 Hang on one second, please. I just want to make sure I'm having my password, so I don't know, I can't log in. Sorry. Do you need to log in to me again? Could you, I'm sorry. I, for some reason, I didn't write a comment. It knows me, it wants me to log in. Yes, we got it, we got it set up for you. Yeah, of course I don't have a password, so, sorry. But next time I will log in, I promise. It's good, yeah. So, now we need a bigger table. Hi. Yeah. So. Thank you. These documents in the order that they're stacked. Nice to meet you. I think we'll put them into use in a minute. So. Oh, yes, let's call this meeting to order. The first item on the agenda is to approve the minutes. We have, it looks like, minutes from three previous meetings to approve. You can only approve one, because there was only, there was a bunch of you, you weren't, most of you weren't present for the two previous meetings. Oh, okay. So you can only approve the 20. So for the last meeting, which was on. The 22nd. The 22nd of February. And I don't know if everyone here has seen a copy of those, but do we have a motion to approve the minutes? All right. So we're good on that. We just do names before we do this. Yeah, I'm sorry, we should actually do introductions first. I can't record this without that. So why don't we go through and do introductions? And I'm going to order the first and last names just so I could put them on here in that order. For the attendance. Yeah. All right. So we'll start over here. Amy Hamlin. I actually was on the DRV. And I've come to the other side, which is good. What's up? Palace is a foreign. Z-I-P-O-R-Y-N. Thank you. A-B-B-Y, B-I-V-N-B-L-E-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Terry Sigmund. M-H-R-K-A-K-A-H-A-R-K-A. And K-H-A-D-K-A. K-H-A-D-K-A. And that was H-A-R-K-A. Okay, thank you. And I'm Lauren Sampson. L-A-U-R-E-N. And then Sampson with a P. Hopefully we'll go through all the names again later too, just so we can make sure everybody knows each other. Okay, so I guess for record keeping purposes, I can be, I have made the motion to approve the minutes. Actually, Lauren did. Lauren did, I thought, okay. Oh, she moved it. So we need a second. All those in favor and a post. So now we move into public comment. It doesn't seem like we have anyone from the public here tonight. So item number four is to review and approve the Downtown Transportation Fund grant to support the Catmull Bike Share. And that would involve a presentation by Heather. Is she? She's not present. However, I will carry the water for her today. I'm gonna be short about it. So I didn't know, I probably have to refuse myself from any voting because I'm on that bike share team. So I'm happy to answer questions or tell the group about it, but I don't think, right, I wouldn't vote. Yeah. So essentially we're asking the council, first let me step back up and say the council has already approved this. This is almost more or less a procedural move on Europe behalf, but the grant proposal asks for support for a bike share, a 50-50 match on a bike share. Funds according to this are available up to $100,000 and they have two bike stations within the Downtown, bike share stations within the Downtown. So they're actually asking for 30,000 to be a combination of in-kind labor with DPW staff, installation and the remainder to be funded by the city budget. Do we know where these would be located? I think that that, do you know, Abby? I know, well, phase one, the location is by the Transportation Center, down by when you see falls. There's been no determination on any other. There's a couple of spots that are highlighted for the other hubs, but there's been no finalization on anything but the window task. And is that information required in the grant proposal? I don't believe so. I was just gonna say, I think it'd be good if there was maybe some coordination with the Main Street revitalization project because that might be a good target area for a second location, just, I mean, rather than clustering them right in the circle, moving one a little bit further up. Plus practices at least a quarter mile away. And it would be something that would be brought to City Council and you guys to help pick a second location residence. But that was the sort of first that location made sense for the dropping the bikes at first. Since we have the bus down there and it's sort of a mobility hub, that makes a lot of sense. How many bikes are there? So the whole system is 105 bikes. There's 17 hubs in phase one. One of them's in Wyniewski. 25% of the bikes are electric assist. Yeah, and the rest are seven speeds. So the Wyniewski hub will start with five bikes and two racks. So that's eight parking spaces and five bikes. But at any time those bikes can be, there could be 10 bikes on this rack, right? Or no bikes on this rack. It depends where people are taking them because you don't have to return it to where you took, where you started. You can return it to any of the 17 hubs. And that's your pension? Or what's the 17 hub? Yeah, so phase one is Burlington South, Burlington Wyniewski. And I can run through the 17 if you guys are interested. Is that a closed university? Yep. Yeah, so there's five along the spine of campus. There's two on three. Who is it? What's the bike share company? So the group that's coordinating is IREP, Represent UVM, and then Champlain College. We have Katma, CCRPC. And so that's like the coordinating group. And we selected through an RFP process, the vendor called Gatcha Bikes. But we as the community own it versus them. So it's all sponsored. So yeah, we have sponsors like this, like the cities have all come to contribute. The university and college have contributed. So it's probably over 25 different contributions to make it happen. Interesting. Yeah, so we as like all these contributors own the bike share and determine what happens with the bike share. So there must be some kind of servicing like management. Yeah, so Old Spokes Home is going to do the management, which is awesome. And they have an agreement with Gatcha Bikes. So it's not all of the bike maintenance, bike repair, rebalancing of the bikes is through Gatcha's contract with Old Spokes Home. Now does Gatcha move the bikes? If all the bikes pile up on UVM campus, do they move the five back here in a timely manner? Yeah, so the way the rebalancing works is they are supposed to keep the bikes balanced either through, they're actually bike balancing them. So they have a bike trailer that they're biking around and an e-bikes balance. Or there's a program called a bike angel program where if we see like there's too many bikes up on the hill and not enough in the bottom, what we're thinking is bikes will end up at the bottom and not the top. But anyway, you'll get a pop up as a member of the bike share and say, hey, if you bike to the Winnieski hub, to this hub at the university, you'll earn riding credit. So it's called like a bike angel. So you can earn money to buy the bikes just by taking bikes back to different hubs. So it's a pretty amazing. The back ends is social bikes. Soviet bikes is the back end and the data and the amount of stuff we can do with the system that's on the bike is incredible. And that's why we chose them. So social bikes would never go after our small community but gotcha bikes works with small communities and uses soviet technology. And is that because it's a small community, did you have to buy them? Is that the gist of gotcha bikes? Is that how they always work? Or I mean, did you look at just, I guess having a company that would rent them so they're leased. We don't are leased, okay. Yep. Interesting. So we tell them where we want the hubs and sort of what the pricing models and that's what we work with them on but the bikes, they're responsible for. So if somebody gets deals one or if it breaks, they're responsible on the hub for replacing them. And then they'll take them back after their life. Where is they doing this to use the new system? Yeah, they have, I think about 16 to 20 different bike shares on the ground now. So if you've got to gotcha bikes, you can see all of the locations that they have them. Yeah, their most recent one was Charleston and Citywide Bike Share there. So I have one more question. Do you pay a monthly subscription or is it just like $7 a day or is it both? Yeah, both. So you have the pay as you go