 or if you want to do something, I don't know. So if there's a, you know, if there's one person who's really into something, I don't know at all. You don't know. Yeah, I know that. Alright, that works. Do you want me to talk to you? Do you need to sort of get me a comment? Just like, I want to know something. Yes, I want to know something. I want to know something. Okay. I want to know something. Sure. And then David is going to do a little bit of an interview with you. Okay. And then, actually, she will be... Okay. Okay. Sweet. Yeah, so is that what you're playing about? It's really... I'm not sure about my hair. Right, right, right. I'm just kind of like singing. Sounds good. Um, I think that that guy loves me, but I'm not sure if it's from that girl. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that. Alright, cool. But I was also going to do something that I didn't know what we're doing, so that way everyone knows. Right. So that way everyone knows. Yeah. When you're spending a lot, I just want to make sure if you can come in to talk to them about some of the facilitator behaviors that would be ideal for this kind of activity. Okay. Okay. Alright. Alright, so if you want to know, I'll look back on just a few... So we'll see, like, once in a month, we'll have a language break. Okay. Okay. So, we'll be back in a minute. Okay. Let's go. Bye! Bye! Bye! Take care guys! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Good evening. My name is Andy Montroll. I'm the chair of the Planning Commission and tonight is actually, it's a formal meeting of the Planning Commission, even though we're doing it very differently than we normally do. And the main focus of tonight is obviously plan BTV. And we're going to be going through a number of steps on the plan BTV is essentially the city's plan for development and for planning over the next number of years. Under state law, the city's required to have a municipal development plan. And in the past, we've done it every five years, and it's been a fairly boring document that is pretty tedious to read through. And this year, for this time around, we're trying to do it differently. We're trying to do it in a way that's much more engaging and really sets out the vision and the goals for the city in a much more, again, a much more open way and a much more readable way that we hope will really bring a much better focus to what the goals are of the city. So I'm going to open our Planning Commission meeting. And our agenda, as I said, is the focus on plan BTV. We're going to be having some open discussion about it. And Megan Tuttle is going to introduce it. And after we do that, we're going to have open up a formal public hearing. Although at the beginning, I'm going to open all of this up as our public hearing on plan BTV. That way, all of the comments that come in during this part of the process can be incorporated into our public hearing as well. So if you don't want to, you don't have to speak later on during the more formal part of the process. We have our Planning Commissioners here. I think we have three. If I could just have the Planning Commissioners raise your hand and introduce yourself. They're all in the back corner here. Harris Ruhman. I think that is it for here tonight. We have three other members who apparently are not able to make it here tonight. But we will be here. We'll be listening to what you say and very open to all comments and thoughts that you have on that. And unless there are questions with that, I'll turn the microphone over to Ben. Thank you. So thank you all for being here. As Andy said, we are working on our update to plan BTV or as some of you may have heard this plan referred to in the past, the municipal development plan for the city. So we're going to spend a little bit of time here at the beginning talking about what plan BTV is, talking about what's in the plan and how we've been working to update this plan. And then we're going to give you a lot of time to have discussion with each other and with the Planning Commissioners because we know that that's a really important aspect of making sure that what's in this plan is reflecting what you see as being important. So we're glad you're all here tonight to be part of this process with us. It's a little bit of an experiment from how we've done things in the past. So to jump right in, what's in plan BTV? And before I start talking about what's in plan BTV, I would like to ask the question, how many of you saw the draft plan before you came here tonight? A couple, a couple have had a chance to peek at it, but maybe not read it thoroughly. Great. So we'll talk a little bit about it. And for those of you that have had a chance to look at it, hopefully this will be kind of a helpful reminder. So plan BTV is like a roadmap for the city. It is a really high level plan for what is going to happen in the next 10 to 20 years in Burlington. But ultimately, it helps provide policy direction for the projects and programs and initiatives that the city and even many of our partners will actually use in the next, you know, five, 10, 15 years and beyond to guide the work that we do as a community. So it's a really important roadmap for us as a community to determine our future. Many of you have probably heard of plan BTV over and over and over and over again in the last few years. And that's because plan BTV is actually part of a collection of plans that we have as a city. Tonight, we're here to talk about plan BTV, our comprehensive plan, which is essentially an umbrella plan for all of the planning work that we do as a city. But we do have more specific plans, like plan BTV south end, which is something that we've also been working on in recent years, which looks specifically at how we take in and interpret these ideas that we have for our city in a specific area of the city. Or plan BTV walk bike, which looks specifically at how we take these principles and interpret them in our transportation system for the city. Ultimately, this plan that we're here to talk about tonight provides that framework for all of those other plans and efforts. This plan is about how Burlington continues to be a dynamic city at the heart of our region. We are right in the middle of Chittenden County and in the middle of what's happening in Vermont in a lot of ways. And this plan also talks about how we evolve over time, that as we evolve, that we will preserve the things that make us a distinct and unique community. And we'll leverage those identities to promote greater inclusion and more connectivity as a city. Plan BTV addresses a really wide range of issues that we need to think about for the future of our city. You can see here that there are a number of topics like transportation or housing or the natural environment that are all included in this plan. And the reason that we show them this way as a series of gears is because they're all connected. And you can understand this way that as we start to turn those gears or make decisions and implement projects and ideas that pertain to one of these issues, it has an effect on how all of these other parts of our city function and ultimately work. In the past, if you're familiar with our municipal development plan, we've had individual chapters related to each of these topics, which has allowed us to really expand upon each of these issues and talk about why they're important and what we're going to do about them. But what we've been trying to achieve with this update to Plan BTV is to reframe how these ideas are addressed to demonstrate the interrelated nature of all of these issues to one another. So our updated plan, instead of having 10 sort of distinctive chapters about each topic, has two major elements. The first one is our plan for action. This is what our plan instructs us to do over the next 10 to 20 years. It presents a number of goals and the potential tools that we can use to actually implement those goals as a city. And these goals and actions are organized around four characteristics that we heard from you are really important when we were having conversations. And that is those things that I mentioned at the beginning about Burlington as a distinctive city, as a dynamic city, an inclusive city, and a connected city. The other major part of this plan is our plan for land use. And what this part of the plan talks about is kind of where and how we will actually take these goals and potential strategies and implement them within our city. This plan has been shaped by a number of kind of evaluations and conversations. As Andy mentioned, plan BTV is not a new thing. Plan BTV, the municipal development plan, has actually been around since 1973, was when we adopted our first municipal development plan. And we've been doing planning work even further back since then. So this is our kind of regular check-in time. This is our chance to look at what's in the plan and evaluate what was done since the last time we adopted this plan. What have we been successful at? What have we not been successful at? What are things that are in our plan that are still important priorities for us to continue to work on in the future? And then combined with that, we've been talking with you. Many of you I see in this room I know have been at either an NPA meeting or a workshop or even at the farmer's market or somewhere else and talked to us about this plan earlier this year. But taking that information that you've shared with us about what's important for the future of Burlington, maybe what's missing in our plan that we need to make sure is reflected in this update. And combining all of that information into the draft that we are here to talk about tonight. So I'll talk through kind of what all of these elements are and a little bit about what they say before we get into a conversation. The first, as I mentioned, our plan for action is really talks about four important characteristics of the city and what we're going to do to ensure that the city embodies those characteristics. The first of those is Burlington as a distinctive city. And as it implies, this is about all of the ways that Burlington is unique and is a special place. This part of our plan talks about everything from the natural setting and natural resources that make our physical location very special and important to the kinds of things that we've built in our community, our historic and architectural legacy as a city and how that contributes to the essence of what our city is. As well as things like our personalities and our preferences and how we engage in conversation and politics and community in Burlington. The types of businesses and services that are located in Burlington and what they offer to our residents and kind of what they offer as the economic identity of our city. So each of these characteristics has a number of goals that go along with them in terms of how we will ensure that we continue to, for example, be a distinctive city in the future. These goals are really about how we preserve and enhance those things that we just talked about as important parts of our identity. Improving and protecting the quality of our natural resources is a very important one that we talk about a lot as a community, the