 I'll follow the meeting to order. Agenda, anything changes to get into the items? Where do you order? No. For you. Number three on our agenda, comments and questions from the public, not related to this agenda. Say no. A discussion. Introduce items for potential inclusion in the F-46 regulations. Yeah, just so anyone following at home, just want to give you a quick explanation of where we are. So we are missing a few folks tonight. Wanted to keep the agendas not too heavy, just because we may have to repeat some things in order to get a full body to sort of weigh in on what are some pretty substantial items. So what I'm hoping to do tonight on this item is just sort of introduce some things. I know you feel like we just finished this. Why are you giving us more? But as I've sort of shared in the memo here, I think we had to rush the last supplement a little bit in order to stay in tune with the wastewater regulations. So there are a few items that have sort of backed up a little. Some of these have come from our development review board, which they've identified as some things that just keep coming up for them. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but just some ones that I'd had sort of hanging out. A couple of them will be sort of, I think, will involve a pretty fair policy discussion. A couple of them are sort of clean up housekeeping. Let's just make sure that the language is a little bit tighter than what it is now. So and I'll walk through each of them. Again, there's no text that's associated with these yet. It's just to sort of introduce the idea. See if you like the idea. If you hate the idea, I won't write you any text. So let's get started here again. I'm not going to go into too much depth. So accessory structure exemptions. Anyone not familiar with accessory structures? So in culture, there are like a lot of towns. There are certain things that we group under the title of accessory structure. All accessory structures do need permits. While not an exhaustive list, the easy ones tend to be swimming pools, sheds, decks, patios, gazebos. Those tend to be the things that we see the most frequently. But every now and then, a very nice citizen comes in and says, do I need a permit for X? And we're like, well, I don't know. Is that a structure? If it is, is an accessory structure? And so we started to look through the regulations and we saw that there's not really a clear definition of what's exempt. And so I think it's been a judgment call based on sort of whoever the staff is at that point. So my hope here is just to clean that up a little, talk through some common structures, play structures, for example. Somewhere in here under 100 square feet is exempt. But it doesn't live in that accessory structure section. So I would move that. And I might even have a conversation about whether or not 100 square feet for a play is sufficient. As a mom of two, I can tell you even my affordable play structure was probably larger than 100 square feet. Flag poles, I don't have any specific regulations about flag poles. We had a very nice gentleman in the other day who was asking about whether or not his flag pole, flying the US flag at 25 feet, needed a permit. And it was a little embarrassing to sit there scratching our head and say, we don't know. So I'd like to talk about some of these things and just get direction from you as to whether any of these things should be exempt. We'll have a more exhaustive list when we come back to it. But that's the general idea. Does that sound like something you'd like me to pursue? Yes. Mobile food units, food trucks, as you might call them. There is limited language in our regulations for mobile food units. It dates back quite a bit. We used to call them seasonal mobile food units in one of the supplements, maybe during some of your time or before. The seasonal part was struck. But it's a very limited regulation that relates to mobile food units. There's a definition, and then there's a table of uses. So in there, it says, these are where they may exist in certain zoning districts. So there are certain zoning districts where you cannot have a mobile food unit at all. I would suggest if we go forward with this sort of topic, we just revisit that list and make sure it's still a list that makes some sense. And I would probably want to build out the definition of what a mobile food unit is. Mobile food trucks are permitted largely in two ways. Through the peddler's ordinance, they would go to the select board after having gone through a staff review. But they are also permitted through zoning when they might take up a site. So if it's just a truck that is peddling ice cream in your neighborhood and never actually sits anywhere, there's no zoning related to it. If it is a truck or vehicle camper that stays in a single spot, it needs some level of review. A lot of them have been done as conditional uses, which means that there's some attachments that get, attached conditions that they get subject to, they're not consistent. In some places they're required to be removed every night, in other places they're not. And by places I mean in specific cases. And in reviewing several that I know of, they're very inconsistent. I think it would be worth pursuing a regulation that would make it a little bit more consistent. Are there a certain number of seats that should be allowed outside? Are there certain things that you would like to see associated with a food truck, such as trash or septicles? The big one is, should they be removed from a site every night? And if so, what is the purpose of that? So I would want to have a discussion about that. I'd bring you some information and some talking points. Are they allowed to have any sort of decking or other semi-fixed or fixed structure? If you've ever been out to, I'll say it's Jericho, I don't think it's under hill, but it's probably under hill. Kate's food truck, anybody been out there? Route 15, it's a food truck, but it might as well be like a restaurant, it's got a huge deck, huge, large refrigerated coolers, like walk-in-sized coolers in the back, that are the size of like a large van. It's actually quite delicious, but it's caused some consternation in town because it's like, is it really a food truck or is it kind of a restaurant masquerading as a food truck? And so to avoid that happening, I think here, be good to just be clear up front as to when is a food truck, not a food truck? When is it an actual structure? And just attach some known things to it that would be go through the public process one time so that it's much easier to permit them going forward. They're very popular. After 2020, they became even more popular. People love them, and I think they, there have been studies that shown that they really improve a sense of community. So they can be quite nice, but we do wanna make sure that if you mean to have a structure, such as the one I'm referencing in a neighboring town, that you get what you want. We don't anymore, last spring, there was a bit of a discussion because there was the one, the Fridays, DAZE, which was at the corner of East Lakeshore and Lake Lee here, the pink truck. They had had a conditional use approval where there were some requirements attached to it that sort of sprang up at a DRB meeting. They were just sort of attached to it. That didn't really come from anything in the regulations. And so when I think the select board was kind of trying to look at that as part of the peddler's permit review, it was where did this come from? Do we, you know, is it being met? And that one ended up being a little bit, it could not be permitted because it did have that site plan that said it had to be removed from the site every day, for better or worse. And it could not be or would not be because it was not operable. So that didn't get us fantastic press or friends, but yeah, by and large, other than that though, it did have a small DAC associated with it. You almost wouldn't know it was there unless you were kind of looking at it. There was some limited seating. There was, they had a site plan that did show a limited number of parking and circulation, which is important. I think you don't want a food truck where that is popular, where cars are backing up and making a mess. I think that's kind of the purpose of that. I don't know of any right now that are fixed. We do hear about them, you know, in terms of events or we've heard from some of the larger employers up on like Water Tower Hill saying, hey, can I have a truck here every Friday? Or those probably don't end up getting regulated under this because they're so temporary. But we would also want to make sure that we're clear what that threshold is so that we know whether or not something gets regulated under zoning or not. So just I think a little cleanup there and an opportunity to discuss it, especially now that they've become so popular so that when the next one does come, we're ready. Yes, so I'm assuming they chart meal and room tax and also the local option tax and do they charge a fee? You know, that's a great question. I don't know about the taxes. I could look into it. I don't know the answer. For the peddlers permit, there is a small fee. I want to say it's $80 for the season. But we are working, we being three department heads or the town clerk or the town economic development officer myself are working on revamping the peddlers ordinance so that those, so it's also being more clear and easier in there because what's happening is you might get a food truck who comes in and says I just want to set up. The permitting time associated with that can exceed a month in some cases. And so we're trying to streamline that a little bit so that it doesn't necessarily have to have a full hearing. We can have some very clear standards and move along quicker, but that's a work in progress. It's just a draft that the select board has not yet seen. I think we'll be seeing more of them. So it's a good opportunity to find something that serves the town really well without creating undue issues. I hope they would. Go ahead with that one. We could collect the local option tax on them. Yeah, I would imagine according to the law we're supposed to, but it's a good question. I know. I don't think there's any operating at the exact moment, although I've seen the ice