 All the meeting to order, because we haven't done that. So I'm calling to order the November 13 meeting of the Montpelier Planning Commission. We have to approve the agenda and get a motion to approve the agenda from one of the Planning Commissioners. I need somebody from the Planning Commission to move to approve the agenda. So moved, Kirby. Thanks, I'll second it. Can we have a second from Brian? Those in favor of Gabe's motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? What's that, Mike? Nope, I didn't say anything. Okay, all right, so meeting is in order. Mike could just, Mike, before the meeting started, Mike told us about the new zoom procedures and I think we all know what to be prepared for there. Which means moving on to comments from the chair. I have 1 update. About getting together with the housing committee, this thing is involved a lot more back and forth anticipated. But we're going to sort something out. It's just that the housing committee. Wants to be able to talk to us about whatever they want to talk about and they don't want to worry about open meeting laws being violated. So we're going to sort that out with them and figure out a way to meet. I am currently kind of opposed to holding a whole different special meeting that's on the record and everything. So we're just going to figure, because our idea for this was something more informal and I value everybody's time and don't want to hold a special meeting that doesn't have a whole lot of. Substantial purpose to it, so we're going to work something out with them and I'll keep you updated probably at this point it's going to happen in a month or 2, something like that. The other thing is that we are not going to meet next time. So the next time we do meet will be the 2nd Monday of December. And that's it for updates. Does anyone else have anything else to share? Hey, I was wondering if you saw the. There's a Times Argus piece about. Like housing regulations being changed in Barry. I was wondering if. You are Mike knew anything about that is very similar to what we're talking about here. I haven't read it. Yeah, I saw the article, but I don't have the specifics. I don't have a copy of any draft from from Barry City. I saw it. Yesterday today, but didn't have a chance to. Dig in and see what they were what they were doing. OK, I was just wondering if there's like any. In between it sounded like from the from the newspaper that there was some things that were similar. In that. It is similar in conversations to what we're doing. It sounded like they were trying to remove density from a few things. I don't know if they were trying to remove density throughout the city, but parking requirements, they were going to be adjusting. I think a number of what the of the things they're doing. Kind of goes back to what we did in 2018, so they hired the same consultant we had when we did our adoption that was adopted in 2018. So I think they're pretty much making that big step to the next level of of zoning to kind of match what what hours looks like a little bit more. So. But again, I don't have the specifics of the changes they were making. OK, thanks Mike. And 1, 1, little, little factual tidbit that's related Maria and for anybody else. Who's not aware like part of the Vermont system with planning is that we have regional planning commissions and. You know, I believe it's Ari on is our official liaison, right? It's hard. OK, we did some because I think like I think gave helped out at 1 point. But anyway, with the regional planning commission, you know, when towns make there. So there's a regional plan. Because of these regional planning commissions that are kind of filling the void for like the lack of county government. There's a regional plan. And so when you make major changes on the. Like municipal level, you do have to check in with the regional planning commission. But so Barry will be doing that and then part of that checking with regional planning commission is to check with your neighbors. So, eventually, like, if Barry's doing a big rewrite, there's a chance that somewhere down the road that they would check in with us. In order to follow all of the laws around conforming with the regional plan and all that. So, so that's that's how it tends to work. We like in the past, we've had like the town of Berlin check in with us about some things they were planning, for instance, because their neighbors. OK, thank you. Yeah, OK, anybody else have. Anything we'll move on to general business and don't see anyone present who's not on the planning commission. No, no neo nazi so far. That's good. So, moving on to the next item on the agenda, which is to discuss zoning and river hazard area regulations hearing on December 11th. This is Mike passing some info on to us about the December 11 hearing. So, hand it off to you, Mike. Yeah, so we just wanted to go real quick to. So, if you're looking for copies because they're big, there's going to be a shortcut on the front page of the city's website. If you go to the city's website, usually, and I'll go there afterwards. This is we're going to make a link to this page, which is the zoning and subdivision and floodplain regulations. And right on the top is a draft. So, if you want to get a copy for yourself, they're big downloads. That's why we haven't really been able to send them out too much. So, there's zoning changes. There is actually a set of river hazard changes, but the those are really small. The only thing those are looking at are what are called critical facilities. Which is just changing the regulations for critical facilities. So, hospitals, police stations, fire stations, city hall. If you're going to be in the floodplain, they're required to be two feet above the 500 year floodplain instead of two feet above the 100 year floodplain. And that's just because of the special circumstances of those those facilities. Because you really can't really shouldn't want to have them out of commissions. And in some cases, it also includes things like hospitals. So, you wouldn't want to have say a nursing facility get built in the downtown. Even if it's two feet above the 100 year floodplain, that doesn't mean it won't flood. And if it does flood, then you've got a lot of people who have special needs that need to get evacuated. And that's that's a much more difficult position, which is why they require even higher standards. So, that's it's a recommended standard at the NFIP. We're doing it a little bit part of our CRS requirements. We don't think it'll