lake and our other land-based natural resources. How we ensure that we continue to have a number of strong and diverse residential neighborhoods that are nearby areas of services and jobs and other opportunities within the community. How we're balancing parts of our city where both of those things can happen. Protecting those historic and architectural resources in a way that allows them to continue to be used and continue to be vital in our city going forward. Enhancing our role as an arts and cultural center for our region. And then finally, leveraging those unique characteristics that we have as a city and using them to help us strengthen our economy going forward. For each of these goals, the draft plan does have a number of potential action items that we could use to actually advance these goals. That's a ton of information for us to get into tonight. So we hope you'll take a look at the plan. But this level, these ideas of goals are something we're going to discuss a lot more in our groups. The next characteristic is about Burlington as a dynamic city. We as a community are a small city. But we also play a major and important role within our region in terms of jobs and services and how we relate to the region as a whole. This theme is all about how we balance those identities going forward. Embracing our role as a city and responding to both current and future challenges that we experience as a city. We know that there are things that we've experienced as chronic challenges over many years that we still need to continue to be creative and nimble about how we address. But this also acknowledges that there are a lot of changes that are coming that we may not have experienced yet or that we're just starting to experience. Like climate change or changes in technology or transportation or other systems in our city. So the goals that we have here about Burlington being a dynamic city are about ensuring that we are embracing and participating in conversations and programs and policies that recognize and are responsive to our role within our region. What is our share of issues like housing and transportation and economic development. Ensuring that we are thinking about our policies and programs in the context of change and how things are changing. Specifically how our demographics are changing, how climate is changing, how technology is changing. Making sure that as we identify those opportunities for addressing our needs as a community we're aligning our resources, our public infrastructure resources to be able to support those solutions. And then the last two goals are really related to climate change. The first being how we ensure that we as a city are doing, being really bold and ambitious about reducing our impact on climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and becoming a net zero energy community. But as a compliment to that ensuring that we are identifying ways that we can become more resilient as a community to those hazards of climate change and other hazards that our community might experience. The next characteristic is about Burlington as an inclusive city. And this is really about making sure that everyone in our community has opportunity, that we are actively trying to seek ways to reduce barriers to equity and inclusion. Obviously when we talk about these issues a lot of times we're talking about issues of housing and economic opportunity, job opportunity, making sure everyone has a place to live. But this is also about making sure that our community is accessible to people of all abilities and sensitivities. Making sure that our public spaces are welcoming for everyone. That we have resources and opportunities for people to participate in their neighborhoods that are appropriate to their needs. As well as like the experiment that you'll all be a part of tonight, making sure that we're being responsive to the ways that people would like to be able to engage in conversations about the community and the specific needs that they might have. Things like engaging youth in conversations or developing language access plans to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to participate. So what are the goals around this idea? The first is about addressing those gaps that we know exist in our housing picture in the city. Making sure that we have housing opportunities for everyone regardless of their income and housing needs. Related to that is making sure that we have safe and accessible housing for everyone. That's not just about the physical kind of quality and condition of buildings, but things like making sure that there are homes that are accessible to individuals as they age so that they can remain in their neighborhood and in their home as they get older. Enhancing our built environment to make sure that our public spaces, our streets, our sidewalks are safe and accessible for everyone. Ensuring that all residents have access to meaningful employment opportunities. This is not only about job opportunities and workforce development, but also about the supportive infrastructure that will help people participate in the workforce, like reliable transportation and childcare. And then finally, as we said before, meaningful opportunities for engagement and what are the specific actions that we can take to promote that as a goal for the city. And then finally, the last characteristic is about Burlington as a connected city. And this is really about all of the issues that I was talking about at the beginning of this presentation that we're considering the holistic nature of the decisions that we make and how individual actions affect one another. This is about things like how do our economy and our natural environment relate to one another? How do we relate to the place where we live? Some of the very specific and kind of tangible connections like making sure we have robust transportation choices as a city that serve everyone's needs. Making sure we have the services and amenities that we need on a daily basis close to where we live and where we can access them, as well as continuing to keep sight of the long term kind of big picture impacts of the decisions we make, prioritizing those over short term decision making as a city. So you'll see here again, another important goal when we think about being a connected community, our natural environment comes back here. Really thinking not only about protecting the quality of our natural resources, but about the integrity and connectivity of those resources and making sure that we have the appropriate tools in place to ensure that those continue to be a valuable part of our community, protecting them from inappropriate effects of development, for example. Coordinating our decision making around housing and the economy and transportation to ensure that we really develop that robust multimodal system within the city. Guiding important amenities and resources into neighborhood activity centers. This isn't just about kind of the things that we think about like a grocery store or other sort of typical services, but how our neighborhoods can be places where there are opportunities for us to come together. Recreation, community amenities, all near where we live and can use them. This is also about our public infrastructure. Making sure that we're coordinating the care and enhancement of our public infrastructure so that it continues to serve us well as a community, meet all of our needs without burdening us from a tax-based perspective. Looking at our consistency and coordination and our decision making, especially among the many different decision making bodies that there are in the community. And then finally making sure that we think about the impacts of our decisions in terms of our relationship to our municipal neighbors and our larger region. Burlington, as much as we might like to think that what happens in Burlington stays in Burlington, that's not the case. That the decisions we make are affected by and affect the decisions that people, municipalities and residents of the region experience. So as I mentioned, the next part, major part of the plan then talks about kind of where and how do we implement these ideas about Burlington's characteristics on the ground throughout our city. This is an element of the plan that has been really strong for a very long time. Our land use framework has guided a lot of the work that we've done as a city for many, many years and it's been based around three major principles for development. The first being that there are areas in our community that we will conserve. These are areas of our community that our plan has always directed us to ensure that we are protecting, like our natural and cultural resources. These are places that the plan talks about in the future, taking great care to protect and conserve them largely as they are today and making sure that over time as we implement this plan, we're kind of checking in with ourselves, evaluating. Are there ways that we need to manage these resources differently as, you know, for example, climate change impacts these resources? How are we doing in terms of balancing the use of these spaces for their natural function while also meeting the needs of recreation and access to nature that our residents value? These are the areas, the plan talks about them as the areas that we're planning to conserve. The next sort of major principle of our land use plan going back many years has been about strengthening and enhancing our residential neighborhoods. As I said earlier, we have a lot of really diverse neighborhoods in Burlington. We're a small city but we have neighborhoods that are very different in terms of what type of housing and when were they built? What characteristics of the structures? Even the people that live in them. And this part of the plan talks about our residential neighborhoods of the city as an area that we want to strengthen and really enhance going forward. But this plan recognizes that each of these neighborhoods has unique opportunities and challenges. Whether that's aging or whether that's cost of housing or proximity to the institutions. They all have unique influences that they experience in terms of what residents see as the quality of life in their neighborhood. And that we need to in the future, as we're planning to sustain these neighborhoods, think about what specific tools and strategies we can use to address those quality of life issues that are important in each of these neighborhoods. And then finally, the last principle, the longstanding principle of our land use policies is about looking at the most dense parts of our community that are already developed today and identifying opportunities for infill and redevelopment to continue to support our needs for housing or jobs or other amenities that we have as a city. So the last part of the plan then talks about areas that we're planning to grow. And much like our residential neighborhoods, there are a number of types of areas that the plan talks about when we think about areas where we're planning to grow. This includes places like neighborhood centers, which I've mentioned before, places that are really geared towards serving the needs of the immediately surrounding