cream truck. Have you gotten one? No. I think that's the only one I know of that's currently operating, but he's not ever stationary. So that's what that one is. Pre-existing non-conforming structures, updates to demolition standards. So this one's actually, I think, fairly simple. It's a cleanup item. We have pretty good regulations for, if you have a pre-existing structure, maybe it's something at the lake or something, a small lot that would not conform today. It could not be built under today's regulations, but you have certain rights associated with it. If you tear it down, you can rebuild it, generally in most parts of town within a year, in the exact same spot. We've talked about this a little bit with the lake shore and stuff. The missing piece in our regulations is that there's no requirement in there that's associated with the tear-down part. So if somebody, especially in a very sensitive spot along the lake or something, tears down their house and rebuilds it, sometimes you tear it down on a sandy soil where you never had a foundation. And then you rebuild it and you're like, it's in the same spot. So I would propose bringing you some regulations that would say you need a permit to tear it down first. And in doing so, you have to document in some way, create monument markers or something that would show us where that was so that it is very clear when you rebuild that you are doing it in that correct spot, because this is an issue that keeps coming up where we're not entirely sure that that's exactly where it was before, but you can use old photographs, they're only so good. You need something near it to measure it from. And I would just wanna clean this up so that we know before you take that structure down what you were vested with. So that I think will be pretty straightforward, but worthy of doing. Thoughts? You like it? Okay. All right, temporary certificates of occupancy. So anytime our office issues a building and zoning permit, no matter what it's for, bathroom renovation, new DAC, brand new house, new 60 unit building, you are required to get an inspection afterward for certificate of occupancy. And largely what we do with that is to say, did you build what you said you were gonna build? They're very easy in some ways because some of them are pretty straightforward. You're gonna build a fence, six foot fence. We got there and it's a six foot fence. Good job. In larger developments, it takes a little bit longer to check everything that's on a site plan. Did you put in your stop signs? Did you put in all the lights? We're out there counting shrubs. If you were supposed to put in 50 arborvide, we're counting 50 arborvide. There are times when people request from us a temporary CO so that they can get going, get occupying, get using their structure while they await X, Y, or Z. The only authority in our regulations right now for a temporary CO is for paving and line striping. If it's weather related, as you may know, you can't pave in the dead of winter generally. Doesn't stick very well. I imagine painting is the same thing. There's probably a certain temperature from what I understand where the paint's just not gonna work on the ground. And so it's somewhat logical. But that is absolutely all that's in there. I'll give you two examples of things that have come up recently which you may wanna consider adding to that list of eligible for a temporary CO. And just so you know, when you get a temporary CO, you have six months to secure the full CO. If you do not, then you forfeit that and you have to pay an extra fine. But it would no longer be valid. People generally want their CO for their financing. Usually their banks or their lenders will require that. You also need it if you're gonna sell your house. So if it's somebody just doing a shed and you didn't get it and you sell it a year later, we're probably gonna write in there, you never got it. It was never approved. Your buyer's gonna wanna know. I would catch a lot of them that way. But two examples we've seen recently. One, I know many communities do, they will allow landscaping for a temporary CO. So if you build a building and it is entirely ready to go in January, but you're not planting trees in January. And if you are, they're not gonna survive. So we don't have that exemption right now. And so anybody who finishes their construction over the winter is not able to occupy a structure. So that is one that I might suggest you consider. The other one that I've never encountered that's sort of a gray area that we're working on in other parts of our regulations are elevators. We have a new building in town. The elevator, like many things still, has been on back order for some time. We do not, in some cases we do not require an elevator, have not required on paper, the elevator to be installed prior to occupancy. Going forward, that's something we're gonna change in our decisions because it is so critical for emergency services. When such a thing is required, the question is, can you occupy a first floor that doesn't need the elevator until the elevator is available? This is kind of a very uncommon thing that I don't see happening a lot, but still something that's happened now twice, given the, and I don't know if it was just a material ordering error. Yeah, the full shaft is in, but the physical metal part, I guess, is what is unavailable, the cab. It's not something that's an issue at this exact moment because the decisions for those buildings did not require that the elevator be in prior to occupancy, but we're hoping to have that as a condition later because you don't want a four or five story building with your emergency services having to carry somebody on a stretcher down by flights of stairs. Wouldn't there be some ADA regulations that we have done? I would imagine so. Not to mention if you have a new residential building, your tenants want to get their couch in, right? How do you get your couch in up by flights of stairs? It doesn't sound very fun. There's probably other examples, but for now those are the ones I'm thinking of that might be worthy of considering I think you could do like a conditioned temporary CO. So you could say, we'll give you a temporary CO in the elevator case for the first two floors, but no more and only for three months instead of six, I don't know. So I think you could, but we would want to make sure that that authority is in whatever we write to grant to, what happens if the elevator doesn't get there in three months though? Do you kick the people out? Yeah. I'm not. No. No, I'm just thinking long term. How would you regulate that? Well largely COs aren't an area where we invest their resources in compliance. We just are not going to take someone to court because they didn't get their CO. Really what motivates someone, unless it's really egregious, what motivates someone usually is their financing because their bank says you don't actually get this money released until, for those who are self financing, probably less of an issue and we would consider other things, but so it's an area I kind of want to explore. I haven't worked a lot on it yet, but if line striping can be delayed due to whether I would think at least landscaping is in the same category. Sounds like a pretty easy one to address. Okay, go with it. Okay, we'll bring you some ideas there. Parking standards, I'm not going to go into too much here. I think I've sort of foreshadowed it quite a bit to you in the last year or so. The biggest issue that I see with the parking standards right now is that there's language in there that says you can't have more than 110% of your parking. Now, in a large lot, this makes a lot of sense, right? You don't want people over parking. We don't want all this unused parking. Where you have a use, for example, that needs 10 spaces, not everything is new construction. And a lot of times it's one tenant leaving another tenant coming in. It's one use leaving another use coming in. We had an issue recently where a general office use converted to a daycare. Building was already built, site was already constructed. The daycare needed less parking spaces. There's an educated guess as to what a daycare use generally uses. Maybe it's, I'm making it up right now, I don't know what off the top of my head. It could be one for every three students, something like that. So if you have a daycare that needs 10 spaces and the site has 15, because they had 15 for the last use, this use, this change to a daycare has to go to the development review board, development review board has to tell them, you can only have 110%. I picked 10, because math is easy on this one. You can't have more than 11 spaces. You have to go out and remove four of those spaces that are already on site. It's not terribly business friendly. When, especially when we're talking about a change of use or a change of tenant, because parking is often tied to things other than square footage, it can change pretty frequently. A daycare use, for example, if it is tied to the number of students and that enrollment goes up, all of a sudden they have a new pre-K teacher. Building's the same. Now you need more parking spaces. Before you just took out, go put them back. And I think our regulations just don't allow it to be fluid enough. And 110% is a very tight number. So if there is some desire to keep a number, I would probably caution against the extra 10% being a hard cap. Were you thinking about doing a minimum to a maximum, kind of a range? Yeah, parking is very tricky. I'm not entirely sure yet. My professional philosophy is not a popular one. I tend to be very market driven in terms of let's let a business figure out the parking they need. And I would do away with parking requirements altogether, but I'm not gonna bring that to you because I know it's very controversial. So I would like to find something that I think is practical and can be supported, but I haven't really worked through it yet. But I do think something more flexible at the very least is needed. Most people in my experience don't overpark or underpark. I shouldn't say that. Retail tends to overpark. They like to have empty parking spaces because they don't want people to leave because they see that their lot is full. So retail will often overpark. Medical office in my experience wants more than