 So let's call the order of this January 25th meeting of the Immapolio Planning Commission. We can find the agenda. So the first thing we do is approve the agenda. So Kirby, do you want to request that number seven be tabled? When we get there, one thing we could do is we could fill in Ari on about what the discussion was last time. So I don't see a reason to take it off the agenda. But I don't see us doing much with it tonight. Okay, I can ask a couple questions too. Yeah, I'm sure she'll have questions too. So I think we'll have some discussion. We just, at this moment, I don't have an expectation that we're going to have any action. Okay, I'll move to approve the agenda. Okay, motion from Barb. You have a second? I'll second. Second by Marcella. Okay, those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, agenda approved. Which brings us to the comments from the chair. And I was just going to use the opportunity tonight to check in with everyone about the subcommittees real quick. Three out of four of the planning commissioners here know that the housing subcommittee met. And had a discussion. So now you know, Marcella and Mike. So, you know, we started a discussion. We have a little bit of a plan to do some rearranging, I guess you could say, to try to make things more active within the housing chapter as it stands. I think it's mostly wordsmithing at this point, but we do want to do some brainstorming about coming up with some additional strategies to fill out some of the goals. And I don't know if you have anything else to add Barb or Arianna on about our discussion. Yeah, I think that the idea of adding more strategies to fill out the goals is good. And sort of trying to remove redundancy and maybe make the whole chapter a bit more proactive. So that was pretty much what our discussion was about. So the members of the economic development subcommittee, which are me and Barb and John, we decided to put that discussion off until later where we'll have more bandwidth and maybe be in a better place once some other chapters are done to tackle that one. So we're strategically waiting, not procrastinating, but strategically putting that one off for now. Marcella, what subcommittees are you a part of and what's going on with those? Continuity and structure. And I know we have an agenda item about this later. Yeah, so don't need to do that. We can pass on that. And then natural resources. And I think Erin's on that one with me and somebody else. And we have not met at all yet because we haven't seen anything from the conservation commission. So it wasn't on my radar to be starting with that at this point. Yeah, that makes sense. Conservation commission is meeting next week and there's subcommittee to try to get that chapter finalized. So it'll be done in second week of February. So you probably won't have it till the last meeting in February for the planning commission then. Yeah, that's fine. We'll regroup when we get there. Okay, great. And transportation, you guys have been meeting, right? Well, technically, Arianna and I met around, was it between Christmas and New Year's that we met? Yeah, somewhere in there. And had trouble sort of getting all of us together. But what we're looking at too is somewhat similar to the housing chapter is that to try and sort of simplify the format and make it a little bit more clear, eliminate redundancies and but still keeping the intent of what the transportation committee wanted to see in it. Is that fair, Arianna? Okay, sounds good. Okay. Yeah, that's all I really wanted to do is check in on that. Oh, have we covered Aaron's? I see that he's joined. Have we covered his? Marcella says she was with him for the natural resources. Yeah, I'm on natural resources in barb. I'm so sorry. I just realized. You just realized? Well, no, I so there was I had like a minor family emergency that night. And I just I and I honest to God, I just spaced it after that. And I remember you sent an email like right after that and I have not even looked at I I apologize. So let me take a look at your last email and get up to speed. I'm really sorry. I honestly just it just let it go though. Yeah, well, Arianna and I met. And so maybe right after this meeting or actually tomorrow, um, that those two subcommittees, transportation and housing could set up our next meetings. So I just ask you to watch your email for that. Definitely. Okay. All right, great. Thanks. Okay, sounds like sounds like that covers all of the subcommittees of everyone is here at the moment. So with that, we can just move on. One, um, to approving the minutes from January 11, everyone take a look at those. You know, I have one kind of clarification. I don't see a need for it to change because I don't think it's inaccurate. But you know, this is Kirby Center reminder that the subcommittees need to meet more often. You know, my message was a bit more nuanced than that, but it was also probably kind of rambling. So if you want to be succinct about what I said, then that's fine. But, uh, you know, just no one, no one be put off by is saying that because, uh, you know, if appropriate, meet more often, just make sure that you're, you know, organizing. That's all. Maybe even being active. He could be that strong. Kirby and we'd be okay with that. Okay. I noticed that the minutes had me as present and I was not present at the last meeting. Oh, well, we should fix that. I wonder if it left someone else often. No. Okay. I was only, I was only attending by phone, but I don't know if that needs to be included in the minutes or not. That's like a good, that's a good like open meetings law type question. I don't, I think it counts as you being there. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But I don't know if it needed to be noted or not. Typically, does that happen, Mike? Not that I know of. Okay. I mean, everybody's virtual, so. Right. Yeah, I was just going to say it's just different shades of remote. Yeah. Like we can't see you, Aaron. I'm sorry. We can't see you right now. I know that's by design. Okay. Any other changes to the minutes? Okay. So do we have a motion to approve the minutes, but with the change to remove Ari on from being present? So moved. Okay. We budged first by Barb. Give me a second. I'll second. Second by Aaron. Okay. Those in favor of proving the minutes with that change? Say aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Okay. So minutes approved. And next on our agenda is an update from the continuity and structure subcommittee. And I take it that Marcella is the representative because her teammates are conveniently disposed. Yeah. And I guess I knew that Stephanie wasn't coming, but I didn't know that John was going to be here. So full disclosure. So we've met a couple of times to talk about things that we've, some of it we've already kind of shared with you guys, but we had planned to meet to go over Mike, something that you had sent us and we hadn't, we didn't do that yet, but we still want to do that. I just, nobody sent an email and I'll do that tonight after this meeting. So we have some more work that we want to do. But in the meantime, we did create, we sent everybody that the template that we wanted, the Excel template that we thought it would be good to have everybody's chapter into as an addition to the written chapter. And then we created a little flowchart to sort of help get our minds around what we were doing. I sent it to Stephanie and John, but didn't get any feedback from them. So I haven't sent it out to everybody, but I'm wondering maybe if I should just show you it now and maybe would help you understand how we're thinking about it. Is that possible? Mike, can I share my screen? Yeah, I don't think I need to give you permission. You can just go to the share screen. Okay. Sorry, it's going to be only on one screen tonight. So it's a little, it's going to be a little meta here. Okay, so this was the template for a reminder. Basically, it takes the pieces of the chapter and puts it into a form that we can like copy and paste and put together and sort and group and make sure that we don't have competing or identify what the competing goals and aspirations or objectives are so that we can remedy them. And it will just be sort of a nice way for us to look at it. So the first tab's got aspiration and this has the historic resources chapter put into it quickly as an example. The next is the goals would be listed here and then strategies here with that sort of effectiveness and effort that we had done. One thing that we talked about as a group was how helpful it was when Mike, you went through and gave the planning commission an idea of like how much effort it would take, you know, what's kind of realistic and just kind of getting our heads around that. Oops, sorry. The, this tab also has got responsible parties and partners because those things will help us prioritize like if and when we end up needing to do that for the final document. And then any support? Marcella? References, yeah. Marcella, before you moved on, what effectiveness does that have to do with how critical it is? Effectiveness of what? Yeah, that's a good, I would need to pull up, we did this a little while ago and I would need to pull up the chapter to remind myself for sure. But I think there was like an effort, I think the effectiveness might have been like how much of an impact we're talking about, you know, would this impact the city? In terms of getting us towards a goal. So it's like an effort impact sort of matrix. So essentially once you have that all worked out, you would want to tackle the things that are like, you know, the stuff that are high effective, highly effective or high impact, but low resources or low effort. Those are the things you just do, you're just doing fast. And then you get to prioritize the things that are like super effective, but maybe high cost. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think part of that might have been our conversation with Mike after the fact. I don't, I know that the commission, the historic resources group gave us sort of the responsible party and like their priority for it and what the effort was going to be, relatively speaking. And then there's some things you can kind of just tell, you know, if they're going to be super effective or not. So that's this part. And then the flow chart is a bit rudimentary, but I hope it will help you think through it. So it starts up here where you have all of the, hopefully you can see my cursor, you have all of the different committees that are giving us chapters. Those chapters will come into the planning commission. The planning commission as a group will look at the chapter. And then we'll decide is there a subcommittee for this chapter because there aren't for all of us. If there's no subcommittee, then we'll review the chapter together, kind of like what we did for historic preservation. We'll put the chapter into the Excel form together or somebody will take it on. And then throughout, we'll need to pay attention to the community outreach to notice the public about what chapter we're going to be discussing at a given meeting. So potentially beyond just noticing on an agenda that we're going to be talking about a particular chapter, we may want to do like a front porch. I mean, I think we were mostly talking about front porch forum posts, but we may consider other types of outreach too. If on the other hand, there is a subcommittee, then after we look at the chapter, give it a good, you know, some initial thoughts, then it'll go to the subcommittee. And this is what some of you all are doing already. I'm not yet, but I know you guys are transportation and housing. So the subcommittee will meet, discuss, make recommendations, put the chapter into the Excel form, and then do initiate a little bit of community outreach to notice the public about when we're going to discuss it as a commission. And again, we're thinking from porch forum posts, but there could be other avenues too. Quick question. At that point, Marcella. If the sub, what the subcommittee is going to do is end up putting it into the Excel form