have a big impact, but just because we haven't talked about it, that's what it is. But the draft zoning, we have talked about the draft zoning map is here. So we now have the draft zoning map and the list of zoning changes that was the table that we went through. And the draft zoning regulations, which I'll show you really quick is the strikeout version. So it's kind of a big strikeout version. So it's 231 pages. So if anyone wants a copy, I can probably send people copies, but it's a it's a longer strikeout copy. That's that's what's online. But there'll be a shortcut. So if you're looking for a copy, that's where they are. And so how the hearings will be held. So a number of you have already been through this a couple of times. Nothing really changed other than what we just talked about at the start of the meeting. It'll be a little bit different. But for people who haven't gone through this before, you know, Kirby and I just wanted to make sure you kind of had a little bit of an idea of how these are run. We really are taking this a lot like our listening session. We're here to listen to people take input. If you have questions, you can ask questions, but generally we don't go through and debate people on point for point. It's of course your meeting. You can, you know, take it up with everyone. But usually the way this works is they tend to be be a little bit more listening sessions asking questions. If somebody has, you know, a point they're trying to make and it's not clear to you, you can ask questions. But generally we are listening to what they say at the end of the meeting. We'll go through and discuss what we heard and decide what changes to make based on that input. And I think we had talked about this before that we're hoping it may make the meeting a little bit longer on December 11. But because the meeting after that is Christmas, we're going to have one meeting in November, one meeting in December. I really want to get this to City Council in January. So if we could stay a little bit later, if we need to, to go through and make an approval that night, the Senate City Council, that would be better if we get too much. And it's just we're in a position where we're not comfortable to move this to City Council. I'm not going to ask you to force you to move it forward. You just make a decision that we'll talk about it more in January and we'll take that time. But if you kind of hear from a bunch of folks and you're like, yeah, yeah, we'll make this change, but we won't make those changes and let's move this forward, then that would be a big help to keeping it on time. Because what we don't want to do is have the have the zoning hearings go past town meeting day because then we might end up with new councillors and they may re-warn new hearings. So if we can get all the hearings in and have council adopted before the end of February, then that's good for getting the zoning amendment passed. Is there any questions on that, the process or the rules? Mike, one of us since since Carlton's new and he's not here right now, one of us should probably give him some kind of heads up. I can I can try to reach out to him if you want. Yeah, if you have an opportunity to yeah, because part of a little bit of this was to help him out too and he's not here, but. Yeah, I can I can try to get those with him because I. Yeah, yeah, we I had the orientation. Walk and talk with them recently. Good, we can follow up. OK, is there everyone's ready for the hearing? Um, I'm going to circle back real quick and. I had Google the thing that Maria mentioned earlier just to check in and it looks like. I wasn't aware, but it looks like the housing committee spoke to the city council recently, Rebecca Copans. Was there are there any updates there that line up with with our stuff or any anything there? I wasn't at the meeting. My understanding was that was really focused on the housing committee has proposed a new ordinance regulating short term rentals. And that was kind of the focus of their presentation was. To try to have the council advance a short term rental ordinance very similar to Burlington's. Um, just as a general box of how Burlington handles it, so that's what they're looking at. OK, I don't. I don't think we went there with the city plan, did we? No, I don't think so it hasn't. And at least over the past couple of years when we were talking with the housing committee before. The perception was that it wasn't a big issue. And even the housing committee said that a little bit to that effect. It kind of says not it's not a big issue now, but we want to be ready in case it does become a big issue. So it's. You know, it's one of those. Yeah, it seems like the best thing we can do is actually have a hotel in this town. I take a couple of them. Yeah, but like seriously, I mean, that's one reason probably why Airbnb do have a market is. You don't have another choice. OK, OK, thanks for that update, Mike. And yeah, sounds like we should get in touch with housing committee and. Talk. OK, so I'm going to move on on the agenda. And. All we have left tonight is to look at the storyboards for energy and economic development. I went over those today. I don't know if anyone else got a chance. But I can. I unlock the share screen so you should be able to grab it now. OK, everybody see the energy chapter. OK. This one I actually didn't do a lot with. But I just had some comments. I was I don't know if you know this might be some of some of these storyboards have yellow text. And I was just wondering if they're yellow because there's some kind of vision for these are these meant to be like pulled to the side or. Or highlighted in some way. You know, I don't know why these were those were put in by SE group and I'm not sure if that's because they're going to be special tags or not. Yeah, I'm not sure. OK, so yeah, I'm just I'm just curious to like pass along to them if they have some vision for it. I think I think having some dynamic things on the pages is nice if that's if that's what they're planning to do with that. And that's what I'm assuming and that's. Because it looks like it's a bit different in the way it's written compared with the. You know, text other places. I was thinking we mostly don't say city council. So I was just thinking that we could. I don't want to. True. Yeah. Just, you know, the thing there is just we tend to say city and then even though obviously a lot of the activity that's done by the city is done by the city council just keeping that consistent. And then. I