 Recording in progress. Okay. Oh, I'm going to meet that. Okay. Great. All right. We're ready to go. Okay. So I am going to call the meeting to order. And so the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. And we have some changes to make. So the first thing is that we're going to jettison. A few items here. One is we hear going to. Jettison number. Oh, where did it? Okay. We're going to jesson the, the lockers. As well as the reaffirming the strategic plan. So. Otherwise we will take it as it is listed. Okay. Any one else have thoughts on the agenda? I'm sorry of your terminology. You mean delete. Oh yes. We're not going to be doing those. Right. Delete. Yes. Till another time. Yes. I thought at first she meant move ahead like jettison. Anyway. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just being, you know, too fancy. Okay. Any other. Thoughts on the agenda. Okay. All right. So with that, we will consider the agenda approved. So onto general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is not on our agenda. Otherwise. If it is not on our agenda agenda item, then there'll be an opportunity to speak to that item as it comes up in the agenda. But if it is not on our agenda, now's the time. If you would say your name where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes. That is very helpful to us. And just so everybody knows. With the consent agenda, though. If you're not familiar with it, if you're not familiar with it, if anybody is unfamiliar is that is a. Items that are assumed to be noncontroversial. You can still comment on them. If you would like, just let us know. And, you know, raise your hand or whatnot. And we will. Take comments on those. All right. So to kick us off. I actually have a thing that I would like to. And I get to, I can call on myself first. So just this past March 13th and anniversary came and went. That should have been recognized. Two years ago, which was that was the hiring date of Bill Frazier, our city manager. And I wish I could blame COVID as a reason that we did not recognize that that was his 25 years of working for the city of Montpelier. But I cannot blame that, but so to this is, this is the first meeting since that date. And so I'm thinking of this as the second anniversary of your 25 years. So we have a pin for you. So thank you. Absolutely. Thank you very much. I think the last two years just did that. That's right. We're back in person. Exactly. No problem. Yes. Well, we're glad to have you. All right. So beyond that, I will turn it over to the public. If you have something you can just form a queue up here. And we'll take people in person first, and we'll take people that are online. Go ahead and go. So again, so your name where you live and if you can try to keep your comments to about two minutes. I'll just take my mask off so I can speak more clearly. My name is Hanif Nazarali. I'm here today as the program liaison for can. Capital area neighborhoods. So I'd like to give you a quick update on can though. Today's a special day for can because on the consent agenda for this meeting is a formal partnership between the city and program support and sustainable Montpelier. But I'd like to speak a little bit on what can is for for those who don't already know that. Sustainable Montpelier has been supporting can for several years and through the era of COVID. In essence can is about connecting people and place. And can is a volunteer led neighborhood network that has grown to have 30 coordinators. In 20 neighborhoods across Montpelier. So the memorandum of understanding in the consent agenda aims for some new work. And that is to recruit more can coordinators. Connect more neighborhoods. And establish a regular two way communication. Between the residents and the city. So sustainable Montpelier will support the coordinators in the neighborhoods with timely information and tools for communication and organizing neighborhood events. So one new initiative is the neighborhood information kiosk. We have a new prototype kiosk for neighborhoods that provides a sort of a physical place a bulletin board for posting news and events. Another new piece of the program is civic engagement. Some of you might have participated in been involved can recently hosted a candidate forum for district three elections. So that residents in district three could get to know the candidates. So we're planning that to follow up with other forums so that residents can bring their voice to the counselors. Through their can coordinators. So when I say we I mean the team at sustainable Montpelier including Laura Brooke who has worked hard to make camp program support. What it is today. And I'm just stepping in to assist with that program. Hello I'm Laura Brooke. I just wanted to say hi put a face to the name. I've met you all but to anybody who's watching. I'm super excited. And I'm excited to be here with you. And I'm excited to be here with you. I think he's going to be great. He has many organizing backgrounds. But we've learned a lot these last two years. And partnering with you all with the city staff. The can coordinators like the boots on the ground. We're excited to make some progress. And take a move on these things here. So thank you. My name is Diane Sherman. I'm a resident of Montpelier and a property owner here. And I have a general public comment. I anticipate many of you have read this article roaches and broken locks that was published in seven days last November. It it's a joint for anybody doesn't know it's a joint investigation by VPR in seven days that about a landowner with a history of longstanding history of non-compliance with housing codes. And to outline the problems faced by municipalities trying to obtain compliance. So our community avoid getting into this exact same situation. I propose that Montpelier adopt an amendment to our zoning and subdivision regulations. That would expressly authorize the DRB to deny or condition a development permit based on the compliance history of an applicant. I'm not saying that the DRB doesn't have this authority right now, but it's opaque at best. I have two brief points of clarification. One writing such amendment warrants care because as you may know precedent exists that indicates an applicant's identity should not be considered when reviewing development applications. This obviously for good reason. It helps prevent discrimination. However, there is a distinct and significant difference between these two considerations. One is taking into account an applicant's identity such as their race their gender or even their motivation behind putting forward a development permit, all of which is off limits. On the other hand there's taking into account the applicant's past property use as demonstrated by their compliance history with the exact type of laws they will be expected to comply with in the context of the property use they are proposing. So consider the state of Vermont agencies and departments within the state routinely consider and in fact are required to consider an applicant's compliance history with ethical and comparable laws when considering whether to issue permits and licenses. I'm asking Montpiler to do the same for the DRB to give it that authority. Second point and I will keep this brief and provide written follow up. But as we know I want to recognize that housing is a major concern and I wouldn't want to ask you to adopt an amendment that was so broad that would deter responsible landowners from putting forth applications. So I would propose that you really focus this amendment on the problem which includes for instance the situation of repeat and knowing disregard of housing code requirements dealing with tenant and community health safety and welfare and retaliatory actions taken against tenants when entities and individuals try to correct that non-compliance among other things that are outlined in this article and again that I'll address in writing. But what this creates is what is outlined in this article is a situation that is completely intractable for the municipality and also for the communities in which these developments exist. So in short I'm asking you to consider preventing this from happening here. I'm asking you to put on the agenda in a meeting coming up and vote to task the Planning Commission to work with your attorney to draft an amendment to the zoning and subdivision regulations that would grant express authority to the DRB to deny or condition a permit based on the compliance history of an applicant from their property use that rises to this level. Thank you for taking the time to listen. Thank you. Hi, I'm Susan C. Walbridge. I live at 11 Monsignor Crosby Avenue. I was born here. I've lived my entire almost 69 years here. I've lived 67 of my years in the same house. But I want to share another story about what's going on with Ukraine. I went to the State House Vigil the evening one and so the day before I found out about that I went to town on trying to make something and in that particular case I didn't have the text on this but I had a battery operated candles on each side since it was a vigil so it would illuminate it. While I'm standing there a couple comes to me and they asked to take a picture of it turns out is because they wanted to send pictures of it to Kyiv right after the vigil where they have family that are stuck and cannot escape. And I exchanged information with them and I got a text the next morning from the wife and it had made it to Kyiv. So they know that Vermont cares and they know this happened in Montpelier. And then I joined the group at the post office Tuesdays and Thursdays for just the noon hour and I was there and there's two women that are there and they're both Ukrainians that had moved to Vermont and one of them at the very end came over and said I want pictures of your sign and again it was to send them live again over to two different cities that again were being bombed so that her families couldn't get out and at the meeting yesterday she approached me to say that she got word back that they got those pictures. So people it does make a difference I mean I'm shocked that this got over their lives so that they know. And one of them the cousin had said how emotional he became to know so far away people care and they know the truth of what's going on. So be proud of that and I'm proud to be a native Montpelierite. Thank you. Thank you. Steve Whitaker Montpelier. I attempted to ask a member of the council to ask for an agenda item. There's a pending open meeting violation. The city really needs an attorney to address these issues. Every public records and open meeting by every public records request and appeal ahead of the agency and open meeting violations are absolutely bungled by the city manager. He does not know the law. He's not obviously consulting but the open meeting violation is explicit to a certain subset of meetings that were enacted that were held virtual only relating to the act 78 of 2022. Those recordings are not in the city's possession and Orca is not obligated to provide copies. Same issue happens with CVPSA but that's another story other forum. So you're going to end up to comply with the law you're going to need to have a special meeting either Thursday, Friday or Monday and then complete the written response according to the statutory requirements before Monday which is a 10 calendar day deadline unlike public records law which is five business days from an appeal. So I attempted to get it on the agenda so you could discuss it. You may want to add it under other business and discuss it. I don't want to use up my two minutes on that topic but it's your obligation to deal with that. Redactions. I've made public records requests and anybody who's anybody can say, oh, that's confidential but when we're spending public money on public radios and public technology the public has a right to know what it's being spent on what model numbers, what prices, et cetera. You can't just carry water for some over secretive corporation. There was a case, I had a case here in Superior Court and Judge Teachout made clear to the, it was vital, the functional equivalent of a public agency with regard to medical records said government is not in the business of keeping trade secrets so she gave a limited window of time to allow Motorola in this case to seek an injunction to prevent the release of the data. What I would ask you to consider is these types of redactions. Redactions for system security are one thing. I'm not arguing with those. Redactions for trade secrets that aren't even our trade secrets because we don't have trade secrets invoke the 10 day, 10 business day and give the party who's claiming the trade secrets 10 days to get an injunction or that it's going to get released you can't be buying hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars worth of radio equipment and et cetera and keep the people from being able to scrutinize what's being bought, how is it compatible, et cetera. So that's an appeal to the head of the agency that's long overdue and still hasn't been responded to properly. You need to give clear direction to your head of the agency on how to handle that. Bathrooms, the bathrooms committee still has not met. I swear y'all should just quit using the bathroom until you can make some bathrooms available. April 15th we're about to have 10 more homeless people on the street virtually doubling the population downtown of the unhoused and we don't have 24 hour bathrooms and we're still not enforcing the bathrooms at the transit center during the lunch hour which is again a violation of the lease and a mismanager not enforcing the lease. Over $10,000 has been spent on an architect to consider public safety dispatch renovation designs which is totally at odds which has been going on in secret and it odds and undermining the work of Central Vermont Public Safety Agency. I have not yet got a clear reading from a lawyer on whether Montpelier may have a fiduciary obligation to not undermine the very inter-municipal corporation that it is a member of and so to flagrantly be undermining it by having Chief Pete higher Black River design with no approval by the council to spend over $10,000 doing work that might be off or not. That's reckless expenditure of the public money and it's beyond the authority in my view of the city manager to spend that kind of money. I also understand you've been spending money on the Elks Club property again without an approved budget for such. I would ask that the police corruption issues be put on the agenda. We need a citizen oversight body, not a review or an advisory. We've got police, I've got personal evidence of police theft, harassment, destruction of evidence and lying on sworn statements. That needs to be brought up and discussed. That's not something you put on the scope of your police review committee. It didn't get dealt with in the report and y'all keep trying to sweep it under the rug. Agendas and packets, I think you should always have at least a couple of agendas and full packets so that documents can be referenced that are included, that are coming up. I will save the locker discussion. Parklet, you were told last meeting that none of the parklets were put in fire lanes. That was another lie by our city manager. The fire lane signs were even one of the fire lane signs was cut down and bolted to the outside of the parklet in the Haney lot eight feet further from where its original stem is. It was beyond the city manager's authority to issue a parklet permit that wasn't in a parking place. A fire lane is not a parking place. He did not have the authority to create that and it's in a fire lane. I learned about it from the complaints from the truckers that have to come in and out of there delivering food. You need to deal with the fact that you're not getting the truth as often as you like to pretend you are. Thank you. Anyone else who's in person? Okay. There are a few folks online who would like to say something and we're going to go in the order here on my screen. We are going to start with Joanne. To be fair, before you go Joanne, I just want to make a note for folks who are online. If you could change your name to be your first and last name, that would be helpful so I can address you properly and we can have your name accurately for the record. Anyway, Joanne, go ahead. Hi, Jodi Pedersen from Colonial Drive. Thank you. The Zoom link wouldn't work for me and I ended up having to put in all the numbers and I ended up with something different, but I'll try to fix it for next time. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I was wondering if our city manager could give us a brief update on the status of the land purchase. Anything moving along with that, including maybe a summary of how many, how many people are on the agenda. I have a question that my friend, has received by email. I know we had up to 155 people at that first meeting. Wondering when you might be planning another meeting and what are the next steps? I noticed I didn't see anything on the agenda about it. That's why I'm asking. for that. I saw something about the rec field and the zoning changes, but were there any proposed change of designation for that area? Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to answer some of those? I was actually going to talk about this briefly at the end of the meeting, so I'll try to remember everything you asked, Jody. I think the easiest thing is we actually have on our next meeting's agenda was going to be to go through the follow-up process, so we'll have more detail about that at that time, so April 13th, I believe, is the date. So our next regular council meeting, I think we received about 10 additional comments from Mary. We're compiling them now in my category so that we can put those back out. We're assuming the council approves the consent agenda tonight. We're getting a new piece of software that allows for sort of polling and public back and forth, so we're going to be putting those out for public comment in between. As far as the actual purchase, we are exchanging purchase and sale agreements for finalizing some details, and I suspect that we'll finalize after April 1. As far as zoning, it's kind of way too early for that. I think we need to see what gets master plan and what is needed and what if any zoning changes are needed at that time. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, Jennifer Tochi, I'm not sure how to say your last name. Jennifer, are you there or looks like also... Hi. Hi, maybe this is Alan. Go ahead. Yes, Jennifer Toce and Alan Johnson. This is Alan Johnson speaking, Montpelier residents. Before moving up here a little over year ago, I was on the Harvard Select Board for five years and chaired the Energy Commission down there for years before that. So just you know where I'm coming from, I want to say thank you very much to everyone on this call, particularly our representatives and our staff members that put in so much extra work for these calls, and I appreciate the challenges of letting people speak and be heard and giving them extra time to be heard and navigating those waters delicately. So thank you so much for that and I mainly wanted to put in a vote of support for the previous speaker. I apologize it didn't catch her name regarding holding people accountable for their past records of adherence to law, certainly for development in areas of public safety like that. We certainly do the same thing in many other areas of government, particularly best example off the top of my head is the liquor licenses that are about to be approved, right? So if you don't hold up to the liquor laws, you have a bad track record, you don't get to participate in that area of public safety. So definitely something to consider. I think it sounds like a good policy. There may be pitfalls, but worth considering. And then just to mention, I don't know, it seems like Mr. Frazier's microphone has improved a little bit, but it's definitely a poor sound quality on this end coming from his mic. That is all, all right, thank you. All right, Peter Kelman, go ahead. My name is Peter Kelman. I live on Mountain View Street in Montpelier. I'm pretty sure that you, the mayor, city council and city manager are all aware that as a result of intense public pressure, the landlords, Mark and Rick Boeve have now reversed their decision to the Vic 24 low income, mostly refugee families from a Winooski apartment complex that the Boeves own and had intended to renovate in order to charge market rate rents. I think that many, if not all of you, are concerned and perhaps frustrated that it isn't clear whether you as leaders of Montpelier city government would be able to prevent similarly unjustified evictions happening here. And that's why I think it's important that you take away from these events two vital lessons. One, Vermont and perhaps municipalities like Montpelier badly need enforceable responsible landlord laws. And two, even if municipalities like Montpelier are currently unable to regulate and enforce responsible landlord behavior, the voices of you, our government leaders joined with others can create the kind of public pressure that caused the Boeves to radically alter their plans. I've emailed all of you a copy of the letter that Winooski city leaders and a coalition of nonprofits sent to Governor Phil Scott and legislative leaders asking among related matters that state lawmakers can act new protections for low income and refugee tenants. I hope that you've all had or will have a chance to read it. And now even though the situation in Winooski appears to have been resolved in a socially just manner, I speak on behalf of a number of Montpelier residents who have contacted me to urge you our city council to publicly endorse that letter at your earliest convenience. The city council is known for taking stands such as sanctuary city, having black lives matter painted on our side on our streets and non citizen voting. This is the same kind of issue that you can speak out on whether or not you have the legal right to regulate it. Although I again endorse the insurance request that you look into the legality of it because it may turn out that you do. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just on that note, I did have the opportunity to check in with the Mayor of Winooski, Mayor Lott about the letter that they are sending to their lawmakers to their delegation there and asked if it would be appropriate for us to sign on to it and she thought that would be just fine. Even though I will note that the last paragraph of that letter says that we are supporting the particular residents of this one building block and obviously the people signing on to that letter in from Winooski would be supporting them in a very different way than we are but nonetheless it sounds like that would be all right. One possibility is that we could look at signing on to such a letter. I would recommend for next time so that such a letter would have the opportunity to be circulated and published and the community would have the opportunity to check that out before we approve something like tonight unless you want to. I guess that would be my recommendation is that we put that on for next time. I'm seeing some nods. Any other thoughts on that? Yes, Lauren. I mean just process-wise it looks like this was already submitted. Does it make sense for us to write a brief letter just supporting the sentiments of it and submitting it to the same entities? If this is kind of a closed letter that would be I mean I like the idea and thanks Peter for bringing this and for people raising some good ideas about how to put this out there but just process-wise. Sure we can think about that before next meeting I guess. Thoughts on that? Okay we'll go in that direction. Okay all right so can we ask you to draft something up for us? Thank you awesome and you have the copy of the original okay super. All right okay all right well thank you everybody thank you for your comments. All right so we are going to move on now to the consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? Yes Jack. Move the consent agenda. Just to note there are no minutes on the consent agenda. Thank you. I'll second it. Okay and we're understanding that it's without the minutes. Okay. Right there is an email from McClurk earlier today and we're expecting that on the agenda next time. Okay any comments on the consent agenda or any items on it? Yes Lauren. Just briefly just wanted to say that I'm really appreciating the analysis that we're getting about vehicles and purchases that involve fossil fuels and the responsibility I know all of our departments are taking as we all try to get to net zero and the challenges we sometimes face but understanding kind of the state of what's available and what we can do so thanks to the chief and the team at MPD for for getting us that information and appreciate it in an ongoing way. I agree. Who else? Okay all right so about the consent agenda all in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay so the consent agenda passes so we are up to an appointment to the complete streets group committee and I believe we just have one applicant from Hanif Nazarali who I believe is here. Would you be up for just reintroducing yourself to us and just tell us about your interest in joining this committee? I have already served on the complete streets committee and I have a particular role on another committee the Montpelier Transport Infrastructure Committee which I've been serving serving on as a full member whereas on complete streets I'm an alternate and over the two years I think that I've been involved with both committees I've developed a role of liaison so kind of trying to share information between the two committees and also distinguish the specific mandates of the committees on initiatives that we are taking and actually you'll be hearing about one of those initiatives that's a joint initiative later on in the agenda today. Thank you Connor. I'll move to a point in Nief as the alternate spot on the complete streets committee and I would just say thank you for all you do for the community you really roll up your sleeves and do the work not just sit in meetings I really appreciate that. Yes go ahead and also add he does a wonderful job of liaison between the two committees thank you. Great okay so there's a motion and a second any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye and opposed okay thank you honey if we appreciate your service on on this this committee and as the liaison uh all right all right so we are up to the complete streets presentation about the Berry Street bike path pilot and I think I'm turning this over either to Donna or possibly to Hanif. Oh holly is oh okay thank you yeah there you are sorry okay no worries I wonder does Cameron hold the the the magic to allow me to share slides and you should be able to now I think okay great first um I'd just like to thank the council for approving Hanif's appointment um since moving to Montpelier in 2019 he has been a wonderful peer on the complete streets committee and we do deeply appreciate the translation he often makes for all of us in his role as liaison and while I am tagged to present I should say that Donna Bate has given us good guidance in preparing this presentation and it would not have been possible without the coordination of Hanif bringing the partners together of Cori Lyons expertise representing the Department of Public Works um and Jonathan Weber who is the complete street complete streets program manager for local motion is also attending virtually Jonathan has been a great partner to the complete streets committee um previously some of you may have remembered our e-bike lending pilot that occurred last summer um Jonathan's organization has been doing this type of work in assisting other complete streets committees around the state for over 20 years and he has been absolutely instrumental in helping us put together some of the information that you're going to see in the presentation so with that I just have a few quick slides uh to kind of assist this update um so for everyone this is uh related to the 2019 endorse Main Street and Berry Street Bicycle and Pedestrian Scoping Study this is a two-way public bike lane between Main Street and where the current recreation center is along Berry Street those of you following along uh front porch forum and around the turn of the year um may have noticed too a lot of lively discussion among residents about currently some of the issues um that this exact study and solution are meant to resolve so that study identified a long-term solution and a short-term solution to improve safety circulation the connectivity of people walking cycling and driving along this section of Main Street and Berry Street and I'm going to use a number of visuals which is the main reason for the slides to help illustrate this so everyone can kind of understand what what the numbers will look like so the long-term solution is a 10-foot wide asphalt recreation path this is basically an extension of the existing recreation path and the city has acquired the grant funding to design and construct that path through the state's bicycle and pedestrian program the project design consultant is anticipated to be selected in the coming weeks and that design process will occur in parallel with the design of a new traffic signal at the Berry Street and Main Street intersection that's the long-term solution and I'm primarily going to speak about the short-term solution but both of these have to deal with uh this image um so what you're seeing on the left hand side is figure 50 and that is from page 45 of that scoping study um and the inset to the right is a slightly larger version uh of this um and basically what you're looking at is the the uh and the designed two-way bike path along the south side of Berry Street between Main Street and again the recreation center and I'm using just a little bit of highlight there agreeing to kind of show people where we are talking about and this is kind of another visual to give you an idea of what this is going to look like it's two-way you can see folks moving in both directions here on this with a small buffer between vehicles driving along Berry Street and those using the bike path so the short-term solution is a two-way bike path on the south side of Berry separated by pavement markings and temporary vertical element which you'll see in a moment um and as mentioned the complete streets committee uh of which I am a member I forgot to tell you that has been working with uh Jonathan at local motion uh Cory and um Hanif uh and thinking about the design materials the budget logistics and implementation um one of the added benefits of having the short-term solution is going to be that um we'll get insights it'll help inform the long-term solution which is while designed uh we will obviously have a chance to help our residents um and users of the bike path into getting acquainted with it and behavior change the same for vehicle operators um and we should learn something in the process um but again this isn't meant to be a pilot it is just the short-term solution to what is an established long-term solution so our design considerations are that Berry Street is about um just under 37 feet wide the north side parking lane is seven feet wide um the short-term solution calls for basically two nine and a half wide auto lanes uh this is informed by the average annual daily traffic um rating uh that's done by the federal government the DOT that's the acceptable urban area width on low volume streets with little truck traffic which is how Berry Street is is defined um by the AADT and that leaves room for two four-foot lanes and a two-foot buffer um and that is following the national association of city uh traffic official recommendations and this is the same design as was used successfully in Burlington last year um so Jonathan was able to give us precedent to make sure that this design is both nationally benchmarked and locally um been tested successfully this is um a rendering basically of what this looks like so from I'm going to go right to left which is basically existing sidewalk and then the seven-foot parking lane to two drive lanes the vehicle operating lanes the two-foot buffer and then the two four-foot width lanes for the two-way bike path um so the materials involved in the implementation of this um there are the vertical elements those are meant to be uh posts they're slightly taller posts that will be placed 10 to 7 feet apart um we also thought about uh an alternative to cones which are um perhaps less distinct for this type of application we wanted an element that was a bit unique that would capture attention uh so we've identified the wave delineators which is a commonly used material for this exact type of implementation um and this these come with the added benefit that local motion has a number of them to lend to the project which is great those can be supported by sandbags as well uh then we have spent a lot of time discussing paint both the tenure of paint meaning how long it can last uh once sprayed on the street um and we have options between 30 days and six months for different applications in this um if needed it can be reapplied during the course of the um short term application this summer and then local motion also has stencils and has advised on the markings um terms of style and color and placement and Jonathan and Corey have coordinated very closely on um which of these would make the most sense for Montpelier and um to make sure that this is also the the most cost effective and safe um type of installation and then additionally local motion has um suggested signage either end of the bike path which is um to include the signage of do not enter and bicycles only oh and two to the right hand side basically is an example of this wave delineator of the illustration you can see both its measurements um they're each about 93 inches long five and a half inches wide and 27 and a half inches high and weigh about 11 pounds so as I mentioned local motion is able to contribute the wave delineators for us um they may also be able to contribute the paint uh Jonathan might have more recent information about that but um thought that that might be an option um local motion will also be contributing information outreach the signage including translation the rule of the complete streets committee will help um in doing the public outreach and awareness building and coordinating volunteer support along with local motion for this um and Corey has um suggested that the $2,000 that may be needed for post and paint if not available from local motion um is within uh within existing budget basically i'll leave Corey or others to inform on that but basically it may not even be this it may not even be 2000 based on what local motion is able to contribute so our next steps as a team um coordinators of this um the city is to request that the trans not stripe the center line on Barry street this spring um for the reason that we are narrowing those two lanes uh local motion will support uh Corey and staff with the materials and markings there won't be markings at the main street intersection but there will be conflict markings which are basically to um ensure that those using the the few driveways that are impacted uh on Barry street to look both ways and recognize that there's a bike uh lane there now and um uh Corey is also going to see about adding green markings to contractor work because i think currently it's only yellow paint that's used um and again our role uh from the complete streets committee is to work with local motion to help assemble all of the materials and develop a volunteer and communication plan that's the update great thank you so much Holly uh any questions for Holly about the presentation yeah carry hi thank you so much um i am really intrigued to see this plan and curious about how it's going to work and then so along those lines i'm wondering what the plans are for kind of assessing how it's used how many bicycles are using it um and kind of what the what the interplay is between the the cars that are there and the loss of parking spaces and the additional bicycle traffic if there is any i'm wholly unqualified to answer that question carry um i think it's a great one i think it's probably something that we're going to have to talk more about in the complete streets committee um i would offer jonathan uh to suggest if this has been done uh such as in burlington any examples to share with the council yeah um there certainly are there are lots of ways to monitor bicycle traffic as well as vehicle speeds and also to collect quality of data from users on how the infrastructure is working throughout the the projects um i would i would you know say that for a project like this which really is uh an implementation of something that has already been endorsed by council for permanent installation i would you know wonder how that data would be used and for what purpose um but you know my recommendation would be to fit any kind of monitoring for bike traffic for this specific piece of infrastructure into mob pillars regular monitoring for bike traffic if you're doing any now thank you jonathan and carry thank you for that that question so oh sorry yeah go ahead we could also i don't i don't want to speak for them but we could also rely on our friends at the regional planning commission to potentially do some data collection and some bike monitoring in that type hey cori would you mind introducing yourself oh i'm sorry cori the line that uh public works okay thank you yeah donna go ahead and just to add another thing that's there for cars is we'll be putting yellow no parking bags over all the meters that are along the street the meters would stay because once this is gone and the full project comes then there's an expansion of that sidewalk to become a shared youth path and then the meters will be removed anyways great super any other questions okay any from the public okay all right thank you so much this is i think is very exciting and i'm looking forward to seeing this in action i'm using it actually so all right thanks again and so we're going to move on now to the next thing is the temporary parklet ordinance for second public hearing so i'm going to officially open the public hearing on this as this being our our second time with this any thoughts from the public or council we'll start with um is there anything you wanted to add bill just for those that are paying attention this is the last two summers we've enacted a temporary ordinance for parklets in the downtown area and this would be the third summer that that temporary ordinance was enacted this is the second public reading let the first public reading it changed the start date from may 1 to april 15 and that is included here and then we'd be working on a more permanent change for a longer term okay great any comments from folks in person i want to remind you steve woodaker i want to remind you that the uh you need more clarity on when the business is closed that the public still gets to use the public space that's particularly an issue uh i think on langdon street or on yeah langdon main uh these these folks put you know obstacles preventing the public from using the public space and that needs to be explicitly prohibited when the business is closed the public gets to use the public space and that has been agreed to conceptually but not enforced and not made explicit in the temporary ordinance so and clarify the fire lane issue and the cleaning there's a lot of dust and crap builds up under these things and right on either end of them because the street sweepers can't get in and who's obligated to get in there and shovel that stuff out it it blows right into the food or the people sitting outside so now would be the time with arpa money to get that vacuum cleaner i told you about several years ago thank you anyone else in person okay uh and i'm just going to turn quickly to folks online i don't see any hands but just want to check anyone else uh online want to weigh in okay any comments from council yeah connor go ahead bill would you be the point person if like businesses are wondering who to ask about the park litter is there someone on staff office okay great office yeah mary is the point person city manager's office yeah perfect go ahead donna time for a motion i think it might be yeah that we um we move ahead to the second reading oh no this it was the second reading oh wow i guess the last time we talked about it i didn't realize that was the first all right it's okay so i'd make a motion that we adopt the temporary here the the temporary parklet ordinance as written second okay um any further discussion okay um all in favor please say aye hi and opposed okay um all right so thanks everybody and i'm looking forward to hanging out in some parklets at some point this summer uh okay um hopefully formally closed oh thank you i will close the public hearing on the temporary parklet ordinance all right on to the zoning revision so this is our first public hearing um so i'm going to officially open the public hearing on uh the zoning uh amendments and just so that folks know of the flow of this particular item uh we have a presentation from our our planning director mic miller uh so we'll go to him first after that we will uh hear i'd like to hear uh comments from the public particularly and uh i think we ought to take them one item at a time so if folks have comments to make on on the first zoning change we'll do that first and then we'll we'll wrap that up and move on um to the other ones and though this uh the only anticipated vote for this evening would be to put uh here um a second public hearing on to our next agenda i will be recusing myself at least for the parts um of this that pertain to habitat for humanity um or a conflict of interest of mine so uh so i'll turn to jack to at least facilitate um those parts um all right so uh but first thing is uh to hear from our planning director um i can um try to think if there's anything else that needs to be said while i stall for them okay i may move actually this presentation i have faith so we're all set with that all right excellent make sure everyone can hear me it's good to be here in person again uh my name is mike miller i'm the planning director here for the city of montpelier and so tonight i'm here to give the the first introduction for everybody on the public hearing for amendments to the zoning and river hazard regulations so really quick i'm going to try not to make too much of a keep this presentation short so we're not spending time here listening to me we really want to hear from the public but i do want to go through explain what this hearing is about um what is everything that happened how did we get here what are the official amendments that we'll be voting on i'll go through the the changes that were in the memo it's it's in your packet it's available online if you go to the city's main website main web page uh near the bottom on the left hand side is a is a set that has a link to all of the the official changes um and i'll be going through the memo which has the 11 changes um i'll describe the river hazard amendments and then we'll get to some public comments so tonight this is two hearings in one so we are going to be talking about changes that are being proposed to the unified development regulations what everybody talks about is zoning bylaws but by state statute we have to call them unified development regulations um and this will include changes to the zoning map as well as changes to the text of the document and changes are also being proposed to the river hazard area regulations um which is really permanently adopting the interim changes that council made in 2020 with one minor uh reference addition that's been added to the rules for clarity and a memo was provided in the packet describing each of these proposals in detail and i will summarize each one but anyone who's looked through that memo knows it's probably 16 pages long i tried to put all the information in so if somebody wants the details of a particular piece they can have it but i'm not going to go through all 16 pages here tonight so how did we get here in this summer of 2021 staff started assembling a list of changes for consideration um counselors who've been here for a number of years know about once a year i'll be here to have these meetings to talk about making zoning changes so um this happens routinely on september 30th the planning commission held a special meeting to review these changes and recommends one ones to move to the hearing which we did um november 2021 we sent out notices to 330 property owners posted in newspapers and other required locations and then on november 29th and december 13th um the planning commission held their public hearings and it had good turnout and they had good comments and then january 10th and 24th the pc had planning commission had some deliberations before february 14th where the planning commission considered some amendments including what you'll hear about later on the sabins pasture addition um so they voted to make an addition in addition to what had already been considered and then voted to council for you guys to to make a consideration of that so what is officially being voted while we talk a lot about the memo um the memo uh it really tries to explain what the implications and outcomes of the change will be um but the official zoning document is the complete strike through that is found on the website plus the revised zoning map um so a lot of those are rather minor you might just be a strike through of three or four words but i i describe the impacts of what that strikeout will be but the official what we're officially when we vote to amend the zoning that's what's officially being voted and for river hazard there's an official document in online again um which includes the edits that are highlighted texts wasn't a strike through document is highlighted plus the interim river corridor map which was what was amended in 2020 um so i'll go through these really quick um and i just did want want to preface this up front that when i talk about a proposal that has come forward that spurred this uh the planning commission has always been was was very clear that as they were reviewing these it's not reviewing to approve or deny these projects some of these ideas for a zoning change came out because of a project but really they're looking at this request in the context of um our master plan and the the bigger picture so it's obviously sometimes hard to disconnect the two um but they they did try to go and look at what what is in the best interest of the community and not whether or not we are approving or denying a particular project um so zoning change number one um for folks trying to get oriented a little bit you'll see there's a um the road kind of coming through here that's main street that's north street and this is luma street so this is uh little road harris and av and wittier um and so there are 20 parcels on these including three there on luma street it's the area that's labeled nine dash three it's currently residential six it is part of the college street neighborhood even though it's not really near college street it is in that neighborhood and the proposal is to change that to res three and be part of the liberty street neighborhood liberty street east neighborhood it would allow modest increased in housing not inconsistent with the area we had limited public comments about this but it was overall supportive excuse me mike when you mention these different levels like res three res four res six could you for people who aren't done from aren't familiar could you mention what those terms mean sorry thank you jack i should have done that um so our zoning we weren't very creative when we were putting together the zoning it used to be medium density low density high density and we had so many districts we really couldn't use those so what we ended up doing