 I'd like to call the meeting to orders, July 11th meeting of the Popular Planning Commission. First, we have to approve the agenda so people can take a look and move to approve. I'll move to approve the agenda. Okay, do you have a second? Second. Second for Marianne, those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Okay, any opposed? Okay. The next thing on the agenda is comments from the chair. I don't think I have anything since last time. I think I've already pulled everyone about the verge article that came out at the end of June. Nothing else comes to mind as far as things. Seems like we're still on schedule. Things are slowing down for the summer but things are still on schedule with the city plan. And later tonight I want to talk briefly about arts and culture so we can get some movement on that chapter. But I don't have anything. Does anyone else have any updates or anything? Okay. Next item on the agenda is general business. So comments from the public about something not on the agenda. We do have one member of the public here. So if the person with the name Tim Zimmett has anything that they would like to bring in the planning commission. Just attending to see what is going on. Thank you. Okay. We're welcome. Okay, so we can move on. First thing we're going to do is discuss the recommendation for a new alternate member for the CVRPC. I think the hope here, why this is on the agenda is that someone hopefully will volunteer and step up and help Gabe. He's still willing to take one of those two slots but we do need someone else. Well, so I would just lead with this that Ariane, when you were out of town last week said that she would be willing to take that spot. So I would suggest and actually would nominate. I don't think it's the right process if you can correct me but I would nominate that Ariane be our representative to the central remote planning commission and then Mike go back into the alternate slot. Okay. Ariane and Mike, how do you feel about that? I, so this is a, can I just clarify? I was feeling very guilty when I had missed two planning commissions in a row. So yes, I did volunteer in that when I was in that emotional space. Sorry to take advantage of you Ariane. No, no, no. I just want to, well, I want to ask a question and clarify what the commit time commitment is. So we are getting a new member to replace Marcella, right? At some point, yes. At some point, but that just hasn't happened yet. Okay. And this is a once a month meeting commitment on Tuesdays. Is that correct for the CBRPC? So Kirby probably, he's served on it for a while so he probably can speak better but my discussions with Marcella was that I would cover the general meeting which is tomorrow, you know, on a monthly basis. And then she would continue, she had volunteered for some committees and that was what was really dragging her down was the committee work. That was just a lot of extra work. And so that was how we decided we were going to sort of split the work but I don't know if it's required that you fill a committee Kirby, you probably know better than I do. All right. From my view, it's absolutely not required that you fill in the same capacity that Marcella was. She had volunteered, it sounded like for a couple of the more intensive committees. And I'm sure, you know, being one of the larger towns in the county, I'm sure that they would like Mopulier to be really active but I don't think there's any requirement that our representative take on a whole bunch. And so it's really up to you. I think that there's an understanding that you're on at least one subcommittee. But as we've said before, there's a number of subcommittees that don't meet regularly. And she was on the executive committee, which is, you know, a busy one. So like Aaron, for example, I said I would serve on this Act 250 review committee which only meets when there's a project that meets some certain scope that would impact that entire area. And so it's pretty rare. And when they've had them, it's mostly been solar projects that go through fairly quickly. Okay, yeah, I mean, I feel like I could handle, you know, for up to a year, I could handle one more meeting a month, but I probably am not, you know, I can really do more than that. But if I can be on a committee that does not have, that has maybe, you know, what are two extra meetings over the next year? I could probably do that. But yeah, I feel like one more meeting a month is probably realistic, my max kind of capacity. Yeah, I think that that would be okay. And there's also the alternate to help out. That's why there's two. Mike, what are your thoughts about being... Yeah, I mean, I served alternate. I think when you were on Kirby and I think when Tina was on as well, I was the alternate and it mostly, I would just fill in in the event that somebody wasn't able to make it. So there wasn't a lot of obligation on my end. So yeah, I can fill back in in that spot. But usually I'm just playing back up. And I think what Gabe and Marcello were trying to do was to kind of split the workload between being able to serve on some committees as well as being able to do some general as well. But usually I haven't been attending that many