 All right. We'll call meeting to order. It is 701. So, yep. All right. So let's start off with introductions. Our new member of our team. Yep. So I'm happy to introduce the Isaac Maya joined us as a development planner. So he's going to be filling a bunch of different roles, but as Lisa Riddle, a long-term zoning minister, looks to transition out of Colchester at the end of June. He's going to be taking a lot of responsibilities with the development review board on. Occasionally you're going to see him coming here. Hopefully I can pull him in some fun stuff. He worked as an intern for us back in 2018 and the town plan. Some of you may remember. He's been working with us for a long time. He's been working with us for a long time. He's been working with us for a long time. So I don't know that being said, I'm very happy to have him on our team. And Zach, do you want to go for you introduce yourself? First of all, I want to apologize if you, my connection cuts out because my internet's acting up. It's very bad. But yeah, I was. Thanks for the introduction, Sarah. I'm really happy to be back in Colchester. I, you know, was an intern. I was an intern at the central Vermont regional planning commission for a couple of years. You know, I was doing land use planning and assisting municipalities there. Very much smaller municipalities in Colchester, but I'm really excited to be back and, you know, taking on more of a zoning role. So really, really excited about that. I'm excited to work with you all intermittently as well. Great. Welcome. All right. Ready to go for our public comment items, not on the agenda. I see Patrick O'Brien. Zach, nice to have you back while we're waiting. Sorry about that. Are you waiting for me to speak? Yes, we are. Honestly, I have two zoom meetings going because I'm in South Burlington in five minutes. And so I had him both on the screen. I had to shut that one off. So thank you very much for your time. My name is Patrick O'Brien. I'm here representing SD Ireland. And I'm going to talk a little bit more specifically. I'd like to talk to you about a project that we have in the growth center called Sunderland Farms. We are currently building the infrastructure. And we have a little bit of a snafu with the, with the form-based code wording. As you may know. There is a requirement that the garage is be set back from the principal plane of the building. I believe eight feet. And. That poses a, a big problem when you want to build a, a triplexes and fourplexes like we are proposing to. And I'm going to show you why in a second. Our buildings are approximately. Our each unit is approximately 40 feet deep. And 28 feet wide or to 30 feet wide. And I'm just going to show, show this to you. I have no idea if you can see it or not. Can you, can you even. See that. So Patrick. Yes. I'm going to show you why in a second. Our buildings are approximately. Our each unit is approximately 40 feet deep. And 28 feet wide or to 30 feet wide. And I'm just going to show, show this to you. So Patrick. Yes. We do not allow screen sharing unless it's pre arranged ahead of time. So you could turn in a camera and show us a picture of it that way, but. That's okay. That's okay. So. So because each of you can do this exercise at your desk or at home. So we have units that are basically a box of. 40 feet long. By 28 feet wide. And in those boxes, we need to fit typically a. A 12 foot wide garage. By 22 feet deep. So if you do math, if you have 40 feet and you take. Eight feet off of that. That leaves you 32 feet. Your garage is going to be 22 feet deep. So that takes. That basically leaves you with 10 feet of room in the rear of your unit. And so. What I would like to, to propose is that we reduce that. We do one of two things. We reduce the principle plane of the building. Setback. So we can have a much more functional layout. With these units. I know one question could be, well, why can't you make the units bigger? And the reason we don't want to make them bigger. Is because we want these two afford to be affordable. We want these to be in the $300,000 range or lower. And if we go bigger, we have to ask for money. Quick question, Patrick, were you part of this whole process? And we did the form base and talked about designing these things. A few years ago. I have been as part of this project. I think for maybe. Five years. Maybe six years. But I was not, I was not here when form base code was adopted. And you know the reason why? The concern was aesthetics. Absolutely. 100%. I appreciate the fact that you do not want. What I would refer to as snout, nosed garages, the house that has a garage sticking out. Of it. So. I do believe that if you have a garage that is within the principle plane of the building. That aesthetically, it can be done very well. I, I do not like to see garages sticking forward of the principle plane of the building. But I know historically why that was done. And again, it was to gain space behind the garage for more livable space. But I just think if, if, if it was equal to, or two feet set back, that would, that would certainly be the trip. So it also was, we didn't want boxes things. It wasn't a sticking out point. It was more of a, we don't want a big square cubicle. No life. No. No life. No life. Decent look to it as well. It's a two street. Yeah. Your question of affordability of 300,000 or 350 is. What kind of median income needs to have to live there. I'm just curious if you have that. Right, right now, if, if. Right now, if. Right now, if 80% of median income. Would bring you in. At about 70 highest seven. Let me back up. If 80% of median income. You would be able to afford a house. In the high 200s. With today's interest rates. 