 Hello, everyone. We're going to call the meeting to order. Soon, but I'm going to try to wait to make sure we have. The quorum of planning commissioners. We have three so far out of the four needed. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Okay. I had a question. This is being recorded. I gathered it. Will it be available for people to watch somewhere? Orca or what city website later on? Yeah, it's being broadcast on Orca as well. So they'll have it on the city website, right, Mike? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, the zoom, the zoom recording is just a backup in case something goes wrong with the orca, but I've never had an issue with the orca media. So we'll be able to record it and get it on to their website. Thank you. Okay, so we've got. Plenty of planning commissioners here now. So I'm going to call the meeting to order. This is the. September 11th meeting of the popular planning commission in 2023. We first have to approve the agenda because this is a, it's a regular planning commission meetings. We've got to go through. The typical steps. So, if I'm going to motion from planning commissioner to approve the agenda. Okay. Okay. Motion from John in a second. Second. From Gabe. Okay. Those in favor of approving the agenda say I. Hi. Any opposed. Okay. Agendas proved the next thing on the agenda is comments from the chair. You know, today is about comments from everyone else. That's not on the plan commission. So I'm going to just skip that for now. Later on, I'll be doing an introduction to the listening session, but for now, I don't have anything else to add. Except maybe to plan commissioners that, you know. Summers over so we'll be resuming our normal. Meetings we've missed a few recently, but they'll be. Coming at a normal rate in the near future. So everyone knows in case they're wondering. Okay. The next thing on the agenda would be general business, which would. That's normally a time in which we would take any questions or comments or concerns about anything that's on the agenda. But considering the vast majority of this meeting is about hearing comments about density. I am going to assume that there's also people who want to participate and give ideas about other things. But I think putting that before the density conversation doesn't make as much sense. So if everyone's all right, I'm going to essentially bump that down 1 on our agenda. And to put it another way. I just plan to once we're done with the density discussion and people are through giving us feedback. Then I would 1 just open it up to other zoning issues that people have and do it that way. If that's all right with everybody. So, so that's going to be our plan. So with that. We are at the reason for the evening, which is the popular planning commissions holding this listening session for. The development of some potential zoning amendments. Mike is going to give some background. Before I pass it off to you, Mike, I did plan to just kind of introduce some of the, some of the topic here. Which is, you know, welcome. I'm Kirby Keaton. I'm the chair of the planning commission. This discussion that we're going to have is mostly about the concept of density and zoning. So 1 thing I wanted to make sure that we. Cover before jumping into it is to make sure that we're all on the same page about what density is. So, just in case anybody's not. Incredibly familiar if they're fuzzy about it. In the zoning context density is the number of the units that are allowed per square foot on a parcel. That's, that's the, you know, as has it's used in the popular zoning. That's what density means. So what it doesn't mean just just for clarification is. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of a building. It doesn't have anything to do with the shape or the design or anything like that. We have a whole bunch of other zoning that does address that stuff. And other things like design review too, which we're going to be talking about tonight, but so that's what density is. It's about the number of units that are allowed on a parcel for, for the square footage of the parcel. The reason why we're having this discussion or a big part of the reason anyway, is that an organization called Congress for new urbanism, which is a planning think tank. The national well regarded think tank. Kind of on its own. Working with a RP of Vermont reached out to the city. It's been a year and a half now actually, and 1 of the major suggestions that they had was that Montpelers should get rid of its. Zoning density caps because. They thought that was 1 of the quickest ways to to bring down barriers to housing. So, what we've done tonight to kind of set the stage is. The planning commissions put forward some of its own ideas about about how we could go about addressing this. It was it's not just the Congress for new urbanism. I just want to make that footnote. It's also about housing for us because that's a big priority. Our understanding is that a majority of the residents in Montpelier. Recognize that that a lack of housing is a major problem in Vermont. Potentially the biggest problem in Vermont and he's probably up there with childcare is something that's just always a major problem in the last decade or so. And so it's a major problem and that's that's part of it too and housing is on our minds all the time with planning commission. What we put forward was a few ideas. I'm going to throw them out there real quickly because I don't want to take up a ton of time. But some of the things we put out there for people to respond to. Are the potential for us to not have density caps a density cap being a limit on how much density, how many units are allowed on a parcel. In the design review district, which is. A district in our zoning that is regulated based on the appearances of things because. Congress from new urbanism noted. Design the design review district and design review rules. In its letter, and it's also we know a concern of the community that any changes we make that are that are to encourage housing. We want to balance with. The aesthetics of our community, we want our community to have the same character that we want to just. Allow space for more people. So that's 1 thing, no density caps and design review district. The logic being design review district. Already covers aesthetic issues very well. Another thing we found out there is just allowing for units everywhere. And that would just mean that. If you, you know, if you're trying to have. An in law apartment situation, or if you're trying to have like make your house to a duplex. That, which that's allowed everywhere, but if you're trying to add units and you've already got. Small number of units, that's just going to be something that will allow us. We've also, you know, consider something like maybe instead of moving away from density entirely, like CNU had suggested. We could double the density and we could do things like instead of basing it on designer of you, we could just base it off of eliminating density. Just around the downtown area and kind of do it. And a different like something that's off designer of you, but that's similar. So those are the things we've kind of put out. We're really looking forward to what hearing what other people have to say. Like I said before, we're going to take suggestions and things. I'll, I'll try to make sure there's time at the end for zoning issues and topics that are not. Density related and. This is a listening session. It's not a hearing. We haven't decided anything. This is it's not something that's required by law. We really just want to hear from people before going forward with our stuff. So that's it for me. I'm going to hand it over to you, Mike, and from there, we can get going. All right, well, I. Have a presentation that I put together, but you kind of went through most of the pieces. So I don't know where everybody's background is on. A little bit of the history. So maybe I'll just very quickly go through. And so for people who are just trying to get caught up, haven't been familiar with the whole process. The city went through a very major zoning rewrite in. That was adopted in January of 2018 and that made changes a lot of changes changed our zoning significantly in the city making most neighborhoods. 90% compliant by that we mean. Prior to that, most of our housing units were non conforming, which meant they we had zoning regulations, but nobody's houses actually met it. They were all grandfathered in because they were built before the zoning and that doesn't make any sense. If we love our neighborhoods, let's make the rules that allow great neighborhoods to be built. So we changed our zoning to make sure that 90% of our neighborhoods were correct. So your setbacks would match what your what we actually see on the street and your densities and your uses all matched what was on the streets. We also made changes that allowed duplexes on all conforming lots. We added some environmental rules that didn't exist before, including riparian wetlands and slopes. And then the rules on parking, which used to be very strict, not necessarily in how many parking spaces were required but in how you count them and how you're allowed to put them in. And we streamline the permitting so permitting is much faster, much more efficient now. And then we amended them about once per year to fix a number of small things some small some big but we would each year come back with another amendment in the last one was done in 2022. We haven't made an amendment yet 2023 this one was supposed to be in March, and then April and May and June and now it's been pushed so we're still trying to get this one in for this year. And as Kirby mentioned we did. After those were reviewed we did have a RP in the Congress for no urbanism take a take a look at them. So, won't go over this too much because Kirby kind of went through it, but they recommended moving away from density. They noted that design is more important than density. And if the city has strong design regulations, then they didn't feel we really needed to be regulating density, as much as we are. Let's point out that the city has revised and updated new design review regulations in 2020 and adopted new design guidelines in 2022 that help people applying for in people administering those new design review rules. And this is a picture. Don't know if you can see my cursor but you know here we've got Main Street. No, here we've got Main Street kind of coming down through the red, the red blob. Here's State Street, this is the area with the capital complex. This larger pink area is national life is up in here so if you're trying to get yourself oriented a little bit. This is East St. This is the college is in the design review. Barry Street is coming down in the this lower arm, and then Main Street, the roundabout, and a little ways past the school so kind of gives you a little bit of an idea of what's in our current design review district. We sometimes hear the historic district. The historic district is different. It's a, it's, it covers different properties. So, some areas we see like nine dash three and nine dash four would be in the historic district but not in the design district. And then there are areas like national life that are not in the historic district but are in design review so they're really two separate areas. Design review is what we regulate and there's a set of rules for that, some of which are administrative and some of which need to go to design review committee. And Kirby also went through this really