meetings, but I serve in a backup capacity if we need somebody. Yeah, I mean, I think part of the reason why we were trying to balance things that way is because Marcello didn't want to step down from her commitments, but she's leaving now. So it's not the same commitments. And they do a pretty good job of trying to pressure people into getting into committees, but you certainly, your ability to say no, goes a long way to just say, I can't take on anymore. And I think nominations also already went through. So you actually might be showing up in time for a year where you're already outside of the nomination cycle for committees. The other thing, they have alternates on all these. So if you can't be on something, even that sort of partial one that I was gonna serve on, because I have another commitment that same Thursday sometimes. And she's like, well, if you can't make it, we have alternates appointed. So there's a lot of flexibility. And the other thing I would say, and you both probably, Mike and Kirby probably know better, but it seems to me like most of the other people that were there are retired and probably have more capacity to do some of these things than somebody who's working full-time might. So I feel like, yes, we're not pillager, but there's a lot of capacity there for some of the other commissioners. Yeah, I agree with that. So yeah, don't feel pressured to take on more than you can with it, just don't. I mean, I was on it for a while and honestly, I didn't even feel the pressure when they tried to recruit me. I was just like, I'm busy, no. So yeah, well, okay. So if the two of you are okay with that, we can do it and we can reassess after a year or whatever period of time too. I think Marcel was on it maybe a little too long anyway. It's technically an annual appointment. So I'll forward that recommendation to council. Okay, do you need a vote? Okay. As long as it's... Okay. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Ariane, for stepping up. Huge help. The next thing on the agenda is to talk about awarding the web-based city plan contract to either Stone Environmental or SE Group. I'm gonna hand it over to Gabe because I wasn't there. So Gabe, if you can just give us some backgrounds and we'll have some discussion if we need to and then we'll just do a vote. Yeah, so I don't know if people had an opportunity to take a look at the different materials that were provided or the Orca show, sort of after the fact, they both came in. I mean, both very professional. I think my impression, I'm not... I mean, that's not my space. So I don't wanna necessarily put my thumb on the scale for everyone, but my impression of Stone Environmental was that GIS and linking those things seemed to be their strong point. Whereas, is it SE? What's the other contractor? SE Group. Yeah, I mean, they really are all about, this is actually what they do. I mean, they're all about integrative media. So they have some GIS, they actually kind of move beyond some of the capabilities that maybe we'll use, but maybe we won't, Mike, you maybe talk about some of those programs, but they have access to some of those programs. If they have other programs that they find might work better and just watching their demonstration, the two different demonstrations of the website. Again, one is very sort of what you think of if you've drilled into any of our... I mean, they built what we have for the transportation folks, right, the road crews and stuff, the snow plow. So I mean, it very much looks like that. Whereas, if you're thinking about really going through a plan where you can really get a feel for what's going on, that's what SE was doing. It really is like, just very dynamic and interactive, I guess would be my comments. Does anyone else have any feedback or impressions to share? Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think both of them give fine presentations. I think there is a certain appeal about having stone being local, retaining them. That being said, I just feel like overall, I got the sense that SE group has quite a bit more experience, I think doing the kinds of work that this would be calling for. And so I just think that given the budget that we're throwing at them, there's a little more potential for them. For us to get a little more bang for our buck, they're not gonna be reinventing the wheel to do this sort of work, I don't think. So I would lean towards SE group. That being said, I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with retaining stone. Thanks, Aaron. I will go ahead and just share Jeff's email for the record. Jeff, of course, won't be voting tonight because he's not in attendance, but he was there for the presentation and said that he found both sides compelling but felt that SE balances mapping and planning and his portfolio fits the RFP. So those are, that's just feedback. Do we have any other comments about it? Do we have a motion to approve either one of the two consultants or to recommend either one of the two consultants? I'd move that we retain SE group to do the work. Okay. I second. I second. Second from Gabe. Any discussion before we vote on that? This is a little bit of an aside, but like I said, I would like