compared the storyboards with what we had prepared before. And I saw that most stuff was taken for this chapter. Most of it was taken as it was in the other place. The next thing I had on here was that there was a comment about. About what kind of infographic they should use. And I'm assuming guest user as someone from SE group. And so I was just planning to pass along some feedback to them that. If there's going to be an infographic on an energy related topic out of all these here. I would say that it's probably best to lean towards renewable energy, which some of these. Do touch on like the solar array 1. So I was just passed that I left a comment just that. I think renewable energy would be what people are most interested in when they engage with the energy stuff and it seems to be the biggest concern. Everybody else. Feel that way. Yeah. And then there was there was just a spot here where like we had a 4 example and it seemed like it flowed with the rest of this. So I would just. Suggest that they move that back up and make these 1st 2 paragraphs 1 paragraph, but I didn't think the sentence in the middle. Was helpful and it wasn't part of our stuff from before. Is it seems to be some kind of introductory like this section review shared issues like like kind of like what the synergies do. I don't know it didn't. Yeah, so, so that's I think that's it for. Yeah, that's it for any internet at any editing type comments I had on this 1. Did anyone else see anything in the energy chapter. That they'd like to bring up. Most of this had been reviewed previously when I mean because so much of this was pulled from. We wrote a chapter for anyone who. Maybe wasn't here for that we actually wrote chapters. For all of these and then at a certain point we had to convert them to story boards. And so they went through and wrote a bunch of story boards and we really didn't like them. Or they really weren't getting a lot of good positive response. We kind of told them why don't you just take from our chapters. So that's when we kind of went back and kind of compare them now. So most of the language you see are things that either Kirby or I or somebody has has written not. SE group. So it should sound a little. More like what we usually write. Okay. I'm going to move on to economic development. Everybody see it. Yep. I somehow lost your faces. Well we're still able to see you. Okay. Maybe. I just want to make sure I had some visit like you know visible feedback options here to see. Make sure I can see people. Okay. Economic development. This one did look like it. Was rewritten in places because it wasn't exactly the same as what we gave. So but I still it doesn't look like I did a ton. So just some like wordsmithing stuff in the beginning to make it a little bit more succinct. And same down here we've got the yellow text again. So just curious what exactly the idea there is. This is comment. That's comment I had. Okay. So your guest user mystery solved. Okay. One thing that when we spoke with SE group last time I forgot to bring this up at a thought of it later. We were really excited by the idea of having an infographic that. Showed Montpeliers or not infographic but like a map and like a dynamic map that showed Montpeliers development over time. And I should have brought it up with them last time but hopefully that idea is not dead. Hopefully that's something they can do because we were excited about that if that could be something that's you know either on the main page or the historic preservation maybe. Page. But I just wanted to bring that up with you Mike to if you're in touch with them soon to let them know that we're still interested in that. So we have we have this stuff. That's the thing I just mentioned there my comment there about the map. And then just. The city council removed there. And that's it. Down here I removed the word new from Caledonia spirits just because that's something that will be outdated. You know soon it won't be soon. And that's that's it for me. Did did anyone else have anything or anything to say about the economic development chapter. Kirby I just had a comment about the first yeah that first paragraph for your pointers. I mean it seems like we don't really know the effects of remote work versus people being. Home and able to shop downtown because they're not going to work in Burlington or elsewhere. I mean I don't think we really know what those tradeoffs are do we. There isn't any data about that. Mike do you know this whole paragraph feels is like. Like it feels like it could have an effect on our economy. You know like yeah yeah that's a little. Yeah it's one of the two mysteries one is what is the how is remote work going to affect us. And that can affect a lot of things. The offices you know offices are now more vacant. So that's going to have an impact on that part of the commercial real estate market. Those could always be converted to residential units and that's that's fine. But there's obviously going to be an economic change that remote work will bring to that side of things. But all those workers are population swells in Montpelier during the day. So we're a town of 8000 people we grow to about 14 or we did pre covid we would grow to about 14000. During the day with all the workers and so that's an extra 6000 people who shop and spend money and go to restaurants and everything else before going home or. Leaving work and going to a restaurant before they go home. So there's a big difference having people moving in so we've lost those let's say post covid we're now in an environment where people are doing more remote work we've lost those people. Well now we have more people staying at home in Montpelier so we've gained some people we've lost some people we've gained some people what's the net. What what's the net does it have a big difference and I think we're just going to have to wait to find out how that all shakes out in the end so I think it's more of a question so remote work is one of the big ones. The other one is the online shopping and that that's been going on for obviously six or seven years now that that was going on before covid we were talking about what is going to be the impact of online shopping. 