the recommended guidelines, but it's usually because they need them. There's a lot of turnover in medical offices. And while they may not be full all the time, there's people constantly going in and out. Residential tends to park pretty well, I think. And if I understand it correctly, you may have a new direction from state law anyway as to the maximum amount you can require for residential multifamily over. Well, Sarita, it's been a bit. Is it 10 units? Any multifamily? I can't remember. I know it's back down to 1.5 that you can. Yeah, do you remember what it applied to? There are duplexes and trifectas and are big. Yeah. So there are a lot of kind of new regulations coming down. So there's some new regulations from the state that I think are attempting to make sure that towns aren't requiring too many parking spaces for residential. I don't think ours are terribly high, but they're probably higher than they needed to be. But they're not, residential is not usually the worst. About restaurant. You don't recall off the top of my head. The real problematic ones and the ones that we hear about a lot that tend to be less business friendly is where buildings are very flexible buildings and they turn over a lot because you could go from a restaurant to a tax office to a daycare and the parking requirements are so vastly different, but the site is there. It's been built. It has been operating and it becomes a real challenge for somebody who's just like I'm changing from this to this or even the real challenges, the real real challenges are the ones that are not based on a square footage. So if a hair salon with three stations is doing very well and becomes a hair salon with six stations, all of a sudden, the parking requirements double. And it's really hard for businesses to adjust to that because not only do they have to have this extra parking, but they have to go through, they'd find an engineer. They have to create a site plan and they have to wait on average three to six months to get that permitted. And so we don't have a speedy turnaround. They're not allowed to be done administrative currently. And it's been slowing down some business turnover and some reuse of vacant spaces. I know we've talked to some people who are like, I want to look at the site and we're like, you have to do this site plan. And they're like, okay, yeah, you know what? I don't in Milton, so bye. And the direction from the select board last we met with them is take a good hard look at what we can do to help businesses that doesn't really create any burden or harm on the community as a whole. And I think that parking is one of those areas where we can make vast improvements that aren't really gonna harm the whole of the community. If people show up at Shaw's and it's kind of full, they're gonna move on. They're not gonna park on the street necessarily and create traffic issues. But again, that's my outlier philosophy. I recognize a lot of people don't share it. So I won't carry on. I guess my question is this, like if there's already existing parking and somebody moves into it, and let's just say, there's 20 spaces that are associated with that business. What do you do when it changes over and they're not allotted that amount? Do you tell them they can't park there? I mean, I just don't understand. We've seen everything from people having to physically rip it up to taking out paint and making sure that they are putting enough paint so it makes it clear that this is not a space you park in. To move your dumpsters over to that area, it's a very difficult conversation to have because the property owners, the business owner, look at you like, are you crazy? Like, you're really for real? And we have to say, yeah, for real, we're really, really sorry. But that's what it says in the book. And it's just awkward. And again, I think that the biggest thing is not that they now have to paint those spaces but that it took them like six months to be told that they have to paint those spaces. It's just not fluid. I don't think there's any argument then. I think let's tackle that one. Let's tackle parking. And there'll be more than that. I think it's right sizing those numbers too. They're very old, they might be out of date. Retail may not be getting the same parking that it used to. Office space not getting the same parking it used to. So taking a fresh look at maybe better right size numbers. Okay. Does this include East Lakeshore? Sorry? Does this include East Lakeshore or is? No, no, no, no, so. This is just, we're just talking about seconds. We're talking about anything that would have a site plan associated with it. So multi-family, triplex and up and non-residential uses. So not East Lakeshore wouldn't affect that. Science standards, I don't have any specifics to bring to you. I just know that it has been on the list. It is one of the top things that small businesses have brought to our economic development office. I don't know that the fine details, but I did promise I'd at least start to put something together where there are some concerns. I can't really articulate them to you at the moment, but it is the number one thing I think that that some businesses have highlighted as a concern for them. Do a lot of sign permits. So I'll have to spend some time getting a better idea of what the concern is. Sounds good. You can always say no later. Lastly, conditional use designations. Our pile of regulations has a lot of conditional uses. A lot of towns will like to make things as conditional uses because they are, when you're thinking, should this use be allowed here or not? And you're like, yes or no. Conditional use is often looked at as a yes maybe. And so it is used, but it is very much, I think, overused. The problem with conditional use, when you overuse it, is that it is very burdensome because it automatically requires you to go to the development review board. So the example that I just gave you about a daycare that it was a general office building transforming to a daycare. General office permitted use, daycare, conditional. It was about a four-month process just to get approved because it required them to now have a site plan, to amend that site plan, to go through the development review board, to go through conditional use criteria, which are defined by the state. It's a state statute, largely. And by and large, the criteria within conditional use are meant for things that could very easily be problematic or not depending on exactly what they are. I think of things like a quarry or things that largely can have known detrimental adverse effects. They may very well not, but they are more likely to. There's a lot of benefit in having, I think, greater predictability. Either you like a daycare in that area or you don't. I'm not sure what forcing it through a review does that would separate one daycare from another. I'm saying daycare, there's actually almost half of our uses, have a conditional use associated with them in some district. So I would, I've been wanting to take a look at that list and see if we can pair that down a little. There's some districts where some very intense uses are allowed as a right, but then some like a mobile food unit or a daycare are conditional. So I guess I don't have them yet, but I wanna take a look at that table and see if there's something we can do there. The other thing is that it's not really clear when we talk about a conditional use in our regulations. Are we talking about the use itself or the use with its detailed components? So for example, keep going back to this daycare. A daycare that comes in and says, and we're a conditional use in that district, we have 22 children. They get their approval. Yes, you're allowed here. Said daycare comes back later and says, hey, we're doing great. We were able to purchase more of this building. We're gonna be 100% in this building now. We're gonna go from 22 children to 32 children. Yay, we already have the place space and everything. Don't really need a permit, do I? And we're like, well, actually, your conditional use. Your conditional use, you said, the board said, conditional use for 22 children did not adversely affect these things. They could say conditional use for 32 children does. And so they are now forced to go back through this lengthy process. So it might be beneficial to talk about whether it's the use itself that's conditional and once that use is approved, is it approved as a use? Or is it that use? And it's very specific components that go with it. It's not really clear. But you said the state that's gonna defines conditional use. The state defines the conditional use criteria that the town can apply. I printed it out here somewhere. Did I grab it? And I'm happy to bring it up here too. Conditional use is, it's section 8.10 in our regulations, but the criteria that we apply, whether or not something has an undue adverse effect on the capacity of existing or planned community facilities, roads, highways, water, sewer, school, fire protection. It's a very hard thing to assess, an adverse effect on the school system, an adverse effect on municipal water. Well, if it gets water, it gets water. If there's not enough water, there's not enough water. So that one's a little challenging. The second criteria is whether or not it will have an undue adverse impact on the character of the area. And this is where people mess this up a lot. As defined by the town plan. So not character of the area as in, hey, I'm very happy with my house and now you wanna put a daycare next to me. It's gonna ruin the character. If the defined character of the area in your plan is that mixed uses are fantastic and we want more of them, then it's probably compliant. I think that's getting removed to the care. Yes, in the Act 250 criteria, you followed that one too, right? No. So they use the similar criteria in Act 250 about character and that's the first thing that people who don't want things near them cite. But they always cite it wrong. They always say character and it's not character, it's plant character. Will it violate any municipal bylaws? We need the DRB to figure out whether or not it violates the municipal. Like if it does, it won't be approved. I don't know that we need a DRB to evaluate that. And so this is the one that I think actually is helpful. Whether largely