was distinguishing districts based on lot size or density so res six is short for residential 6000 which means it has a 6000 square foot minimum lot size and requires one you can have a density of one unit per 6000 square feet so that would adjust to residential three which means you could have a 3000 square foot lot and one unit per 3000 square foot of property and so in in this particular case of the 20 properties i believe there were four properties that had parcels that were smaller than 6000 square feet so they would have been non-conforming parcels by going to residential 3000 that makes them conforming parcels so that's a little bit of the basis and if people have any other questions about that please feel free to interrupt me and let me know so zoning the second zoning change and this map looks very similar to the last one because it's it's just below it but is actually looking at heat and street so where the 9-8 is you'll see a road that's turning that's heat and street where heat and hospital and heat and woods long-term care facility are located so this will affect two parcels it'll shift them again from residential 6000 to residential 3000 same same discussion as before these properties were defined by staff and by the planning commission is being unique they don't really fit the residential 6000 character because there's the it's the old hospital and the long-term care facility so we decided that this was initiated by washington county mental health project to renovate the old hospital into 18 units plus five units next to the parking lot and they can't do that at the residential 6000 density so by shifting it to a residential 3000 they will be able to move forward with their project so that was what initiated it and spurred it and staff reviewed the current size of the properties and the buildings and found that it would be consistent with creating a new neighborhood excuse me a new neighborhood for them because it's a slightly different unique set of properties public comments were mixed on this at the planning commission level and we can go into that a little bit more or we may hear some additional comments on that some of it was the result of some miscommunication between washington county mental health and the staff who were preparing the materials for the public and then when we got to the hearing we got a slightly different version of what their project was so our presentation didn't match what their proposal was so the third change this involves two parcels this is northfield street where you see seven dash four is northfield street that's coming up that pink parcel is is I believe where the Econolodge is so this is across the street so this is a 58 acre parcel and so this involves two parcels and plus moving a small area out of the design review district the small parcels were in mixed use residential the large parcel where 11-7 is is currently in rural and we are going to shift that to a residential 9000 under this proposal it was initiated by a central vermont habitat for humanity project which many people may have heard about the change is really based on access to sewer and water which would be extended with this project so there's not there's this site that has a lot of steep slopes and has some challenges but there are portions of it that could be developed if sewer and water were extended and as has been done in other places in the city crestview being one there are places that have these internal parcels that have access to sewer and water and as a rule of thumb in planning you usually have at least a minimum zoning density of four units per acre if you're going to have sewer and water and the reason for that is it provides enough customer base to support the long-term maintenance of those sewer and water lines so if it's a lower density then those lines end up being subsidized by other other people so there's usually a rule of thumb if you're going to run sewer and water into an area it should have a one unit four units per acre which would be a residential 10 000 this is residential 9 000 which is our closest so that's the rule of thumb that's why we have recommended going to the residential 9 000 comments were generally negative at the planning commission towards the zoning change but positive towards the central vermont habitat project i'm sure we're going to go into this in much more detail later the challenge is the habitat for humanity needs the zoning change in order for their project to work so it's it's a little bit of a catch 22 but we can comment discuss this a little bit more later before you leave this picture what's the 11 7 you may have explained it and i missed so these the the numbers that we've had before i can't remember the ones in the previous ones but the 11-7 that is the neighborhood designation so we when we did the zoning changes in 2017 one thing we did was to break the the entire city into many many small neighborhoods of very similar conditions you so you see the 9-6 above that's prospect street and pleasant street cherry street so those all kind of have a very similar use and feel and context so they were grouped as one neighborhood and 11-7 is part of the colonial drive neighborhood because it's the most it's it's the adjacent neighborhood to that and most of those are the that density just to go back to that i made a wrong correlation in your other maps of when when the second number was a three or a six i thought that meant that three thousand it wasn't it was a reds three it's yeah neighborhood it's it's referring to the other number is just referring to the the legend in the the zoning map so my apologies about that confusion so the fourth and fifth changes these will go a little bit faster um the number four is to reduce the side setbacks and residential nine thousand district from 15 to 10 feet residential nine thousand has many neighborhoods in in Montpelier it's it's down you know you go out any road and you're going to end up in a res nine district and the issue is when you have these zoning rules is sometimes it doesn't it may match for many but not all of those different neighborhoods and we found there are a few neighborhoods where the 15 foot setback did create some non-conformities for the side setbacks and side setbacks can impact density tremendously because it keeps separating structures each structure and if you're at 15 feet and they're at 15 feet that makes each house 30 feet apart and if you've got ranch style houses you just start watching the the density kind of drop as it pushes pushes apart and apart and apart so the idea is if we had the 10 foot it'll reduce the number of non-conformities and help to allow for more compact developments number five is about rail setbacks in the eastern gateway district it will be five feet instead of 20 feet so it currently is 20 feet and there's a ton of non-conformities in there most of them are zero feet already so the rules are that it would be five feet instead of 20 feet but it can be zero if the property owner gets an agreement with the state rail division to allow for maintenance so this will eliminate many non-conformities and was initiated by one of the major property owners in the area because they have ideas for some expansion nothing specific at this time but they recognize that there was a problem with this 20 foot setback and they wanted to get that fixed and we didn't have any comments except for the property owners in that area who support it number six and number seven talk about planned unit developments so number six is about creating two new planned unit development types so when we developed our zoning in 2017-18 when it was finally adopted we didn't have any just general PUD rules that allow us to cluster lots we if you wanted to do some clustering lots you had to do one of these specific cottage cluster or new neighborhood or very specific types so what we did here was to just add in some general ones the general PUDs is that clustering of lots idea that you'll see sometimes with projects where you own a couple acres and you just want to cluster the lots at the front and leave the back as open space this would allow you to do it you don't get any density bonuses because it's just just giving you your benefit of being able to cluster those lots the footprint PUD applies to some condominium projects I took a quick look today through our tax maps I didn't see that we have any footprint PUDs currently in Montpelier but it does happen especially you'll see these if if you ever you know went to a timeshare in Stowe or in some of the ski resorts that's it's a common thing where how you would set up a condominium is by actually subdividing that lets you own the building in the condo as opposed to owning the rights to the building in the condo so it's it's it's pretty typical we probably won't get a lot of them but we added it in number seven is to remove the required PUDs not the first time you guys have heard this this is something I've been pushing for since since they were adopted so there are two PUDs the conservation and the new neighborhood PUD both of which require you at a certain number to use that PUD so if you do four or five lots in the conservation district you have to then do a conservation PUD and if you do 40 units over 10 years in a different district you're forced to the new neighborhood PUD another rule of thumb I try to use I encourage when we're writing regulations and doing things is make the projects that you want to have happen be the ones that are the easiest to do required PUDs is the opposite of that we want people to cluster lots but if you want to cluster lots then we're going to make you do a lot more work and make the process a lot harder so I've said I don't think there's going to be very many people who will ever do any of our PUDs but if they do it should be voluntary the other thing you will find and I've seen this in other communities is if you set that threshold you can only do let's say it's 40 you'll see people who will come in and say I was going to do 60 but I'm going to do 39 so I can avoid that requirement did we really help ourselves when we could have gotten a much bigger and better project but they wouldn't be able to build that project under the PUD so they backed it down to avoid doing the PUD so I've argued that I would rather get these the requirements removed you'll still have those as an option but remove the requirements they're also difficult to administer over time because you're tracking the number of lots over 10 years I'll leave that for my memo but if there are questions I can get into that the planning commission also wanted to note that number three when we talked about Northfield Street and number seven this one here to remove required PUDs could be applied differently now the planning commission's recommendation is to go to residential 9,000 on Northfield Street and to eliminate the required PUDs but they did want to recognize that people could go through and say well we could keep the required PUD and then require the folks on Northfield Street to go through the through the PUD process that the problem is the conservation PUD which is when they would be required to go through would only offer them 25 units which is half of what they need to to basically make their project viable so while this is a technically a possible thing it functionally would still kill that project if which is why the planning commission ultimately recommended it but they did want to note that there were there was this other alternative that would have required that that they cluster and conserve land so changes eight nine eight is another one that you've you've received a lot of testimony on written and you'll probably hear some more on this is the removal of the residential density in the residential 1500 and riverfront district so as the numbers get smaller just so people in your minds is a little counterintuitive so as the numbers get smaller the lots get smaller and densities get bigger so more units can be on residential 1500 than residential 3000 there are more units on a residential 3000 than 6000 so just so people can understand these numbers aren't getting less dense they're getting more dense so this would remove the residential density requirement in those two districts this is a planning commission proposal in the planning commission profession currently is evolving away from using density as as it is arbitrary and can have unforeseen negative outcomes so the idea is instead to let design standards define character this was reviewed by AARP and CNU which is AARP is actually the name of the organization now I believe and CNU is the Congress of New Urbanism they were randomly just going through and picking communities to review and unbeknownst to us they reviewed Montpelier our rules and when we discussed this they talked about that this was a good idea but caution that we need better design standards now this happened after the planning commission and we didn't get their report until after the planning commission's memo so you do have a memo but they didn't have the benefit of the the report to actually quote and reference so I did want to point that out that we had a meeting I relayed the information that I heard in that meeting to the planning commission who had the conversations there's been I think a lot made and there might be some some stuff made about the fact that staff myself did not recommend this citing the need for better standards first and while I think there's a lot that's been made that there's a disagreement between the planning commission and myself we both agree this is moving away from density requirements is a good idea and we both agree and I agree with that the question is whether or not we believe everything is we have the design standards in place today that would prevent bad things from happening I'm not sure their opinion is that this isn't a big problem for us and I can agree we haven't had big problems that have come up with directly with this but at the same time I'm the person has to sit in the seat and go and say am I comfortable telling people that everything is going to be fine and I can't guarantee that we wouldn't have problems that would result and that's why I feel we should get the design standards first and then move towards removing the density the planning commission is comfortable moving ahead now and fixing the design standards over time because these design issues haven't been a problem and I think staff or planning commissioners are online who can comment on that later if you guys want to directly address them I believe Kirby and I think I saw Aaron were both online if you want to directly address things with them so nine are the minor technical fixes I'll just skip through most of these except to say we got a lot of comment on the solar access which we can go into more detail a little bit so the solar access was an issue because the way the solar access rules are written today you cannot shade yards walls or roofs so it became very strict to go through and say you know not only can the new building if we want to have infill development it's very quick to have a shadow from the top of that roof that's going to trip over a property line and shade any amount on December 21st that would not meet the rules so the planning commission um we had a discussion planning commission decided with staff recommendations that we would adjust it to uh that we would be protecting solar existing and proposed solar devices and not the broader walls yards and roofs so that's the change there which I'm sure we will hear some more about as well so I skipped from nine to eleven that's because ten was our river hazard which we'll go back to so it's a little bit faded and what we can see here but if you look carefully you will see there is both a yellow line let me get in here there's my yellow line coming up and over this is Saban's pasture and you'll see berry street along the bottom of the screen here and you'll also see a new green line see if I can get my cursor over here again and I can't really do that so um there is a green line that's right next to it so that this is there was a proposal at the end um for to change the river front boundary in Saban's pasture to bring it bring in the eastern line 40 feet and move out the part of the northern line by 90 feet so I think you can see the green line in there that kind of juts out at the top um these are all internal boundary adjustments so Saban's pasture is 100 acres in size and 15 acres of which was cut out to be in the riverfront this was the compromise that was worked out by city council in 2017 um but when they're when the um property owners were starting to look at some development projects that they're exploring they noticed that the riverfront district's actually only 14.1 acres and there was some pieces that were undevelopable and there's a little piece to the north where the bump out is that would allow them to put in one additional um structure that they were trying to fit into the the bottom um they needed the additional land to fit in the one more building so they requested after we had closed the public hearings um so the planning commission um because we knew that the owners of Saban's pasture were going to come in and present it to city council that would automatically trigger the fact that city council would then have to send it back to the planning commission for comment so the planning commission can comment on it to send it back to city council so to kind of cut out that loop and it was the day they were going to be voting to send the entire amendment to you they just reviewed it at that time to go through and say this is a minor amendment um and you should use city council with us should um be aware that there was not specific comment at the planning commission level and you guys should do some extra outreach um we sent the planning department sent letters to every abutter to Saban's pasture so they have been notified of the change um and just so you get a little bit of context that northern line is 1300 feet from the southern boundary of leap frog hollow parcel so there is a lot of land that is in between those two it is 850 feet from the nearest parcel line on McKinley street and it's a couple hundred feet from the parcel you see right there so it's a um um because that parcel line along the top is 500 feet so you can see it's it's almost 300 feet probably just to get to um the parcel next to it so the thought from the planning commission was it was a relatively minor adjustment um and they are they are in support of making this adjustment it still continues to be less than the 15 acres so at the time city council said we want 15 acres of riverfront we want 85 acres of rural it didn't work out that way and ended up with 14.1 acres by making this adjustment it will be 14.5 acres of riverfront so all right almost there one step back we go to to number 10 which was the river hazard area changes so these were the interim rules um passed in january of 2020 those rules describe what rules apply to accessory structures in the river corridor and we made a process for waivers um this was because river corridors are only only appear north of coming street um on the north branch that's the only place we have a river corridor it's the only place it's enforced but if somebody is in a river corridor and they want to put a shed or they want to put some small accessory structures the rules weren't clear that they could do it and so we established some some rules that said all right these are the things you can put into a river corridor uh it also changed the map on coming street because there was a portion of the river corridor that went on the other side of coming street and according to the rules the state uses to draft these maps roads are supposed to be hard boundaries so if a river corridor crosses it they always clip it and for some reason it never got clipped so when we made the proposal we made that change and then there was the one text change that I referred to which really helps people find this section about accessory structures so um this is um this is it so let me go through and just say I know the process is typically we would hear get questions from the council and questions from the public I guess it's up to you guys how you want to handle it and the next hearing is April 13th so there is at least one more hearing on this there can be as many as you want I remember when we did this in 2017 we had 20 22 of them I believe so those were the good old days when you saw me every week so I'll open open to questions I guess okay well just uh to start here are there clarifying questions not necessarily a time for a pining but clarifying questions uh from council yeah go ahead Connor sure Mike uh your character of the neighborhood comes up all the time and it feels like it's being no brainer to like what's the character of the neighborhood but I wondered is there like a written definition of that or if not how do you see the character of the neighborhood I think it could be a bit subjective maybe so it can be a bit subjective and it's actually one of the one of the I guess some of the one of the fundamental pieces of when you're writing regulations you can write things to be objective or you can write things to be subjective and objective standards we can then put into the administrative category and Audra and Meredith can process those but certain things we want flexibility and we need the ability to to let reasonable persons decide what is appropriate and character of the area is one of those classics that always falls into the we need to let the reasonable person make that determination so that's why those always go to the drb that's part of conditional use review that said because it comes up a lot and it is a legal term there is something that's the the qui chi decision from southern Vermont that came out a couple decades ago now that attorneys would know about and it really just looks at the whether it's an undo adverse effect upon so they kind of break it into pieces and ask the first question well is it you know is is this adverse is this undo and that's what we try to do and so within our zoning for each one of those 57 neighborhoods that I talked about so we broke the city and 57 we put a small descriptor in there of what is kind of the character of that neighborhood it's a historic neighborhood it's you know has mostly single family homes it's mixed use it's so that way the drb gets a sense of okay here's what we think of as the character of the neighborhood now is this proposal undo having an adverse effect upon that that character it is vague but it is a pretty standard um practice and is in virtually every every um every zoning regulation that's helpful thanks any other questions from council yeah jack thanks for this presentation mike i've got a few questions mostly about uh number eight okay i think here because there's been discussion both uh in your presentation and by the comments about the the report from what is it c c and u and a arp um is is this the report that you're talking about here it says enabling better places a zoning guide for vermont neighborhoods or is there something specific to our zoning ordinance uh there's something specific to our zoning ordinance and i think i forwarded it today unless that didn't make it um i think i sent it up to mary and bill and maybe it didn't it may not have made it into the packet i i had been sending out a lot of stuff and somebody asked me if i'd sent it to council and i was like i don't remember if that was one of my okay thanks i don't there is a specific document um it's enabling better places code reform roadmap vermont pillier vermont oh great i i don't recall seeing it but of course i was also working today but but i think that would be a good thing to uh make sure the council has to make sure it's on the on the city's web page so anyone else who's interested in this because i noticed that wasn't wasn't a link in in your presentation to it there wasn't a link in the commenter's presentation to it