 Thanks, Mike. Sounds good. So we have a quorum. I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order. So this is the Monday, March 11th meeting of the Mobiliar Planning Commission. First thing we have to do is approve the agenda. So if I could have a planning commissioner. Move to approve the agenda that would be great. Looks like Ari Amanda is raising her hand too. I moved to approve the agenda. Right, if you keep yourselves. Yeah, let me go through. I can. I'll hit ask to unmute. There you go, Carlton. And if you leave yourself unmuted, I think you're okay. Thank you. We've a motion from Ari on. Do we have a second Carlton? Yes, you got it. Okay, second to prove the agenda. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Or wave your hand if you're muted. Aye. All right. Agenda approved. So next we have comments from the chair. I hadn't thought about it, but I guess I have things to say for one thing in case you weren't there at the last city council meeting will be. Going over some feedback from the city council and we'll be taking a vote. I'm making some changes to the proposals to the changes in zoning. It was fantastic. It went really well. We were concerned. But the public really showed up and had our backs a lot and what we're trying to do. And city council responded to that. So it went better than we could have imagined. So, hooray. And I guess with that, I should say that. Since we're, since we're at such a high note right now. And since I've been getting pressure to move off the planning commission that. I might plan to make next pressure from my work that is not from. Right on anybody here. So. Anyways, so I'm thinking maybe the next meeting will be the final one and then so we'll be plant. Maybe you can plan to elect new chair at the. First meeting in April. That's it for me for comments. Does anybody else have anything. I will just mention real quick, as you can see, I'm working from home today and it is very, very windy. And I know some people have lost power. So obviously. If the power goes out, we might get disconnected and. I will go through and fire up my generator and get us back on because we have to have a vote tonight. So hopefully we have a quick meeting. We get a quick vote and we make a decision and we can move on. But if not, I'll fire the generator and I'll get us back online. So. Just be patient for about 10 minutes and I'll try to get you guys all back on. So. Just a quick, quick warning because we do need, we do need to have a vote. To approve the changes and approve the revised required report. So. That's great, Mike. Thanks for bringing that up. So nobody give up if we, if we drop. Michael just be back with us shortly. Okay, so that's it for comments. Does anybody else have anything before you move on? All right. So the next thing on the agenda is comments from the public. So if there's anyone here from the public who would like to speak about something that's not on the agenda, that is, that's not related to. The proposed zoning changes. Now would be the time to speak up. And it looks like we have 1 person. On zoom that's not a planning commissioner or staff. So now would be the time to use the raise hand function. Or wave to us or or whatever. If you want to talk about something that's not on the agenda. All right. I will move on then. So review of the council. Public hearing and the zoning amendments. Mike has prepared some documents for us and I can only presume that he is going to walk through it with us. So with that, Michael, hand it off and. You can go for it. All right, so I think you guys should have. This document. My way. Let's see if I can make a little bit bigger here for us. So these were all the changes that. Just move it over from my screen benefit. A little bit. These were all the changes at the start. And I sent this out to you. It should be attached to the council packet that you guys all reviewed. When this was a planning commission public hearing all these ones through here and these were some decisions. In fact, 3009 on fixing stormwater rules. We said save for future. We actually ended up adding some back in at the last minute. And so the gray ones are things we didn't do. And then we got down to new additions for the council to consider. So you've already proved everything above that line. This first section worth changes. That I'm not sure the first three you guys may have seen, but came in after the public hearing was warned. So we had a word. Just that was a technical error that had to get fixed. And I'll just run through these really quick because there's not too many of them. With the density requirement, we had to add in the capital complex. We had a conversation about. Our proposal is if you're in the design review district, you're exempt from density. After we made that motion and we approve that and it went to city council. We recognize that there's actually an exclusion zone. To the design to the design review district and that exclusion is the capital complex. So basically the density, the way we wrote it density would be exempt everywhere except for the capital complex. This just added capital complex back in. So if you're in the capital complex, you'd be exempt from density as well. And we also expanded commencement of development rules to include open permits. So. What this exemption did was added in an extra year. So anyone who has an existing open permit. You're going to get one extra year to use your permit. And the reason why is we approve these permits during covid and then during a flood. So there are a number of projects that didn't happen. But developers wanted to move forward on they already got all their permits, but they didn't actually get to move forward because they got stopped by covid and flooding. And so we put in a recommendation to extend those open permits one additional year, and then they'll follow our new rules on development permits. So hopefully that makes sense. It's just giving everybody an extra year on their permits. If you have an open permit. Then these other ones were added in based on comments from the public. So there was a comment that and a gentleman reviewed the entire document and he found a bunch of stuff that were very good. So first we have an exemption at the start of our zoning that goes through these. Everything needs a permit and then we go through and say these things don't need a permit and one of them was. If you get it. If you have TV dishes or other antennas, and they're less than 15 square feet, they don't need a permit. He pointed out nowadays, most of these dishes are actually closer to two and three square feet. So a 15 square foot dish is kind of, you know, so 2002. So we really could lower that now. And so the council agreed and we lowered that to 3.25. We noticed a few things we had missed a few residential 24,000s remember that district was eliminated as a result of the home act. So we are now. We had to. We removed it from most of the document but we missed a couple one was in the applicability for one of the planned unit developments. It was still in the legend for figure three dash one one. And it was still in the use table, which we ended up reusing for urban residential. He noted that there was a technical piece that just just had a header that said hindstein height, but it didn't have anything there and I actually ended up moving a few things around. Change the reference that was in 312, he to move it back to the to move it back to 312. So that's not really a change the recommendation to improve the definition of top of bank, which we took his recommendation. It was out of state statute. So there is a new top of bank definition. There was a recommendation remember we talked about making country club road the zoning map that we said it should be urban center one is the most flexible zoning district was pointed out by him and a number of other people that well the purpose statement for urban center one doesn't work. And a lot of the other pieces don't work. They recommended creating a new zoning district called urban residential. We said, okay. So we've drafted new rules for urban residential it is a new zoning district. And use that and actually we put that in that area where the use table where a residential 24,000 used to be we put urban residential, and we put in a whole bunch of districts that we thought would be appropriate. We added urban residential to the parking exempt areas so there's no parking requirement up there, we added it to the light zone so now it's got some light rules we added urban residential to outdoor seating and urban outdoor display rules just that way it's got rules and effect. We made further revisions to the demolition to account for redevelopment projects that's a same person made a comment that are rules. Kind of focused on if you demolish something and return it to grade. But there's also a whole set of projects where you're demolishing and building on that same location. And so we adjusted the rules made them better. There was a good set of comments good recommendations he made is better product now. That was another set of changes you guys didn't see. And we can go through in detail any of these you want. Most of them aren't really making substantial changes except maybe country club road country club road is what kicked us into requiring the planning commission to review that was a substantial change. All these other ones I would have recommended to council. These aren't substantial changes. That was a substantial change. They then had a second public hearing on February 28. And OK. I'll let you jump in Kirby. Can you unmute or I have to unmute you again. All right. Yeah I didn't realize that was going to happen. So yeah Mike what just for the for the planning