using the template before the full planning commission has seen what the subcommittee does. I'm a little uncomfortable about that. I don't know, Ariane or Kirby, Erin, what was your impression about what would happen to whatever we do as a subcommittee before it goes into the Excel form? I didn't have a ton of thought about it because I think when we were sort of engaged in the process, we had assumed that we were going to have the grant and we were going to have someone that would sort of facilitate part of this process. And so I'm a little unclear. I mean, I'm pretty agnostic in terms of how we proceed, you know, absent the grant and being in place now. Do we need to have approval or at least review by the full planning commission before our changes are put into the template? I wouldn't be opposed to that. I mean, it would probably save us a little bit of work. I mean, the way that Marcel is laying this out, though, I just interpreted it to mean that it goes in the Excel spreadsheet, which is what the planning commission can look at when deciding what it wants to do. Yeah, I think our initial thought was that the Excel spreadsheet would be critical towards the end when we're starting to do some serious continuity work. It could be useful for some folks to see it that way in the meeting as well when we talk about it. But I don't, I mean, you know, I understand that there could be changes after the entire group looks at the chapter and therefore you wouldn't want to create additional work for the person that's putting it into the Excel spreadsheet. But, you know, that changes, potentially those changes we could do together as we go. Well, yeah, okay. I wouldn't have any objection necessarily of going ahead and putting it into the template. But I just want to make sure that we're not going to be doing something that then the planning commission wouldn't agree with as a whole. Sure. I mean, my, it's not clear on this spreadsheet or sorry, this flow chart, but my thought was that the chapter itself isn't going to go anywhere. We'll have both of them to look at as a group. I think some folks felt strongly that having everything kind of laid out in the Excel sheet was just a nicer way to look at for their brains, which is fine. And some folks might prefer the chapter model, which is also fine. So I was thinking that they both exist. We would have access to both of them, you know, with the edits on both of them. And then when we got down to the nitty gritty, then we probably switch over to the Excel spreadsheet to do the easy moving, the easy comparing. But in the end, it's going to kind of look a little bit, it's going to look different anyways. Does that help anybody? Yeah, that's fine with me. Okay. Okay. So we'll keep doing this cycle until we've got what we need. And of course, there will be a different task sort of for the land use chapter, which we're going to write together. So that will sort of be different than this. But then once we have all the chapters, they're all here, then the continuity subcommittee is going to take the Excel files, do some comparing, identifying, combine duplicates, identify and resolve conflicts. And then I assume we're going to come back to the planning commission to review resolutions, make approvals, make changes. And again, for that process, we would want to have some good community RH2 at least on front porch form. And then, you know, once we get to this point, we'll decide what it looks like to put it into, you know, if it's not going to be the fancy website, we were imagining it'll be something like that. John Adams has some ideas about that. Okay. So it seems that we have a little bit of an unresolved question about should the planning commission have the expectation that the subcommittees or the working groups are going to bring this information to the planning commission with like in the Excel spreadsheet form. Yeah, I guess I'd want Stephanie and John to weigh in, but from my perspective, I don't care if we have it for the discussion with the group, I just care that we have it when it comes time to do the actual comparing, resolving of conflict, eliminating of duplicates, that sort of thing. It seems like a helpful, convenient way to look at and process the information, though. Yeah, and I think John and Stephanie may feel more strongly about that than me in terms of like it's nice for them. They like looking at it in the Excel spreadsheet, and so they may prefer that. Yeah, I mean, it may actually be a clearer, simpler format, like what we've been trying to do with the subcommittees in terms of looking at discrete aspirations, then looking at goals as a group, and then looking at the strategies, it does kind of help to break it down that way. So I'm perfectly fine with doing that once the subcommittee has agreement about what the chapter should include. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And it's not, I mean, it shouldn't be a massive lift to stick it into the Excel. You're just kind of copying things over, so it'll take you a little bit of time, but hopefully not, not a huge lift. Yeah, okay. I think that sounds good. So just, I mean, I just want to be clear for everyone who's hearing right now. Our expectation will be that the working groups will put the info into the Excel spreadsheet. So when it comes to planning commissions, so we can expect to kind of digest everything in that way. And then I think as a group, we'll just need to make sure that we're not, that we're maintaining our changes. You know, if we've got the two documents, the narrative and the Excel sheet, we'll just need to make sure that when we make changes to one, we reflect it in the others and keep ourselves organized that way. Yeah, and that, you know, that's something that's going to be important once the planning commission looks at the work of the working group and, you know, passes something. Well, you know, the thing being passed needs to make sure that it's in the right form in both documents. Until then, they're just working documents and doesn't matter much. There's something official. Yeah, good point. One other question I had, does anyone have thoughts about their outreach? Like, one thing that, so besides front porch forum and the committee, our continuity committee, Stephanie, and I thought it would be a good idea for us to put together some template language, which we can still do when we're ready, but like a template front porch forum post. But does anyone have other ideas about any other way we should be doing outreach? And this would be outreach to say like, Hey, Montpelier, we are talking about housing on this date. Come join us. Here's where you can access the documents. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it should be the bridge. Yeah, the bridge would be useful, although that's the it's not quite as frequent. I think it needs to go out in the Times Argus and then it needs to be on the, you know, as a schedule, sort of on the city website. So that people who go occasionally go to the city website, that they could at least see Oh, in two weeks, they're going to be talking about this particular chapter. So if we could get an actual schedule together, it might help people. We, I think the more places we reach out is the better because we had so many people during the zoning ordinance say, Well, you never told me that you were doing this. So, you know, I don't know how many more places we can reach out, but I think certainly Times Argus and the city website. Yeah, that makes sense. And one thing I was thinking about too is like we could do an initial outreach to just say like, we're starting to talk about this stuff. And I don't know, Mike, if you've done kind of a niche like outreach for like the last time you did the plan, if there was like an initial like, this is starting to happen, we're starting to have conversations about it. And then I always like, I always think it would be nice to ask like, how would you like to be involved? How can we involve you and make it like an open end to question and see if we get anything useful from that. But at least like we're asking, how do you want to be involved? How can we reach out to you? That sort of thing. That could be like a one question survey. Yeah, I think it'd be good. I mean, at this point, you know, we're trying to crunch our way through. And I'm gonna, I would say we kind of wait and see where we end up when we get to get into June when, you know, hopefully we've got some chapters, we've got things ready and we'll be able to evaluate where we are with COVID because I think that'll make a big difference in how we can get outreach and in what our options are. Because if COVID is still, you know, new strains coming out and we don't have a grip on it, then I think we're gonna have a completely different strategy of doing an online public input, which is going to be tricky. But you know, we're just going to have to really make do with the best we can. But I think if we can get the other one, if we can get through COVID, we've got some flexibility, then we can do some a mixture of online and in person and try to meet people where they are people generally aren't going to come out for for plan update stuff. But if we can meet them where they are, go to the farmers markets and and try to catch people where they're going anyways. And we might have better time, you know, doing things with at the senior center and matching things up with other events that are ongoing. There's usually a good strategy. And if we can get one big charrette that we can actually attract everybody to go through and say, you know, we've gotten all of our input. Now we're we really want to wrap it up with a big presentation, then we can kind of go with that. That would be kind of my my thought for approach. Public inputs never been my strongest suit. I always emphasize that in my RFPs to get good consultants who do it because I'm not that good at it. But I think that's the direction I would probably go. That's helpful. I think and I think yeah, if we to Barb's point of having like a schedule which would provide some people with more notice, if we can muddle through the work we're doing that, you know, get that done, then later, then we'd be like, okay, we've got stuff we've agreed on here. And then we can roll it out in sort of an organized way that that makes sense to me. Thanks. Yeah, so I had four comments. I reviewed the Excel table and I just had four things that just for you guys to take away or make decisions on. So the first one to notice was that what you had put together in there still included the reserved strategies. So when you're working on it, keep an eye on that. And I don't know if we're going to relocate them or just remove them. The reserve strategies were things where people had come up with a whole bunch of things. And then when they did their priorities, they said, we can't do everything. So we're going to take a chunk of these and we're just going to put them in the reserved column because we're not really going to do them in this eight year window. So those ended up making it onto the Excel table. So I think those would either have to be removed or relocated. It does make sense to have them on there because there certainly are some that we're coming across and say the transportation plan that are not necessarily quite tuned into being a transportation issue, but we don't want the committee to think that we ignored them. So is there some place that we could put those? We're probably just making a tab or something. Yeah. Yeah. So that was really a little bit of my thought on that was that we do have these reserved strategies. We really should figure out how to classify them somehow, whether they're a different tab or at the bottom or something that clearly shows that these were other ideas that were considered that are possible in the future, that these are valid strategies. These are definitely valid strategies, but they're just not, if we're going to make a strategic plan, then we have to be strategic. We can't do everything. So for example, in the historic, they've decided not to do the archaeologically