and so that would be good to have um but following on that uh on that track what i understand a primary comment is that the current zoning by-law does not give enough design guidance to protect the neighborhoods from uh from bad consequences that might happen if uh if we get rid of the uh the density requirement and so i looked a little bit at the zoning by-law and and the zoning by-law does have district has developmental guidelines and standards for each type of neighborhood um so that 2.108 or 2.108 talks about uh residential 1500 uh and 2.104 talks about uh riverfront and there are descriptions there's a section of environmental standards and uh and there are descriptions of some of the things that seem kind of detailed like building facade shall be composed of modules or bays that incorporate visible changes feature a regular pattern of windows it it all seems like it's it's kind of detailed and uh and so i wonder why that isn't enough so those seem to be enough yeah so those standards were are applicable only to very specific projects so if something is a major site plan then those rules will start to be applied but they're not in the design review district where there's a committee that's going to review them so in some cases um a project will be big enough have enough square footage that it'll trigger a major site plan and those rules will apply but if somebody's doing infill um and and and doing a number of smaller structures they could avoid meeting it needing to meet any of the architectural standards okay that gets me to my next question which is design review it seems like whenever there's a discussion of design review there's a fight because there are people who want to be in design review and people who don't want to be in design review and and nobody seems like nobody's happy with with the way it comes out because obviously if you don't want to be in design review that means you don't want the city telling you what to do with your property more than it already is so if we if we go down the track of saying well we're going to expand design review and expand standards where does that lead us leads us to another fight right yeah you've been doing this long enough jack i i would my experience has been um that that expanding we had proposed in in 2016 i think of of expanding the design review district and through the zoning process the design review district kept getting smaller so instead of we couldn't even maintain the size of the existing district because we had to remove places which was disappointing but again i think that's it's a reasonable balance to think about expanding the design review to cover some of these areas to resolve that issue but i think we would have to have a discussion about the bigger process what would you want if we were going to do that i don't think we could just simply add that to the list i think that's something we would have to go through and it would have to go back to the planning commission then when it comes back to council i think we would have to you know if i were recommending a process to you i'd recommend we'd have to probably notify with a letter to everybody in those districts that we were going to consider expanding them and adding them in um and the last proposal to do that i think is the the most full that i've had for it was a planning commission public hearing that filled this entire room um when the last time we expanded we're proposed expanding so i would expect a similar thought process thanks that's all i have for the moment thank you other questions you're going Connor yeah that might be a bit daft on number three uh so people liked the habitat project they did like the zoning changes that would enable the habitat project to go forward what am i missing is that the boat property to no nothing there's no boat no boat of anything in this um so the concern and i'm i'm going to be giving you you know reading into other people's comments um and so i'm sure they will correct me if i if i don't hit this correctly for you um their concern is that if we do the zoning change to allow this project to happen and then habitat project fails uh any developer can come in and take advantage of this new high density and can put uh 270 units out there you know the reality is there's a lot of steep slopes out there and there's not going to be 270 units fitting in there because just because of how steep it is but um you know from a from a number standpoint yes uh it would be open to the next the next person who comes along our position has been um as as staff and what we know of the the project they're doing their feasibility study habitat is and they need to have the rules in place to know it costs a couple hundred thousand dollars to put together and do these plans and designs and what you can feasibly do and they really can't make that investment if they don't know that they're going to get the zoning change to happen because that that's a lot of money to invest without having that assurity that the zoning can change so this is a proposal to change the zoning to allow them to move forward with the planning knowing their the the parameters that they have to meet so back to that now if it's property specific is that what you call spot zoning this was technically shift to two parcels but that's really it comes in exception versus yeah so spot zoning is a common um and let me qualify stuff now um i talk a lot about some some legal standards and and legal stuff and um as a part being a icp certified planner i'm required to take law classes every year so i'm familiar with law but i am not actually a licensed lawyer so i will give you comments based on my amateur um um stuff but spot zoning is it's it's an expression and a thing that a lot that is used commonly but doesn't actually have a legal legal piece the the fundamental behind a spot zoning is you or the opposite of that what the court looks for is to treat people of similar character of similar circumstance they should be treated in a similar manner so you should not single out a a parcel to go through and say this one is going to get special standards even though they're not a special property so that would be spot zoning even if we don't even it's not a legal thing that's what usually we're talking about is is either making special exceptions to make them make it better for them or making special exceptions to make it worse for them um so this even though it's just one parcel and it's shifting it it is it is part of the abutting parcel and there's a logic behind why it's changing which is running sewer and water in means it shouldn't be zoned rural you shouldn't be running sewer and water into a rural area because they're going to run the sewer and water in we should rezone that to residential 9 000 to make sure that we get a sufficient density that that utility is properly utilized um and so that's not even though we're changing one parcel it is still going to be consistent with the neighbors um it's not being treated inconsistent with you know there's not a similar parcel next to it that of similar in a similar situation with similar conditions so you talk about one parcel but basically it's like what you were talking about savings pastor is sort of moving the line on savings pastors you move the riverfront and here you want to move the line so you're just including or excluding a piece of property in a neighboring zone yeah he yeah it's being yeah it could be lumped in with the its neighbors on hill street which are rural or it could be lumped into its neighbors on colonial drive which are residential nine i like that better than exception thank you other questions lauren yeah thanks i just had a couple um on some of the ones that i um anticipate not having as many public comments on just for some clarity um for the rail setback just i know there's been some conversation about um increasing commuter rail for example between barry and montville you're like are there any concerns or any conflicts you foresee if we actually did ramp up rail usage in the future or would you not anticipate any i wouldn't expect any most of these properties um so if i if i didn't include the map in it because it was really hard to see most of the areas that we are talking about are um where the bike path is on that abandoned section so this is over just past um the the harvest equipment so once you get past harvest equipment that rail line still continues all the way up till it stops at gallison hill so all of those buildings that are on um melons properties uh cabot um all of those properties all about an abandoned rail line and they all have a 20 foot setback so most of what we're talking about is abandoned rail lines not active rail lines but they're still owned by the state they're not going to give them up so um um they those are fine there are a couple agway um and the um two rivers property so again if somebody comes in and wants to go and build a zero lot line on the active rail line chances are better that they're not going to get an agreement from the um from the state unless it is a rail it's for a rail use so in other words i'm going to put a rail siding on and i'm going to put something right on the rail line so i could take advantage of that siding um rail probably isn't going to let them build up to the zero lot line um and even if they did get the agreement this the waiver still has to go to the drb to get the approval um so i don't i don't think i don't foresee any issues with that thank you um on the solar um shading proposal i guess the only question i had you know so it looks like the proposal is for existing or permitted so like in the process i mean is there any way i hate to like lose solar potential in the city like if you're shading someone's whole roof or something so i i get and i you know i can just imagine how difficult this issue is to measure and whatever but i mean if there's some substantial shading of potential solar opportunity where you're shading at your neighbor from being able to go solar is is there some ground in there that i mean it's different if you're like you described you know going dipping onto the property line is one thing but shading someone's roof or something is another yep so the planning commission i laid out a couple options for them to consider um and the discussion really came up with uh if one of our number one goals is to is to try to make sure we get these infill projects going a lot of these are going to very quickly end up especially if it's a two-story or three-story building very quickly start shading the other side so they didn't want the shading requirement especially on properties that have trees um to end up you know there's no there's very little solar potential because there's already a lot of trees but it's going to shade the other property um they kind of went back and forth as to where they would draw that line and i i kind of drew a couple of lines in the sand and said well one i could guarantee we would need to do or we really should do is to make sure we protect existing and proposed solar projects we really shouldn't cross that line and then kind of had a bunch of options on the way back down um and and their decision was because we if we really want infill um we are downtown we have a lot of trees we have a lot of topography the buildings are going to only occasionally be the problem people are more likely to have problems with these other issues of topography and and and trees so their their vote was and their recommendation is therefore to just go with um protecting the existing and proposed yeah go for it um on the planned unit developments um so you said you know it makes sense that we don't want to effectively discourage people from doing clustered buildings paired with conservation are there policies and you know maybe it's just something to be thinking about but are there ways that we could be encouraging that with incentives or penalizing what we don't want to see of spread out fragmenting development um i mean are there strategies you've seen of successful ways to encourage that which it seems like was probably the intention of this um i don't know if i have a good answer for that one um usually developers are going to try to go and and do things and i haven't seen a lot here in mont pilier that are you know kind of wastefully subdividing in such a way usually they're gonna they're gonna look at the lot in the topography and kind of subdivide in what makes sense for their for their property so i think putting in the general pud is a big first step in a in a big help because now you can do it without getting caught up i think as things stand now without our general pud somebody is really forced into doing small subdivisions because otherwise if they do large subdivisions they're forced to conserve land um that that may be viable for um subdivision or development in the future um and so i think they would probably do things to avoid um triggering that um but some of my issues are with the fact that it's just difficult to track and administer over time so that i think is the trickier piece of those existing ones all right any other questions okay i'm not seeing any all right so we are gonna turn now to the public and we'll do each of these proposed changes one at a time in order so we'll start with number one the harrison ab rezoning um we'll start with folks who are here in person and then check to see if anyone online wishes to comment on that particular topic and then we'll we'll keep moving through all of them uh all right so um harrison ab rezoning anyone um wish to speak to that okay i am not seeing anyone and anyone online okay not seeing anyone there either uh all right so we're gonna move on then uh to number two the heat and street rezoning um anyone in person wish to speak to the heat and street uh rezoning uh yes if you'd like come on up and if you would uh say your name where you live and um i guess try to keep your comments at two minutes if you can hello uh thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on these proposed revisions i'm thomas weiss resident of montpelier liberty street and i attended the meetings of the planning commission about a year in 2015 and 16 submitting comments and speaking about the proposals then to amend our zoning bylaws which was a major overhaul of the bylaws and then i did make comments at both of the public hearings last bottom so i believe that moving heat and street into the residential three um yes residential three thousand district is premature it turns out that up to 19 dwelling units can be built on that parcel that's the washington county mental health parcel and still comply with the standards relating to coverage and for area ratio and its president in its present residential 6000 district and i will have a written document that i'll provide tomorrow i've learned a couple things tonight that all need to change the document around but not these parts a portion of the lot needs to remain open because of the existing buildings and impervious structures and that leaves a certain additional area that may be used for new structures for housing nine units may be built at the standard density of 6000 square feet per unit and if one goes for the bonus for the cottage cluster that could allow 19 units on on the property and um that seems like a adequate room on the site for an ample number of dwelling units and i mr miller put it into a document that i read i don't remember that he said it tonight is that we're not zoning for a particular project or a particular individual or organization we're zoning for for what's best for the neighborhood so um but the bonus bonus for the cottage cluster i don't know is only available if you don't do number five because number five takes out infill development if i remember correctly and it takes out cottage clusters so it's it's kind of a conundrum there uh as to what do you leave in and what do you leave out of the zoning so anyway i request that city council reject this proposed amendment for nine heaton street and i have a similar argument for uh moving 10 heaton street into the residential 3000 district is also premature and sorry for the uh paper crinkling for the people who are getting that in their ears 52 dwelling units can be built on the heat and woods parcel and still comply with those same standards of uh relating to uh block coverage and for area ratio in the present district um so i request that the city council reject this proposed amendment to 10 heaton street which would take care of not doing i'm asking you not to do number two at all um i i believe that no one has proposed or is considering a project there and i believe the only reason that this came up is so that we didn't end up with a residential 3000 enclave at nine heaton street totally surrounded by uh the residential 6000 but again um i think there's plenty of room for plenty of housing on that property without rezoning it so those are my comments on number two great thank you very much welcome anyone else um wish to comment on number two uh the heaton street okay anyone online wish to uh comment on heaton street okay i'm not seeing anyone um for number three i'm going to turn it over to jack okay number three is the uh northfield street parcel for the use described uh requested by uh by habitat for humanity um jennifer tose i notice you had your hand up earlier so why don't you uh go ahead hi thanks this is alan johnson uh here with my wife jennifer tose we live on the very end of pleasant street and for those who are not familiar uh i'm i'm gonna assume that most folks listening are familiar if you're not let me know i'm gonna be happy to describe or maybe someone else there can describe it um the couple concerns that we have uh my my so first and foremost for for my own background i'm very much in favor of you know affordable housing developments and uh doing well by our community in that way um i think it goes a long way for the community not just for the folks living in those houses but for for everybody and i have been uh to a presentation where uh zak from um habitat for humanity uh described the project and it seems very reasonable to me and our concerns generally are around what might happen uh should that project not go through so um i'm not i'm more of a yimby myself than a nimby but with the limits of course uh there's some uh banter about you know the idea of potentially extending pleasant street to support some of the development that could happen up here not i don't think so much the habitat for humanity project but uh i don't think any to my knowledge nobody's ruled it out completely and um we had a couple of email exchanges with the planning department uh mike and and uh his staff and meredith and the planning department they gave some some very well measured uh responses they weren't exactly the answers we're looking for but i don't expect they can give us those answers the answers we would have liked to hear is um yeah no matter what there's going to be a nice forested buffer between uh the surrounding neighborhoods and the new development um and then the other one is yeah there's no way that anybody's going to be able to extend pleasant street um because of current regulations and so forth so those are the answers we'd like to hear and i understand that those are not really on the table um so let me pose this question first uh which is regarding act 250 um what about the current zoning would trigger an act 250 uh hearing for development and how does that compare to um what might change if the zoning pro zoning change would go through i'll have another question for that after that i'll try to go into that so again not not the attorney oh there we go so yeah so not the attorney and um but i will kind of give the best estimates uh so act 250 has a lot of triggers that can go into it and it's there's some proposals in the state house that can change that as we speak um but in general it used to be that it was um for mont pelier because we have zoning and subdivision it would be uh 10 units that would start to trigger act 250 but then they started to have priority housing which i believe is now 75 units so if it is housing that is being provided for and qualifies as um the for priority housing it would be 75 now somewhere in there there may be some other triggers and other requirements uh i think it's a a much more specific question that really as with any proposal it's really hard to to comment on hypotheticals because we need to really know all the facts to know whether or not something is going to go in but a few of the numbers um generally are as low as uh 10 units or 10 lots i think it's 10 lots that can get you into um act 250 and it's 74 units that would uh for priority housing so um it's it's a little bit tricky to definitively answer that without knowing exactly what's being proposed thanks mike you have another question alan yeah and just to clarify just to make sure i understood the answer there it sounds like that um regardless of the zoning change it's going to be a similar set of things that are going to trigger an act 250 hearing yeah sorry i should have answered your second question as well uh yeah the change of zoning will have no impact on whether or not it's something that does or doesn't need act 250 i believe it's the exact same trigger whether it's in rural or whether it's owned residential 9 000 okay that's great um and it sounds like it you know any significant project is going to get us in there it's a 10 you know talking about 10 units or more it's certainly beyond what we're concerned about um so then let me let me describe my uh presumption about the concept of extending pleasant street and what the current limitations might be so and then maybe i could get some correction or clarification on that um in my experience there's some set of regulations uh around the current standard you know standards that would be required of any new development in roadways um whatever those may be i'm not familiar of course with the mob killer one specifically but um having lived up here i i have to imagine that pleasant street and the connecting especially the connecting street cherry street are well below those standards for you know what would be allowed for a development of what's already here um so if i understand correctly at least again i don't know so sure if this is how it works in my failure but any new development that would extend that street would bear some responsibility to not only handle the additional traffic load but to bring the roads up to standards to handle the current traffic load as well is that is that accurate i guess i would say it's um we do have standards um and i guess the you know the questions you are asking um today you know a little bit of my caution to to you know not be able to come back and say it's impossible for somebody to extend pleasant street you know i as i said i think it's very difficult i think it would be a challenge but if i said somebody couldn't do it i'm sure there's an engineer out there that would say challenge accepted i'm going to go and show you how i can do this and their um road standards start to come in and apply when certain subdivisions reach reach certain sizes so somebody could put in a a a driveway and build a certain number of houses without qualifying as a road and therefore be able to build a certain number of units um that's why i'm really cautious about going and saying it can't happen i know the the end of that road and i know the challenges that exist on cherry street which is why my comments earlier today to you really focused on if if i were a developer or if there was a developer who was looking to do a project on that 57 acre parcel chances are good they're going to look in the same location that habitat is looking because that is the area that's got the easiest access with this least steep slopes access is a class one town highway as opposed to accessing a class three highway a class three road which is very narrow and steep so there are rules in place that would regulate extending whether somebody tried