commission for whoever might be watching from the public. Can you give us just a summary of what the country club zone is going to look like. I remember if I'm going to be able to pull that draft up. So the area is still the same except down here. Let me take off the 28th changes first and then I'll go back to talk about those specifically. I have to I'll just open it open up the document itself and kind of grab a few pieces. So we amended on the 28th the council amended a few uses on the table. Another kind of significant change we had always talked about for density. If if you have a single family home if you have a conforming lot you can have a duplex even if you don't have the density requirement. So if you're in residential 6000 and you have a 6500 square foot lot you can have a duplex even though you normally need 12000 square feet. You don't because we ignore the density. If you have a conforming lot and you can have a duplex that's today's rules. Now we of course have talked about making that four units. That's in our proposal. If you have a conforming lot you can have four units. What the council said on the 28th is get rid of the conforming requirement. If you have a parcel you can have up to not four but six units. So that's actually two changes. That's what you see here on these 28 changes one removes conforming and adds four to six. So regardless you stop to meet all the other requirements parking and everything else. But if parking is required for that area. But you we don't look at density for anything up to six units. So that was their proposal. They put on that's one of the things you'll be voting on to say yes that's fine. DPW added some revisions to stormwater rules. That's what I had mentioned above. We added some waiver requirements for signs. That was a request that had been made. Somebody had some questions on signs. They wanted to put up a sign that be slightly taller than the requirement. And I said well we could have signed requirements. So that was what we did. They added back the solar shading. Remember we talked about eliminating the solar shading requirement entirely. They added it back. But only back to basically the 2021 requirement which was we had proposed only protecting existing and permitted solar devices. So you can't shade an existing solar device existing solar panel or hot water solar. And that analysis is now from equinox to equinox from March to September 20th. So as opposed to December 21st it's now the middle and now it's only the existing and existing and permitted. So that's the new analysis that's in there. Updated table of contents. So that was the other piece. All right so I can jump off. The quick summary of urban residential. It allows the same height as urban center one. So it's 60 feet that's five to six stories depending on how you're doing your stories. It is does not have a density requirement does not have a parking requirement. It is pretty flexible I think I put setbacks at about 10 feet so they matched more urban center to because it didn't sound like we were looking at going for that downtown block style urban development or buildings touch buildings. We're probably talking about separate buildings but usually you put about a 10 foot side setback that's what you see for think about Main Street from the library to the roundabout. Got big bulky buildings in this case they'll be even bigger buildings and what you see there. But you have individual buildings as opposed to buildings touching one another. So that's kind of the difference. So and you wouldn't want them closer than 10 feet I mean buildings five feet apart are kind of making little alleyways between buildings I don't think that's what we're looking for. You're going to have five story building you probably want at least 20 feet between the buildings each building 10 feet from the property line. So that was a little bit of sense on the setbacks so we still have really big most of the uses are permitted we did allow things like recreation hotels and the reason for that is not because we're trying to have those things happen. But because we are we really could have called this urban mixed use as opposed to urban residential maybe be a little. Tiki tacky with the semantics of the names. But the idea is we didn't want to just have this residential enclave out at country club road. We're trying to think also half of the lower area is owned well it's all owned by the city half of it we plan to develop for residential half of it's going to be residential. So that is going to be recreational. So the recreational piece may have other uses and we may have some other uses that kind of mix in on the first floor of some of these residential buildings so some of the examples I use at the planning commission at the council meeting was. We could have a restaurant or a small grocery store or. You know maybe we have a senior facility a senior facility that goes in there and we want to have a physical therapy. Place or something like that you want to allow some of these uses to be there what you don't want to have our car washes and gas stations. And those types of uses but you do want to allow a number of views and own the property so we have a lot of control. Not only from this angle but from the other angle so. We'll have zoning and we'll have the ability to who we approve the projects to so. That's a little bit of background. Yeah would you say overall that that Urban Center to is the best comparison for an existing district. I don't know if we're going to end up really having anything that looks like this. I think we. I just based on the uses like based on based on the types of the types of uses happening that we would expect. Maybe it was yeah I imagine it's going to look sounds more like a campus type style that you're describing. Yeah it's going to kind of have that that look to it. I think some of it there was a little bit of you know chicken and egg as to do we get the developer and to find out how they would like to do it and then tailor the zoning to that which. You know isn't good planning but. Does kind of makes good sense logically that you know we kind of want to see where how a developer wants to go. A lot of communities if you're in Florida. They would just go through and kind of open things up in some places in Florida and you would come in and they would propose the. The form based code they would say hey we're going to do a development we use form based code this is what it's going to look like these are going to be the rules we're going to develop by and. Basically the community agrees to the to the code. And then it gets developed and built and you know if you're in Arizona and Texas and Florida and North Carolina you'll get a lot of those and we're kind of. Sitting here figuring out well we'll put some zoning in that generally looks back at the process that. Was used to develop country club road we're not making this up. There was a public process community came together they said we don't want single family homes we don't want this we don't want that but we do want this you know. The develop the consultant asked how big you guys want five story buildings they said yes five story buildings in the lower areas perfectly fine. So we're not just making this up this is stuff that the public has had a process on and said yes we're okay with this. But five story buildings could look like Essex town center. Or it could look like. Burlington South Burlington's new town center. So you've got two completely different ways that you know the same idea could look in sometimes you have to put some pictures out. And let the public say yeah we like we like a better than be. And some of that has to come down to. Letting some developers come in and say this is what would actually work in this location. We kind of need both both hands shaking on this one to make it work. So we're going to put something out we're going to see how it goes we're going to see what we get from the public when we do that process. And if we need to amend the zoning well in the zoning but for now it's it's opened up for a number of uses it's pretty flexible but it doesn't know how everything is not unlimited. Thanks Mike. Was is that the extent of the changes coming back to us. Those are the changes so some of the substantial pieces that you kind of have to go through and say yep we heard it and we support these changes. And basically what the return to you guys is if there's a substantial change you're supposed to look at it in light of. The city plan the master plan and go through and say yeah this is still consistent with the master plan and most of these changes we based on and that's in that required report that we can go over. Really hung our hat on the fact that we wanted to promote housing. We a lot of this is based on the housing chapter we need to promote housing and so the removing of the conforming requirement. Basically saying that none not pro the prohibition removal of the prohibition of non conforming to have that benefit. The increase of four to six is just increasing housing. And a number of these other pieces are really all about those types of those of changes so the substantial changes is is adding back the solar shading requirement. We do have energy policies that would still support the energy policies. But it's now been adjusted and even me act the energy committee reviewed the rules and said that the rules we have in place are ridiculous. We need to amend the rules and they felt these rules. We're okay they thought these these would be the rules they didn't want to eliminate all of them. They would be comfortable at least protecting the ones that we have the solar devices that we have because if somebody were to put 30. $35,000 into some