 My name is Rob Goodwin, Chair of the DRB. I'd like to call this February 7th regular DRB meeting to order. I'm going to introduce the members of the board starting at my left here. Kevin O'Connell. On the Zoom platform, we have Michael Azorchik. Good evening. Joe Kiernan. Hello. Abby White. Kathy Burgess. Well. Catherine. And Dean Leon. Hello. How are you guys? At this point, I'm going to turn it over to, I guess it will be Meredith. We didn't flush this out to review the remote meeting procedures. We have a little swap going on due to the nature of the applications. And I'll let Meredith go right ahead. Just a minute. I am going to be sharing my screen. And this is more for people who might be watching via Orca. But it's going to be some information for other people who haven't done a remote meeting with the DRB previously. Oh, hold on one sec. Sorry, I don't usually have. I used to do it all from in there. Alrighty, can everybody see a PowerPoint? Yes. Yes. Great. So for those of you viewing this meeting via Orca Media, you can participate in the DRB meeting using the Zoom platform. You can either click on to paste this link into your web browser and or I guess if you're watching on your television, write it down and then type it into your web browser. And that will take you right into the Zoom meeting. You'll be able to see the screens we look at. You'll be able to ask questions, give testimony. You can also dial in using this phone number and this meeting ID. If anyone has any problems accessing the meeting, please email me at this email address. Alternatively, we do have Michael Miller on tonight. We'll also be staffing and so you can email him as well. Either one of us will work for those attending via Zoom. Turning on your video is optional. And for everyone attending, please keep your microphone on mute when you're not speaking, this will reduce background noise. We don't seem to have anybody on primarily the phone. So I'm not going to go through the phone procedures. If you have any issues, there's an echo. If you're having any issues getting into the meeting, any technical difficulties with sound, please use the chat function. And please use that only for those logistics or troubleshooting issues. Any comments or questions about the substance of an item, please raise your hand, either physically or using the raise hand button on your toolbar. And the chair will call on you or Mike or I will let the chair know that there's somebody wanting to talk. Once the chair is recognized, someone to speak, please make sure to provide your full name and address for the record. In the event that Mike or I get noticed that someone is trying to get into the meeting and we aren't able to get them into the meeting, the meeting will have to be continued to a time and place certain. I'm going to now hand this all back over to the chair. Thank you, Meredith, for your summary. It's always good to get that stuff straightened out. At this time, I will accept a motion to approve this evening's agenda. So moved. Second the motion. Motion by Kevin, second by Jean. How do the members vote, Kevin? Yes. Michael? Yes. Joe? Yes. Abby? Yes. Catherine? Yes. Jean? Yes. And Rob, myself votes yes. That's the agenda is unanimously approved. All right, thank you everyone for coming out this evening to the night's meeting. We have two applications this evening. This meeting will be a little bit different than once before. As you'll see, we have our planning department head, Mike Miller, sitting in the chair that Meredith is usually sitting in this first application. To the nature of it, it's an appeal that Meredith was involved in, so because acting as staff for this. And Meredith is here to provide what information she may need to for the first application. And then for the second application on the agenda on Greenwich Shed Lane. Meredith, I believe, will be joining us up here and taking over to support us in the remainder of the meeting. Any board members have any other general comments before we get started in tonight's meeting? OK. The next item is approval of the meeting minutes for the December 20th, 2021 meeting. And we can do that because we have enough members present. Does anyone have any amendments or changes or a motion to approve? I'd like the motion to approve the minutes of December 20th, 2021, as written. I'll second. I have a motion by Kevin, a second by Catherine. Kevin, how do you vote? Yes. And Michael? Yes. Joe? Yes. Bobby? Yes. Catherine? Yes. Jean? Was not present. Thank you, Jean. And Rob, myself votes yes. That is approved unanimously. At this time, we will now move on to approval of the minutes for the January 18th, 2022 meeting. And I will accept a motion or amendments as board members wish to proceed. Motion to approve. Motion by Jean. Second. I think that was a second by Catherine. Right. All righty. So Kevin, how do you vote? I was not present at that meeting. Thank you, Kevin. Michael? Yes. Joe was not there. Abby? Yes. And Jean? Yes. And Rob, myself votes yes. That is unanimously approved. Thank you very much. Are you Susan? Yes. So you cannot step right up here if you feel comfortable. I'm assuming you would like to speak tonight on this application. Well, I thought we were going to do it a little differently, but it's OK. Do you want me to? If you can, well, I guess I will introduce this item of the agenda. We're moving on to the 25 Cliff Street application. Recording in progress. Which is an appeal of administrative decision of the zoning administrator. And so you can introduce yourself. And we're going to have Mike Miller give a little overview of this sort of technical process that we're in here for everybody. And then you can sort of go through your concerns and say whatever you like to give us information we need to come to a decision here. You want me to do that after Michael? Yeah. OK. So you just want me to introduce myself. OK, my name is Susan Danfield Abdo. And I live at 32 Cliff Street. Can you can everybody hear me? Yes. OK. And I have property adjoining 25 Cliff Street. That's right next to 25 Cliff Street. And I am the property right below part of the property on 25 Cliff Street. Yeah. I believe that the appeal should be sworn in. And is there anybody else on the Zoom platform other than Arthur who wishes to speak on this application this evening? OK. So Arthur and Susan are the two members of the public that will be providing testimony on this application this evening. And so we will swear both of you in together. And so I will do that right now. You want me to raise my hand? Yes. OK. Absolutely. So all those interested in providing testimony on this application, would you please raise your right hand to be sworn in as a witness? Do you use only? I'm sorry, Rob, I've got to interrupt. Because I haven't done this before with an appeal. Mike, technically aren't I a witness who should be sworn in as well for this one? We might as well just, yeah, just to be safe. Thank you, Meredith. All right. So all those interested in providing testimony on this application, would you please raise your right hand to be sworn in as a witness? Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury? I do. I do. Right. Thank you. So we have Meredith, Arthur, and Susan all in as witnesses. So I will now turn it over to Mike for a brief overview of where we're at and how we got here. All right, so brief overview. So one quick point for everybody who's trying to figure out why I'm here and Meredith is not. This is the only time is when we have an appeal. And it's not required under state law to do it this way, but we find it's in the best interest of the public and keeping things above board and fair, that when somebody appeals a zoning administrator decision that the planning director may will then be the staff for that appeal. So it will get a whole new review with a whole new set of eyes. So Meredith is the zoning administrator and she made the decision in this case and it had been appealed, which is why I'm going to be acting as staff. And Meredith is acting as defendant if you want, defending her decisions. So this application was from Arthur Falsch of 25 Cliff Street to create a temporary access to the rear of his property for the installation of a stolen array. And he applied for that on October 27th. And so beginning October 28th, the planning department started to receive some concerns and complaints from Ms. Banfield. Oh, and let me first apologize, Susan. Throughout my staff report, I had her name as Banfield with an N and a Banfield with a D. So I've omitted the D. And I now understand that your last name is reversed. It should be Banfield Abdo and not Abdo Banfield. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. OK, I just want to make sure we're proper and how we address you. So Ms. Banfield is the neighbor across the street and is a owner of the property adjacent to this. And the planning staff reviewed the concerns at the time and the comments and found none of them would materially impact whether the permit should be issued. And therefore, the permit was issued on October 29th. And that permit had a 15-day appeal window. So appeals would need to be filed by November 14. On Saturday, November 13, Ms. Banfield filed a timely appeal of the zoning permit by placing it in the Dropbox and City Hall. On Monday, November 15, unaware that the appeal had been filed, Mr. Folsch started his construction and Ms. Banfield notified Mr. Folsch and the city of the fact that there was an appeal. And we went to the Dropbox and found said appeal notified Mr. Folsch to cease construction, which he did accept to stabilize the disturbed area that he had already started construction on and to install silt fencing. On Tuesday, November 16, public works manager, Zach Blodgett, inspected the stabilization and confirmed the site had been stabilized for winter. The subject parcel is in residential 9,000. And the Development Review Board first was supposed to hear this in December 20. And it has been moved to tonight after two movings. So Susan, do you want to give a little bit of overview and present however you would like to proceed? The floor is yours. Well, I think I'd like to begin by saying that I think it's been at least six years since Arthur Folsch has spoken to me. I have no idea why. But anyway, that's from get go. That just shows you the strain on our relationship. And Arthur sent me an email. And in his email, he said he planned to use the right of way to access. He didn't say, I think he said in the track machine, to access the back of his property for a solar array. He said that. And I just can't believe he didn't know that that is not allowed under the contract that he signed when he moved into the property. There are to be no vehicles with motors going up a path. And several emails went back and forth between us because I understand I'm very pro-solar. And several emails went back. And then I became very aware that if I allow this track vehicle to go up a path, that I am setting a precedent. And so I just said no. And that's when, am I not doing something right? That's when I got wind of a temporary access and a 13-year-old granddaughter, Lester Hart, she found the pictures in my cell phone. But my cell phone wasn't set up. So that's why you've got the pictures very late. But this is a very steep bank. And I have the pictures here. If you need to see them date their time, their stamp, and they're dated to show the steepness of the bank. These were forwarded to DRB this afternoon. These are different pictures than the pictures that I sent from my iPhone because capital copy took these pictures of the date and time stamp right off. And I just want to point out that this yellow machine is a city machine. And it's parked right in front of the steep bank. And then as the pictures go on and their date and their time, their stamp, it shows on November 15th at 7.50 in the morning, I went out to take a picture of the straw or hay bale. I was standing on