option, which is $2 per ride. You have a monthly option, which is 15 bucks a month. And these all get, so the paper ride is a 30 minute ride. The monthly, if you're a monthly member, you get an hour, up to an hour a day of ride time. And then your annual member's only 50 bucks. And you get an hour, up to an hour a day. Okay, so it's not like you can take it and go for a cruise. It's not, we're not trying to compete with the bike shops. They were really worried about that, but this is a commute, this is to get you places. It's a commute thing. So it's gonna have panniers or a basket. A basket, yeah. What about helmets? So helmets are, it does come with, the lights automatically turn on when you turn the bike, so that that's law, right? So that'll be covered. So even for the ones that are on e-bikes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the bikes, the lights automatically come on. And then the helmets, we are gonna provide different locations or once you're a member, you can get pick up discounted helmets, but it's an 18 and over system. So you as the adult decides whether you want to wear helmets. And do you know what kind of bikes they are? Look at what brand? Well, they're like a, they're a bike share bike. So gotcha made and manufactured their own bikes. Oh really? Yeah. Mm-hmm. What's just so exciting? So you said it's only for adults 18 and above? 18 and above, yeah. So kids cannot. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty standard across bike shares and liability and that sort of thing. But yeah, I'm really, it's just adding mobility and other mobility options to our community. So we're super excited about it. Yeah. So you said there would be 10 all together in Manuski? For that each hub? Is that what I prepared you so? Total bikes. So phase one is, this is for, if we have additional money, we can do additional hubs, but what's the money that we have committed right now? We could put one hub in Manuski. So we could put additional hubs if the, you know, if there's the money in there gets approval, but the plan right now is to put the two bike racks, which is eight hoops with five bikes. But it's not like the five bikes say, right? So you could have 12 bikes on the rack or one bike on the rack or no bikes on the rack. Right, but at six o'clock in the morning, presumably there'd be five bikes in Manuski. Yeah. And there's two racks, you said? Two racks. In the same place? Yeah, same place. Oh, okay. With signage and everything to explain like how to use the bike and how to become a member. And so it's $30 just for one hub. I mean, $30,000 for one hub? No. How is that? No, so this is, this is, they're trying to buy, they're trying to get more than one hub in Manuski. So this is gonna get multiple hubs in Manuski and that would be relying on you guys and other Manuski residents to say where those hubs would be most helpful. Two hubs in total is what the goal is, or? So I think at full belt out, we have four hubs in Manuski, yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, this is great. But I would be nice to have the e-bike to go up the hill. That's my commute. Oh yeah, people would love that. People, it is a game changer, let me tell you. Yeah. I have one and... And that was the thing, we didn't want just bikers to get on these. We want people who don't bike to feel comfortable participating in the bike share and people who might not even consider biking to jump on an e-bike and see that it's doable and all of the barriers, right? Sweating between meetings, the time it takes to pedal, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think a lot of the e-bikes will address that. So what we're trying to approve right now is just supporting this grant proposal. Yeah, and if you make a motion to approve this, then Michael Bryan will sign it tomorrow or the next day. All right, all right. Does anyone want to make that motion to... I move. Okay, I second. Okay, we have a second. All those in favor of approving this proposal? I move. Anyone opposed? Motion passes. So now we move on to probably what will be the bulk of our meeting, which is the Planning Commission Introduction and Orientation and I will turn it over to Paula. You're gonna be doing this, right? So welcome. There's four new members and two of you who I don't know if you ever had a proper orientation or we just threw you using. Terry came before I did, so. So we need to give you a brief overview which is covered in this document that I sent to you on the weekend. This covers all the varieties of municipal... Appropriate municipal panels, amps, as they're called at the state. You happen to belong to now the Planning Commission or have been appointed to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission has a very specific role. It essentially has the capacity to set policy. It doesn't rule on policies once they're set so you will never see a project other than a project like this. You'll never see a zoning project per se, but you as a body sort of write the rules of the road. You're in charge of drafting or rewriting the zoning ordinance and the municipal plan and in theory also the capital budget plan if we had, if we chose to pursue that. But the big things, the big line items are really the bylaw and the municipal plan which we'll get into in a few minutes. And then the other piece that you're charged with if there's any sort of policy or kind of general practices or sort of planning initiatives that the city is engaging in, we will typically come to you for either approval or you'll be the clearing house for it. For example, the Planning Commission is the current body that reviews and passes on or recommends to council anything to do with the Main Street Revitalization Project. So there's a whole number of initiatives that would come before you including something like this. Municipal Planning Grants would come before you for approval. Any sort of thing that is generally geared toward a planning policy would come before you. There's a flow chart within this document that kind of shows the roles and responsibilities of the various entities. There's you guys. So you write the rules for the DRB and the DRB is the body that enforces the rules for zoning. So again, you do the town plan, the bylaw and any other studies or capital budgets we would look at. So for example, this body reviewed the Economic Development Strategic Plan. You would be in charge of reviewing the Energy Plan in charge of the current Transportation Master Plan. This body also was part of the steering committee for the form-based code. That was for the Gateways Project, which was zoning ordinance. Trying to think of the other things but it's a pretty broad pallet of policy structuring things that you're charged with. So does anyone have any questions about that or comments? So I was looking at this and one thing that frequently kept coming across I came coming across is bylaws. So is bylaws somewhere in this packet or how can I access bylaws? I sent you the bylaws by the way of email on the weekend and I can get you all a copy of them and I will get you a copy of them because you will be in, I just printed up a ton of stuff today and just printing out another thick packet of more colored photocopies. I was having guilt sometimes. But we will be addressing the bylaws and actually you will be in very short order amendments to the bylaw. And again, the bylaw is the zoning ordinance by which any development that takes place within the city must adhere to the bylaw and the story. And that is again something this body is in charge of and will be re-addressing. However, just let me back up and say a little bit about Winooski's zoning bylaw or uniform land use ordinance which is the bylaw is that it's a unique document in the state of Vermont and then largely New England because it's a hybrid between a conventional zoning bylaw which most communities in Vermont have and we also have a form-based code which is the gateway districts which is a very unique to well to know that ours is unique to Winooski but there's only three or four communities in Vermont that have form-based codes and they're a little different than conventional zoning which we'll do, we'll have to do some as we get into the zoning ordinance rewrite or amendments, we'll have to get into some of the some training on how that works or how they work so