solar devices to have their neighbor then build a project that shades it would be problematic. So I don't think there's going to be a lot of it. Yeah we can we can stop there and so we may as well like you know, have some structure to how we discuss it so let's let's stay there for a second and discuss the solar shading. My two cents is that this is this is reasonable that this is probably not going to prohibit other things that we that we other goals we have for the city and it's a reasonable landing place. Remember, we were coming from basically letting imaginary solar projects stop development and that that's going to be no longer the case. But does anybody else have anything to comment about the solar recommendation. Go ahead Aaron. I think you might need to be unmuted Mike. Thanks. I'm sorry I just forgot going into the going into these latest found recommendations where was the solar shading. What was on the books before this. And I, and then let me just say this is like, I, I'm not an expert in this but these sort of half baked approaches to what you can and can't do with respect to solar shading gives me a little bit of heartburn from a kind of litigation risk perspective I don't know if we've had the town's attorney take a look at this and has given an opinion on it. And again I'm not an expert on it but I just does give me some pause in terms of just kind of throwing out ideas about what the books can and can't do in terms of development based on existing solar facilities that may sit on roots. I don't know what the answer to it is I haven't looked at any of it but I'm just curious if a what we had on the books before because I don't have sort of informed what we've been comfortable with before and be whether or not we've had the town's attorney take a look at it because I think if we haven't we might want to do that here. I just my understanding is just from way back at law school is once you get into these sort of rights with, you know, light and air and all that it gets. It can get very complicated very quickly and I just wouldn't want to put the town in a position where we're setting ourselves up for a problem that might come down the road. Yeah, I'm like I'm going to comment that I'll let Mike go into a more explanation but I'm right there with you about that. Do you do you recall like this is the same battle we fought last year where the the solar shading applied to any potential solar development so basically anywhere. And so it's dialed way way back the litigation risk of what it of the current of the current state is crazy high like you're saying so in this case. It's dialed back to just an existing device at least or at least or or one that's about to install. That's kind of what my memory was with that is that we were full bore but I just, I never knew whether or not we've had the town attorney take a look at that. And this just seems like something that if we want to encourage development, and especially if we start getting into multi story development. Given the amount of hills and trees and whatnot and that was sort of I think the issue that was sort of problematic with this to begin with is that so much of the shading that exists you know is due to trees and just the topography is my understanding I don't, you know, those things aren't going to go away and to sort of this just to me seems somewhat arbitrary. Again, I don't I don't know the answer to it because I haven't run the legal traps on it by any means but it's just something that I wanted to raise here. It just seems to gray at best, from my perspective. Yeah, so to kind of roll back you had a couple questions in there all at once so the question of where where we are right now so in our current zoning regulations the rules are that you cannot shade roofs, walls or yards and by definition yards in the zoning means areas within the setback area. So it really kind of shading anything on somebody else's yard. And it can't shade on December 21, which leaves the longest shadow between nine and three. So it's really early in the morning to really late in the afternoon on the, and it can't have any impact so even, you know, 20 minutes of hitting your neighbors yard at 935 in the morning on December 21. That wouldn't be allowed you to prohibit the development of a building so we all know that's ridiculous but that's what the rules say. There is a certain exemption in there there is a model that says if you don't cast a shadow bigger than 15 feet on a fence at the property line or something like that so technically it would you are allowed to have a certain amount of shading that would happen within that diagram and within that model. It was a, it's something that the consultant had put together. So, anyways, that's the rule in place now we have proposed to city council to eliminate it all together. What council has said is, let's take a step back in let's protect at least the existing devices. Let's adjust it from. March to September as the analysis, and I also forgot to mention, let's adjust that from only 10 to two. So if you start thinking about where the sun is from 10 to two in those windows, you're looking at. Of, you know, a much more as opposed to the sun, you know, on December is coming across at this really low angle at nine o'clock in the morning. Now it's 10 o'clock in the morning, and it's at the equinox so you're talking about a much less likely that that shade is going to be causing an issue. And it is looking at mostly those rooftop things so you'd have to be pretty high up to have that impact at that time. So I think we're just going to have to watch how this plays out over time and see how it see how the impact is but it should have a much less of an impact that that equinox line makes a big difference from the solstice. So, and 10 o'clock is going to be a big difference from nine o'clock so both of those factors should make a big difference. I understand that. And I remember, you know, John Adams in particular was pretty good at planning why we should move away from it, which I think sort of underpinning why we made the recommendation to get rid of it all together and I still think that's probably the right thing to do. I'm just saying it from a different perspective, not in terms of what's the, you know, what's the methodology that's used to establish, you know, shading. I'm just saying, I don't know if there's even a legal basis for us to have the third point. And if we just don't, and if we just don't know, I just am suggesting that it might be something that might be worth taking to the town attorney very quickly to see if they've got a quick and dirty opinion on it before, you know, when we go back to because we'll make our vote and then it goes back for another hearing at City Council right. Yep. Yeah, I just, to me, I think you're right. If we adopt this sort of compromise position, given the equinox versus the thought this modeling, it's not it's a low risk situation anyway, but I wonder that if even why invite the fight if we if we're legal, legally shaky grounds to have to fight in the first place. That's just my concern but if it's, you know, if this group and ultimately City Council feels like it's such a low risk situation, it's not worth getting an opinion on it. That's fine but I'm, you know, just my. Yeah, I'm still hesitant about it. Yeah, I can, I can check, I can check real quick to see if we could get David Ruda opine on it. But getting to your third point, just so. Okay, good. I was just going to finish up so that on the third point we did bring that up with Council. It's the theory of ancient lights and really what I mentioned to them and and that had been pointed out to me was that is really kind of a false thing it had been something litigated many times, especially during New York City with the construction of skyscrapers, and people would be losing their their. They formerly had sunlight now they don't and the theory of ancient lights is basically that property owners do not own the light that crosses onto their land it's not that you know the if you formerly had light onto your land and somebody builds a building and now shades your land that's you that's not one of the rights in your bundle of sticks that you have as a property owner. Right. That's that's a theory. Yeah, that's that's been sort of rings a bell in mind the back of my mind from a long time ago in law school so that's that's kind of why. I figured it out, and some astute counselors did some googling and found that there are other communities that have these protections so it's not. Now, just because somebody in Maryland has to write doesn't necessarily mean that Vermont law being Dylan's rule state as opposed to home rule states and blah blah blah blah blah. The answer is probably, maybe if you ask an attorney but I'm sure David Ru would probably have a nice long comment on it but I can see I'll talk to Bill the city manager we're trying to really be careful on spending money, especially on our legal fees. But we can see, as we as you point out, I think there's a certain level of risk that we're looking at from an from an appeal. We've always, and I pointed this out to them as well. I put this in a box in 2017 when we had gone to public hearing. I didn't like this rule. Others on the complaining Commission did. So we kind of conveniently parked it in a location where its use would show up less often in major site plan. So only certain projects of certain scales are going to hit this. So that was kind of a little bit if it only shows up very infrequently we'll save ourselves some some heartburn over this it has shown up a couple times. So we've had to address it, but in general it hasn't shown up and when it did show up for Ewing Street, which kind of prompted us to go through and say okay now now it's starting to have an impact. So, let's have the conversation we proposed removing it. Everybody kind of knew we had to fix it but Council wasn't ready to remove it. We proposed it again to remove it and here we are so I think take half the bread loaf now and come back to the other half later. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not the voter I'm the planning director so but that's that's kind of how we got to where we are, but I will see if we can get some kind of legal opinion. But I think unfortunately, had the proposal been to put it in. I think we'd be a better shape to go through and say I don't know if it's legally justified we should need to get a legal opinion. It's already in we're trying to get it out. So, right. No, I understand. Mike, I think I think a key question just about the legality of it is how many. How common is it for cities to have an ordinance like this. And then if it is common then. That means that there's probably been challenges elsewhere. And more litigious states like New York or California or something and. But my understanding is since it since it is something that's done, like this, like we got it because it was borrowed from somewhere right we had a consultant to who took this shading idea from somewhere right so. I don't know she may have made it up as she was just working with another community who wanted to do it I don't know I don't know where where she got it from. I recall being told that like it was bar from somewhere but it but the version that was borrowed is obviously the most extreme restricted version of it possible. Because it couldn't it couldn't have been any more restrictive than what it then what the current current one is. So anyways, the fact that it exists and that and that it's done other places at least tells me that. I don't know as it's it's stood up somewhere before but so I think that would be a place to look as opposed to like getting into like really old school case law. But, okay, does anybody else have thoughts about this. Are we generally in support of. I'll give you a second Carlton and Brian. Are we like 1 question I have for the planning commissioner generally in support of asking. Or suggesting that a legal opinion be saw is a question that's kind of right now. I think I saw Carlton first so let's unmute him. I don't know if it's still up there you go. So, I'm just trying to glean some information or the experience from northern power systems when we were putting wind turbines up and sometimes people the neighbors would have an issue with the shadowing of the turbine blades. And they were concerned about it causing epilepsy. And I'm only mentioning that because if we build the, if we present the issue to the public. Who may not be paying attention to it. It will become an issue. And so I just, I just want to put that out there that. We can. We should, we should really think about not stymie it up in the future for the future, because solar technology is rapidly changing. As we speak, and I would hope this wouldn't become another satellite dish. Revise in the future. That's all. Brian. I'm just watching the council deliberate on this. They will talk about other things. I mean, they, they follow the planning commission's lead on a lot of things, things we unexpectedly had followed up and took them and ran with them. The four to six. And I mean, we're talking about other. They were talking about why don't we do all other neighborhoods, get rid of density caps and other neighborhoods, but this one. It's a bridge too far to totally get rid of it. They wouldn't go along with a recommendation on that. So it seems to me that it. I'll defer to the group on whether we get a legal opinion, but it does seem like a kind of us. There's no way we're going to get rid of it politically. The council is not going to get rid of it. The feeling around solar is too strong. So this seems like a good compromise to get to keep this all moving. Anybody else? Soul shading. So, how do people feel just like a straw full thing? Oh, it's like Aaron has something. Yeah, thanks. I was just going to say very quickly. I, I didn't mean to put this out here to suggest like a really strong push for it. I don't know what. The scope of our retainer is with Dave Rue or anything like that. So, if it, if it is an issue. Where, you know, the town manager is going to push back on spending those kind of money because we, that's fine. I think. I think Brian's right. It's a compromise. I, I'm just cautious by nature when I, this, this just, this, this one piece just seems odd compared to the other things that we've put on the table and the city council deliberated. So, it's all, I've always been a little uncomfortable with, and I was glad that we had made the recommendation to get rid of it all together. I'm not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, but so. Yeah, that's true. You know, this is, this is the one that we lost on last year. And at least we, we, I saw it as like a 90% victory to get it down to it, like an actual reasonable place. But it's not perfect for sure. So, so Aaron, are you or do you, are you in favor of us, of us doing a little straw poll to see if we want to suggest that they get a legal opinion. You may need to be unmuted again. Giving you a thumbs up. I'll take the thumbs up as the, as in favor of the straw poll. So. Those in favor of. Asking or suggesting to have a legal opinion done on the litigation risk involved with. Making this change as opposed to getting rid of the requirement. Say, I, or give me a thumbs up, just do a thumbs up if you, if you're in favor of. A legal opinion. I, for sure, Carlton Aaron. Anybody else. Okay. Yeah, I just, I feel confused. To be honest, I like what, what the value is, but I'm not, I'm not opposed to it. Okay. How about this? How about. Mike, if you could add something in the response. That we think it's a good idea, not as a like. Suggestion or any kind of demand, but just like. It could be, it could be something to think about for your consideration. I think Aaron has something else to say. He may need to be unmuted Mike. Why do I seem to be going to be unmuted every time I feel like. I feel like you're trying to tell me something like. Don't remute yourself. I don't want you to, I want you to hear my internal commentary. I think maybe another way to sort of sort of circuit this is, if we just have the general vote as to whether or not we approve this change. We make that recommendation that the city council is putting forward. It would sort of short circuit the need for. A legal opinion. I would, I would only suggest getting that opinion if we felt like. We weren't comfortable with the change. But if the group generally thinks it's okay. And I readily admit, I think it's a pretty low risk scenario in terms of, you know, appeal. But. You know, I think if the group's okay with it generally, we don't need to. We don't need to. We don't need to. We don't need to. We don't need to be in the money or. Time to. Have the attorney look at it. We generally end up with a legal opinion. Once somebody files for an appeal in court. So. That's when the real work happens anyway. So. And then if we find out our, our attorney goes back to city council and goes through and says, you know, I've done my homework on this. And. My general opinion. If it goes to the judge, we're going to lose. So. Or they feel no, our rules are in good shape. And, and I think we could win this based on these decisions and these other courts. And therefore we should go forward and try to win it. So. Yeah, no, I get that. I get that. And if the group is comfortable with that approach, which is fine. And. I'm comfortable with saying that, you know, we don't oppose the change, but we would just like to note that. It could be worthwhile seeking. Some legal advice about it. And that's just in the long run to save money potentially, because. Defending it or getting a legal opinion. Once something's filed and doing a settlement, that's all going to be more expensive. And is the policy outcome. Is it, is it worth. The potential expense. Right. So. If you under, if that was coherent enough for you Mike to just. Note for them. Looks like we have a member of the public interested in. Giving some feedback. That's fine with me. Go ahead and unmute Mike. Oh, thanks. Hello, everyone. Good evening. I actually accidentally realized that the way of hand icon would come up. Maybe motion centered in a meeting a week ago, and then I forgot about it. So apologies. My name is Brian Jones. I am all member of the public, but I'm also a member of the DRB. And I meant to participate in these meetings a little earlier and funny story. I went down to city hall a couple of weeks ago and. Realized that the doors were locked in the front, but open in the back. Anyway, I found you all tonight. And I just had a very quick question about the density provision that general from four to six units. I realized that it's, I missed this part of the meeting, but the first question is, is this something that is still kind of open for discussion when it comes in front of city council again? Yes. Yeah. Mike saying yes. Okay. Great. Yeah. So as I was looking at this in detail, I just kind of had a few questions and. I'll just try to do them as one offs here. Essentially I. I understand the need for housing, but it seems like a big jump and I guess. As an architect, I should also say I'm an architect. I'm also on the DRB also live in town. I'm just wondering if density, this issue can, can or was discussed with some illustrations similar to the other diagrams that we see in the zoning code. You know, things like floor area ratio and whatnot. And I also want to make it