quickly what is density, it's a dwelling units per acre. So a dwelling unit can have any number of bedrooms and bathrooms so a seven bedroom three bathroom house is considered one dwelling unit it's not counting the number of people that live there so when you think density sometimes people think people. It's three dwelling units and one dwelling unit can have seven bedrooms, but that same house could be divided into a three bedroom apartment a two bedroom apartment and a one bedroom apartment. Same house, maybe the same number of people living in it, but it's now counted as three dwelling units. So, a lot of times that's why Congress for new urbanism and others are trying to get away from using the density of dwelling units doesn't necessarily really match what is on the ground we're talking about the number of people, or the impact on the neighborhood. So, some of the final density background stuff there is no density in the urban center right now. So urban center one two and three which is your downtown or parts of Berry street. And all those areas they there is no residential density you can have as many units as you can fit into the into the buildings. Another thing to keep in mind with density is that the bigger homes many of these bigger homes that were built a century ago were built for bigger families so in the 1950s the average household size had more than four people in it. Less than two people per dwelling unit so you know we've got the same size house, but half the number of people living in it, and currently more than 40% of all households are people living alone so a lot of times. We're really looking at trying to get more dwelling units not because we're looking to get more people but because we've just got big houses with one person living in it. And so that becomes an issue for taking care of things. These were the four things that Kirby went over for the planning commissioner thoughts that we would have you think about removing density from that district we were talking about maybe we don't regulate density and design review district because Congress for urbanism says as long as you're doing a good job with your density you're doing okay and or with your design review and we have good design review rules and here's the area they apply. We could remove density from additional zoning districts we could remove density for projects of four units or or less we already do that now if you've got a single if you've got a conforming lot you can have a duplex. We could change the zoning to say if you've got a conforming lot you could have four units. There's another idea that's on the table we want to put some ideas on there and then another one is as Kirby mentioned doubling the density and all districts and that would still have some density limits but would simply expand the amount of potential development that could happen. And these are just a couple other changes that are being considered that are housing and density related that are because we are looking at doing a zoning amendment. We are looking at rezoning country club road. We are looking at the requirements for for what is now called Act 47 was called s 100 these are the home act that was changed by the legislature. And it has a requirement that all districts with water and sewer allow five units per acre. The bill actually has a lot of requirements we already meet all of them, except for this one. Because we have one zoning district of res 24,000 that wouldn't meet this requirement so town Hill Road would have to be rezoned res 9000 in order to come into compliance with that statute that statute change. And there's some argument res 9000 may need to have density of one unit change to have one unit for 8,712 that's five units an acre. The reality is I don't think so because we already allowed two units. So everyone with a conforming lot can have two units. So I think we already meet it and we could leave it at res 9000 but I did want to just mention, these are the only things home act related because somebody may have a question on that. And then we had some other changes that we're looking at like splitting multifamily into two groups and a few other smaller things but that's not really the focus of this conversation today. This one we really wanted to just have you guys talk about, you know, what we haven't talked about that you think we should consider what you like or don't like about the density suggestions, is there an idea you like better than another, or do you not like any of them. And what questions do you have we're we're here and we can answer your questions so that's, that was my quick discussion just to try to make sure everybody who may not be completely familiar with our zoning has a quick leveling of the place. So we have a quick leveling of the playing field and we can try to take it from there. And so I guess with that I can open the floor and start hearing questions or comments. Yeah, so I can I can take it back from you Mike to call on people and then, like I said let's let's talk about density first and then we'll talk about other zoning ideas after. I guess to facilitate this, we can use the raise hand function on zoom, just under reactions at the bottom. And yeah so there we go we've got some of those, and we can we can call folks. We don't have a ton of people so I'm not going to send any limits at the moment. I'm just gonna go see see where we go without rules for a minute. Like without rules maybe I'd be crazy. I'm going to be helping somebody get on so I'll let you guys handle it and I'll be working on some stuff in the background. We got somebody who's trying to get in. Okay, thanks Mike. Okay, Barb, you're first on my screen so go for it. Sure. Mike, I know Mike's leaving but does the Homes Act require that us that we allow any, any house to be for units. That was the way I was reading it. Yeah, I had the same question. Did we get you Mike. It looks like he's unavailable. All right, let's save that one save it for later. I mean, there, there are certainly some benefits to I mean that's why we did the duplexing in the first place there's certainly benefits to increasing that to four units per building. I, one of my concerns is what would we do about parking. You know we still have the one parking space per unit currently. And that's going to increase the amount of parking required. Also, and this is maybe just, this is just my particular bone to pick but it seems like every time when we add an ADU, there's an additional pretty substantial fee for a sewer hookup even if we are not hooking up sewers. So does that mean that four units adds that cost to a homeowner for each of those additional units. And I think finally my concern about the four units per building is, does that trip any kind of sprinkler requirements from the city. So, I'll just leave it at that in terms of that particular piece of the zoning suggestions about four units per bill per acre or sorry for units per building. Okay, thanks Barb. Joe, I had to do next on my screen. You're muted. Sorry about that. I was trying to lower my hand. So a couple of quick questions in reviewing what Mike just presented. Obviously there are some areas the districts that are proposed for higher density that were impacted by the flooding. And I'm just concerned, okay, what are we thinking about moving forward, if we're going to try and rebuild downtown I mean should we wait until there's some sort of consensus as far as what we do as far as rebuilding some of these areas that are in the flood zone. Obviously national life's not impacted up towards the college is not impacted. But I'm just concerned that we increase density and we're going to be in a flood zone and we saw what happened downtown in July of this year and we don't know whether we're going to have a similar situation next year or 10 years down the road. The second part of my question is, I believe we did a major rejigger of the zoning in 2018. I wanted to find out what the impacts of increasing the density has been so far have we seen a dramatic increase as far as I know, we haven't seen a dramatic increase as a result of the density so I'm wondering if this change is going to have zero effect as well. And then the last question I had is I believe that it was Minnesota. Eliminated density limits in 2019, right after we changed our zoning and I believe that initially. They haven't seen much in terms of results. I was wondering if there's any studies that you're aware of to figure out. What's the long term impact on something this this big of a change is. I just want to find out if you have any data. Yeah, it looks like Mike's occupied. I can try to handle what I can about what you asked. As far as the flooding is something that we've talked about. In general, just outside of this. Conversation because it's bigger than that. You know, the idea of new construction in flood areas is, you know, something's on our mind. And so far. We've talked about how. With new construction, it has to it has to be built to with flood mitigation in mind and we have a lot of. You know, we have a lot of rules about that. The. And then Mike can speak to specific like examples better than me, but my understanding is that. You know, a lot of the buildings that have that were hit hard with the flood were. The grandfathered, you know, they're not they're not as high up as they should be. They, you know, they have basements when we actually wouldn't allow that now. And on and on. So we, if any new construction happens just period due to any kind of zoning stuff we do, or some other reason. You know, we're expecting that if it's happening there, then. We actually do have good rules and regulations in place for new construction. We just haven't had a lot of new construction. So, stuff we have is not caught up. And that's my understanding of that situation. Has there been a major increase since 2018 changes? I'm not sure exactly which ones you're referring to, but because downtown's been zoned without density caps for longer than 2018, but. I don't know of any significant moves forward from that and I don't think that this we don't see this change as. Any silver bullet type thing whatsoever we see this as an incremental. You know, there's a lot of barriers to housing and this is 1, but it's. By itself, we're not expecting it to be huge that where we do think or hope that it will have impact is with people converting large houses into. Multi unit either rentals or or condos or turning, turning the big houses we have into. More units is, is I think the biggest hope we have there. And the Minnesota thing, I don't know, but that's interesting. I'm interested in looking up. Mike's, Mike's back on Mike's, Mike's back. So. Joe asked the question, Mike, about if you know anything about any studies that are done or just anything about Minnesota's experience with changing density. Or getting rid of density caps. I, I haven't heard anything specifically from Minnesota on that. No. I, I, I remember the past year or two that there's been a lot of people padding themselves on the back for doing a lot of the stuff that we've been doing already, but a few of them had had removed density caps but I haven't, I haven't seen any report of what the impacts of that have been. I assume it's probably Minneapolis or that area. I think it was the twin cities. I believe that they eliminated there. It may even be a state law at this point. I remember reading an article. I'd have to see if I can dig it up, Mike. I may have saved it somewhere. I can see if I can get it to you. I can Google