to see if there are ways that we can incorporate sort of getting stone involved given that they are local. And I was just gonna ask Mike, is there any, do we see any sort of any ancillary work with this that we may be able to pull them in in a future date or this, we sort of see this as a one shot deal with SE? Well, I see they work a lot with DPWs. So we have some GIS capabilities in our public works department. And so Stone has worked with them. That's why we've got the Snowplow tracking program that's in there. But this would be kind of its own thing, but Stone is, we just, the Elks Club environmental work that was just done, the phase one Brownfield work was done by Stone. We, you know, Stone routinely comes in, they may not have this contract, but they get picked up on quite a few projects being the local company. And I do think that it's worth mentioning they're both using the same platform. So if, you know, future edits or work is required, it's not like one could not pick up where the other one left off because they are both familiar with the same technology and the same backend. So it would not be hard for them just to jump in. Yeah. That's good to know. Do you have any more discussion on the motion? Okay, hearing none, those in favor of the motion to recommend SC group for the website work, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay, so it's five zero, sorry, five zero favor of the motion. And that will be our recommendation for city council. Okay, moving on. So yeah, I'd ask Mike to throw in there just so we can have a little bit more meat to the agenda and also just to move on things that we can move on. A discussion of a possible Arsiculture chapter. So I'm gonna share screen and show you what we have. Okay, can everyone see the document? So this is based on just like some like preliminary, like throwing something together for discussion a lot earlier. Right now there's, this definitely we need to be rephrased and Lena, Mike would be doing that to rephrase it to match the same conventions as used in other chapters. But there's three aspirations here right now. One of them is popular will support public art integrated into the urban landscape. So once public art, another is popular will support private artistic exhibits and performances. And then the last one is popular will support the development of artistic skills and art appreciation in the region. I think it's not here, but we had mentioned this could also be a space where if we're going to incorporate in the planning for the city, like doing more to appreciate like cultures, culture going back a very long time. Like so like native culture stuff. I think there's some room to also do that if we have interest. So first off I'd say, what do people think about this? What do you think about those aspirations? Let's just start there. So maybe you mentioned this and I forgot. Are these aspirations that you came up with or Mike came up with? Cause there's no committee that kind of is in the sphere. Yeah. If I remember correctly, like I wrote this originally I spoke with a couple of local artists to get their input about what they thought was important. And I also spoke with the person who's the chair of the public, there's a public art committee, I believe now, right, Mike? And I spoke with him too, but I don't remember his name right now, but he seemed just like he liked the idea but he didn't, I don't remember him giving a lot of substance actually. It was the local artists that gave me a lot of substantive feedback. Okay, cool. Thanks. I just wanted to get the background, reminded of the background. Yeah. And this could be though something that once, like moving forward now, now that there is the public arts committee we could absolutely have them take a look at the first draft. Did you review the public art master plan for this one? No. There is a public art master plan that was developed. When was that done? Is that pretty recent? Everything turns into a blur since COVID. It was since COVID though? Well, may have been just as, may have been 1920, somewhere in that window. Okay. That's around the same time that I threw this together. I might have put this together before that existed. It's a good thought. Yeah, cool. I see this. Yeah, this is something we can incorporate. Definitely, it looks like they're pulling out specific projects and things for this. So it looks like we could mix in a lot of this stuff into strategies. So maybe we should do that. Maybe we should plan to use the master plan to flesh out some more of this. So yeah, so let's plan to do that. I'm also hoping it's just, if the planning commission has any, like 10,000 foot view type things that we think would be important to have for or is missing or lacking in this area from up here. So you wanna have thoughts about that? I think the master plan goes into a number of those, some of those, at least from an arts perspective. For being a capital city, it is amazing how, I mean, there is more recently from a public arts perspective, but for a long time, it's a city that's remarkably devoid of any public art. And this is in stark contrast to having worked in Berry City where there are granite monuments and granite statues