 The agenda hearing none I'm gonna deem it approved by consensus comments from the chair John Adams wasn't feeling well tonight so he's going to miss our meeting and I also want to just mention about scheduling the next meeting would be on Christmas Eve but I think if you discuss this at a meeting I didn't attend I don't you don't plan to be here for December 24th unless we have anything pressing that we need to have done before the new year we can't accomplish tonight then I think it's fine to speak you know I would like to get the landscaping recommendations out today if we can and if we can't we should discuss at the end of the meeting whether we feel a sense of urgency to meet before the new year on a date other than Christmas Eve to do that a short special meeting could accomplish that if needed but I'm hopeful we don't have to do that so assuming we don't need to do that our next meeting would be on January 14th I believe that calendar doesn't show yeah but the 14th so I just want to give everyone a heads up we're gonna this is our last meeting in 2018 and then we'll meet on January 14th unless we decide otherwise the other general business or the other comments from the chair I wanted to mention is Eric Gilbertson from the design review committee and Historic Preservation Commission reached out to me said that they were working on a proposal for guidelines for changing the bylaws about the design review criteria and so he he asked to just have lunch with me and give me an update on where they are haven't had that yet but I just wanted to give you a little bit of a progress report from what I've heard I've invited Kirby to attend the meeting with me so anything I forget and I think that's it so moving on item for general business this is where we invite members of the public who want to speak about something that's not on the agenda to offer comments so I don't know if you have anything here to talk about I guess the slopes in the landscaping so much okay okay all right do you want to just come introduce yourself and give us your general yeah first my name is will she bow I live here in Montpelier and general contractor and I've been in front of you before speaking about the slope issue and I came tonight just to see my understanding is that you're sort of trying to fast-track the slopes in the landscaping and I see that as an agenda and just curious what that as far as an interim zoning thing would that mean basically is like they'll be those will be adopted prior to all the other stuff that you're working on yeah we've identified those as two parts of the zoning bylaws as drafted that have proven administratively challenging and so the idea is that we want to prevent as few future permit applications as possible from being impacted by some of those challenges so we can put forward a proposal to change the bylaws for the city council to review that we want to do that as soon as possible okay well that's great I guess that was my reason I'm here is just like is that happening is it you know as a contractor I've got a few people that asking me you know because then we have projects where it's like a small portion of the touching 30% slope and they're just kind of like when can we do this I was like well yeah yeah it's it's the top item on our agenda tonight and in general so basically you'll be voting tonight to send those I can't guarantee anything yeah that's that's what we're hoping as a contractor saying if you can that'd be great do you have specific feedback for us to consider I mean I think you know I've spoken with Mike about and I've seen the sort of draft at least for the slopes and I haven't perused through the landscaping stuff that's a lot more involved I think you know I think it all makes sense you know and I agree that you know yes having development review board review anything over 30% in engineers that makes perfect sense you know depending on size and you know a lot of the projects that I deal with a very small scale you know it's like a 600 square foot cottage it's on a small hill or just an addition off the back that touches the hill you know I'm not putting up condo units on simply have or something you know so I think all in all it's where you're headed is the red direction and just wanted to see when it was going to happen and hear what you had to say about that so I mean even once we vote it would just be a recommendation for city council that would then have to then they would have to adopt yeah and I believe they'd have to have a formal hearing process so you know even if we best case scenario we vote on tonight it could still be a couple of months yeah yeah best would be best best case scenario you'd probably end of January yeah as far as when the potential to say apply for a permit under that interim zoning regulations would be yes yeah I mean it could be at end of January early February yeah my understanding is that once changes have been warned then any new applications have to meet the modified laws although they also have to meet the current laws right at the same time yeah it makes a mess of things so it's best to avoid state laws yeah I've been there before it's like right before the current regulations it was like well just wait until we do these ones are in place because I need to apply under two statutes and didn't want to do that so but yeah so I just wanted to get a sense of like when I could sort of expect to let people know I could do their projects yeah we're doing the best we can okay all righty well thank you yeah I mean if you have other comments just raise your hand and I'll invite you back yeah I probably won't stick a lot of stick around for too much longer but I just wanted to get a sense from you and yes you know put in my two cents so all right thank you all right so item five we can jump right into the substantive discussion uh reviewing the draft landscaping and screening standards so the version I um provided you tonight is um has a couple places where there were changes made so the first one we had voted at the last meeting takeout on page 358 number three it's highlighted in yellow uh I shortened that up John Snell I let John Snell know that we were talking about this and what the recommendation was that the tree board should adopt something so he said he was going to put it on their agenda for December and hopefully have it adopted in January so it may just be a placeholder um but he is looking at the nta 300s and not the best management practices so I know ms Abbott talked about potentially that they were the the recommendation from the creators of these is that it may be that the best management practices would be best but it sounds like from John Snell that the tree board may be just looking to adopt the specific a 300 standard so I pulled up a 300 for our last meeting and there are many categories most of it's not relevant to planting so it really isn't a portion of these standards um and I think it's specific enough where it says plantings that it's not like we're trying to say that the all of the standards apply that we're being that we're specifying that it's only the planting yeah portions are pertinent yep yes and so can you pull it up on a website because like you can look at the listings but you can't look at the contents right so so we're gonna have a copy yes if we adopt these we will have to have a copy okay downstairs so I guess what I pulled up was like the table of contents which was like 11 different categories and one of which was planting yeah can we scan it and put it online probably not I'll he ordered a copy so I was just gonna I was contemplating whether I should order it and then I figured I would go and see what their direction was before I mean they're relatively cheap they're like twenty dollars a copy I think that they weren't too bad so if people ask about this we can maybe sending them to the tree board or just showing telling these all copies and they can come look at it I think I think what it's gonna end up being is we will have a copy and depending on the project and depending on what it is depends whether we would a lot of times we have what are called TRC technical review committees and so when we have the TRC's applicants come in and we invite everybody in I think if we had a project that was going to have a number of plantings we would just have either Jeff Byer or somebody from the tree board be there to go and answer questions of the specifics of the plantings if they're not already familiar as we said with the A300 the advantage of those is a professional probably already knows those standards so that's what the advantage is they can at least from the engineering firms when they're printing out their their plans they can just go pull up the A300 A300 tree planting yes here it is so that was the first one I didn't delete it I just put in a kind of a placeholder that reflected that so the next set of changes were actually on 361 where we get to the total site landscaping but just above that which is number seven and this appears twice this is just for the non-conformities for screening you'll notice highlighted three percent's those did say five percent's and so what this says where a site is non-conforming with respect to screening the applicant shall be required to come into compliance less to cost of compliance will exceed three percent of the total cost the reason why I dropped that from five percent to three percent is I was actually looking at our zoning that was in effect from 2006 to 2018 that just we just replaced and that one actually had a cap of three percent so we were trying to guess where I was like well some people do two percent some people do as much as five percent well actually we used to do three percent so I just thought I would pick that we can certainly go back up to five percent if we wanted to but we wanted to be consistent with what we had been doing for the past 15 years in the past it was three percent do you have any knowledge as to why three percent was the standard through this? a lot of like I said a lot of communities have these caps it just really comes down to what do you do in the Cates where somebody is coming in to put in a 300 to put in a $10,000 deck on the side of a restaurant to do some outdoor seating and they have a lot of non-conformities this just gives us an idea of how we can handle that we know we want them to come into conformance but with a $10,000 project are we going to make them to do $10,000 worth of landscaping they may not do the project at all this just caps it at three percent to go through and say you're going to have to do apply three percent of the project cost whatever it is to improving that non-conformity so it will over time come into compliance if you're not a project that designates where that three percent goes in terms of how they how much they come into compliance in this case it would it would depend on whether it's a major site plan or a minor site plan so just if it's a minor site plan it would be the zoning administrator if it's a major site plan it would go to the development review board more pushes less trees i mean you know basically it's kind of a choice like that yeah i mean when you're looking at cost it's really going to come down to you know what what is effectively and this is really talking about screening so in a lot of cases um this is talking about somebody's building a deck but they have a dumpster that was never screened so we're going to kind of know where it's going to go you're just going to have to you know you have to apply at least $300 towards that that requirement um i don't know enough about what it costs to do landscaping how much screening is $300 to get you on the $10,000 deck uh maybe not a ton but it's as we said we're looking at a percentage of the cost that's going to be going on top of that um you're going to be able to get some some work done for that but like i said it's it's uh just an overall cost i think it depends what your i mean i imagine you could get at least a couple of shrubs planted for $300 but a lot of projects we get are you know up to a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff so as i said it could be it we can do whatever number that you'd like um what we the issue we have right now is we don't have any regulations to help us with nonconformities so if somebody comes in with a deck and we're left with i guess yeah if you've got $50,000 worth of landscaping needs you're going to have to do 50,000 um and so we just needed to have some way of of regulating how we're going to do it this is a typical way of doing it 3 percent 5 percent you can make whatever percentage number you want do we want to set some minimum i mean you know a small project but could have a significant nonconformance so one would probably having a lower percentage would mean that you feel like i understand this well so this one is look yeah this one's looking at nonconformities from the standpoint of strictly with this the screening and i think total landscaping has a similar three percent except they have an additional requirement which we will go over um we should look at these all together and get through all the changes yeah so