to do a private road or a public road you know if they went for a public road you're right there are a lot of engineering standards and it's going to be difficult there's going to be a lot of dirt to move and that decision process that decision that would be made would be made by the development review board so that's out of the hands of of the staff the administration so that's why i really can't say yes it would or yes or no it wouldn't because it's not a decision that staff is going to be making somebody can apply as hard as that proposal is to get approved they can apply and depending on the whims of the development review board it could get approved but i don't see somebody extending that road to put in 50 units off of pleasant street i think that would be my personal opinion i think that would be a very difficult application for somebody to defend but that's their application to defend um and i guess i'll leave that where it is can i really without an application it's really hard to determine i appreciate that completely like that's a wonderful response and and i understand i'm trying really hard to tease the answer i want out of out of you and the other folks here and i know i'm not going to get there but i just want to be clear that these are the you know cherry street especially pleasant street is tricky to drive cherry street is downright treacherous there are you know like the real estate agents simply will not show houses up here in the winter time because it is it's at their own risk right so um i would think that even you know that the town's liability is limited by the fact that this these roads have been here for so long and that if there were not significant upgrades to these roads for any new development i would i would argue uh that a single home being built past hours or off of pleasant street would um you know be being permitted to be built on these lots without major upgrades to these roads which would not just be dirt moving we're talking about blasting ledge to make the roads work up here to be wider you know it's sink it's basically single lane we have to we have to pull into each other's driveways to get out of each other's way on cherry street to get up and down cherry street and again that's a treacherous slope and uh there's an unspoken rule that the downhill traffic has priority because sometimes that's they they can't stop so um i encourage anyone who isn't familiar to if you're feeling adventurous to walk it if you're feeling uh brave drive it if you're feeling uh foolhardy bike it um and um i guess so i have i have another comment on the solar issue but i think there's going to be opportunity to speak to that later is that accurate yes there will be okay i'll hold that for then and just um um i guess if anybody could comment on what the town's liability is in approving development when there are uh you know really life-threatening potential issues with the the development that already exists okay i'll leave it at that thank you very much alan i don't see any oh i do see uh zach watson uh with his hand raised go ahead zach thank you councillor mccullough and and the rest of the council um and thank you alan for your comments alan and i both moved up from the upper valley so we're slowly taking over central vermont um i'm zach watson i'm the executive director for central vermont habitat for humanity and just wanted to first um respond let folks know that uh pleasant street is uh definitely not on our radar at all as an option for um for an access to the parcel it's um there are not many people as brave as those um early uh early developers that built that complex up on that hill that is a steep hill and i don't like driving it even when the roads are good so that is absolutely not an option for us right now um but i just wanted to speak generally about really why we're um why we're exploring this parcel and why we really believe that this uh the zoning change is a really good thing for the city um and it's really twofold first of all you know there's as we all know there's not a lot of great parcels of land for larger housing developments and especially near the downtown from up here so this parcel is ideally located to the downtown which is a major benefit for low-income families that we work with because they're able to have access to public transportation and services so um but in addition to that just having a walkable community is both good for our community and also for the environment and by building developments closer to urban areas uh we're ultimately preventing forest fragmentation and parcelization in rural areas um that don't have zoning um and so ultimately uh you know we we really do feel that regardless uh and i'm sorry i'll just say that i know i've heard some folks say that we're afraid that another developer is going to come in and build this if half that doesn't um and uh i have a lot of things to say to that but regardless of whether this is a habitat project this is an ideal parcel for housing if it can be developed and it should be developed for housing in Montpelier so it benefits that way the and then the final piece is just that currently there is a lack of um parks on uh this side of this side of the river and uh well we're really happy that the private the owner of this property is willing to let the abutters walk on it at their own leisure it is not currently a publicly accessible parcel of land it is not a public park um and if we truly want to create green space on this side of the river which benefits the entire city we need to put this into an easement um so we're protecting the land and that is our goal um and there's way too many steep parts of this parcel to actually be developed so um really i think this this rezoning making it possible to do this development is uh is really going to benefit the city in in both for housing and also for green space so um that's that's my positive things to say about this and thank you for considering our rezoning request and i'm happy peter didn't cry the whole time i was good thank thank you zack and peter um is there anyone in the room yes uh mr weiss thank you thomas weiss again um moving 102 northfield street out of the rural district will not comply with the master plan the notice for this hearing incorrectly states that the unified development regulations have been developed to implement the policies of the montpelier master plan and rezoning the portion of 102 northfield street that is in the rural district will not be in compliance with the plan the plan has a future land use map which shows that most of this parcel to be in the rural district this portion is not in the growth center it's not in the smart growth district nor is it designated to be studied for smart growth additions therefore rezoning it for denser development is not in compliance with the future land use portion of the master plan the master plan also states that development should reinforce existing neighborhoods by increasing diversity of use and by increasing current densities within the growth center and reducing them outside of the growth center as i mentioned the parcel is not in the growth center thus converting the parcel to a denser residential 9 000 district is contrary to this strategy the master plan also states the goal of the rural district will be to encourage traditional rural uses and to maintain the natural resource base of the city agricultural activities forestry and low density settlement patterns including rural economic activities will be encouraged new housing developments that have an impact on target resources will need to consider minimizing the land impact through clustering and transfer of development rights maintaining biodiversity and wildlife habitat and protecting valuable agricultural and forest resources thus converting the parcel to residential 9 000 is contrary again to the future land use designation master plan should be upheld by working within the existing zoning the three acres now in residential 9 000 can have 14 dwelling units the 53 and eight tenths acres now in the rural district can have 26 units there are already 11 units on the parcel that means an additional 29 units may be built using the standard densities the parcel is also eligible for cottage cluster development that allows a doubling of the density means a total of 80 units the parcel as I said already has 11 so 69 new units may be built without changing the density I'm sorry the district of the parcel and if you want to change the district that the parcel is in I believe you really need to go back and have the planning commission amend the master plan the planning commission it seems has spent a lot of time over the last many number of years on zoning changes and really has done nothing on the master plan probably for 10 or a dozen years master plans now have to be revised at least every eight years but the last revision was really a very minimal change in order to get to 2017 2018 zoning amendments put into place because they needed to have the master plan updated so I request that the city council reject this proposed amendment and it seems that there is also adequate room on the site for an ample number of dwelling units those are my comments on number two and I'll be back for another one thank you Mike do you have something anything you want to say about the master plan issue or you want to hold it for next time um yeah I mean I can hold them to next time to to kind of look there's a there are a number of things that have changed over time including where the growth center is and it's also a guiding document so we have to kind of take it in context with all of the the aspects of it but I can certainly go through and review what's in there and come back next time with a with an answer to that okay thanks is there anyone else in the room who wants to make a comment or has a question about proposal number three and nobody else on online I think Alan Johnson your hand is probably just still up from before before no I was hoping to add in one more comment if it's acceptable I don't want to drag it on though if it's very if it's very quick yeah just to in support um you know in honor in Mike's concerns you know I agree completely we must always remember to never use words like always and never right especially when it comes to public policy um but just to clarify you know um you know as Zach's comments again we I support the efforts in his project um and you know people like him and reasonable people would look at the slopes that are marked off and read on his project proposal as unbuildable and think hey nobody would build there but I sit in a house that you know is counter to that where every house on this side of the street and Cherry Street is on a slope that is you know quote unbuildable and they're all square and true and they were built in that you know this one was built in the late 1800s 1890s so it's doable but I think that the question comes down to at what cost and at what impact so just getting a better sense of you know I think for people that are concerned getting a better sense of what the costs for an individual to build homes you know I'm not worried about what Zach's looking to do but I am concerned about people trying to build additional homes off the end of Pleasant Street potentially as you know ways to reduce to you know selling selling lots there right as a way to offset the costs of the the a project like what Habitat might do those kinds of developments are I think counter to everybody's interests both new development and existing homeowners unless there's a massive restructuring of the streets which is an insurmountable task without buying up most of the properties and either knocking some down or sitting on them while the road is being developed and selling them again afterwards so is that you know that's the kind of scale of effort that's running through my mind and I guess the question is how close am I to reality there or is it much easier than I'm imagining okay thank you for that and I think I think that's all the comments I'm seeing now on item number three that being the case I'll turn the chair over to the mayor okay so normally the council takes a break at 8 30 and we are more than 15 minutes beyond that so we are going to take up number four which I believe is setbacks in residential nine so we're going to take a 10 minute break we'll be back coming back from our break and so we are going to start back up with residential 9 000 side setback comments anyone have in person have oh actually before we get started I do want to mention just a couple protocols here one do try to keep your comments to two minutes and the this time is not designed to be a back and forth so if you have comments try to put them all together into your your two minutes and then we may if there's questions in there we may address them after that okay so having said that comments on residential 9 000 anyone in person okay I am not seeing anyone and I am having to rejoin the zoom does anyone see commenters I don't see anyone on zoom okay all right so yeah one second okay so that means that we are up to number five the rail setbacks in the eastern gateway district any comments in person on that okay I'm not seeing any and no one online as far as I can see so we're going to move on then to number seven and since seven has at least had the the comments did pertain to oh I'm sorry skip I skipped six thank you sorry six six is the new planned unit development rules any comments in person on the new planned unit development rules okay and online I'm not seeing any okay so all right we'll go back to seven then and I'm going to turn it over to jack for this one thank you mayor item number seven in the city's proposal is a removal of requirements to use new neighborhood and conservation planned unit developments I see one hand in the on the queue I'm going to see if there's anyone in the building who wants to speak on this item first I do not see any call on Zach Watson thanks again and I just wanted to comment on the alternative option that was put forward I just would like to say that I'm not really sure why number three was connected to number seven um it's actually kind of baffling to me I sat in all the d rb meetings and there was definitely a discussion of how could eliminating the pd rules impact the habitat project but there was never a discussion about well if we get rid of this we should leave habitat and rural so this seems to have come up after the public meetings and I'm not really sure where it came from um but I do want to clarify that if if the project stays in rural the current allowable density for the 50 acres is 25 units and and I know the previous speaker talked about cluster uh cottage clusters for folks that are not familiar with this this is these are single family households um and and that would allow for us to double the capacity it would be 50 single family households um which is absolutely 100 not feasible on that parcel so if if you if the if the rezoning isn't allowed for that parcel it will effectively kill any opportunity for housing on that parcel so I just want to make that clear there's we're not going to be able to build 80 households up there I'm not sure where that number came from um and and that and also that number seven is completely disconnected to number three I'm not sure how that happened so I just want to clarify okay thank you Zach anyone else online I don't see anyone else online anyone in the room nobody so we're done with item seven and turn the chair back over to the mayor okay and I'm sure a lot of you are here for number eight so we're up to number eight then removal of the residential density requirements from riverfront and res 1500 districts who would like to speak who is here in person if you would just come up to the mic and form a queue then we'll we'll go in that order I really apologize that I don't have a baby on my knee I wish I did um so my name is Courtney O'Connor and I live on Loomis street I'm relatively new to Montpelier I moved here in 2019 before the pandemic and I purchased a home in 2020 and I'm asthmatic so forgive me I have to take this off I didn't know when I purchased my home that I was walking into a difference of opinion shall we say that apparently had been in existence for nine years in our neighborhood amongst various neighbors and that difference of opinion in part from the extensive examination of it that I've had to do to protect my home and my investment stems in part from what I as a newbie to Montpelier but often newbies bring fresh and helpful perspectives to problems what I perceive as a confusion and conflation between a design review overlay district uh the historic district of which Montpelier on at the surface and to the public is very very proud the historic district but in reality and in the regulations it's very confusing so um I uh I would like to support um Mike his um reticence about moving forward with the change in residential 1500 before design if you want to use those terms design standards have been clarified and I would urge um the city to do its best to dispense with this conflation and confusion that exists on the record and in the practice of the DRB between design review and historic district and that when the city does that it recalls that it is obliged to implement and to respect state law okay and that is extremely important when it comes to the preservation of historic districts and structures in um in Montpelier and everywhere in the United States um so thank you very much for a really clarifying presentation and I support the staff's position on that um and then I do have a comment on number nine so I'll go sit down until then thank you very much Sue Walbridge again corner wilder Mont Senior Crosby Avenue for 67 of my 69 years in my historic home um I'm very concerned about this and as I told the city manager what I'm I'm not going to get into all these weeds that we have here of policies and stuff I am going to speak as a lifelong person who has lived in the city which I bet most of you haven't um I am seeing and eating away of Montpelier Montpelier has been a gem um I worked for the tourism division for the state for many years and I got to deal with all these tourists that would come in and they love Montpelier because it was so small and it's the smallest capital in USA which it won't be if we start doing all this density of people coming in um and it just you know they said it was like a movie set when they went downtown because it was just left with this quality and and the historic part of it was very appealing to many people and the great thing was they'd come in and they would spend their money and then they would leave but now we just I told Mr. Frazier the signage down you know on Bailey Avenue has caused people to come in and they don't know where the welcome center so they just leave I was working in the building right on the corner of Bailey Avenue um and these people would come in and drive and they'd go and then they would leave they wouldn't even come into downtown Montpelier or anything but the buildings you know a prime thing is most of you probably don't know what the original post office looked like it was like a castle a beautiful thing and that got destroyed in the monstrosity that we have today sits there and that sticks out like a sore thumb and this is what's going to happen what is this that they can come in if this goes through and like take my house down some developer and then put up a three-story flat roof thing I can't believe you're even thinking of doing this to people you know my home I can't believe that just this thing that you know the coming in and just taking over and doing these kind of drastic changes and on those of natives we never seem to get nobody asks us about anything or how things were or how they came about my dad was born in the house on College Street because before that became a wealthy street um but we're eating I battled cancer last year and I'm going to compare this now what I'm seeing now and what this planning commission is thinking of doing is like a cancer to Montpelier it's going to be invading Montpelier slowly and just chewing it up and changing its whole way and how you know why people wanted to come here please don't do this you're just moving so fast and many of you haven't even been here for number of years and the ones that I know after about five years they move away again and then we're stuck with whatever decisions that you made like this so please from a native standpoint think from that not just all these little rules and you know things of the commissions think about people from your heart and what it would be like for you to have somebody come in and destroy the city that you have lived in your entire year thank you and this is only the second time in my entire life I have spoken in front of city council and I'm speaking for a lot of people thank you anyone else I'm Catherine Gordon and I live on brown street which is a very small street and I just want to say I really think you should think hard about this the 1500 proposal because there's really issue with parking and there's an issue with space already and to take out the controls around that is just setting us up for more disaster I feel and also I feel penalized because my house was also a house that became on the historical thing so I'm going to be confined by that not that I would ever do anything to you know harm the beauty of my house because that's part of why I bought it but it puts constraints on that but then allows people around me to do whatever they feel in their best interest that's it thanks thank you hi can you hear me am I on there okay is sandy vits to my live at 14 loomis street and I want to preface my comments by being really glad that jack asked for the CNU report CNU is the congress for new urbanism everyone may know that already and they are a national think tank of planners and they were invited by the AARP to try to find what are the barriers against building more housing in Montpelier and this report actually came out but by a glitch didn't get into Montpelier's hands until about a month ago and I really hope that it's too long for me to make copies for everybody but I really hope that you'll take the time to read it because we're referring to it all the night time tonight and it's kind of hard not to know what the heck we're talking about and I really like jack's idea of putting it as a link online because a lot of people have been asking me about it so I'm going to really try hard two minutes because I know I've gone over before I am referring mostly to the commissions memo and my biggest comments on it have actually been grouped together where the bunch of other people we've been talking and Janet my neighbor is going to present that next so I am going to use my time to talk about just a couple of things that I need to I feel like I need to focus on the commissions memo implied that I was the only commentator on this topic first of all that's just not true at least two other people commented in the two hearings that the planning commission held and actually that is phenomenal compare when you begin to think about how little this topic has been shared with the public there's been nothing in the argus that I'm aware of nothing in the bridge until I wrote on March 9th the only letter that was sent out to the entire district was a letter to landowners and after putting flyers in every single mailbox I could find on Sunday I can tell you that I think 85% of the buildings in our district are already apartment buildings and many of them have three four or five apartments so you probably reached at most 25% of the population by sending out a letter to landowners the letter came out on the Friday before Thanksgiving and the meeting was the Monday after Thanksgiving and the entire item was it was sunk in the in the bottom of the you know number eight and it was two sentences long with no explanation no graphics I mean it was really easy to miss so every single person I asked who is a landowner if they