that there's kind of common understanding amongst you guys about what they do. We have Amy who was on the DRB and truth is she's never because the DRB does not see the form-based code regulations in play has never seen them in action so it's a different approach to zoning than most communities have it and truthfully what the state has geared these bodies toward or this trainings it hasn't really accommodated for the kind of uniqueness that is Winooski's zoning ordinance. Do we plan on staying that way or is there hopes to do everything form-based code or is there, I mean, I didn't. I looked over it, if you asked me that question I would say it's much more advantageous to be form-based code 100% of the way but that's not a decision that I alone would make. It would be up to you and council I think. I just didn't know what the intent was down the road. So we decided to focus on the types of zoning that we're going to create what we wanted to see from a development standpoint of the gateway district. So when we undertook form-based code the focus was gateway district development and focus on that the character of the neighborhoods was largely decided to keep intact with a few tweaks. And when was the form-based code officially enacted? When did it become policy? May 2016 I think. Okay. So it's been a while. So all of the new development that we see coming up in the gateway district is in our form-based code. Yeah, all the development that is occurring there's three or four projects on East Allen. There's two in construction on Maine. There's three more in the works at least. So there's, and to give you the short synopsis of the difference between the two conventional zoning versus form-based code conventional zoning can take one of two paths administrator review which is something that the zoning administrator looks at and either grants or not or development review board review where there's a higher level review required which the applicant must go to the DRB and meet standards that are set up in the zoning ordinance and by state statute. The gateway districts or the form-based code if you meet the qualifications or the requirements of the code everything is done administratively. So the building that notably 348 Maine which is almost complete, four stories, 24 units. Retail on the ground floor was an administrative permit. So the advantage to that is there's lots of advantages but one real obvious one is to the developer or the development community they're kind of guaranteed a very streamlined process so it makes developing to the standard set up by the form-based code in Manuski as opposed to some other community very desirable. So that's why we've been seeing sort of an uptick in development, good development development that meets the code standard. So when we get into that which we will I have a list of things that are going to be code amendments or I'm going to put them in front of you to be discussed as potential code amendments it's all ultimately on your shoulders. We'll take the time to really get familiar with what it means and what the implications are. Yes. If I could, so each commission has a liaison from city council and for you guys I'm a liaison so I come to the meetings too and kind of help update council on what's going on and the work that's going on. I think Harka to your question of bylaws I interpret your question as one of the rules of the road and the rules of the road are provided by the state statute that creates the space for planning commission and we have the documents that Paul gave to you that kind of create the rules of the road. You're not stood up by bylaws that are separate from like the government structure of the city. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And the rules of the road for you guys are this document which I sent to you which is the Manuski planning commission rules of procedure and also conflict of interest policy which Abby exercised tonight. And it's pretty boilerplate stuff but it tells you when you elect officers, how you elect officers, all that sort of stuff. So basically how many members there are or what the general decision making process is which does bring me to a point that is on something I handed to all you but it's tonight we do have the typically you elect officers in June tonight because we just lost our vice chair. We need to, Jonathan was our vice chair. Yeah. He's gone. I wasn't here so I. He was asked to resign because of potential conflict of interest because he's paid staff on the fire department. Wow. Is that why we have four new people? That we also. I mean, I know we lost Ryan. Ryan and Susan and then we were short too as well. So we have a total complement of seven which is what the rules of procedure say you can have. So at some point before we move on to the next slide we need to select an interim vice chair to act as chair whenever Michael Brian, the current chair is not here. Just going back to the regular people being appointed. Somewhere I read four years but I thought we were two years on this commission. You're two years. We are. I think it might have been in one of those other documents. It's just isn't the general Winnieski one. Or the general Vermont one. That's what I thought. So it's two years. Okay. That's what I thought. And then what happens after the two years you put your name back in? Yes, you can, after two years you can choose to, I will ask you at the end of your term, do you want to be reappointed or not? And if you say yes, unless you've done something really onerous, you'll likely be reappointed. It's actually difficult. And if you get to do it like twice? What's that? It's unlimited terms. And it's very difficult to remove you once you're in place for the simple reason that that body, the city council is a political voted on body and you guys are supposed to be appointed but then once you're in place, if you did something that the voted on entity didn't like, they couldn't remove you with ease. So you're in a way kind of protected to act in a way that is not entirely independent but a little bit independent of the council. And then Palace and Terri are the most senior members of the table. How long have you guys been? Terri's been here the longest. It'll be two years, this one ever. Just longer than two years. I don't know, I don't think it's even two years yet. I think it's coming on two years, right? Just to add from that, what the city had was a planner, right? So we had somebody who sat in an office and wrote a plan, interpreted code, wrote a zoning and was a full-time staff member. And then about eight years ago, in the beginning now, the city made a decision to switch over to the planning commissioner model where we had a group and the whole point was we recognized the zoning was from 1982, 1991, really needed to be updated. So we had a pretty poor group right at that time and that group, the last person who left from that group was Susan Addie who stepped off just earlier this year, actually. So we had kind of a poor planning commission group that moved through the whole process. Some people came and went, but there was kind of a poor group that moved in along for those who were Seth Gillum and Freda Fenerenton. Nate DeJasse was on it, wasn't he? Nate, yeah, Nate came in. So that group kind of has now passed on. This is like the new iteration that's starting to have a really exciting thing from a public perspective. And what did Mike join the planning commission? Right after he left the mayor or council. He hung around home for like six nights and so forth. But it was pretty soon afterwards that he decided to step in, yeah. So he was mayor previously. So Mike was mayor for the bulk of the form-based code writing process or the initial part of it. I know you were running for mayor. Yeah, so Mike was mayor. I was the liaison to the form-based code group. So I myself and John, who else from the council had to make the Sarah Robinson look a little wild. I served the liaisons and then I carried it. I was on the completion of it, but Mike was mayor. Mike was always really big on pushing forward this model of planning commission's existence and iteration in the actual place for the land. It brings a lot of institutional knowledge. So then on a not personal note, but a note to all of you, I think Pallas and Terry will attest that this group is generally very like in between