clear that I don't, I'm not trying to propose that there should be more diagrams. I, it's not just, it's not the way zoning works. It would be, it'd be too dense to have a diagram for everything. But the reason I mentioned it is because it seems like a big increase to me. And the second point, which is more of a point than the question is, I just think maybe it's harder to. Go from six back to four than it is to just try four for a while and say, Hey, this is a pretty darn big increase in density. Let's see what happens as a result of that. And then if. Because again, my, my overarching concern is just simply that. As citizens, neighbors, et cetera, you. Folks don't really know what's coming. You know, and that's why I ask if it's been studied with diagrams. And so then that kind of drinks me to my third point, which is really just a question, which is. Is it possible to illustrate this with diagrams of some nature and then to try to again, see what an increase to four units minimum of any lot. People who have discussed this at length realize this is residential 1500 as well as residential 3000, which is already a lot of times a quarter acre lot. Would it be worth just kind of taking it one step at a time, possibly illustrating this to just try to better communicate it to the public. And I realize that's a little bit, there's a little bit in that question and I realize you all already discussed this. So forgive me for not being able to participate earlier. The only reason I mentioned this is because I realized that we need to see a certain increase in density in town. I think that could take a lot of different shapes. And, but trying to steer away from the hypotheticals of what that means. I just recently studied and Mike, I'm not, I'm speaking to everyone, but I'm going to speak to you on this point specifically. I recently studied a development. Pretty close to, pretty close to my own neighborhood. And I was thinking, wow, maybe three units. This is feasible. This brings in a good amount of people. There's a good pro forma here. Wow, four units. That really help, right? To imagine that same development with six units. It's only an apartment building, you know, it's nothing else. So anyway, I don't want to get too much into the, the what ifs. I just think that it may be a little bit too much of an increase from, from where we are. And I think that some illustrations would help folks understand. Hey, what does that house next to me that wants to add an apartment and an ADU. Sorry, here we go. Add an apartment and ADU look like, and they already have a current unit. Well, that's three right there. So, you know, what's that going to look like with. Three more units. Anyway. So Brian, I'd like to, you know, representing the like policy talk as, you know, as whereas Mike is the technical person. I'll catch you up on the, I'll catch you up on the like the policy place we're coming from and we've been coming from for a while now on the planning commission and looking at these things. And so overall, I think it's fair to say that our more or less our consensus here is that for, for planning in general, moving away from density and using density as all as a way to regulate things is not a great idea. And we think especially it's not a great idea for an urban center like Montpelier where the overall policy goals for the region are to kind of concentrate development and so that so that other places are not developed so that we don't have sprawl so that we don't have, you know, other negative outcomes, you know, forest fragmentation, etc. And then the economic and the community and all of the like goals we have all like line up with that. So we'd like to, we'd like to move away from just using density at all and we'd like to use what Mike sometimes calls a form based code, which is just regulating how things look and using our design review using the, you know, all of the things that we have in place for determining how things look without, without trying to regulate the amount of units in a place. And sometimes there's going to be scenarios, I'm sure, like some of the things that you were mentioning where six units is not going to be probably possible on every parcel, you know, even though, even though it's allowed, but because of just the practicality of, you know, the, the limitations on setbacks and the limitations on height and things like that. I'm doing this again, but I'm off camera. So you're good. I appreciate your explanation that I don't want to waste anyone's time tonight. That's not, not at all my goal. I'm aware of the, these other factors that you're mentioning and I just wanted to acknowledge that. So, so you knew that I was thinking about this thing from from kind of multiple sides. Again, not to be too specific, not to use one case study as an example, but the reason I mentioned it is because I think it's difficult sometimes to put policies in place and everything seems abstract and there's not even an illustration or some kind of study which has been done to say, this is what could be. And that's why I brought up this example. It just so happens that with a floor area ratio of 100 or one rather on a quarter acre lot, you can have 10,000 square feet of built space over three to four floors. If you were to look around anywhere and I'm sorry, and by the way that even with three large size units that only equals approximately half of the floor area ratio. So I want to just address a couple of things you said really quickly and then move on because again, my time here is not to slow anybody down but kind of catch up and share a little bit of what I see is happening. This notion that pro density should happen downtown and 100% with you on that. I think we already have a high, we have no density regulations on the downtown district, right? There was another product I was looking at with some folks a couple of years ago. It was an existing brick building. Somebody probably knows who purchased it a couple of years ago. We were thinking, hey, what about seven condos in this building? It's feasible. They wouldn't have been too small. Maybe it would have worked. No density regulation there. So I realized there are already zones in town that have density that do not have density requirements. And I realized that taking it out may seem like an easy way to make things simplified things, but I'm not sure that's how it's going to work out. And I just want to point out that coming from Philadelphia, 10 years of professional work in the city, they have density regulations as well. And they're an urban environment. They also have other regulations that have to do with individuals who are or not related to each other living in close proximity. I'm pro-development. I have a meeting with Down Street next week to talk with folks about some projects that are coming online. Again, the only way that I felt like I could make this tangible to you all as a concept and also to folks in town, right, neighbors and other people who don't always know what's going on when it's happening is just to simply illustrate something. And that's why I brought up this example of this very typical quarter-acre lot, single-family house, you know, in a neighborhood with primarily single-family houses. And for units, maybe it's going to be condos. And I, you know, my concern is not that we shouldn't have diversity in housing and it's not that we shouldn't have the ability for that diversity to cater to multiple groups of folks, you know, smaller apartments that are more affordable. But there's also continuity in zoning and also in town planning, right? And this is an important thing. You have neighborhoods that have families or families with an apartment or even families with an apartment and they're in-laws living there, right? And these are what we, this is what we typically see in town in a lot of our residential neighborhoods. This is the fabric of Montpelier right now. And albeit, I agree that there's a lot of potential for increasing it and improving stuff downtown and creating higher density. It just doesn't seem like it's a good blanket solution for all zoning districts. And getting back to my first point, which is really a question, wouldn't it be a good idea to illustrate some of this and have it as part of a report, even if only to communicate internally within these government and these volunteer organizations at Workway? Because admittedly, it can be very difficult to see what change this is going to mean. And I, you know, it's... I can tell you one thing, Brian, that the easiest change that we foresee is, and it gets at one of the biggest problems we have in Montpelier and in Vermont. And that is having one or two people in an enormous house. And making it possible to renovate those, the housing stock we have to have a lot more units in it. You know, that's the low hanging fruit. That's the easy thing. And that, but that's also something that density can get in the way of. So that's the kind of stuff that we're expecting to happen. New buildings in like more rural areas of the city that have six units, I think that's less likely, just economically and otherwise, that there should be major new construction stuff. I think it's going to be mostly renovation stuff is what we expect to see. And we've had like potential developers and landlords tell us that they were interested in properties near the downtown area and they did not do the project because they were limited to four units. If they would have been able to do six, they would have done it. So, so, you know, that's really what we're expecting to happen. But Maria also had her hand up. So I want to give her a chance. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah. Oh, I just wanted to say that. Point out that I live in. On a street that for some reason, Brian, or Mike, you might understand why, but a lot of these homes used to be single family homes, but they've been built into six plus units. I live in a single family home, but next to me there's a building that has at least six units. And then on the other side, it might even be eight units. We're on East State Street. And from the exterior, I mean, I've looked at historical photos of my block and if the buildings are exactly the same as when they were single family homes, like they're still beautiful Victorians. And now we have this whole neighborhood and it's, you know, these units are filled with lovely people. We're a neighborhood. We're not like, I don't know. I guess there are apartment buildings, but they're full of people that love living here and are happy to live here and happy to have somewhere close to town that they can walk to. So I just don't see. I personally don't see the concern with jumping to six rather than four or even two. I mean, it's still Montpelier. It's still good people, you know, and you're getting people placed to live. So I just wanted to point that out that this already exists on a quarter acre lot and it's a perfectly nice neighborhood. Yeah. Thanks. I just had one last comment partially to reply to that. Thanks very much for that. Yeah, I don't want to come across with any of these concerns as being kind of like anti-density or something. I lived in Philadelphia for 10 years. I get it and being able to walk or bike downtown is really one of the main kind of amenities or positives of being able to live in this town and kind of keep the urban fabric alive, eyes on the street, etc. There are many, many, many benefits. Chopping up existing buildings that are large is absolutely I absolutely understand that. My father was a landlord and builder and developer for many years and there are a lot of projects where you get a big house and there would be four, maybe even five units, sometimes fewer, but I get it. It's the other developments that I don't think maybe folks have really modeled and that's why I keep talking about these diagrams and again, floor area ratio of one, 10,000 square feet of buildable space, excuse me, allowable coverage in our ES 3060%. Typical development with a lot of parking spaces and three units of some nature or a good size house and then even an accessory dwelling unit it's about 20%. So it's just one of these things folks that from a development and planning side I don't I don't propose to know exactly where we're going or what the solution is. My concern and really my ask is simply saying should we take this one step at a time and I realize you all have been working on this a lot so I don't want to come across as suggesting that I know better but as a citizen and as an architect these are the things that and I've read through all of these proposed changes too by the way. I've been on the DRB now for about a year and it's been a great experience to meet folks and understand what's going on in town and acclimate to the zoning code. I think it might be too much too soon but I do hear you Kirby when you say hey we've talked with developers and we've got these barge Victorian houses and they want to chop them up maybe an apples and oranges thing and I don't know if we can quite see that yet where it's like chopping a building up that's already there is different than allowing somebody to build something new or add to a site and put in six new parking spaces plus six new units or five new units get to anywhere between a 40 50 percent you know it's just it's a lot and frankly I realize there's not a lot going on in town from a development standpoint as an architect that's also very clear to me and I realize that Vermont has a housing shortage problem and this is something that needs to be addressed Montpelier also has a tax revenue problem and so let me think about development I think we also have to keep in mind scenarios for generating tax revenue which is something that I'm not really prepared to expand upon I just wanted to point out that from where we are now to one to two units accessory dwelling unit you know even the incentives that down street was offering to provide middle class folks the opportunity to get some income generating revenue increased housing I'm all for it I think it's a very positive policy four is a big jump already six we'll see that's I mean I think I've expressed my concerns and frankly it may just be an opportunity to look at larger changes like this and say these are the this is the way we're going to move these forward in the future and maybe larger changes even solar is another good one where the diagrams are incredibly helpful but for folks to be able to see that visually what does this actually mean for my lot the fact that I'm giving putting on my neighbor an effect that my neighbor might be putting on me it's incredibly helpful so when the proposed changes happen my only feedback is let's add some visuals to this to really make it easy for folks to see what what these policy changes mean so thank you all for listening and apologies for you know kind of talking a little bit more than I intended to tonight yeah we appreciate it we appreciate you very much we also appreciate the DRB very much because for one thing in a lot of towns the planning board would be the DRB and planning mission combined so we're just really thankful we don't have to do all the adjudicating stuff you have to do so thank you for your service I also wish you mentioned Philadelphia and I'm just going to take a second to talk about that so I work at the State House and I was talking to some colleagues there who are like fiscal analysts about Fishtown recently because there's you know Fishtown is this really successful redevelopment area in Philadelphia where a whole lot of houses were redone and I've heard about it yeah we were just talking about how we wish something like that but it's unfortunately it's just it is really different than the reality of a place like Philadelphia like we're just almost the opposite where we just have these old Victorians and things we have our housing stock just has not we don't have much of it and so when you talk about the potential of people building new things we're not seeing it it doesn't seem fiscally possible there's construction costs are so high so like you were concerned about throwing up six unit lots or small lots but I agree there aren't a lot of vacant lots in town period you know and I agree with you the construction time so it may be an outlying kind of thing that happens but I still see the possibility for and the only reason that I had these insights that I has because it just so happened a time up that I was working on a project where you know this would have been very possible just like that right just I mean just snap the fingers and you know there's get there could be a giant six unit building but hey that's not that's not our reality unfortunately we don't we don't have a lot of developers we don't have a lot of people throwing a lot of money into new developments from what we've seen you said you're going to talk to downstream it's like downstream it's one of the only entities that are actually actively doing stuff but that's because they're getting you know grants and they're getting the money to put into it we're not seeing like middle income people get you know have developers build for them so that's that is a that that's very relevant to this whole conversation is that that we we want to see new construction type stuff like but we're just we're just not seeing it and we're not I mean I'm not personally convinced that this making this change about density is going to make that happen at all just because it's feasible like just because it's like like you know something that can be done doesn't mean that it will be done that's why it's it's more likely just because it's the month the money makes sense for renovation but I don't think the money even make sense for new construction unfortunately and in my pillar has a lot we have a lot of obstacles in the way zoning and otherwise so that's part of our job here too is to try to reduce those costs as well but we we have a lot of work to do for that yeah well I hear you and I'm sure you all have already thought about this this is really the only piece that I haven't talked about which is yeah I mean I think everybody's excited for there to be more population in town I think when you take a building that's a certain size and you divide it up into six units instead of four you just get six units that are less valuable than the four right so you we're going to get an increase in population for sure you know and I think that could mean a lot of different things but look folks I appreciate you listening to me tonight I don't have a crystal ball and I actually don't have any political agenda at all I'm just a guy with a kid who's about to go to school and I think if I love an appeal and that's why my wife and I move back so happy to be participating in local government and happy to be meeting you all tonight and appreciate your time and also your service so I look forward to seeing you around and frankly in person I'm going to let you all go but is there any notion of having meetings in city hall again I was at a city council meeting a week ago and that was disparate public population at best I think I was about one of three people that were in the room anyway Mike shaking his head no no I can jump in and I want to say we're not expecting it we don't usually get a lot and we actually get better participation by doing remote only meetings so yeah and I know Carlton's trying to jump in here so yeah okay thanks looks like he needs to unmute hello