15 or 20 years ago it was what is the impact of big box retailers on our downtown retailers are all the. Business is going to be vacant in the downtown because everybody's up shopping at Walmart in Berlin and Williston and that was a question we just didn't know how much of an impact we knew there was going to be an impact and. Clearly it had an impact more of an impact on some businesses than others and this is going to be the same thing that the continued growth of Amazon and these other companies how is that going to impact our downtown retailers. I don't know if it I don't know if it will it will impact some. Nitches and won't impact others as much but those are the two big question marks I think that are out there when it comes to economic development in our downtown. Just trying to see where I think we also last time we reviewed this was before the flood. I mean the state and federal workers have they returned to their offices at all. I know more about the state workers I don't believe I believe state workers have partially come back I think when I've talked to a number of people at like and are they come into the office once or twice a week but they're still predominantly working at home. It's like 20 20 percent. Maybe. When by the best. Is that 20 or 25 percent compared to before the flood or before COVID. Because it. Yeah. So the only thing I'll just say generally is I think it's really poorly written and the document that we worked on like a year ago that's in the folder is better. So I'm not quite sure I know they were trying to like make it a little bit more succinct but I remember Kirby did put a lot of work into sort of crafting some language and I I'm not sure what they did has made it any better. I mean I understand they pulled it from what we wrote but it's I don't know it's not for you. Sorry. They from work from looking at this today I saw that they pulled pieces. Which did impact the flow. And made it. And I made some of those some of those changes. So they made a storyboard template and I noticed it really didn't match our. Economic development chapter very well so I went back and pulled pieces of the economic development chapter in but it was very long and their introductions were short. So I think if you look at our introductory chapter we had four paragraphs and so I cut it down to two paragraphs and I think the four paragraphs are better but it's just. Much longer. In comparison. And therefore it really became a little bit more difficult. You know it's tough to shorten it up. And I know and I know we're going to have community input and it'll end up being like really bullets and so maybe I shouldn't get so worked up about but I just read I'm like this. This is like it's not even USA today quality like economic. It's just bad. I'm sorry. I think it's not. I mean I know what we're trying to do right and what it would end up being is something very different so I shouldn't get so worked up about it. Now I mean if and certainly if people find better ways I mean as you know as Kirby pulled this up you can see a lot of the pieces that had kind of been cut out. A lot of what I was trying to do. Was to capture some of the big pieces again. I think everybody maybe everybody was here for when we did economic development but really economic development broken into two pieces one chunk was talking about the businesses and the other chunk kind of talked about the workers. You know what what do businesses need to be successful for economic development. What do workers need to be successful workers to to prosper. So in the workers side we're talking about we need affordable housing we need child care and we need good transportation because a lot of people commute. If you live in town not everybody can afford cars and if we want to have an economy where everybody has an equal opportunity to participate then we need to have a transportation system and businesses set up in a way that we can all participate. We can't exclude people because they either can't afford to drive or don't have the ability to drive. So we had the worker side of things and we have what do we do to make businesses more successful and that's that's a completely different side. So we tried to have we have to have two conversations. Within this chapter one about the the businesses and one about the workers. And then when you write everything that we wanted to which we did and it was great. But it's like a page and a half. Yeah. So. This paragraph that I've highlighted here is where the storyboard starts. So the material above it was not included. And then there's. I think like this one is included. So a lot of it was there was judgment calls made about. What parts to put in and you know and. I'm not sure. I mean we can have we should have this conversation though. Gabe I can stop sharing the original here and go back to the. Chapter. So gay let me ask you one question. What were your thoughts about energy in the state of it. You know I think I had not had as much input into the energy so I didn't know I seem fine. To me but I don't think I had joined the board at that point. And so this one this was like the first one that we had worked on together when I joined the board. You know whatever it is two years ago 18 months ago. And so I remember working through it and then I just looked at what we had written. And again I get it. Right. We do have to it's a web site. Right. People aren't. It's not that it's a web based plan. And I'm not suggesting that we you know words that you're now I just. Right. My overall comments is that it just doesn't read very well. So. Yeah. Yeah. I just looked at this one today and and and I did you know. I had this I had the same feeling and looking at it today just the way it was. So we have this other material to pull from. We could also just take the. Info that's provided here and just and. Rework it. And this is probably I think it's a really good idea. Rework it. And this is probably I think what we will end up doing we can just rework. Like like like this was the information that was pulled out as significant when Mike was working with SC group. We can just so instead of just deciding like. You know. So instead of deciding that we can take this info and just and we could rework it. To make it kind of flow better for. For this. Is there any obviously those are what the things Mike brought up are the right things right like this is what we really need to be focused on you know the transportation childcare like you know how do we create this environment I think it is you know we are in a very like. Unknown. Situation how the downtown is going to reinvent itself I mean. The state hasn't made strategic decisions and they're maybe a year away from making strategic decisions about what their workforce in town will look like. Right I mean they've got a bunch of buildings and