sensitive areas map. It would be very helpful. It'd be a very good idea to do. But with all the other things on their list, that's not in their eight-year plan. So that was the first comment. The second one was we, and this deals a little bit with the redundancy that Barb has mentioned and you guys mentioned a little bit. And I think we can shift to the table. And one of the things we had talked about was how to capture the fact that they're shown in different goals. I don't know if this is even gonna going to show up. We'll see. It's reversed in my picture, but you basically would have the strategies. Then you could have some columns that would take goal one, goal two, goal three, and you can just put a dot. So rather than what we have right now, which might have like participate in growth center program. And it'll have, you know, and it appears in all three. So right now, we've written it in all three. But if we go to the tab format, we've lost those connections. So we now have a list of strategies, but they're not connected back to their goals. So if we had something that just did something like that, then we could go through and maybe add some extra columns. Each one would be a little different because historic resources has only three goals. Transportation may have four or five. And I actually think some of them like housing have four different aspirations and probably six goals. And so we'd have to have more tabs or columns or something. I don't know how we would fit it, but it gets more complicated. But it was one of the thoughts that I had that there might be ways of really connecting those across and eliminating the redundancy, but still keeping that connection. So just thoughts I had. The third one I noticed, which Marcella, you'd mentioned was the change of the titles. You guys had effectiveness. And I think we had put them in here as priority and cost. So they really weren't going with what's the most effective. They were saying, what is the highest priority? Now, we would hope and assume that they're probably, you know, together, but it doesn't always necessarily fit that way. Your priority may be something that's less effective, but is the most timely. So there may be something less effective, but now's the time to do that project as opposed to say something else. So I don't know if we want to keep it. I think that's just a matter of everybody as a group identifying the what tabs we want to have on there. How do we want to classify these? And as Marcella and John and Stephanie were pointing out, these make a big how we can sort them later on. Having them classified, that's really why we're doing it. And whether you want to classify them by priority or effectiveness, it's just up to you to kind of come up with how to how to do that. And then the fourth one would be just a question for the for the committee, the subcommittee on whether this is we're going to end up with one Excel table or one Excel table for each chapter, I guess. And that's just a and I think one Excel table for each chapter would probably be how we go because of, you know, as I'd sent the subcommittee, I sent the subcommittee the chapter. I don't know if I sent it to everybody, but I sent it certainly the historic chapter. I came up with a written chapter with the note that it can get moved, we can add new sections, you know, shuffle subsections around. But the idea is at the end, we would be able to then link to the the implementation strategy. But if we have an Excel table, we actually could just embed that Excel table right into the web page. So as you get down to the bottom, it just goes in there with three tabs on the bottom, you can see what the aspirations are, you can click the next tab over, it would list out the goals, you click the next tab, and it would list out all the strategies. And, you know, that might be the way to, you know, kind of seamlessly insert the implementation strategy into the chapter itself. And that was just an idea I had when I saw the tab. I think you can actually embed these types of graphics right into the design. I thought that that would work out well, if we can kind of figure out how it all goes. So that was why my thought was we would have one one table for each chapter, because then it's not linking, say to here's the implementation strategy, sending you to a separate page, which then has 12 sets of strategies. I would probably think we would just insert one on the bottom of each page, but that's just a recommendation or a thought. Would it also be possible then to see one giant Excel sheet? So we sort of had an overall view of what all the aspirations are together, although it might, I agree that with what you're saying about embedding it in the chapters would be really useful. But I, you know, one of the benefits of doing it this way seems that we can look at the whole thing. Yeah, I don't know if that's possible. I don't think it would be that hard just cut and paste it all. I think, yeah, I think, well, it makes sense to me to like, these are helpful, like, I wrote them down. Thank you. I think everything makes sense to do quite honestly. I can't remember where the headings came from. So I'm not really attached to them. We can definitely put them, match them back to the chapter. And I think it makes sense to have individual spreadsheets for each chapter. But I don't think there's any reason why we couldn't put them all into one as well for our own use. And then if it feels like something we ought to share, and it feels really useful for some other reason, we could do that. Yeah, I think all the above things. Yeah, that all sounds great. Maybe Marcel, you can go back with the group and let them know what Mike said and let us know if it's going to be substantially different. Yeah, I took notes and we'll follow up with them. And just let me know when you meet to talk about the chapters, because as I said, I just put something together that was like, it's the easiest way to talk about things is to write something out, throw it out there and say, beat it up. Tell me what works, what looks great, what's kind of a waste of time. Nobody cares about that. Nobody's going to read that. What we should be spending more time is talking about X. Because I think once we've got a framework for the first one, then I can go back and say, okay, now let's write a housing chapter. Now let's write a transportation chapter. Now let's write a, and I can start grinding out more chapters that we can once again all sit down and chew on. But we kind of have to have that, you know, every chapter should talk about this topic, and then this topic, and then this topic, and then this topic, and sum it up with this topic. What gets said will be different. But the framework, I think basically the continuity of the entire plan, you kind of want each chapter to have the same type of flow. At least that would be my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. So my understanding though is that as far as the other working groups go, if we're ready, we can start plugging in information into the spreadsheet, and we'll be doing it just as a chapter. We're not going to try to, you know, keep track of all, like, because there's been some discussion here about having all the changes in one document or something, the working group shouldn't worry about that, right? We should just put it in for our topic, our chapter, and then bring that to the planning commission for discussion, right? Yeah, also include those, what might call reserve strategies, the ones that we did not include. We should have those for this whole planning commission to look at too. And I mean, Mike said, you know, Mike pointed out that he wanted to track that as well, so we don't lose sight of the fact that some of those were tagged as reserves. So if we could tag those somehow, we should try that. Because if we don't in a way, we're kind of ignoring the advice of the, you know, the committees and commissions that sent things to us, you know. We want to keep honoring, you know, their work. Would it be helpful if I try to incorporate some of this stuff into the template, like, quick here, like tomorrow or Wednesday and send it back around? Yeah, I think that would be good. I think it's better to have it as close to a final product before everybody starts jumping in. Yeah, okay. And if you need to, I'll be available, if you need to bounce anything off of me, I'll be working from home tomorrow. So thanks. I'll try to do some time midday tomorrow. Okay, thank you, Marcella. You guys did some really great work and we really appreciate it. This was a really important part of it. That's why we create a working group just for this. So you guys are kind of the brains of the whole project now. So no pressure. I probably shouldn't say this, but it took me a while, I think, to get my head around like what we were doing. And that's part of the reason why we did this, read the flow chart, because we were like, I'm just confused. So I hope that was helpful for more than just myself. Yeah, I think it made a lot of sense. And I think that the chart that you showed us about the way you guys kind of structured the workflow and everything, that was kind of that was kind of the image that was in my head, but it's great to really have that as a graphic. So now we have that. So make sure you send that to everyone so that we're all on the same page about it. Yeah, that's really great. Thanks again, the brains committee. Okay. So with that, we can, we're meant to talk about the parking and to continue a discussion and possibly, I think the idea was if everyone was here, that we could have a vote yay or nay on the parking issue and then be done with it. But we only have five members. But one thing we do have is we have, Ariane wasn't there last time, so she's catching up a little bit on what our parking discussion was. And I'll take a shot at giving you kind of a summary of what happened last time. And then other people can jump in with either questions or comments about what they thought was important. So we had actually, we had a lively discussion about the parking issue and what the problems were. The current state of things might explain them much better than I could. But the gist of it is that we don't have residential parking requirements for some places, the core of the downtown. But there are other walkable outskirts type zones or neighborhoods that do have a residential parking minimum for certain properties. That's part of it too. And I'm not going to try to go into which ones are which. Mike, you can maybe, when I'm done here, just specify that. But there's, we also have commercial parking minimums in places, which does apply to the downtown, if I remember correctly. I'm probably butchering this explanation from the think of it. But Mike's smirking. So yes, I definitely am. So that's the state of things now, right? And our discussion was, the proposal from John was to get rid of all those parking minimums for everything. With the idea being that his argument focused mostly on how it was just better planning to rely on street parking and have infill development occur off street. So there's like a, he's a planner and there's a planning focus. And then Stephanie didn't talk much. She was a supporter of the idea. And I was a supporter of the idea. My support comes from a more of a, I'm a policy person in my day job. And so like law and policy wise, I think it's better policy for us to not try to to try to control something that we know, like a parking issue is something that's hard to predict. And it's something I think a market where the supply and demand with renters and things works that stuff out better than what we could do. I'm not anti-regulation, by the way. I mean, I don't know if I don't even think of that impression, by the way, but I'm definitely for some things. I'm not all about markets all the time, but this is just one where I think it is actually the elegant way. So that's kind of my point of view is the policy stuff. Marcel and Aaron had concerns about, are we protecting renters? I think as is, was a big part of their concerns was if we remove the parking