neighborhood in places that are walkable and bikeable. Our multimodal corridors, you can think of these as our major street corridors in Burlington, like North Avenue or Main Street, where these are the streets that connect all of the parts of our city to one another and serve a very important role, not only from the community services that might be along them, but also the transportation connections that they offer. These also include areas like our downtown, which the plan talks about as really being a regional center. This is what we anticipate in the future to continue to be the most urban part of our city. It serves not only the needs of residents of Burlington, but also provides jobs and many other opportunities for residents of our region. There are also a number of special areas that have been identified in this plan. Things like our institutions and how do we target specific growth around the needs of those institutions within certain areas of our city? Our own public schools, how do we use the land in the city that our public schools are on to better meet the needs of our public schools going forward? As well as the areas of the city that we call our enterprise areas, probably the most obvious example of this is the south end. How do we continue to facilitate the south end as an important part of our economy in terms of the different industries that it is home to today and in the future? As I mentioned before, there are a ton of extra details that are in the plan, but it's a lot of information to kind of throw at you tonight. So I want to let you know a little bit about kind of where we are and where we're going so that you know kind of how we can continue to engage in a conversation around this plan. So where are we in the process of updating this plan? We have been working on this update with the Planning Commission since the beginning of the year. We spent some time earlier this year doing that analysis, as I mentioned before, of kind of where are we with our current plan? Having conversations with residents and stakeholders in Burlington about what the important issues are that we need to make sure we're addressing in our update and then ultimately working to rewrite this plan and to get it ready for you all to look at as we're doing here tonight. So tonight is really our first kind of opportunity for a conversation and to hear your input on this draft plan. We're using this as an opportunity to have a discussion with you about what the goals of the plan are. And in the next several months in the new year, we're going to continue this conversation, dig further into the details about what are the specific actions that we can use to actually move these goals forward that we have in the plan? And where and how might we do this in certain parts of the city? We want to have some opportunity for us to really dig into those details. So we'll be continuing this conversation. We'll have a number of workshops in January for us to continue to kind of have a format like this to learn more about the plan and discuss certain elements of the plan. And we'll also be sharing this and having conversations about this with Council. So you can look forward to a number of presentations if you'd like to come and hear more presentations at the Council level, as well as public hearings that they will have at the Council level. So with that, I'm going to kind of wrap up sharing information outward to you and start to move us into a discussion about the plan and hear from you what you think about each of these characteristics that the plan has specifically recognized as being important to Burlington and what you think about the importance of some of these goals and why they might be important to the future of the city. So because we are at a public hearing, because this is a formal planning commission meeting, I'm going to ask Andy if he could come and open the public hearing and then we'll get into the details about our exercise. All right. Well, thank you, Megan. This is a very formal, very quick process. So as Megan asked, I'm going to formally open the public hearing for plan BTV. And this means that all the comments that are made during these breakout sessions and then following when we get more formal comments, if you'd like, are all going to be part of the record that we can then use to incorporate in the plan as appropriate or to make adjustments to it as appropriate. So this is an important part of the process, both for us and hopefully for all of you as well, so we could get your input on this. And so again, the public hearing portion is open. All right. So I'm going to just quickly explain what we're going to do at our tables tonight. And then we'll wrap up after our group conversations with just an open time for any comments or questions or feedback that you might have that you're not able to specifically cover in your group conversations. So at your table, we have a number of materials and these posters around the room. There are spaces for us to talk about each of the characteristics that plan BTV is organized around and the goals that support that characteristic. And we really want to use this as an opportunity for you to be able to talk with the planning commissioners and with each other about those really dive deeper into what they mean. So we've got a couple of ways that you're going to be able to do that. The first of which is that we hope that you'll take a few minutes talking with everyone at your table first about what the characteristic means to you. If you had to say what the future vision of Burlington is as a distinctive city, what would that mean to you? Or as an inclusive city, what would that mean to you? Get to share with each other what that sounds what that looks like from your perspective. And then based on that conversation, you'll have some dots at your table that you can use to place next to the numbers for each of the goals. And what that means is that you're helping us understand which of these goals you think are important. Which ones you think really have the most potential to help us achieve that vision for a city from your perspective. And then tell us why have a little bit of a discussion with your group about why you think that's important. This could also include a conversation about what's missing. What isn't on that list of goals that really should be. And this will help us to set up for making sure that what we've done so far in evaluating our current plan and listening to you about what's important, make sure that we've heard the message correctly and make sure that we've captured everything that we should have in that draft plan. So for those of you that are sitting at the middle tables, this table and this table, I might ask you to just kind of turn and or the two front tables, since there's only a few of you, maybe you could turn in and work with the middle tables. So we can try to maybe condense into four groups. And then we'll let you work together with a planning commissioner if you guys could each join a table. And myself and Noah and David and Shaley are here to also support you in that conversation. So we'll spend some time doing this exercise and then we'll all come back together in a little bit. Sorry, I do have one more thing to share. David reminded me at your table if this exercise doesn't give you the space to share something really specific that you came here tonight to share, there are some papers that look like this that say share your input on the top. You can feel free to write anything you want on this paper and leave it with us before you leave today or take it home and continue writing your thoughts on it after you go. That's right. Process here. So just to kick us off, why don't you turn to your neighbor here at the table? Hopefully it's someone that you don't know well and download that here. What does it mean to you for Brellington as the state of city? What would that look like in the future and download the person next to you? What would that look like if you had a magic wand and you could make it any way you chose? So let's fix all the sidewalks and have a lot more trees. That sounds like a great comment to share to Steve because we're going to turn to our partners and we're going to download them for a minute. What comes to mind when you think about the distinctive city? I have to be objective. I'm not allowed to go to Spain here. That's right. That's right. All the trees in the area are marked. Every tree has a block that's just like this. So, I'm just going to interject here so they just would give us a lot of process and give us a downloader partner. We would love to give you with 10 dots, there are no difference between the dots that come up into a lot of them as if these dots are resources, okay? Because we want to know what your priority is. We're going to talk about what the ideas are and then the prioritizing with dots afterwards. That's afterwards. We're going to ask you guys to come up here so you can a lot of value or resources to each of the five goals. All these five goals. If we do this, we don't get to talk about our issues with those goals. No, we'll talk about it, man. We're going to talk about them right where that reason is going. Okay, Barbara, so why don't you come up first? We'd love to have you come up. We can see where everyone's priorities are. We can come up together. We just want to be able to understand your priorities. So these five dots across correspond to five distinctive goals that are here on the table. So we'd love to understand your priorities. But there is no difference, Barbara. Everyone has 10 dots. But we're just looking at two understanding your priorities. So we're doing 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. No, but we're doing 1, 2, 5. So there's only one copy of 1, 2, 5. So each person has 10 dots. 10 dots. 10 dots. 10 dots. 10 dots. Whatever resources. Just to figure out what your priorities are. So we'll... Alright. Can I take this with me as a cheat sheet? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Everyone gets 10 dots. We should put them on the left. On the left. Alright. Are you going to name these goals? Or is it just 20? I mean, we're just going to call it one. Like, represent it. There's a lot to take in here. You can get through this. Yeah, we can... I'm already jamming here. What do you got for us for 1 right there? What? So perhaps... What would I call it? So that goal, we'd love to know where you prioritized there. Minor 1 and 3. So we'd love for you to come up and put those dots to show where your priorities are. I would love whatever your priorities are. You can join me up here. Okay. So consider this 10 dots in the past. What would you like to see? There would be a little sheet with 1 to 5. I don't know how to... Yes, let me see if we can get that up there. I'm guessing one. He's got an item there for my dog. Yeah. Okay, I already put some on, but I can't remember what they stood for, so I stopped. You got 10. Here we go. There it is. Thank you. What's that? You want to move on to the next table? You're the content expert here. You're with me, Alex. I need you in the long haul. All right. Thank you for getting that up there. That makes the world a little better. Yeah, yeah. It's a movement. Okay. You're welcome. Number two is definitely very, very conflicted. Creating new opportunities to make use and feel and redevelop. But that is entirely inconsistent with strengthening adjacent residential neighbourhoods. You can certainly bring that up to get some that quality information. It's a sort of political question where you can support it. That's right. When we can definitely bring that up and make sure that it's not too early for everyone's awareness. We're getting there. That's right. We're getting some good movement here. All right. Getting to some of the reasons why you guys have allotted those values. And we'll get to diving into some of those anecdotal information that we want to know as we're sitting here. All right. So let's open it up here to the floor here. Everyone's got a lot of strong, passionate opinions here. Let's get to reason for number one for folks that put their value on number one here. For improving and protecting the quality of the natural resources in our water resources area. So we're looking for the why. We've told us what is important here. Now we want why. Why is number one? The question is why for the folks that allotted whatever they allotted to this priority for the natural resources. Just why? What made you put this? In my opinion, it's an economic driver for tourism in the city, which I personally think is incredibly important. As an economic driver, of course, just to protect the natural water. It also aligns with what we stand for in Vermont. I think it's in line with this very outdoor area. You know. You know, make the outdoors look very like the lake's border with Vermont. Yeah, it really took a hit in 1960 with being on the trees. Is it a right to assume kind of like the Vermont identity? Just to encapsulate it there in the brand? That's a great idea to put in the brand. The lake is a focal point for the entire state. Right. And that goes with the area. That's why tourism is the only place that we felt like sharing the land. Well, that's a great idea. BTV equals rubble. So what about two? Does anyone have anything burning for one? I'm not sure that we can get to all of the rules within this timeframe. Yes, Richard. I've got to wind on two. Okay. Right? Because I think the first part of the first couple of kilometers has been effective. The south. But because victory and inconsistent with the second part of it, that is part of what creates conflicts in the neighborhoods. And also potentially these are the institutions. So you're saying creating new opportunities and making it feel redeveloped in the most densely developed areas is one part of it. And then while conserving and strengthening all adjacent residential neighborhoods and evitably in this city with the infrastructure of all new perspectives of the planning commission and the DRP for every minute, developers are putting the most units in the least possible part of land in a way that is completely inconsistent with the adjacent residential neighborhoods. So it sounds like a sad face could symbolize some of the sentiment behind your comments. What would you put for... I think there are two distinct elements of the same subject. Okay. So help me work with me here, Richard. What can I put down here to represent that contradiction? Well, can I say something about that? It's really hard. To do number two is hard. It's difficult. So it's important. Because I think we all want people to go buy things and have jobs. We do. We want nice places to live. It's hard to do that. Maybe it's just badly worded. But I think that the one possible thing that I would like to say is that in mixed-use infill and redevelopment should be consistent or enhance the adjacent residential neighborhoods. What we're used to is that they degrade the local neighborhoods. I think that some of you could put down the mixed-use infill and redevelopment should be adjacent. How do you shrink that to a certain number of words? In context, in certain parts of the city, you've got the institutions and the possible link between UVM and their student policies and landlords who are almost in handing love to the extent they degrade neighborhoods if you've only got them on certain streets. Adjacent to the university to find out how true that is and how it's not improving. When it hasn't improved in the 22 years I've been running to. So I understand there's some historical significance here. How can we put that? Does anyone have any ideas here? How do we encapsulate that comment in a couple words here? Challenging? Contradictory perhaps? Richard is taking back the better parts of residential neighborhoods. Better and better. In house, protected. Okay, so let's go enhance and protect. Barbara, I saw you looking to chime in there. Well, I agree with Richard with the downtown poor too. They think by enhancing and protecting the neighborhoods which they're not doing in border areas it's anything's okay in the downtown. And I think it's contradictory in terms of their environmental goals, in terms of their water quality, in terms of their goals about preservation and scale and what is unique about the city. Then they go and do two things. They change the zoning rules to make buildings more at a scale. They change the architectural rules to make it easier for developers to develop repeat cutter, non-interesting buildings. So, you know, I feel like the plan talks out of two sides of its mouth in terms of what it wants. Not just for the city, it's a whole lot for the downtown in particular. Anything goes for developers. Can I ask a quick question about that? I wrote down here something that's not getting too late. I think it may just assume architectural. Design advisory board. Well, let me tell you about architecture. We're the Design Advisory Board and the Planning Commission. The Development Review Board, they have instituted something called form-based codes, and it's a series of design rules. And if you follow those rules, you may be able to avoid going before a public review. And it's designed to talk about predictability for developers. Well, it is very easy. I think that a lot of development is adding character and it contradicts what you want. So, is it fair to say that it's sort of some thematic contradiction could encapsulate what you're talking about? An inherent contradiction in making things easy to do for developers and for developers like you and others, while saying that you want to protect the environment and saying that you want to protect the character of the city and the uniqueness of the city, the scale of the city. So, what does both mean and does both mean anything goes up to 14 stories? That's a great question, something we'll certainly dive into. When somebody designs their own building and it doesn't look like anybody else's building and you haven't seen a building like that anywhere else, you're on the right track. We were presented with a number of designs for that thing that's going up on North Avenue. I don't have any terms, but every building, perspective building that the illustrator looked like a building that had already seen one of the not-so-good-looking new things that people have seen. You have to get it right. It's complicated. I think that's always going to be it. It's not going to be the tension. If we rebuild what we have, which is what this year said, then we haven't solved the paradox problem. We think we have, but if you think about that, that's the way to look at it in a lot of ways. That is the way to look at it. What we want there, if what's there, we've got to look at it. I mean, that will bring it up to an entirely different design. We will. This is where they're going with that, because we can't doubt that there's rules about getting rid of apartments, and you have to rebuild somewhere else if you do not go out to, and you've got to go to somewhere else, that kind of thing. I think that's really where I look at it. That's how I look at it. The old North End, there's been some very prominent examples of older housing, older structures getting knocked down and built entirely new ones in their place, and not necessarily with any fealty to the historic traditions and patterns, and there's a lot of social benefit in terms of community reform, and there's kind of a prominent example of that. Before that process started, Bright Street was shared frankly. Bright Street. And what's there now is way better, and it's affordable housing, opportunities that far exceed the housing up to there before, still for them, permanently for them. There's going to be a lot more of that in the city's future, but that isn't going to happen. It's how is it going to, what are the values that will guide that kind of adaptive destruction and then re-creation and new buildings. I think it's important to put environment and energy efficiency ahead of retaining the old historic architectural structure. I mean, we have a powerful example of architectural, you know, historic architectural buildings. They're not primo, but they're architectural. That doesn't mean that we need to keep them. It's sort of like looking at the industrial revolution and saying, yeah, maybe the camera chooses such a great idea. All right, you guys. So we are definitely being asked to move on. Is there an economic one here? Well, we have an energy, the thing is this is only one, so we have like four different themes we have to get to and there's different ideas. We did not do our dots to people feel strongly about doing our dots before we move on. I don't think the dots do anything. All right, so we can be prioritizing stuff. Yeah, it's really trying to, it's giving us a sense of what you think is most important, but if you feel like it's better to talk about the goals that are here and what resonates with them but doesn't, then let's focus on that. Does that sound okay? Okay. Dynamic is next. Dynamic is next. It's going to be it's typing number one you know, two in terms of one of these. So we do like that one. This one, I think is really interesting because I think that enabling a range of land use and development that need involving needs not just health service but change it. I worry about downtown and we've been changing retail and what's going on with the stores going out there. I think we have to have lands addresses. We were just up in South Point and I still guess we're looking for, you know, the library now. It's kind of an example. We're all going to find a store to be in there. They've got to be able to allow other uses. I was in Washington D.C. recently and in kind of a strip mall a decent strip mall in the corner they had a wrestling group to teach kids swimming and you'd never see that before in a strip mall. And two minutes over from that was a woodworking workshop where they gave lessons on how to do woodworking. You never would have seen that in the past before. So I think being open to what's changing in terms of what's happening around us is kind of forcing us. So David, how might you allocate your dollars? Well, I'd put at least a couple on seven and ten. Put three on seven and three on ten. Three on ten. And I thought I was just going to come for the first time. Here you are. Because I have things