had seen it they all said no so nobody looked at it nobody knew I would not have known unless Barbara Connery happened to see me and talk about it so if that one conversation hadn't happened there would be no input to you tonight I really wouldn't like I'd like that to sink in at how important it is to have public comment and the sooner in the process the better I think it's more constructive more friendly when it's early not in the two-minute limit as testimony and in hearing I wanted to say that a long time ago when I first started participating as an adult in this kind of thing in Montpelier there was a real encouragement of the public to get involved early because the hearing process was actually pretty quick because everyone had talked themselves out already and I kind of like that I think it'd be better use of your time too okay so I want to also point out that I was disparaged in that summary as a generally negative person I think most people who know me know that I love Montpelier I'm devoted to Montpelier and I am a totally pro housing I know there's a problem so I don't know how I would have been taken as negative I was making constructive comments to someone who's defending them that might feel like it's negative but might that was not my intention I my intention is to try to make our ordinance as good as it can be I was also kind of offended to be dismissed as a local architect I studying planning and design at one of the best universities for that in the whole country I studied under the professors who wrote the textbooks for the rest of the country I taught university level design for more than 10 years including at the University of Notre Dame I've written codes written codes for other communities I had a design institute when I taught at Norwich I served on Montpelier's design review committee for many years when I grew up we we've taught not to toot our own horns no bragging and I'm I'm embarrassed that I have to do that tonight to explain to you why that statement was I think incorrect okay so super quickly I need to point out to you that this is from talking to a member of the CNU that they did not compliment our zoning ordinance as progressive they complimented our master plan as progressive which is fantastic considering it's over 12 years old really out of date I think in the conversations I've gotten tonight is the general feeling that it's kind of irrelevant is probably because the people who are really active in town now haven't been personally associated with updating it I'm so excited that maybe we will be able to do that I've been thinking tonight about the things that have that are out of date they're huge we've had a food crisis with COVID we've had climate change is significantly different in 12 years and the housing situation is significantly different in the last 12 years so and think about the change of ownership in the last 12 years of Montpelier it's it's huge as people have left and new ones have come in which is healthy but anyways that's why it should be a living document that's what statue wants it to be all right then very quickly I would like to preface some of the comments because tonight with your own questions first of all design review has been sorry let let's say the the idea of this character of a neighborhood is being subjective is actually not true in my profession we try to boil it down as much as we can to measurable things and think about it any reasonable person walking down the street can assess the character of a neighborhood that's why so many tourists like to come to Montpelier because they say gosh darn this is a great neighborhood so what are the things the width of the street the approximate massing of the houses as they face the street their depth the regularity of pattern we have big house little house back house barn that is so common in Montpelier the size of the trees the slope the percentage slope of the roof the shape of the windows these are all things that what the CNU does is they try to advise new communities they make design guidelines that try to distill that that's code so you know a building should be most buildings are 25 feet wide they should be somewhere between 25 and 30 feet wide whatever that's one example if most of the roofs are 10 and 12 say they should need to be between 8 and 12 and 12 and 12 they're very specific but they they're a list of rules rather than the kind of ordinance that we have now I agree we need to shift away towards this but you can't shift one part at a time it just doesn't work so when people were against design review in the past I want to give the example of Dave Bellini who I hope he's here tonight listening his I just had to death in this family so he's not physically here he was against design review for our street even though most of our street is in the historic district so there's no review for our house and he was against this the reason why is because there were density limits in place people couldn't tear down properties on our street so now I need to address that which is I've heard several times from the planning commission at those hearings and then tonight from Mike and Mike I totally respect he is a planner and thank you for for your guidance on this issue too um oh my gosh I forgot what I was gonna say um that just so you know Sandy you're at 10 minutes oh my god I know I'm sorry I I apologize I didn't want to interrupt you it's okay it's okay you know I I really didn't want to so so I just very quickly in my construction had I've been in construction for 40 years um and I have done developments in Michigan I was an equity partner in development so I do understand development um I keep hearing that this not going to happen this isn't going to happen so what are we worried about folks this is going to happen and in my neighborhood if there were one or two tear downs built out with full buildouts for apartment buildings it would disfigure my street it only takes one or two we can't even once we we open the door to this we can't take it back I have heard from lawyers because if possible the city could encounter lawsuits if they're already in the pipe work and then we take it away so I just want to show you quickly so I don't know where how far it went um so I used my house as an example and actually you can tell from the site plan that it's not a full buildout on the property we were just going Catherine and I were just going over the math she owns a fifth of an acre she could have the same build out would would threaten her property even I think even smaller you could build a full 2,500 footprint building on it so this is what it looks like doing my I didn't think it was fair to to draw on top of someone else's house so my house currently has three units I don't have the math now so it earns it earns I have two apartments I earn $50,000 a year income not really because I live in one of them the market value of my house is right now about 540 compared to says Zillow so that is actually I'm at the considered the buildable ratio of annual income to the value of the basis of the property does that make sense 1 to 100 if I were to follow the current rules I could actually build eight units but I probably wouldn't because I wouldn't hit that 1 to 100 ratio if someone were to buy my property at market value and tear it down and then do a built full buildout they would if they didn't want to come to you to dear be at all if they just wanted a permit they could build this little rectangle I drew on my property and they could build this thing and they'd have plenty in the room for parking although it's not even required parking is not required in our district at all which is crazy because they'd be adding 30 cars to the street if they didn't feel like building parking with a PUD or some other special permission they could actually build twice as much on this because the the dash lines on this are the the building setbacks so you can see that in the math and I was super conservative here residential construction starts at $450 a square foot right now so 300 is super low and I'm assuming they would use modular construction which would be super ugly for my neighbors but they could make a full profit and why would they do this because they would have a lot of income as they depreciated the building over 27 years why would you have income for three or four units when you could have the income for 20 units so and and with a house it's worth 300,000 or 250 over on Franklin street the smaller houses are actually even more vulnerable than my house because my house happens to be big already so this and I should got to remember that the developer's primary question is once they've done this math is how quickly will the market absorb those units and right now we know that they would be absorbed immediately most units are getting purchased or spoken for reserve before they're even built so there there's nothing that would stop someone from doing this especially the project the properties that are not in design review district and I think it's a half or at least a half of the properties are not in the design review district my time is up this woman devora said she said put this note in my mailbox at five o'clock today and she said that she has neither a phone nor computer to allow her to contact her council members she says please do not change the zoning rules without a public discussion of a total city plan so I'm going to circulate that I'm also going to circulate the article I want to make sure everybody saw the article that I wrote in the bridge did you all get the letter from Diane Macario did all of you get it to save you time I'm not going to read it out loud but Diane wrote an elegant letter and then did you get all get the letter from Larry Myers I think you can just assume that go ahead and pass it all okay well I want these people ask me specifically to tell you their names and they actually wanted me to read the letters but because I've taken up so much time I won't thank you so Lawrence Myers of a Meyer of luma street Diane Macario of luma and this is Dr John Peterson I'm sure most of you know um on st paul street I think we got all of those okay okay I really appreciate you so much thank you thank you and do you want the color cards used oh um no no that's okay just uh yeah okay go ahead hi I'm Janet worm sir I live on luma street across from sandy and I was just going to read this letter that sandy wrote um it was signed by 27 people um including Diane and Larry who wrote letters that have been circulated dear mayor and city council members we write in response to the planning commission's memo of February 28th 2022 regarding 11 amendments they proposed to Montpelier zoning regulations we take strong issue with the planning commission statements regarding item number eight removal of residential density requirements from riverfront and residential 1500 districts districts we urge you to reject this amendment while there are other inaccuracies in the commission's introductory background assessments for item number eight we want to make sure that the city council is aware that the planning commission misquoted the key cn cnu aarp report on Montpelier zoning regulations several times the effect is significant and we are aware that the cnu did not intend the report to be interpreted this way most importantly the cnu emphasized Montpelier's master plan should be followed quote encourage a moderate increase in residential density through compatible infill and through conversion of some existing buildings into multiple units development should reinforce existing neighborhoods to ensure that the historic character and appeal of neighborhoods are protected the cnu then recommends three changes to Montpelier's ordinance all to be made one at a time that's emphasized encourage a moderate increase in residential density in certain areas this increase would be accomplished through compatible infill through conversion of some existing buildings to multiple units number two adopt design standards for additional residential units clear standards to truly ensure that the historic character and appeal of neighborhoods are protected ensuring that a new building new building remains at the approximate scale of a larger family single family home Montpelier might include standards for front porch roof slopes etc clarify processes for incrementally adding residential units that's a third one the cnu report clearly states that number one should not be enacted without number two and number three according to the cnu our existing regulations are not sophisticated enough to ensure that the historic character and appeal of existing neighborhoods will be protected without number two and number three in plain language without compensatory adjustments just removing density limits will encourage tear downs and large apartment building construction this caution has been repeated by Montpelier's planning director Mike Miller and by planning commissioner member Bob Barbara Conry who is the only architect on the commission and who resigned over this controversy noting that noting that a large portion of the r1500 district is on the design review district we are concerned that neither the design review committee nor the historic preservation commission was consulted about this change to the ordinance we strongly suggest that all three of the cnu recommendations be considered together that would be the best solution if in the interest of time this is not possible the design review district should immediately be expanded to encompass the entire riverfront and the r1500 districts this would be a minimal protection to ensure that Montpelier's historic character and owner occupied apartment buildings are preserved thank you thank you so i guess hello i'm Bob McCullough and i live on Bailey avenue and i will try to articulate articulate a position for the historic preservation commission which i'm a member when competing values all of which are important affordable housing preventing sprawl encouraging downtown growth protecting historic neighborhoods preventing forest fragmentation when those values compete finding solutions is so very very difficult often answers the best answers are found in good thoughtful skillful architectural and urban design and to move forward with a major transformation of Montpelier's zoning as proposed without careful design standards where i think be so very very risky and to underscore that i will add that the historic preservation commission just recently developed new standards that are now that are now being implemented and i can say that as careful as those standards are they weren't directed at the very precise type of problem that will be developed or that will occur with increased pressure for infill as a result of increased density they will help but they weren't specifically designed for that and the guidelines that we are in the process of developing now also are not geared specifically for that objective toward that end or toward toward a solution lean toward a solution european cities sweden and in particular stockholm have really looked at this issue of finding ways to increase density urban density finding ways to provide affordable housing without compromising historic districts historic neighborhoods without losing open space are really more advanced than we are and i think this is an opportunity to do it right Montpelier is such a special place why don't we pause and take a look at what other cities have done perhaps hiring a consultant and investigating the topic in a more thorough way that that was my recommendation for a solution thank you thank you anyone else in person wish to comment on this okay i'm not seeing anyone so i'm going to go to folks who are with us digitally so i'm going to go in the order that you are appearing on my screen so we start with Kirby Keaton then go to Joe Castellano and then Barbara Conray go ahead Kirby hi everybody um so uh because you don't know i'm the chair of the popular planning commission i'm chiming in because uh mike has a slightly different recommendation for number eight than the planning commission voted out the the planning commission did unanimously vote out this suggestion that's before you just so you know um so so i feel like i should address this is slightly different than than um mike's view although usually i'm thrilled to have mike speak for us because it's he does a phenomenal job um i also want to thank all of you because i know how thankless service work can be so so it's it's i see it's 935 so so thank you you're appreciated um the way that this proposal came about was there were two big things one is that the planning commission was aware that the planning experts around the country the think tanks the resources been done are all in agreement that the old paradigm of having density caps doesn't work like that's and if you when you do see the cnu report that's been talked about you'll see that the cnu is adamant about it number one on the list is get rid of your density caps which is so for this proposal we're talking about the two neighborhoods that have the highest density right now that that have density caps and just getting rid of those as as an incremental small change um so so that's that's where this started with was this is what we need to do this is the direction of things this is the direction of good planning um and the reason for that the number two reason is that i know that we need to have a conversation about this and i think you can tell from your comments tonight that we really need to have a conversation about what density means and so um i'm sorry that that you're it seems like there's a lot of drama here but um i kind of knew that when we proposed it because we need to have this conversation the reason why all of the think tanks and everyone like says says what they say and the reason why cnu is saying that mob healer needs to drop its um density caps not just in the two neighborhoods we're talking about they're talking about everywhere basically um the reason for that is is it's it's kind of common sense um density is a regulation of how many people can live in your neighborhood how many people and our values right now are we want housing we want people we know there's a great need um we want lots of people we want more people like i think that that's a shared value across our city and with the city council so the so the density caps only serve the only thing they directly regulate is something that goes against our values it's it's in the way as far as how our neighborhoods look it's we do have design review but i want to make the point because i think this was kind of confused tonight a little bit we also have a lot of other zoning bylaws that regulate how things look other than that design review we don't necessarily need design review everywhere that's not necessarily the answer we don't necessarily you know we we can always go back to our zoning bylaws and try to improve them to to determine what's going to make our communities look good but i tell you density doesn't do that density is never ever been designed to do that that's not what it it's intended to do it's intended to regulate how many people can live there and we want more people to live here and all in all of the like planning brains around the country are saying this is unhelpful this is good not good for you get rid of it um so when i had this conversation because my experience on the planning commission is that whenever a zoning change comes up and there's a talk about a change in density and you saw it all tonight people get really upset and they talk about how their community is going to look so much worse and getting through to people that that's not what density is supposed to do and that's not what density does in reality is the conversation that we hope to have it's a it's a paradigm change like this this issue we're talking about is related to a paradigm change making us see things differently when mike gave his presentation tonight he talked about how our zoning neighborhoods are named after the distant density number they're associated with we should change that because that's not helpful it's not helpful that we always think in terms of density when what we really care about is how things look if if we were obsessed with density we would be obsessed with keeping people out like that's not what we're obsessed with right it's not helpful so so i'm happy to have this conversation and i'm glad we're having this conversation i might have been a little naive going into it thinking that if we just talk about this and explain what things really mean then it will get better um maybe maybe maybe it will in the long run and and that's what i'm still definitely hoping um but that's where we're coming from sorry so where we where we disagree with mike is mike wants to wait and line up the design review with any changes we make to removing density caps we recognize the all the all of the planning commission recognizes that uh there's no need to wait because these density caps aren't doing anything to help how our neighborhoods look that's not what they're doing so why do we need to change design review because that's not actually related to what these things do i know everyone i think some of you maybe your minds are being blown by what i'm saying right now because it's everyone who talks about this acts like densities related to how your neighborhood looks and it's not and you know so that's like we want to change this over time i know that tonight i mean i don't know how i'm going to change any minds but i'm hoping in the long run if we get away from the d word and we start focusing on um the parts of our zoning bylaws that are actually dedicated to how our neighborhoods look and concentrate on those things that that's going to be really constructive and and hopefully in the long run we don't have density caps because all the planning brains out there know that this is not it's not helpful and it's and it's hurting housing and we don't know how much it's hurting housing it's hard to to measure these things we can't measure it but so so i think i'll leave it at that i hope um i addressed enough things and i am on standby if anyone's interested in asking about you know how does the planning commission feel about this as opposed to the you know the planning staff thank you hi joe castellano yes thank you i'll lower my hand um thank you so much and i want to thank everybody for their patience tonight i'm sure that a number of you have already seen a copy of a draft letter that i submitted to an Watson and jack a couple of the supervisors connor kasey and donna um i'm against this proposed change because i think that they're proposing eliminating the density requirements without looking at some of the other recommendations of that new urbanism cnu report so i would suggest that we actually focus on the recommendations that report as a whole as opposed to just cherry picking one little piece um and the other thing too is i i've done a little bit of research about what Kirby Keaton is a big proponent of and reducing or eliminating density limits and so far the biggest city that i've seen in the us that has eliminated this has been minneapolis and as far as i can tell in the four or five years since they've eliminated it it's sort of had mixed results they haven't gotten the sort of density that they were hoping for so i'm hoping that as a result of doing this or as we start moving down this path at least we see okay what's the intended consequence or what do we hope to achieve with it that was essentially my comment thank you thank you uh barbara go ahead yes um thanks planning commission for uh bringing this to the four i think one of the things that it's done is is kind of encouraged this community discussion but thanks for to the council for taking a serious uh look at this um i'm a retired architect i'm very strongly in favor of sensitive new housing and i'm actually working on on creating more housing in montpelier i also did serve on the planning commission until october when