itself collegial with each other. And there's a lot of really good free-flowing discussion. And if nothing else, I'm always a little bit entertained by the conversation because I never know where it's gonna go. So I can't, I don't come into this saying, oh, I know what we're gonna start here and end up here. So, and that's I think truly appreciated. And so I think my encouragement to all of you is to think about what's in front of you, whether it be municipal plan or energy plan or transportation master plan and be forthcoming and not be shy because I think that's what makes the process rich. We wanna have conversations and we want to, any one of us probably misses something. So we'd love to hear everybody's thoughts. And just another really great example of that in action was, I think we started the main street project with a kind of, basically we're taking the plans from the form-based code, the drawings from the form-based code project, the streetscape plans and moving them forward as if they were the kind of what we were gonna proceed with. And we had several meetings that involved the public at large with the Planning Commission and the Public Works Commission and through some pretty serious discussion, the plans involved in a way that I don't think the engineers expected, I don't think necessarily council expected or the steering committee expected. And now the plans as they're being moved forward to the final stages of preliminary engineering have an uphill or northbound cycle bike lane. And at the same time, we've managed to accomplish all the things, all the other modes are equally supported, sidewalks are as wide as the original proposals. And so it became a much more rich project with the input from, in that one night at the O'Brien Community Center with some really thorough debate and discussion. So. So does anyone have any questions about the rules of procedure or anything else that we've talked about? So, sorry, did you raise the question of electing officers? Is that something you want to urge them to do? Well, I think we need to tonight at least appoint or elect a interim chair, a vice chair. Terry, unless you want to, don't want to be secretary any longer. No, I actually enjoy doing this. So I'm happy to. So Terry is our current secretary treasurer. I'm the treasurer too. No, you're right, let's go ahead. Michael Bryan, who's not here is our current chair and we need to elect or appoint however you choose to do it as a body, a vice chair. So I think the way it would be in the vice chair typically chairs the meeting if there's a conflict of interest with the chair or the chair for whatever reason isn't here. So you can talk about it with each other or you can nominate somebody. I would be happy to be vice chair. I will be missing one meeting, probably the next one. I can't believe you think you're only gonna miss one. Oh my God, I know, really? What? I was two minutes away from here, so it's not hard. You can ring me. Yeah, I might as long as the, that's allowed on TV, but I have a baby. But I do plan to, I probably will miss one meeting, but Mike hopefully will be here and I will be back right after that. So I would be happy to, unless there's someone else that really wants that role. So does someone want to nominate Palace? I do. I nominate Palace to be the vice chair. Do you second? Second. Of the planning commission. Did somebody second it? I second it. All in favor? Yeah. Hi. Hi. Yeah. Great, congratulations. Thank you. So, Paul, is there more to the orientation? No, I think that's, I mean, I think it's gonna be an evolving thing as we go forward. We're gonna talk about the municipal plan next, which I'd like to delve a little bit of energy into. Yeah. But if there's any questions, I think that would be, this would be the time to ask. The one thing that I would like to do, if possible, especially for the new members, is just get a little bit more sense of everybody's background and what brought them here. Because for those of us who weren't part of the interview process, that will be helpful in facilitating some of the conversation down line if everyone's on board with doing that. As I said before, as part of the DRB, I actually have a career in escape architect in town, and actually a civil engineering degree. So, I understand development and we do a lot of planning as well. So, that's why I wanted to be part of the team here. Great. Ed, you go ahead too. Oh. So, I joined the planning commission a year ago. Been a resident of Winnieski for two years. My husband and I moved here with our now two and a half year old son. We own a duplex, so we live in half. We rent out the other half. So, we have a perspective of homeowners. We're also actively engaged with the rental scene in population here. Really was so excited about Winnieski and wanted to get involved in the community. I have a background. I'm a real estate agent. So, I do work in real estate in the area. I also have a background in local governance. I was a school board member in Maryland where I lived previously, but have really become very interested in urban planning and housing. And that's why the planning commission seems like a natural fit. And it's been honestly the highlight of my month, my art, these two meetings. I'm on since I started and I hope all of you guys feel the same way. It's okay that much. Yeah, so I moved to Winnieski three plus years ago and I live in Russell Street with my two year old. And moved from the south end of Burlington to not very far and we kept our condo there but are selling it soon and got a house here and just love, again, love Winnieski. My background is in environmental policy and urban planning. So certified planner. And I also lead like a green building consultant. So I've always been really interested in how people move around and how places are built and how that affects people's quality of life. And I served on the Ward 5 NPI neighborhood planning assembly when I lived in Burlington and have been bogged down with what it means to have a two year old and just in like finally surfacing. And it just seemed like the right time to become involved both with my family and then with the master planning stuff coming up. So excited to bring my specialty in planning is bikes and pedestrians. And so it's one of the reasons it's probably the top reason or top two reasons why we moved here because it is a great city to get around without a car. Really excited about the farm based code and sort of where we're going as a city and what the city offers today is really unique, especially in a city like Vermont. So just happy to be here and be participating. So Abby does bring a really a deep degree of professionalism to the, I mean, I've known Abby for a long time before when you were a supply to school coordinator. And so she's been doing sort of really in-depth work for a lot of years. So I think we're lucky to have you. Thanks. Yeah, I used to work on the Safe Rocks to School program in Winooski before I started working at UGAM. So I was familiar with sort of what was going on here. Okay, basically. I've lived in Winooski since 1999. I see. I've lived a long time and I've always been interested in not very active, but active in the community and gone to city council meetings and paying attention. But I don't have the backgrounds that you guys have, I'm an artist. And I was just interested in doing something to give back to the community. And I was talking to Seth about it and he said, oh, maybe you should join the planning commission. So that's how I ended up here. And I don't know, I'm starting to understand what I'm doing here, but. And I didn't have an orientation like this. I just showed up at the meeting and that was it. So anyway, I'm happy to be here and I hope to be here for a little longer. So I actually can't understand what's going on. I see your postings on Facebook. That's me. Yeah. That's me. Yeah, it's good to put your face with the name. I moved to, I'm in Winooski towards the end of 2012 with my family. I have two children. One is in UVM. Seth is gonna be graduating next year and an eight and a half year old in elementary. You're in Winooski. And so since we moved to Winooski, I wanted to be involved because Winooski is a small city and I wanted to be involved in some way. I then joined the Winooski Community Garden. I managed the Community Garden for two