the two three percent so on the next page on 362 the same provision applies at topic that this one has an a because we also need to address where a site is nonconforming with respect to impervious cover the applicant and the applicant demonstrates that the nonconform that as a result of the nonconformity the site cannot reasonably meet the total landscaping requirement the development review board may waive some or all the total landscaping requirements so this just puts a second out in there because we have sites that you might be in urban center too and i can think of a couple of them that are a hundred percent impervious and therefore you're going to come in you're going to have to do a project we're going to say you got to do five percent three percent whatever the number is and they're going to look out and say i have no percent i don't have any landscaping place i can put so either i'm going to have to tear up or tear down buildings or i'm going to need a waiver so this just gives an out for the development review board to waive some or all the landscaping requirements based on the fact that there's just no place to put it but other than that the percentage amount of money to spend is is still tends to tends to be in there and i think both of these whether it's for the screening or whether it's for the total landscaping would probably have the same percentage so in the tax world because we're talking about like a chilling effect of something like there's a lot of studies out there showing like a modest sales tax at six percent it doesn't really have much of a chilling effect that's like there's a lot of research out there on that and that's kind of how i'm thinking of this is like three percent five percent was the increased five five percent higher would that have a chilling effect on projects and yeah i think of it as similar as like a sales tax i don't really think it necessarily would have a chilling effect that's my point of view i mean probably not i mean we could i mean in theory you could go through and say that all non-conformities have to be erased i mean legally we could just go through and say you've got to bring them you know if you're gonna get a permit you got to come into compliance but we get a lot of smaller projects and somebody says i'm gonna put a new propane tank in we're like great you've got to put in five thousand dollars worth of landscaping then we'll give you your permit no i understand the need for it i think we're all convinced about that it's just a matter of what percentage is appropriate and um my first thought was oh i don't want to discourage some of the development that we want to see in like the urban center where there's not a lot of screening or landscaping but then on the other hand we want to have development that is aesthetically pleasing and contributes to the design and that's the whole part of it so it does make sense to at least have some percentage set aside for this i like that barbie look like you're right no i was just wondering when you were saying that are there other regulations criteria that they have to meet other than landscape screening you know in terms of mechanicals outside of building so if they're all if what they are putting in is a new propane tank or new dumpster they would have to screen that dumpster this three percent doesn't let them out of that okay this three percent is just you're putting in something that's separate a deck and now the question comes in we notice that you're also non-conforming with respect to your screening of your x and the question is do we make that happen but screening is not just restricted to landscaping no it's not which is why we don't worry about if it's a hundred percent impervious well then you might have to put up a fence so on the previous page screening materials can be landscape buffers but they can also be fences and walls they can be berms and that's those are the three options that you have for screening materials and then what has to be screened are parking lots utility service areas and building mounted equipment and uncomfortable with the five percent i don't think that's that bad i just thought i would point out the fact that previously we had three percent as has a number we're adding something in currently we have nothing and if we bring it in there's a certain sales pitch you can get to go through and say well we're just going back to the way it wasn't in that but we want to go beyond it that's as you said i don't think the difference between three hundred dollars worth of landscaping or five hundred dollars worth of landscaping is really going to go and take somebody's debt project out i didn't i suggested that yeah i don't i don't think that's yeah let me restate the point i think five after hearing pervy's valuable contribution i think five percent does not does not seem like a too harsh a hurdle to put in and landscaping seems like a you know even if it's two hundred dollars worth landscape more landscaping seems like a positive thing so that's my take on it at this point uh i just have a quick question like you were saying i mean can you kind of give me just a a ballpark like what's the range in terms of the price of these projects you're talking about i mean clearly there's like a ten thousand dollar deck but is that the norm are we talking most of our permits we get a couple hundred permits a year so most of them are going to be relatively small permits for changing windows in the historic district or you know a lot of smaller projects in in those areas and then from there it ramps up to you know five million dollars for french block and you know some of these bigger projects but some of them are going to be exempt because of being an urban center one or whatever but we can most of those big projects are already covering themselves on different points so it's it's really how we handle the small ones yeah i i just feel like if there's not a lot of difference on the margins in terms of the small projects which it sounds like it is and the larger ones are going to be covered with different areas anyway this isn't going to really touch those bigger projects so much five percent but frankly i mean this is sort of my first blush at it so i don't report to be we just we even even us we we make this we put the other this is this is fixing the previous proposal because we hadn't even thought of this until we started doing them sounds like there's a consensus for five percent for screening and total landscaping total site landscaping um i did have i was given one question this afternoon related to that on is there a project that is just too small should we have a minimum project right this is barbson i was thinking more on the other from the other side though minimum amount for landscaping yeah you were thinking minimum amount for landscaping and the other one is yeah the other side is if somebody's doing a $750 project are we requiring i think that would be $75 $7.50 landscaping i mean is there is there a floor to some of these where we just go and say look if if landscaping it's less than this there's two options one would be if it's less than this you have to at least do x amount which i think was what barb was thinking or the other option is if it's less than this amount we just we're not going to ask you do landscaping if it's if the landscaping requirement is under a certain amount what's an example of a $750 project that would be none we'll get small projects that might come in um i mean certain changes of use might just need a sign might just be a sign permit that'll come through there's really no other changes and so we're left with a what does that mean plants and flowers around the side i don't want to screen your sign by me sure but being a but you could screen the base of the sign uh yeah but seven dollars i mean that's great it's not a big flower right it's a small pot plant some seeds that doesn't even fit in the ground just purchasing it yeah right seems like it's a de facto exemption where it's such a de minimis amount on those small projects that i mean mike you're not going out on in the field and enforcing right so i mean technically we really shouldn't be writing rules that we have no intentions of you know going saying well we'll just ignore that because i i'm not going to be enforcing that so um i mean so but we should just put a de minimis where landscaping requirement where the landscaping requirement is less than a hundred dollars or fifty i mean i i think that i mean the only hesitation i have with any of these numbers is that i don't have a good sense of i mean what it costs for a landscape professional just to even come out and sort of assess i would assume that's i just don't know what a hundred dollars gets you i think that's a hundred dollars and you need to plant something and you need to follow the ants day 300 standards you're just one person that doesn't yeah you can't hire someone right that's i sort of there's some yeah i'm thinking it's probably going to be in the three to five hundred dollar range before anybody even takes any of that seriously we may guess i just don't know you could put a substantial amount of landscaping in one specific area for three hundred dollars you know six bushes you know small enough to shield something so if you know if we want to set a minimum i think it's going to have to be small the point i was getting at is like i don't think mike's gonna be up there and say that bush only it's worth eighty dollars not a hundred you know that kind of thing where usually that we're going to get that in the application state people are going to come in and go and say what are you going to do and we're going to come in and say you know you need to be doing something what are you going to be doing for for this amount so if it's if we don't have a diminished exemption and people say well seven dollars in the bi-plant but then you have to plant it following the answer you three hundred that's right yeah and it has to be replaced if it dies because that's a requirement under any landscaping requirements so you're you give them the book at least it's a number and if it comes back that it's not high enough we can always come back and go and say look we're getting a bunch of these sort of just silly or and then we can always come back but at least a hundred dollars gives us something there's something there all right so the next so as we get into the total site landscaping i made a few tweaks to the administrative rules sorry where are you still the same page 361 yep now we're into dot j the last of the total site landscaping where we got stuck last time so we had some questions that came up previously this had been talking about forested areas and we had some discussion about whether we should or shouldn't be regulating forested areas so i tried to do a little bit more massaging on this one and the riparian rules talk about naturally wooded vegetation so rather than create a new term of art i just grabbed the old one and replaced it to make this one safe so this is for calculating planting area where an applicant demonstrates that naturally wooded vegetation is on the parcel is proximate to the development site and furthers the purposes outlined in section 3203.a so that's the purposes of this section the naturally wooded vegetation may count towards landscaping requirement on a two to one basis for example retaining two square feet of naturally forested cover or riparian habitat will count towards one square foot of landscaped area so this puts the burden onto the applicant that they would have to demonstrate that it is on their parcel is proximate to the development site because some of these development sites can be rather big and we don't want somebody counting something that's clearly the purposes of the landscaping requirement is to improve the aesthetics and to screen bad things and blah blah blah there are four requirements well if it's up on the back of the hill it's not going to do any of those four things so this kind of gives a little bit of room for us to count that but at the same time they don't just automatically get credit for everything perennial plantings may be used hold up hold up that the point you're making there where there's some discretion administrative discretion you're packing all that into the may that's there right is that something we should make a little more explicit is proximate to the development sites it's yeah it's a little bit if we think we know how we could grapple and wrap that in i mean we talked about proximate with other accessory structures and some other things i mean there'll be a certain amount of gray when it's the administrative officer making that call but i think it could also be appealed to the drb if somebody believes the administrative officer has said that's not proximate and great appeal to the drb and just yeah if you think that your office will exercise discretion on this may then i think maybe we should have a standard to apply but if you don't think that in practice you'll end up doing that then i just find the way well i guess if the applicant demonstrates i guess the key is that should probably say shall if if we're