and i know when the zoning was written because i was part of that and we took a lot of very careful look at how we set these particular density limits so i know a lot of consideration was used however when the planning commission decided to go forward with this kind of blanket elimination of density um within just a first zone and later would would move it to other districts i really felt like i could not support that as an architect i've used zoning ordinances i've worked with developers i know what they want and what they would like to do is to put as many units on a piece of property as possible and the easiest way to do that on some of our larger properties in montpelier including in res by 1500 is to tear down the existing buildings now previously when the zoning went through there was a lot of concern about that happening and what i could in good faith say at that time was that we had the guardrails set up so that that would not happen and one of those guardrails was the density limit that we incorporated and i know that planners don't like to use the word density because it it's not actually defining the number of people in fact it's defining the number of households that we necessarily allow on a piece of property but it will certainly drive the character if we no longer have any limits and developers could easily come in and follow every one of the other requirements that is in place in res 1500 and more than double the allowable units never mind the number of units that are actually there and i did send to the planning commission some example just example properties because that's what architects do is when we work with developers we define how many what's the potential of this property what could possibly happen and i'm really concerned also that this is just the first step and what they want to do is to expand this to all all all districts and it's because we have a number of large lots it's it's very concerning to me and i think that we need to really not only be concerned about design standards because we do have to some limited degree we do have design standards but what we don't have is a prohibition of to tearing down the historic buildings if they are out if the property is outside the historic district and that's really a concern because if somebody wanted to maximize the number of units on a piece of property the best way to do it would be to remove the buildings that are there and i think that it's it's it does in fact density does affect the character of the neighborhood significantly and because if in that case because it's going to remove our historic fabric even for the buildings that are not in historic district so i would urge you to turn this down and and do further consideration take a stronger look at what what we can do to maximize the use of our existing buildings maximize the potentials for infill between our existing buildings or within them and so that we can really retain the character of our neighborhoods thank you thank you okay i'm not seeing anyone else online oh right okay so um oh okay eric go ahead eric you are muted and there i'm still waiting to okay there now i'm not uh i'm eric yalbertson i'm i live on rifterson street in montpellier i am the chair of the historic preservation commission and vice chair of the design review committee uh i would urge the council not to approve this uh this is only change for for a couple of reasons one is that it's pretty clear what several people have said is historic preservation may be an unintended consequence of the density regulations at this point so if we remove the density regulations we need to have in place some regulations either through design review that protect our neighborhoods the now with the density it's it's probably more difficult to add units and i things you could do to an existing historic building to add units you could change the roof line uh which is it defines the character of buildings in the neighborhood so and this is happening all over the country where uh when property gets so valuable developers buy up lots and either replace a small building with a larger mac mansion or uh with a number of units so i think it is a real risk for montpellier as our property values go up uh and i i think that expanding the design review district and the preservation commission is as you guys know uh drafted regulations and i think maybe we should go back and take a look at them and see how they might apply in these conditions and expand the design review now people don't like regulation in general i've known that for years but i think if we're gonna protect those qualities of our city that we all enjoy uh we need to look at regulations to do that um i i've submitted a written some written summary of my testimony the other thing i would urge uh is that uh the planning commission or the city council or the planning uh department really use the people on both design review and the historic preservation commission as they're developing these uh regulations and guidelines to protect our neighborhoods uh we're there the city council appoints people uh for their establishes these committees and appoints people to them so that would be my recommendation is that these committees be used early in the planning process and i found out about all of this uh sort of incidentally so i i certainly appreciate Barbara's comments and i think we do run some real risk in the city of uh of uh tearing down historic buildings to increase our density if we just look at density we need to look at the other qualities of our neighborhoods and make sure we protect them thank you thank you uh steve go ahead uh yeah i'll be brief because i'm just going to echo what i want to thank sandy especially for getting it into the paper and and rallying the the troops so to speak eric and barbra said it eloquently we're playing with fire here and we're lacking a current and updated master plan and i you know i recognize double speak and my mind's not blown that this is way too risky to embark upon to basically open it up wide open to development pressures in this economy and with the housing pent up housing demand so i echo the sentiments to reject this uh change and get the underlying planning and and precautionary you know new England conservatism in place before you start reducing the density thank you thank you anyone else digitally okay all right uh thank you everybody uh so we are going to move on now to um the next the next one um and just so folks know how this is going to proceed um we're going to take up the rest of uh these for public comment uh and then we'll have a time for us to to um comment on them as as council but then um when we do that i'm going to ask again that we separate out items three and seven for commenting um so i can excuse myself uh and uh we had scheduled a presentation from the mont river conservancy i do not think we were going to get to that tonight so we've already let them know that um that has been pushed back uh in case anyone was waiting for that um okay so a number nine i'm going to get back to it here okay number number nine technical fixes there's a number of um sub items in this anyone wish to comment um in person uh on the minor technical fixes yes in my line of work i've worked in um societies in different parts of the world um and on matters of matters where communities and societies have started to lose respect for the rule of law and when that happens the society of the community breaks down and chaos results we're seeing a little bit of that here and i would like to urge the council in particular because i think you people are the the brain trust that we're not the brain trust that the command central who can enhance respect for the rule of law in mont pelier and its protection and who can promote coherent government between your planners between your um between your density increases and your historic preservationists etc etc and when it comes to solar access that's another issue um i am against uh the recommendation in the memorandum on solar access and i am against it because it goes against the vermont municipal regional planning and development act section 4303 para 24 which defines and i don't have it in front of me um but you can find it which defines renewable energy and that's what we're talking about when we're talking about solar access here especially in 2022 with all that we have in front of us the recent climate plan that vermont has passed etc we're talking about in the case of solar access we're talking about renewable energy and if you consult that statute which mont pelier has to respect like it or not that statute says that renewable energy in the case of for example sun they are referring to conversion which this um regulation this provision is about or collection mont pelier has has two net zero goals for net zero 2030 for the municipality uh net zero 2050 for the entire city the development the uniform def unified development regulations must implement the master plan and certainly cannot adopt you cannot adopt provisions that fly in the face of the master plan and the master plan is supportive of the state laws approach to energy conversion and collection if this city wants to reach its net zero 2030 and 2030 50 goals if this city is honest and genuine about the ordinance that you pass the home equity information ordinance if you were sincere in passing that ordinance denying buildings solar access that warms their thermal mass that provides daylighting which means people don't need to pay money for electricity or whatever you will not reduce you will not go back in time in terms of your regulations on solar exposure and access you will move forward with the state respecting state law in the process in an effort to preserve this city and our planet for our children and our grandchildren the recommendation being made here and i don't mean to insult anyone i'm just speaking from a legal perspective and an environmental perspective is nothing short of retrograde when you move back from seeing solar exposure as a question of those nice little panels i have them on my roof but when my company sun common came in to design that array they took into account the solar gain that my house received the passive warming that it received in the thermal mass that's the stone the concrete etc the daylighting i received through the windows so when if mob healer is sincere and genuine about its various ordinances and the city council's 2018 directive to staff and departments to move towards net zero 2030 you will not walk back in history and further damage our children and grandchildren's future by limiting our capacity to meet those goals thank you anyone else hello thomas weiss again and i am also commenting on solar access but first of all i don't consider what's being proposed for solar access to be either minor or a technical correction or a technical fix i think is the word that was used i believe it's actually quite major but restricting access to sunlight is also a master plan issue it won't comply with the master plan the proposal is to restrict access to sunlight for both energy and it also means that it restricts access to sunlight for growing food the proposed amendment is contrary to decisions made by the planning commission in developing the i believe was the 2018 zoning regulations as i mentioned it's contrary to the master plan it's contrary to goals of sustainability and of the global warming solution act it's also contrary to the city's goals to become net zero the two sections that are proposed for being amended now create a right of solar access for growing food and to access to active and passive solar energy systems and the proposed amendment does not preserve that right also the proposed amendment is limited to solar energy devices passive solar features use solar gain on walls and roofs and are not devices so shading of walls will eliminate solar access for passive features and their ability to heat a structure passive solar is actually more sustainable than active solar and needs to be encouraged the proposed amendment will discourage passive solar i did my master's degree in solar energy number of years ago passive was just beginning to be analyzed from an engineering basis and i did my master's thesis on orientation of solar collectors everybody else was looking at oh what's the best orientation to get the maximum but i was concerned about the kind of situation we have in vermont where we have so much existing housing stock and we've got to figure out well if i'm going to put the panels on my roof which faces southeast how much am i going to lose against that maximum orientation facing south at just the right angle so anyway that's just a little background as as to my background and knowledge on solar energy and the proposal as i said is is contrary to the master plan the proposed amendment fails to move the city closer to achieving at least six goals in the master plan and i i have a little table in the written testimony which you haven't received yet and which you will receive over the next few days i plan to bring it or get it here tomorrow and i don't know when you'll actually get it so i do have some alternative suggestions for amending section 3206 the the first section that's proposed to be amended calls for the city's energy goals and policies strongly encourage solar heating and a number of other things i suggest that you add growing food be added to the list of strong encouragements for the city's policy um the right of solar access for walls and roofs should be expanded to more than 15 degrees away from true south my street including my house most houses have their sunniest roof facing southeast which is 45 degrees away from south and that only gets about a 10 penalty from if my house faced with the same roof orientation or slope uh the face due south and a lot of the other there are a number of other houses on my street roofs about the same thing and they also have solar panels so there's a lot more need to protect solar access even further away from south than the existing ordinance does also the existing ordinance talks about the orientation of a yard but the orientation of a yard for solar purposes depends on where the slope faces not where on the location of the yard with respect to the structure so solar access for yards should exist for a yard in any orientation uh and that's on the basis of a yard being used for growing food and not necessarily for energy purposes so i believe the proposed reduction to solar access is short sighted our goals our need for sustainability require a longer range vision we need to keep open our future options for homegrown food and for solar access and that's one thing that i crossed out in my talking copy here is that the way the amendment is proposed it precludes future access where there isn't an existing solar device uh so anyway i'm so pleased to not adopt the proposed amendment section 3206 i ask that you consider and adopt my alternative suggestions for that section and thank you for taking the time to hear me three times tonight on these topics thank you anyone else in person okay and so not seeing anyone we'll go to folks with us digitally vikian lane go ahead um yes i may be just misunderstanding this or reading more into it than is there but um this business of shading does this mean that neighbors can request that you remove things that shade their property is this going to cause a um an issue where someone demands that a property owner remove or alter something because it might shade their own their property that's my concern that this could end up being something unpleasant thank you um allen johnson go ahead um don't want to repeat some of the uh points that it made that i also had about you know being more the shading being about more than existing pv systems um i don't want to i think those are valid it does seem like this you should be pulled out it's not just a basic technical correction here um and maybe some more more thought put into it uh lauren uh you did a great job taking the words out of my mouth with your question earlier about um you know what do we do about potential new pv systems um i just had a maybe a thought that um i wonder if there's some solution around uh the concept of right away there where if um you know somebody doesn't have an existing system but a new development is uh removing access for expansion later or development of an extended system later maybe the new development could have a right away with a group net metering solution um and say you know well we have the right to put solar on your roof if you're going to block our roof or our yard or wherever solar may be cited um you know it's not a strict right away thing but it's a similar concept uh just a thought and uh i miss you lauren good to see you right okay um anyone else digitally okay so we are going to move on to number 10 um doing this in order even though we skipped to uh 11 in the presentation uh river hazard area regulations changes anyone in person okay anyone online okay uh great so and on to number 11 uh adjustment to the riverfront boundary in saban's pasture anyone in person okay and anyone online okay all right with that i'm going to close the public hearing thank you everybody for your comments and your time and uh uh folks thoughtfulness about uh your questions and comments so at this point um we can have a sort of a council conversation about what we'd like to do uh it requests that we for this part if you could pull out um parts three and seven um other so council thoughts on on any of this besides those two parts and if please keep in mind that it's 1009 okay go ahead i have a couple of thoughts uh i in general i uh i strongly support the changes i think it's uh it's really in most cases it's really getting us in the direction of where we want to go as a city and uh achieve the goals that we have with regard to number eight and i thought it was quite interesting that uh mike miller and kirby keyton are really not that far apart at all in terms of what they're saying even though the uh the planning commission voted out a proposal to adopt this change immediately kirby was very clear that we need to have a conversation and we're having a conversation now and this is just the start of the conversation i think uh moving to allow more density is is very important and as i was working on uh advocating for the last amendment to the zoning bylaw that was one of the main things that i was hoping to see uh more uh more density but i think that uh this needs more work before we're ready to adopt it and so i would not support uh adopting proposal number eight now and i think we we should have more of a community conversation and having having taking it up there at our next meeting isn't enough enough of that conversation to make me think that we can uh go forward that now to that now and so at some point uh either now or after there's more conversation i'm going to be moving to take that piece of it out of it before we go to the next public hearing um and i do think we should have more the other point that i think is worthy of more discussion is the is the solar access part of it and i think we need to have more of a conversation about that i i'm not sure that that can't be resolved by amendment before we uh you know in time to pass it as part of the whole package but uh i'm less of an expert on this than than other people other thoughts carry go ahead yeah i just wanted to i would concur with what jack said um i think that number eight has a lot more work to be done as we've heard from here and as i've had lots of conversations and as this is um would directly affect my neighborhood and so i have a very vivid image in my mind when people describe the kinds of things that might happen and i haven't heard um a reassurance coming about why i don't have to worry about those things happen so um i'm it may be available but it needs more discussion it needs more more time than i think we can give it here so i would like to see that pulled out as well great connor jump on that train as well um but i i do want to say you know there are a couple controversial parts of this and you know i don't want that to take away from the amount of work that was done by you know the planning commission and my care there was a lot of good work here um and i i actually really appreciate kirby being a bit provocative i don't know if that's a word he said uh to sort of uh force this discussion because it's a discussion that needs to be had you know um i i don't mind if montpellier is not the smallest state capital we need to grow or we're going to die here it's uh less than a hundred homes are sold every year the average rents are 1600 the people who work in this town can't afford to live in this town and to me that's unhealthy and it's unsustainable so we need to take action and we hit walls when we tried to develop in rural areas and i i you know i'm not saying anybody's coming in with any wicked like motivations here it's like bob mccullough said it's competing values right we want to preserve wildlife we want to preserve green space uh but we get walls when we try to build in these places the same with lake neighborhoods is it too dense already uh so we have to be thoughtful about it but we've we've got to do something here and i like the idea of not waiting forever to have these conversations do it soon but you know let's make sure our ducks are in a row uh we look at like you know what regulations are in place to preserve the aesthetic nature of certain neighborhoods right now we see what we need to do on it and have a more uh comprehensive discussion on it so uh huge thanks to the planning commission and everybody who came out tonight um and i like the direction jack is going there yep but i would um add to that um uh i curby i hope that you pass along to the planning commission our gratitude for their work on this and i would like us to i would like to see us go in the direction of eliminating uh density but together with uh some updates or thoughtful you know crafting like intentional crafting around uh how we how we ensure that uh you know we're not necessarily just getting just big blocks of buildings um necessarily um so i do hope that the planning commission comes back to us with uh with this together with um some thoughts on the the uh characteristics of um of how how we do protect our our neighborhoods and i see jennifer morten you have your hand up go ahead all right i'm unmuted sorry um i just wanted to say that i you know i've had a lot of really great conversations in the last week with um folks about this about number eight and i feel like i need a little more time as well um because most of the people i spoke with all felt in line about things so i would like to kind of look at the other side before i can make a really good solid decision so i agree with connor and jack about pushing it out a little bit giving us more time thank you donna well i also want full eight i'm concerned about solar and i guess i would direct staff to come back with taking in the consideration of the criticism of that section but the thing about density i just want to put a heads up i've set through all the sign review district and all the people who wanted to get out of it and i just you haven't seen a group yet when you start saying your house is going to be put in a sign design review zone or district it it'll fill the room totally and that's a fine that's fine to do i'm just saying it's going to take a lot more time than just the issue of density and that's good but it definitely needs to be dealt with in a long term basis and it's true we're overdue for our master plan when we did it we promise we would go back and we haven't so that's always a good reminder and i thank everybody for nudging us along i am i'm surprised because i i when i read over the solar i was bothered by the shade and i don't know how you deal with that if it's my tree and person put solar and now my tree has grown what happens um so i'll be interested how you work the language on that but we definitely i