100% of median income. Which is somebody making a family making, I believe around $89,000 a year. You'd be able to afford a house at about 350,000. At current interest rates. So by moving. The closer you move the garages to the front, the less area you'll have. To do anything outside in the front as far as. Sitting. I mean, there's no, there's no real backyard from what I understand 13 feet. Some of these there's backyards, but I would, I would. You have to keep in mind that. If you have a garage set back eight feet. You still need to bring pavement up to your garage. So one could argue, yes, there would be more room there, but it's going to have to be paved. You wouldn't think of it more of the SNAP pad. And a small patio for the front of the house. It could very well be. It could be used for that. Sure. Yeah. You're rolling your furniture out of your house and. Yes, you sure, you sure could do that. This to me, this is more about the function inside the house. Yeah. How many bedrooms are most of these places? There'll be a, there'll be two and or three bedrooms. This, that's one of the things that this will do is it all, it'll open up the potential for a first floor bedroom. You've also asked for some change in parking design as well. Correct. Yeah. So really what that is driving at is the. Yeah. That is the request to. Not have to have a small island every several parking places. And we think that makes sense in areas where you may have like a grocery store. Where there's a sea of parking, but in a growth center like this, where the, the, the, the least. The most important thing is that there's a lot of parking space. And it all boils down to parking. And the town doesn't allow on street parking. So we, everything has to go into a parking lot. And. If we could. Have that altered. And not have to have that island every several spaces. That's just going to equate to being able to add more units. So are you thinking if these are family residential places and you have one, two cars, how many cars parking spaces per. How are you planning on if we allow you to change the parking structure? Those, the, where that would be applicable would be a multifamily buildings, the parking lot for a multifamily building. And that would mean. What we're finding is that. For our one bedroom, most of our one bedroom units. There's, there's, it basically boils down to a car and a half. And for our two bedroom units. And. At some, at this project, we have a shared parking. Program, so to speak, because there's a mix of, there's going to be a mix of retail office and apartments. And so there's a calculation we have to follow. And I, my point is just that it, we're going to be able to have more buildable building area. If we don't have these islands. So my request really is, is not to convince you. To approve this tonight, but would really convince you to just put it on your docket so I could come in and talk to you and, and maybe even bring some fancy pictures and value with some numbers. That would be a good idea. Absolutely. Now you realize we have a supplement coming up. And it would be difficult to fit that into the next supplement with the questions we have. I would only ask you to do the best you can. Nothing, nothing more. If you can't fit it in, you can't fit it in. Correct. I definitely think you should come to the meetings and. When you can. And show us what you can do. Okay. So I don't think anybody's unreasonable. I just think it was felt rushed last time. Right. And a big project like that. We really want some nice looking stuff out there. You're starting from scratch. I agree with you a hundred percent. And that's why I'm presenting tonight. Yeah, I love that idea. Go ahead. Oh yeah. Hi, thank you, Mr. O'Brien for coming in. It sounds like this is kind of a. Weighing function against aesthetics and. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the functional piece of it. I mean, it sounds like you might be able to have two cars, more space inside. The home. You know, what other functional. I'm losing the word, but aspects of the project. I mean, trust me, I like really nice looking. Buildings and architecture. But I know Chittinham County is way behind on housing. And. You know, that's, that's a big concern of mine is the need for housing workforce housing in Chittinham County and Vermont. So with, you know, to me, it's a balancing. It's trying to balance. You know, these different, these different considerations of. You know, the need for housing. The functionality of maybe being able to park two cars. More space inside, you know, for the homeowner. As opposed to the garage setback. So. You know, just, again, I'd like to just hear a little bit more at some point. It doesn't have to be tonight about just how functional. You know, having your ass be granted. You know, is it just the two car, you know, the two car, you know, two cars, one in the driveway, one in the garage, in the garage, and then more space for the homeowner. To answer your question is yes. And I do look forward to presenting some plans to show you. Thank you. Thank you. Rebecca, anything on that? No, I'm looking forward to seeing what the plans would look like and maybe elevations as well. Because, you know, what we see in plan isn't necessarily, we all see the same thing in elevation. There's a lot of things that could affect how the garage stands out or it doesn't stand out. So I, yeah, I would look forward to seeing a presentation that we can look at and get a good feel for it. I'm fine. I can wait for the presentation. Well, thank you all very much for your time this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great night. You too. All right. I move on. So now at this time, we need to. Recess as a commission. We do that as a motion. I make motion to recess. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much for your time this evening. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great night. You too. All right. I move on. So now at this time, we need. A quick motion to recess. Second. I'll second. All in favor. Hi. Okay. So now we'll reconvene. As the CRS public information committee at seven. 