years in a row. And then here and there, I didn't actually wore a specific hat or took a position, but then I was volunteering here and there doing a lot of different things. Sometimes translating, housing, survey, satisfaction survey to community members in the language I speak. The other language is my first language because there are a lot of people here that speak Nepali and I speak Nepali. So, and then sometimes volunteering here in the recruiting process with Seth and the team with the recruiting police officers and all that. And yeah, then I and my wife decided to do something like we bought a home and then we bought a duplex for rental property, then bought another triplex, and then got more into this renting profile and wanted to be more involved. And I'm here today. Sometimes I drive around and see the development projects and different things, sometimes when I'm driving, sorry, and I drive in a junction like a T-junction there that's something I get just surprised and shocked when drivers don't slow down, when they are driving down straight and I'm driving towards the intersection there. And I can foresee accidents happening anytime, things as such, and also was involved in parts and racks and organizing games for kids and other people as well. So, still looking forward to do something in the community. Don't have a lot of knowledge and planning but wanted to learn, wanted to share my expertise. So, I have been doing muski since fall of 2016. I rent with my fiance over on muski falls way. I am an attorney, I work in Burlington. He's a software developer who both works from home and works from an office in Colchester. And I'm always been interested in social geography and kind of what place means for things like community or identity or coming together. And one of the reasons that we loved muski and wanted to live here was because we enjoyed the public spaces so much. The green area before you had Casavent, the way the circles transformed at waking windows. And I look forward to being a part of that. In terms of expertise, I bring nothing really in the specific arena of planning or development review except that I spend my day reviewing documents and look forward to doing that at night as well. Great. Well, we're happy to have all of the new members and I think it was, we were shrinking and it's really nice to have some new voices and perspectives. So thank you. Thank you. Everyone who stepped up. Does anyone else have questions for Paul while we are here and have kind of this open forum for general questions? So how often, how often does the public come or does it sort of vary based on? It can vary a ton. Like when we had those hearings for the Main Street Revitalization Project, I don't know Paul, how many people do you think came to those, those were? Well, one of them we had like 70 people, I think, down there. That one, and even this one it was, the room was pretty packed. It really depends what's on the agenda. And that in itself, that's great. Does it, people are reading the agendas to the point that you hand them on? The reason why no one's here is because it looked like an internally focused meeting. I think also those, the ones where there's public input, like the one at the O'Brien Center, there's more than just the minutes that were out there. You know, like there was, Really? Well, there was, I don't know, was there some? There was, we didn't see that because we were sitting in the, but in any case, there was more, I think there was more promotion for it to get people to come out for sure. But I mean, all the meetings are posted on front porch forum, so people do see it. But yeah, I mean, I would say probably the majority of our meetings, we're gonna either be one, nobody from the public or one or two people, but then occasionally there are topics that bring out a lot of people, but we're also filmed, so. Streamed, streamed a lot right now. I think everybody can watch it at home. What channel? 17. Yeah. It's on YouTube, you have to. Anything else, other questions? I'll know our meeting schedule twice a month, second and fourth Thursday. Which we have occasionally changed at times, but hopefully that's good for all of our new members too. And there was talk of having a separate meeting, but I decided not to do that. It didn't make sense to post, it didn't make sense to have this meeting without doing kind of a general orientation if we have one before this meeting, we could have, but at this point, it just seemed to make sense. We have something originally that was gonna be on the agenda for tonight that got moved or no, no, okay. We did not, we are either at the end of this meeting or the next meeting, we will reschedule the variety of commissions for a revisitation, visiting again. Is the next meeting still the housing commission or has that been moved as well? I think that everything is, the schedule moving forward, I think needs to be adjusted. Okay, so we'll be doing that at our next meeting then? Yeah, probably, or I'll write one up. And just send it to you. I'll tell everyone this, with the municipal plan, we've been meeting with different commissions throughout for different meetings because we want to get input on the plan and their expertise and ideas on our plan. And then they're gonna, we're basically meeting with them one-on-one to talk to them about what our vision is and what we'd like them to give us input on. And then they're gonna go off on their own and brainstorm and write down some bullet points and ideas and come back to us. So we have a few more commissions that we need to meet with that we have in housing commission is one of those commissions that will be on the schedule, if not next time, and I would assume within a couple of meetings. It's like you as a planning commission have reviewed the existing master plan document. Well, we're working on it from, basically from scratch at this point. There, there, we've kind of left that up to you. I sent it all to you, that we left it up to the individual plan, like individual planning members to do on their own time. Okay, one more. But the idea is that we would start afresh and there's a history to the existing plan. It's, it's, it's dated, profoundly dated. And so we, we kind of took this opportunity to rethink it all together. Are there good plans and other steps, like another town? Are there, like, Essex, like, the one that we should look at as gold standard or is there like a town in California that we're looking at? Essex has a really good plan. They, they, they won the plan, APA's American Planning Association, not American Physicians Association. Every time I type in APA, I get the American Physicians Association. Like, I don't want this. That's funny, because it's planning that hard. The APA awarded Essex two years ago, the plan of the year. And it was done with Orton Family Foundation. And it's a really good plan. It has a good online presence and a good physical presence. There's some other online plans, I think, are really good, which I can send you links to. And this document, I just want to make sure everybody has seen it because this is really the key document that we have been working on where it says, this is kind of our broad right now outline of sort of the different sections that we've been to cover with some subtopics, that we've been, this is what we're giving to the commissions to look at to come up with feedback on all of these different areas. And is this modeled off the Essex plan? No. We went through a process to develop this. So let's step back and let me just say I sent you all this and I just gave you all a copy of it. And if you didn't have a chance to look at it between Sunday and now, I think I sent it on Sunday. It's a really thorough document. It was done a really well done job. For example, if you look at page 53, this is one that the current planning commission or the existing planning commission members will learn from too. There's good and bad examples of goals and objectives in your plan. And it's pretty explicit. What works in a plan and what doesn't work. And this is the kind of thinking we're gonna be applying. And this document is full of this kind of both really practical information like this, but then also the statutory requirements. And so this document, while it's big and it's sort of got a lot of stuff in it, I find it to be really useful to