think need to take out eight and the solar alorn yeah i mean i think i'm mostly just concurring with what other folks are saying um you know agree i'm definitely concerned with a current solar section so look forward to uh mic working some magic there to come up with something that allows for um you know new solar and not limiting people's access to that um on the density issue i i agree i'm really glad we're having this discussion i mean i think it's happening in communities all over the country as people wrestle with you know how do you maintain character and feel and grow and allow new people to come in and address the housing crisis so i'm you know also appreciative of the planning commission putting forward a provocative idea and getting us talking and i i think i mean it sounds like i i don't know enough about like the entire process and all of our zoning in and in's and out so maybe there's like a middle ground between being in design review and some other um aspects we could add to the zoning regulations that could do some of that maintaining character something so maybe there's some ways to to get at it that don't fully bring people into design review so i'm looking forward to lots of creative discussions about how we can meet our city goal of increased housing bringing new people in um and you know really with climate migration and vermont being on like every list that you see is like the top place to move i think we're going to see more and more pressure for housing people moving in so us really getting ahead and thinking about what kind of community we want to see i think is going to be increasingly important in the coming years so this is just a really important discussion and i'm really grateful to all the thought people have put into it and the really um incredibly thoughtful comments tonight from folks from the community i have one further thought which is uh just want to note something that sandi said that i thought was really interesting um just about when we send out notices to people they go to the landowners uh and so if there are tenants in those buildings they might not necessarily get those notices and that feels like it's worth thinking about and figuring out how do we get notices to tenants um you know just off the cuff here it seems like renters ought to be able to sign up on some list uh that they could get notice well notices maybe this already exists but um i guess i'm just thinking about like what do we have for for renters to be able to access this information which is not necessarily being passed on to them from their landlords um yeah i just wondered if we could actually in any way require owners to give it to tenants we can ask i don't know how we would enforce well maybe let's anyway is that something that we can just put on your radar to to think about jack did you have something to say about that we've got the voter checklist which isn't obviously you know it's not a hundred percent up to date there's all kinds of weaknesses with it but tenants register to vote where they live yep yep mike did you have something you want to say about that i just want to say there were i mean there were articles in the bridge there were articles in the weekly report i mean i think the bigger push is if we could if there was just a more general outreach to try to get people to sign up to get the weekly report i don't know if that's something everyone can sign up to get i mean these these are talked about in the weekly report these are talked about in the bridge these you know they're they're they're in a lot of word we're not hiding them they are there you have to read those things regularly just hearing the issue and then you go looking i mean it's inevitable well this might also be a can topic anyway i just wanted to flag that um for us because it also feels like an equity issue so um right so um any other oh jack yes so at this point i move that we uh take uh item proposal eight out of the uh proposed ordinance amendment we have to close public meeting she did i did i did i did close the subject i hear you so there was a motion there i'll second okay for the discussion uh all in favor please say aye aye and opposed uh okay um do you like switch now yeah i mean unless people folks want i guess we're not did folks want to take out number and do the solar lauren go ahead unless you want to just note it and that we're going to come back to it or something yeah go ahead whatever you want to do i might you have to use them like um i would move we remove it i mean if staff wants to come back with an alternative proposal um but i don't i'd rather not see it move forward than okay personally um it seems like a limited the solar provision so i'd like to also move to remove that if if there's a we could always add something back in next week would that be a friendly amendment or it's well no we voted already oh we voted on that so second oh so you're you're seconding taking out the solar part other comments on taking out the so yes donna well but they're going to come back at the next hearing and there's changes i guess i'm more pessimistic changes and we don't like and we can take it out at the second hearing well there's a motion you can vote it down um other thoughts no okay this is the time to debate the motion yeah right no no further thoughts on taking it out yeah carry it feels cleaner to me to take it out and we can put it back in after it's amended but since we took that other one out so i'd be in favor of that okay it's just generally when we go from first to second hearing we do give staff specific things to edit so unlike eight which i see not being dealt with at all in the next few months i would hope solar could be worked out so i don't see it as an exception of what we usually do when we have something that not quite right so also i would just add to it if we take if we were to take it out i feel like that is sort of a signal to staff to not work on language because we're not bringing it back up does that make sense if you want them to work on it we should leave it in if you have thoughts on that you just wanted to be fine with it not being worked on but okay no okay as long as we're clear on what the the vote is that's fine um but you're going to have to do roll call but you got one in your mouth yes well potentially we'll see well it could be unanimous you know okay all right okay well uh any further discussion on the solar okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay i seconded it by you're voting it's better to leave it in for it to be worked out okay uh all right uh i'm gonna go around in person first then we'll go online lauren hi jack name connor hi kerry hi tana hey and uh jennifer uh yes okay hi sorry four to two so the eyes have it so we will take that part out um okay and so now we can switch roles jack um i'll take off so now we are to items proposals number three and number seven which i think we can you want to discuss them let's do do them separately um what do people think about uh uh proposal three which is the northfield street rezoning yeah dana yeah i support it i mean it goes right in this neighborhood it's not i support it yeah is there anybody who doesn't the only question i had um for mike like if you rezone it has to be the whole parcel it sounded like part of the concern is there's steep areas that they don't want to develop we don't think they're going to be developed like is there a way to you know keep some of the parcel rural that we really don't want to see development on but somebody could make a proposal in the future too but that would allow the habitat project and whatever project is that just untenable um we generally we have a general rule that we try not to subdivide parcels that said we we have number um 11 that talks about savings being split into two parcels so it does happen crest view split into two um so it's not impossible to do that but in general we try to follow property lines it becomes a lot easier for just staff for being able to administer things and and you end up having some less confusions um but i think there are opportunities once we get through his uh through the development the feasibility steps of the process if they end up subdividing the lot into a couple of pieces then we've got a line that we could go through and and rezone at another time but it isn't impossible to go through and say make this part that district as long as there's a clear line what we don't want to do is occasionally we'll get these things up this will follow the 640 foot contour line and we don't want that if it's if you look on a map and it's like well there's already a pin here and there's already a pin here just draw a line between those two and make that one and make that the other and the thing i want to observe about that is that that we don't know if habitat is going to wind up being able to develop this property what we have from them is the assurance that they're not if they do they're not going to build in that place where the neighbors were very concerned about them not building and it feels like it might be hard to defend if if we're essentially saying we're going to zone it to let this developer do what they want to do but if they don't do it then we'll block what the next developer wants to do i don't know i would keep it the way it is everybody okay with that move on to number seven um i'm sorry is you you're putting this aside to talk about later oh no i'm seeing i'm uh thinking we're i'm if anyone has anything more to say about three we should do it now okay closing the discussion what's the status it moves forward okay we'll eventually have a motion okay to move forward yeah but i i think what we should do what i what i would suggest we do is discuss three and seven and if everyone's happy with both of them then we move to move those forward i understood that far i just wasn't sure how i got confused with your in statement i was feeling okay if you wanted to not leave it yet okay sorry clear now sorry for the confusion and item seven was the removal of the requirement to use new neighborhood and conservation patient puts any discussion on this item at all that's sounding like a no okay and uh in jennifer i'm not seeing your face right now are you okay too yes okay great so michael you convinced us finally so five years is there a war you down i i see uh vicki handling you have your hand up uh this is council discussion do you have a very brief comment and you're muted yes um i just wanted to offer a suggestion for getting things into the hands of tenants just have the post office drop the letter into every mailbox thank you in the area which you want okay thank you we're going to move along um i invite someone to make a motion that we uh adopt uh items three and seven and move forward to second reading on those so moved sorry any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye post okay turn the chair over to the mayor all right i didn't quite hear your motion what was it i know right he's killed it i was expected to move advancing three and seven four okay with without you uh right being part of the discussion okay so i think we uh what we probably need now here team is a uh motion to set the date for the second public hearing on this uh which would be at our next meeting which let me just yes it's already been worn it's already the newspaper so okay so we don't actually need a motion okay great so we will not do that zoning zoning follows slightly different rules for new members so because zoning is set in statute for the process for adopting it there isn't a first reading in a second reading under a traditional ordinance change it follows the two required public hearings so which have to get warned in the paper so we usually do that in advance okay well um with that then i think we are done with our regular business which is very exciting thank you michael yes i agree thank you so does that mean that i shouldn't have had uh donna move that we go forward on three and seven or should we now make a motion to go forward on the remaining items that were not amended out i move that we uh advance the remaining items of the proposal that were not voted out and that means everything but three and seven which are already advanced and eight in solar access which have been amended out i'll second for the discussion all in favor please say aye aye aye and opposed okay great uh all right so um we are up to council reports all right i'm just gonna go around the room um all right donna go ahead thank everybody who came out tonight and who's emailed us i want people to know their email is as strong as when they show up and really appreciate it and i do want everyone to know that the average length of time talking was six and a half minutes and i didn't add yeah i mean so the shortest i mean there were like four people under six minutes so you may not realize that when you're talking but when we say two minutes is just trying to get five it'd be a miracle yeah i want to apologize for not cutting folks off but i wanted to like yeah well and you know maybe for the next time i'll say okay we're gonna recommend two but we're cutting you off it or whatever whatever it is i gotta be better about enforcing that thank you uh carrot i also just want to thank everybody that came out and um all the people who contacted me and emailed me and called me and um provided me with a really fast intensive education about some aspects of zoning has been very greatly appreciated Connor all right congratulations to the state champion montilier high school basketball team which uh one again that's really exciting um and then i'm looking forward to deliver in some meals tomorrow with the senior center at 11 20 so i think that invites still open for other folks there that's it thank you uh jennifer um i too wanted to thank everybody that sent emails and i had phone conversations with um this was really a great way to start out um this next year and i look forward to having further conversations i apologize for not being there my son was exposed to covid so we're all quarantining um and i wish that i was there with everybody and could see how many people were sitting in there i think that's amazing that so many community members showed up i really am bummed that i missed it but um yeah thank you all for the engagement and i look forward to our next meeting thank you jack the only thing that hasn't been said is that there's been there was a lot of discussion tonight about the master plan and are we just sleeping on the master plan are we ignoring the master plan the answer is no that work is going on in various city committees about uh all the component parts of the master plan and the planning commission and the planning director have been working on it for at least a couple of years and uh they'll be coming forward with with a proposed master plan and bringing it before uh before the council i don't know the timeline Kirby's got his hands up be and i maybe knows the timeline but but but but it it's happening and it's a big project and i think it's going to be uh good when it's when it's done Kirby do you want to add something yeah just to give you the update since that came up a lot we're halfway done we're halfway done with rewriting the city plan from scratch basically it's going to be very different very new and we think that definitely by the end of the year you'll see it probably in the fall we want to work with a consultant we're going to have an online master plan for the first time which a lot of that credit goes to mike for organizing and master mining having the online master plan but big new things and we've been working very hard on the master plan and some of the big chapters like economic development and housing natural resources those are all done so we're so we're making great progress actually and also like to um i don't know how to let you know what my email is but if anyone would like to um meet and talk about planning commission things i'm available for that i heard a couple of the new city counselors mentioned that they met or they've been in contact with people this week and learned a lot about it um in some ways that made me interested in maybe also influencing you then because if you're getting influenced by people who are against us maybe you should be influenced by this planning commission too so so i'm totally available to me then maybe i'll send you all an email and let you know uh if you want to go for a coffee or something and i'm totally up for that great thank you uh lauren yeah thanks just would echo all that and only other thing um it was brought up in public comments many many hours ago um but it was just the elks club first hearing was fabulous uh seeing 155 people or so show up but like great discussion thanks to paul castello for facilitating um i just thought like just the energy and ideas it was really great and a lot of good ideas both for the property and how to maintain that really inclusive and great process for how we kind of think through that project so i was just really grateful to the staff for pulling it together quickly and everyone for showing up and bringing a lot of great energy to it so it was really i think uh exciting to see where we go from there yeah i agree that was a great meeting uh i will also be at uh the senior center tomorrow at 11 20 to drive for meals on wheels i am excited about that uh and i also am grateful that folks are turning out for things i just you know digging a step back i feel like we're having an increased level of participation in city conversations and i think that is wonderful um and while it can always be better i just want to celebrate that uh for for a hot second here uh and with that i will go to john just really quickly it's not really related to anything we were talking about but i i promise mr whitaker i would stand up and be counted at the idea of trying to collect all of the various recordings video recordings from orca and trying to host them ourselves i do have contact out to uh rob and orca about that and it would be a mighty mighty lift but it would be also a cool thing so thank you and bill uh yeah i get a few things here i hope my mic is working um first of all because it's come up two or three times the next smallest capital city is pier south dakota at 14 000 residents so we've got 6 000 residents to go before we lose our status think our i think we're good i think you're probably right for a while um secondly i will follow up have followed up mr whitaker made a suggestion that maybe we needed a special meeting i'm not sure about that but i did send an outreach to our attorney to find out about his you know he the allegation is that we do not keep proper minutes and i i don't know what the city clerk said but we i know they meet the legal requirement for minutes and um we do have recorded meetings that are available to the public so i'm not sure how we don't meet the law but if we have to meet to say that um we'll probably set up a zoom meeting or something if that's required um i was going to also mention the elks club forum and it did cover so the turnout was great um and like i said we are collecting the we are assembling the the information the comments that were made categorizing it and now that we will be having our access you know the polko public polling system available to us we will use that to set up some electronic two-way communication with the public about this process and i just want to also remind i know the council knows this and anyone that's listening but this is going to be a long process i think you know i it's great to hear people asking you know if we've changed zoning and if we've done all these things yet but that we're just a long way from that and so we will talk about that more at the next meeting however that brings me to the next meeting and um the fact that you changed the zoning may have helped quite a bit um because we have a lot of you know some things from this past meeting got moved to next meeting so i'm going to try to shuffle the things so i'm not going to go through it all now but some of the things you've seen dates and i know jack you'd asked like for the housing task force to come in we may need to move some of that around just to accommodate everything but again i was also worried that we're going to be another two or three hours on zoning and it may be a lot faster with number eight number three or then the the solar thing out so we'll see how that goes and lastly i just wanted to raise um an issue that we've been getting a lot of calls about and i'm sure many of you have which is the the gerton park structure on main street and as you know we we had a lot of issues with it in its prior locations we moved it here to see how that worked and um you know i'd probably have to report that it hasn't really worked and right now it's our number one calls for both police and fire in the entire city even more so than the economy and we've got you know we've got that data um we're getting tons of complaints about people you know going by and all that stuff so i wanted to raise it all with you i think we as staff would be prepared to take action and move it or take care of it if you all think it you would rather have a public agenda item about that we can do that at at the next meeting but we do we at least would recommend some pretty urgent action but i did not want to unilaterally take action without giving you all the chance to weigh in thoughts on that team yeah Lauren is there an obvious place to move it i don't know that we would move it move it move it i would i mean i think we we would it wouldn't be there and it might not be anywhere it might be maybe in Hubbard Park i mean i'll think it it's in in our minds and i think the public's minds is no it's not really a public amenity at this point and so i don't know where it would be an effective public amenity but maybe there is a place but i don't know i'm not sure it would be right in the proximity i would say the hopelessness task force know about the idea of possibly moving back to the riverbank there but i i think it might be a bit much to move it to another location without engaging the homelessness task force at least for a meeting there i spoke to ken russell today and uh you know he floated the idea it might be a good time to have a public hearing with the homelessness task force uh just on the issue because a lot of things have come up just with gordon park and you know i think it'll continue to be a community conversation so i you know i'd like to have it on the agenda before it gets moved to you know kind of an unknown location you know i i think it goes back to the riverbed i i think that's okay for now but you don't want to move it twice either right that's that's fine and it's not quite ready i mean i think the ground still frozen and everything but we just wanted to be prepared and i think given that our next meeting is april 13th if that's if you wanted it on that agenda we wanted to make sure we were prepped for that so that it wasn't that meeting and then pushing it off even further donna did you have something i was just wondering if bill was wanting it us to ultimately make a decision about being so what i'm asking is if you all would like to have this as for further public conversation that's fine and i get that and we'd be happy to put that on the next agenda if that's what you prefer if not if you you're fine with just us dealing with it we'll deal with it but it probably will be moved at some point soon and i'm not sure where if we do another discussion item next meeting we could definitely work with ken to have that sort of community discussion over zoom beforehand right that's uh so we have some information going into it i mean i'm not against having on the next meeting i don't want to make it something i'm trying to push this but i don't think it could wait much longer so thoughts on having it on the next agenda okay seeing some nods okay that's all i've got okay all right uh so with that uh we're at the end of the meeting so um without objection i will adjourn at 10 47