they're sitting on them they're not sure and that that impacts the downtown right I mean. We you know if you were here and you know saw things were like in 2018 or something and then you saw what they were like in 2021 and then you know now we just we don't know so I think. Acknowledging that there's some things that are in flux that we don't know I think it's that's okay. You know I don't need to know that we need to look into a crystal wall that we just can say look there's a lot of things that are uncertain as we talk about our future but. I think those are the key things it's just how does it flow and maybe it doesn't begin once it's on a website web page it's not going to really look like this anyway so. Maybe it's not worth spending a ton of energy on. Well I was going to ask is. Is anyone interested in. This little project. Just to to massage this storyboard. In the next couple weeks. I mean I can make a I can make a stop up. In the end what's the sort of highlight. What do you want to do to make it. I think the goal would be to say all the same things but then but to make it to make it flow and be more readable for people. Because yeah this one suffered from being taken out of the context of the other material. So that would be the goal here just be like. You know. Yeah I can do it. Professional level. I can take a stab at it. I just wanted to make sure I'm not going to have the capacity to go back to the old graph that we did and sort of graph that stuff back in. But I can work with what this is and try to make it smoother. Okay. Yeah I appreciate that. And yeah you don't need to go you don't need to you could go back it's there in the shared drive just if you wanted for context but yeah just taking this. Taking the same information and just. Yeah I'll take a look at it but yeah just once you start getting to cutting and pasting across two documents you just get bogged down. Yeah I can do that. Okay so we can just polish this one up more and Aaron will do that. Sounds good. Is that good with you Gabe? All right good with Gabe. And it should just need the introduction in the planning context because the synergies goals and aspirations and who's involved. Those shouldn't need to be changed. They're all okay. Right. It's just up top. So aspiration and goals definitely don't change as as you know Aaron let's set in stone. I'd say if you mean if if you want to take a stab at the at the style of the other one so that as far as I'm concerned they wouldn't be off limits. Okay. Sounds that sounds great. Thanks everybody. Did we have any more comments about economic development or energy or about the vision for the website infographics things like that that we can pass on. What can we might question is like do we even talk about the flood and all of this because I mean this was written obviously before the flood. And it seems like we're just assuming that everything's going to go back to the way it was as of like June 2023 you know and it might not. Do we leave room for that. Do we acknowledge it. I think all of us really wanted to go back to June 2023. But I don't know if that's what's actually going to happen you know. But then you also don't want it to be a document that you know in two years time. And does it make sense because maybe Montpelier is completely restored and you know the floods like in the way past but I don't know how much should we refer to it or even discuss it. Like I think for sure that we'll bring it up in the land use plan in the chapter. Now this is you know this is this chapter language is not legal right. It's just you know it's just the. If we so given that if we want to acknowledge the flood. We can do that. We don't have aspirations and goals about that here but we do have them in places in the plan right Mike I mean you know before the June flood we were still planning for. These things. Is it natural resources chapter Mike that mostly deals with. Yeah natural resources I mean it should probably isn't referenced in synergies we should have it. You know there would make sense for us to add something in there and we could add something up top just to go through and say it's part of the unknown we just don't know. I mean it's impacted commercial property owners it's impacted businesses and you know that'll be a third. Third piece I mean. It's it's. Interesting and hard to to figure out how to tell that to tell the story of economic development I mean we've got those economic forces that we talked about. We've got COVID we've gotten the flood of which are you know events that have happened. And so it kind of makes things you know how do how do we talk to people about you know these are all the things that have kind of shaken up that snow globe and we got to kind of see how things go now. You know maybe you know as Maria says maybe two years now we're all not even thinking about flooding until the next time it rains hard. Or maybe everybody is still in the front of everybody's mind because we have a second smaller flood next year and it becomes you know their communities you know. In Maryland there's the one in Maryland there that had 2000 year floods in two years. You know we're not exempt from being hit again in a very short short span. Then what would that do to us economically so I think I think we just have to look at you know tell that story somehow you know these are these are the things that we're looking at there's a lot. You know I don't know if I would want to you know investing money in the downtown building now that's that's a. You're. Investing in housing kind of seems like a pretty successful investment you know investing in commercial development in the flood plain in Montpelier I don't know that's that's that's more of a. Challenge in question. For investors. This is kind of placeholder stuff. Okay so just through through like a placeholder thing in there to acknowledge that here you're right Maria and I guess I I've not always been responsive because this isn't the first time you brought up like flood stuff and it's like oh man yeah what to what extent do we want to go back and integrate. We know that it's covered in the plan and like places right we just just yeah how much we call it out I think a land use it's going to be the elephant in the room and we're going to have we're definitely going to have to do that. What is what is here about it. Don't you think I mean I think people will bring it up and hearings. Then I mean I think the economic development part of it is just how much money. All of our businesses of small