looking at that that may that's later in their purpose outlined in section three the woody vegetation shall be counted because the assumption being that if the applicant demonstrates it the administrative officer in the drb always has to make the determination of whether or not it has been demonstrated if you demonstrate is proximate if you demonstrate it's on your parcel and if you demonstrate it means these four purpose statements we can count it on a two-to-one basis and if we don't it's because we're saying it's not um i think that covers it so is proximate to the development site i'm just wondering i mean we have a rain i mean syphony's point is well taken so it's a little bit vague but i think if you if you're looking at that proximate in relation to the purpose statement because you have to meet all of them so it's proximate but it has to enhance the appearance of the built environment as viewed from a public vantage point create shade alongside walk walkways parking lots provide landscape buffer between residential non-residential uses screening uses and development that creates that screen the land uses and development that create visual clutter and distraction so i think if you kind of know what the purpose is so maybe the or maybe the proximate doesn't have to be there at all if you can meet these four requirements yeah i mean you could say is proximate to the development site so that it furthers the purposes or something like that but yeah maybe we can just take it out take up the proximate yeah if you look at if you look at 32 of 3a yeah yeah if it's if it's if it's remote from the site then yeah it's gonna be difficult to meet one of those four requirements yeah i mean how big a project a site are we talking about i mean if we have a several acre site it's possible that they could meet these criteria and still not have it be close to the building well it's the development yes the development site that which can be the site or this the site of the development yeah we and we had this discussion of whether or not we wanted to define site because we talk about site plans we talk about sites and sites and parcels tend to be the same when they're small i mean you have a quarter acre site it pretty much is the whole entire parcel the question is at what point should we have a different different definition for site when it's something that's less than the size of the parcel and that was the question that administratively downstairs we have been kind of chewing on a little bit to try to come up with should we have a separate definition of site thinking about the distillery project you know if there was a landscaped area at one far end of the project i mean is it possible that it could potentially meet these four criteria and still not be proximate to the disturbed area yeah and i think that i think that i'm fine i think it's gonna be a got called to some degree that's a nine acre parcel and they're doing a little bit of work over here and they're trying to count something way on the other side i think there's a yeah and i think i think that there'd be a good one think of timber frame a nine acre parcel and there's riparian buffer on the river on the back of this nine acre parcel all their work is being done up by route 12 can they count that riparian buffer on the river at the back of the nine acres towards their landscaping requirement and my thought was well it's not really proximate to the project the project is in the front three acres um but it's on the parcel and so that was where i was kind of that was the one that was kind of rolling around in my head so if we left proximate on in there that would at least give you a basis i think it would give us a basis to say no in a certain certain cases where somebody wants to count so i i just um i'm gonna i don't mean to be contrarian but i just disagree with that um i don't see that the proximate verbiage is needed because you have the purposes outlined in 32 or 3 if there if the woody natural vegetation is not proximate to the built environment it's not going to be able to enhance the appearance of the built environment which is the first prong of 32 or 3a it won't be able to create shade along sidewalks and walkways it won't be able to do the things that 32 or 3a is is aimed doing um and i just feel like if i'm the review board i'm looking at if i'm weighing an applicant's demonstration of fulfilling those requirements and then you add an undefined term such as proximate to the development without any standard for me to evaluate that it just creates another level of uncertainty where i feel like if you know the board is going to be given discretion to determine whether or not those 32 or 3a purposes are met by the application i think it should just be enough but i just don't know it i just don't know what a undefined term of proximate to the development site adds to that the the only case i can think of where something might not be proximate to the site but but actually fulfill 32 or 3 is is number three there where it says providing a buffer between residential non-residential which arguably the the timber homes natural vegetation's a buffer between that and the development in the river so you could say that it meets a three here that maybe still is approximate enough sure and i think that's again i think that's a call that the board can make if an applicant tries to make that demonstration they can they can make that call i think that the proximate question just adds another variable that kind of muddles the analysis but that's that's just i i can see the other side of the coin too don't get me wrong but i i feel like the 32 or 3a standards give at least some quantifiable and objective standard by which the board can evaluate an applicant's demonstration of a you know counting the land counting the wood areas i could go either way i think i'm going to end up getting rid of proximate proximate is part of it oh my god either way there yeah my initial point and sorry for bringing this up and getting us into the weeds on this was really that i think if you keep proximate in there there's a possibly if you if you make a decision based on the proximate language you get into getting this illegal trouble with it but i don't feel that then they can apply to drb right they call it drb that you break the drb and they're the ones who make the decision ultimately so and they could also get the legal trouble we'll try to interpret and apply approximately elements of interpretation right you know you know a once before our interpretation elements yeah that's i think that's probably not for them to handle on so if we take out proximate then we take out the possibility that there's all these arguments about it that we don't intend to ever happen or leave it and see what happens yeah i mean i guess i that same argument could be used for for the purpose the the elements raised in the purpose as well so it's it's definitely a matter of interpretation what's easier for your stuff i i mean clearly from from the decision-making standpoint if you don't if we don't have to make that determination of whether it's proximate then that's one less decision we have to make i was just if we find we get ourselves caught in a position where we're approving things that we don't want to because we don't have that we can always come back and either define that term or as we said we're improving something that doesn't exist so anything is an improvement over what we have and i think um like i said i was just trying to capture a little bit of those projects where people come in with the big you know some Malone properties on gallison hill that they've got you know big industrial building up front and then they own another 15 acres of woods and back and i know the question is going to come up of well doesn't that just meet all my landscaping requirements like well but i guess now we've got the the basis in there well if you can demonstrate 3203 a is met then sure you can count that but do we want them to count that i mean is that the ultimate result that we want to see happen well the purpose of our landscaping standards are to implement those four standards so all of these standards that we've been reviewing are to achieve those four things if there's something if there's a fifth thing we should be adding then i guess that would be the next question well no i mean i guess it seems like it's splitting here is that potentially they could argue that it meets those four criteria but it's still halfway across you know it's still acre away from where they're developing so do we want the landscape standards to apply to the area that is being developed well of course and i think that the argument isn't about whether we want those to apply or not the argument is about whether this achieves it with or without the term possible yeah yeah and i i guess i can think of all kinds of different ways to get around it so if it's a nine acre parcel and it's all in the back acre is it enhancing the appearance of the built environment as viewed from the public vantage point right well maybe the public i mean it may it may be if you think about the state house it may be yes because that back hill is all forested and acts as a forested screen for the back if it happens to be flat development clutter yeah but it's but it's well it's whether it's meeting it when it comes to the next one where we're talking about the total landscaping requirement um i think a lot of them they're not going to be the first one all right so without taking an official vote on this how raise your hand how many people want to strike the the approximate aspect of this how many people want to keep it two people want to keep it no i'm just like i don't i'm not sure i think i talked myself into you can cover it without that all right very far view goes down do you want an official vote no i don't care really i do you know i do have to say that i constantly think about these different ways that i could get around them in terms of site design you know so it's sort of like oh yeah i could i could easily do this and and the you know the natural area would be half a mile away but um anyway yeah well we'll look and see how it yeah we'll look and see how it plays out in yeah in the reality and sometimes we just have to see how the drb comes down on a couple of these because the drc's drb starts being very consistent in no we're not going to count that um for x y and z or we'll count only a portion in the front of it because yes these first 50 feet are actually making a nice backdrop to the restaurant or whatever but the last 750 feet of it are not providing any benefit and therefore we're not going to give you any credit for those but we'll see where the drb plays it okay so here's the change i see is is proximate to the development site it's going to be strong yes and then may is going to be changed to shell yeah i'd be curious to see where some of the other drb ones are but we'll make those but what's that oh i was just trying to think about occasionally it's written with the drb may approve where the applicant demonstrates i don't think but we'll i'll i'll i'll put it as shell because i think actually if the if the applicant demonstrates i think legally if the applicant does demonstrate it we are kind of obliged to to give them that whether they've adequately demonstrated that is up to the others um so b moving as quickly in the next one b actually just moved up from later on i noticed that we talk about perennial plantings and then we have these administrative rules up top and it really should have been part of these administrative rules so perennial plantings when it comes to total landscaping if you're planting perennials they can be counted on a one square foot basis um and then see um i added in because we've had a number of these questions that have come up and i think this will help clean some of the stuff too to be counted as an existing tree or shrub for the purposes of this subsection trees and shrubs must be healthy and have suitable planting area to support its long-term viability unmanaged or unmaintained portions of a site shall not count as landscaping unless the area meets the provisions of 3203j one which we just talked about um invasive species shall never be counted towards total landscaping so the purpose of this is we have had people who've come in with applications and you'll have a tree growing sideways out of the foundation and then kind of turn and kind of grow up and they're like well there's i got a tree that counts as my tree and we're like well yeah it is a tree but you know or it's or it's just brambles with a bunch of junk in there and you're just like is that is that really should that really be counting towards our existing landscaping if it's not really landscaped if you know and you can if you drive and look around you can see between buildings on berry street and different things you'll go and see that just in between the buildings it's just grown up scrub and does that really count as counting these things out and go through and say I found seven maples in there so if nothing else maybe it wouldn't encourage people to maintain them the