it's about performance standards, dust, fumes, gas, smoke. This is one where I think there are certain uses that could, you know, maybe it ought to repair business. Could and could not have this impact because maybe they're entirely in the shop. Maybe it's new technology, maybe they have lots of space around them. So I think that this is one that is actually very good for a board to figure out by talking to an applicant. That's not as, you know, cut and dry. And so this is a very good one that could apply to certain uses. That would be really obnoxious in a certain part of a mixed-use district, but in another part of the mixed-use district, it has no adverse effect. And then the last one, but that one's about, that one might have been specific. So that's largely what conditional use is. It's a good handy tool, but it's a bit overused and the DRB had identified it as an area where they feel like they're getting applications that don't really need to come to them just because somebody wants to be a daycare versus a general office, or they want to be some other ones in there that are really benign, I can't remember what they were, but it was like a congregate care housing versus, you know, an office use. Just things that just generally aren't producing the types of things that get reviewed under conditional use. So are you saying more of these because there is so much empty office space out there? I think so. I think, you know, just business turnover, business is either being so successful that they move on to a new space or being unsuccessful and they fail and so the space becomes available. But it is just, it's, the development review board sees a lot of applications purely because they are conditional use. And I'm not aware of them to date denying any. And so we wonder if they really just shouldn't have been conditional in the first place. We either say, yep, this is an allowed use in this district or it's not. It's going to be one that's going to be thick to walk through and maybe it doesn't get done. As part of this supplement, maybe it just gets sort of started. But I think it's worthy of taking a look at. The only one I can think of is, you know, for me would be traffic like big trucks. Like all of a sudden something changes where big trucks, garbage trucks are now going by four or five times a day. Yeah, I think that's a good example because traffic in general is usually regulated via trip ads, right? It's how many there are. But a conditional use criteria allows you to go beyond that and say what kind of traffic is this? Are we talking about very large vehicles that need a different road layout, for example, or they're going to be really heavy and loud or? At night. Yeah, so conditional use, the nice thing about conditional use is it allows you to attach conditions to address these things that you wouldn't be able to otherwise do. So if you do have, say, a manufacturing facility or a warehousing facility, you could say conditional use. Under this criteria, yes, you're allowed to operate. However, no delivery should be made after 10 p.m. No backup truck, backup beepers should be used after, I don't know, that's a terrible example because that's illegal. But you know what I mean? You could say no idling of refrigerator trucks all night long or, so it does allow you to put reasonable conditions to an adverse effect that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do otherwise. I don't know what sort of reasonable condition you might apply to a daycare, you know? Your kids can't be outside more than an hour during a day or I don't know. But there are other things, maybe like a dog or animal boarding facility, you would maybe want to assign some conditions of, pets can't be outside unattended or should not be out for more than a half an hour at a time after next time at night if it's right next to a residential use, for example. So there are definitely good uses for conditional use. I'm not trying to trash it as a tool, it's a great tool but it should be reserved for things that can really bring adverse effects that might either should be denied or should be conditioned with some things that would mitigate the potential adverse effects. So that's what I'm thinking there. All right, sounds like you can proceed with all of these. Thank you very much. And I don't know what order they'll come back in, we'll see. I imagine food trucks will probably come up sooner or later just because it is the season. Okay, I promise we won't get to like X or Y like we did with the last set of elements or two sets ago. Okay. All right. That's that one. So that's the discussion for new items for supplement 46. Next item is a discussion on the form-based regulations. Yeah, so I'm gonna make this one really short just because there's only three of us or missing two people. I think if Amy had been here and we had four out of five but I thought, you know, we introduced some building examples in the last meeting and we just sort of looked at them. I was actually thinking about doing a site visit tonight but then I saw the forecast and I was gonna put it on the agenda and warn it. Take note, Marsville. But then I saw the forecast and said, not the best night for it but I thought it would be a good idea. Maybe at our next meeting, we'll consider taking a walk through. So the only thing I would do is run it by Rich, see if he wants to participate in it. Yeah. And if he's not able to move it to another time. Hold on to it. So we could do one. I did wanna show you a few things. There's no good way to look at these, let's see. Oh, there is, they will scroll through. So I visited some of the new buildings that were built under our form-based code and took a bunch of pictures for you. So I thought we'd just sort of openly talk about what stands out to you as a good element, a great element, a E that didn't really help element or I wish they would fix that sort of element. And with these in Vermont. This is right down the street. Yeah, wow. This is the, so of the two new buildings under construction at the Southeast quadrant, this is the one to the left. This is, this will be rental units, market rate. Didn't notice the orange. The gray one, next to it is cathedral housing or Chevrolet housing trust. And I've got pictures of those too. So I just threw all my pictures in here. Sorry, I haven't edited them. And there's your dog. Just kidding. So let me see if I can, sorry, they're all out of order. There it is. Let me, here's the front. There's the front of that particular building. You guys see that okay? So just would love to hear from anyone who wants to share it like the, maybe each person can say three things that they immediately noticed and liked or three things or a combination of that you immediately noticed and don't love. Anything you wanna share about it? Well, since our last meeting, I've become acutely aware. I've been riding around and noticing. And I do, I find it pleasing. I really do. But you do that in general or this one? Oh no, no, no, I don't do that in general. But. No, now that I'm looking, I like the look of the buildings. I don't like the cookie, I mean the slabs. It just, it gives it a lot more character. I like it. What are the specific details of this building? This building, I like the way it's cut up. Okay, cut up. Is that a, is that a? Yeah, no, Bill, keep talking to me. Tell me what you notice makes it cut up. I like that they don't all look exactly the same. Okay. And I kinda like the color difference. I don't know if I love that. Is it retail on the first floor? So the way that our code is written, we required nine foot ceilings on the first floor so they could be retail. Probably one of the things I'm gonna bring to you that nine feet is not that much different than eight feet. They don't feel terribly tall. This one might be 10, I'm not sure. But it's only marginally taller than the ones above it. So they could be, this particular building is not. But the idea in the code is that it's flex space. And I'll show you a good example of that actually in a minute where you look at it and you're like, is that a residence or is that a business? There's a couple good examples of that out there. This one, I don't know how successful it would be given the door types that they chose as a commercial on the first floor. It's just hard to tell. Yeah, but you could pop out a door pretty, I think they're sliding glass doors. And they would not probably work as retail then. Right, but you could probably at a fairly affordable clip change those out for. Yep. No, I like the way it is divided up. You can look at the building and kind of decide what's residential or what probably is not or what's a different level of residential. But I think what I took from our form base was that it was more of a New England feel. And this is not, so. That's what I noticed. I don't know if that's really the direction we wanted to go or this gives more flexibility, which I think in the design world is good. You get more variety. So what do you think about the idea that it's not sort of that New England vernacular? I don't have an issue with it, but I wasn't part of the form base. Violations. I just don't, I don't know, I'd love to see an example of New England design. But I like it. I mean, even though it's supposed to be, I like it because it's industrial to me and kind of techy and modern. I just don't like the white. I don't like large expanses of white. I feel like that really kind of pulls my eye towards that. And it doesn't kind of blend in. That's just how I feel. But I don't think it's kind of modern. Let me see, while we're just here, let me just show you some other photos. It might have taken some closer ups. That's the side. Save that thought. We'll go back to that very first one I showed you. Oh, so that's like an entrance door. Yeah, but there's cord correlated. It looks like metal on the right. Yes. Let me see if I've got... I like that. Nope, different building. Here we go, back to this one. So there's your metal. There are some little things I noticed about this one. Little touches. Let me see if I can zoom in here. I don't know that I'd write it into a code, but do you see this here? This is their downspout. They painted it white where it was white. Oh yeah. And they painted it darker where it was darker. Little thing. What do you think about the glass balconies? I kind of like it. Yeah. I like the black trim. Those are one of the first things that stood out to me. So something that stood out to me that I'm curious what you think of. There's this door here. First of all, it's not symmetrical. Curious what people think of that. Doesn't necessarily bother me, but some people have strong feelings about that. What do you mean it's not symmetrical? So they've got this door here. There's not a partner door on this side. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm a believer of the form falls function thing, so. Yeah. Some things that I've seen in some codes are a requirement that there be a central defining feature and or entryway. Whereas this has sort of equal multiple entrances and one sort of semi-treated entrance. Some codes would say you have to have one like really obvious dominant either feature, their architectural feature, maybe it's the corner of the building, even if there's no entrance there. Or you would have to have some really obvious central entrance that draws people in. So I'm curious what you think of that. I think it's, if that were the code, I think that's missing here. But I'm curious what you guys think. Well, that's one question I ask, whether it's residential or commercial on the first floor. And obviously, when I look at it, it's definitely more residential. And the one main entrance to get to the upper floors is there, it stands out where everything else looks residential. Yeah. But it looks like it could be turned over into a commercial strip fairly easily, if that's the way the market would go. Yeah, I think so. I could see like this whole area here being like a small shop of some sort. Right, but the entrance to the upper floors for the residential is still highlighted with that canopy. You're right, that's probably a stairwell right beyond it, right? We do have something in our code that calls for a very clear building break between the first floor and upper floors. And I think they delivered that very well here. It's very obvious that there's a difference between upper floors and lower floor. This, just so you know, because it's a corner and because the corner is on a C street, this was limited to only three stories. I'm wondering, and I quickly sort of asked the applicant, didn't really have an answer for me. The building owner like, if you were allowed four or five here, would you have built it? And I got the sense that it was sort of a yes, but I needed to think about it. It feels very short to me for a form-based code area. And that's not, again, that's not a failure of the applicant. That's a failure, but not a failure. It's a result. You can determine whether it's a failure of the regulations. We talked about the A, B, and C streets and whether that really makes sense because our A streets are Route 7, Lakeley Road and Severance Road. And nothing's really getting built up to those roads. They're all kind of within their own little quadrant, little developments. So I think it's something we should definitely kind of relook at. Yeah, definitely. I want all five of you here because I think that'll be a very central discussion. I think you want to increase density to ingrown areas so you can keep ag and farmland open. Yeah, I wouldn't mind going higher at all. We have taller buildings outside the growth center than this one was allowed to be, which is a little odd. So this is the corner of the building. Any thoughts? It's kind of the same as the front. They have another entrance with a canopy. The rest is kind of residential. They're off to the right. There's another canopy where the brown wooden... Right over here? Yeah. Yeah. So that tells me it signals another circulation space. What's interesting to me is that they, that's a different building. You can ignore that one for a second. Here, we're starting to get around the back. Ignore that one. They're out of order. Hang on. I'll get you around the back in a second. There's the back. Same thing. It's a four-sided design. I think a lot of buildings where such is not required, they tend to be one-sided to the street or the parking lot and the rest is like forgotten about. This, I think that you almost can't tell unless you're out there. Is this the front, the back? So they really treated all four sides. They even put those glass balconies on the back. What you don't see here is eventually they're gonna have some fire pit areas and some community space patios or something. You do have an entrance here. This one does have, going back here. Sorry for my order. This is the entrance to the underground parking. Little details that stood out to me. They're fake blocks. They're obviously not all the way through. It's just cement with a treatment on the end. But it's kind of a little step up. Yeah, it's a nice detail. That unit, mechanical unit there has been painted to match the building rather than just a sort of stainless steel color. They did on both buildings sort of hide the parking very nicely. So it's just off here, different building. There's the back again, before it turns into an L. Lots of windows, what else on this building now? Okay, so I'm gonna go to the other building. And they'll be landscaping, right? Yeah, so this was, we were out there before they did that. So this is the other building. Let me see if I have a full shot of it. It's probably the closest I have. There we go. So there were dump trucks in the road and did not appreciate me standing in the way taking photos. And there was no sidewalk on the opposite side of this one. So this is the other building, different. Yeah, this one looks very flat compared to the other one. And the horizontal band is almost non-existent, so. Yeah, you mean this thing right here? Yeah. Yeah, I'll see the separation from the first one. There's a very, very subtle color change. You can see it in person, you really can't see it otherwise. No, I can't see it. This is probably just a couple of pantones off from this. And that was too. And on paper, I went back and looked at the plan because Rich is always asking, like what? How do we not catch this? And I think when you look on paper, it looks like there's a very dramatic difference. It looks like the other building where you have a solid color and then a much lighter color above it. In effect, that's not really what happened. So the color difference stood out to you guys. Anything else? Stand out immediately as good or not so good, less good? The first floor level looks just really flat and a continuation of the upper floors. And I think the whole idea was to try to get something looking different at the first level. I don't know, something just didn't work here. I know. Very flat, like non-dimensional in a way. I did not take photos, unfortunately, of the back. I can tell you, you'd like it a lot better than the front. At the time, they were really working back there, but I've seen it. Has a little bit different colors back there? The colors are the same, but there's more treatment with the awnings and coverings and the windows. It feels like the front of the building. Yeah, you noticed it too. Do you agree that the back is nicer than the front? Like levels better? They've got a gorgeous bike rack back there that's covered with glass panels. It's the nicest bike rack I've ever seen. Or bike parking. It's your charger. There are charging. Maybe four even. They'll expand if you have 12. Yeah. That's on the sides. If you're looking at it straight on, the charging is to the left. And then you go around the back. It'll be fun to take a site visit over there, but. Landscaping can do something to break this up over there, but it's just. They're putting that in last week. Yeah. We were talking in our office, trying to figure out what's going on up here. Yeah, that's kind of weird. We don't know. We don't know what that is. Exactly. And you can't, let's see, did I take a side picture? Sorry, these were so much going on this day. The side is even boxier. The windows get smaller. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I have any other side of this building. I do want to show you. Can you go back just one or two? This is one more, maybe, one more. Sorry, I should have put them in different folders. There was some brick. It looked like there was something with some brick to this, what that looked like. That one. Oh, that's the back of the first building. Is that brick on the bottom, kind of? It looks like it. Brick or brick treatment? Yeah, I like that. I like how that looks. Yeah, we do ask for a material. Well, we ask for a clear change. And I think we say color material. I don't think we have to do both, but something. That seems to kind of be more, I don't know, symmetrical, easier on the eye for me. This building, they opted for material change. And a color change. And this, too. This one, I guess, a color change. On some places. From gray with an A to gray with an E. What is that orange material? Is it wood? They're panels. Some of them have a wood veneer to it. This one might be one of those. I have to look really close, but they seem to be fairly popular right now. Let me just show you. I do want to show you a flexible space that I think was done well, not in Williston. And in fact, it's so flexible that some of the, some of them are residential. That's where the new cookie place is. New cookie place? You should start when you talk a lot about 24-hour cookies. Crumble cookies, they're actually quite delicious, if you. Oh, someone else told me that, yeah. No chance to get over there. You can say that you're out there for a site visit here. So these spaces on the first floor. Is this where you pack corners? Yeah, kind of just where the new stuff starts. So Guy's Farm and Yard is literally across the street from this. So this is sort of where, this is Zephyr Road. These spaces here are flex spaces. And in fact, I know this because I walked by and was peering in people's windows. A couple of these are residential. A couple of them with signs. There's a financial services, a hand surgery. Ooh, too far. Oh, I think I just went down the street, hang on. My mouse isn't working. So there's three blocks of the same building. The little variety to it, yeah. And this one actually, this one I guess does have a split. That's residential