businesses and. Commercial landlords have had to. Take from you know like Montpelier alive has been getting off grants like how much they've been supported in the past. Two or three months. And that's I mean it definitely hits one of the aspirations and goals like. I think the city and popular live have helped keep some of these businesses afloat. So I mean they are doing that work it's not like we're making this up and it's also not like for it's not future. Looking like this is what has happened and what will probably continue to happen that we will have to. You know. Come and help out the businesses every time something like this happens. If our downtown is going to be located. Where currently is. This is a bigger conversation and something for the land use plan chapter that we're going to be developing soon but. I definitely have in my mind that we should at least. Point out the possibility of downtown growth going uphill in places. And you know that's not something that's been talked about a ton in city planning. In Montpelier before but. At the very least I feel like our land use plan should have like room for that decision to be made down the road you know what I mean. Because the city plan is really about. Guiding future decision making and and so if we suggest that that's a possibility that it could it could just enable. The city to do that direction. I think I've mentioned before about you know going up the state street up to the college green. And allowing. Making sure that we allow mixed use and commercial stuff up that way and if the businesses choose to try to concentrate that way because of. Blood concerns that it's possible. But it's a bigger. Conversation. Yeah I mean I think businesses. Should be located downtown personally. I think that's probably the right place for them to be but saying that. It's also going to be part of the city's responsibility. To. Literally bail them out. You know if this is. Where land use decides is the best place for a city to be. Then it will also be up to the city to support those businesses when they do get flooded. You know and that's kind of like what we've seen the past couple months and. I think I think it's just like a reality that this is what. How Montpelier will probably be functioning from now on. Everyone has that. Has this memory of this flood. In the background. And so yeah when. You know someone's looking to start up a new business downtown. It will definitely. It will definitely be thinking of. You know what happens if all my inventories flooded. You know like this is. So I think the city is going to have to. Pay attention to. Flood risk from now on. And we can't always. This aren't going to all be new buildings like. The buildings that are currently there. We'll probably continue to be occupied. By somebody. Anyway I just think it's like an important thing to note in this chapter that. Supporting. You know the economic development of Montpelier is also supporting. The economic development of Montpelier. Flood. Risk and. Flood relief. When floods do happen. So I chose just in this pillar language I just threw down I chose to focus on. The mitigation adaptation because I do think that. We can't control like what people what the market is going to be doing. But I can only assume that. Many many landlords are going to be. Trying to. Flood proof so to speak. The downtown buildings so that. The dam so that the economic damage isn't so severe in the future. But it's not something that. You know we regulate it to some extent. But I don't. Correct me if I'm wrong Mike but we I don't believe that we're too. But I don't correct me if I'm wrong Mike but we I don't believe that we're telling every downtown business that they have to. Fill in basements and and raise things right. No none less there's substantially damaged building in historic buildings or exempt so for the most part. That's going to take care of that so we. You know we've got about a hundred buildings downtown that were. Hit pretty hard. And so certainly going through. And working with them and trying to come up with plans like we said we were just talking about you know we've got vacant office space maybe the vacant office space is converted to. Storage for inventory as opposed to putting inventory in your basement you put your inventory on the second floor with which what. Used to be office space. You know maybe there's some other model that works. As well for being able to. Store and and do things we're just going to have to work with people. But then our other goal is to start to work with property owners and this isn't going to happen till next year we're going to try to get what's called a brick. Grant which will do some scoping work for downtown buildings. It's just a building by building inventory where we can give recommendations to property owners. On what are the best things you could do and again you know in some cases maybe it doesn't you know the flood we just got you're going to still get flooded. But if we get a flood that's you know a 50 year flood event you don't get damaged because we've been able to flood proof up to a certain level that helps to make smaller floods less damaging. And maybe we can find ways to make larger floods less damaging as well if we can elevate or if we can use floodgates. You know this storm we had advanced knowledge of so we would have if people had floodgates it would have had plenty of time to put up the floodgates. And that's just a matter of designing those making sure buildings have been completely looked at to make sure there's no way for the water to get in. And they can get in through backflows you know toilet in the basement that doesn't have a backflow preventer as soon as the water ends up in the sewer it just comes out you know so you've just got to look at every possible place that water can sneak into a building. You know second floor of City Hall was flooded because the roof drains were tied into the water fountain. And so when it was raining hard in the sewer underground filled up the water filled up the pipe and water came out the water fountain. Who knew but that's how the second floor of City Hall got flooded. So that's why we don't have offices on the second floor because that still has to all get repaired because of all that water damage. But those are the things that you try to identify in these studies of each of these buildings is how does water get in and then finding ways of sealing up the buildings as much as we can. So that way if we know flood is coming we could put a flood