ones that oh yeah so that's the point was we would be able to at least if we go and say if you want to count as existing do something to kind of make it qualify we aren't obligated to take your tree as a tree my other thought is with um yeah with ash borer in a few years we're gonna have trees that are not healthy yep ash borers or another common tree give people actions in places yeah trees of paradise i have a couple of other trees sorry i have a quick name three two or three j one c quick question um the second to last sentence unmanaged or unmaintained portions of the site shall not count as landscaping and the last sentences invasive species shall never be counted why is there different verbiage if one is shall not count as landscaping the other one is shall never be counted towards total landscaping is there a reason why there's probably should say not just shall shall not count towards the counted towards sorry i was just being yes i was being overly sorry sorry sorry i just know i have a relationship to that might so then they need the owner needs to go into their area and determine if they're invasive species within a forested area no it no not i mean if if they were doing if they're going for the forested area this is just for a site and we will get a number of them that will come in um that are just uh even some of these berry street elm street projects that you know it's just a small two 20 000 square foot lot and there's just a section of of something that's in in brambles and this is questions whether they can count those as trees um but as they start mapping them out to go and tell us you know we're going to ask them do you know do you meet your tree requirement and if they go through and say yeah i've got a tree here i've got a tree here and i've got two trees over here and we can go and ask them what what are they okay because first of all we need to know because we have to determine it's just a large tree medium tree or a small tree and if they go and tell us well that's a x tree we can go through we we can look because we've got the list or know that while a tree of paradise is an invasive species and therefore doesn't count yeah unfortunately we have a lot of invasives but so we have a clear designation of a list of invasive species that they can reference in the zoning the state and it's referenced in here okay so the state list is referenced yeah and i don't this doesn't apply to the natural woody vegetation that's when you're specific this is when you're specifically counting what tree so if you haven't made it in your natural woody area yeah yeah this doesn't apply to that go and survey your two acres of wood it's so wow all things we can get through just in five more minutes all right so just skipping to the bottom of that you'll see number four we already talked about this previously so i will make the changes that we have approved the percentage the percentage and the wording of any of anything else so we'll make those so the last thing that comes up is back up on number two which was what we left at there used to be a two and a three yep and the two talked about lots less than one acre three talked about lots more and john made comments that that were absolutely correct it really wasn't i didn't have it right i made mistakes and so i spent a lot of time again playing around with a bunch of more examples and what i've put in here is a more complex one but there are a number of ways of trying to get us to a number that works but one possibility is to go back and move to a factor of um if we apply a factor of 0.033 which you see is the requirement just for the 90 percent and we just if we just took that out and just said look we're just going to apply a factor of 0.033 it actually kind of works through all the districts it does apply just a minimum and you are looking at it as as a minimum it works at no matter what the size of the parcel is and i ran this all the way out to projects like tractor supply which is a 20,000 square foot building with a 20,000 square foot outdoor storage area with another 60,000 square feet of parking that one didn't have enough landscaping but i think all of us could go out there and go and say it didn't have enough landscaping but the biggest thing it didn't have was landscaping enough shading for the parking so if it simply meant its parking shading requirement it would meet the 0.03 requirement um the other thing i looked at was we all kind of thought the shading requirement worked okay so i converted that to our new system of impervious cover that comes out 0.042 so that's not too bad you know we're starting to see numbers all in the same area here of stuff that that tends to work the number that didn't work when i calculated out our current zoning which you know has absurdly too much landscaping which is why we're we're redoing these rules it came out to 0.19 so you started seeing okay well now that's an upper limit 0.19 we don't want to be up that high um so we played i played around with a lot of different examples um from tractor spy caledonia spirits and looking at some of them and kind of giving an eye to them as to whether or not they really could have like caledonia spirits i think we recognized could have had a little bit more landscaping it would have been fairly easy to have provided more landscaping um and really started to come up with that the the 0.033 would work as a across the board for any of them just get the impervious cover multiply by 0.033 that's the amount of landscaping you you could meet in certain cases it might be a little bit on the low side so the other options which you see here in number two the most complex way of doing this is we looked at you have the building size you have your other impervious cover like parking lots we already know the parking lot requirement gets up to 0.04 and that kind of works so we could just go through and say structures have to meet this and the other landscaping has to meet the other number and this this just goes and says the other parking lot would be 0.033 so if you've got a parking lot that's basically smaller than 10 parking spaces you're at 0.033 as soon as you hit 10 parking spaces you're at 0.042 i don't have to say that here because the previous requirement would push it up there and then the buildings would add would go from 0.033 to 0.0625 to 0.086 and then everything else would be at 0.1 that gets a little steep so that's kind of the high end now you're we're requiring a more robust amount of landscaping if you went up to 0.1 we could stop it at 0.086 if we wanted to so i was just trying to get some ideas out there for for how the the simplest and straightest is just go for the 0.033 and that's the quick and clean way of of doing it it works for the small ones and it works for the big ones are we aware of any other cities that have different factors or different approaches for structures versus impervious surface not really i haven't seen some of the issues that have come up with landscaping is that a lot of times it is a strictly subjective standard they will do a more of a performance standard approach most communities would go with take your purpose statement pull those out stick them in as performance standards and go and say you have to demonstrate this the problem with this with that is we're trying to have a lot of our stuff be administrative so we really want to start to be a little more objective less subjective in in our rules so that way our administrators can go through and process because most of our applications you know we get a couple hundred applications a year 12 15 of them go to the drb you know so if we send site plan and say all site plans have to go to the drb then we're sending a lot to the drb to to evaluate the reasonable person standards and the subjectiveness so we tried as we said we tried some of the way brandy's been proposing to do it um we think this new way kind of tweaks what she's doing puts it on a better foundation because we're linking it to the size of the buildings at least the footprint and the size of the parking areas good by linking it to impervious cover we've got a more impervious cover the more landscaping you need seems like a pretty reasonable and previously we talked about the distillery we all got that example so i think a lot of us it helps to talk about these examples for us because we can imagine how many trees in acreage but it's hard to take the math and get the yeah so so tell us what like what we're looking at now how that would look compared with what we discussed last time with the distillery project where we went to some depth on um they didn't have to meet any requirements previously so we were kind of taking it because they were under the old zoning so was it good would they would they have met i guess is my question so would they have already had to add more for parking yes yeah because that's part of it too i think if we if we look at that side and say this wasn't enough well this is in addition to those if it's lower right no these aren't in addition these are uh the total landscaping yep you may meet your total landscaping requirement before you get here it's this was kind of intended as in our current zoning total landscaping is actually kind of at the top or in the middle and we kind of wanted to make sure it was clear we put it at the bottom we relocated all those standards to go through and say we've got screening street trees parking and screening are the three requirements but each one of them has exemptions so you might get all the way through there and you don't get to go and say yes the landscaping no you do have a minimum you have to at least meet this much you may meet it through your street trees you may meet it through right that's what i meant in addition to the right right because you've met the other things and you're already over this amount you don't have to do it so then you won't have to do anything applying to the distillery project or did it was it met already from this parking and other and it sounds like they if they had been under this rule they would have had to do more before this yes they were adopted under old zoning but oh yeah but if they were they would have failed our new zoning um we have old we have older zoning old zoning yeah we have old zoning current zoning but yes under this rule not including this they already would have had to do more because they wouldn't have met the parking requirements yeah they would have yeah they would not have had enough parking shading and i think looking at the site plan we would have agreed at least as planning commissioners that it would have been reasonable for them to have provided more shading for that parking lot of that size but this will give them would give them a numerical number to use to say okay this is the area that needs to be provided as a minimum and here's where it should be some of it should be shading the parking some of it should be in other locations yeah they will meet the they'll go through and meet those first three requirements and then we will get to the total landscaping where we add everything up and see if they've met and if they're still if they're deficient we'll have to add some more parking or add some more landscaping somewhere in one of these six or seven places that are identified so when you say these factors you sort of work them out in your head and they make sense what does that mean exactly like you feel like you look at examples and they have i'm just trying to grasp with that that they don't have too much of a burden of landscaping but in in certain cases i look at a project um so some of the new ones i looked at hunger mountain co-op uh caledonian spirits we had looked at before 184 elm street we looked at before tractor supply was a new one that i looked at um burger but buddy's buddy's burgers yeah thanks for all of these ideas as as we try to kind of flesh out these ideas which numbers seem to make sense um so what i would do is let's say if i happen to be working on an idea of like maybe we do a 0.06 for the building and a 0.03 for the parking lot i can i would run them through hunger mountain co-op and go and say well what did the total come out to and what did they plant and do i think in my personal opinion do i think there was enough landscaping there um in some cases if it comes out it's like those they were they would be a little bit shorter it's unclear whether those are medium trees or large trees those are large trees and they would count and they would meet it if they're medium trees and they're not but so that's kind of how i looked at them um like hunger mountain co-op has 30 000 square feet of impervious they have 22 medium trees and nine small trees now we can start adjusting the things is is that enough landscaping in that parking lot it doesn't count any of their riparian buffer that they have along the river just so would that meet the total landscaping as we have in this proposed version in certain cases i'd have to if it's here this calculator so i think i mean marianne's getting in it which is there's two things to consider here there's administrative of implementing these rights which is very important and