on the first floor. But that could be your next financial services next year if it wants to be here. But this is what I was talking about when you showed the other one there at Severance Court and it's just all flat. This is showing how the first floor, all the fenestration and everything is, it's also treated differently than the upper floors. Where the other one was just, you know, same pattern up and down. And I think this is what our form base was trying to achieve that the first floor would be more welcoming and have its own identity. And somehow it got missed in that one project. And can't you see that this could be either, like if this would wanted to be a small restaurant tomorrow, it could be. And this definitely looks a little bit more New England-y than they would the columns. Yeah, I guess you're right with the pitched roofs. Yeah, clapboard. And again, I know that when you buy these, they can be either. And just for fun, I'll show you. So you're like, oh, what? No garages there. This is how they, come on, let me drag down there. Let me go down that one. Put it on the other one. I love this technology. That's what they look like to the back. So you can be in a form base code, still have a garage, still have a deck. They have like these little decks out. So the way that they're set up is that there is a unit on that first floor. And then some of them are two floor units. And some of them are flats. But I think most of them are two floor units. So they're actually fairly big. I think they're like 800 square feet or something where you get the two floors. I think two of them, maybe three. Do you have transit comes by here? You probably have to go. At the road, right down here. I don't know if it comes in yet. But the other thing that I like to show people about this is that, and it'll be a discussion point when we get to it is, mix of housing types. The current regulations say encourage, but it's not required. And if you look at the first bit of Severance Corners Village Center, the one that's mostly built, it's all the same housing largely in that you have these large buildings. Some of them are mixed use of some commercial on the first floor. But largely you're not seeing different housing sizes. And so a question I'll have for you is how important is it for you to have a mix? Now this goes right to, these are singles and duplexes here, but very close to these. But that's kind of showing that different street levels too, right? Yeah, and actually, let me get up. So then you transition. These are, I don't know. These are like 40 unit buildings, I think. These here. So you go up the street, you transition there. Across the street, you have a lot of triplex to quads. That one's two, but most of them are, most of them are, well, they give me a liar. Most of them are three to four in a row. And they've got their garage set in the back here. Um, but is it this route? Please let me drive down you. Really? This one has a really good mix because it goes, you don't see like 12 plexes and eight plexes a lot. People don't build them. The blue building that's back there and the distance is like an eight plex. But they all have, they have like at grade. It's not like one entrance to eight apartments. Everything has a first floor entry, either immediately to it or to the apartment upstairs. So again, you know, transitioning, still dense. That's good. It definitely is more New England when I think of New England. I know. It's more of a beacon. Yeah. You know, some of the shudders and the brick. And then again, you transition into a whole another piece here. I don't know. Well, I'm curious. What do you guys think of this one? Looks like it belongs on a campus, but. But tell me why like articulate cause we have to put into the code like. Too busy for me. There's too many lines and details. So I think we're not seeing that distinction with the first floor. Yeah. I agree, it does look like a dorm room. Like a dorm room or an industrial building. It's, it's hard to tell. Tell me to drive through most of these. So when you're like with sevens corners, it's kind of the whole four quadrants that they all found out. Or is it someone can just, people could build very different things in each quadrant. Well, they could definitely build right now. I think very different things. And I think we're seeing that the plan. And I know you guys asked me to bring it to you. And I will at the next meeting for, you know, Severance Park. That's that Northeast quadrant. Currently has a pretty diverse mix of housing sizes and styles. I don't know if it'll stick or keep, but at the current plan is there's a little bit of everything. You know who else does that very well? Just driving by this one the other day. You guys been over here, Bayberry Commons. Yeah, my daughter used to live there. Oh. That line came that way? Yeah, there's like four different grove streets. It's like chased to grove to bear, or chased to bear it to grove to patch it all in like a mile. Yeah, it's a shortcut to patch it. That's why I wasn't sure what to put in. It's technically Grove Street here in this section, I guess. But it's all housing. I like these. Yeah, I do too. And part of, I think, and it's an interesting discussion that I see in the planning world a lot of like, do you start with your high density at the road and then go back so that your low density is sort of removed from the road and maybe closer to other neighborhoods that may already be existing, or do you start with the lower and then sort of build your way back? I never would have thought that building lower at the front was what worked, but I think it's very successful here. I think it's the topography because you go in there and you go down into the site, so the taller buildings you don't really notice. So you've been in them throughout here? Yeah, my daughter, she lived there, so yeah, there are a lot. Plains were very loud. Oh, God, yeah. So these look like single family houses, don't they? Yep. They're duplexes. They might even be, some of them might even be quads. I think there might be two apartments on the backside on a couple of them. That's nice, that's nice. I love the shutters and stuff. So they have, I think what I like about this, they're not gonna let me drive in here. Oh, they will, look at that. They transition very well, so look, duplex. I'm guessing four to six. Yeah, that's where it starts dropping down. There's a whole new level. Oh, there is to this very building. To those, to the blue building and the red building. Oh. Down on a lower level. So, my friends, what do you think? Tell me what you like or don't like about a building like this. I like it. I do too. It looks very familiar to me. So what do you like about it? Like what stands out, like if it wasn't there, it would be a totally different building. Am I at the columns? I like the way it pops up. I like that little thing on the top. The little one. I like the color. Oh, the fake dormer. Fake dormer. Fake dormer. It's totally fake, right? It is fake, yeah. There's no actual livable space in there. I like how there's numerous colors. There's a, in my neighborhood, they, when they built all the new houses, there's like three colors and they're all like a shade of gray. And it just, it's boring. This, I like the red. I like the bright yellow. I think just more of a color combination really makes this stand out. So you're talking like multiple, like not just on the same building, but like having your buildings have variety. Yes. Can you get the shingles over on the side there? That's very newly built. Some of the stone. I have never seen a building like this before. No, I like it, Clamford. And these were one of the first buildings that were built. Actually, these, the red one, these on the side of the street were one of the last ones that were built. But the first ones you showed around the street, those were one of the first ones, yeah. You're right, you can see just how it looks like a small building in front, but it's actually, you're right, topography plays a pretty big role here. But these sort of like recess decks are interesting. Yeah. It's a very schoolhouse look. And then, is this their community center maybe? It's their offices and there's a gym. Oh yeah, so these are, those ones at the street, some of them are quads, they're four. Two up front, two in back. See, it's gonna let me keep driving and I'll drive. Similar? I like the pitch of the roof. Yeah. This does have that new England feel to it. This was the first area that was developed. And then as you go further to the south, they kept building. With the bigger? Yeah, they keep getting bigger and bigger. I'm trying to see, so what's on the door here? Is that because these are more apartments that don't have? I don't know, I thought they were all apartments. That was interesting. Yeah, this is more of like a commercial door right here. Can you zoom to me for a while? Looks like it's got a logo on it. That's all I can get. Yeah. So you guys are saying sort of like you liked it, the colors broken up here? Yes. Yep. What about the porches? I do like it. You still like it without the porches? No, I like that. I like that it's covered and just open the door and people can go out and in. Very easily access, it's very easy. One thing that these buildings are doing, this group, is that they're more vertically divided. You don't have the horizontal line at the first floor. So this kind of shows that you don't need that horizontal line. Maybe on the C streets you don't need, I don't know how we're gonna define that, but I think the horizontal line may have been introduced when you want to try to have like mixed use, retail and housing when it differentiates between the two, but maybe on the C streets where it's all housing, that item doesn't need to be there. It would actually be easier if you tried to do that. Because you get the horizontal difference. Right, you're defining the units. Because you're doing that so well. If those didn't have it, it'd be different. If that was all one color. But you're definitely very, very divided. It was very pleasing. I mean, it's very tastefully, I think. Glazing requirements, you know, so windows are very common in a form-based code. This probably has, if it did have a requirement, I would assume they're hitting over 50% on each