public property. And that's when these pictures came up with Arthur coming out of his house and coming up very close to me and asking me, why am I taking pictures? And I said, because it's cities right away. And at that time, I told him that I have filed an appeal on your project. I said it very clearly. As I walked into my house, Arthur called me a swear word. So I know he heard me because he got more upset. And then I took pictures of the Green Mountain Solar track machine. And I went out a second time when that track machine came over close to the bank. And I said to the Green Mountain Solar person, I said, if any, well, first I should back up, I called the office of zoning and planning. And I left a message with that office. But I got no call back. And then at 8.13, I talked to the Green Mountain Solar hired person. And I said, if any part of this machine touches the ground, I will call them until you're police. And these pictures are so important because they show the Green Mountain Solar person getting off the machine. They show him walking back to Arthur's house. And the last one shows Arthur and the Green Mountain Solar person at 8.14 walking up his driveway. So there were two times that a neighbor, and I don't care if you just absolutely hate my guts, but what a neighbor says to you, I have filed an appeal. Then you have a respectful duty to listen to that person. And I said it twice. Then I went back into the house and I heard machine noise. And I looked out my window, which is right across the street. And I saw the machine trying to grab onto the bank. And so I called them until you're police. And I went out and stood in front of the track machine. And I really was beside myself. I didn't know what to do. So that is the beginning of this unfortunate situation. So you laid out a number of very clear concerns in your appeal here. And so one of our challenges here as the board is we have to take the zoning regulations and like your appeal and we compare them and we see if there's anything we can do to satisfy your concerns and resolve this situation. I can tell you this. The erosion structure that was set up did not last two days. It was down. And I sent emails to Michael Miller indicating that. And then it was put up and then it was down two days. It's been down since January 18th. It has done absolutely nothing as far as erosion goes through the winter, zilch. And when Green Mountain Solar apparently put back the bank, I watched them as they put back the bank. And all I watched them do was put all the big roots that they tried to take out, put them on the bank, throw some on top, throw some grass seed. And that was it. Oh, throw some hay, some straw or hay. And that was it. And I told Michael Miller. I sent an email. I said, it is not. The bank is not put back so that it will not erode through the winter. And so it's eroding. That's for sure. But I won't go out and take more pictures. That's a good one. Go ahead. I have a question for Mike. Mike, where are we in terms of the status of the application and the approval that was granted by Meredith? What's the issue? I mean, is the issue, is it the physical issue in terms of access across land, which is governed by a right away, which is, I mean, if it's a right away. No, so his original project, his original proposal was to try to take a less deep route and go through the common land that Susan owns beside them, where there is a right of way. When he was denied that access to use that right of way. Which would have been done by the land, though. That would have been that would. It wouldn't have been his land. It would have been about five or six property owners that own the neighboring property. Susan being one of them would be using their property to make access to his back land. When that was denied, his proposal that is permitted is entirely on his own property. And it is to go up basically of a steep slope. You can see from her pictures. And Arthur recognizes and has acknowledged that it's a steep slope. DPW and the planning staff have all said it's above 30%. It's greater than 30%. So that's what the allowance is for, is to allow disturbing a 30 plus degree slope. It's not a right of way issue. No, it's entirely a slope issue. It's entirely a slope and erosion issue. And he was looking for, Mr. Folch was looking for a temporary access. So this is a limited time. And we can get into some of the, if we get to conditions and discussions, we reach that point later on. But it's really, it's about a temporary access to get up the steep slope with this track equipment so they can install the solar and then drive back down. Re-seed and re-stabilize the bank and put up the erosion control. And so that's Arthur's, in a nutshell, that's Arthur's application that was approved. Okay, go ahead Susan, it's your time. I own the right of way. There are five families now that have access to the right of way. And Arthur knew when he bought his property about 10 years ago, he knew there would be no access by a vehicle on the right of way because he has the list and that was not drawn up by me, was drawn up by another attorney in our neighborhood who has since passed away. So he knew that, that's what really frankly irritates me. So because he did not get the access through the right of way, he went to this temporary access. And I have a letter here, they did 1996, 97, where I did some improvements on my property and I had a water problem from the right of way because of the improvements. There is a mountain behind with, and there's lots of ledge. And so I talked to the neighbors because I improved the right of way so they would have a good path going up. And I ended up with water, so we had to grade the right of way so the water goes towards the, it's six inch divot, about six inch divot, I'm not gonna argue that, it's a little divot that runs along the north part of the turnaround. And so the right of way is over here and we had to grade it and I had to put plantings in. And I also had, I put seed in so that it would slow the water down. Okay, then I had the city come up and I first I went down and I asked them, I said, could you just make that divot a little bit bigger? You know, because I'm having a water problem with the right of way, with the water coming down. And they said, you know, we cannot make the divot any bigger because there is ledge, there is ledge all the way through this area. I mean, you can see a great big ledge rock just to the right part, the right side of where Arthur wants to do his temporary access. So I just had to accept the fact that I keep the divot opened so the water will go towards the divot, okay? And then there is a great, an underground great, there's actually two, there's one to the, when you're looking at not standing in front of my house and facing Arthur's house, there's one to the right of his driveway and then there's one to the right of his driveway and then there's also one to the left of his driveway. When this is the number of years ago, Arthur did improvements to his property and there is a pipe coming out in front of, right in front on the, towards the grate on the, when you're looking at his property on the right side, water comes out of that pipe that Arthur put in all the time. I asked Meredith, where is that water coming from? And she did not know. Now maybe you can get Arthur to say, because he put the pipe in. But when I was having improvements done to my property, the bulldozer just on the surface nicked an old lead pipe and water came gushing out. And the contractor said, I don't, that water is coming from across the street. And I don't know why they didn't cap it off. So the professionals put a crimp, what they call a crimp in the pipe. And it's not, it's right on the surface. It's not very deep, but it's under the crawl space of my house. And the way they acted, it was coming from that property, okay? 25 Cliff Street. So I am very concerned about water. I'm very concerned about water and I'm very concerned about erosion. And I'm very concerned about ledge. You know, we couldn't even make the divin any bigger because of the ledge. And there is ledge throughout. So I know that I could go after Arthur. If he does this temporary access, it makes a problem for me. But I really don't want to do that. Well, so I think that we have, you know, sort of a lot of information here. And would it be okay if now we gave Arthur maybe five minutes to sort of like talk about his projects and whatnot, and we can go from there with questions. I think I've, I just want to say one other thing. Okay. I've already dealt with some problems with water in terms of my house from Irene. We are expected to get 25% more downpours. That's what I read in the paper. So the water problem is not going to go away. Frankly, you know, it's just not. So, okay. Absolutely. Well, Rob, I would just comment before we get too far into this. You know, I'm questioning whether the resolution to this issue, which is, you know, it's bifurcated. It's both a technical issue and a legal issue. It's also a neighbor neighbors at war issue. And I think we need to be extremely focused as to what it is we're dealing with as a board and what it is we can do in terms of the application and any resolution to the neighbor situation. Yeah, and I think that, you know, the next step going forward at, you know, we obviously usually hear from the applicant, but there's not necessarily an applicant here. There's an appellant. There's an appellant, but not an applicant. Sort of like an overview of the project and what they're planning to do to, you know, address erosion and address any, you know, that type of stuff. I just want to, I want to add one thing. These stumps that you see, there's two sets of stumps in the picture. Yeah. The city graciously took down some ash trees that were really threatening my house. That's how close my house is just, it's about 10 feet from the pavement. And so Alex, who is the tree arborist said, he would plant some lilacs or something on the bank when he took them down. That was just a couple of years ago. And so there's been nothing really planted on there, but the bank has been holding. Oh, okay. Okay. So, Arthur, do you wish to provide a little review of your project for the board so we can just sort of weigh all the information here? Just to start with a couple of clarification. So first of all, I am one of the landowners who abuts my own property. So I am also in it. And clearly this is a contentious issue. Susan's description does not fit mine in terms of how that property works or is agreed to, but that's not for this hearing to decide. It does happen to be context as to why Nicole, my partner and I decided that we would try to put in a temporary access because we have a solar project which we've been working on for some time and we were at a point where we were able, we have a permit now from the state and we wanna put the panels up. We need to get a machine in that can drill screws into the ground to do that. They need the track machine to get up. So it's not ideal for us either. We recognize this is a steep bank. This is not our preferred route, but this is where we are. So we're trying to figure out how to do it in the best way possible. So obviously we've approached the city because we knew it's in the city's interest to safeguard both the right of way and the steep slope. And we believe that we came up with a proposal that satisfies us getting a track machine, both an excavator and a skid skier up that bank, put the screws in for the array and get those machines out and tend to the bank so that it will be stable and it will grow. We talked about plantings and so on and so forth. And I don't really wanna hash out the details of why our neighbor is so acrimonious, but I think it's worth noting that when Susan finished her last statement about the stumps that were left on the bank, that's my property. She directed the city to cut trees on my property and then proceeded to burn those trees