I have to get done tonight and put them on. And deliciously. So I may not stay the whole time. Okay, that's understood. I really like the walkability and then that sale and then I just really like being able to walk downtown. If there's snow and I can't get in my car and go anywhere, I feel like I can survive. Everything is in walking. I don't want to have a story but I don't mind walking. I don't mind. So maybe when we think about how we love people and the abuses that are responsive to changes it's, again, that context. So let's, you know, insert a part into it. I want to speak about the six. Okay. It's not as kind of it's just it's it's the problem. Bro, in the back. Sorry, I have five ten years ago. I think it is now four January. Which one? Each one of us has got We cover a really important to everybody has something that we want. So promoting land use, housing, transportation, and national development policies, and public improvements consistent with the city's role as a regional growth center, that seems to be the big winner. Why is that? Why do you see that as being a priority goal? For me, it's what John said in the last one round, that if we don't prioritize that, we become insignificant to the world of ours. And it must be something more. And, you know, I think that what he's been planning is to be playing, to be building for us, and to be playing the same. And, you know, we'll see, we've got this urban area, we'll have a lot of responsibility. And we'll handle all of that. I'm sorry, can I just really say something? Yeah, yes, it's all about that. We shouldn't put down all of that. So I think that, but it is really a serious issue. I'm not going to say that. I'm going to put it up. You can put it up. You can put it up. I'm sorry, can I just say something? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, can I just say something? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We need to explore. You know, with our ability to strongly larger students. I think we are indeed out of the shoes, you know. I'm just sure that perpetual affordability can increase the overall supply and inclusion to this housing. 12 is about safety and accessibility of housing, so the programs laws and ordinances to support that, and ensure that no person seeking housing is discriminated against. 13 is enhancing the built environment, ensuring public buildings and spaces are safe, well maintained, and provide people access to people with all the ability to provide it. 14 ensuring all residents have access to meaningful employment, people with a wage, providing meaningful opportunities for citizens to be involved in the decision-making, ensuring that the city can hold its responsibility for citizens. But there are so many. 5 on 15. 5 on 14. What were you saying? 13, the bullet points to the final details of 14. Well, these American ways to live on debt, and borrow, and spend money, and then you're always in debt, and so you always have to pay the bill from the last borrow of a claim. Well, that's a constant scare. Well, it is. It is. Sorry. And your question is absolutely right, and one of my comments in this is going to do with these four things, is that there are some numbers in there about population projections and everything. And the real question really is, you know, can you just say, we're good with what we have here, because we need to figure out what we've got here, and what's our debt load compared to what we have for income. And there's a book, you know, like proper, proper, as we kept, you know, without work. And there's businesses that would be considered crazy if they just say, well, I'm really happy. We've got 12 employees, and we're all happy. We've got good jobs. We don't want to do advertising or whatever. People would say you're crazy, but because that's not the American version. Well, I think one of the core themes, though, that Burlington has dealt with, I've been here since 1982. A lot of changes. I was on the Planet Commission for four years in the 90s. And, you know, one of the questions that came up during my time at the Planet Commission was, this is a headline in, you know, Seven Days, article by Karen Kelly, this density bulletin is destiny. And my answer to that question then and now is yes, because frankly, you know, we're the only real city in Vermont, and we're the only urban center of the only metropolitan area in the state. And in order to avoid sprawl, we have a responsibility to the larger communities to be available for growth. But to me, growth is not necessarily like inviting more people to move here, inviting more businesses to come here. It's really more how to deal with the pressures that are already upon us, given our position, as I started saying earlier, as the only real city in Vermont. And so the question is not, do we grow because people already want to come here and they're already driving up the cost of housing and they're already the employment sector, they're already the academic center. So it's really more like what kind of growth, how do we define growth in a way that fits the quality of life that we expect and want for ourselves, for the children, for the people who follow us. So it has to do with character of the city and what kinds of growth we want to encourage and what kinds we want to disco. And that's really the knob of all of you. It's like, are we going to be anti-business? Do we start saying no to every proposal that we're going to leave business? Well, I'd be silly because businesses are opening and closing all the time. But we could say, for example, about business development, we could say we know that small businesses are the engine of job growth in our community. And that one of the things that makes us relatively distinctive is that we are, nurture small businesses and entrepreneurs like nobody's business. We do it better than almost any other place in Vermont. And Vermont does it better than most other states. We don't pour out for big companies that want to, like Amazon, that want to promise all these great things and come in and ask to get all these tax breaks. We don't do that in Vermont. We've never done that. You know, Enron tried to come to Vermont about 15 or 20 years ago. He said, hey, we've got a great deal for you. And we said no thanks. But it was one of the smartest decisions that state government made was to really say no to that. And so we have to say no to some kinds of growth and development. But we also want to say yes to other kinds. And nurturing entrepreneurial business startups at a local level is one of the best things we can do to ensure the right kind of growth. Good quality jobs. And to make this a kind of place that young people are going to move to and stay and really have a stake in the future of the community. So that's how I come down. And I think some of the numbers in the population projections, which are, like, early on, they don't have any, like, footnotes or something. But the real question, I think, is we need to look at the numbers of what really are we expecting because there's numbers about how many college students. And I think the projection of students doing residential college is going to go down. And so the 17,000 that are pressing on all of our housing, things are going to completely change. And that's not where we're going to get any statistics that are in this. So my really question is that we need to be very careful about, you know, you're saying, oh, there's all these people that don't want to come here, and businesses that don't want to, and I feel like, you know, who, who, we need to really realistically assess. We need to really know that we've got solid projections and not fantasies that looked good three years ago. Because I feel like, years ago, there were people saying that there's a turn in the housing market, you know? A guy from the Nuremberg put it, said, I've been, I usually, my apartments are snapped up like that. Now I'm waiting three weeks and I'm getting large whites. That was three or four years ago. And they're saying, oh, there's a housing crisis. We're also building more housing. I think we're, I think we're going to end up with a crash. I think we're, I think we're going to build more housing. And the banks are going to be home of the bag and so will we. But again, it's really based on the, the, the, we need really realistic, believable numbers that we all agree on. And I don't know, I think there's some numbers in there. Look at page 18 if you're interested about the plan. And the hard part for me is, and that is the growth cycle. The growth cycle in housing is seven to 11 years. And it's like, it has to max out before people start to invest. And then you invest and it gets invested all at once and so then there's a drop. So everybody's like, ah, this is nothing's right. But, but that's a classic American city growth model for housing. But shouldn't that be, people being educated about that in this plan that we are at this point in that cycle? We think we're, And we're still saying we need more housing. No, I just feel like, people need to understand. In other words, there's a lot of high-end housing out there. We don't have a middle housing. That's what they were saying the last couple years. I don't even think that's true. Oh, it is. I mean, at least in the city, it is. And it's very hard to find something that's within the... Well, it gets worse before the... I remember we said, in these 400 years, I mean, we still don't have a... ...low income. That's the hardest. But even a little bit of housing comes from that. It's just... So, somebody said to Liz, within our means... Yeah. I don't know, I think that should be a bullet. Because we get that... How do we get enough affordability? The problem is when those people are thinking, if you're going to live within your means, it's moving out of the city. You need to own a car so that you can drive into the city. Plus, you need $200 a year. I mean, for the whole city to live in. So, what about nine? Because nine is a close runner-up here. And perhaps the tide. Yeah, I agree with that. You know, we're not going to change the planet, but we certainly can. If everybody did what we did, we would change the planet. So, let's be what we are, which is a thoughtful, smart... So... So, this is a plan. It's a sort of general drive guideline. Eventually, it comes from the plan. It's actually called the status dispute. I mean, we build a lot of 50 units after we build that. We build a population. That's it. It's a wage down the road from here, but you emphasize this thing now. So, you're seeing the status where people's hearts are lying, where people's dots. So, tell you what, I think, since we are getting close on time, perhaps if you guys are okay with it, we can move forward since... Does anyone have anything burning about six, seven, and eight that they would love to get on the board? Get... Economic development policies. I'm against them. Because... Because they come from the top down and they don't ask us what we want. They say, this is what we're building here. So, it sounds like you're looking for a more co-created process. Yeah, yeah. Economic development policies aren't usually from the people. They're imposed upon the people. So, which number are you referring to? That's on six. Economic development policies. You know, promoting land use, housing, transportation, economic development, you know, policies. Yeah, you know, starting with the policy and then trying to make everybody fit and fit the same shoes. Anything else, guys? I'm just going to make sure I got that wanting to co-create policies and the notion of participatory decision-making. Does that gather what you're describing, sir? I guess, yeah. What was that last part? Participatory decision-making. Okay, awesome. Anything else, guys, for seven and eight before we keep moving forward here? Number eight is we can suffer if we don't keep infrastructure and keep it, for example, the lake. If we destroy the lake because we don't have a sewer system, I guess everything else could go on. So how would you articulate that and the reason why that could go on? I'd like you to articulate it, because it's a big thing. Okay, give me one more shot here. What do you have for me, Stuart? I'm trying to articulate the idea that if we develop and we don't keep our infrastructure and public services and facilities up to speed, the city will suffer. For example, I think about the lake and I think about the sewage issue. So I'm really referring to that. We can't allow development if we don't keep the infrastructure capacity great enough. It sounds like a balanced focus on developing infrastructure. Maintenance or innovation? It's maintenance or innovation. It's more balanced development. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. That was eight. I actually think that I'm a business owner downtown, so for me, this growth and focusing on expanding and developing the downtown is really important. And I actually I find this to be obviously for my personal reasons. I'm sorry, Miss Stella. That just the growth, the downtown growth, I think is very important. We're actually losing the ball and we're actually suffering a lot down there right now. So I think that focusing on development and the strong economy is really important. You mean for the people for the businesses that are here? Yeah. So you're suffering with them all gone? Because it's not driving as many people? Yeah. Okay. Anything for seven before we move on here? I just emphasize the word evolving I think is really important in that statement that the what Burlington has and will need will continue to change. And is that just referring to... It's embraced in there. The evolving needs of households, new technologies, changing environmental economic factors. So I think that that's why it's important that it's just going to keep evolving. Burlington is a story of evolution of the economy, the culture has changed over 250 years or so and it's just going to continue to do that. Keep it evolving. I mean I think about what Burton's doing and Burlington has changed a lot in less than 20 years. So what we're going to need in the next 20 years will be different. What people need is going to be different. So it's good, the evolution process. Technologies. Technological evolution too. Alright. Does everyone feel pretty good about moving on to the next talk? Taking away. Alright, let's do it. I'll explain. There are floors here which would favor brownfield, redevelopment So download your partner, we're going to get it up on screen. It's really a lot of it. It's a good question. I don't know. I think that's great too. I think that's a good question. Probably. It seems to me that every green space is like hanging fruit and no one wants to remediate it. Probably because it's a lot cheaper than the intermediary. So I don't know. Is it healthier for both? Alright folks, inclusion is also on the board. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more. Good question. Is it a lot of here is the real center of the the whole size of the centennial I think in 2018 before we paid parenthesis? Where would that be? Where could that be? The remediation for for I'm going to make sure we put that on the previous one. Which number would that go with? It might go with 6 or 7, I'm quite sure. We'll come back to that. I just want to keep the thought going. It's like we encourage you just to chat it out with someone next to you if you want to go through the content a little bit. But if you feel pretty good about where your priorities lie, we encourage you to come up in. Let's see. There's a six in the house. There's not many of you guys. No, we're not. We've got two guys. We've got that. We're going up. Here we go. You have my pleasure. Oh, awesome. It's nothing that I have to say. But it's very helpful. Share your thoughts on this event. I appreciate you coming. You're going to call you by your name, but that's alright. Charlie, it's a pleasure to meet you. I can call you by your name. Thank you. And at this point, yes. We don't need to have a journalist. I'm sorry, see? The buffet of dogs. The hot? Yes. That's fine. That's fine. Got one drink. That's fine. One toast. Here's that. Thank you. Of course. And then... I'll have a toast. Thank you. I'm sorry. Yes, but... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was looking at my school order, but... Yup. Yup. It's not an accident. Yesterday. It's a great story. Thank you. It was a great night. I put most of my money into it. As a later person, I had to put so long to be able to do it. On what? Oh, yeah, right. Let's quickly... Well... Let's see what happens. Is 21 the last one? Yeah, I think so. Is this... Is there a target? I think there is. I think there is. I think there is. I think there is. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. All right. I believe Stuart is the last one aligned to the values. Let's get the conversation going here. Yeah, it sounds good. Let's start with 11 just because that got some significant value there. Let's start with some shock. What are people thinking? It's the number one issue. Our employees at Burton talk about cost of housing. Liveability? Affordability? Well, cost and just availability. Yeah. And these are employees, some of them make $15 an hour and some of them make $75,000 an hour. It's a similar theme of living in Burlington. It's hard to find places and find places that are affordable. You know, it ties in with climate change as well. I mean, people are driving further and further distances to get moving across to housing. So that's having housing within the city limits helps us with climate change. Awesome. I wish somebody would plan a community of tiny little houses because nobody wants to live in a housing project. But it would be a housing project. It would just be lateral instead of vertical. You know, everybody wants to live in a house where they can't hear the neighbors. If you could make enough little houses, that would be really great. I don't know where they would do it or who would do it. I lived in an 11th house. You know, that he made, he made them just down on their cheap because he didn't build basements in them. Just a concrete slab. Basically a ranch house. What's that? Long Island? Yeah. Charlie, I'd love to get your comment on the board and I'm going to try to summarize that. I'm struggling here to summarize that. Can you help me? Inclusiveness of housing. There should be a lot of little houses instead of a high rise. Yeah, we've got options of density that don't have importance. Yeah, I mean, people would love to have a little house even if it's actually there. That sounds terrific. So Charlie, I'm going to put up there lots of little houses. Apartments are little, but you hear the neighbors in the hall. Dara, did I see you about to say something before? Oh, I'm not one. Anyone have anything or maybe we should grab the door 15. That's got a lot of value. We want to make sure that we can dress up. We have about 15 minutes left. Well, 15 is easy. It means that we want to have more say in what happens in the city. But why is that important to you, Charlie? Because we know what the city needs and somebody doesn't. And he's the king. That's exactly right. What else? What else we got there on 15? Meaningful opportunities. Ensuring that the government is responsive to citizens. Say they all say, we don't want the F-35. Then the mayor would have to say, okay, we won't have the F-35. Instead, he said, oh, I want it anyway. So Charlie, it sounds like you're looking for... He wasn't really responsive to the citizens. Okay, so let's reframe that here, Charlie, what you do like. It sounds like you're looking for participatory decision-making. Yeah, if an item on the ballot passes and the people of the city want something, the mayor shouldn't say, but I don't. Okay, yeah. Does that encapsulate that well, though? Participatory decision-making, where everyone has a chance to participate in the process of making decisions? Yeah, the people make decisions. I'm not sure how that works. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. It doesn't buy that. It doesn't buy that. It doesn't buy that. Man in a superficial way is not giving you an help-out, which to me is a concern. But if you wanted, you know, number 11, which has to do with, you know, filling gaps in the housing of the county, no matter, I think that's a big, a big inclusive problem. Because there's nobody building a single reserve occupancy place. There's nobody building 300 square foot things, although Eric Ferrell just proposed a co-living project. Yeah, he did. I read your minutes, and I think that's an interesting concept. Very small, my friend. 300 square foot units, but a bigger common area. That's a great idea. That was a really cool idea. Your rental unit is smaller, but you still have, and I think that's a middle-aged, you know, the 20-something, early 30s. That's the whole thing. You need people, the homeless people need something that is very simple and safe. And then people, everybody has more to go through their life cycle, stick with love, you know. And then when you go for a cycle, because then you get older, you need something like that too. Yeah, well, yeah. You want smaller space, and you want more community. Right, well, if you look at the thing that he presented some materials in the November 13th. It was a really interesting idea. I think it really is. Yeah, I guess it's being tried in some places, and he thinks it could work here, and we were trying to figure out how to... Well, what is it? I thought that was fascinating. They don't have a label for it. Yeah, it was, it was. It's not a boarding house anymore. It's not that different from the co-housing model. It's not. Like East Village, it's just, it's more accessible because it's more affordable than co-housing. It's closer to a place. It's called co-living, and it's just the intent of it is to not make your space cost so much because it's a one-bedroom. And not have to duplicate everything. So every person owns everything. Exactly. Cool, yeah. And at a certain point in your needs for housing, that might fit. It's not like everybody, but you might go through that thing. We used to have that with SROs. And they had to be in any space. Absolutely. The whole story of it. Where the trailer park is in the old North End. There was a, and got bought by the tenants. There's space there, and