18. All right. So. We did this last year. Last year was a while ago though. A lot of things happen in between, but. So as part of having the CRS program, which we took on and we get credit for. For administering a bunch of things, for instance, having good standards and regulations about where we allow building and what we allow in the floodplain. To things like educating people about. That there's insurance available for people in the floodplain and what their risks are. And making people aware of that. The program for public information is just that. It's really how are we going to reach out to the public over the course of the year and let people know. If there's. An event coming up. Or. You know, how to get flood insurance. Just serve like a knowledge sharing. And so usually in March, we do this because it's a great time. The type of flying that we have in. Old Chester is a. Sort of bathtub filling of the lake that you can sort of see coming when there's a high. Snowpack. There's a lot of rains in April. So if you start with educating people in March about, hey, we're going to get some of the. We have some of the most common. You know, more than a year's flood insurance available. So that is just it. And in your packets, you had sort of what we've already done this year, which was what we did last year, put something on the sun. We've put a blast out through our website. We did some stuff on front porch forum. And we use some of our. Online tools to send emails out to people. That had signed up for. We also had to send something out to. Repetitive loss property that we have in full gesture. Just start touching base with them. And that was great. I think we've made some forward movement on. That repetitive loss property this year. So. Education does go a long way. And so it's nice to see now there were a couple of years in that some of this is working, but this is just sort of an opportunity for the commission. We have to have two of these a year. We'll put one, we'll tack it on to the front end of the 15th of June meeting. But just in case you guys have any comments or concerns or ideas. I'm personally all set. Go ahead, Serita. Well, I just, you know, it was the second time I read through the materials. It seems like. You know, there's a lot of. Outreach. Not requirements, but ideas about how to reach these homeowners. You know, especially about. I think people are beginning to hear, I don't know if it's happening in Vermont, but people are not being told that they're in a flood floodplain or that there was flooding. On the property that they're thinking of buying, even if it's not an identified floodplain. And, you know, the whole issue, I think of insurance is concerning. To me, you know, people like now. Not again in Vermont, you know, I just, I don't know if it's going to come our way in terms of the increase or not, not able to get flood insurance. So that that's a concern, but I, you know, that's not what. I want to. Talk about because this right now that's in the future. But I. You know, I kind of would like to know. What is the outcome? Like what is our responsibility to let homeowners who live in a floodplain or a potential. Of being flooded. You know, what is our responsibility as opposed to emergency management. I'm not really clear on that. So this has nothing to do with emergency management. Yeah. They get set back from there. And so what the CRS program is. FEMA works through with the ISO, which is an insurance group. To say to communities, hey, you might want to consider this program. And if you join it, if you meet the thresholds and their points given to different things. Then people in your community are qualified for. Insurance rates. And also if you have a declared disaster in the state of Vermont, you get reimbursed at the highest level. And so what we get points for are things like having strict regulations, allowing no new construction in the floodplain. These sorts of educational outreach. Components. Things like I'm a. One of my endorsement is a certified floodplain manager. And I'm not sure if that works. Still is one as well. When she was at their department, she got that. And that's that you can talk to people and read floodplain maps. And so when people come in and say, Hey, I'm concerned buying this home. Can you tell me if it's in the floodplain? That's a service that we can provide. So those are some of the things that we get credit for. So that's a CRS program, not emergency management. But in terms of what you said about obligations and responsibilities. So you have to work on regulations. I'm good regulations in place that say things like our regulations do right now, which is no new home construction in the floodplain. And if you have substantial damage, your building gets damaged more than 50% of its value. Or you decide to add on to it. Your existing building is you have to flood prove it. You have to raise it. One or two feet above that flood level. And they're flood proofing techniques. But they should have no harm in that. So we could do a couple of things on piers, ratchet down propane tanks, so they don't float away. Those sorts of things that we work with people to let them know about. So that's a little bit about. How, what. Playing commissions role. Is with those regulations. What this committee's role is for public information. picture of making Colchester a safer place long term and that this has incrementally helped. Colchester is doing really well compared to a lot of other communities nationwide because what we have in the flood plain tends to be mostly summer seasonals. So it's great having an email list that you can let homeowners that don't necessarily know in the area that there's a flood coming, secure their items. And most of the times you've been very fortunate when we have had flooding, it's been that early spring before you had the summer seasonal residents moving in. So those are a lot of things that we have going for us and I think if we stay this course we'll be even better over the years and hopefully people will become more knowledgeable and make good decisions for themselves. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Yep. Yeah, a question. So doing this twice a year and kind of massaging this program here, would we get a different classification so that homeowners even get more of a reduction? Just on the cusp this past year we got our cycle visit and it's just a few points away from becoming that next grade. So I'm hopeful there's like with any federal stuff they are constantly you're doing their point system. And so I'm hopeful that the next time we get evaluated that we will just because they're trying to catch up to some of the things that they've been promoting like this. And so hopefully just by continuing to do what we do with their changes to their system we'll get that next level and the better levels you get the more discount people can get on their flood insurance. Great. Anybody else got anything on that one? All set? All right. We will need a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn. I'll second. All in favor. All right. All right. Now we will be reconvening as a planning commission and it is now 7.27. Pretty simple. Minutes over meeting. Need a motion to approve? I'll make a motion. Go ahead Bob. Go ahead. Go for it. You're on it. You do a good job with those. All right. I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of the last meeting. I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor. All right. All right. Now we're on to our packet information. Not a whole lot there. You know the monthly report you have noticed from South Burlington. But I think I wanted to also talk about future meetings but does anybody have any questions for me on the packet information? Well on the South Burlington I mean it's a lengthy thing. I just kind of read the summary. But do you take a look at it to see if it affects us anyway? Yeah and no it doesn't really. All right. All right. So with that being said future meetings. So you have on June 15th your future meeting for the supplement 43 and we'll also do the second public information committee meeting that will be even shorter than this one. We'll just tack it in and but the thing that I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about was East Lakeshore Drive and what your thoughts are on potentially restarting some of that. You guys had done some work last winter. Back in February of 2020 on sort of briefing yourselves with some of the background on it. And I think we're looking to serve use LS1 and LS2 as a template to use for an LS3 and LS4. He had some questions about setbacks particularly front yard setbacks and those type of things but I don't know if potentially on June 15th I could give you some information about sort of touching on all that again. Then maybe that's a summer project. I think we pushed off a little bit due to everything that's going on now that we meet in person. Makes sense to try to get it done at a good time frame. I'd be willing to like go over things again on June 15th kind of just touch base refresh everybody's mind because it's been a while and maybe are we going to go back to meetings every two weeks? So that's a good question. So my department is going to be by July 1st myself, Zach and Denise Johnson Turk. So I have three people in my department which used to have six so we're a little bit short right now and I'd love to keep you guys going as much as possible and get easily short drive done but I think it's going to be a little bit of a stretch. We'll see how much heavy lifting. We are small but mighty and as I said I'm very excited. Zach's been a great ad. He's very energetic so here's me saying I can't make any promises but I'll do what I can. More than understandable I didn't realize you had shrunk that much that fast. Sorry to hear that. So hopefully our goal will be try to meeting in person even if we do it once it would be a lot more efficient. I think that would be our biggest goal and we can definitely touch on East Lakeshore Drive. Any other thoughts on that one? I agree. I'd like to see a recap it's been a while before we left off. June 15th meeting is worn for Zoom. I think there's a potential that we could actually have you meet in that room and still keep the Zoom invite because right now what the select board's doing is they're having the public come in via Zoom but they are all in the Outer Bay conference room together so if you wanted to we could look to have that June 15th meeting in person. Let's plan on it I would think. I wouldn't see why we wouldn't it would make life a little easier and get her done. Let's do it. It'll be good. Is there any way we could get an update on the septic wastewater situation on East Lakeshore Drive with all the new construction? I'm just wondering are things under control or is it is it still you know a concern about failing systems or future failing systems again not now but I mean I'm just like wondering about that. So I'll provide a recap maybe on the 15th that we'll go over I think you guys were all involved in the MBI project but we can talk about that too because I think one of the key things with looking at picking up that East Lakeshore Drive piece is we I think heard from the community of a lot of different issues with East Lakeshore Drive from everything from bike head to people at speed to wastewater but I think this is going to be the commission's focus is just on the zoning and so I think it will be useful to sort of touch upon some of all what was heard but I think the key thing with this is to keep the ship on course it's going to be there's that bigger picture but this is just zoning. All right and I just do you know Sarah I'm just going to hold this up this where you can't say it's a summit on the future of Vermont it's May 26 and 27 it's from one to five every day it's by it's being offered by rural the Vermont Council on Rural Development if you go to futuresofvermont.org slash summit if you want you know if you anybody wanted to go to that it's just going to be a lot of workshops about the future of Vermont and what Vermonters want you know how they want to see the state evolve and grow especially with I think a lot of this money this one-time funding that's coming in it's good time and so I just want to make people aware of that if if do you know you know about that Sarah right it sounds great I wish I had time yeah no no but I just but I just um I you know I don't know if anybody else is in I'm gonna I I'll be going to it but I just thought it's a it's a really good idea yeah all right we're all good okay thank you questions yeah I need a motion I make a motion to adjourn second I'll second all right all in favor very good thank you again I told Zach after the four hours of DRB that this would be quick you guys are good so yeah it really is nice to see you back and I remember working with you you always did a great job for us appreciate you yeah welcome back Zach yeah