for firewood. So the sense of entitlement and ownership of Nicole and my land by Susan in this case is very difficult for us. We don't want to have conflict around this. We'd really like to just get the solar panels up, but we're being put into a position where we're making a sub-optimal choice. We believe we're making one that's reasoned. We believe we're making one that will work and will protect all the stakeholders who are involved, but at the end of the day, it's not how we'd like to do it. I'm happy to clarify any of the other points around this, but I think the permit is, I hope, fairly straightforward. We wanna build a very narrow path going up a steep bank that's going sort of perpendicular to the bank itself that curves into our backyard. We're at the end of Cliff Street. We're on, there's steep banks all around us, once we're over that initial bank, which is about 12 feet plus or minus, depending on where you stand in the cul-de-sac to see it. After that, it's a reasonable path into our backyard. So again, it's not the best approach, but it does seem viable and that's what we're doing. At this point, that's the plan to be able to make the solar panel project work. Thanks. To clarify real quick, when you say temporary access, what's the timing and direction of that proposal? So Green Mountain Solar and their subcontractor, which is Flint Hill Contracting, they told us they need about 48 hours to actually do that work. So the intention really was, is we need to drive the machine up, put the screws in and drive it back and repair it. And that looks like something on the order of two days, but I think we all know in our experience of various construction projects, two days never is two days. It probably ends up being more than that, but they don't believe, they're not seeing traffic going up and down. They're just seeing the time it takes to create it, the time it takes to install and then to get out. And again, they are saying that's like 48 hours. And is this work that can be done in the winter or they need to wait till spring of the year? This is not what we would entertain in the winter. I mean, even though that bank seems to have to be fairly dry, we want to give it time for all the water to melt out from it. So we want to make sure that it is reasonable, that we're not gonna cause undue problems for ourselves, trying to go through mud and whatnot. Yes, Susan, real quick. I would just like to say something. I have a deed to my property. And when Arthur confronts that issue, he is barking up a tree that he does not have a deed. And I'm sorry, Susan, I don't want to cut you off here, but unfortunately this board, we can't. I know, but I'm just saying that, and I am not in the position I never will be, and he needs to understand this. I will never give my property away. I pay taxes on that property and I will never give it away. And he can be as contentious as he wants, but he's never gonna make me move. And the people that take over my house will not move either. Okay, that being said, something that is new, that is appropriate for me to say to this board, is that I have been in touch with the public utilities department and the public utilities commission. And they are not happy. They are not happy because I wasn't informed about this project and it was approved last August. And there is no way I could make my issues clear because I was not informed. And so this hearing may be all for naught. If Arthur's solar array, which unfortunately, the kind he wants is revolt. And those are the words they used. And one person asked me, well, why doesn't he just put a solar array on top of his house? And I said, I don't know. And so I'm bringing that up because there are other options besides tearing down a bank. And I've been told by Meredith Crandall that the bank will never be the same. And here we have a little divot that's directing the water. And you know, it's just something I think that we can look into. So let me ask you, if you had a, not to say that the board would require this because we have some procedural stuff to talk about a year. We have a process where if you're discerning steep slopes, you have to have a plan prepared by a professional engineer to make sure that the drainage is okay. If you were to go through that process, would that satisfy the majority of your concerns? Well, I think it would go a long way. If the person could say where the water's coming from that came gushing out of the pipe that's underneath my house, all they could tell me is that it's across the street. And so I have the knowledge that there are several springs across the street. And all of them bring water down. My house was built in 1880. And it's still standing amazingly. It's been built into the cliff and it's still standing. It's the only house that's, you know, it's all by itself. So you would like some answers onto where the water's going exactly. Boy, I tell you, I would love some answers. I didn't pursue it when that pipe was nicked because there wasn't really any reason for me to pursue it. I've lived in that house for 35 years. This issue has never come up. And I would never expect it to come up because the reason I wanted to have a site visit is that, frankly, anybody looking at the site, I would think that they could say, oh my goodness, this is gonna cause big time erosion. And the other thing is, based on these pictures, I cannot trust this neighbor. Frankly, he scares me. And so I don't know if what he's gonna do, if he's allowed a temporary access, that's gonna set a precedent for future access. And then I'm the one that's gonna have to deal with it. I kinda wanna just move over to change gears a little bit here to start taking through the regs and some of these issues. This staff report sort of first big issue that we point to is this question about steep slopes and whether the provisions were applied correctly thus far on this application. On page four of the staff report here, I think was previously said, it doesn't appear to be any disagreement here about how the slopes maps for the city, which the city's zoning regulations are directed to use, that this area in question is an area with 30% slopes or greater. But Mike, do you wanna maybe expand a little pet upon where we are as far as steep slopes and what the decision was made on the administrative level related to steep slopes? Okay, so what happened during the zoning permit process was that Meredith had the application, she noted as Arthur noted that it was a steep slope. She reviewed this with Zach Blodgett who is a licensed engineer, works for public works and talked to him about this proposal being this narrow, going up the steep slope with the tracked equipment and he felt that this was gonna be okay, provided it had the proper erosion control because it was gonna be temporary because it was gonna be of limited scope. They're just gonna be roughing out a path. That was gonna be fine. So under the regulations, Meredith has a right to waive certain application requirements. And so there is an application requirement that says you need an engineer's report if you're going to disturb 30% slopes. Meredith made a determination that based on her conversations with Zach Blodgett that this is gonna be temporary, it's gonna be of limited scope that a full engineering report would not be needed in. The second piece, we're kind of splitting hairs a little bit on these things here, there is also a requirement to have a hearing and that's where I noted in the staff report that I think it, although Zach has agreed that this doesn't need a hearing, that this doesn't need an engineer's report, it probably in my opinion should have had a hearing because it was gonna disturb 30% slopes. We don't have a hearing requirement. Tonight, we are having a hearing. So therefore it is certainly the option of the DRV to go through and say this is the hearing, this is the opportunity to comment and make a decision as a board. So that's a little bit of the subtleties. You could as a board say you wanna have a separate engineering report produced, basically making a different decision than Meredith. You also could say we wanna have that new warned public hearing with that new engineering report. So the board has some options with respect to this and it's up to you, I guess what path you'd wanna take. You wanna just make this the hearing if you wanna separate engineer's report that's up to you at this point. I guess I have one more question. So you have the threshold for the 30%. Yes. Is there a score footage as it relates to the amount of area disturbed that falls into this or not in our regulations? No, the regulations unfortunately just say any disturbance of soil over 30%. And Meredith, because a little bit of this application and some others, we thought maybe we'll talk to the planning commission and some others about whether there should be a low threshold that would say the minimal disturbance. But as the regs are written, any disturbance of soil over 30% automatically triggers a hearing. And therefore, even though this is only going to disturb two or 300 square feet, I believe, with the amount of soil that would be disturbed, it's above zero and therefore technically required a hearing. So obviously, just to put it into context here, obviously you have to draw the line somewhere because you could go out with your garden shovel and you could dig a wheelbarrow out of the side of the hill and you're disturbing a 30% slope. But I know that that's not the hair you're trying to pick here but obviously, at some point there's a judgment call to say that there's some disturbance of steep slopes that happens in this city where you don't need an engineered plan and you don't need a hearing. And a little bit of the nature of the disturbances, there wasn't any soil being moved, there wasn't any soil being added. The nature of what they're doing is to kind of shape it. It's being an unshaped piece of soil going up. What they need to be able to do is just, yep. Abby, did you lose him there for a minute? Yeah, I saw Abby said that we lost council chambers there for a minute. Abby and I were still both sort of alive but maybe step back a minute in what you were saying. Okay, and where did we lose you? Pretty much when you put your hands up in the air. Oh, exactly, sorry. Well, I think what Mike was saying about, there would be no actual disturbance of the soil. Yes, so the idea is that if there's any disturbance of the soil, then it has to have a hearing and so that's where we're pretty much where we were at was this should have required a hearing and now it's up to kind of the board to make a decision on should there be an engineer's report and should there be, does this count as the hearing or should there be another hearing? There's kind of a couple of decision points for you to make. So board members sort of understand what we're at as far as the hearing for steep slopes provision does this count as the hearing? We don't have to decide that now, I don't think but just maybe make sure you have enough information to make that decision later. Kevin, yes? Yeah, Rob, I have a question. I was curious to know more about Mike's comment that it wouldn't disturb the soil. Is that because the equipment is just intended to, how does that work that it wouldn't disturb the soil? Disturb the soil. So they were bringing in an excavator to shape so they weren't going to bring in any soil and they weren't removing any soil but what they did need to do is to, my understanding and maybe Arthur can correct me if I'm wrong, just to kind of give some stumps, move some soil, move some rocks but you're kind of moving things a little bit to make a clearer path so that way the tract equipment can drive in and drive out. It's not making a road, it's not installing, it's just in order to get the track equipment to go up and you kind of gotta, it'll be uneven and you're just gonna kind of move some dirt so that way it makes a kind of a straighter, flatter