get to what we're trying to do here. And so I'll briefly explain, and Seth, if you wanna jump in anytime too, what I think we're trying to do with the municipal plan is both sort of describe Winooski as it is, but also what it aspires to be, what's aspirational about Winooski, what the goals are of the community at large and how those goals have been reflected in a number of planning efforts to date, including transportation master plan, the housing commission work, the energy plan, the form-based code, gateway districts. There's a whole bunch of work and including the behind you on the wall, the strategic vision statement, which if you look at the chapters, this document, it's roughly shaped around the strategic vision statement. So the strategic vision statement was generated two years ago? No, not really two years ago. I'm really in the absence of it. Why we did that is because the municipal plan that we have now is not a functional document. It doesn't do anything for us. The municipal plan, as it's currently comprised, was put together in order to really check boxes and was in that way. And the one section that got a lot of focus was the city's downtown redevelopment, the largest redevelopment of the downtown and the state's history. So that's very professionally written and rigidly written, but that was the focus of the plan, was getting that funding and financing and then maintaining it. So in the absence of a functioning plan, the council and its most previous iteration took the time to do a lot of polling, a lot of outreach and a couple of events where we brought people in and really asked, what is it you would like to see? Number one, why are you here? What do you like about the city? Why are you living here? What will keep you here? And what makes you excited to live here? And we've built in that vision statement to really guide our investments based on that. But we really did that as a way of saying, right now the municipal plan is not a workable document. So we wanna replace that really with what you produced. And just backing up, this city, when we put a planning commission together and asked them to re-write a zoning, they spun their wheels for about four years and got almost nowhere. And there was a lot of frustration and the real hesitancy about whether or not this was gonna fail and whether we were gonna get a plan update. And that group took a step back and wrote what is the 10 principles you'll see in the beginning of the plan. And then you worked from there. And that really changed the course of Fruzky's history in a way that most people don't know about. I was very listening at the moment that that group sat down and said, hold on, we are getting lost in details about what curb cuts should look like and how high offenses should be. Let's back up and talk about what the community wanna live in and what it's like. And they built those 10 principles and kind of moved forward from there. And it really cemented the city and the goals we're working for. But we're trying to take another step in that direction here. And we see the plan that you're working on as the next generation of that. Yeah, I was gonna ask if there is any development plan that is already being talked about, but that has not made an entry into papers or if there's anything that the planning commission, members of the planning commission already know and that we knew members don't know about. So we have been working on this pretty much every meeting for, I don't know, six months or something, at least talking about it. So we started off with some sort of big visioning. What are some of our big visions for the city and what do we want this document to do? We talked about that and we talked about all of the different areas that we wanted the plan to include. That's kind of what helped us create this document. What occurred to us is that there are lots of people who are involved in a deeper level in many of these areas and we felt that it was critical to get their input and insight, which is how we developed the model that we're going down now, which is that we have, we've talked about things like it would be great to have. An arts district or when you ski a tech hub, we want to connect our parks and we want to really define a sense of neighborhood identity and these are all that we've talked about, but we haven't necessarily said how exactly do we envision that happening. We know that different commissions are talking about similar things and so what we're asking them to do is to go sit down during their own meetings and talk about these ideas and come back to us with those specific ideas for us to filter through, talk about our own ideas and kind of like mesh them together into an actual plan, which hasn't been written yet. This is like a collective process of developing it that way. So, we have discussed a few specific ideas, but we're kind of opening this up to like, for example, there's a housing commission, we're not just going to the housing commission and saying, give us your thoughts on housing. We want them to look at everything here and if they've had discussions internally on any of the topics that we have, we wanna know what they think and we wanna put that input into this. So, we're kind of one by one having meetings with the commissions and saying, please bring us your big ideas and then we'll work through them and then probably invite them back. We've talked about for a second round to talk to them and on certain topics, they may have expertise that we don't have that will help us, which is great, but we wanna make sure we're doing this thoughtfully and be informed of what is going on in other commissions. Yeah, that sounds very good. And the other thing I have is about the swimming pool in Landry Park. Are we involved into some extent or? Pool is right here. So that's gonna be some part of our plan. We want to do that. So that's, again, an example of, we want to involve the people that are actively involved in that pool project to tell us what their vision is and discuss it with us and then that will, in one way or another, work into our plan because it benefits everyone for that to be in the plan in some way. So it might benefit to tell you that one of the things the plan does, the municipal plan does for any municipality and this is by state statute. So if the plan envisions and describes activities such as a pool, when we seek funding for that pool or seek any kind of support from any entity other than within ourselves, the first question I always ask is, does your municipal plan support that? So the municipal plan to support the activities that we might think about asking for grant funds for, for example, the Main Street Project will, I think it's, you can argue that it is currently supported by the municipal current plan, but we will try to enhance the support for things like the Main Street Projects, things like the pool, things like if there are community garden, there are discussions with community services about how we can write language in that further supports community garden activity or farm it or kind of food sovereignty or food insecurity issues within the community. So that's all stuff that is, should be if it's important to this community and important enough that the community might seek support from the state or from the federal government, it should be somehow described within this document or not this document, the plan. But in a way that's loose enough that it doesn't constrain you, so it doesn't say a pool in Landry Park, but describes the activities that revolve around the pool and the recreation potential and the taking care of children in the summer or all the cross-section of the Manuski population. So those kinds of things that the plan wants to, the municipal plan wants to describe. I don't want to get bogged down into any details right now, but I just wanted to mention Paul really quickly whilst on my mind. We did, there were a few things last time when we were looking at, it wasn't even the previous version of the document that we realized we're missing off of this document, like the O'Brien Community Center and the childcare facilities that I just don't want to make sure that all those notes from last were updated on here. So what happened last time? Yeah. I've got, I take all my notes, I have a bag that is my bag with it has everything in it. Yeah. Everything. And