and a lot of art that's built into Hope Cemetery and all these other things, but really there's very few large, for being the state capital monuments of any significance that were really erected here in Montpelier. So I think that's one of the reasons the public art commission was trying to get into getting more art into the downtown, to kind of start emulating a little bit of what Berry City's been doing, even with little things like bike racks with gargoyles and stuff like that. So just even little things, art in little places can make a difference in kind of livening space. Yeah, yeah, totally agree. And yeah, we discussed that before about it being a serious need. It's funny, I think the timeline went like, we were talking about the need for that and then the public arts committee started up and started working on it. Okay, well, Mike, what do you think about? Like, would you like us to flesh this out more and work on it? Or would you rather take the outline, take the master plan that exists and develop something based on that? I mean, I think right now, from my timing standpoint, I'm gonna be continuing to try to wrap up the community services chapter and then starting to lay out some of the land use stuff so we can start working on getting that chapter. And then obviously starting to work with the consultant once we've got a contract signed to start putting our city plan onto the web, which was what the contract is for, is to start building that out. And I think that's gonna take a lot of time, not to mention the city has two permits that have been appealed to environmental court, one of which is being appealed on making a determination that a number of aspects are unconstitutional. So I've had to pencil out a bunch of time, a lot of time to preparations towards going to court and getting deposed and all these other things to defend our zoning regulations against constitutional challenges. So my time, I don't have a lot of time right now to dedicate to working on the arts chapter, but it's something that certainly can be there if I've got some time, if I've got some windows of time, but I wanna stay focused on the key pieces, which is the community services, the land use and oh, utilities and facilities, which should be a pretty simple straightforward one. It's 90 plus percent done, I just need to meet with DPW to have them give their blessing, but other than that, it's done. Okay, that's good to know. Yeah, I didn't know that those things were even with you. I thought maybe some of them were with the other city committees still, but okay. So it sounds like community services and the other thing. Yeah, the community services, I'm meeting, I've already met with the cemetery committee, and they wanna work on it for another two more, or at least another meeting or two. They're gonna meet in July and maybe August to finalize it. And then I'm meeting with the rec committee and the senior center. So I've got three committees in them. Okay, so that one might take a little while, but you said utilities is mostly done. Utilities are mostly done. Okay, yeah. Good, okay, yeah, so I didn't realize that, yeah, that stuff was on your plate at this moment. Yeah, well, would it be helpful for you? I just don't, I don't wanna do work if it's not even helpful for you, but I don't mind putting more work into fleshing this out and maybe putting it into like the Google Docs spreadsheet. Would that be helpful or what, or you tell me what would be helpful? If you're working within this Word document, that's fine. I can get it into the Excel spreadsheet later. That doesn't take long to do once we've got it kind of fleshed out. Okay, well, just for the sake of time, I don't wanna take up any time with this. I wanna just bring it to your attention. It's saved with the other city plan stuff on the website. So if people can just, if you feel like it, if it's of interest, take a look at this outline, think about it, send me feedback and then I'll try to flesh this out more to be useful for Mike later. And I will get to reading the master plan and incorporating as much as I can out of that as well. So just send your feedback to me. I'll be working on it. If anyone else is interested in working with me on it, just let me know. We can do like a working group sub thing. We just have to meet in a group of three or less for open meeting law reasons. But we can just keep working on this on the side here and there and as we get through the core city plan chapters, we can then develop it out like the others. So if that sounds okay with everyone, I'll just move on from this, but please reach out, review it, give feedback. If no one has anything else on the arts chapter, I'll move on. Okay, so the last thing that we have on the agenda for tonight is about the shading provisions. I decided to throw that on there just because I don't wanna lose momentum. I think the last time we talked about this, if I recall, it seemed to make sense to people for us to work on our own proposal first and then work on any outreach related to it after. And so if we don't have city plan work coming up in the next meeting or two, I would like for us just to go ahead and make that a topic of discussion and