path for the tract equipment to work its way in and out. Does it have to be graded? Does the slope have to be graded at all? Maybe that's a little bit of a technical question for Arthur, I believe it's not graded, it's just being shaped in order to allow the equipment. That's my understanding as well. I'm not the excavator operator and so I can't specify it in that level of technicality perhaps what I was told as we walked through it he indicated where he pulled soil from one spot and put it and create kind of a bench for the vehicles to go up. We're talking about a six foot wide path that would be going sort of diagonally up the path and then to ensure like we would, wherever there are divots from that moving of soil that would probably be smoothed out. I don't know if that counts as grading or not, but that the intent there is just to like, why do you make it disappear into the bank after it's been used and to be as least intrusive as possible? Thanks. Go ahead, Abby. That was it. Thank you, Kevin, do you have anything? Yeah, I just recommend that we take all evidence possible and then adjourn to a deliberative session because this is definitely a deliberative session. I was just gonna say, I feel like I've got the information I need for us to sort of hammer out the technical regulatory details of how all of this sort of interacts with the zoning ordinance. And so I was- I just wanna add one other thing. Yep. In Arthur's application, he said the divot will not be disturbed. It is impossible to create a bench and not disturb the divot. That is an impossible activity. So when you're deliberating, I want you to think about water coming down on both sides and we know water's coming down on the right side 24-7. I don't know where it's coming from. Water's coming from underneath my house and water is coming down the right away until it was pushed into the divot. And it makes me very, very concerned, very concerned. So concerned that I've notified my home insurance company about this situation. And they were very, very pleased that I notified them. And they told me exactly what to do because I know this neighbor and he will say, well, you have to prove it. That it's the water from my project that's causing you difficulty. And so I have worked to get the proof together beforehand and then after. And I really just don't want to go through that, but my home insurance said you are doing the right thing. And it's very unfortunate because Mr. Fulch has lived there for about, oh, I would say you could ask him 10 years. And he did a great big project building a retaining wall behind his house. Well, if he hadn't built that retaining wall, he could have pulled up, you know, there's plenty of room for access, but he put in a big retaining wall. So I am dealing with a neighbor that doesn't plan and I'm not gonna be the scapegoat for his lack of planning. That's where we're at. And the other thing is that the neighbor on the other side of Arthur put up a solar array. I think we really have to keep the on point with these. Yeah, yep. And did not need the hot machine. So. I think Jean has a question too. Yeah, before we go into delivery, just, I've been looking at this site in detail with the Google map. So someone raised the question on, whether was there any other alternatives as far as putting the solar on the roof or beyond 25 Cliff Street, is there any other point of access that wouldn't be as steep or as disturbing to access the rear of the property? Yeah. You know, Jean, I think those are interesting questions, but I'll also think that there might be outside of sort of the purview and the reasons why we're here. And so I would thank everyone for their participation this evening on this matter. And so I did want it before we move out. So there's a second point. So there were two points, which one you noted on page four about the steep slopes and the second is on page seven regarding erosion control. They're both very related issues, but they're technically two separate issues. So I just wanted to make sure that we, on the record, we mentioned that there, the second one is whether or not there should be an erosion control plan, which basically this discussion follows a very similar one that we had about the steep slopes and that Meredith consulted with the city's operation manager and engineer who's a registered licensed engineer in Vermont. And he reviewed the erosion control plans and he's continued to monitor the plans and is aware of the fact that those, the snowplow has taken out that silt fence and they're in touch with Arthur and said there's no sense putting the fence back up until the snow starts to melt because the ground underneath is currently frozen and isn't going anywhere. And putting up the silt fence now and the snow banks is just gonna get taken out and it's not serving any purpose. So the public works will continue to be in touch with Arthur over the winter to continue to monitor it and make recommendations on that. I have to disagree. The erosion structure was down before the snow came, that I'm clear about. It had nothing to do with the snow. The erosion structure was not built to withstand this steep bank. And then the snowplow, yes, took it out because you would just expect that to happen. So. I would entertain a motion for the board to move on unless any board member feels like they need any more information and have any more questions. Gene still have his hand up or does Gene? I mean, we'll have another. No, I'm sorry, I gotta get the hand down. I'd like to motion to go into deliberate session. We will be doing. We'll do that after Fred closed the public hearing and then go into deliberative session. Right, Gene, do you accept that friendly amendment for your motion that we will close the public hearing and we'll go into the deliberative session at the end of tonight's regular meeting? That would be my amended motion. You okay with that, Gene? Yes, second. Go to the amended. Gene, we still need a second. That will be me. Kevin, second from Kevin. Okay, Kevin, how do you vote? Yes. Michael, yes, so Abby? Yes. Catherine? Yes. Yes. Joe there or is Joe at? Oh, there he is. Joe, we can't seem to hear you. Joe can't hear you. We have enough votes. We'll give you a thumbs up. Thumbs up from Joe. We can see you if you wanna do a thumbs up if it's a yes. Okay, here we go. Is this thing? Joe, there you are. That motion to take this up in deliberative session over the public hearing now, through unanimously. So we'll be discussing this after tonight's meeting. You will be hearing from the funding department at some point in the coming weeks. We'll fix on the process after tonight's meeting. So yeah, be a pellet. No, this will be, if the decision is rendered tonight, I'll be starting to work on the writing up the decision and Rob, we'll get with Rob to get that signed and we'll get that out to the applicant and the appellant. As appeals are worked the same way as any DRB decision, there's a 30 day appeal window on these. So once this decision is signed, it'll be 30 days and either appeal or the permit will be valid or denied. So Susan, thank you very much for coming in this evening. Thank you. Wish you the best with the rest of this. Four members, I want to entertain a motion for a five minute recess as we have to shuffle staff around here in between applications. So we'll just do that by unanimous consent. And that's for Zoom at eight 10 in this room, which is seven minutes. So yeah, see y'all at eight 10. Welcome back. I believe we have everybody present here. And I haven't, I don't know if Abby and Kat, I don't know if our actual board members are back. Yeah, I'm just checking. Here. Jean's here. Abby's here. Catherine, are you back? Michael's here. He just unmuted himself. Yeah, I'm here. Awesome. Joe's back. Hi, Catherine. Just gotta wait for Catherine. I'm here. Awesome. We're all set. And there's a bunch of people to swear around this time around. Yeah. So it is now past eight 10. We could call this meeting back to order. Thank you all for being patient while we had a little recess. So our next application this evening is for a conditional use approval on Granite Shed Lane in Montpelier. And anyone who is here to speak on this application? I'm from together with Jeff Velosky. So Jeff Velosky is the only one speaking. Is anyone else gonna speak? And Fred? Yep. Is anyone else from the applicant gonna speak this evening or a member of the public? So just Jeff Velosky and Fred O'Connor will be sworn in. Phyllis, will either you or Paige wanna talk for the Montpelier Conservation Commission or for yourselves? Maybe. Okay. But that's where the man, they don't have to go. Just swear y'all in just because it's easier. I don't think I'm gonna speak. Okay, I'll let Paige speak. That's, this is Phyllis. Thank you, Phyllis. Okay. So we are now swearing in Paige. Paige, Fred, Jeff, Steve has his hand up. Yep. And then if John or Michael need to speak, you can swear them in at that time. Yep. All those interested in providing testimony on this application, would you please raise your right hand to be sworn in as a witness? Do you solemnly swear or affirm testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury? I do. Yes. Yes. Ready. Thank you very much. So I will, with those speaking of the application, would you just introduce yourself real quickly? Fred Conner. Fred Conner and... And my name is Jeffle. Go ahead, Steve. Steven Conner. And my name is Jeff Alasky with Kedavon Consulting Engineers, the civil engineer for the project. And so, Meredith, you wanna give a brief overview of the status of where we're at on this application? Yep. So the staff report goes into some of the history for the project. I think I might let Fred or Jeff talk about most of the history. In general, as Rob started to say, this is an application for major site plan review and conditional use approval. Tied in with that is also a request for some permitted uses that normally would just be administrative approvals, but they're all part of the review for the major site plan and what is planned to be done for the outside of the building, as well as the site itself, landscaping, lighting, parking, stormwater, all of those things come into play here. And the things like parking, you have to evaluate those based on the uses. So everything is included in this approval package. That doesn't mean that the board has to approve all of those parts, right? So they can approve the major site plan requests along with the permitted uses being requested and then decide how they wanna deal with the conditional uses. There's a mix of things that the board could do here. As summarized in the staff report, there is some administrative permit history with this project because this is all part of a Brownfield redevelopment project. There's a corrective action plan. And so we've had back and forths with the applicant on various small parts of the project that had to get dealt with. So that they could clean up the underlying site as well as some needs, because some of the sort of out, kind of outbuildings, but really the additions that were put on the building that are the smaller sort of elbows, shoulders to the building, when Connor brother bought it, we're in really bad disrepair. And so administratively, we have approved some removals of roofs and some small demolition where those demolitions never triggered actual major site plan and some rebuilding of the shell. With caveat that Fred had to come back when he was ready or Connor brothers had to come back when they were ready and had a sense of what they were gonna actually do with the rest of the site. It really, it just, it wasn't triggering that full review but we knew it was coming. So that's what we have here. It is still sort of a speculative approval because they don't have a tenant. So that's where some of the complications come into play here and why there are sections with a lot of red where the board's gonna have to figure out whether or not