door on and keep the water out. And in other cases where there's a new building getting built or some other work significant work is getting done maybe people do fill in the basement because that is the best that's the best remedy fill in the basement and elevate the building and put in a small elevator that lifts people up. So you've got ADA access to a building is a little bit higher. And you'll see that there was a proposal to do that for the 1216 main where the beverage redemption center used to be that you know now right next to the drawing board that that was there was a proposal to put a building in there would have been three feet above the ground above the sidewalk. It just would have had a little lift for ADA access. There was a proposal for over next to the pavilion building that vacant lots owned by Tom Lowes on. He had a proposal to put in a bank. He's also had a proposal to put in residential units there. Same idea that had to be elevated six feet because of how deep the flood water is over there. So there are ways of doing it. You elevate the buildings. You put in an elevator and you can make these buildings new buildings work. And then for the existing buildings that are historic, we try to floodproof them. And it won't be a hundred percent, but hopefully it works much better than than we just experienced, which was to have very few buildings floodproofed. Like I have a couple of things. First, when we talk about raising buildings up, should we actually, as the planning commission, be thinking a little bit about the height limits downtown and whether we should raise those? Because you know what I mean? Like give, like it would help the ability to, to adapt by going up as long as people aren't losing, you know, total space possible. So we raise the height limits. You know what I mean? The logic next. What are the, what would be the opposition to increasing the height limits by say like a story based on where we are now? For the downtown, it probably won't matter because I believe the downtown is measured at six stories. I don't think it actually has a foot requirement. I would have to double check on that. So whether your first floor starts six feet above the sidewalk, you'd still get six stories. How many have to check? How many of the buildings are actually at six stories? The capital Plaza has a section, I believe that goes all the way up to six stories. Most of the building is five or four stories, but there's one small section. I think that goes up to six. Okay. So we already are allowing most of these, most of the buildings could add height, but they're not. Yeah. Not too many, not too many buildings are near their max height. Okay. Not that I'm aware of. And certainly if people come up and say that, that's an issue, we certainly can come back up and make a proposal to increase that height. My other question is, and this is something that occurred to me when the flooding happened, but I kind of let it go because no one else ever mentioned this. And it might be like a childish idea, but like deepening the North branch. Has that been considered in any serious way? Where is it? We always, we always get proposals and ideas like that, building tunnels under the river to let the water move. The reality is the amount of water that's moved moving in the amount of water that's there. When you have a hundred year flood event, like we did in July, it's just, it becomes negligible on the amount of water because it's not a static pool of water. It's moving water. And I want to say it's moving, I always try to mix up because there's cubic feet per second and gallons per second. And I always mix the two up, but it's like 20,000 cubic feet a second or 20,000 gallons a second. And when water is moving that fast, it fills up whatever. So even if you, I think somebody had proposed maybe we put a tunnel under Elm Street starting from like coming street all the way down through town. If we built a 50 foot wide 10 foot high tunnel all the way down there, would that move the water and keep us from flooding? And the truth is that would be filled in about 61 seconds with the amount of water that's flowing. And then it basically would just still flood. It just takes 61 seconds to fill that space. So the problem is when it, when it hits, when it hits the one new ski, there's nowhere to go. So it backs up. Yup. So it doesn't, yeah, okay. That's too bad. It would be nice if there was some engineering solutions. Yeah, we've, there's, there's a lot of people always take looks at those. A lot of the big ones have been done. I mean, this was a substantial event. You know, so 1927 was 8.6 inches in 72 hours. This was 6.8 inches, so less, but it was in 36 hours. So half the time and slightly less water. So this was actually, I would argue probably almost a worse event than 27 because it just didn't get, it just rained so hard so fast. But we had the advantage this time of having all the flood control dams that are upstream from us. So we, we ended up with five, six feet of water in the downtown as opposed to 10 feet of water in the downtown. And that's because of the flood control dams. So there's not a lot we can do. The flood control dams were the biggest savior. That we had. I think the successes and I, and I, you know, I'm sorry if I mentioned this to other people before. That's the successes to look at where the, our modeling that we had for this type of event said, you know, built to a hundred year floodplain. So city center was built to a hundred year floodplain and the water got just up to the edge, just lapping on their doorstep. So city center stayed dry because it was built to the flood stage. The transit center was built two feet above flood stage and was perfectly fine. And a number of other places were also built above flood stage or had pieces of their buildings or utilities. You know, for the past five years, we've been requiring people to put heat pumps two feet above base flood elevation. And so there's been a lot of projects that are, that stayed dry. And so there is, there is a certain amount of proof out there that if you elevate your building and you elevate your first floor two feet above the floodplain, then you are far less likely to flood. And that's, that's what we've been hanging our hat on in the planning department is saying, you know, we're trying to get money to elevate mostly the residential buildings, Elm Street, lower state street, not the big commercial brick blocks, but those residential buildings. We want people to be safe in their