some of us sort of made like a tiny home model with like a community center for that like little mini park that's part of it. Well, but you know, it's sort of like, unless there's incentive, nobody's going there. And they're, and my understanding from the housing land trust is it doesn't happen because they can't get the money for those kinds of things. And they have to get money for more than 12 minutes. More than 30 years. They have to get money for projects of certain sizes. Well, so there, I mean, another approach to that goal would be, you know, having a city to take a more proactive stance and provide resources and technical assistance to homeowners to create accessory dwelling units on a bigger scale. My son just recently moved to Portland, Oregon. Portland made headlines in the planning world because they drew a bright line around Oregon. They said, no development outside of this line and it will not happen. And so one of the dynamics that's emerged over the years is accessory dwelling units have become a hot commodity. And the city has responded by, you know, bending over backwards to try to create a more open regulatory framework and technical assistance to homeowners who want to put these in. And the more of those you put in, whether it's for market rentals or below market rentals or mother-in-law apartments to encourage families of different generations to come together. Each have their own separate living spaces on the same property. It can have a positive effect, but it meets guidance and support from the municipal level to really blossom, I think. Is that prohibited in Burlington? It's not. In fact, state law requires that the cities and municipalities allow it, but the question is, you know, there's a difference between allowing it and strongly promoting it and encouraging it. And, you know, it can take pernicious forms. I mean, you know, it can be Airbnb. People creating living spaces for Airbnb which then tends to up to spite the, you know, market rentals. Yeah. When we reduce the supply of affordable housing. So if we recognize that that's a possibility, then we also have a responsibility in the public policy perspective to try to steer that kind of development, in-field development in ways that are socially positive in support for housing and housing diversity. I think where it becomes expensive is where you have to connect and call it the tiny house addition. It needs to be hooked up to your septic system. So that can be expensive. It's not just that you can build a 200 square foot cabin. It's that we require certain other things. Yeah. And so then all of a sudden you lose that impetus you're making. All right. The social expectation of certain amount of size will be lost. Last one? Last one. And we don't ask people from other countries that have come here what would be the best region for their homes. So we don't really get any input from a person who has come to Nepal on what would be the best way to build housing that fits with their families living in their homes. So you'll see very large families in a private space. Because that's the choice. There's nothing that will fit. All right. We have probably, I'm sorry. Well they do. Obviously that's the housing that's here. They have to find new clothes and they have to find new ways of living in their homes. Let's try to touch on this last one with a few minutes that we have. This is connected city protecting preserving and improving the integrity and connectivity of natural areas. Open space and recreational systems of local regional statewide significance and protecting them from incompatible development. So that's really about connection of natural areas not just that we have them. Coordinating land use development and transportation to strengthen multimodal transportation corridors that support and provide access to a wide range of services and mode choices. Guiding important services and amenities and neighborhood activity centers and enhancing public spaces and facilities to serve as neighborhood meeting points. I feel like this is a lot of, some of this is what we've talked about. Coordinating the ongoing care and enhancement of public facilities and services in order to ensure they adhere to approved standards serve the whole community and minimize costs and disruption to taxpayers. Increasing consistency and coordination decision-making and public administration among quasi-independent departments and decision-making bodies and improving coordination with municipal neighbors and leveraging our location within the larger northeast region. That's a lot. It's like, ugh. Number 19. Yeah. If they were being really honest about this, a bullet point would be take the entire city hall park redevelopment plan and feed it into the shredder immediately. Because that plan is completely contrary to the spirit of number of gold redevelopment. Yeah. As it currently is redeveloped. Well, you know. It's an F-35 thing. Yes. Well, completely contrary. Part of the problem of that was that, you know, the plan was focused around keeping the farmer's market in city hall park. And it just doesn't work because the farmer's market is a victim of its own success and it really has to have its own space size. We have one. It's called Marketplace. Right now, well, the old mall that's now a big open zone. Soar. Zone. No, it's perfect. The steel's here. You build the structure. Yeah. You have the super, it becomes like any town in France or Montreal. And you build the structure and then you have a lot of space for community gardens. You have enough room for trucks. It's still a market place. It brings more people downtown. A huge market. A huge market. You can even make two stories. You can have vending stalls. I mean, the whole thing becomes like a whole other dream. Yeah. You mean as a transition to what's next. It never gets the 14 stories. Completely me down. I don't think the 14 stories is going to happen anyway. Yes, but so do I. I do. So, but now that we have like this opportunity for a market place, a true market place. This was not about. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to talk it. Is there anything missing here? Yeah. You talked about so many brought up public-private partnerships with the institutions. Yeah. That to me is the connected city. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think UVM should have many, many more examples like the the consumer protection office that they run for the territory of this office. Yeah. It should be more like, you know, Vermont Law School has the public law clinic where they do free legal services for people throughout the state. Yeah. UVM should have 10 of those. Yeah. Things like that where they connect students and faculty with community needs in a really direct way and provide. The engineering department coming in and really doing the project. So, let's move on just to make sure you guys get to that last subject in a real short on time. So, lastly, is a connected city. You can try to get up on the street. Oh. It's crazy. Here it is. Please. Huh? Please. There are three? Yeah. Six. Seven. Did you get any? Not yet. Okay. There's two. 16. All right. Let's keep this positive momentum going. We've got some good energy. Where are the trees in here? Which one? Sorry about that. Are they used? I think my... Is that the worst? Oh, yeah. Texting improvement. Natural areas. Open spaces. There's open spaces. More now. Okay. We're having fun. It's good to go to work trees. Yeah. Super. Yeah. We're doing an activity of natural areas. Open spaces and recreational systems. See, there you go into recreational systems. It's like, take down all those trees and put out some pedicure up there. I'm so sorry. I look for them. I'm really about looking for good experiences and facilities. Is they're bigger over here? Sorry. What's that? I'll just... I'll stay in here sort of like, you know... Oh, nice. Thank you. Those are your tax dollars to work. What folks, this might be helpful. Additional dots here, folks. Lots of dots. Lots of votes. I'd love to see where your dots are at. Thank you. Okay. My name is Alvin. I live all the way through here. I'm a little bit older. Okay. This is my first time. I've been doing this for a long time. I haven't had the energy to do it, but I've seen a lot of people that say, you see, I don't have the energy to do it. I can't do it, because... Oh, that's really smart. Are you starting? Yeah. Let's see where you can take us home. Thank you. So I just wanted to make a point of order about where we are tonight. I promised that we would have a time for open comment question that you might have generally about anything that you discussed tonight or that you might have prepared as a statement before you came here tonight. So I want to say that if you are here for that and want to be here for that, we're going to do that in like two minutes. I promised this group that I would let them wrap up a little bit here, and then we'll get to that very quickly. So if you don't feel like you want to stay for that, don't feel like you need to. You're welcome to leave, and thank you for being here. My computer died, but all around the room there are little business cards that have the Plan BTV logo on them, and on the back there's a web link to where you can read and continue discussing this plan online. And that's where we will also provide more information about future opportunities to come to events like this or to come to other presentations and public hearings. So thank you for being here. Thank you for participating in this discussion tonight, and we'll get to the formal public comments in just two minutes. Megan, any thoughts? We're 16, guys, folks, before we shut it down. I know I want to comment on this question. Okay, let's do it. I think the reason you see a lot of dots there is we have a pattern of management by lunch-housing syndrome. They let things go to back and ruin. They say there's a crisis here, and we are here to fix it. We'll tell you what it's going to look like in the real world. It's where you're going to say, maybe like in the grand plan, certainly they could boost the money or distance the situation. So I think that making people maintain what's in the public trust all along and not just letting it go away. So like consistent maintenance? Is that... Okay. Instead of letting things deteriorate to the point where there's a crisis. Consistent and ongoing maintenance. I advocate for the change in governance of gentlemen and county, some of them have county and secondary. So that every single community in gentlemen and county is not competing against the one that's making it. Right. So what... Is there anything that would, of course... 