to approve certain items that are mostly tied to the potential uses. And if so, especially with the conditional uses how to condition them in a way to deal with the things like traffic and other things that come into play when you start having a conditional use. So it's a little bit more of a puzzle piece for the board than I think normally comes before it. And I think just to note here that there's a number of issues in this application. You could actually say that this could be three different applications in one with some different issues. And so I just would like to ahead of time just to apologize to the applicant and thank you for your patience. We may not get through everything this evening. It's just possible and that's nothing to do with your preparedness or anything like that. That's just us going through our process and trying not to make decisions while we're falling asleep. So that being said, we will turn it over to the applicant if you want to give a presentation and overview of what you're proposing to do and try to address any concerns you think you can write off. Thank you. I'm Fred Conner and I'm representing the owner which is Conner Brothers, we develop a company called Three. Together with my three brothers, Steve, Mike and John. And we're joined by our sub engineer, Jeff Aleski, who's the owner of Catwalk Consulting Engineers. I'd like to briefly introduce our company and the project and then turn it over to Jeff to ask him to walk us through the site plan. Conner Contracting Inc. Our general contracting and construction management company is 32 years old. We have 30 employees, very talented employees and we maintain office and support space in both Berlin and St. Albans. Each year, redevelopment projects for least a third parties is part of the mix of projects that we undertake. This is our fifth such project in Montpelier and it's been my families, my immediate families since 1998. I wanted to just comment on one project that's in the neighborhood which is 575 Stone Cudders Way. It's similar to this one in that it was a speculative venture and with the DRB support, we were able to get the building shelled up and then we're able to secure two tenants, the chancellor's office and the Vermont State Colleges and also the Vermont office of the Nature Conservancy. So while that's not preferred to build on spec, it's proved in this marketplace to be a successful recipe in some cases. Next week is our second anniversary where a purchase of the former Montpelier network, the closing was on Valentine's Day, two-oh-two-oh, just before the start of the pandemic. This is a unique perspective property and we feel privileged to be able to take on the challenge of bringing it back to productive use. We look forward to receiving the support of this downtown Brownfield redevelopment project and with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff to ask him to provide us with an overview of proposed site plan. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Fred. Again, just for the record, my name is Jeff Halecki with Catamount Consulting Engineers. I think in the spirit of the time and of this evening, I'll try to start this off with a very brief overview of the project, the existing proposed conditions. I feel like probably everybody's at least familiar with location of the site, but we're talking about 43 what used to be 65-branet ched lane, two old granite warehouse warehouses. And the kind of, as Meredith kind of outlined, of periodically packed off and pulled some of the old dilapidated portions of the buildings, as well as the entire building that was previously known as 65-branet ched lane and raised and removed the structures and are now to a point where they're looking at really getting to the site redevelopment. As you're aware with the application and as Meredith outlined, there's no hard tenant at this location right now. Really, Connors are attempting to procure a permit or permits in place so that they can make the lot more marketable for potential clients. And as outlined within the application, there certainly are some preferred and suggested uses. And we'll get into those in some more detail throughout the night, I'm sure. But what the application from a similar site standpoint involves right now is really retaining the existing building shelf, which is left right now, I believe is 14,700 square feet of building. And that existing footprint that is shown in the existing site plan would be retained in its full capacity. There are some additional structures. There's a craneway support, partly roofed that are being proposed to be retained and potentially worked into some type of site development. And I'll let Fred maybe speak to that a little bit as far as what some of those uses could be. But then really to support the building and in any potential use, looking at really formalizing two parking lots, one on the north side, one on the south side, and then redoing some municipal utilities, namely the water and sewer. We have the building currently is on both municipal water and sewer. We'd be looking just to reconstruct those and upgrade them to today's standards, make sure they're viable for whatever potential tenant goes into this space and really just clean up the site as a whole. There's were considerable drainage deficiencies in the property beforehand. And what we're attempting to do is with a lot of that site redevelopment is not only treat some stormwater runoff but also convey it down to the Lewinowski River in a safe and manageable manner. And I know that was outlined in some of the staff comments as well as some of the conservation committee comments. And again, we can get into some of those in more detail as we go through the night here, but really intent of the stormwater design was to not point collect, but really conquer and divide and provide some on-site green stormwater treatment techniques on site before safely conveying down the river and we felt we've accomplished that with the current stormwater design, understanding that we're out of the threshold of any state discharge or stormwater permit. I guess at this point, I'm happy Meredith, I don't know if you have the existing proposed site plan to pull up or I can certainly screen share them if it's easier. I thought it might make sense to just kind of bring those up so we could take a look at them together briefly. If you could pull them up, that would be helpful. Okay, yep. So bear with me, I'm gonna just pull up, start with the existing condition right here. Sorry, Jeff, I know usually I'm in a space to be able to do it, but it's a lot of files this time around. Yeah, and can everybody see this right now? Kind of, yes. Hold on, let me turn off the lights. I'll be here. Yeah. Oh, yes. Can't see us, but that's okay. Ooh, this is a interesting reverse view. Oh, black. With that being said, I also thought it may be easier, easier in black and white or is the color? I don't even know, that's a little, because we're also having, I can look at my computer screen, but everybody else is looking, or at least everybody else in this room is looking at a big projection, so. Yeah, I think that might be better for us there. The black and white, yeah, okay. Oh, it was pretty neat, but. Yeah, well, you just got a backseat view of what those engineers look at every day, so. But so yeah, I mean, what we're talking about here is, you know, if you're looking at this plan, we have the Wadewski River to the southwest of the property and a steep bank that kind of goes in the top of bank, where the building was in the buildings and lot was predominantly built out down to the river. And then we have Granite-Shed Lane on the northeast side of the property. And that's, again, it's not a, I don't believe it's a public road, obviously, but it's essentially a shared right-of-way with, I believe, in fact, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there's four or five properties, maybe along Granite-Shed Lane and near the second within those to all benefit from their shared right-of-way. And that kind of runs along the railroad tracks here on the northeast side. And as it seems right now, the shaded area you see here in the middle is the main building. That's the 14,000 square foot of building that remains. This smaller shaded area here is the covered craneway and then there's some additional non-move structural supports over here. But right now, the area to the south and the area to the north, they're really just big gravel parking lots. And so I'm just gonna switch over to the proposed site plan. You kind of see what the site development looks like. Really, it's just the formalization of this. So we've got 39 parking spaces on the northeast, I'm sorry, northwest side of the proposed building with the main entrance being right here on kind of northwest side. And then there'd be a second parking lot on the southeast side of the building that would have a couple of different access points on the southeast side. The loading dock area would be here on the far east corner of the building with the concept of trucks pulling down Granite-Shed Lane and simply backing into this space before utilizing the southern parking lot to do a three-point turn and exit back down Granite-Shed Lane as it's one-way dead-end road. And the municipal water and sewer services that are located on the north corner of the building are the locations where we'd be looking to upgrade the water and sewer services. And then, you know, we're obviously proposing a significant amount of landscaping on the proposal on the north and south property lines to provide some aesthetic screening of these properties to the adjacent neighbors, to the southeast and northwest as well as some street trees on the front. We have the space capacity do it. And I know we'll get more into that requirement specifically as we go through the staff don't slave here on. But, you know, that's the general layout in a nutshell. Nothing's really changing with the building, really just formalizing the parking areas and then doing some utility upgrades. One last thing I will mention with regards to stormwater, how it'll be managed is the old north parking lot here will all be shallow sheet flowed into a long rail that runs this whole property line along the northwest side. So it'll be a shallow, gradual, infiltrative swale with overflow discharging through a small stone swale down the riverbank here, which is one of the two areas that required us to impact those 30% slopes and have the conservation committee review it. And then the secondary is the south parking lot here. Well, because of great issues and not being able to sheet flow and drain everything to this far south end, we do have a small collection system, a catch basin and underground collection system that would discharge to a stone dispersion swale or outlet right here. And so that's the second location of 30% slope that would need to be impacted. And these have been sized and minimized to all ability to minimize impact within the riparian buffer in the state bank areas while still we feel providing a safe conveyance to the stormwater out to the river. And then the last part of this parking lot here would actually sheet flow and be treated with a grab disconnection area as this is all predominantly lawn on this far south corner of the building. Great, so brief overview of the existing proposed condition site plan. I guess Meredith at this point, I'll maybe stop screen sharing and hand it back over to you. And I don't know if you want to at this point go through the staff notes in any particular order or run through them. If you want us to leave that discussion or if you want to leave discussion, happy to proceed however way the board prefers. Yeah, I think we can listen. Board members have any questions right off basically just clarifying the previous presentation. We can jump into the staff report here. I don't see any hands. So I think you can jump in, Rob. So it is the first issue