which was supposed to be a guidance document but yeah so the timing is kind of unfortunate I guess maybe what we put here might influence that strategic plan that's done later but yeah that's something for everyone to be aware of when they review this another thing to keep in mind as you review for next time what I was hearing when we discussed this last was it sounded like there's interest in paring it down and focusing on two or three really key important areas instead of just trying to cover everything a little bit I thought that was a good idea so people want to embrace that more and do some work between now and the next meeting to isolate what those key areas are and come back and talk about that I think that would be that would be really interesting okay does anybody else have any other like global thoughts about economic development before we review it and get back next time okay so we'll see everybody next time on that we have to consider the minutes from January 24th may as well get that knocked out so if people can take a look at that the minutes mentioned a phone call about the Whittier street thing did you have notifying the people at Whittier street about us potentially making that change Mike no we didn't have any direct contact information and so I did get their mailing address and all that information but I didn't get a chance to send it out I have been pretty busy but okay yeah that's understandable I can start to lay it out to them to okay yeah and they'll if for some reason it causes them concern they'll still have time for a city council I guess that's not going to city council super fast right yeah okay March okay do we have a motion to approve minutes quick question do we not make any changes to the solar shading stuff in the end no I did I went back and I I paired that down I think it was like four or five paragraphs I made it like one one and a half paragraphs so if you look at the new version of the memo you'll see the solar shadings different do we need to vote on them no I mean like everyone has the new version of the memo so if you if you have any issues with it let us know it's not I don't think we have to vote out it doesn't rise to the level of an amendment I guess that's what I meant there's the strike out version a lot of people look at the memo and think this is the amendment the actual amendment is the red line version which we don't talk about because the red line doesn't really help people because it's just aligned through density and I think we voted on the memo in the first place but we didn't really have to me because it's just described what we did but yeah people should check out the new version of the memo make sure everything there as far as what I did was I just John thought it was too long so I took it back and I turned it into a sentence basically making the same point just with less description were you okay with that mic by the way I kind of most of them look good I didn't have any issues with the how you had rephrased them like I said most of my small changes were pretty minor edits to what you had put together okay you're really cool about how much we mess with the stuff you write by the way very humble that's it's not my strongest suit so I will just admit that up front feel fine I don't think it's something that you're bad at we just tinker so you don't ever seem to show a lot of you go about it so I think that this speaks a lot about you I think that's a good question for the to approve the minutes so moved by Aaron wait a second second for Marcella those favor of approving the minutes from January 24 say aye aye opposed okay minutes approved one final motion of this meeting with lots of motions and that's to adjourn moved to adjourn I will second okay second for Marcella you guys have a lovely night those in favor of the motion say aye aye we're done good night everyone thank you