21 of us, that's the one about connection to the community. So help me just to shorten that at the every turn, semantically. How can I put that up here? Well, I would have to do it for the county executive. Yeah. I see. I see. Some leverage over the insurance and seniority such that they're not competing against each other. Yep. So the detriment of the county is a halt. Right. Thanks for that. Let's hope to use those motels that the property owners can do in schools. Yep. Recreation of the county is something that's really diminished by the county. And it's where there are a lot of governments in the county. Okay. Okay. So I'll put a big circle around that and we should emphasize that here. Wonderful. Anyone for 16 or 17, because we're about to get to the public hearing, I just want to make sure if anyone has anything to say. 16 Say something about 16. Well, that got a lot of votes so I just want to make sure that if that is something that is a priority to you that we're able to capture that. Yes. Yes. There's all kinds of threats to the natural areas and the integrity and the open space. So protecting them from incompatible development which could also be recreational systems. So I want to protect the stuff that's there, not the recreational systems except for, you know, running around on the planet. So, yeah. Protecting the integrity of the natural areas. I like what Richard said which is the, I think he said that open space the natural areas in the open space are really the lungs of the city. For the downtown. If anybody is around that still wants to provide formal comment to the Planning Commission questions or comments. I'm happy to pass the mic. A little question. What is the timeline? You stated it before but I would appreciate your restating. So the question was what is the timeline for Plan BTV? So tonight was the Planning Commission's public hearing and process. So we are going to be working on revising this draft and hearing more feedback in January as well. We will also start to share this and discuss this plan with the city council in January and then the city council will hold two public hearings. One will be in February and one will be in March. And then ultimately we are working towards having an updated draft that can be re-approved by the end of March of 2019. So we're kind of at the beginning of this process of having a conversation and refining the draft plan for the next several months. What have we already done? So if you saw April on the screen that was stuff that had happened in the past. Yep. And along that line what will be done with this data will it be fed back to us what we see what we all said is a collective? That's a great question. So we can certainly when we have a summary written of tonight's discussion we can share it with you if you provided your email address. We'll also share it with the Planning Commission. We'll also share it with you as well as other feedback that we've heard about the plan and talk about ways that we can start to incorporate that feedback into the draft. And we'll continue kind of iterating that draft over the next several months. So we'll post it. We can either send it to you directly or we'll post it on the website as well. It's not judicial. In terms of it's not the same as a hearing that the will provide public comment and to hear any concerns that you have about the plan is something that we do is required to happen. So we have tonight and then we'll have two more with the City Council in February and March. I have a question. So to what extent has UVM been consulted in this process because they have such an insidious impact on such a large part of the city and the neighbourhoods where people are only invested in their own communities. I think there should be some sort of honesty and disclosure. That's a good question. So we did talk with all of the institutions, UVM, the Medical Center and Champion College about the plan that we're updating the plan and made sure to talk to them about any kind of future plans that they have. Ultimately all of the institutions reported to us that they're just coming out of a period of a lot of investment reinvestment in building new buildings or major renovations so from a major new project other than the UVM Athletic Facility there's not a ton of new development on the campuses that are immediately planned other than looking at where they can meet more of the needs on campus. So we really looked to the institutions master plans to help us understand what are some of the future activities that we might see and one of those discussions that we know that will happen will be with UVM around looking at the Trinity Campus and having a conversation about the Trinity Campus. So those types of things are reflected in this draft plan in terms of how we look at the institutions to meet more of their needs within their boundaries rather than kind of outside of their boundaries. So we'll just extend to the IRR Now we're building some buildings Don't the IRR know the school that's built this building on Colchester Avenue? Oh no. That's not quite true in the U.S. It's pretty darn close. It's pretty darn close. Yeah. Just outside of it. Any other comments or questions? I think it is. No I'm saying I think that the Here I'm going to give you this just a I'm trying to get a disclaimer from the school district to say that that building is not up for sale for acquisition by UVM Anybody else? I had a question. There's a lot of statistics in the early parts of the document that don't have the citation to them in the footnotes. So that's just a suggestion that the footnotes would actually give some credibility to some of those statistics that are sort of the foundation of some of the plans and the goals I'm not sure maybe I couldn't find them but there's a lot of footnotes cited and I can't find the citations to where those statistics come from for like the population projections on page 17 There's footnote numbers and there's like the transportation projections footnote 22. I mean there's a bunch so that's just a comment to make those accessible I couldn't find any of those and the second thing was a question about the city's impact fee study. There's something in there a couple of places about updating that. Do you know when that was last done and what the plan will be for updating that? I think that was the third that was that and one of the other thing that was not talked about a little bit is the financial load on things like the city's bonding of existing bond debt and how that relates as a percentage to whatever value if you're using grand list or using tax receipts or something like that. It might be worth looking at a way to document that so that when we're looking at investments in these planned and developments and enhancements that we sort of already know our finances and when things might cost money so I think my most important thing is that the sources of the statistics that are the foundation of the goals and goals are somewhere in an obvious place. Thank you for both of those inputs. I'll actually ask David if you could respond to the question about the impact fee study when it was last updated. I don't think there's a specific timeline on updating it again but there is you obviously read that there is a goal in there to update it again. I don't know that it has a specific timeline though. It's certainly when it should be completed by other than it needs to happen because that original study was probably done in the early 1990s I guess. It was quite some time before I I just want to make sure that we do know that we have a plan for assessing those financial impacts whether it's to the schools or the public works and wastewater and it's sort of tied into one of the other items about the capital, the long-term capital plan but it's not the same and I think when people are assessing some of these great projects what are the impact fees that we now have in place and how are they calculated and then clearly if it happened in the 90s last and they haven't been updated we need to have it have that actually you know some way more than just well we're going to do it sometime but we don't have a plan for that yet. I'm glad you mentioned the capital plan because that's a critical component of what goes into an impact fee study what the necessary piece and one of the recommendations in the plan is that the next version of the 10-year capital plan look not just at what our current capital needs are but what are we projecting capital needs being out beyond that 10-year horizon because that then is part of again critical component of the impact fee study that those costs and then proportionate fees are based on so once that work is done then we can do an impact fee study because we know that we're going to need to make this level of improvement to a water plant or one of the wastewater plants at some point in the future that stuff gets documented and it's built into the system. Can you post the existing one so that it's a link on the document website? We could see if we can dig it up and if it's not digital already we can try to get a scan of it available. Sure. Thank you. Anyone else any other comments or questions that you would like to offer tonight? I know we've probably already got a lot of comments and questions but I don't know if you have any questions. I don't know if you have any name or no. I come here as a kind of a representative of ward 3. I think you're in ward 3. Is that right? Ward 2. I think there are very few people who come from ward 3 to any of these meetings are going to be quite impacted by the plans by plan BTV to go up and to go dense and denser and so I'm speaking as one person only that I'm glad for economic growth. I'm for that but I also want to be sure that walkability bikeability the lungs of the city are included in this place that's going to go up and get more dense and that's just one voice from ward 3 so and if it's hard for me to speak in a microphone what about all those people in ward 3 who are quite quiet about this so that's my concern Thanks for being able to give input plenty ideas and I hope that I'll be very interested to see what results we see from tonight's work it's kind of hard to make a plan from up above and bring it to earth and I think the plan should be made on earth and everybody as many people as possible who live in the city should be able to understand the document and it's a plan for Burlington Vermont it's not a hashtag plan BTV it's a plan for Burlington Vermont and the future and it's not going backward it always goes forward sorry I'm an editor so yes it's really great to be able to do this and now I must be off into the night it's been a long day thank you so much everybody Anyone else? I think everyone that's left had an opportunity to speak so thank you for those of you that are still here for sticking with us all night and for coming and we hope that we'll get to talk with you again in our upcoming events so have a great night and I guess we need to close the public hearing we have just a little bit of formal business do we close the public hearing or do we keep it open for we close it tonight right unless there are any other comments anyone else want to speak see none we'll close the public hearing thank you to everyone who came out tonight both those who are still here and to all those who are here we really appreciate the input that everyone was able to give to us and with that we'll bring our planning commission meeting to a close and unless I see any objection from my three other planning commissioners we will adjourn tonight's meeting and I don't see any objection so tonight's meeting is adjourned thank you all again you were about to but I was going to jump you wait a minute