Brian you are an amazing human being for being on that doing your role over there I am also from the Philadelphia region my father owned a block around Pouton village in the art museum it doesn't work like that here I've lived here for 21 years what you're stating I appreciate it I represent the other side of things where I'm looking for the density I'm also looking to alleviate the competition of the lack of housing that the landlords are able to establish we're turning this community into a community that is really loves the service industry and but the service industry can afford to live here and what you're asking is doing more the same of what's going on and that's hiring more consultants to come up with paperwork or to convince the public when we really all need to just sit down and have a conversation together in colossal inclusive manner because there's a lot of decisions and a lot of discussions like you're having coming from a perch that is not hearing a lot of people that are more boots on the ground than represented here today okay thank you for that I checked your stuff out I'm really interested in having a conversation with you in the future I think we have a lot of shared values but the whole point of this I think really could be distilled into my idea of participatory democracy is one where it's easier for folks to access what's happening around them and as an architect you're always working through ideas by drawing things because there's a famous quote in architecture why would we talk about things when we can just draw them they don't lie drawings do not lie and so I don't think anyone here is lying I just think that some some more diagrams some additional diagrams for some of the more important parts of the zoning code are positive both when bigger changes happen and also to kind of keep them in the code to make it easy for average everyday folks to wrap their minds around if we can get a pro bono I'm good we can't have both ways we can't we can't ask for a lawyer to check out things and then also then you know or we can't have enough we don't have enough lawyer but then we we create these you know convincing reports that may or may not fly because and I understand what you're saying there's plenty of information that shows documentation on a variety of things and it's very difficult to access with a lot of different bumper stops the transparency the ultra transparency is probably what we need to work on more than anything you're talking about right now yeah all right well I realize that this is branching off into all sorts of stuff but I just want to say to all of you thank you very much it's I feel like I've been able to express my thoughts and that's not always the case with these meetings as I know because I'm usually on the other side of things so thank you all for listening and I look forward to meeting you in person we can talk more about town and our volunteer service and you know how to how to bring Montpelier alive to borrow from the from the group in town doing a bunch of work so thank you all have a great evening thanks Brian thanks for coming in you're welcome anytime appreciate you yeah thanks I'll try to keep it keep the verbiage down next time but thank you very much have a good evening yeah thanks for your thoughts so while we're talking about it we haven't actually discussed the the change from four to six and the conforming to anything change so so why don't we tackle that do people have thoughts that haven't been said about that change other than I mean I'll start off again with my opinion on it and I feel like city council responded like lightning struck for some reason for us and I think that this is an opportunity that put us a few years ahead so I'm excited that there's interest there go ahead Maria I was just going to echo that I think it's well again like I just said I live between that many buildings that have many units and I think it's wonderful you know people just desperately need a place to live in town and we don't want them moving you know so somewhere far out in Calis then driving here every day it's just if they want to be in town we should find ways to help people live in town and I don't know I mean maybe there's I don't know see I even say like a risk I don't even know that I would be opposed to more construction outside of like the downtown area you know like I think this is where we want people to live this is where we want people every kind of person so I agree and I think there are there are so many other regulations in place you know between like demolition requirements and all the different reviews that buildings need to go under for permitting I think there's so much in place that would still probably stamp down a lot of development that other people are afraid of so I think there's still a lot of those kinds of protections in place but yeah I am all for increasing increasing it to six even though we had only voted on four so that's my input it's also it's also if I may the elephant in the room for me is I gleaned a lot of information hand painting and a number of people came in and discussed younger people discussed that you know they after they leave their parents house and want to go to college they can't afford to move here they can't live here even high schoolers who approach me and said I can't vote yet but if I were able to vote I see the future we're stating how there's a there's a unsaid that's going on where parents I don't have any children I turned 50 last Saturday and so it's I'm not that old but you know what I'm saying there's a there's a consensus amongst young people when they're when they trust an older person to state that you know their parents or grandparents are really psyched that they're going to study abroad however the unsaid is it's cheaper to study abroad than it is to be here in Montpelier and studying here and one of the high schoolers suggested that I may use the idea of it's cheaper to live in Montpelier France and go to school than Montpelier Vermont and go to school live and go to school and so that's that's the issue bubbling from younger than us this is not about us this is not about our concerns it's about the future it's it we need more housing it's the the population as a whole is growing and you know to sense the belt because it's stymied tradition is not future focused so I say 8 10 however many we need because we really it's it's long overdue Carlton Brian if you can unmute yourself yeah I was going to say so just watching it unfold at the council we were all you guys had prepared me that we had to be really incremental and tread lightly because politics which I think was probably good council based on the experience you guys have had but and we brought it up to four because that's consistent with the state law that just passed right so and then spurred on by citizens chiming in at the council session and the council members themselves they said you know let's be a little more bold and many people have mentioned the big changes that went zone changes that happened in 2018 and that there hasn't been I think it was Nathan or someone else at the council saying well it really hasn't been much development since those big changes yeah there were changes there are some changes for the good and there's some real positives but we're just going to have to be more bold just be bolder and less incremental with it so I I'm on and I don't look a gift horse in the mouth if the council politically is ready to go to six let's let's go honestly I think it's incremental too though I mean the six things incremental I think I think the the long run is is to not have density requirements so that we can focus our zoning attention on specific things that that really matter like design review and you know other things like that things that people do care about and and you know not not just limiting the amount of people who can live here which is what density is the entire point density so I still incremental I think I think six is I think four would have maybe caused some projects maybe to happen that wouldn't have it would have just been a handful maybe less and I think six is going to be maybe a handful more and still not going to be any kind of silver bullet it's just like Nathan said like everyone has it who's been around here looking at the state of things for a while knows we were way behind the catching up we did and we redid the zoning when I first joined was basically making it so that the town as it exists was legal but not even not even 100% it was up to 90% we brought everything up to 90% I mean that meant that the zoning that we were starting from before that was so anti-development that it made the town as it exists illegal so and we still only brought it to 90% like when we did all those changes so we still made 10% of our beautiful neighborhoods that everyone loves the meadows and stuff like a lot of that a lot of those houses that everyone loves and cherishes is still non-conforming as in we don't according to our zoning we don't want that which we obviously do so anyway a lot farther to go so thank you Kirby for saying that six isn't a huge step really considering how far behind we are and how long what Peeler spent decades being pretty anti-development and it's why we have a crisis obviously the crisis didn't happen overnight it happened after decades of preventing housing so anyways I'll golf that so box everyone's good with three everyone's good with the three and everyone's good with that change any other of these changes that people would like to discuss then before we go to a vote it is seven so I'll start moving things along for it for us anybody have anything else everyone's good with the Mike did prepare the memo we didn't formally go