in the staff report. And since we have the, you know, couple members of the conservation commission here, I think that the first issue it makes sense to sort of talk about is starting on page seven of the staff report. We have the water setback area. So do you want to give like a, just a brief little little tutorial on the water setback as we do this application, Meredith? Yeah, a little reminder for board members that all properties that have, you know, waters, streams, rivers flowing across them in Montpellier where they've been recognized on our natural resources inventory map have water setbacks. And depending on what zoning district you're in that setback area varies. And there's limitations in what you can do within that setback area. This property is within the riverfront just district. So that setback, the water setback is 20 feet. That's measured from the top of the bank of the river. The first 10 feet of that water setback is referred to as a riparian buffer. So from the top of the bank in towards the building for 10 feet or into the property for 10 feet, there's a riparian buffer that has even greater limitations on what you can do in it. And one of those limitations is that the regulations really want those first 10 feet to if at all possible be kept to natural woody vegetation except in very limited circumstances. And, you know, some of those circumstances are for water dependent uses and other related items. The board has previously approved stormwater outfalls, drainage things like this to the river in those riparian buffers. It really makes sense because then you're not having water discharged and erode a long way. You also don't have a direct pipe, right? It actually slows down the water discharge a little bit. So previously we have considered these stormwater outfalls to basically be water dependent structures even though it's not a, you know, boat access or swimming access or something like that. But we do need the conservation commission's comments any time that someone wants to remove woody vegetation from that riparian buffer zone. And so I forwarded the application onto the conservation commission and they kindly held a special meeting last week to consider it. And everybody should have gotten a copy of the conservation commission's letter. Fred and Jeff, you got that as well, correct? You got the email? Okay. I circulated it to all the board members. And we have their comments. They have some ideas and some thoughts about how to deal with it. And I think it's probably better to hand it over to Paige at this point. Absolutely. Go ahead, Paige. Okay. Well, you have read the comments. One thing I'd like to point out and partly looking at the picture that Fred sent out the other day, which showed the building that extends back actually into the setback and actually into the riparian area that's going to be retained. We didn't have any objection to that, but I believe, and this is actually not in our message I drove by that property last night and noticed this. And then went back and looked at that picture and noticed it again. There is almost no woody vegetation on the bank or in the riparian area. And I believe that that building extending into the riparian area makes this a non-conforming riparian area for which 3005 sub G sub three requires that woody vegetation be restored on the riparian area. I would strongly encourage that. It would help a lot with water running off the parking, especially the Southeast parking lot that basically has a 1990 storm drain system that collects water and catch basins and runs it directly into the river, which is not the best way to do it. But if there were a woody area over there that could capture some of the water that is going to sheet flow off of that parking lot into the grassy area, that would help. And it would also help hold the bank and contain some of the storm water. And then the other major part of the proposal was to do some additional green storm water infrastructure as much as you can do, given the contaminated nature of the storm water soil underneath the site, to put some more green storm water infrastructure in the swale on the Northwest side that would slow the water and filter it even further because otherwise, if it's just grass, the water's not really going to infiltrate very well. So if you had some more vegetation, possibly some shrubs, there are people in town who can tell you what some of the good plants are to put in there to plant some more in that swale to slow and filter the water running off since you are sheet flowing that whole Northwest parking lot into that swale, which is better than running it directly into the river. Thank you. But it's not, it doesn't filter it or infiltrate it in a grassy area. So that would be a recommendation or another recommendation we have definitely limit the removing wood vegetation in the riparian area. And frankly, I don't think you're going to find much but restore any vegetation that's disturbed during the construction. Perhaps thinking about planting clover instead of grasses on the Southeast corner there in particular and the grassy area behind the parking lot, it would probably improve filtration in that area. Check for the presence of invasive species on the riparian buffer and perhaps develop a plan to remove some of them and plant native species over time. It would improve the health of the bank and the health of the water. I don't know about commercial uses on this but when I J-Lated a footing drain into the Otter Creek about 15 years ago, it had to daylight somewhere between 25 and 50 feet away from the water. And so I would confirm the legal requirement of daylighting the drains directly into the river. I'm also verified that your fertilizer isn't going to impact the water quality and there was, oh, and perhaps have somebody help you determine plants to put in the soil. And all those are going to make a difference in the stormwater and the quality of the stormwater because as we noted in the beginning, water running off a parking lot, even though the impervious surface is the same area as the building that was there, water running off a parking lot is far more polluted than water running off a roof. I think that's, can you think of anything else, Phyllis? I think you covered it all Paige, thank you. Okay, thank you. So if I can ask the chair, I'd just like to respond. Yes, absolutely. Jeff, go ahead. It's Fred Connelly. Oh, Jeff and I have reviewed the Conservation Commission's letter. We appreciate that they met on this, on the topic. We've folded that one to our landscape architect and jumping ahead of it, assuming we're not going to be in a position to get a favorable decision type due to timing and some other information issues that we have since we got, and we appreciate, greatly murderous efforts as well. But we received the conservation commission letter this morning and received the staff report while we were moving snow around on Friday. So I think we're going to be requesting the continuance to your next meeting, which I understand to be March 7th. And during that time, we would give a thoughtful reply to both the Conservation Commission and the staff report. I think our 21st is going to be. So Fred, right now at the bottom of our agenda, it said that the meeting on the 22nd of this month is canceled, but that was because of there's no applications. So if you thought you would be ready by February 22nd, we can continue this to then and meet then, or you could opt to go into March. I think that's really your, whatever you felt you would be ready for. We can certainly make that timeline and would appreciate the earlier date, please. Yeah, I mean, that was only canceled because we didn't have any new applications. Well, I think we're going to get through the, the smally miss small, everything tonight anyway, so that would work well. I think if we get a sort of a general outline as to what the plan is and what the issues are, that would be a realistic goal for this year. Well, let's keep moving along here. So did you, Fred, do you have thoughts specifically about the riparian discussion or do you want to? I just give a very brief bit of context. Part of our emergency repairs through building was a completely new roof system, but we also had to eliminate the post and beam framing on the east end of the building in the river on the whole first floor and jack up the building and replace concrete and timber framing because that's the place where the 10 foot diameter saw that's fed with water would run every night for 75 years. And those post and beam members were just about dust staying up by half itself. So that's the kind of work that we had to do there but we also demolished a 14 foot deep addition that is not coming back. So we're increasing the green space on that end of the building. It was about 14 by 60, I believe. Fred, if I could just piggyback on those comments a little more and just kind of just addressing specific comments Meredith within the staff report but I think at one point you were looking for some confirmation on some numbers with regards to the existing of our proposed repairing buffer impacts. And I just wanna confirm, ultimately what we're proposing is 145 square feet of repairing buffer impact but that is not within the first 10 feet of the water setback, so it's outside. So there's really no proposed impact in that first 10 feet. And the only additional existing impact, there's about 534 square feet of Craneway roof that is within that 20 foot river setback. But again, that's existing condition. And then on top of that, and I think this kind of is what Fred was just alluding to is what the portion of the existing building to the Southwest that was previously administratively approved and was removed. And that was about 570 square feet in total of which 442 square feet was within the riparian buffer and has since been removed and returned to green space. So there already have been some mitigation efforts within the previous administrative approval take back some of that riparian buffer in that space above the top of banks there. And along those same lines with regards to conservation committee's comments, we did forego the landscape back to design to develop the landscaping plans. It was gracious enough to provide us with a response. And I think we didn't really have time to turn around that and provide it tonight, but I think there are some thoughtful ways for us to address those comments and concerns with some supplemental revised plans, landscaping plans that'll hopefully address a lot of the conservation committee's comments as we move forward here. So Jeff, just a couple of things. Well, I guess do you think at the next meeting maybe you could have a little tiny exhibit showing like your square footage and your impacts just so we have a picture of where that is. Doesn't need to be fancy, but just so we have a general idea. So like a zoom. Yeah. So the second one is you said 534 feet of a frameway roof. So you're saying that's like the roofed building overhanging into the setback area. Correct. Yeah. So if you were to go to the proposed condition site plan or this, or really either the site plans, the existing or proposed conditions, you'll see the river top bank setback established on there. And you can see the portion of the craneway roof that is within that riparian buffer or that river setback. It's collected off that roof or just sheet off the edge of it for as you speak or proposed or. As of right now, I believe they both to sheet flow that there's no collection system to the craneway structure. Correct. That's correct. And I just want to add, I believe that roof, the roof on that piece of the site terminates before the, what when they're able to, just go look at the site plan behind you right now. Yeah, Jeff, when we get your revised data, I think it probably for looking at the non-conformity within the riparian buffer that Paige did confirm and I didn't mention it in the staff report. There's