floor. There's quite a bit of windows. Those doors may be going to units that are on the back side. Yeah, that's what I wonder. Because I don't think there's any businesses in there. But it is set up, doesn't it look like it, but that it could be, it's flexible. And I got there. So here's some bigger buildings. They've got underground parking or below-grade parking. Interesting. You've got the vertical divide and a little bit of the horizontal. Not throughout the whole thing. Well, I guess you kind of do. It's just through different things. Instead of the material change here, it's met here with the awning. Right? And that roof detail looks like it goes through the whole development. Yeah, with the fake doors. It's charming. This is a fairly big-sized building, but it doesn't come off that way because there's so much division. I like that. Similar building here. There's nice open spaces, too. Yeah, I think something that I like to see are things that read to the street. You could just imagine somebody sitting out here interacting with you. Yep. Yep. How do I get down? I want you to let me go down, down here. Right there. Yeah, it's not gonna let you. Ah, bummer. I wonder if I can see it. But the buildings do change as you go down. You can kind of see a little bit of it. Yeah. I wonder if it'll let me see it from a patch in there. Grover, whatever that is. Yeah, it's gonna be hard to see down there. Yeah, they're pretty far down. I think you have to get up to the top of the hill, look down. Yeah, it's hard to see. So what's fascinating about this, this is the same builder as the other buildings I just showed you. Yeah. Who's the builder? These are all Estee Ireland. This used to be their property. Yeah, their actual quarry. Yep. Just had in my mind another local example I was gonna show you. Let's see. Again, we talk about mix of housing types. So here's, I think you're getting your New England here for sure. Yeah, definitely. These are not all single family actually. Trying to find. Picket fans. Yeah. Trying to get over to, they had some mid-sized buildings. No form-based code here, but we're talking about a larger development where there's some mixing going on. I think what you're seeing here is, remember I mentioned that like focal point of some sort. This one happens to also be the entrance to the building. I think this building looks very different if it's just a single entry door with no pronouncement of any sort. And it's in the red. And it's like a, just a slider or something. I think that it looks very different. This is very pronounced here. Yep. The porches. That guy's even got a fan on him. Yeah. It's cool. Go you. Go you. Yeah. These are mix of duplexes and tries, I think. I love them. I do. I love them a lot. And then I think these are. That yellow house. These are singles back there. I just really like that. I like the way that looks. That definitely looks new England to me. Screams new England. Trying to get back to like, let's just try to show you like, well a lot of people skip over when they're, you know, you see one, two, three, 12, 30, 40. And there's a big gap often in sort of these mid-size. There's a whole like, a bit of planning out there that looks at like, how do you make a four, six unit building look like a single family? There's a place I visited once. I wonder if I could pull it up. Anyone ever hear of like, that? I might still have the brochure somewhere. I'll see if I can find it. Stapleton, Colorado used to be an airport. So it presented a really cool opportunity to like, build a whole town of sorts. There's a lot of vacant land that got to be reused and they sort of master planned it. And I'm not familiar enough with it to find the good examples, but they have every building size you could imagine. And they do some super cool things. That's not the best example. That's a horrible example. But they have a whole section of the town where they have what kind of looks like, I don't call them mini mansions, but they kind of look like houses that you'd see in some parts of the county year. But there's six and eight units in them, but they look like a single family. Interesting. This whole neighborhood's a bit too big for me to find quickly, but they've got, Parkside sounds like the kind of place it would be. Oh, that's older development. So I'll bring you those at some point because they're really cool, but they've got every type of development in this neighborhood you could imagine from small craftsmen's to... Yeah. I love that. This is actually cool, because this is like just a driveway for parking. It's not a real road. It's just sort of like an alleyway. Right. And that was kind of typical. You go up to Chicago, Eveston area, that's kind of a standard there. Yeah. I think that one's just a single family, but there's a whole part of the neighborhood where that's like four, but it's meant to have the appearance of a single. It's really cool. I toured it when I was there. Just some of what they do. And it's all like less than 20 years old. Well, Dalton Drive is kind of like that. The old barracks, they look like single family, but there's multiple housing in each of those buildings. So it's a pretty cool housing type. When you talk about mixing in things, it's a good way to sort of get. That's too good to get that in there. So I think this was a pretty good start for us. I don't want to keep you guys super late tonight or go into stuff that we'll just repeat, but. No, I think it's just a good exercise to see. Yeah, I think I'm trying to keep my examples local too, so we can talk about things that you can actually drive by. Well, one of the questions that comes up, like you're showing this, did they have form base code here or is it somewhat unregulated? So the fascinating, oh, look, I got it. I was able to get down the street. They did not in Williston at the time that this was adopted. They do now, which is funny, but they did not at the time this was built. So here's a, this is like sort of that middle size that I was talking about. I believe there's eight units in here. You know, when we talk about ways to improve things, I personally would have liked to see a few more of these, have like an entrance at the street. But it's sort of, it's, it's, you see the color breakups, right? Even in a two story, or two and a half story building, I guess, you see that, that vertical separation. You see that either the materials or the color or the doorways or the balconies, something is happening. Well, this building gets a lot of attention. Yeah, it looks like kind of like the other building. Yeah, the door. Inverted or something. Yeah. The door. Yeah, you're right. The top has a different color. I'm just noticing that instead of the first floor. Yeah, it looks like you have bump outs with the dark color instead of receding. Yeah, it is very much the opposite building. So the one we saw before this, the houses, was that in Texas or where was that? Colorado. I really like that. Oh yeah. I really like that. It was an interesting opportunity. I think so, they moved to the airport, if you've ever been there, it's way outside of town now, but it used to be right in the middle of town. Apparently it was a real bear to land in. Yeah. This is interesting. What do you think of this? I feel like I'm at MIT, I don't know. Right, yeah. Yeah. It was better than not having it there. Yeah. Like the end of the building. I would imagine though that these are much less expensive to build what we're seeing as opposed to the ones in Colorado with a lot less detail. I know some of the Colorado ones had some detail to it, so I don't know. I just love the way that looked. I introduced some of these buildings to you last time, but we didn't spend a lot of time talking about them. Very past one, no, yeah, not that one. That one's just... That's the town offices, right? Yeah, in the library. Yeah. Let's see if I can drive down the street here. All right, so, any, give me some feedback on this building. Yeah, it's also, yeah. Yeah, Market Street, Crofton Street, back there. I don't like that, I mean, it just looks kind of, I don't know. I can't imagine it at all. So, tell me what stands out that you like or don't like, like very specific things. It's almost inverted where it looks like the top has the horizontal band and not the lower. It's like the building's upside down. Does anybody else see that? So, I guess I think what I keep hearing is the standard that we have now, whether it's working or not, that you have a very pronounced first floor is a very good one to keep and... On the main road, the one where the housing is, I don't think you need it, but I think for the buildings that we see as being mixed use or potentially having mixed use, I think it's important, but I don't know whether the horizontal band's the way to do it or there's other ways to do it. That vertical cut-ups, like you said. I think there's other ways of saying this could be more retail than just putting a horizontal band. But that way, and I think we're, the severance corner, that one building really shows that someone literally took it as a horizontal band. And it's just flat. It's not, I think, what was intended. Yeah. Anybody wanna point out anything on this building they like or don't like? I don't like it. You know, I don't know exactly why I don't like it. It has a tenement feel to it. Right, it looks much more urban. I think, remember we're talking design. Tell me why from a design perspective. Well, compare it to the one in Colorado. I mean, they're so different, and I love the one with the Colorado, but that was more residential. I mean, this must be mixed use. So actually, you might be talking about the housing in Baybury, that's right in Burlington. Not Colorado, they want all the colors. I didn't show you too much out of Colorado. I think the one you're thinking of is. I like the one with all the little houses and all the little houses were different, but they were all really pretty little houses. There was some shaker looking ones and some New England looking. Yeah, they looked much more New England to me. So I keep hearing from Sarita, New England, New England, New England, New England. But you like the modern one too, that we like them. I did like the modern one. I do like the modern one, but I may like that on like the A