come up with a plan that we wanna re-propose to city council. As a reminder for people, the options that we had talked about before, these are from Mike, what he had said to the city council before was like we could come up with an amendment that what we have before was simple, but I think they wanted more to it, they wanted something different. So we talked about limiting the type of development that it applies to, roofs, walls, that kind of thing we had talked about. I don't need to go through it all, because we've talked about it before recently, that there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of options. I'd like for us to go ahead and act on that soon. So I just wanted to put that out there so that people are thinking about it and so that they're ready to do that and to brush up on our options so that when we come back and talk about this, we'll be able to efficiently come up with a new approach that we think's best. Does anybody have anything to say about that plan? So I'll make just a follow-up to that comment that I made on the appeal. One of the pieces that has been appealed, so there was a project on a street and one of the unconstitutional claims is against the shading provisions. It's a bizarre case. They are, the people were not subject, so the neighbors want to move a structure. So property A wants to move a structure. Property B is their neighbor. Property B has appealed this to court and is upset that property A does not have to meet the shading requirements. And it's because they're a single family home and single family homes don't have to meet that requirement. So they've appealed, property B has appealed and claimed it's unconstitutional. So it's kind of weird because if they win the appeal, they basically deem the shading provisions unconstitutional and it doesn't apply anywhere in the city. So it doesn't, they don't actually win if they win. So it's kind of a weird appeal. We've pointed that out to them that that is the outcome if they win their appeal on the unconstitutional. So, and then from an interesting standpoint, on that as we did our homework, it turns out that this is very unique. Our shading rules are very unique, even in the entire country, because there's something called ancient lights, which has never been found to be constitutional in the United States. And basically ancient lights is kind of this idea of you have a right to the light to your property. And basically it's never been found to be a valid right. Now I'm not an attorney, but I've seen it on a number of cases and it's interesting that since then, somebody has pointed out that it's generally not constitutional. So it'll be very interesting to see if this even survives through this falls court hearing. And it would take us a lot of work. What is this right that is, that like, yeah, could you explain that again? So there's a legal theory called ancient lights. And I think what it comes down to is that you, it's like in Europe, there's I guess there's these certain rights and when they tried to apply them in America, they didn't stand up in court. And one of them is that you can't, you know, I'm entitled to the light that shines on my property and you can't therefore create shade. Or you're taking away some of my rights. And that has never held up as a right under American constitutional law. So it was interesting. And actually, you probably remember Kirby when we were going through the public hearing process to adopt the zoning, Jerry Tarrant showed up and gave a litany of complaints. I mean, I think four or five pages of them. And we just kind of, because he had so many of them that just kind of were there, this was actually one of the ones he complained about. And he said that this whole provision of shading isn't even constitutional under the ancient rights, ancient lights doctrine or something like that. And actually it's shown up now, we've found other references to it. And it'll be interesting to see when this goes to court, whether this whole provision is even constitutional. And it's being challenged ironically by somebody who wants to be protected. So, well, I just looked up this ancient lights. It's a property right that you have a right to the light that goes through your windows. How would our shading requirement interfere with someone's access to light? It's actually protecting it. It actually is protecting it. Except that they have appealed, and that's why we're all scratching our heads to try to understand why it's the neighbor that's appealing it. Because she's appealing it because she wants it to apply to this property. But we've pointed out the way these unconstitutional arguments work, appealing it won't actually get that person put in. Yeah. It simply rules that it's unconstitutional and therefore gets stripped from the zoning bylaws in its entirety and therefore nobody gets protected by the shading requirements. So that's one of the two claims. So one of the two unconstitutional claims I have to defend this fall. One is for the shading and the second one is for design review. So the second one is actually quite significant. We feel very comfortable I think and we'll see how it goes in the court process, but certainly I think