it was stolen from my car. Are you kidding? No. You're in Manuski? No, I'm in Newport and my note, like my voluminous two notebooks that have been for the past three years of everything I've written down. Wow. Oh my God. Like everything. And it was, you know, no hard drive back up. It was like this bag, this thick full of, that always sits right next to me in this meeting. I take stuff and put it in there and I was like the next morning I got home and I was like, something's missing from my car and I just left it in there because I was gonna turn around and come back the next morning. So I was a little bit at a loss. Yeah, and I think we didn't film the last meeting, so. But I think we can make those things up even now. Those were just two, I know there were more. Those were the two that just immediately came to mind, the Bryan Center and Child's Care, which was under section five. But unfortunately, I don't remember the other items that we talked about. Well, I think we'll get there again. I don't think they're lost forever to them. No, no. And I mean, we're encouraging all of the commissions, like if there are areas that they think we've missed to create their own categories. But I do think if we have more when we hand this off to the commissions, then it'll give them a starting place to think about different things. The other thing I did just so you all know for this document is I did actually add a few things that I remembered, but then I also put in where there were appropriate the statewide goals for, say, economic development. And at the end, I put a statewide goals section. And that was because we, the municipal plan needs to align with the regional plan which needs to align with the statewide documents. So the statewide goals, our goals should be reflective in some ways of the statewide goals. That's a sort of unspoken requirement of the plan that we can't, but statewide goals are so generic and so inclusive that it's not gonna be hard to do it. I kind of think we're already doing it, but I put that in there as a kind of footnote to ourselves to say, okay, we need to be thinking about this as well. There was one more I remember from last time, which was parks. I know we said that we have natural areas, but I think we decided that not all parks necessarily would qualify as natural areas. So, yeah. So are these, this is being emailed out to the commissions before they come to the meeting with us. So. And what's the language that's given to them so that they don't come and get burdened in the minutia? And how do you say, for somebody that's unfamiliar with a master plan, that you want them to contribute with giving them enough guidance so that they understand like the level that the master plan is versus the detail? So what we did before, and I think this will be the last thing we do today, but what we did before was each planning commission member was assigned a committee or commission. And they, those individual members met with the commission, commission chair or the commission staff member, depending on how it was worked out and had this sort of broad based discussion with that liaison. And then when the commissions were, the commissions of all, except for the housing commission, have all been in front of, have all had a joint meeting with this commission, the planning commission. And in those joint meetings, it was described that this was meant to be in the broadest of terms, but also kind of a, also a kind of aspirational sort of thing, but not like we want the sidewalk on Russell Street and whatever to be fixed. And so it was sort of described to them that way and whether or not they, we have yet to see whether or not they will, public works commission is meeting right now. And I once again gave Jonathan their staff person this and sort of gave him this and said, think about these broad principles. So, but. So there is some communication before they show up here to be like, this is high level, like aspirational. I think a lot of the function of the first meeting with us is actually to establish that tone in person, like should be like, this is a big vision document. We want you to think big. We want you to tell us, this is your opportunity to tell us those big bold ideas that you have had and talked about in your meetings without necessarily feeling like you have to justify how everything is going to be accomplished. Like we want to hear the idea because that's, what's going to get us to a place where we can even discuss it or like, think about it. So the first meeting that we have with each commission, we've had, I guess with every commission now except for the housing commission that we plan to. So that's going to happen at a future meeting. We've had that discussion and they've come without, we don't ask them to come here prepared that day with anything other than, knowing that they're going to have a conversation about the municipal plan. And then we ask them to come back in a month or two after they've had a chance to meet on their own with those ideas. But I think we've tried to set a tone that they should, I think some of the questions that we've gotten are like, oh, do we have to like type up like a paper? And we've tried to be like, no, we just like a bullet point list is fine. Like we really want to hear just ideas and not have people get caught up in like formality or like writing or operational stuff. Yeah, and I'm just, I had only been to the other meeting and it seemed like that wasn't communicated to them and they were talking about like the, and I don't know just for efficiency for our meeting and everything to have some sort of communication with them. It's sort of, it doesn't really matter at this point if there's only one more commission that we're meeting with to do it this way, but. Yeah, and what happened in that particular one was an interesting one because we had prepared. So Terry and I had met with Ray. And you took a ton of notes. And I gave them to Ray and Ray decided he didn't want to use them for that meeting. So, and you know, that's his prerogative. And we, you know, the Public Works Commission met with Jonathan and Jesse who was at that point staffing Public Works. And I think that the communication went really smoothly with them. So it's all, it all depends. But it's, you know, it's a learning curve. Yeah, sure. Yes, so. And I think the whole idea of the way we've asked the plan to be written is really for it to be spoken hub where they have very technical documents that need to be updated regularly. And they're going to be looking to the plan right now. There's more information coming up to you. And that's to inform you and to allow you to understand what the philosophy's been behind the work that's been done and the feedback they've done behind the public. You can set that high account of policy vision. And then that further informs when they go to update Public Works standards and you've set out this goal of really walkable streets that tells them, okay, we need to mandate the streets seem to be wider than maybe the specs look like now. But it also keeps it so we don't find ourselves in this position again, where we have a municipal plan that's unusable. And we, we instead spoken hub that we're updating the master transportation plan every four or five years. That's just done on a schedule, that updates that section of it. And we're not relying on reopening the entire plan to do that. And you've set the philosophical boundaries of what it is they're supposed to achieve with their more technical specific work. So the plan at this point can be an eight year document. The state changed it from a five year document to an eight year document. So to that end, I think it wouldn't be harmful to sort of begin to identify who wants, I mean, you're probably still gonna work with community services as we move forward. We, we should probably all sort of identify within self identify within the commissions who, who. I was assigned to housing, although I wasn't here the day you assigned it to me, but I got that. But you did a great job. So we no longer, we lost the, the representative, the planning commission member who is the lilies, almost public works commission. So is that, is that what you are volunteering for? I could do either the structure or the five second one. So the commissions are on the back page. So the, there's public