lots of stuff going on here. How much of the craneway roof is in the water setback as a whole, right? So that's the 20 foot versus some of that looks like it actually does intrude maybe into the riparian buffer area that first 10 feet. When we were talking about what's in the riparian buffer before, I was thinking about the new impervious surfaces, right, and those are really just the outfalls because the stretch of pavement doesn't get into the riparian buffer. That was stayed in the water setback but is right that the part of that craneway roof looks like it is into the riparian buffer. So if we could have that breakdown on the separation there for the total square footage, that would be good. Yeah, I mean, I can summarize it but essentially the craneway, there's 534 square feet of craneway in the river setback and 200 square feet of that is within the riparian buffer. Perfect, thank you. No, Meredith, just for context here, are there any sort of river corridor or flood plain stuff done administratively on this project? Only the approval to demolish the part where Fred was talking about was the shed, right, and that was also lower. That was in the flood plain river corridor and so Audra was part of getting a permit to get that demolished and pulled out and none of the rest of the structures fall into there and there's the line for that is on the site plan. Thank you. You're welcome. Can I just say that we do appreciate what Connors have done along the riverbank and also the fact that they're restoring a historic structure, I think it's great and I should have said that in the first place. So thank you. Okay, so the next item on the staff report is the steep slopes here, which I think you kind of covered in your presentation, but just maybe to confirm, the only site work proposed in those steep slopes appears to be your construction of these outlets and not really any grading beyond that, but maybe I'm wrong. No, that's correct. I mean, again, just with the nature of the stormwater collection and discharge here, and I understand we do have a red sheet bank, you know, I think in total that elevation change the ordinary high water level to the top of bank is somewhat a neighborhood of say eight to 10 feet, you know, we're really trying to be cognizant and aware of not treating any type of discharge at the top of these banks that would cause potential erosion of the banks and ultimately uncompromise any portion of the property. So, you know, what we're proposing from a stormwater management standpoint, we feel is kind of the bare minimum impact on these slopes necessary to safely convey the water in either location. So again, on the north side, we're simply proposing a small swale, stone swale from the top of bank to the bottom bank with the total area of that being about 75 square feet. And then on the south side, you know, just all that would be necessary to essentially trench and install that stormwater pipe outlet and then have a stone dispersion pad at the bottom or the end of that outlet pipe. That's about 20 square feet. So really, you know, the limits of disturbance are outlined in the EPSC plans, but we're doing everything we can to minimize that bank and then obviously we'd be reestablishing the bank and stabilizing it as part of the reconstruction process and confirming that everything is re-vegetated and stabilized when we need to bed. So, you know, along those same lines, we're also trying to, we've got three different kind of discharges to the curve here and an attempt to not all centralize and collect into one pipe in one discharge location as part of these green stormwater infrastructure techniques. So it's a little bit of a balancing act and just using best engineering practice and attempt to A, allow the site to drain properly which it doesn't always do now and B, do it in a manner compromised water quality or the, you know, the bank itself. Okay, yeah, thank you very much. So as far as steep slopes or the river or drainage and erosion, the board members have any questions while we're here? I think... Move it along. Move it along. Yeah. You know, the sections here in the staff report about drainage and I think you've done a really good job of explaining it all so far. So I think we can move on here and the next section following along, we're on page 12 and it's access and circulation. And I think that this is a good segue into looking at the proposed uses. So maybe I would have you sort of skip ahead and talk about the potential uses here and maybe give us some more information on that. I'm sorry, either me or Meredith, I couldn't apologize. I think it'd be, I think coming from the applicant as far as proposed uses would be... Yeah, I think that's a better way in on that. We think highest and best views could be a brewery and a riverfront restaurant. We've toured the site with a couple of brewers. They both want to see where they are but we think there is the potential for that. We're not married to it and we're exploring a lot of other potential uses as well. But that's a use that could have some appeal and interest by the community, I believe. And Fred, just as far as the application is concerned, outlined, obviously we're applying for several permitted and conditional uses and those are on page two of the cover letter that went in with the application originally on December 23rd. But I think as it relates to the conditional use review as Meredith outlined at the beginning of this, the approach we talk in not only in the original application as well as our technical review committee discussions was really to take a look at all these different conditional use criteria and then kind of come up with what's the worst case scenario with regards to a potential use for different criteria, so to speak. And I think obviously there's parking to consider, there's traffic to consider and I think those are the two primary ones. I think that ultimately need to be hashed out a little bit here but in general as part of the review with the technical review committee, we talked about trip generation and uses. I think Fred, correct me if I'm wrong, the concept would be any type of brewery slash restaurant would be about 4,700 square feet of this building to be used that use and storefront, so to speak with the remaining 10,000 being used for the manufacturing or production and storage of the beer or restaurant component of it. And so we've kind of taken that breakdown because it's too easy numbers to work with and kind of run through the parking analysis and traffic analysis on those. Again, understanding we're dealing in hypotheticals here a little bit, but I think we've, and again, I don't know if we want to hash specifics right now but that was a lot of the discussion that happened at the technical review committee and I think the threshold that Meredith put in place within the staff comments that I think, and again, Fred, correct me if I'm wrong that we were comfortable with working with or adhering to if a positive outcome on the overall application could be seen, so. Yeah, we understand from the staff report that basically we're free to request up to 49 trips per day but that if we commend with something greater than that that that would be subject to the zoning administrator's review. It's, and those break down to be 50 because we're on Granite Street, 75 or so we're on more of a different class road. Just before we get too much into the traffic and the trip counts, I just wanted to sort of overview on the uses. So in your cover letter, your application, you list for permitted uses, retail sales and service for the indoor office, restaurant takeout, food service contractor, laboratory or technical facility and then for conditional uses be contractor's yard whether without storage, light manufacturing, manufacturing, warehouse or storage, wholesale, trade, establishment. So are those still in line with what you're proposing? I believe after discussions with Meredith, my letter of January 11th revises that list is the number of uses. Yeah, so we, because we had, there was a lot of back and forth before we triggered the complete application. So that all those things listed in the original cover letter, those are uses that could happen there, either administratively approved or conditional uses. But yeah, as Fred said, the pair down for this application went down to requesting up to 4,700 feet of restaurant, which could be in, you know, eat in or take out and food service contractor. And those three could really be all approved overlapping because those uses could all happen in the same space, almost at the same time. And then up to the 14,700, which is the entire space of manufacturing or warehouse or storage, right? And those are uses that we have in the use table. It specifically just says manufacturing, but manufacturing can be a bunch of different things, which is where it gets complicated. Absolutely. I just wanna add to that that manufacturing includes the used brewery. Yes. And this was previously, I believe, an industrialized zone parcel. So for 75 years with this building and another 50 with other buildings, it was these uses, manufacturing and warehouse. Yeah. It's, unfortunately, you weren't ready to apply for use within the first 11 months of owning it and after the previous tenants left. Got it. Gene has his hand up. Go ahead, Gene. Thanks. So regarding uses and considerations to uses, has there any consideration or discussion to not necessarily just to use for commercial, but is it the potential or consideration for housing? I have to ask that. Yeah. The timber frame structure, which if anybody's been in the Vermont Granite Museum, this is a little sister of that building. That was 300 feet long. This was 200. That was a little wider, a little taller, but the framing does not lend itself to residential without a lot of rework. It's not quite tall enough to be two legitimate stories. I see. I thank you. Yep. Okay. So we got talked about the uses here and in relation, we're going to do that in relation to as a primer for access and circulation. I guess it's asked a question about, you talked about parking on site a little bit, but maybe before getting into that, pedestrian and bicycle access to this site, obviously if you're posing restaurant or brewery or it could be traffic in that nature, proximity to the bike path, do you have any sort of plans or visions for addressing that aspect of access and circulation? A project we may want to explore at some point is the reconstruction of the roadway. Each lot, I think there's a half dozen, each lot's on the road and then all the others have to pass and repass. So it would be a half dozen folks that would have to agree or maybe two or three if it's just on our end and then it would be reconstruction and parking and paving and we do value our place on the, at the start of the new second phase to the motorway bike path. So we do want to facilitate that, but right now it's a gravel road and has been for about 150 years. Did you catch that, Rob? I did catch that. You did, okay. Board members, have any questions at this time? Moving down the staff report, we have parking and loading areas. Meredith, were there any technical details we really need to address on this specific issue? No, I mean, it's, there's, I have a suggestion for a way to, in a condition here for a way for the board to potentially approve a major site plan with limited parking striping, actual parking spaces striping that would let the applicant have some parking spaces for a more minimal use of the space and then be able to come back in sort of a phased adding of parking spaces as they're needed depending on what the ultimate use is. You know, the other, the only other, you know, one of the other funny little things in here is about the electrical vehicle charging stations. I think that because the language says those are for residents or employees, it would depend on what ultimate use ended up being here. So if it did become a