it. I'm sure it'll pop up on, on enough of my list serves that I'm on. Okay. Steve, I have you next. So the opportunity to speak my interest and concern really and request to you is that you defer any substantive discussion of actual changes in zoning and density. What have you while the city wrestles with the aftermath of the flood. We certainly have a housing crisis in the city, but I think our overwhelming reality at the moment is the aftermath of the flood and where we're going to go from here. The city, as you know, has undertaken a citywide kind of all hands on deck approach to reviewing what happened and looking at ways to go forward. Among other things, expertise will be sought from hydrologists from engineers from structural engineers, housing people, public safety officials. We honestly don't know what direction the city is going to want to take at this point. And I think that it makes sense to defer any substantive discussion of zoning until we know what that might be. For instance, will concerns about residential development in flood prone areas. Look to increase housing opportunities and other zones where it may not be so where there may not be so many opportunities now. Like I mentioned the country club changes. Will the city want to do more at the country club that is not particularly that is not consistent with the present ideas on zoning changes. I honestly don't know and I don't think any of us know at this point. So I'm basically suggesting that you delay or defer any any thoughts on actual changes until we have a clear idea for the city as a whole wants to go and as a as a public club note, I'd say I hope that you all intend to participate in that process and deal with one or more of the topics that have been identified for for further review. So thank you and good luck. Thank you Steve. Michael Reed, I have you next. Yeah. Thank you for allowing me to speak. One question. And the, if they're now allowing by law, the four units for dwelling on the four plexes. I think that mean that even in the 24 K roughly half an acre, you end up with more than five units per acre. So yeah one of the changes to the in the home act was a requirement that in zoning districts that have water and sewer, which is all of our zoning districts, except for the rural district, the rural district by definition is the area that doesn't. So if you're in a zoning district that's not rural, then you've got sewer and water. And by by law in 2024 when it goes into effect, it has to be a permitted use for single family, two family, three family and four family. That doesn't mean the four family is exempt from the density requirement. So if, if you were in a will just round things off if you're in a quarter acre zoning district, then you'd have to have one acre in order to have your four plex. So that's it, but you can't make it a conditional use has to be a permitted use. So, even though you might have a say a third of an acre lot. It wouldn't necessarily allow you to have four units because you still don't have enough density. And that gets to the other part that we're talking about the density requirements should we have this density requirement. Does that kind of answer your question. I think so yes. Okay. And Jen just a couple of comments. The, it seems to me what you are advocating or thinking about is moving from basically individual owners to renters. So if you're thinking about dividing up large houses into multi family units, then you're going from, going in from a single owner to a landlord tenant arrangement. Is that basically what what you're thinking about doesn't technically have to so one of the differences is you could. Regulate the ownership type. So you'll you'll you will find a number of these in the city on on Loomis and Liberty you'll find some they'll make condominiums so you'll actually divide it up and buy and sell pieces of it so you might own a third of the house. All three of you are in a condominium and you own three pieces of the house so it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be landlord you could still end up owning a portion of it as a part of a condominium. So that's, but yes it would, there is that obvious. Obviously there would be a number of things like making more landlord but it's not necessarily the only outcome that could occur. I would just throw in there on just the policy issue of we know that we need we need renters and homeowners and I'll clear both both the housing market and the rental market are both statistically in terrible shape. So, I guess we're not thinking about that specifically we're hoping that it helps both. Okay. Yeah, and I would make the observation that from other cities and so on that that is likely to change the character for better or worse. And then, finally, I'd like to follow up on one other person's comment is that I would like to have a good feeling that these changes in density that are being discussed will really help the housing. And we've seen a number of developments in the Montpelier area that seem to be moving very slowly one which sounded really promising up at Isabel Circle which was going to be cluster housing and so on but my understanding it's now just back to single family. So there seem to be a lot of barriers to housing. And I would hate to see the city changed dramatically in its character without really addressing and I should say individual neighborhoods changed in their character without adding a lot of housing. And still having this the problem of the other barriers being there. Certainly, what I've heard from developers is that Montpelier is a really difficult place to do development. And it's not just the density requirements that are keeping them from building. Thanks. Thank you, Michael. Phil, you're on next on my screen. Thanks. I just first wanted to clarify. I'm not sure I quite understand the requirements of the new this new act 47. I went and looked at it. I'm just going to read one sentence to you. In any district that is served by municipal sewer and water infrastructure that allows residential development. Multi-unit dwellings with four or fewer units shall be a permitted use. Unless that district specifically requires multi-unit structures to have more than four yelling units. So, I guess, before I out for my comments, I just wondered if Mike could explain one more time to me how how this works and why that density rules would override that requirement in this law. All right, so you kind of ignore that last that last phrase, which was added in later by them, which basically the legislature was trying to address a very specific case in St. Albans where they don't allow single family duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes because they only allow multifamily. So that's what that last sentence is getting to. The first part about makes it a permitted use. There's a lot of things, even today that you have that are permitted use, but they're contingent upon you having the correct density. So if you in today's zoning wanted to go and build a quadplex, we would make sure that you had enough density to allow the quadplex to happen. If you do have the density, then it's a permitted use. And we had, I think, the same question that you're rolling around and pondering in your head, which was what did the legislature mean in this? Did they mean that quadplexes for units are allowed anywhere single family homes are allowed or is it, as we said, with the density? So we did contact our attorneys and we got an opinion from our city attorney that said it was what I explained how I explained it to you, which is that the density still applies. It is a permitted use. So if you were in residential 6000, you would need to have 24,000 square foot lot in order to put in a four unit building. But that would be a permitted use and could not be a conditional use under the new state law. And for our city already, every one unit, two unit, three unit or four unit use is already a permitted use, which is why I said that that provision won't change anything in our zoning, because we already have all of our smaller single families, single family, two family, three family, four family are already permitted uses, but you need to meet the density requirement. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. I think I get it now. I just wanted to echo, you know, some of the comments earlier that in the wake of the flood, we really do need to think about where we're going and see what makes sense. For instance, a lot of that areas that either have no density or proposed to have no density in the design review were flooded. Building new structures in those areas means the water that would have been in that part of the floodplain now has to go somewhere else. So it, in essence, it displaces the water when you when you build in these floodplains. And I think that's what a big thing we're wrestling with is how do we allow the river to flow. And so, you know, I think there's some question as to whether that makes sense. The other thing if we if we build a lot in the areas that were flooded, and a flood comes even if they're above the flood level, those people may need to be evacuated. And we'd have to have plans for that. They're all their cars would have to be moved out. If they're in the floodplain so I just, again, think maybe we ought to think a little bit more about where we want the development and whether we want it in the floodplain. You know, beyond that, I do, you did say Kirby that this would be an incremental change. I don't think I've seen a lot in the neighborhoods that's come about with the density we've seen already. I think it's really the answer to the more housing is, I'm afraid, big projects which there's several being talked about there's the bow brothers and the apartments is a bell circle habitat for humanity downstreet country club. Building is so expensive I saw a figure recently that building a house or apartment units $500,000 are approaching that. And so I think building larger projects at scale maybe the only way we're really going to get more housing. And I think that Berlin and their plans for Berlin town center may be part of the answer for our area and so it may be that downtown Montpelier isn't the right place for some of these projects. You know, it's a very frustrating situation with housing now the interest rates have gone up, the construction costs are high we don't have enough workers, you know the great recession a lot of people got out of construction. So it's, it's, it is a challenging thing. I read recently that the Chamber of Commerce is pushing the Vermont futures project, in which they're proposing that we increase the state population by 25% in the next 12 years. I just don't see how that's going to work with these challenges for housing. I'll just finish with two quick ideas. I've been promoting this for a long time there are a lot of homeowners who are getting on an age and might want to downsize to a smaller house. So if there are condos or units available for those folks that would open up their homes to to younger families. If you're selling a house you do have some money to put toward a new unit so some finding some way to encourage that kind of construction in Montpelier would make sense and I don't know how you accomplished the last thing but we have an extreme shortage of workers and and whether you could get employers to get together and and build some housing that would be for their own workers. Something along those lines, maybe needed I, I just see shortages everywhere. And, you know, they're building a more new memory unit down at Gary home. It'll be interesting to see if they can find people to staff it. So, that that's a big problem and I don't have a real solution but just wanted to mention that. But thank you for your work on these. I think these are big topics and, you know, the public needs to chew on this stuff a while so I again, urge you not to rush and maybe have another hearing with a little better publicity about what's happening. The bridge issue where you had the ad was just after the flood and that never got mailed to everybody in Montpelier. So, I think there are a lot of people who haven't become aware of the kind of things being discussed here. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Joe, you're next on my screen but I'm going to, I'm going to try to give Nathan a turn first, and then I'll circle back, assuming you still have something. Nathan. Hi, everybody. Thank you for holding this and I'm sorry that I had to join late. I was on another meeting so I don't. I don't want to assume that things that I have to add are not already been covered and like I missed your, I gather you had an initial presentation and so I'm sorry to have missed that. I think that, you know, Phil's comments about building actual brand new housing, as far as I can tell are accurate the math is as almost insurmountable in terms of if you want to build rental units and make the math work. At least from my perspective as a sort of small time landlord. But we have a way just give a couple of examples of ways that we can make incremental difference. My wife and I just bought a duplex on Brown Street and it's a, it's a, it's a very large square foot building. And with the current density rules, the only way we could add, you know, transform parts of that building to a third or fourth unit is by using the plan unit development and having to check the boxes in terms of getting density bonus. And those are not, those are not necessarily easy hoops to get through. And they some of the mad cost. If the density. If the density levels were changed or opened up. You know, with a lot less investment. I can make that building into a four unit building add add to its housing to my failure, which should be something like 20% or 100% of which housing has been added in the last year. I'm probably, it's hyperbole, but you know, when we look at how much housing we're actually adding and the answer is very, very little. I mean, that seems like an easy, an easy way to get to yes, we have, we have two other properties that have sort of, you know, garages or buildings that I could see becoming housing on a similar footprint to what they have. I haven't done the density test in those cases, but you know, I would, I would love to get to yes on that. I would love to be able to do that. And we're, you know, I, we're at a stage in our lives financially where, you know, we can take maybe some risks and wait a little bit longer for something to pay off. 10 years ago, that wasn't the case. And as soon as the kids are in college, that may not be the case for a little while. So I just think, you know, not all of us are Malone or Balini or whoever who have a making an assumption but who have access to capital that I just don't have. And maybe their timeline is different. I think that I, I can't imagine that I'm alone in terms of folks who have control over some property and have, you know, care to attend to the housing issue and want to make, you know, I would love to make something that's accessible flat living I'd love to make, you know, just, there's some great goals we can, we can work towards. And I think so my, you know, change the density limits would be my first ask. And then I have it's been a little while since I've read through the zoning but the, you know, height, I think if, if someone were to build something new, if you can go to five stories instead of three or, and again I may be operating on bad information there may not be height restrictions as I think there are, at least we're not facing, at least in some districts, the need for there to be parking spots, if for a new unit. If they're, if that's still true in outlying, you know, whereas whatever I don't know what the other settings are, but I would love to see that go away. Because it's not, it's, it's fraught, right? Just people are going to find a place to park their cars if they have them. I'd rather, I'd rather deal with that problem than deal with the fact that housing is going to become unaffordable for many people in Montpelier because I have, I control, you know, part of the very, very limited stock of rental housing. And one effect of that is that I can essentially start charging almost anything I want if I chose to do so, because people are so desperate to live here. And that's, that's a kind of injustice that I think we would rather not support. This is not a zoning question, but you know, if someone's building an ADU or something like that, is there a way that the city can collaborate and either handle all the cost of or some of the cost of the sewer line, you know, the sewer water from the unit to the, to the street. Because again, you know, I haven't priced that out, but if it's $20,000, $30,000, that's a huge delta on a, on a sort of small project and be great to see that. I would love to see sort of a saying, how can we help contribution from the city. And that's not to say that's not what I've received, I haven't explored that. I would, you know, anyway, so that's another thought and then overarching one for me I think is that, and again, not a zoning question, but if we had a city funded revolving housing loan fund that I'm talking $10 or $20 million, where if Phil Dodd wants to build a six unit and he's got control of the property to do it and he says it doesn't pencil out at, you know, $300,000 for a thousand square foot two bedroom. And, but if the city's willing to underwrite, you know, 30% of it, it'll pencil out for me. The city gets to keep that equity they can extract that equity at some time in the future put it back into the revolving loan fund that I feel like if we as a community are committed to growing housing and density within our boundaries. You know, I pay a lot of taxes in this town, sign me up, I'll pay more taxes to support that fund because that's a way forward. That's all I got. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Nathan. And that was some of that stuff was really, really on point, like I didn't realize that there'd be someone here with the perfect example like that of what we're trying to get done so. It makes it makes us feel like connected to real life as opposed to just policy, you know, decision making without that connection so that that was fantastic for me. Okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to go to Emma's office next. I'll be there. Let me see if I can turn on my video. Okay, I can. Hi. So my name is Emma Zava as I live in Montpelier. I'm the chair of the Montpelier Housing Committee. And I'm here sort of with my Montpelier resident hat on and sort of Montpelier Housing Committee. We hadn't seen any of these options before. So we don't have a comment prepared, but I guess I just wanted to say echo somebody said that they would love to see another hearing on this. I would love to see more of a community wide discussion about what types of housing we do want to see and where. And I guess maybe having examples of so there were sort of four options laid out but having examples of what does that look like if we go with option one versus option three, like what could that look like. If it was played out if it really did change things. So that people could sort of make an informed suggestion as to what they would like to see, because just looking at those right now I, I don't know. And yet I think about housing a lot. So, so I'm sure there are other folks in that boat as well. And I also wanted to say that the housing committee we are always working on a million projects as are you guys I'm sure, but we would love to to find a way and find time and energy to work more collaboratively with you all to whether it's having some of those options or looking more intensively at the zoning regs to identify barriers to building more housing. I think maybe you said, like, we don't think this is a silver bullet we're not sure what this will do. You know, we've talked about wanting to sort of try to identify some more of the more of the features of our current zoning that that could be changed to to really start seeing some, some some real change on the ground in terms of building and I appreciated the previous commenters suggestions and would love to to see more of that. Yeah, so lots, lots to respond to their the. I think I think that that members from the housing committee should definitely. We should follow up. We should talk more about this. You know, you're always welcome to come to our meetings. Obviously, the biggest way I see us communicating with you is through the recommendations that you've made for us to work on the city plan. And, you know, what we work off of there. You may miss the beginning that this is just a listening session. It's not the hearing. So, yes, there will be actual hearings. We haven't put anything official forward yet. That's why this is not an official. Okay. So, so, yeah, I think that would be great to, to, to touch base more between the 2 groups. Okay, great. Yeah. Do you have any examples of how the 4 different options would play out? Or is that something you might bring to a hearing once you have a recommendation? Yeah, I mean, to clarify, when I talked about how we don't know how it's going to play out, we don't know how what the markets going to do or like, you know, and and since it's. You know, there's so many obstacles, as I'm sure you know, and so many people in this meeting know that removing just 1. That's why it was great to hear Nathan's example because he actually did have an example of a project where the density was the thing. Getting in the way of moving it forward. I think in a lot of things, how they come out is is maybe density would be 1 thing, but we probably have other zoning issues too that are in the way. So that's how we don't know like how any change is going to go. We know from experience that when we tinker with things, we redid the zoning and we opened a lot of things up. 5 or 6 years ago. And the housing market hasn't drastically changed from that, even though our zoning drastically changed ours and our zoning did. You know, so that's why if I say that it's incremental or I'm not sure what the impact is going to be it's just. You know, and you just heard Nathan talking about how unbelievably expensive is to build here. Yeah, we have so much to do. We have so many changes to make if we actually want to see. Some noticeable growth. So, but when I say that I'm not sure that it's going to do much. That's why, because we just have all, but I, but I'm pretty certain that if we don't do anything, if we. You know, say no to every idea that comes up that we're going to stay exactly where we are. I'm certain about that. So anyway. But how, how these specific things I'm sorry, I didn't really answer your question. The, you know, if we. If we take away the density caps from the design review district. In my opinion that expands what's available. An available amount of space a little bit, but since our downtown is part of that design review district. And it's already has those in city caps. And since the areas right around that are already have very high density. I'm not saying that is a major, a big, major change. That 1, the 1 where we the idea that we make 4 units available everywhere that complements the design review approach. And I think that 1 will probably make potentially a bigger change just because it. But it's not focused in the way that we sometimes want to focus because we want to try to make the housing walkable to downtown. We want to have that kind of community. But, but that's, you know, and then doubling the density everywhere was 1 of the ideas. The downside for that for me is that we're still talking about density all the time. And it'd be nice to not do that so we can focus on other ideas and other things. So, so, but no, I don't think anyone knows I don't think. Hopefully city council when things like this kind of city council, I hope they realize that. No one knows like exactly like we have an idea like I don't think like I don't think any harm is going to. Like I'm certain about that but as far as the impact on housing. Yeah. I probably talk too much though about that. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm gonna. I guess. Yeah, I guess I could, I could, I'll add just to 2 things real quick 1. 1 is the reason for some of the incremental density suggestions that were in there. You know, we went through and recommended in 2018 that anyone who has a conforming lot can have a duplex and. The reason for that was because anyone who you know it's already state law anyone who has house can have an ad you and the ad is an accessory dwelling unit. Is capped at 30% and everyone was like well why don't we make it 50% well 50% of your house is a duplex and they said we'll just allow duplexes so that's how we made that suggestion that pretty much let's say we'll just ignore the density and allow you to have a duplex. And you know the the world didn't come to an end and a lot of people have a lot of concerns about. Removing the density requirement because what could happen. You know this could happen or that could happen or somebody can tear down their house and put in a 16 unit building. And we, we've gone through these public hearings before and we've heard those arguments before so a lot of times when we talk about this more gradual approach, the gradual approach of let's double the density. And the idea is let's double the density and show everybody the world's not coming to an end everybody's not tearing down their houses put in giant things or let's allow for units on a conforming lot. Really the idea is is not that we want everybody to run out and and convert their house to a poor unit. Everybody still there's no requirement to do it it's just give somebody an opportunity if they've got the right building to make that happen. And some of this so when we talk about having kind of a gradual approach, you know, I think as as professionals as in the planning commission that the thought is, we don't really think it's going to have a big difference if we got rid of the density requirement. There's a lot of things that are still problems for developers, but we don't think that the catastrophic things that we sometimes hear at hearings will happen. So that's why we've talked about let's gradually, you know, let's double the density or let's make these the reason why it's just because we want everyone to feel comfortable that as we slowly remove density as being a requirement that people will see the world's not going to come to an end. And, you know, if there are as they they say there are things that could be problems we should be able to see them as we gradually release the density requirement so I think that's what that's what we're looking at. And that's somewhat somewhat of that. And the second comment I wanted to make really goes a little bit to to Emma's role and to Nathan's comments about things like can we have a housing revolving loan fund and we can we have these other pieces and the housing committee is does have a subcommittee that is working on those revolving loan funds. Now we don't have $20 million. We're far from it but we do have a housing trust fund and we do have a housing revolving loan fund. And so we are trying to come up with what is the best way that we could use these money, these monies to leverage more housing how can we make this happen and so there are people on the housing committee who are working on that exact question. So, if you've got good ideas, I'm sure the housing committee would love to hear different ideas of how we could use some of our housing trust fund money. And how we can use some of our housing revolving loan fund money to support accessory dwelling units or other projects. So, I just wanted to add that in. That's it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Jessica is up next on my screen, and then I'm going to circle back to you Joe. You've been waiting for officially. Hi. I am also a member of the housing committee and I just wanted to make some comments about how important it is for us to use whatever we can do to increase housing in the city and to speed that process up because there's so many people that need housing. And just, maybe I misunderstood the tone of somebody else's comments before, in regards to if it was going to increase rentals and if that was good or bad or not, but I just want to say that there's a lot of us that are renters in town that rent from homeowners that are living, not in state and communities are a huge part of the community. We work here. We raise our kids here that part of the school district. And the more family that we can get. Whether they're renters or homeowners is really important to the greater community. Thank you, Jessica. Okay, Joe. Thanks for circling back to me. I had a couple of comments. As we're rethinking some of the zoning. I know that obviously post pandemic. The office market has still failed to come back and I don't see there's going to be a return to office work or at least, you know, even I work for the state and our office is a very city place, even on the days where they mandate that we go in. The office is probably about 30% or 40% full. I mean, I'm just wondering if we start looking at part of the zoning regulations that making it easier to convert office space to residential use. The other thing too is, you know, just my background as a real estate appraiser I know that the cost of construction is north of $400 a square foot in Vermont. It's just material cost, labor cost, everything. That's just for a standard. This is nothing fancy. It's 400 square foot. So you have to factor that into any sort of density, any sort of new building that we're trying to create. One of the other things I wanted to ask to is, do we know if there's going to be anything regarding Airbnb's as part of the new zoning because I think that Airbnb's are taking up some of the rental. There could have been rental housing for long term renters and landlords have just decided now I rather do a short term rental and make more money that way. So I'm wondering if we're going to address it somehow in this new zoning. And then there was going to go on Mike. I'm just going to quickly answer on the Airbnb it wouldn't be in the zoning if there is a proposal and I think the housing committee has been discussing the issue. If there is a proposal it wouldn't be in the zoning, just because of the way zoning is structured under chapter 117 and the grandfathering and the non conforming in the blah blah blah blah blah legal mumbo jumbo. It would probably be either an ordinance or a license would be how you would address Airbnb if it were to be addressed. But it wouldn't be through the zoning. Yes. And then I did have one last point to make is while I was waiting as I actually did that research on Minneapolis so Minneapolis did change the zoning in 2018 to allow maximum density everywhere and out of a city of 425,000 unfortunately only had 53 units built as of 2021. So had zero virtually no impact on the density. Just FYI, that was my last point. Barb you're next. Oh, thanks Kirby. Yeah, I appreciated what Nathan had to say because 20 years ago when we made rental units we had a two unit building and we had to turn it into a three unit building in order to make it affordable. And now it's quite possible that we need to start creating four unit buildings in order to make the numbers work and the rents not to increase astronomically. So I mean that the whole idea of creating the opportunity throughout the city for four unit buildings seems to make a lot of sense to me. And actually as a result of the flood I am now, I now have three families in my house, not because not because it was necessarily planned but my Airbnb became flood flood family. So I think for me, the biggest concern about the universal talk about creating no density limits within the design review district is just to me that's an elephant in the room is where are the protections to keep buildings from being demolished. Because if you're looking if you have no density limits, and you're looking at a piece of property, and it has an older house on it. It's going to be much more lucrative to tear down that house and create a larger building. So where do we have those controls within the design review district and that larger building could meet every single one of our other requirements. So it's not the other requirements are not really enough. And I checked the zoning today to see if there were any stronger requirements about demolition. And I just really don't see them. So I guess that to me that's a big question. And if anyone who's here who's has developer experience wants to take a stab at our question, then I would be interested in what they had to say. But so Nathan, you're next on my screen. Thanks again. Let's see, I think. So when I talk with Greg Gossens, who has way more experience with the sort of thing that I do. Gossens Bachman is or GBA is involved in a project in Burlington right now, which is it's north of 30 units. I don't know how many more. And we talked about the, you know, what just talked about $400 a foot built. And Greg said, in Vermont, the own, you know, the tipping point on that being economically viable for a developer is about 30 units and above. And in the below that it just doesn't make sense. And even if, even if he's wrong by half, even if that number is 15. I would argue that if we removed all density requirements, the control factor that may answer Barbara's question is just money, right? People aren't going to build a 20 unit building just out of love, right? They're going to do it. It's math. And so, if the math doesn't work, they're not going to build it. And, you know, you can, you can look at the last, as far as I can tell, the last dense ish thing that was built was on Cedar Street, built by Merrill, a six unit where, you know, and he sold it to a year and a half, two years ago for 1.2 million. It's six, it's six two bedrooms. I think that's the last dense thing that was built in Montpelier. And, you know, I don't know how the math worked for him. But my guess is, my guess is he didn't make a killing having built it owned it for a number of years and then sold it, even at sort of peak COVID sales price. So I think there are some natural controls. And my, what I was going to say is, wouldn't it be great to find out where that line is, right? Wouldn't it be great if we just removed all the, all the limits on density, and somebody built some 30 unit monstrosity and we're like, Holy shit, we don't want any more of that. So let's go backwards a little bit, right? Like, where are we, if we just, if we do this incremental