requirements, are we setting up a rental market where there's not enough parking and creating problems for people? So that was part of the discussion. There wasn't a whole lot of concern from anyone that we heard about commercial parking or losing that. People seemed like if there weren't commercial parking minimums that it wouldn't have a major negative impact. So it really was about the residential and what was going on there. And so with that, I'll turn it over to everyone else. I think Mike, before I go to planning commissions, I just want Mike to, is there anything that I left out of the current state of parking regulation in Montpelier? Is there anything you'd like to add, Mike? Covered most of it. I mean, it's in, we had talked about if we went down some of the roads that John wanted to, then we would have to make some changes. In other words, as like currently, we have minimum parking requirements, but we also have maximum parking requirements. So if we were to eliminate the minimums, we would be eliminating our maximums. So we could make some, there were ways of us to keep them maximums, but we would just kind of have to work with a few things so that, you know, we were really kind of acknowledging that there was going to, if we chose a new policy path, we would have to go through and make a number of changes to reflect that because, you know, we don't want to lose some of those protections that we have. And I think that was, you know, it really came down to the basic economics and conditions on the ground. It's, you know, in certain neighborhoods, it's not going to make a difference in certain neighborhoods. It's going to make, it could make a big difference. And the question is how you see public parking on the street? Do you see it just as, you know, a public good? Or do you see it as, you know, as something that we really need to try to make sure that we manage the more, the reason why you require off-street parking is so that way it doesn't create non-street parking problem. And that's one of the reasons. And if you eliminate the off-street parking requirement, then you're pretty much acknowledging that you're going to let the market decide. And that could make big problems for the on-street parking. And that's only going to have an impact in certain areas. So it really is a policy discussion. And I think there was a lot of views on both sides that everybody had. So, and there was six people, there's three and three was how the vote ended up in the end. So that's classic for it's just good. Does any other town in Vermont has, has anyone eliminated parking requirements entirely? Like we're proposing to or the motion? Tirely? I don't believe I know any town that has entirely done it. There are a number of towns, you know, I worked for Berry City and I know they did not have parking requirements in their downtown as well. So I think they had central business. I'm trying to remember their zoning they had, but their urban core districts over in Berry City also don't have parking requirements. But the residential sections do. Once you get to the residential sections, they do. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm, I can see that there's some downside, but to me the upside is larger. So I'm, I'm in favor of it. So Kirby, can I just add what I felt were the important points from last time? Yeah, I didn't dare try to put words in your mouth. So I know, I know I could tell. Thanks a lot. Um, well, I think, you know, from my standpoint, there was a lot of talk about market forces would, you know, solve the problem here that the, it would be a lot easier to rent apartments that had off street parking versus ones that didn't. But when we have a 1% vacancy rate in our market, there really isn't a market force. I mean, you basically, if somebody's looking for an apartment, they have to grab whatever they can. So it's not like there's that kind of a discretion for their on their part. And I really think that it's, I mean, especially with, with the off street, I mean, the on street parking limitations of winter, which basically cuts down the on street parking by half, that it really puts an incredible burden on to the tenant to try and find a place. I mean, I just had these pictures of families, you know, have parking half a block, a block away from where they needed to go. And with groceries and kids and all of that. So I mean, I guess, and from an architectural standpoint, as an architect and a site planner, I guess my big question here is, what problem are we trying to solve? It doesn't seem like we have a problem now. So why are we trying to do this? When, when that's, it's not a problem now. Well, I definitely have heard from people who are trying to develop for instance, like accessory in it, but it is a problem. So I don't think just because maybe it hasn't been presented to the planning commission, it's not, it's not a real problem. And to me, the problem we're trying to solve is getting and doing what we can to get more housing. And this is, this is removing, removing a barrier and a cost. It doesn't mean that people won't do parking, but you know, you've referenced the 1% vacancy rate. Well, we have more housing, people will have more choice. Yeah, but it, yeah, I guess it's not like as if the housing is going to suddenly increase. And I guess I would argue that within a lot of the cases where I've looked at and ADU's accessory dwellings, that a little bit of creativity could really make it possible to have off-street parking. That it's not, it doesn't have to be the, the element that, that stops that from happening. I spoke with a very long-term landlord who owns a lot of properties in Montpelier and he said, oh yeah, we have to provide off-street parking. It has to happen. His, his point is just could, could the city be more flexible in terms of how they allow for that off-street parking to be counted? You know, could they, you know, the whole issue of, of, could, can we have shared parking? Can we have parking, you know, in some other configurations? His real, his stress was really on making things flexible, but not necessarily eliminating the requirement. And, and to, to Mike's point about a public good, what that, what the, that action does is it takes the cost of developing parking for a particular tenant away from the landlord and puts it onto the city. And I guess the question is, you know, does the city really want to accept that? Because we'd have to provide a lot more parking somewhere in the city if this was the case. Hey, Arianne, can you, can you sort of flesh out some of the concerns that you've heard from developers? Because I just really am curious what you've heard. Like how is, how is the minimum parking requirements specifically problematic for those folks that you've talked to? Well, I guess I've only heard, I mean, you know, I don't want to over, overstate what I've heard, you know, I just, no, that's fine. I, I just want to keep myself on this as best I can. So, yeah, I mean, when you're creating an accessory in it, you often just have, you know, like, you know, a studio apartment over your garage and you have a small driveway. And how are you going to create parking for a tenant? So that can be a real barrier. I mean, yeah, you can be creative. But without, like, making a new driveway, I don't exactly tell where you're going to put another car. And that accessory unit to me is very valuable. And we want to encourage that. So that's just a couple examples really. Well, I think too, that a lot of people don't realize that within the zoning that it allows for people to park behind each other, that, you know, it's not that you have to have a parking lot with equal access so that everyone can get in and out at any time, that it's very possible to, within us, the, the length of a single driveway, park two cars. And that may be what's necessary. But some driveways are not long enough to park two cars. But if you're, yeah, I mean, I guess if you're putting in something over a garage, that's more likely. But yeah, I mean, see, there are so many different potential situations that I guess what I have heard from people who have, in fact, done ADUs and people who are struggling to do ADUs, parking was not the issue. So I would like to add in there, though, that, I mean, I just want to share the way that I see us solving this housing problem. I think I use like the, you know, the expression of death by a thousand cuts last time, or maybe that was, I think of those are housing group. But I'd like to reiterate it for the planning commission, is we have a problem where we have just a mountain of little obstacles that are preventing housing because there isn't, you know, there's no silver bullet thing that's just one thing in the way. And so that's how I view and approach the housing issue is trying to take away as many small obstacles as possible in order to, you know, to, I don't know, I'm following back on all these like expressions and stuff, but like there's like a bottleneck of, you know, we can clear that bottleneck by taking all the little things out of the way and then allowing the development, because we know the demand is there and we know there's money in this house. So why isn't the development happening? It's a lot of little things. And so for a few ADUs, it's the parking. For a few other ADUs, it's this other thing that hopefully we get to and solve also. But it's going to, it's all these little things. We're going to be talking about something later. We're going to take a bit of density after this. And that's another, just a little thing where it's probably not stopping a whole lot of things by itself, but it contributes to being another little obstacle. Go ahead, Barb. Yeah, I mean, after, after our last housing meeting, subcommittee meeting, I spoke with a developer who's done development in Montpelier for 40 years. And I also, as I said, spoke to this landlord who also has been here for a very long time. And I said, oh, so, you know, we have all of these things. What's the, what are the major barriers? They said there was one major barrier that was prime, prime barrier. And that was the fact that you cannot construct new units for what you can get in rent. So we all know about, for example, that transit center that originally there was a group from Burlington, Redstone, who were going to be the developers with the city on that. And they backed out because they could not make their numbers work if they had to put residential units on the upper floors. And it's just becomes a fact of life that even though it seems like our rents are high, they're not high enough to be able to meet the kind of new construction costs that we're talking about. So that was the number one. And then the second one that the realtor brought up, particularly, the landlord, I mean, was the cost of taxes, which we all know is an issue. And again, that adds to the cost of the units. Oh, one, one aside, he gave me on construction costs is he estimates that construction costs in the last three years have increased 30% because of the cost of materials. So we are, I mean, unfortunately, we're kind of stuck in this position where we can't afford to do it because we can't raise the rents to Burlington levels. And even in Burlington, the developments don't all work out. But we cannot afford to do that work without raising the rents. So we need to find some other way to do them. And some other way means something simple, like the kind of thing that we have in the zoning ordinance to be able to duplex a single family home. I mean, that's duplex by right. Correct, Mike? So yes, so if you have the requirements for a single family home, you can duplex it. And that doesn't mean that you then have to do all kinds of other work. And perhaps you don't even have to work outside the home itself that in fact you can do it within the constraints of the existing building. So those are the kinds of things that he thought that the landlord thought would be, you know, most effective in terms of trying to increase housing in Montpelier, because we do have a lot of existing homes that are very large that people can't