I can safely say in conversations as we're developing our defense of our zoning, we feel very comfortable that our design review rules will withstand legal scrutiny and that they are constitutional. The shading requirements on the other hand, I don't know. It's just, we'll have to see. It's the design review rules themselves that are being questioned. The district boundary again, this is a property that's outside of the design review district, but they would like their neighbor to be in the design control district. So that way they have to meet the design control rules, but they're not in the design review rules. So if they win, again, they wouldn't put their neighbor into the design review boundary, but it would in fact, remove everybody else from the design review boundary. But again, this has been explained to their attorney and they are well aware that that's the rules and that's the appeal. So I get to prepare for court. So we'll see how those both fair, but again, I'm confident without getting into this, again, any ex parte that I'm confident in our design review rules will withstand legal challenge. Okay. Is it the environmental case? Taking the environmental... Oh, sorry. Yeah, I was just saying, it just takes an inordinate amount of my time that I shouldn't have to be dealing with, but I've probably already dropped the good 60 hours of work into preparing the fence stuff. So. That's unfortunate. I doubt it's changed. I mean, my experience in the environmental court from before is that it moves very slow. Things live there for a while. So I guess this could... It's been going on since last year. So we've just been going through all of the questions and rebuttals and motions of this and motions of that. And it's kind of everything's been dismissed, dismissed down to, I won't say it's down to the last, but the only pieces that involve us anymore is just down to whether these are constitutional. And this neighbor's project's been on hold the entire time? Yes. Yeah. That's not unexpected for a project that's under appeal. Well, thanks for that update, Mike. I don't know if I have anything more to say about zoning regulations. It doesn't sound like that's going to change anything for our reconsideration. I think, I mean, what we're doing is clearly not in response to the litigation. What we're doing is our own adjustment. So... I just wanted to make you aware that there is this effort going on in the background. So when it comes to making a decision of, let's say we come up with an idea and we want to go to city council. I might, if we were in September, advise that we wait until after the October hearing. I might be going to court either September or October. So we'll see. And at that point, yeah, we won't have a decision, but we might have an idea of where this is going. Because if it's going to be ruled unconstitutional, then I don't know how much effort we want to put into making that decision to the city council. If that happens, yeah, I think our recommendation would be just to take it off the books and leave it. Okay. Well, if we don't have city plan work to do, I'd still like to go ahead and have our recommendation ready for that, if that's okay with everybody. But hopefully we can get the utilities chapter and some other things on the agenda and move those forward. Okay, well, that's all I've got. Does anyone else have anything else before we adjourn? Do you want to do the minutes? Oh, right. Minutes from last time, right? Well, June 13th. Minutes from June 13th, because the 27th was not a forum. So we do have minutes, but we don't have to approve them. You're welcome to if you'd like to, but... I don't feel a need to. Okay, if everyone can take a look at the June 13th minutes before we let us know if there's any changes. The minutes mentioned NOAA from popular high school. Is that still happening, Mike? I invited him to the meeting, but I don't know if he's back from vacation yet. I believe, I had told him that the next council meeting, I think is July 20th. That'd be about right. A week from Wednesday. And so he could ask to be appointed. We have a seat, there's always an open seat for a student member, and we've invited him to apply as a student member. So I think he was gonna apply for that position. And if anybody has folks, I'm hoping the planning commission is, planning commission vacancy will also be that night. If we've got... Yeah, if you haven't already, everyone spread the word to interested people that you know, we wanna fill the seat, we wanna make sure there's good applicants. Okay, so everyone's had a moment with the minutes. Do we have a motion to approve the June 13th minutes? You do. Okay, we have a motion from Aaron, we have a second. Second. Second from Gabe. Does anybody need more time? Okay, those in favor of approving the June 13th minutes? Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the minutes are approved, and we're good to adjourn. Everyone go enjoy the summer. We have a motion to adjourn. I'll move to adjourn. Motion from Ariane, do we have a second? Second. Second from Gabe. Okay, those in favor of adjournment? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, we'll see you guys in a couple of weeks.