big office building with a bunch of employees and they needed, needed 40 parking spaces for those, you know, I think it's more than 40 parking spaces then suddenly they'd be required to put electrical vehicle charging stations in. But I don't think that the board really has to pull that trigger at this point. I think that's later. So it's really where you guys fall down on putting a condition on approval. I don't think this is a big issue. So what you're saying is that the specifics hasn't been defined here. So it's hard for us to put conditions on saying exactly what to do because. Right. But there is a condition that could be put in to let them strip some parking spaces. So it's more manageable and able to be leased out and move forward from there. So that's in there. On the latest issue, which I had in my letter of January 11th is that we are a ground field project. So we have an US EPA and Vermont DEC approved corrective action plan. And part of that plan involves building this pay vent and on to be able to cancel a very low level waste and save it having to be exploited. So. So they need to pave the surfaces. But they can just hold off on striping all the parking spaces. That also gives them some flexibility if they end up with a use that needs some more truck parking on the other side. Or if ultimately they do come back for a contractor's yard approval, they'll have the open paved space to do some outdoor storage if they need it. But it gives them flexibility. Right. Mary, it's just a quick confirmation, too. I had a note here on page 19. You specifically just asked the applicant to confirm the square footage total of two parking lots. As I think it gives them maybe landscaping and treating. And I just want to let you know we have confirmed that the total parking size at 23,300 square feet, which again at the 40% is 9,320 square feet, which is less than what's being proposed by a substantial amount of space. So just as a clarification on that on page 19 comment, I think we meet that criteria as proposed. Thank you. Just to confirm, you said the parking lot total square footage is 23,300. And 40% of that is 9,320. Yes, ma'am, yeah. Perfect. Thank you. And any of the calculations that Jeff's reciting will obviously put in our reply to the staff report. Well, that appears to sort of clear up the major site plan issues in this application. Street trees. Street trees. But I took care of the shade trees for the parking lot. There's still the street tree question. We'd like to have the opportunity to review that with our landscape architect and go over the comments just to save time tonight. OK. And the same thing in the case of the next item, the lighting. We think we can develop a program for meeting the lighting of allowed women. But we'd like to save everybody some time and let the professional lighting folks look at that and see how we can get that in compliance. Hey, Fred, I don't really need to over-spec. I just thought maybe ask a follow-up question to that, though, specifically with the street trees. I know we want an opportunity to talk to Terry about it a little bit. But it's my understanding and our conversation today that we obviously have a hard time meeting that requirement, given the existing lot layout in the orientation of Brannett-Chevain to the existing building in the parking lots. If we were going to request that waiver, I feel like we want that on the table now. Or do you feel differently about that? No, I think we will formally request the waiver. I just want to look at it in more detail. Fair enough. The way it comes right up against our building. So there is no frontage in front of the building to put any plantings. We've put them where we could. And we can't put them on the south side because that's truck access. Oh, right. Doc's going to need to be able to back in there and have the view. Correct. Maybe at the February 22nd meeting, we can address landscaping and lighting with some new information and new plans. And you guys can work on that. Yeah. And I just had one other item I wanted to get in. We were pleased to report that we do have a certificate of public good for a solar array in the south and the south side of the main roof. The roof was designed to accept that. And it's a 66KW system that's been approved and ready to go. We would expect to have to work on that with the tenant because the tenant's going to be buying the electricity. Awesome. Great. Kevin, do you have any advice on the process here where we're at? Well, I would just poll all the members and see if we have any additional information we want for the application as it stands tonight, knowing the uncertainties about the actual end use and so forth. And then what I would recommend is that we continue the meeting until the next point, which is the 22nd, right? Yes. Will members get Kevin's recommendation here? Do you hear him? I'm seeing Abinad. Thanks to 22nd of February. Yep, it's a Tuesday because the city hall is closed on the 21st. Got it. Thank you. Yep, and you would be the only item on the agenda so we'd be able to get going right away at 7 o'clock for you guys. OK. So yeah, I mean, I think that segue I kind of feel like with this process, we've sort of almost gone through a sketch point here, this sort of subdivision. And we have a real good idea on what you're up to, what your next steps are. And I don't think we see any glaring issues here. You seem to be on top of the major things. And we really look forward to seeing the rest of it in a couple of weeks. I do have a question. Here's the microphone so they can hear you. As public works had a look at this. Oh yeah, we had a full technical review committee review with multiple members of public review of, sorry, Department of Public Works being there. We had the chief of police. We had the fire chief. OK, so the full thing. We had the full thing with the applicants represented there. Was there a report there? So there's an email that's attached in here kind of buried in there. That's a summary that I circulated to everybody to make sure that they had no other comments. And I've tried to work it into the staff report. Public, I mean, the only big question for public works really was the traffic impact, because it's hard to tell what that's going to be if we don't know what the use is. And the further complication that traffic numbers throughout the state for the last two years has gone down because of COVID. They have not rebounded all the way. And so even the state is pretty much guessing when it comes to the current state of intersections and traffic throughout the state. You know, there's a sense that in Montpelier traffic is down probably still 5% or so from where it was two years ago. But really what we have to look at is the trip generation triggers that we have in the regulation. But again, it's speculative based on what the use is. That traffic review under conditional use is probably the most complicated part of that. That and what other conditions might apply depending on a use. Those are the two people's question marks that are hardest to solve with a condition. I guess with that maybe, Jeff, do you have any additional comments on traffic or where you're at now on that design? Yeah, and again, obviously, we're almost in the same boat, it's hard to find without knowing what the final end use is. But we were trying to back our way into some square footage use components to the building based on the number of trips. And I think that's where I mentioned previously. Generally speaking, ours that triggers for a traffic impact study for AOT, as examples, 75 trips, PMP hour, peak hour trips to trigger a traffic impact study for class 1 or 2 roads. And I believe the city of Montpelier for class 2 roads has essentially a trigger of 50 PMP trips. And so we were essentially, during that technical review committee, talking through what could we propose or what percentages of the building we could propose for different uses that would get us under that threshold where, theoretically, it's something where Meredith could process that administratively, or at least have a condition of approval within this conditional use review, where whatever the IT trip generation manual said, based on the square footage and the ultimate uses of the building, if it fell at 49 or lower, then the traffic would essentially be considered a non-issue, whereas if it went over that and above it, you still may be able to permit it. But it would involve coming back for additional conditional review with the DRB. And that's kind of how we left it. And I think that's kind of Meredith attempted to summarize that within her staff comments here in the notes. And I think that all came from the TRC. And again, I think that's a logical approach. It's just we can't get in any more detail without ourselves knowing exactly what's going in there. I guess as a knowing that part of town pretty well, I guess the interaction between any proposed site improvements and traffic in the Granite Street Bridge and the interaction with co-op traffic are things to consider. Probably have a flushed out plan at the end. It's going to address the concerns there. But just know that from riding the bike in that part of town, it's definitely busy as is. But it's not to say that there's no way to engineer around it. So good luck with that. I would entertain a motion from the floor. I'll make a motion, which is to continue the public hearing on the 43 Granite Shed Load Project till our next regularly scheduled meeting, which will be Tuesday of February the 22nd at 7. Yeah. The second motion. Second by Gene. Kevin, how do you vote? I vote yes. Michael? Yes. Joe? Yes. Abby? Yes. Catherine? Yes. And Gene? Yes. And Robbo, yes. It's unanimously approved. We have adjourned this meeting, I guess. Well, the public part of the meeting can be closed, right? We would actually like the public hearing to be continued. Yes, the public hearing. It has just been continued. That's been voted on. We're talking about the public meeting, because these guys have to go to deliberative session on the appeal that you heard earlier. They don't get to sign off all the way yet. The fund never ends. As far as the Granite Shed Lane application goes, we will see you all on the 22nd of February. Thank you so much. And when would you like our materials by? Let's see, the 22nd, we're closed on the 21st. Sorry, I'm looking at a calendar that's a long way away. I mean, if we can get them. 17? Well, at the latest, I'd really need them by the 17th. But feel free to run things by me ahead of time, because I'm happy to look at things and double check things against the regulations. But yeah, the last date, really, so that we can get them processed and pulled together into a packet, and then circulated would probably be the 17th. OK, thank you. Thank you very much. That would be helpful if we have some, you know, we can get it posted on the website, so that if the Conservation Commission wants to look at it again, or at least the members that were on tonight, they could always come back. The commission itself wouldn't be able to meet again. But individual members could always take a peek at it and comment as members of the public. So thank you very much. Thank you all for your time. Thank you, Fred. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Thank you. So I will circulate the link for the deliberative session to the D&P members and to Mike. I will not. I cannot be part of the deliberative session. So there'll be another reshuffling of people. Do we have anything else that has to happen? You did the minutes. We did the minutes. We got it. So, yep, everybody's set. Yep, but we still have to adjourn. Yes. Motion to adjourn the public meeting. Seconded. Are they frozen? They're not frozen for me. But Meredith is muted. OK, we made the motion to adjourn. We just need a second now. Second. Great. OK, and we're going to accept unanimous consent for that motion. So we'll see you all in a couple of minutes.