afford to remain in any longer. So our options here are to assist those homeowners in order to duplex the houses. They could rent them, they could sell off the other side by condominium. So that's the thing that we could do most directly and be most helpful in terms of increasing the housing in Montpelier. Okay, I guess that's it. Thanks. Yeah, yeah, that's that's all very helpful. I mean, I would say that like what I was saying before and what Ariya was saying is I think compatible with what you're saying, though, when it comes to building new, they're saying that yeah, they can't, you know, like the cost effectiveness isn't there. We're talking about removing barriers and making it more making it more financially feasible to do it. I don't know that the barriers are there. That's the point. You know, I'm not sure that the barriers that you're seeing are actually there. Well, having flexible parking requirements means that they don't maybe maybe don't have to put as much money into a parking lot if they're building something new. It means that they don't have to put if there's not density requirements, maybe they can, they can go beyond what the density requirements would be and have more units. And so it would make make more money off the same building. I asked that question. I said, so would it make more sense if we could have more units? He said that just increases the cost. You know, it's not as if you can, you can suddenly take a building that has three units and make it six on the same footprint. Because the, you know, if you've ever been in the units and above the transit center, they are very tight. They are not big units. So for the most part, it's not like we're building enormous units. Now, the only way that we're building new units is through subsidized housing. And in order to be able to increase our housing, we could do it within within existing footprints, I guess is what I'm saying. So that as long and within the existing rules as we wrote them. Well, I think the transit center is not a good example, though, of like density being in the way, because it's in a zone that has a high density. But if the transit, the transit could be in a different part of the city with lower density thresholds, and then that would be something that got in the way. But it was already, it was already unbuildable in the zone where it was. It was unbuildable without subsidies. Yes, that's what that's without subsidies. I got you. Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, you know, without down street, there's only so much that down street can do in our city in subsidized construction. So I just I guess my point is I don't think that the the barriers that you're seeing are the ones that we really need to attack. If we can, if there's some way that the planning commission can can deal with construction costs and being flexible in terms of allowing duplexing and other alternatives within existing housing. It's well, there's so there's like a something keeps coming up with our arguments, I think, and that is where for one thing, I think we're letting the let perfect be the enemy of the good just because just because of the part, like reducing the parking minimum may not be the the very best thing we can do for housing. Doesn't mean it's not a thing that's good for housing and is worth doing. That's one thing. And the other the other is that sometimes, even if these things aren't the most effective thing possible for for improving the housing situation, and they're only a little bit effective, we can still look at them in isolation and say, as a policy, is this worth doing? Or are we getting something out of it, where we're willing to give up, you know, what have the way that it negatively affects housing? Like, we don't have to compare it to the best stuff every time, or in order for it to be worth doing. If it's not the barrier, if it's not the barrier, then why do it? We don't know that it's a barrier. We're just imagining. The barrier you just described though, as you were saying, new construction is very expensive, which we all know. But like that we can't let that fact stand in the way of other good policy things we do. Right, but I think I think Barb's point is well taken, which is you're operating under the assumption that removing the part the minimum parking requirements is somehow good for housing development, which I'm not convinced of. And secondly, there's no acknowledgement that the minimum parking requirements serve a function that the town has already evaluated and determined as a function that is worth codifying in the zoning regs. And I agree with Barb here, which is unless and until I see evidence that there is a problem that is uniquely solved by this change, I think Barb's right. I think this may be a case of a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. And it's sort of there's these sort of baked in assumptions about how this works, that I don't think that there's any evidence that I've seen that sort of supports those assumptions. Well, I mean, I will say I think curbing forward in the, I forget what it's called, but the thing that was funded about recommendations for Vermont towns on their bylaws, I mean, this is considered to be in the planning world a, you know, eliminating parking requirements, encourages housing. And, you know, it's generally a positive thing. Yeah, it might not be, we might not be able to draw a causal line. We might not get a ton more units. But I think it's worth doing because to me, I mean, all the, you know, we're also trying to move away from the automobile in my mind anyway. And I just, I don't know why we're saving spaces for I'll read from that document that she just, that she just referenced this is now this is from some of the most one of the most highly respected organizations in the planning world that worked with the state of Vermont. So this is a state of Vermont document. It says, in recent years, many towns and cities have begun to accept that parking minimums had not been an effective tool, either in accurately predicting parking need, which I've said over and over again, or in successfully producing great places. In most cases, lenders and tenants will demand a parking and minimum number of parking spaces. Municipalities should focus on where that parking is located, not how much parking there should be to address this minimum parking requirements can be eliminated entirely, or at least eliminated for smaller parcels. We've already eliminated these minimums in our urban core. We're just talking about in the neighborhoods that are adjacent now, college tree and stuff like that. And so we are following what's considered by researchers and whatnot as the most effective thing to do. So, so Aaron, it's not, it's not a matter of just like making assumptions and stuff. I mean, we're definitely following. I'm on failure. Can I, can I make a point on that? Because I've done, I did some reading in between the last and I would like to ask like Mike or anybody, like I'll read this thing. You guys sent it. I just saw it, you know, right before this, I haven't read it yet, but I will read that. If anyone has any others, that'll be great. But in Google searching, I am fully aware that minimum parking requirements are obviously not like the planning world is not a fan of them. This is the stodgy, you know, unpopular way to go. I get that. However, what I'm reading has nothing to do with Montpelier. It has to do with like big cities with lots of infrastructure, with lots of people that don't have cars and you don't need a car. And I get that. Montpelier is not that town. And I hear a lot of really good points and I'm really conflicted about this. And, but I just like, if we're not going to take a holistic view of parking itself in the city, I don't think we can just pass out parking requirements because, you know, in the wintertime, like if I didn't have parking at my house, I would have to, my closest parking option would be probably a three quarters of a mile or a mile away. And I'm not the only person that lives on that street. And so there's just, that's just one example of like this, our city because of winter parking bans, because of the fact that we as a city have decided we don't like the parking garage that we wanted to put downtown. Like the fact that, you know, I'm seeing arguments about like you're paying for it in your rent, like okay, but Montpelier's like rental market is so tight that they're not going to, like eliminating parking requirements is not going to lower rent in this case at all. So like so far, and I'm looking for, I am looking for the positive here. And so far, I don't see it that works for Montpelier. And so I need, I need some evidence and like anecdotal evidence of like somebody wants to put an accessory dwelling in it on their house that they own. And they can't figure out how to squeeze one more car in there. Like, I don't care about that. I'm like, why hasn't savings pasture been developed? And why hasn't the redstone building been developed? I want those big developments. And we can't sustain those with on street parking. So I'm confused. I don't have all the information. I'm not hearing legitimate arguments yet that I feel like will actually pan out in Montpelier. And I'm looking for more resources. I'm open to the discussion. I'm open to a discussion of like talking about if we're going to address parking, let's address parking. So what does it mean? It means getting rid of parking requirements, but it also means not banning parking on streets downtown all winter long. Stuff like that. Like I need a holistic approach to it before I'm going to feel comfortable just dumping parking requirements because I just don't think I agree. I don't know what the problem is. I agree. I understand that this is not popular policy in planning world, but I just don't see how it fits for us here yet. So I think, Mike, go ahead. So I'll just jump in and say I think there's a couple of things and I think you're right. It does need to have, you need to, you know, if you're going to do a paradigm shift, then you need to take all the pieces and put all the pieces together to make it work. You can't, you can't kind of ad hoc take one piece at a time to get there. I think one of the points I think that John made and I would make would be a little bit gets to Aaron's point as well is about, you know, there's whether there needs to be a parking space for every unit. I don't think the plan is that every, every apartment would lose all that's parking. What I think they're looking at is to have some options where somebody who wants to live in Montpelier and not have a car, right now you would have to pay for a parking space with your rent, even though you don't have a car. And, you know, I just did a quick Google and, you know, 6% of households do not own cars. So 6% of households are paying, probably these are renters. These are probably not homeowners. So 6% of them are paying for parking spaces, but they don't have a car. So it starts to, and all the, the economics that showed that the, you know, the, the, the shoot book last time, which is kind of the Bible, the economic Bible that really says we're not, we're just trying to decouple your parking from your house. So that way it then gives you the opportunity to make that shift to the next paradigm, which would then go and say, how do we get more people to live without cars? Well, now we have to have that microtransit and it has to work. We have to have rideshare and it has to work and we have to have other options. And yeah, I mean, as Barb pointed out, it may mean that the city takes a, a stronger role in public parking lots. We may have to go through on Berry Street or on Lower Elm Street to go through and say, we need to have a public parking lot. If we're going to have, you know, if we're going to eliminate parking requirements on that stretch from Spring Street North, you know, just outside the Meadow, you're going to probably have to have some amount of public parking. Otherwise, if you just simply eliminate that it's already a parking problem and it's going to get worse. So we've got, we