through it he sent it to us though that's going to be part of our response back so there's a legal requirement you have to do a required report planner busy work it's a big BS form but I won't get on my soapbox because you don't need to listen to me but yeah we're required to do this very specifically written out report and so when this comes back we've got to amend the required report so I amended the required report I believe I highlighted the sections that I changed but there isn't too much that had to technically change but officially you'll have to say these are okay and here's the amended required report so is everyone good with the report with the caveat being Mike with the one note about shading that we'd like to pass on yep PC thinks it's a good idea to get a legal opinion on solar shading provisions that sounds great so do we have a motion to approve the report with that one amendment motion from Brian do we have a second at least get us on the screen here Aaron's got a thumbs up so we'll so a motion from Brian and a second from Aaron does anyone want to discuss the report or the changes before we vote can I ask when it states in materials who determines the high quality in the section of material specifically what so let me bring it up for you let's see here within within the document of let's see I do have it here it is here it is well this is you can you go to materials is it in this document here it would be yes no okay no it's in the larger document the 171 page document are we reviewing that at all oh you mean the full zoning bylaw document do we have anything to do with this or oh I mean I can I can pull that one up that's the entire ball also okay I'm just looking for the materials aspect of it when it states it's very specific about different things and I'm trying to understand who determines the high quality in the verbiage because you know that's subject to opinion just give me one moment if you've got a either a section reference or page reference then bring it here okay so it would be question about the signs too let me bring it just one moment it's the material section sorry I uh it's big document oh wait I'm going the wrong way I gotta go to 171 it's page 171 hold on a second there it is okay so I have actually no no no you messed me up oh sorry sorry it's alright so first okay so there's in part 3 I have a number of things circle in part 3 of and so that starts at 132 of 222 12 under 5 section 5 it says under waivers development development review board may waive the amount in placement standards where an applicant demonstrates that the waiver request creates the minimum variance from the standard and either and I'm looking at B I'm not sure if you're there yet because I'm kind of in the wilderness as far as what was the section number again it was section number you want the part you want the section because this is I don't see a word as section the section or the page there'll be a page 3-14 or something like that or a section number I see okay I'm looking at it more from my okay so it's section 3- 6 3 I'm blinding everybody as I go spinning through here 61 62 and 63 so I'm in chapter 320 site playing standards so is that page 132 for you 141 no I'm I'm in there should be like a section number on the left side and it's 3-2 what are the numbers on the left side Carlton is there is it like a 3-1 2-4 or is it like a 4-digit number on the left side 3-2 3 that'll get us there alright 3-2 3 landscape and screening requirements right so as far as okay I have a number of things in this section okay so the building one is this the building mount equipment when it says the wall the wall mount equipment and first of all let me ask before I even go into this do we have any type of say in this oh yeah you guys officially write this I mean technically I wrote it and the consultant wrote it you guys reviewed it and approved it or previous version of you guys did yeah I was going to say I have nothing to do with this okay the I'm so the future is so important and some of this wording for me given that I'm always looking for creative ways of development that will cut costs also be sourced locally to save on transportation the rooftop equipment utility shall be enclosed or screened by the building's walls or the parabits that parapets that shall be compatible with the form design and materials of the building so walking around Montpelier and and kind of trying to find this example it does this require air conditioners or HVAC equipment is this what is this talking about that aspect of things I'm not sure the building mount equipment what is that is that the utilities is it the solar panels as well wouldn't apply to the solar panels it would those have special rules it applies to most of those HVAC systems so usually if it's a roof mounted piece of equipment usually what will end up happening ends up getting set in a little bit to the center of the building so it can't be viewed or you end up extending the walls of the parapet at the top so the roof is slightly below so that way it helps to screen rooftop equipment and then the wall mounted usually especially these get approved all the time even in design review so usually you're trying to locate them around the corner you're going to put them in colors that you know we don't want somebody going putting in you know a compressor for a district heat or for a for a air source heat system to go and have them fluorescent yellow or something like that you know we're going to want them to be colored and muted and put into a location where they're less visible those types of requirements put them on the side of the building or on the back of the building not on the front of the building okay I just want to touch on a couple of them because this is a large document just some things that I just circled they caught my eye and now regarding the materials in section 3207 to designing compatibility and that would be so the material section number four when it states that's my original reason for coming to this document it's the use A is use high quality building materials use a complimentary palette of materials on all sides of buildings have materials changes located at interior corners or other logical terminations and not at the so I understand what you're saying as far as some of the equipment but what does that mean is use high quality and who sets that standard as far as determining high quality building materials high quality building materials yes can I intervene for a second we're actually going to run out of time this is a very important vote so I think we should get the vote done and then I would suggest like Carlton and Mike doing like going over this offline maybe is that okay that's up to Carlton I'm fine to always sit down with any planning commissioner who wants to go over these questions here yeah is that okay Carlton if Mike and you go and you guys can even take a deeper dive because we're going to run out of time in like 10 minutes anyway yeah and Aaron did you have something before we finish the vote yeah I was just going to ask what agenda item this was relevant to it's not I'm not saying that it's not important but it's just we've got to get through the agenda items so let's focus on that and get the vote done yes it seems like it seems like a good thing to tackle offline and then you'll have more time okay so we're going to proceed with the vote and did anyone else have any more discussion of the motion the motion was from Brian with a second from Aaron to approve the report that Mike prepared for us with the addition of a note concerning solar shading and illegal opinion any other discussion of that before we vote is there a time huh is there a time yeah there's definitely time to vote if we're good I was just checking in see if anybody had any more discussion so let's do it any other questions say hi hi we're do a wave or thumbs up any indication okay and Aaron okay and any opposed do a frowny face emote or something and then any abstentions do a shrug I don't know okay looks like it was unanimous so we have six people here yeah 600 Mike okay we've approved the report hopefully the city council follows up with all of it um I will probably be at the meeting on Wednesday to monitor so far it will be late it'll be late so we're on the agenda after council orientation my I've been doing this for 10 years now council orientation usually takes about 2 hours so if we're on after after the 830 break I would be surprised if it's that quick at 830 they not be till later but how many new people are there Mike there's just one but we had a number of new people last year as well so as Bill likes to point out the first time you give these guys you're giving them just a waterfall of information and then they sit on the council for a year and you give them that same presentation and they're like oh I get it now I get that I get that now I get that now that's something I don't even remember from last time so they do it every year just because every year somebody learned something new that was in the last presentation but I did not actually follow up to learn who won the it was district one right who won the district one seat Adrian Gill replaces Donna Bate so Donna was the most senior member of the council but but I do believe there were two people who were new last year Tim Heaney and actually they have been three new people last year so there are a couple of folks that are getting their second orientation and one person getting their first orientation okay alright does anybody have anything else I think we'll just save the minutes and go ahead and adjourn unless we have anything else before okay alright thanks everyone I'm going to adjourn without a vote have a good night thank you all