we leave it to you to determine the best way to do that but then there's a substantive question of how much landscaping is the appropriate amount and so in testing your administrative formula and we kind of want to know how did you arrive how did you settle on this particular factor what were you looking at and yeah you're using your professional judgment in determining what was the adequate amount of coverage and landscaping and that's perfectly acceptable but we just want to make sure we're having a discussion about it yeah and that's yeah and it's it's hard somewhat i mean like in this case here we're talking about hunger mountain co-op um 30 000 square feet of impervious cover if we just did 0.033 for everything that means they would have to do 990 square feet of landscaping which for everyone who's not up to speed with what we're doing a large tree would be worth 100 a medium tree would be worth 49 a small tree is worth 25 shrubs are worth six or eight or 10 um perennial landscaping is one to one so they would have more than enough because you said nine large trees and they would have enough they have 22 medium 22 medium trees and nine small trees which is 1303 so they would have met the minimum requirement now that doesn't they may have been way over if we looked at it from the standpoint of parking we may have said well for parking you actually needed to have more and bigger trees they may have been required to have 1500 square feet of medium trees or something depending on how big so what i'm hearing because again i'm trying to conceptualize and sorry no that's that's but but a 0.033 sounds like a small enough number for the uh total tree that it's it sounds like it's going to usually be caught by parking before it gets to that it sounds like point what what i'm understanding is a 0.033 is so lenient that it's probably not going to catch anything that's not already caught by the other standards is that seem right for certain projects if we're talking about hunger mountain co-op and tractor supply we're talking about places that have big parking lots so absolutely they're a lot of there if they meet their parking lot requirement they're probably meeting most of their total landscaping requirement in fact i would almost guarantee they are because the parking lot is landscape is required at 0.042 so if you have a lot of parking and our requirement for total is 0.033 then you're gonna probably meet it all but buddy's burgers has no parking it's just the building they don't even own their parking lot that parking lots owned by the butters so when they want to put a deck on their building and i calculated theirs theirs comes out to needing 75 square feet of landscaping and they have some small squares in the front um they actually have one crab apple tree so we're like all right look you put a crab apple tree here you put a crab apple tree there and you have some use which they do have you could meet 75 square feet pretty easily in in that and that's that's about as urban as you're gonna get you know probably 90 plus percent coverage on that parcel and they still they still could meet it so it works for really small ones the 0.033 but as i said before when you get up to some of these middle size ones it can be it'll probably be met through other things like parking and it'll be a little bit on the low side but then when we get to these really big sites that was where we were coming to this point where we kind of have this it's not a linear thing as the sites get really big it becomes really easy to meet a requirement and you also have a lot of these extra existing trees and you're like oh i need seven trees and i've got three acres which seven trees would you like me to pick and that was where some of these ones just come up for the other extreme of the really big lots and then i think these middle ones are where we make at hunger mountain co-op so that was my thought and as i as i said some of these i the numbers i pulled together we had done the parking lot calculations and 0.042 is how that factors you know so i think we kind of have a feel it just depends a little bit of you know if we want to have a minimum here's some ideas to go with 0.033 0.042 we'd come about it in different ways and kind of came back and found these other numbers i think we just need a number or or as i proposed kind of in the written example to split it between your buildings are going to factor that one rate and your other impervious at another rate it's a little bit more complicated but we can do it sorry mike where was the 0.042 it's not technically written in here but it and i can always go back and convert it if you were to look at the parking lot requirements so the minimum planting for 0.8 which would be page 360 minimum planting requirement for number three minimum shall be 40 of the area so 40 of the parking area i added the words including aisles and driveways because it was unclear but b each large tree shall be considered to be 1200 square feet each medium tree shall be considered to be 600 square feet so if you kind of take those 1200 and 600 and go to the 40 parking area and do all the math on it it comes out 0.042 because i was kind of curious about the numbers would play out so so i knew you know like i said when i did for the existing zoning if i building perimeters and the requirements that came out 0.19 so that's much higher so i think i think we're in a range that could work it's just going to be a has to be 0.033 for the 90 percent district because of the very small just because there's very little land that's left for landscaping so i think that has to be there so if we're going to do something it starts at that maybe there's just everybody is this except for that one district or 90 percent's this 80 percent's this everybody else is something else i think if if you want my recommendation i'm somewhat tempted to go with the 0.033 and kind of just see how that goes and it's written here it's a lot cleaner it's a minimum it's a minimum standard i think a lot of people are gonna need it in i think it's going to catch the ones we want to catch the people who don't have any or really insufficient it adds a little bit more to a couple of projects that we have all recognized you know i think if i looked at 0.033 and it said Caldony Spirits is good then i think i would be a little bit more likely to say i don't know i think we've all kind of agreed that needed a little bit more landscaping on that flip side though the struck like taking the structures into account with the numbers you gave errors on the side of more trees yeah would add more trees yep if if we factored structures at a higher rate um then we would end up with more trees or more landscaping separating the two seems unnecessarily complicated to be the structures from other impervious it's more difficult to to do the the building that it is for other impervious cover they do have sort of different characteristics you know different aspects to them so um i never thought about doing it separately but from the public's point of view they tell you their square footage for their structures and their square footage for their impervious right they just give it to them the square footage they need for landscaping yeah that's yeah that's the way it would work but right now we're not asking them to differentiate we just asked them for an impervious cover how much of your property is impervious cover they don't split between the two which either way is still simpler i think there's a way to do it yeah and just for example the the caledonia spirits we had calculated that the site plan had 1,600 square feet of landscaping with a 0.033 on everything it comes out to 2,635 so they would actually have to add with that factor a thousand more a thousand more square feet which again as we said with with that site as empty as it is it that's why that's what i needed to hear to be able to conceptualize like what the 0.033 means yes i'm sorry so that was just a 0.33 apply yeah it's just that yeah there's no higher factor for the for the building for the building yeah but ultimately they need to be able to provide year with the square footage of the building as well i mean maybe not yeah for other reasons but for other permit applications so it's not as if you're asking them for information yeah the question that comes up at that point is once you start having structures buildings is where where where things fall into the gray area of whether it's a structure or a building of a so is your recommendation for all districts and all impervious cover the factor b 0.033 yes as written here it's not it's not as written here i would have to amend this i kind of put the more complex version in here so you could actually visualize it and see it it's easier to go through and we're just going to strike it all back to number one and or a and the factors 0.033 so we get rid of b for d and then the in districts with maximum cover a would be changed to just just the factors the factor is yeah that's true yeah but so then that removes all the structure yeah pieces uh so in i think you just add this to two to determine the square footage of planning area that will be required multiply 0.033 with the square footage yeah i'm comfortable with that i mean we have to start with simple if it doesn't work we go to more complex later so where it might not work it sounds like is in a more rural larger project where the 0.033 might it might stand out because it might be too little landscaping because it's something that's big that's out somewhere but in the urban area it seems like yeah because there's already stuff crammed in that the 0.033 is going to work fine yeah i think i think where it will work the least is with somebody who may have a parking lot of nine parking spaces so they miss out on the 0.042 so they end up in the total landscaping and i think there's some scenarios which could play out but again when we're looking at this we're trying to look at it as a minimum and i think a lot of cases come up people aren't meeting even the 0.033 minimum so i think this is already going to push people up to a higher standard and i think if we find their examples where it's not still not being pushed far enough you know again we've already looked at three projects that were approved under the previous zoning that each one of which we said oh we would have probably wanted to see more different landscaping in those whether it was caledonian spirits even hunger mountain co-op could probably depending on whether they were large trees or medium trees i think we would have been better about making sure their trees were more appropriate for shading those parking lots so how does this apply to say future developments where they have no parking um what's that yeah like buddies any yeah or yeah i'm or you know as we decrease the amount of impervious cover that we contribute to parking so that they're in that point three 0.033 is just applying to the building footprint itself so in that case it's lower than what you were proposing here because the 0.03 is lower than the but i think in those cases structure what you would find is this is the amount that's landscaped so if you're if you don't have a parking area and you have your alternative is you need to have certain amount landscape the rest of it's going to be grass because it's not impervious and it's not landscaped it's got to be something that's kind of falls into so i think this is really looking at having a arithmetic way of being able to say how many trees and shrubs so we don't end up with just lawn we end up with some shade i mean the overall goal is to mitigate the the surfaces the urban heat island right so that you know it depends on i'm just trying to imagine how that would be affected as we reduce the amount of land developed as parking so i mean it could still could basically come out as a wash just want to make sure we don't encourage more parking that's all yes and what we didn't want to do is to have the the factor get and i mean if it's decided doesn't really matter we didn't want to have the factor for parking get above the 0.04 because you're already meeting because then we're having to make up more landscaping somewhere else for the impervious cover that's already been taken care of and so people with a lot of parking lot may end up with lots of additional landscaping somewhere else to make up for the fact that their parking lot landscaping didn't provide enough so that would be the maximum for the parking lot landscaping is at 0.042 but as long as it's 0.033 people may have more we hope people have more people may have more simply because they meet one of those other requirements under screening i remember if there if you've got a um a non-residential next to a residential you have to provide screening to protect the residential uses that are next door and you don't get to come into the drb and saying yeah but you guys can only make me plant seven trees because that's all no works the other way around you do your screening first then we see if you meet your landscape requirement yeah yeah i might encourage you to landscape to meet your screening with landscaping and stuff