and B streets. I'll play here. So things that stand out to me, the doors make or break a building. Absolutely. And I think in this building, the doors make or break it. These doors are really off-putting. They're very like, mine stay out. They don't really, I think make a connection for me. They're very residential. And maybe that's fine, but... My thing is whole buildings residential. Yeah. So when you say that, what do you mean? Residential, what do you mean? It's not mixed use. It's an apartment building or a condo building, I don't know. And it's not so flexible that it could change with the market. You could not put a shop in here. They just or a accountant's office or hair salon. It's like utilitarians and they has like one purpose. You know, the interesting thing about this though, I was trying to figure out whether or not it would meet our existing language. We focus a lot about bays, got a lot of bays here. There's a lot of like shifting going on with the depth. I don't know that it does anything for this building. Yeah, no, I think there's just a lot going on on this building. Right, because I was thinking there's too many materials. There's a lot of material. Okay, so too many materials. A lot of materials, a lot of stuff isn't tied together. It's a hard one. Windows, I don't like to have windows. But some people may like this. I don't know, maybe they're cup of tea. Absolutely. I don't have anything against a modern building. And I think sometimes design is objective. Which is what makes your work so hard on this. I imagine these things are meant for shade or are they purely aesthetic? They're meant for shade. I just don't know if they work that way on this building. Yeah, these to me feel like they're like shutters that you pulled out of a storm was coming. Like hurry, there's a hurricane. I don't get those. I really don't like the windows at all. The windows? Yeah. They've got a sort of a school house, schoolyard. That's it, yeah. Because they're not, I don't know. They don't have pains. They remind me of my high school. Did I miss one of the bigger, better buildings? Hang on. By the way, I designed it. No. You designed it? No, I don't know. I don't know. Oh my God, no. Did I love it? No, I did. No, I would not do that building. No, I had time with it on myself. This didn't make my list, but of the other things I want to bring back to you is a screening requirement for utility cabinets. We have no screening requirements. So you could have a beautifully designed neighborhood, a beautifully designed building, and then you could put a giant, twice as big as this. Transformer. Transformer, like, right there. Especially if heat pumps are going up, you should have screening. These are at least screened on the side. Yeah. But we have some that are just fully visible, 360 degrees with nothing to sort of reduce its impact. I get it, you can't block the front, right? Because you need access to it. That's kind of their purpose. But I'm going to go back down the street because there are some buildings that are worse. All right, that building. That one's more tied together, even though it has the same materials as the other building we just saw. Yeah. And the windows are different. Yeah. I think it's a little less busy. Yeah. And the first floor is treated differently. So it looks more commercial. I mean, you could argue that this is their banding. They used an awning sort of as their banding. Yep. That's the honeycomb thing. Different windows, probably a taller height on the first floor. Yeah. That looks like it's... This has a defining, you know, sort of element. Happens to be also where their entrance is. I know. This is senior housing. Just see now. So Kathy, we are getting close to nine o'clock. Okay. So if we go beyond nine o'clock, I have to ask the whole board if we want to continue. Do you feel good here? We can stop. It was just sort of... Oh, that's good. Karen, it was fun. Yeah. Good discussion. So things that we'll come back to at future meetings, we'll talk very specifically about streets at some point, you know, we'll talk very specifically about some open space types. We don't have very good requirements for those either. So we'll talk about that. I think another thing that's sort of missing from our course not just looking at the building, but how do the buildings all work together on a site? You can have gorgeous buildings, but if all you do is plop them down with no relationship to each other, it's still not a nice place. So we'll talk a little bit about other place-making elements. Yeah. So when I was looking at the uses, I know there's a childcare facility in seven corners, but childcare facilities can go in to they have a permitted use, right? Yeah, so the nice thing about the form-based code district and the idea with form-based codes is that it is you build the building that you want and the uses will fit or they won't. And so it's less focused on use and so almost every use is allowed in a form-based code. Okay. Because the idea is, well, if it's a print shop, but it can only fit in a building like this, do we care? You know, whether it's a childcare facility or whether it's an accountant's office or a restaurant or... Can we make it so certain businesses could not go in there? Yeah, I think we have a list of exempted uses and I think even your most traditional form-based codes have uses that are just simply not allowed. Oh, I'll take another look at that though and bring it to you, see what we have. Okay. Thank you, agenda backup. Oh, we have to do a few more things, right? Yeah, we do. So you had some informational items, do we? Yeah, so Essex proposed amendments, like it's just house cleaning stuff. There's really nothing of interest in there at all, but it was addressed to you, so. Yep, I didn't see anything in that. There were 22, right? They were updating the 2022 town plan. They were, I think they were trying to make sure, there were some things that came out of legislation in their town plan in the last few years that never made it into their regulations. So this is them just trying to catch up to state law. I didn't see anything in that. Okay, no action needed, just if you want to. So Memo, to the select board, you saw we get into capital budget plan energy efficiency projects as a reminder. You are the energy committee. There's no action here. If there was, you would have to close your meeting as the planning commission become the, but you don't have to, there's no action here. It's just respecting your role as the energy committee. Here's a memo talking about capital plans. You'll get this, you get one of these every year. Purely informational. Okay, any questions there to pass on? No, just always plugging charges, auto, bike charges. Always. And then staff updates. I always leave these on here just to kind of tell you guys what's going on with us. We'll have two interns from UVM working with us this summer and are really exciting. I have, like I did last summer, I'll have them come to a meeting or two. Some of the special projects I'm hoping they'll work on will include maybe some of the open space stuff, some of the parking updates. Their interest and skills vary a little bit in terms of what their backgrounds are, but we're hoping to take advantage of that and plug them in where they have the most amount of interest and experience. It'll be very helpful for our office. So they'll start early June. So hopefully you guys will see them at some point in the summer. Good. We always have one this year, I took two. Good. Where are they from? They're both from UVM. Yeah. From the Rubenstein School. Excellent. A little good partnership with them. Oh, nope, that's it for that. Meeting schedules on the next one. Yep. Okay. So we move on to going over that meeting schedule. Yeah, so the meeting schedule, you had identified a plan. This was before we sort of knew it'd be a little short, short, a little rich. So June 6th would be your next meeting. We have five Tuesdays in May, so that's actually three weeks from now, not two. That I think we've got one applicant who will be requesting a zoning change. We do those twice a year. So he's been in the queue for a little bit for a property up, off of, up sort of on the Milton side of town, off of, is that route two and seven there? Just two? Up near Jasper, Minish area. Yeah. They kept Bay sort of up there. So he's got a request in that we'll bring to you. I think we'll probably touch a little bit like we did on some of the kind of a repeat tonight in terms of like, here's some items, we'll stick in a little bit more. Depends on how much I can prep before that. Don't believe we'll have Rich back? I don't know. Is everyone else planning to be here just so we can check? June 6th, I'll be here. June 6th, okay. So we'll go ahead and keep that one. Is one of the Junes, I have a question, but it's not the sixth. Yeah, I think July got pretty busy for folks, but I think when we mentioned the 18th. There was one to hold, he said. That was the one we were holding. Yeah, that's the one I might have to be able to make. Okay, so I'll do a quorum check before then. But the fourth doesn't work. Your first meeting would be on the fourth. I agree with it. And the next week obviously is the night of a select board meeting if you were to stick with Tuesdays, and so that's how we ended up on the 18th. August 1st, and then the 15th we would hold might be really getting into the flow of form-based code stuff by then. So I will just wanna hold it in case you're like, this is great, bring us back something quickly. But I think in general, taking a slower approach now than I sort of brought to you at the last meeting, just with summer, folks being away, better to get it right than to rush it. So, I agree. We'll work through all of the element we need to. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. We got the minutes from our last meeting to sign. We need a motion to approve. Second? I'll second that, okay. And there's no other. We have to go. Oh yeah. All in favor? We need three votes to approve. Do we all agree? Do you second it, you know? I will agree with it. There's no other discussion. Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? So move. I second that. All agree? Yes. Bye. I'm just impressed with your photographs. That's impressive.