like, oh, let's ease them a little bit more and see what happens. And I'm not, I'm absolutely not trying to make fun of anybody on this call, but I just think the incrementalism in response to fears about changing the character of downtown or changing the character of our community, you know, sort of want to see how far we have to go to find out we were wrong. And I think we got a long way to go. Let's see. And then the other thing was about, and I'm a little bit out of my depth here, but I think that there's some restrictions on change of use. And another concrete example was that I spent a lot of time looking at and, and modeling the eight dash 20 Langdon street building that's the only river outdoors contemporary dance and fitness was owned by Andrew Brewer purchased by Gabe and lucky, I think, and Gabe I think maybe is on this committee, supposed to be anyway. You know, I don't know, I would love to hear what Gabe has to say about that but when I looked at that and I thought, okay, what if a bunch of this building were converted to housing wouldn't that be cool. The change of use stuff may trigger ADA stuff and may trigger, you know, and some of that is quite possibly out of our control. I don't, I don't know the details there but I think, you know, that's that's a large building. And if, if that could have been converted a bunch of that could have been converted into housing, that might have been a plus six plus seven plus eight units. You know, after from purchase to a year and a half later, and that would be pretty awesome. So I don't know, you know, I don't know what sort of yes factors would have to be put into play to make something like that possible but I don't know who just said it. I think it was Joe. You know, is is sort of class AB office space second floor third floor stuff. Is that just not as much a thing anymore in if case in if that's the case what does it take to convert it to housing. Thank you all. Thanks, Nathan, Peter you're next. I'm going to tell two sad stories of my attempts to build, or actually to convert for rental to create more rental apartments. So, 2014 Balvin Street is a state owned building, which was advertised as being ideal for a conversion into rental apartments, turns out not to be not not only that it's not ideal, it's impossible. So, we looked at the building with contractor, we saw that we could, you know, with putting some money into it of course, but in seven apartments, two of them would have been able to be completely ADA compatible because they already were the because it was as a state office building, it was made so that certain parts of the building were ADA wide wide doors, etc. I was informed immediately by the department of planning and development that no I couldn't put in seven I could only put in five because if you do the density calculations. That's 5.3 and you can't put in three tenths of an apartment so it could only be five apartments so already the math becomes less favorable for me because with seven apartments I could keep the rents low, etc. And I said, oh, and I said, because I know something about the requirements I said to the department I said, well, and what about parking, you know, there's no, there's no room for parking on that in that on that property, because it was a state on property and the people from the state use the state parking lots. Um, could we get a waiver for for not not to have to provide any parking. Well, no, you can't really you could apply for a waiver. You could apply to reduce to reduce the number of parking spaces. I said, well, could you guys talk to the state about this. Could you see whether the state who wants to sell this building and said it's ideal for residential. Do they know that you guys have this requirement. Oh, you can do that. They tell me, well, who do I speak to. Well, we reached out to the real estate agent who handle it said, no, you can't have that. So here's a situation where I'm ready to invest over a million dollars in buying and converting a building to create seven apartments. Beautiful apartments in downtown. And part of the reason is that it turns out that this this building is not only in the city. Whatever district, it's also part of the state complex. We'd have to get state approval. And I, the reason I have this money is because I am doing what it's called a 1031 exchange because I'm selling the building that we used to live in in Brooklyn. And I only have six months. And in six months, I could never wade through all the crap that was out there to prevent it. So I've gone elsewhere. I've gone to Williamstown, where they have no zoning, zero, zero zoning. I've found a five unit, well, it's a four unit building that I could put a fifth unit into and at the same price with actually the same upfront price, but I wouldn't have to put really put much of money into it at all in terms of improvement because the building is already built. I've also found buildings in Barry and I've talked to Barry planning his zoning commission, and they have been very, very helpful because they want me to come in and buy up an old Victorian and put in three and divide it up. And, and you know, the fire chief came in and he walks through the building with me, someone from the zoning office came in, walked through the building, they pointed out all the things that I would have to do, and then got back to me the next day and said, you know what, the rules say you have to do that. But we could figure out some ways to be more flexible. And what I would say is, it's not just a matter of lifting zoning, lifting density requirements, not just a matter of, you know, changing the changing the the regs, it's a matter of giving the department of planning and community development, the flexibility to do things so that so that they can say, ah, this is a worthwhile activity. We're going to do everything we can to make sure it happens. And there's some of the regulations are just written way too narrowly, and it puts the department in a very difficult position. Meredith didn't like having to tell me that I could only put only 5.3 requirements in there, but she had to tell me that. So I would urge that you guys think about ways to put put much more flexibility into it. The other sad story is, I wanted to donate to 9000 square foot lots to Habitat for Humanity to put in to put in two duplexes on each of them under the new to duplex role. As part of our property here on Mountain View, it's just sitting there. It's just a field. It's, it's got, you know, no value to me, and it would be great value to Habitat for Humanity. But guess what? In order to do that, in order to give away to 9000 square feet lots, the requirements of the Department of Public Works and the fire department would have required me to spend upwards of half a million dollars in infrastructure, because we would have had to put in a fire hydrant at the end of our street, the water to go to that fire hydrant, the sewer line, which doesn't go be doesn't even serve serve our house. So, what do you call waste water? Sorry. Stormwater control controls paving the road. And for the fire department, we would have had to put in a huge cul-de-sac. So the fire trucks could turn around. Guess what? We already have a place where the solar trucks turn around, fire trucks turn around, snow plows turn around, but no, we have to put in a cul-de-sac, which would take away land making it even more difficult for us to do the subdivision that we were going to do to enable this. Again, where is the flexibility? Where is the, where is the, we're saying, hey, we are in a housing crisis. You are, I'm willing to give away some land, habitat, had the plans to build it, and it's virtually impossible for us to do it. Thanks. Thanks, Peter. That was really great. That's a lot of, a lot of things for us to tackle, because a lot of obstacles. Phil, did you have something else? Just a couple of things. Having heard what Peter said, I guess, having my eyes open, there may be a lot of other things that need to happen beyond density changes. Maybe saying that alone wouldn't do it. I will say this. Earlier, Mike was talking about incremental changes. And there may be some value in that. For one thing, you've got to get this past the city council. And if you were just to propose lifting all density caps that might get a lot of pushback, potentially. If you were to build a 15 or 30 unit property next door, those kind of fears might arise. So I think his strategy may have some merit. And, you know, there haven't been radical changes with the density changes so far. And maybe you can move in that direction. The last thing just echoing what Joe said about offices, I think the office market is dead. And I'm wondering if more landlords will be shifting over to residential downtown in the upper stories or the state office buildings, for that matter. That's a little outside of the zoning area, perhaps, but that looks like a promising area to me for getting housing soon. I mean, people are working from home. They're not, they're not coming to the office like they used to. So there's, there's a lot of square footage I think that could be turned into residents. That's all. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, so we'll do the last call for if anyone has anything to talk about related to density. And then. So, I'll stop. Any more. Yeah, so I did want to add in really quick Kirby to answer a little bit to clarify some of the comments Nathan had on the change of use. So I think the reference he is making to is what would be a change of use in the building code and not a change of use as we have in zoning. So most of the uses in that area are all permitted uses. But as you make a change of use from a from a commercial to a residential that change of use in building code requires a number of changes that something we don't have any control over and in the planning commission of the planning department. So we've enforced the state building code through the division of fire safety as a as a as a contract. So we're basically enforcing the state building code locally using Michelle savory who's our building inspector so just so everybody's aware that's a clarification or so there isn't a confusion that when sometimes we talk about zoning and talk about change of use we do have a change of use in zoning. But the change of use Nathan was referring to is actually from the building code and that that is that is a thing as you just shift from one to the other. Some buildings that are already set up with sprinklers can very easily shift from office to residential and residential back to office. If it's always been commercial and has never been residential. Then you're in a different class and you need different sheet rock and different they're different requirements because you're going to have sleeping residents and so the fire codes are higher. So just so there's clarification for everyone. Thank you Mike. That was part of what I ran into as well. The building codes. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the clarification Mike. It looks like we have a new person interested in commenting on density. Yeah, thanks. I was just thinking about what Nathan said about being able to charge. Whatever he wanted. If he was inclined to do that and what Jessica was saying about renters being important to the city. It seems like a change in density would. One immediate effect would be to increase in rental properties, which may bring the cost down slowly but may bring it down I just wonder. What tools, if any, does the city have to control ownership? When you say control ownership, you mean like. Well, yeah. Well rent stabilization or requiring a building of a certain number of units to be condominiums where, you know, the residents on the property. So that sort of thing. I don't know what tools are available. I'm just curious. What, what, if any tools the city has and you know whether they're worth considering. I'm sure they come with problems of their own. Do you want to answer that question Mike. So the question on what other tools we have for ownership. So our zoning is actually very open. It doesn't restrict ownership types. So we really don't get into, you know, time shares and condos or owner occupied or renter occupied. We really in the zoning keep things out. We're really looking at the buildings and seeing. They have the minimum requirements for each piece. In fact, we have congregate living as a separate. We talk about dwelling units, but we also have congregate units which are just slightly different. They don't have they share some of the required elements. So we don't really regulate it in that way. I think. I'm trying to I'm trying to think on the fly. I don't know what rights we have to regulate that through ordinance. And that's I'm not an attorney so I can't for sure say that. But what I'll say is your lesson for the day your law lesson for the day states come in two types you've got a home rule state and you have a Dylan's rule state. So home rule states towns can do whatever they want as long as the state doesn't say you can't. In a Dylan's rule state, you can only as a town you can only do what the state says you're allowed to do. Those are the only rights you have. We are a Dylan's rule state. So we can only do what authorities have been granted to communities. I don't know of any statutes that's not to say there aren't any there. I think that would be a question that the league of cities and towns. Or our city attorney would have to go and kind of dig into to see if there's any any areas where we can regulate ownership. Or, you know, like some states out west or prohibiting foreign governments or foreign foreign agents from purchasing land in certain areas because they're worried about China purchasing farms near Air Force bases for spying. Those types of things. I don't know if we've got those rights. That would be a question for an attorney. I can just add to that more direct to the question just as far as the planning commission's attitude and. I think I can safely say that our general attitude is that. We think that there's a major problem with. With a lack of rentals and there's a major problem with a lack of home ownership and we would like to address both. And at this point. You know, we want to do things like this to try to encourage both of those things to get better, hopefully. And I just don't even know if we're like, you know, we don't have the luxury of. Having a preference at this point, I'm not sure that we would ever want. A preference, but, but it's just not something I think that we're concerned with trying to to influence. Nathan. Just, um. Was that sales comment. Made me think of something. And this is a little bit outside the nine dots, but if the. And we don't necessarily have a city that's terribly entrepreneurial, but it could be that. Either the city or a sort of extra governmental body. Like among people are alive, but for housing. Um, could bid on properties that are for sale with the intent to, you know, if it's a three unit. But the intent to purchase it, make it into condos and then sell it to the market. As the sort of enabler of that action and a. You know, so when I, if I buy a three unit. I'm not adding to the housing. I'm not adding a use, use housing that's pre-existing. I'm not adding to the housing. Count in what I'm doing is I'm. Ensuring my future wealth, right? Because it's long term. It's going to work out. Whereas if those become condos, they are entry points to the, to equity into the housing market for. First time home buyers, which would be awesome. So from a mission perspective, if the city or some armor of the city were to say, yeah, let's, let's try to get. You know, let's try to help more people enter, enter home ownership. By doing, by buying that, you know. The one on Franklin just came in the market. It's a. I don't know the 5 or 5 or 6 unit, 5 unit, I think. You know, if the city bought that made it into condos and then all of a sudden sells sells 5 condos and. That, that would be transformative. And if it, if it matched the goals, that could be pretty cool. Just my opinion. Yeah, thanks. Unfortunately, I mean, that does. Really big idea things are just. We're just a little planning commission. It'd be nice if we were the kings of popular and could. But I think that have like, I'm so I'm happy to have those part of, I mean, I'm not trying to be dismissive because like, I think that. Just things like the ideas like that should be continued to be part of our conversation because I think that. We can do some big things. And shouldn't be scared to. So. Anybody. Devora Jonas has been trying to get your attention. Okay. I didn't see a hand. Maybe he was waving. It was waving. He was waving. I don't know how to do the hand thing. Okay. Sorry. So, yeah, that's okay. I just wanted to, I've been listening to this and I was wondering if, even if we have the four units as a density thing, if there could be some leeway so that the gentleman who was speaking about wanting to do the seven units. That one could say, okay, we have this as the general rule, but we can ask for a variance. And couldn't we have an arrangement like that so that each time someone wanted to do something special. There would be a possibility for it. That's it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, Peter was talking about flexibility, which is I think the same thing you're saying. Yeah. Okay, so does anyone else have anything else on density? And if not, I did say that I would open up about other just zoning ideas in case people were coming with those bar. Yeah, just a quick comment to the last speaker. We do have density bonuses available, depending on dedicating different types of apartments or whatever to elderly housing or ADA compliance. So it's possible that they could actually put more units in there than are technically required by by the zoning. Those are still in place correct Mike. Yeah. Yeah, I was able to add one. So I could do five instead of four, but not seven. Thanks. Thanks for the clarification Peter. Okay. So anything else on density. If not, if anybody else, any other zoning ideas. Anything they'd like to let the plank mission know about. I want to give that space now if if people would like to. Okay. So we're a focus group, I guess good. Okay, so with that, I want to move on on the agenda, unless we have anything else from any community members. Any planning commissioners want to talk density before you move on just. It's had a good less a good listen. Listening session. Okay. Well, we're going to move on the agenda then. And honestly, we're. Well, we got a little bit of time. So I think we are going to move on to part six of the agenda, which is to review the arts and culture word storyboard. For the city plan. Mike, do you have anything specific in mind on that? No, that is another one that is in our. Drive there, which I don't know if you want to pull it up or if you want me to pull it up. I can pull it up. So I had thought that I had looked at this before. And we've, you know, we've had a choppy summer as far as our meetings go. So folks could take a take a look at it. It's not something I recently reviewed. Has anybody has anybody have any planning commissioners have a chance to pull it up or no. Yeah, I do have a pull up. Okay. You didn't share it. That's because I'm wondering whether I, whether we want to just hold off on this or not. So here's the draft storyboard. We, this is a second draft. My memory is coming to me. Right, Mike. We've reviewed this before and we had. I remember having, I don't know anything about this, but I remember Maria had a lot of like really good comments. So I remember that we talked about it. Yeah, yeah, I'm remembering that. Yeah. And maybe it is already approved. They were asking us which ones had been approved and I didn't see a quick approval on this one. So. It, this looks like it's been changed post feedback from us because it didn't open up this way. I'll let I. So I do think I like it. So if everybody could take a minute just to read over it. See if we, if we notice anything else. Anyone have any feedback so far. The magazine reference thing is something that the consultants did. It's interesting. Anyone has thoughts on using that reference. Kirby, do you know if that's a recent. Best of list. Yeah, the first time we looked at this, I pulled it up and it was pretty recent. Okay. So those things are always changing and that's a, that's something that crossed my mind is that that magazine may very well put out a new nine best. The next month. You should probably make a note to that they should put a date on that. You know, in 2022 or in 2023. Anything else. I think, I think it's good to pass along like. They're building these things out. I'm going to try to get them in for one of our meetings coming up. Our grant technically runs out at the end of either end of September. Or end of October. So they're going to be putting together a whole bunch of these and again. Once they're in storyboard, we can always go back. We always still have opportunity to make changes right on through. So. And I think that this just leaves us with community services and land use is the only two that aren't. Aren't done. So that's good. Yeah. And as soon as you have any kind of bandwidth, Mike, I think that probably is good for us to get started on land use. That's going to be that's going to be a, you know, as a reminder to the planning commission. Land use is the chapter that we write entirely ourselves. We're not having. A draft of something sent to us. So. We need to take all of our previous work from the city plan and. Sum that up into a holistic. Land use plan. I guess we're going to probably have something to work off of. We'll probably work off. I will put a draft. I'll put a draft together. That you guys can work with. So, yeah, so, so. I'll work with Mike and gave an hour with Mike to get get that going on the agenda soon, but for everybody else think about. A vision for that we can try to we can try to incorporate that vision. I mean, some questions are going to be, you know, how much. Flood issues going to be on our minds. How much. We talk about housing a lot. Is that something that you want to make a forefront? Okay, so. I think we're good without a vote. There. Which just leaves us with. Just with the minutes and if anyone has any questions on what's been going on, obviously we haven't met since. We met once briefly since the flood, but if anyone's got. Questions of that stuff. If you haven't heard or didn't know. We are meeting. We met with FEMA up at the site. Up at country club road. So we're actually. Proposing their proposing. We'll see if it goes through putting Washington County's emergency housing. So they're the FEMA trailers, putting 36 FEMA trailers up country club road. So that will hopefully help us build the road system. We made all those plans to build out the lower part of the country club for high density housing. And this would give us an opportunity to have FEMA pay for putting in the sewer and water lines. Into that area. And then we would