that's it yes yeah if you have to meet screening anyway yeah if you already have to meet screening and it gives encouragement for people to support planting street trees because your street trees count um so all right so i think we're good is everyone comfortable with that approach we can revisit it if needed yeah can i just one quick question mike i just want to say thanks this is like a very elegant solution to a sticky problem we've been grappling with the last couple of meetings and i don't mean to i don't doubt the rigor with which you've come up with these numbers but i'm just curious how many um like how many models did you crunch or how many hypotheticals did you crunch to come up with the number i just i would say at least i would say between 10 and 15 different examples of pulling out site plans and counting the trees and what's out there and looking at examples and and this has been reviewed by adra who is the assistant zoning administrator and meredith who's the zoning administrator and we've kind of chewed over the different they would throw out very specific examples what about the problem on burlin street we had a big problem on burlin street with this particular one and we would pull it out and say well under the old rules they needed 14 trees and 87 shrubs under the new rules it's this and they're like oh well that's actually reasonable anything else in the landscape is that it no i think that's that's it i can i'll make these changes i think the only thing that would be pending would be what the tree board comes up with with that which i may just have to make a decision on that if it gets to the city council and the in the tree board hasn't made a decision and i guess i would recommend that that get pulled but otherwise i think we would keep it in there for now or do you guys want me to pull it and add it later in because we have two processes so everyone remembers we've got this fast track on this one and then we've got the second one i could always go and add that on the second one if we want the second punch list so that would just get struck i like the placeholder that you put in i think it's fine okay what is 358 yeah i mean i guess unless hypothetically they don't adopt something consistent with the ANSI standards i can't imagine that but i don't well i think it's fine i think people can it's something people can follow and i don't think it's gonna actually cause any administrative snacks anyway do i have a motion to forward the revisions to the landscaping and section of the zoning with the modifications that we agreed upon tonight to the city council so moved second second any discussion any further discussion all right all those in favor say aye all those opposed okay and the motion carries oh okay we have a draft yes bar moved are you on seconded we got it that's item five moving on to item six is about half an hour point five minutes we have to get to our minute the slope slope issue so um as part of the punch list of issues with the zoning that was recently passed might brought up this issue of this prohibition on building on slopes uh over 30 percent and it is there are no exceptions to the goal as written right now waivers waivers um and and therefore there were certain instances where it was coming up and it didn't necessarily make sense to deny the application like when for example a retaining wall is being built that would naturally be a slope higher than 30 percent so um we had some discussion about that and i think there there's two parts to this one is the prohibition on slopes and the second part is the calculation of density previously we the intent was to have that calculation be built on the buildable area on a lot um the proposal that we've received from staff would be to cut that calculation because the calculation was proving to be administratively very difficult with the data that we have now that's my understanding of the issue Mike is there anything else i missed nope that pretty much these changes are actually unlike what you just went through um and if anyone doesn't have them this still has the landscaping on the back half but if somebody wants to see the the slope ones just got a couple of these left what's the data all right uh well this was of the 11-7 so the changes here are actually pretty straightforward so this is kind of a strikeout so on this page this just deletes under 302.cm there used to be a section in there that would go and say in all other districts the maximum residential density shall be based upon the lots buildable area rather than total acreage or square footage which does not include any land with slopes greater than 30 percent is mapped on the attached map or wetlands or these other things so that in this case the policy is very i wouldn't say complicated it's it's um that's what we're really talking about rather than wordsmithing because it really is striking that thing that says we're going to use buildable area and then two pages later on 317 the actual changes here go through and it used to say all development of land in this category is prohibited and same with the engineered plans all development on the slope is prohibited what we've said is all development shall require hearing all development in this land shall require engineered plans so those are the pretty i guess the what's changing is pretty straightforward the question is should we make that change or not yeah so stuff recommendation was to as far as the buildable area just to delete that portion right yes and then as far as the prohibition on building on steep slopes the recommendation was to make it so that you could build on slopes over 30 percent if you have an engineer has provided plans and d rv approval right yes i've read all these things so we're not we're not going through an exempting and not regulating it we're simply going through and saying we're taking away the prohibition to go through and say okay if you've got an engineer and we have a hearing so bar raised some concerns based on well there's the two different issues one is i mean and they're tied together because slopes are part of what we've classified as unbuildable area so they're unbuildable then yeah yeah so yeah but one is that we put forward these proposed density maximums in various districts to the public and propose this and we were conveying this message that we calculated this with the idea in mind that you would you would have a maximum for your particular lot based on buildable area the actual number that you crunched would be based on that so we would have the really you know a lot with a lot of unbuildable area and then all of the density that you get if assuming it was all buildable kind of cramped in one area that was the concern and that's what we expressed to the public um and then the other part of it was um with slopes well maybe you can articulate your concern with the slopes i mean it was it was that concern and then it could hold in with slopes buildable though no longer unbuildable right i mean those two issues can be separated i think you know the question is is it good practice to build on a slope of 30 percent or more you know under under the regional planning it's one of the one of the members of the public brought up to me that the regional planning commission recommends not building on slopes over 25 percent so there is some you know there is a rationale that it's not good practice to build on on steep slopes so um but rather than prohibiting it then mike's proposal it just says we need engineered plans um the wording as written does not um you know you could apply for a waiver so it doesn't absolutely blanket prohibit any any development on slopes of 30 percent or more but it just makes it much more difficult to do um so that piece becomes one issue that i think to my mind we can separate um my made my and i see if we keep a tight control on it then perhaps you know this idea of having engineered plans make sense it's the other piece that has me more concerned that if we eliminate what was a kind of to my mind a sort of bedrock aspect of how we establish the densities in the first place um and say okay a site that has a you know 30 percent or 25 percent no sorry 30 percent slope and it's a half an acre is exactly the same as a as a site that is a flat site and half an acre and they should be able to have the same a number of units built on them that's where i think we get into my mind into concern and it brings back some of the example projects that had happened you know within the last years year or so um that were under concern with the public and particularly the issue of the Sibley Street project um and so i took a look at if we were to say that that site was just you know we were all out going calculate the density based on the total footprint of that site how many units could we put on it and how different would that actually be than what was proposed and very strongly reacted to against by the public yeah so before we get to yeah sorry into the reasons of it i wanted so the planning commission voted to adopt Mike's proposal staff's proposal but we also agreed that we should outline Barb's concerns and the rest associated with taking that approach to the city council as we put forward this recommendation so i asked um Mike and Barb if they could draft a memo to city council um we've got two different memos that we can either merge or for health separately i would encourage us to merge our memos um so that we're speaking is with one voice but that's what this discussion tonight is going to be talking about i mean how do we want to do that and can is there is it possible to come to some kind of a compromise that then we could actually bring forward with you know to at least from my standpoint with the common voice yeah we can talk about your examples because that might help to illustrate um so Barb wrote a memo and Mike wrote a memo reacting to that responding to it so let's talk about um maybe another one yeah you want one Kirby sure thanks starting place do you mind i mean is there anything that you would want to change in your memo based on what Mike's response well i think i mean for me it kind of helps to kind of take a step back and say you know yeah we can get into the weeds here there's a lot of weeds and his reaction as well as as my original but i think the the point for me is really to look at what do we want to be able to accomplish uh with whatever we determine is the best approach and um and i totally agree that that um as we knew that when we went forward with this zoning that things were going to come up that were going to prove to be very difficult to apply and um at least from my standpoint i think one of the issues had to do with the scale of the development that was being considered and um that um that this 30 percent or the buildable area issue really comes up to my mind in terms of the new multifamily development not somebody trying to expand an existing house putting an addition or something like that on so it really you know how could we modify this to apply to that in lieu of from the zoning standpoint so when we calculated those district densities that are in our zoning we didn't remove the buildable area when we figured out what the density should be we looked at what's actually on the ground so removing the buildable area will change the amount of building potential from the current zoning because you're no longer going to be reducing that amount but yeah that whether that makes a difference compared to what your neighbors you know looking at what's on the ground from the zoning standpoint probably not because the zoning was set up assuming we had flat buildable area in these neighborhoods when we found the 90 percent rules we founded them what does the provide that the other size scale massing requirements don't well because i i've been thinking about this that it to me one of those elements of character of the neighborhood is is the fact that historically we've only built on relatively flat areas of a site so we are not already building on steep slopes historically and if we want to maintain historical development patterns which i you know heard pretty strongly from the public that that was a desirable thing to do that that's one of those aspects that we need to be considering as well that unfortunately you know we want to say that our other care our other pieces our other requirements define character of the neighborhood but they really don't and that was actually the point of my doing the three examples that i did because we could meet every one of those other criteria um that we say our defining character of the neighborhood but um is this really all right do those developments reflect the character of the neighborhood is that i'm not following and okay it's my fault no i'm sorry i'm sorry let me let me go back a bit um we had said or mike said in his in his response that one of the that we have other ways to make sure that development is consistent with neighborhoods with the character of neighborhoods one of them is footprint one of them is set back one of them is um number of potentially number of units um scale massing articulation all of those aspects um and