can't just, I think, pull the plug on the parking requirement without saying, we're going to pull this, plus we're going to do this, plus we're going to do this, plus we're going to do this because we can't just pull the plug on this. So I think there's a certain amount there. But there's also, as I said, what we look at the, you know, the John Adams and I and the professional planners, we do look at parking as, as a barrier because it's, it does, there are certain assumptions that get built in, as I said that, well, everybody's got a car or every household has a car. And when you start realizing that, well, you know, six percent don't. And, you know, that number could be bigger, except that it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is what David, or Shoe had in his book, which is that every time you need to add parking, you're pushing the density out because for every house, you need to have a parking space. So you're pushing people out. And the farther you push people out, the more you need a car because the densities are so are getting lower because we're pushing things out. And, and, you know, they're mathematical models that he looks at his books to go through and say, you know, if you want to make that shift to a higher density urban walkable, then it may mean we've got to sacrifice cars and sacrifice parking spaces to make that vision a reality. Now, the question is one, we all have to make a decision. That's our vision for the future. And then two, we'd all have to be willing to accept the next step, which is, okay, that means we've got to make sure we can't have microtransit for one year and then bail on it. And we can't have rideshare for one year and bail on it. These models work in, you know, in Boston and Somerville and in Worcester. And they work in these places because they have the density and they've already kind of gotten, they were forced into it because they already had urban downtowns that had this these settings that really required these more drastic models, but the models work. But the, it's kind of like, how do we do a growing model where we kind of grow into that next model right now? We're a hybrid car centric and we're going to always have this trick because as we pointed out, we've got 6000 people that drive into town every day. So we've got to have parking. And that's where the parking garage comes in, you know, is the parking garage the the solution that we look at, but we've got to kind of have that what's what's the shift. So I'm kind of with John, I like getting rid of the the parking requirement. I think it's it, but I don't think, and I wouldn't expect and I would hope everybody wouldn't all all abandoned their parking and push it all onto onto the streets. I still think what's going to happen is there's going to be a certain market that's going to say 80% of our renters want to have a parking space and they're willing to pay the extra $200 a month for that parking space. But for those 15%, 10% that that don't care or are willing to, hey, if you gave me a parking space out, you know, out in the outskirts of town, I'll take a rideshare out there to grab my car because I only need it once a week when I go grocery shopping or when I go to Burlington. Otherwise I can bike and walk everywhere I need to go. You know, that's that's just a new paradigm. So I'll leave it at that and kind of rambled on for a bit. I think I think you're you're touching you're touching on the holistic question that Marcello was asking. That's that's kind of what I wanted to say was we do have the park the parking garage was delayed. But as far as I know, it's still coming into downtown. So we are going to have and I don't know the specifics about how much the public can access that, but we are going to have an influx of parking in the downtown. No, Bart, did it get very much? No, if you look back on the numbers, I mean, predominantly it's for the hotel. And for people who are leasing spaces from it. There's actually there's a lot more than the public. There's quite a bit of parking that that would add. It's at night. Okay, so that's one factor. That's one factor. But to flesh out the holistic aspect of it. If we do this, not all landlords will immediately build infill development on the preexisting parking. If they did that, oh my goodness, that would be a huge influx of housing. And we should do it for that reason anyway. Like, oh my that we'll build it. We'll build another parking garage. If it solves our housing problem, it's not going to solve that problem. There's not going to be this huge influx. The parking is going to stay mostly the same. It's just going to add a little bit more flexibility. And we might lose some parking in the overall market. It's it's if it's if it's significant at all, it would mean that this was hugely successful in building housing. It's like it's like a win-win as far as I'm concerned. If we create a little bit of a housing problem, that's something that can be solved or a little bit of a parking problem. That's easier to solve than this huge housing problem. The real the holistic answer, though, is it's it's not going to majorly impact the parking. We're about to get an influx of parking in the downtown. And when it comes to the few landlords who maybe cut out their parking and do something else with the with what's currently parking there, it just means as a renter that that you when you're looking at two different places and one provides parking, that's a big factor for you. And you assign a value of what it means to you. But the point is you get a choice. And that touches on what Mike was saying before, where now you have no choice but to pay for parking. And if that's not your lifestyle, or if you share a car, and importantly, moving into the future and being post car, some people are mean people you can do it in Vermont. I don't actually I don't have a car personally. Does your wife have a car? You don't have a car in your family? Huh? It's it's not okay. So you have one car in your family? Yeah, that I don't use. There's lots of units on the rental market downtown that don't have parking. And I've been looking a lot about on the rental market. And the only ones that come up are the ones that are downtown, they don't have parking. So there's plenty of options. There's a lot of options now. Well, so this is my thing, like Kirby, I appreciate what you're saying. You can negotiate it, though. I mean, it becomes, you know, yeah. And I understand that. And I do the most important to me so far is that decoupling thing that Mike explained. And I can I get that. But this is what I'm what I'm reading. What I keep reading is this sort of like, it's a little flippant, I think, to be like, don't worry, we're not gonna lose all our parking overnight. So I don't think we're gonna lose all our parking overnight. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that you're creating like, I'm worried about inequity and who you're inviting into this new housing. I understand that not everybody has a car and some low income people don't have cars. And we would want to make sure that we're welcoming those people too. But like, I'm having trouble finding resources specifically about housing, because that's what we care about. So specifically about rental housing, or sorry, residential housing, like residential parking, not just like shop parking, I could care, I don't care if Shaz has parking, but residential parking. And I'm having trouble finding arguments that aren't flippant about like, don't worry, it's not going to change overnight. Like, that's not where I'm at. And I need more than that as a response to my concerns. And we do already think that we have a problem. I mean, in the retail downtown, the retail shop owners say there is a problem. The developer I talked to said there is a problem. If people can't find parking near where they're going to shop, they will not shop. And if we then do this in the residential area and put more pressure on the street, I think that can only have a detrimental effect. So don't get me wrong. I am totally in favor of getting rid of cars as Mike knows. But I think we need to have, as Marcella said, a much more holistic view of it. And I'm worried that in fact, the parking structure will not happen. Maybe we could incorporate this conversation of like, if we want to do a paradigm shift, like we're going into this planning process, like what if we incorporate it into that, like you know, just pulling it out now in, you know, the course of a couple other updates feels a little bit like, you know, we'd be liable to just forget about it and forget about all those other things that we needed to do to prop up the system. Well, what can I ask? I mean, what would be, what would make you feel comfortable with getting rid of parking requirements? Like an assigned, certain assigned parking lot areas? Or I'm just curious what the... No, I mean, that would, I think it's like a system, like it's like a network. Like, I'm just remembering, like from my personal experience living in Burlington in the Old North End, where you did not have parking. Nobody had parking. It was on the street. You could usually find a place to park relatively close to where you live. That usually wasn't an issue. But during parking bands, when everybody has to get off the street, you were walking a mile in a snowstorm between the hours of like 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. to a public parking garage as your only option to handle your car in those instances. And in Montpelier, we block parking on certain roads all winter long. And that's not something that somebody can do every night, all winter long. So I think something about winter parking would be helpful. Something about... Honestly, something about winter parking would be helpful. Like that's probably one of my main concerns is like, if people can park on the street, great, but that's not the reality in chunks of Montpelier. I think you're fortunate that you've moved to Berlin, or you've moved to Montpelier after we tried to fix the parking. And Barb can correct me. But I think it was when I got here in 2014, it was from date to date. There was no on-street parking. And it was only in the past five years that they've gone through and said, this is really a hardship for people in these parts of certain neighborhoods. This is a real hardship because they don't have things. If it's not snowing, why can't they park on the street? And we're on like our fourth iteration of, okay, let's, you know... Which is great. Yeah, I mean... It's only due by that. The new iteration is one side or the other. One side or the other. But the new iteration is all day. It's not just at night. Oh, is it all day? Yeah. Fixing some cases. Yeah, it's all day. It's weird. It is weird. I thought that was, I wasn't a part of that process. I thought that came out a little odd, but they'll probably at the end of the year go through and tweak it again. I think, Ariane, to your question, just I think other things that are making me uncomfortable right now that would make me more comfortable is to know that we're not basing it off of these... I don't think that it's going to lower rent. Unless, like, I love the idea of more creativity with parking, but I don't think we're just going to get tons of housing and we're going to lower rent because we've dumped the parking requirements. I haven't seen that yet in terms of, like, other than like a theoretical, this is what's going to happen with the market. But Montpelier's market is particular in that way. So tight, you mean? I don't think it's going to have a big impact, Marcel. I'm where you are. That's why I don't think it's going to... It will help housing slightly and then we may lose a few parking spaces, but in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's by itself is not going to do anything huge. So why do it? Because every single time we talk about anything that's getting in the way of housing, we can always have this discussion about, well, why do it? And that's why we have a housing problem. That's my view, is I think that for generations in Montpelier, I think