safety, public works, community services and housing commission. Are the, the last two there aren't liaisons for the school district and the CCRPC? Well, I think we probably do need a liaison with the school district and also with CCRPC. I think that, that yeah, public works is lacking a liaison. So if you wanted to be. What was Mike assigned to? He was economic development. And sorry, the joke was he was assigned to Heather to do economic development. But he was going to do economic development and also work with me for general chapters, meaning introduction and things like that. So the first introduction overview stuff, he was going to work with me on that. So sorry, what's taken already? He's doing public works and you're doing housing. And I'm doing community services. He's doing community services. So an interesting, the one that we, grouped with community service was public safety. And I actually think that that's a pretty rich topic, especially when you start talking about community policing and or changing the model of policing, which I think, or even how we do any of our community or public safety stuff. So I think that we need someone to also interface with them. Another thing that I don't know if we want to have a person in charge of, but picture collection is another topic that we've talked about before, aggregating photos for the plan. So there's two other pieces that are, one of the pieces, that's one that's there. But that's also I think going to be, we're about to issue an RFP for the municipal planning grant, which we have roughly $26,000. And we'll have a consultant who will help us with graphic images, maps, the GIS mapping and the sort of collection of the kind of presentational materials. So I think that they're likely needs to be a planning commission member who is specific to whoever the consultant is. So it'll be staff, me, and some planning commission member who will interface with the consultant on that. And that would be looking at graphic imagery, photographic imagery, kind of map imagery, which- You do still want us, I know originally you said, when you're out take pictures of stuff. We still, the Dropbox or the Google Dropbox is still existing. And it's, I'll invite the new members to it. But the idea would be that we, if we're at a farmer's market in springtime or the fall leaves are beautiful, the snow looks really pretty on a morning like today. If you happen to have your phone or camera and you see something you love, take a picture and put it in the Dropbox. If you look at Essex Plan or any good plan, you'll see that it's like 70% graphics. And the rest is references to the spokes out documents. So we do have that. And we need to facilitate that a little better. And so for these other partners and commissions that haven't been assigned anybody, are they equal weight? Are we just concerned about getting somebody with a CCRP student in the school district as the Public Safety Commission? I think they are equal weight. I think that if you look at the chapters as they are written or sort of described, some things like the safe, healthy connected people seem to have a lot of things going on because that sort of crosses all the different territories. And while housing has three bullet points, housing also, if you think about it in a really global sense, it really addresses almost everybody's, it does address every human being and Wendewski's needs. So I think they're equal weight. There's more or less bullet points per each one. I would be happy to be the liaison to the Public Safety Commission. Okay. And I'll take the CCRTC. I'd love to be the school district. That's a fun one. And you have a kid in the school, so that's her idea. Yeah, yeah. And so Palace, you're still housing. I'm still housing. And then... It's not on this list, but he's doing, I guess, historic society and working with Paul on the Mark Steele chapters. Seth, did you go on? So just to note, Mike is also on a rep to the CCRTC. I just want to put that into context, too. So should I not be that one? I don't know if it's something you guys have talked about. And is that like they have a planning commission rep? They have a city rep. I'll tell you what, if you go and love them, you need an alternate. So... Sure. You might also consider being the sort of liaison to the consultant. I'm saying okay, but I don't know what commitment that is. I don't think it's gonna be much more of a commitment than any of the others, other than the fact that that group, whoever it is, and we can talk afterwards for a minute, but might have some pretty fun dynamic stuff going on. And I think they will be being paid to do a lot of work, or theoretically a lot of work. And the liaison would be the gatekeeper for that work. Okay. I mean, instead of being the CCRTC thing. Let's talk afterwards. Okay. But maybe both. Welcome. What am I saying yes to? I just keep saying yes. All right, we can talk after. All right, so any other... Anything else anyone wants to address before we make a motion to adjourn? Just out of curiosity, I see a lot of commissions and a lot of other projects. And if any, if there is a, you know, when we are working, if there is a conflict between other commissions or other, like we, you know, we are addressing the same issues, are we talking about the same thing and another commission or another... Oh, you're saying when they come back to us with their recommendations, if two of the recommendations from different commissions conflict with each other, what happens? Yeah, yeah, so if there is any conflict that shows, you know, how do we... So, I mean, I think the way I see it is that we're asking for input and they're giving us our input and then it is our job to discuss that input. And if we need further clarification to make a decision, then we can go back to each of the commissions and ask for further clarification. But I mean, we're the final kind of... You are the final voice to make recommendations, to counsel, which ultimately the plan is a recommendation... To put into our draft. Right, but in recent history, again, I'll go back to the mainstream project. We knew that there was going to be some potentially conflictual kind of messages or thoughts about mainstream and we put it out to the public. We had, I think, a really healthy debate and consensus was arrived at. So, I think the goal would be to, through a public process and an internal process, get to consensus, resolve conflict through discussion and through compromise. And in the case of the mainstream project, I don't think it was any compromise at all. I think the consultant and the community pushed the project to a better level. So... Yeah, I mean, I think an example, we had been talking about parks and some of the things that maybe I had thought of our other people on the Planning Commission had thought of in terms of what to do with our parks and one of the areas that I was interested in is connecting Casa Von Park with Gilbrook and we brought this up last week, at the last meeting with the Community Services Commission and they brought up some practical potential limitations to that idea that I was not aware of and that doesn't necessarily mean that that's not worth going forward, but one commission might have insight based off of experience working in a particular area that another one isn't aware of, so I expect we're gonna see conflicting ideas at times and then I think we need to get the information and then craft, you know, we're asking for bullet points so that we can kind of figure out where those points are and then craft some kind of narrative to go into the plan. That's clear enough. And there is parks and red department, autonomous, they are hues and they do a lot of those things on the one as well. Right, so that's a resource, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this is meant to be ultimately guidance for all the city departments, all, you know, so when we, Planning does a project, it says does it meet the, conform with the ideas in the plan, in a general sense, same with Parks and Rec. So, Forest Community Services. Yeah. Exciting. All right. Thank you for having me here today. So, does anyone wanna make a motion to adjourn? Sure, I'll move to adjourn. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, for adjourn, thank you guys for coming. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you.