i guess my feeling is that those are not enough um and that was why i felt strongly that when we instituted the the piece about buildable area um what that did was it reflected the density of the build the buildings that were occurring in an existing neighborhood so it reflected the character of the neighborhood as well that that um as well as all of those other characteristics so if we remove that one and say we remove that criteria and we are left with just scale massing um articulation footprint all of that is that enough to maintain the character of the neighborhoods that we feel strongly about and um so that's why i did the examples because i feel that it it's the thought that and the prohibition on slopes it's going to result in a change in character of the neighborhood because the slopes not so much the slopes but the yeah if we again separate those two issues so let's set aside building on a 30 slope is it that different from building on a 25 slow probably not you know so if we set that piece aside but it has more to do with the density calculation and and the fact that we represented to the public there were a lot there was a lot of concern among the public that our densities were too high and we said but this is you know we we're we're going to make sure that any development that happens is consistent with neighborhoods because we've got this slope exclusion but i think what i heard from mike was that the the density calculations were calculated without that oh when the 90 percent rule was yeah but that was what people were coming up against and saying people were upset about the densities that we proposed even though they were what the technically they technically they reflect what's on the ground because it's a very well it's an average yeah right it's an average so we were saying that we have this extra step that that came into the process to ensure that that over development does not happen so my understanding of that piece of the process were you with us at this point i was i was there near the end when this happened what you're talking about and then you can add yours are correctly sleeping well and i just my recollection is not as strong my strong suit right now but my my recollection is that we assured the public that the buildable would prevent a really out of scale building from popping up in a neighborhood you know because everyone could just group you could just group your density in a one little corner of your parcel and then you would have this giant building then we developed the other requirements the scale size massing footprint and i my thought was that that got at the issue so that was that was my understanding my understanding was was the same thing that we have all of these these other requirements that are getting at the character of the neighborhood issue which is what people are the heart of it the public was concerned about the character of the neighborhood changing and density that's allowing distances densities that are too high would change their character their neighborhood so density became a proxy for character of the neighborhood and john adams is convinced me at this point because he's talked about this a lot and and others that i that i've heard talk about this or the planning background have convinced me at this point to say that density is really it's a red herring as far as for character the neighborhood it's easy for people because it's a number it's easy for people to attack to look at density and say that's going to determine what my neighborhood's like but really it's all the other rules that we have in place to determine what your neighborhood's like and density is just just looking in the wrong direction and that's kind of like where but when this when this conversation played out that's kind of where i ended up personally on it was realizing because at the beginning i too was thought that density had a lot of importance and now i realize it's actually a pretty poor proxy for character of the neighborhood it's like your your yeah the number of units that are allowed on a parcel you know yeah um it's a poor proxy that gets split up into five units but looks exactly the same and so that's you know no different character wise vectorian could get split into and there might be there might be more humans around but um but actually yeah but you would i'm sorry it might have parking it might have some other uh but but we have our setback rules we have a lot of zoning rules that just kind of put a another like a real check on it's very difficult to reach maximum density on any any parcel and and the reason why we increase the amounts is basically this mic determined that we're out of conformance anyway we're like way over the old density requirements in all our neighborhoods so we were just changed it to reflect reality um so that that's what i remember this test was done so if 90 of the parcels in this district would be in conformance with this density then that seems like that's a good gauge for where we are now what we want to maintain but i guess i would argue with you know with Kirby's assertion that that the number of housing units um has no influence on the character of the neighborhood because it definitely does i mean even i'll tell you that my my neighbors know that i have a two-family house not just a one-family house um it's and it's really and if i then suddenly took my house and changed it into five units that would have a significant impact on my neighborhood which is mostly one and two-family houses so that i think my reply to that in the memo was that that really really really sounds like a proposal to amend the use table not i mean we keep getting off on this buildable area you know this this is i mean this is this is her parcel and i have to calculate her density on on that slope map and it's it's just oh it's a slope that's a slope map all the red is slow his slopes the darkest red is the slopes that are over over 30 right so it really becomes you know how do you calculate such a such a number so we can enforce and administer those rules without having a large test but really if if the concern is having a multi-family will change the character of my neighborhood right now multi-family is either a permitted or a conditional use then the proposal should be the problem isn't the fact that somebody's going to have a 5,000 square foot house it's that they're going to have a 5,000 square foot house that's been broken into five or more units because it's if your concern is five or more units is the problem then change the use table to go and say you can't have multi-family housing in this neighborhood not let's let's try to adjust the buildable area to the point that somebody can't you know if it turns out that most of Barb's parcel is 25 percent slopes it's all going to be buildable and she can build it there and officially you'd be saying yeah that's fine as long as it's 25 percent slope it's okay that i have eight units but if that's 30 percent then it's not okay for me to have eight units well i know it's an arbitrary number but it was a number that we could we determined was at least a reasonable level and at least some portions of that site will be over 30 percent so that would automatically reduce the three-quarter acre that exists now in terms of buildable area if so the sketches that i did which i don't know if anybody actually saw had to do with um whether you know what the actual effects of that would be and i'll show this to Erin because i don't know if you saw this yeah i think that's part of the memory yeah so i mean the the issue being that you know given if that entire three-quarter parcel three-quarter acre parcel was considered and if we allowed a density bonus because it would be really easy to make it an infill pug then it would be possible to um end up having um a significant number of units eight units on a site that is currently two um surrounded by as you'll see that the numbers on the building surrounding it are the number of housing units um in the neighborhood um and the any of that development that's indicated there would meet any of the setback footprint um any of the other required parking as well requirements and what i'm saying is that to my mind that um is too dense it doesn't reflect um you know without that if if it would basically if it went if the slope exclusion was ignored then um about three units you know it would it would bring it down to four units um does this comply with all the setbacks yep footprint yeah the whole nine yards and it's a 2,500 square foot footprint so two units per floor you could end up with four units and as you see looking at the massing of the building it's not that different from the two adjacent properties just down the street so it's not as if it's a it's totally out of scale um so i think you know so that's sort of where i started was okay does this does it really make a difference um what we're trying to accomplish here um and i think it does i mean i think it has a serious impact because historically the whole three quarters of an acre would never have built built on because it was a steep slope technically now we could of course we could build on on the back portion of that but historically it would not have been that's why all the houses are along the street in in the relatively flat areas most of these sites in the back half of them do in fact have significant slopes on them and as i pointed out before i mean i recognize that that administratively mic would like to be able to tell people you know oh you're you know what their slope percentage is um but if somebody's going to be doing a development like this they would need to be getting an engineered plan in the first place and so any engineer even any site um designer would be able to come up and uh with the percentage that's over a third in that situation but i think the issue administratively is that for any sort of addition or forge or i mean you'd have to get an engineer to help and that i think that's my point is that it's to me it's more significant in terms of if we're increasing the number of of units on the property not just if we're adding on to an existing it yeah using it as a density designation what if you're increasing number eight units yeah yeah well then yeah but you're not changing the external appearance of the well i still think that they're you know is i mean there's certainly a cost associated with that there's a benefit to the property owner to add an additional unit to an existing building so the and to ask them to do a site plan is not unreasonable and in some cases might already have to provide a site plan so i that's why i i'm not sure that i understand that the requirement for having an engineer involved um who could then designate what was 30 percent of greater i think i'm better understanding this question about whether the use table should be the better i mean it it sounds like there's a question of how to deal with this issue of character in neighborhood and whether it's going to be through entity calculations what uses are allowed but it's also a direct decision to be made which i think is what i pointed out in the memo which was that in in her example the only way she could do her example with that many that much was to do a pu d which would mean it would have to be as we pointed out the only way you should be able to exceed our densities is if it was a well-designed project we spent year or more working on our pu d standards to death um but for to be what she proposed it would have to be a well designed senior housing living facility that will provide perpetually affordable housing units in hers rated facilities with a score less than 50 then you would be able to apply to get up to eight units so it's not like everybody walking in gets to go and get this you have to have a well-designed project to public hearings character of the neighborhood and traffic are actual requirements so if it doesn't meet character of the neighborhood the neighbors are going to have an opportunity to to discuss this point but they're not those are not criteria that are that difficult to meet frankly i mean you know a lot most new buildings are going to meet the hers rating and um you know it's it's not professionally affordable is more challenging than that one that i would necessarily choose you know oh there are there are eight different criteria to choose from so you would only have to do one of those well not that this is two or three of them i don't remember which one it is for that one so um yeah so the particular criteria um i mean we were trying to allow a lot of flexibility okay so it's um yeah so perpetually affordable was not going to be one of them but 88 you know accessible yes you know that kind of thing so you have to do two of those to get a 25 percent bonus density bonus or three to get a 50 percent bonus and out of the eight so i mean the affordable two of the following i think so yeah i mean this one this but yeah if it's yeah but if it gets to a point where it's if again if it's to the point where under no circumstances so in other words even if a hers rated senior facility with perpetually affordable housing is unacceptable