planning commissions and other leaders in the city have come up with all sorts of things to do that seem nice. We want to regulate parking. We want to make sure everyone's safe. So everyone has to have a $10,000 sprinkler and et cetera. So we are a very regulated city and now we have a major housing crisis. We're a very desirable place to be and no one can live here unless they have quite a bit of means. That's why we're in the problem we're in. And I don't think we're living up to, not to mean to get on soapbox here, but I don't think we're living up to the image we have for our city. I think we see ourselves as a egalitarian liberal city, but we're actually exclusive. And it's happened over time and it's happened because of discussions like these where you can always come up with ways to fight for the thing that's stopping people from being able to live here and move here. And I think that argument has won out many times over in history, in this town of recent history. I mean, I think we need to prove that it really is what's stopping people from moving here. And that's what I'm not convinced about. Sorry, Marcella. I'm worried about equality and equity too, but I'm worried about Park. I'm worried about this having a negative effect on that. Yeah, I mean, the evidence is that this is not the problem. And we have done things to open up housing with ADUs, with duplexing, that makes it possible. It makes it more realistic that we could have additional housing. We just need to be promoting those things. And frankly, it's not happening now. Those are the kinds of things that are not helping us right now to expand our housing. I think Marcella had the point of maybe the best, we've already missed the window for this zoning update. So that's not getting fit in. That's already been sent to city council. And maybe the best time to really talk about this is with our city plan update. And this is where I think it's going to come in when we talk about the land use plan. This is where we start to pull together all the pieces. How does transportation and housing and land use and economic development and all these pieces come together? And how do we put our vision together? Is it everything is good and we want to maintain it? Do we need to evolve it or do we need to transform it? And how this fits is going to be the big key. If the decision of us and eventually we obviously have to go to the public, the decision of the public is we're ready to transform. They're going to be energy folks. They're going to be transportation folks. And they're going to be housing folks who are all going to go and say, yeah, it's time for us to prioritize housing over parking spaces. Is that enough to win the vote at the end of the day? Or is it not? But I think that's where we have to do it because I don't think you're right. We can't just pull the plug on parking without also saying that parking is going to be managed as public good. And parking works, getting to Barb's point about the businesses in the downtown, parking is managed by using price, by using money. And we have to push people by having on street parking is going to be more expensive and it's going to be more expensive in the downtown. And the idea is people will stay there for a shorter period of time and then we push them, or if you're going to stay in the downtown for a longer period of time, you're going to park in a less convenient location where you're going to get a cheaper rate and that's at a parking garage. But eventually you need to find a place where there is almost a zero cost or near zero cost because low income people need to have a place to park their car. And so that may be a remote lot with a shuttle or some way of getting there. And then things kind of economics kind of works in the middle. If you want to have that car, if you have a family, you're going to probably have to have a car and you're going to probably have to have that car located close to your residence and you're going to pay a little bit more for your apartment. And it's going to take time for those to get sorted out in the market. You make this change, it doesn't immediately fit its way into the market. It takes some time where people start to break these up and say, I've got 10 apartments and eight parking spaces. So if you want an apartment, you don't want a parking space, well, then you're going to pay $1,100 a month and if you want the parking space, it's $1,300. And you can make that decision of how much is that car worth it to you? Is it worth $200 a month or will I park it out in the baseball field somewhere and take a shuttle out to get it? But it'll take time for that to develop. But I think that's really where we've got to kind of address it, is in the land use plan, tackling it in the city plan. And that's probably the best step to take. So we should move on. Thank you, Mike. We should move on. Aaron, I think, had politely used the raise hand function before, and that's why he was ignored because he was polite. Did you have something, Aaron? Yeah, thank you for saying that was polite. It was actually, I thought it was a hand clapping gesture. I was applauding. No, I just, very quickly, I just wanted to say, Mike, I think that you frame the issue very well and I will just sort of, my take on it is I think it is better. This is sort of, we're putting the cart before the horse and I just, I'm afraid that if we ought not approach this as let's make changes to zoning because we think we can anticipate how that will feed into broader sort of policy initiatives that we haven't undertaken yet. I think Mike's right, we need to sit down and think, how do we tackle housing? How do we tackle the car issue in town and then find ways to make coordinated changes to affect those things? And we just are not anywhere close to being that position yet. And once we are, we'll have a much better idea and be able to evaluate how say, getting rid of parking minimums will actually feed into those broader policies that we decided on. So, I think Mike's approach is as usual is pretty much spot on, which is there's certain benefits to doing it perhaps, but I don't think we're close to being able to evaluate it, you know, elastically as we should. Thanks. Okay, thanks Erin. What you say makes it kind of difficult for me to talk about where do we go from here? The plan was to have a discussion tonight and then we would have a discussion later when all seven members are here and do a vote, which would mean obviously not waiting until we've gone through the land use chapter and all of that. I mean, one thing I can say about just waiting until we look at things more, I mean, the planning commission has existed continuously for decades. It's like, there's never a point at which we've like, now we've learned enough information to know how to fix planning. It's a continuous process. And I think if we, if we want to change zoning along the way, I think we should, I think we should constantly be reevaluating. That's just an outlook thing on, you know, from me, and it's just to let you guys know where I'm coming from and how I would like for us to keep looking at things to change right away while we're also doing the city plan for a long term. Go ahead, Barb. Well, I guess I'd like to make a motion to table this until we talk about the land use plan as part of the city plan, as Mike suggested. Is that what Mike suggested? Yeah. Isn't that what you suggested, Mike? Yeah, I mean, pretty much. And but it's also what Marcella had kind of inferred. Yeah, that was a good idea that if. Yeah, I don't think we need to like, can't speak about it again. I just think we probably ought to, I would prefer us to take a holistic view of it. And it seemed like the planning process was a good way to do it. But if you're thinking about doing another spot, like another just, we take the zoning, we open it up again, we do another hearing, we just fix that one thing. I'm not going to probably change my mind until I have some better information. I've seen enough things killed in the legislature to know this is the kind of tactic you use to kill something. I mean, that's that's just like, I don't know. I would love to figure out a way to eliminate housing or sorry, eliminate requirements. I really would. I just don't like the way we're going about it right now. I feel like it's like, if you're not on board with the planning literature, you know, you don't buy in, then you're wrong here. But I don't think I'm being, I'm just learning. And if we have to communicate it to the rest of the town, like they're all going to be where I'm at. Yeah, no, I hope you're not feeling judged or anything. I don't, I hope I'm not, you know, making anyone feel that way. No, no hard feelings about any particular issue or anything. I am, I am very worried that if I actually think that this is a homerun easy thing to do, to fix house, to be one of the many things that need to be done to fix housing. And if we're stumbling on this, then yeah, it makes me less hopeful that we'll get other significant things that probably need to be done later on. Are we debating Barb's motion? Yeah, that is a question. Yeah. We don't have a second. We are, we are, we're talking about our motion because, you know, yeah, because we want to know, is this, is this something the commission wants to vote to put off, or do we want to have it on the agenda sooner than that? So yeah, we are arguing that. So I'll second Barb's motion first. Okay. So we have a second on the motion. We've been talking about the motion. Does anyone else want to have anything to say about officially moving to discuss this until I guess, to have this discussion simultaneous with the land use chapter discussion? Because it seems like it's part of the land use chapter. Everything is. I mean, I, again, another thing. Right. So the holistic approach, as Marcella said. When are we going to get to the land use chapter? It's going to be in, when we probably this summer was, as we've gotten the other chapters wrapped up, that's when we'll probably be ready. I think one thing to keep in mind is it might be, you know, it's maybe a little bit moot to have some of this because of the fact that we've already moved the zoning to the city council. So it's not being attached to this. So it would be attached to the next time we open the zoning for amendment. So I think probably by the time, the next time we open the zoning, we probably will have had some of these opportunities to have worked on the transportation plan, worked on the housing plan, and maybe even worked on the land use plan in the, in the interim before we even get back to another zoning opportunity to, to make this amendment. And so it may end up just working out that way anyway. So, and I know John has said, you know, he's, he's lost it before and he'll keep bringing it back up and he was comfortable kind of letting it go last, last week when we talked about her two weeks ago and we talked about it. Okay. So does anyone have anything else to say before we vote? I mean, do we have to lock ourselves into like a parent? I mean, no, no, you can vote no, you don't have to lock us in to do that. You're muted, Barb. We're voting to postpone this discussion until we can have a more holistic discussion from my standpoint. So what does, what does that mean? I know we're always talking about these things. So we're always having a holistic discussion. So that's why that argument doesn't work on me. Well, holistic means that we're not just looking at parking. We're looking at housing. We're looking at, you know, transportation through, through the downtown area. We're looking at economic development. We're looking at all of them together, which is really what our job is in looking at and providing the planned use plan. So it's certainly going to come up as an issue for the land use plan. But in, in light of a lot of other factors, which is kind of what I thought that Marcel's point was. So yeah, sorry. I mean, it is my point. I guess if it's four against three, and you guys want to push it through in a zoning update, fine. I would like to then be very specific about looking at this