have the ability to use them later as the FEMA trailers are removed. So that's the. One of the things that's going on that you'll probably hear some more about. And we've been obviously spending most of our time in the department, just addressing the flooding. Most specifically, my office has been trying to work with. Well, from the permit side, we're handling obviously all the, all those permits, but from the. The personal side we've been working with the folks that have had flooding into the first floor. So the most significantly damaged folks were trying to get money to try to elevate housing. And to try to make sure they've got emergency housing. So that's been our, a lot of our focus, trying to learn all this. The FEMA rules to try to get ourselves. In a position to be able to apply for grants to. Tear down, do some buyouts if that's appropriate, but also to try to elevate buildings. And that's a lot of what we've been working on. Mike, would this, would the city be doing this buyouts, or would it be just kind of facilitating FEMA doing it? Or how's that work? If their buyouts, we'd be, we have to be the applicants. I think we'd be a part of it. I know we would be a part of it. I don't know all the specifics. Okay. And what would be the. What would the city do with the land after it's required, if it gets it to be a buyout, then it's required to be conserved. So that would become. Owned by the city, but with a perpetual easement that prevents it to be developed in the future. Which is why we're trying to limit where that happens. In some cases it's appropriate and it is the most appropriate thing to do. That happened in Northfield that's happened in some places in Barry, there's a number of properties that just. They should never have been there in the first place and it's time to buy them out, make sure there's nothing there. We don't have a lot of those. Most of ours are places that flooded that. Would be a fine place to have a house, except that it was never elevated. So what we really need to do is either. Maybe knock the house down, you know, find a developer that'll knock the house down and build a new house, but elevated. Or to help them get some money to let them stay in their house, but elevate their house and keep it. So those are some of the options we're trying to work with people. Maybe they want to sell their house to somebody who wants to elevate it. Maybe they want to elevate it themselves. Maybe they just want to. Put it on the market and walk away. So those are a lot of the different options people have and then in some cases. People are looking at a buyout, but we don't have too many of those right now. Mike, I was just wondering about the, you said that FEMA is putting trailers. Yes, 30 trailers. What were the 30 number come from, and is that satisfied, you know, everyone who may have lost housing to do the flood. So I think the number they're they're asking for is 36, and it's supposed to be based on their models and estimates of. The need. And surprisingly, what they said is. If you've got basically one in 10 people who are eligible for emergency housing will actually take it. So I'm not exactly sure if it's just because people have other resources. They have other options they have. It's just pride. I don't know, but they said usually one in 10 is about the going average for people who are willing to accept emergency housing. So we're trying if you know anyone who needs emergency housing, whether you are a homeowner, whether you are a renter. It has to be people who I believe it has to be people who were housed so an unhoused person can't go in and get one of these emergency trailers but. Whoever it is if you have any thought you can always go and just register at the FEMA center and go and say you'd like to register for emergency housing and be put on the list. People can always say later they don't want it but we try to get as many people in to go through and say go in and talk to them and say you want it if you know somebody who needs it. Whether a renter or homeowner go in and register because that's how you get on the list and that's how you get in there and that's how they decide how many trailers to buy and put in there so. How long are they available to be used as housing. There's 1818 to 24 months from the date of the flood so it's actually going to take them till December to get them put in and open for business so that would be they're trying to get them in for December. So you've already lost six months of the 18 months that you can use them for. So that's but we expect. My expectation is that it would be probably the reality it takes is it takes a little bit longer to get all the way everybody in everybody out. Knowing the building seasons up here I would expect if they were opened in December. That they would be open they wouldn't be open for only 18 months it wouldn't make any sense it would have to be probably 24 months because that would be two building seasons. So if somebody's house was destroyed they've got basically most of two building seasons to get a new house built or to find new housing. So but we'll learn more as the process comes in we're just in the early stages right now but I wanted to let you guys know that that is something we've been working on here in the office. Oh, I think Nathan has do you have a comment or question. This is off topic and very quick. I missed whatever presentation about the four sort of thoughts or proposals about zoning. And I just, Mike, or Kirby, if I can find a way to look at those sometime I'd like to look at them. That's all. Thank you. What's your email. Nathan Suter and ATH an s u t er at Gmail. All right, pretty easy. We did a we did a write up for the bridge. It's possible that it's on the bridges website. I haven't actually checked. But yeah, he can send you you're going to send him your presentation mic or. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then Mike my other question. This, they're raising of the houses in the flood zone sounds just like a major endeavor to me. Like I'm imagining like a house buying up on stilts is that the idea like, is that really. No, it's, it gets jacked up. So they run boards beams underneath it and they lift the house up. So as we're talking about elevating it, it doesn't stay on peers. This isn't like the grand banks off of North Carolina or something. This is, you'll lift the building up, you'll pour a whole new foundation, you'll pour a slab, and then you put the building back down on top of it. So either there'll be a crawl space underneath it and you keep your wooden floor, or you remove your wooden floor altogether. And you set the building down and then you have a concrete slab which you then put, you know, you can tile you can put other things on top of it directly. But then the idea is the level of that new concrete slab is at least two feet under our under our flood codes. I'm not recommending anyone who elevates their house to be three feet above just to be if we're going to spend all the time and money it costs about 200,000 to elevate the house. All the electrical has to get elevated all the sewer lines all the water lines everything has to get hooked up and then you put it down it's about 200,000 to do that whole process. If we're going to do all that doesn't cost any more to go up three feet than it does two feet so you might as well. So that that expense will FEMA and the city and, you know, other sources take care of, or maybe it varies by the person. Yeah, it varies and it's challenging and for FEMA, it's very, very daunting to use FEMA to elevate a building. If you were elevated after Irene, one of the big obstacles is that when you do a cost benefit analysis which you have to do for all of these FEMA things they they immediately as soon as you go in and say it's a historic building, which most of our buildings are, or eligible for historic registry which almost all of our buildings are, then it becomes very expensive to and fails to BCA, because you've got to go through and do everything to historic codes. Because you're using federal money. And so after Irene there are 10 properties as an example 10 properties in Waterbury who wanted to be elevated. At the end of the day only one got elevated the one that got elevated was the not historic one. The other nine buildings that were historic. Either remained where they were and got reflooded in July, or were demolished. So it's kind of an ironic twist that because you can't put a historic foundation under a historic building. We would rather destroy the building than to have a not historic foundation under it. It makes no sense to me, I think boneheaded, but that's the that's that's FEMA's philosophy so because we have 18 housing units in those 10 buildings that we want to elevate here in Montpelier. We're making a special pitch and we're pushing very hard on our legislators to go to take state money to give the city $2 million of state money. We have all those FEMA strings and save these buildings. So that's our push and that's what we've been pressing for really really hard, because it costs 400,000 to build a new unit on average. And that's, you know, the state numbers when they say hey we were getting $880 million for new affordable housing, which they allocated last year $80 million we asked for $2 million to save 18 units. No, we're only using this to build new units. So if we demolished those 18 units it would cost $8 million to replace them, but they won't give me $2 million to save them. Again, I've said this many many times logic only gets you so far. I would think spending $2 million to save 18 units is a far better use of our money than to spend $2 million to demolish the building and then $8 million to replace those units. So I'm trying very hard and the legislators are getting it. They do understand it, but it's always a battle because they have to go and convince all the other legislators to allocate. And it's not, they're starting to expand it. So they're going to try to make it a $5 million program to include other towns. It's not just money for Montpelier, but it would be money for other towns that were similarly damaged. That would say, hey, if your building can be saved reasonably with elevating the foundation will provide that money because all of these folks did everything correctly. All the folks we're working with all have flood insurance. They all did things everything they were supposed to. They took out flood insurance. They did everything, but the money will only let them fix their building exactly where it is. It won't let them elevate it. And they're just like, well, why would I spend my $250,000 to fix my house and leave it to flood again? So that's, that's why we're doing it the way we are. And I'm hoping we'll get it. So that's the long answer to the question of what will FEMA do nothing, which is why we're going to ask the state to step up and do their stuff, do to fill in the fill in the gap. Okay, thanks, Mike. And go to update because it filled up the rest of our time perfectly. So, okay, guys, we'll meet again in a couple of weeks. We'll be probably working on the city plan again. And does anybody have anything before we go? No. Okay. Well, do you have a motion to adjourn? I moved. Motion from John to the second. Oh, second. Second from Maria. Those in favor of adjournment say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, everybody. See you in two weeks. Great. We'll definitely be recapping this by the way, we'll be, you know, we'll be debriefing everything for tonight. All right. Thanks, Gary.