this still is not a buildable area question this is it absolutely shouldn't be allowed anywhere if we're not going to allow it for a hers rating senior facility perpetually affordable then then it should just change the use table to say we're not going to allow it in that neighborhood and and otherwise we're just not going to allow what in that neighborhood multifamily housing if you're going to say you don't want a senior housing facility that's perpetually affordable and hers rated the best that we can do and you still are going to oppose that it's just not a use that you think should be allowed in the district and the rest of it is just a red herring that it's the buildable area that's the issue it's not the buildable area it's the issue it's the fact that it's multifamily no I don't think that's that's not the way I see it is that and no I don't have any problem with multifamily if there was enough site area that was flat that was reasonably that it could accommodate that level of development that number of units so to me it's not about the use it's about the appropriateness of the development within neighborhood what was across the street where it's a little flatter if I recall liberty well enough not quite as deep as your backyard no it's deep over here too so there's not a little bit more flat let's hypothetically hypothetically let's say it is across the street and that it's the slope issues taken out of it so you'd be fine with the eight units going in and that's well there is there are properties down the street where there are flatter yeah I used to live in one of them yeah the the one on across the street that has I think five units in it there's you know it's a on the corner of liberty and loomis there's a six unit that I used to live in and then across from that which is also in the corner of liberty and loomis a different corner there's I don't have any it's no there's there's only I think there are only five or six it's only five or six in that one yeah um yes I know I know that that's that is part of the neighborhood is large multifamily yeah except that that's not that's not in the same district that's not in our res six thousand it's in res the corner of liberty and loomis isn't a different one yeah because this is the line this is the dark line here oh you live on the dividing yeah I do sorry I do yeah so without the bonuses fewer units would be able to be built on that side of the line more units no she without the density bonus yeah right but more on my neighbor side by the way who has a bigger flat area now so just because they're in res three thousand so you know that's the kind of thing that I think to me it this whole issue of buildable area reflects a characteristic of the neighborhood so if we have a different way that we can get to that point without you know using buildable area asset criteria then I'd be fine with doing that it's just that somehow we need to be able I mean because people value the historic character of our neighborhoods that's why they want to move here how do we retain those characteristics while still allowing for additional infill development so what's the I'm sorry what's the core characteristic that you're seeking to preserve because that's what I'm not quite understanding the characteristic of the neighborhood having to do with the pattern of development and the specifically along the street the streetscape you know we could say you know there's a certain pattern there's a sense certain size which and some of those elements are reflected in other criteria such as footprint and setback and articulation and our other architectural criteria but other elements of the building pattern that has developed over time it's sort of like what what Kirby and I were just talking about you know as you move through down the street the development pattern changes and appropriately what happens is that the particular district that those properties are in changes as well but historically what's been reflected is not what we're proposing could be built now and and I think that what we're proposing is a significant change to what has historically developed and I feel a little dense because I'm still not understanding either I mean Aaron's question is hitting at it for me because what I see as the only thing that we're giving up is regulating the the number of people and that's that's why I feel so I mean I feel like we've got all of the external regulations to ensure that buildings are near the street facing that their front doors are facing the street that they have consistent scale massing and I just get really concerned about saying that a certain number of people in a home reflects the character of the neighborhood and that's that's what I'm no I don't yeah and I don't think that that's it may it the number of family units you might is basically what you're saying you're not really saying number of people necessarily and and I you know I agree that we increase the number of family units we can increase the number of family units in existing buildings and essentially have very little impact on the character of the neighborhood which is what we were discussing earlier that has minimal impact but once we start looking at infill development we have to be much more careful about that in terms of what's the impact and that's why we have all of those designs right well I mean we you know I my other example was the was the Sibley street and and I met every single one of the setbacks articulation and footprint and still ended up with you know I can't remember now 12 14 units um 12 yeah um and those 12 units could be built if you consider the entire property and and don't exclude the 30 slope of which there is a significant amount on that so we're running out of time do you have one more follow-up question no I mean I think we are out of time actually yeah I'm gonna um thanks Leslie I think first I want to know do the commissioners want to reopen this discussion I mean there was a vote there was a decision we want to reopen that decision and continue this discussion at future meetings that's the first question the second question is if the answer is no how do we want to move forward with preparing a memo for city council so I just want to mention both parts to that question guys I have a point of clarification yeah the decision that we are looking to reconsider is specifically one yes I think it's like oh go ahead is it is it the the 3002c change and yes the which was just 3002 I don't have one sorry sorry it's the buildable area one okay yeah and the later one is the yeah the two that might the might teed up at the beginning so the decision was to um recommend to city council eliminate the that's buildable area okay so the density calculations based on buildable area okay access to 3002c and then then this other the yes they were here the hearing threshold well yeah and then you would allow for some buildings on slopes okay but requiring engineering and design review board okay development because there's a design yeah yeah make sure it's confusing so that's that was the decision and then I asked for memos to be drafted and pointing in time so do people want to reopen the discussion to see if there's a different substantive solution I know Barb does I know she'll vote positively on that but are others interested in that or the reason why I ask it like this in a formal way is because we've talked about this a lot we've had an affirmative vote and I think it's important that we be conscious of our time if we've had a vote and other people don't want to continue the discussion then I want to respect that and and move forward and we can draft a memo that cautions the city council of the risk of adapting this approach I think that's perfectly readable solution but if people do want to revisit this and have a little bit more background information since not everybody on the commission was there for all of the public hearings leading up to its own adoption then that's certainly a welcome way to move forward to uh another point the vote that we took that we do you weren't a part of that I was not a part of because that included a requirement that we send memos to the city council time no no that's also what we need to vote on yeah I think it was more we decided as a group that it made sense I mean generally speaking when we submit recommendations to the city council Mike usually puts together a memo and presents here's why we've put these together in this one we felt the need to be a little bit more involved in interacting with that especially since you know bar concerns are shared by others for me I'm not finding that I'm like moving in my point of view on it but I thought it was important for bar to be able to have a platform so so I'm satisfied that that she was able to plead her case at this point would probably be in favor of moving to city council I'm going to abstain from this one understandable Erin really here's what I propose I'm going to dominate Kirby to try to interweave these memos a little bit in points of view and then to get Barb and Mike to review and sign off on is that okay yeah that sounds good we we use both semi-electronic versions of your memos and I probably already have them but the latest electronic version of your memo word document but it's in word you can you can actually yeah yeah yeah I have a word version of it yeah you should have word version of it yeah yeah I'll find the latest PDFs or words you could do that so that we could discuss it at the January 14th meeting yeah something to do over the holidays Kirby and if not we can move it back just yeah to give us a goalpost here yeah okay and thank you I also want to mention that you have said that different members of the public have concerns they should absolutely submit their comments or come in and provide them verbally because maybe there is something and then you want maybe they'll say it in a way that is no well I don't you know based on what they've said to me you know I think that they're we've captured everything captured everything right yeah so so one clarification we've we've got the landscaping moving forward so that can get fixed yes if this is waiting till January it's gonna miss the window for the adoption of that one did we want to is the excluding the the buildable areas piece I mean because and you can correct me if I'm wrong it's the buildable areas piece that's really your concern we could move forward the other two piece the other piece that goes through on the table adjusting table say you can build over 30 percent with a hearing and engineering and flipping those and flipping the tables yeah it's the strikeout version then I think yeah then there's an alternative at least I can start going up and getting that to change and we we and if the buildable areas ends up on the long adoption list then it ends up on the long adoption list but that's up to you guys to decide whether you want to move buildable area forward but I would at least go and move the the engineered 30 percent stuff yeah yeah I mean that would still require an engineer to be involved but yeah and we have engineers downstairs who do our reviews I mean just as there's stuff downstairs right now for proposals on College Street that can't get building permits until they get approval from engineers downstairs but that would that would move those two forward and and leave the buildable areas question as a separate item okay yeah so do I have a motion to the staff recommendation for the steep slope part of the zoning to city council with the landscape that the steep slope aspect of the build allowing building on areas yes right because steep slope is two parts right you can not sure that was clarified but anyway yeah so we draw and restate the motion all right we try to make it easy for everyone else yeah rather than say give me a motion yeah right great but Mark you want to make the motion what do you how about the amendments to section 3007 which is the steep slopes okay so do I have a motion to recommend the city council the staff recommendations for the revisions to 3007 steep slopes that prohibited construction on slopes of 30 yes to amend that yeah those are the only changes to sections 3007 the other changes are in 3002 too right so the only changes in 3007 are to the to that table that table yeah okay and and the area areas I guess I'd forgotten we did square footage area changes yeah well that was why just for simplicity of the motion I said the changes that were proposed 3007 okay all right then it can come in court encompass some of those minor okay do I have such a motion I love that motion whatever that motion was okay any further discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed all those is abstaining okay so the motion carries um that is item six we're gonna go skip item seven item eight quickly let's look at the minutes I just like to keep in touch there is a one kiss icky wrong is still wrong but two got two of the three we're getting there I'll yeah I make I usually make these fixes so I move we approve second any discussion favor say aye aye I'll take it I was in favor aye thank you thank you for all your help this is complicated