holistically. We'll put the cart before the horse, but that's fine. But let's talk about it in the planning commission, like in the planning process for the land use plan and for the whole plan. But I just, I don't want to just like forget that we did this thing and like be done and then not address it. So like if we do it before then whatever, but like let's not lose sight of the fact that it needs to be taken in a whole holistic approach. And perhaps originally you talked about within the transportation section of the city plan that that would be potentially where it would show up. Yeah, maybe. I guess I wasn't really thinking about which section it would show up. And I was just thinking like if we're going to do a, if this is a paradigm shift and we want to focus the plan on that, then it would probably show up in a bunch of different places. It would probably show up in any chapters. Right. But at least it won't be, it won't be forgotten. Which sounded like you were afraid that if we didn't do something now it might get forgotten. Yeah, I am, I am afraid. We talked about it for two meetings. It was like, feels like a massive change. And you know, then it's like, okay, are we done? So I, I can see now that we're not going to do that. That won't happen. So that's good. I guess I don't care so much if, you know, we seem to have people that want, you know, if four of us want to do it now, whatever we can do it. But I don't want it to just be like, did it do it and move on? I want to think about, and I don't want to think about it from a housing perspective. I want to think about it from a parking perspective. But let's, let's go, let's go ahead and vote on this motion because there is one other item I want to just briefly introduce basically is what we have time for, which is fine. Let's go and vote on the motion just letting you know if the motion fails. My plan would be to just put it on the agenda when we have space and then your future it's not going to probably be next time. But we'll see if the motion passes, then I won't put on the agenda and we'll just and we'll make it part of the land use plan. So those in favor of Barb's motion, which was to officially put off this discussion of changing parking minimums until we're doing the land use plan discussion, which will probably be at the end of summer, if not later, say aye. Aye. Okay. We have Erin and Barb. Okay. So that does not have the majority. So the motion does not pass. And which means we're just leaving it even ended and or open ended rather. And I will be I will just use my discretion to put on the agenda later on. We have the discussion. We can have a discussion. Like I said, I don't know. It might end up being the same thing as what your motion just just was. But then again, we might have a light agenda one night or we might have an opportunity where we know all seven people will be there and get it done then too. I don't know. Okay. So we're going to move on on the agenda real quick. I got a point of order. Sure. This vote, do we have to have the majority of is there has to be some sort of a quorum in order for the motion to fail? My question is if Barb and I vote aye and only two in one person votes nay and there's two abstentions, does the motion carry? No, you need four votes for for a vote. You didn't finish the for for the I think what he's getting at is you you voted how many people had eyes you didn't ask for nays. Okay. Okay, yeah, for the record, Mike, let me let me correct that. If those those who want to vote against Barb's motion say nay, nay. There we have it. It's two to three. Okay. I was I was the reason why I dropped it was I was thinking it needed for for a quorum to pass. On a motion like that? Yeah, I don't I mean, I am far from an expert in it. So I would but there there it is. It's two. It's two to three. Okay, so moving on to the on the agenda. So this is a similar what's that? We have eight minutes on the agenda. Yeah, we have eight minutes. I'm going to try to just cover this in three just introduce the topic and and if people want to want to comment, they can or we can just wait. So this is this is a similar idea to, you know, when we bring up the parking and to seeing how people feel about it, and another similar actionable item that we can that we can look at this to be if we take any action on this, it would be the next time the zoning opened up, which we know is going to be probably months from now. But it does happen in zoning will definitely be opened up early. Well, I should be careful saying definite, but I fully expect that zoning will be opened up before we ever come close to finishing the city plan. So so doing some doing certain actions now has value to me. And we also I don't think we can put everything off. So anyways, this is an item for people to consider. It's from the same document we read we read from earlier, it's the new the Congress for new urbanism work with the state of Vermont to come up with ways to address Vermont's overall housing problem. And so I recent that to everyone. It was something that Mike sent to us back in the middle of the summer. And I just resented to everyone to take a look at all the different ideas in there. A lot of the ideas in there actually took inspiration from Montpelier to our credit. But we also know just because you know, we're a model sometimes for doing good things doesn't mean we can we can't keep keep working better, right? So this is one idea out of there, and it is related to something Montpelier's done. Um, the idea is that is for us in residential neighborhoods outside the walk or within the walkable part of the downtown the walkable part of Montpelier, and those neighborhoods, for us to limit the idea generally is to eliminate our density restrictions density requirements. That is to say that the number of units in a place that number could not stop something from being built or worked on, it couldn't stop an accessory dwelling. We're not going to just put an arbitrary cap on the number of units for a parcel. That's the idea. In the walkable part of Montpelier, where we want units, we even we know we want units, we overall we talk about how we want units. So why do we have a cap is the idea. Um, there's a everyone's could do the research on on density in the near future, just like the parking thing. There's a lot out there written about it. This is a thing where people are really it's existed for a long time, but we're but they're the planners are thinking twice about whether there was ever a good idea to try to do this. Um, Mike could tell you we've had this discussion with zoning when we were redoing the zoning. Some of our best neighborhoods that people think are the most attractive are the ones that are more haphazard who aren't following like density and things. Those are the ones that are non conforming and, you know, they grandfathered in. So, you know, if the places we like the best are breaking the rules, then why have these rules like this? So take a look at that document at least and and read what it says about density. And we can talk more about we don't have a lot of time now, but Mike can talk about what's happened with the zoning and what we did. We tried to make everything at least 90% conforming when it came to the density. So we rechanged we we changed up the the neighborhoods when we did it. So we're in a pretty good place as far as density because of that effort that was made when we redid the zoning. Before we made that effort, we had a lot of non conformities, especially in certain places, which just goes to show how density wasn't, I don't know, very reflective of what our city even really was, let alone like what we want to do in the future was with planning. So we can talk more about that later. I just wanted to bring this, I just wanted to bring it up. We don't have a lot of time to do any further discussion. If anyone has anything to say specifically, I mean, that's that's my intro. That's my first pitch. Anyone have any reaction in the last couple minutes? Quick. Just have a question. Go ahead, Aaron. What are you keying walkable to? That you know, that's something that we can try to figure out and decide. I mean, if we open up the zoning when we change it, we would we would choose which neighborhoods you would do away with with density requirements in and which one we wouldn't. So that would be part of the discussion. Okay, thanks. Mike, do you still have that plan map that Brandy did that looked at what the potential was for expanding the number of units throughout the city based on the densities that were identified? The build out. I don't know. It's probably somewhere. Usually the build outs are tricky. We've done them before. Yeah, she did one, but she did one early. So I don't think we've done one post getting the zoning changes done in our zoning because we have those rules of by right, you can have a duplex that automatically adds, you know, a unit for everybody. So we've got a lot of potential units out there, but the reality is the market, you know, you own a single family home and you're just not in training. I might, you know, I live on 14 acres in a three acres owning district. I could have four more units on my property, but I'm not going to build any of them because I like having 14 acres. So that ends up being playing a big part. I think the big piece to consider with this proposal here, this discussion is really tied very much to making sure that you've got your bulk and massing right for each of your neighborhoods because what it really wants to say is, if I've got a, you know, a 2000 square foot building, I can have as many units as I want in it. I can have one unit, I can have four units, as long as I've got, you know, because it's based on the character of the neighborhood. And yes, one of the impacts is parking. So we can automatically acknowledge that yeah, it could make a difference in parking, but if you've got parking regulated separately or taken care of separately, then the question starts to let again, developers start to make decisions because a lot of what ends up happening is developers look at within the bulk and massing. The zoning says I can have only 10 units. So I'm going to, because I've got enough bulk and massing, I'm going to make most of these two bedroom units so that way I can get more rent for my two bedroom units. Or I can maximize my rent that I can get from those 10 units that I can get as opposed to leaving it up to the developer, where the developer might go through and say, you know what? What the market demands are studios in one bedroom. And I can put 15 of those studios in this one building. And therefore, you know, because it's the exact same size building, but because they now have the flexibility to decide whether they're going to do a lot of single units, because that's what's popular right now, 30% of our population are people living alone. But there aren't a lot of singles and studios that are available just because of the way the market has always built out. So this was this kind of came out of a model discussion in South Burlington, where they were talking about, you know, it doesn't make sense if we've got really good bulk and massing to regulate density at all, because really the bulk and massing talked about the neighborhood character. So as long as your building looks like your neighbor's buildings and if they want to have a single house with five bedrooms, great. If you want to have five single apartments, that's fine too. It's as long as it fits in that same same box. So that's the theory behind it. Obviously, there are some external impacts like parking. But that's the theory behind it that some people have been pushing and it's worth considering. Okay, thanks a lot, Mike. So that's, you know, that's the appetizer. We can have discussions later and explore this a bit. So thanks everyone for listening to that. Thanks everyone for your participation tonight. And do we have a motion to adjourn? We do. Okay, motion to adjourn. Second from Barb. In favor of adjournment, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, thanks everyone. Great night. Thank you.