house, whether it's a rental unit or whether it's a regular single family home. We want to have those elevated, have no basements, get them elevated above base flood elevation, because then people are safe, people are dry. And then we'll work on the commercial blocks afterwards to get them flood proof. Certainly would be great if we could elevate those, but elevating brick buildings is not, that's not easy. So that would be more challenging, but that's certainly the best solution. Then water is going to flow around your building, the water is going to go down and you're going to open your business back open the next day. But not every building will have that opportunity. But that, that would be the goal over the long, long, long term is that we just keep building by building, getting these guys put back either elevated or flood proof. But as Maria says, there is, I see it as part of, there is a public component to that. We can't ask property owners to bear all of those costs on their own. So there has to be a place where either the local, we could do tax stabilizations at a local level at the state, can the state put in money or the federal government, can we get federal money to help pay for those costs? So that way businesses and commercial landlords have the, you know, the assistance they need, you know, they're going to have enough money. They've got to put into the project, but we can defray some portion of those costs to make these, these more financially acceptable, because ultimately we can't really require people to do it. We have to really show up with some money to say, we're going to cover some of the costs of this and help people help the commercial landlords and the businesses flood proof those buildings because it's good for all of us. You know, the flooding doesn't just hurt businesses when they lose all their inventory. It hurts, it hurts everybody. I mean, everybody suffered by having this downtown shut down for months. So it really benefits all of us to have, have the government kind of help, help us be more flood resilient going forward. So I'll get out my toolbox now. That's all right. I've, you know, just, just unofficially I've heard that we can't expect a flood relief bill to pass early in the session, by the way. So no idea if the, the, you know, the money that Mopulier wants is going to be in there. But it sounds like they're going to do multiple flood relief related expenditures. Okay. Everybody want to move on to the minutes a little bit of time for yourself. Okay. So Mike has sent the minutes separately. I believe we're just going to review the October 23 minutes. If anybody has any adjustments, let us know. Otherwise we'll just pass them out. This is. Oh, I noticed at the end of the minutes it says I made a motion, but I wasn't there. That matters, but. Yeah, I wasn't there either. So I really sense so far that the motion is to not, to not do anything to leave. I think we can easily that end like, you know, we're good. Phantom motions. Yeah, I don't know how to correct that. Maybe that probably has to do with, I'm assuming that these are, there's like a template. And these get adjusted to save time. And my notes didn't have anybody making motions to adjourn. I think we just left. Okay. So we can amend the minutes to. Reflects. That. I'll just say meeting adjourned. Yeah, you could say Kirby adjourned using his. Dictator powers. So we have a motion. To approve the minutes with the. Amendment to the adjournment. Anyone. I'm going to approve the minutes. Okay. Motion from Brian. To approve. Including the amendment. Correct. With amendment. Okay. Do you have a second to Brian's motion? I'll second. Second from Maria. Those are in favor of approving the minutes with the. Amendment to say aye. Aye. Opposed. Abstain. Okay. Minutes approved. So. Next time we see one another, it will be for the hearing. We'll get going promptly on December 11th. To make sure that we have time. Because we want to try to wind down the hearing. And. Mikey, what you need from us as a reminder, you need. For us to vote. After. The hearing. Yeah, they'll be just, it'll be a motion to. Forward the drafts. They'll be too, because once the river hazard, once the zoning. To forward the drafts to city council for consideration. Which means if we want to change anything up, we'll need to be prepared to do that right after the hearing. So if we're going to have any discussion or anything. So, you know, we'll try to, we'll try to be efficient with that. But I mean, you know, I don't, I also don't want to. Stop anyone from being able to participate. Like any, in this case, I mean. Any planning commissioners who. Want to make a change or. Or want to discuss something that came up at hearing. You know, I don't feel rushed. You know, what are you going to say, Mike? I was just going to say, well, we'll see who's, who shows up and how many people show up. You know, we've had these zoning amendments where. We'll have five people show up and it's pretty quick to, to move it on through and in other cases we've had an entire, well, usually they're in person and we'll have an entire room full of people. But we've got going for us. What we have going for us is that. We have the listening session and, you know. That may help people feel okay. And we, what we don't have with this is we don't have any, like, you know, major construction projects involved asking for changes and things because. In the past that sometimes a whole community will come out because there's. Like an imminent. Thing in their mind, like we don't have something like that this time so that, yeah, that might lower the numbers. So, yeah, if you, if you're, if you're talking to the housing committee, it doesn't hurt to ask them. To kind of show up and give a little bit of support for some of the changes. Yeah, well the support. The support we need is going to be when it goes to city council, that's when we're really going to. Want to make sure that the people who are in favor of this are aware of when it goes to city council. So that's why everybody. If you, if you're going to call in favors for friends, or just, or just letting your neighbors know or whatever. Then it's the most important things when it goes to city council, it's not going to be this hearing. Okay. So. With that we can adjourn and we can do it with the whole motion and everything for. We have a motion to adjourn. Mission to adjourn, Kirby. I knew you were going to do it. I could tell. Do we have a second to Gabe's motion to adjourn? Aaron. That was, we're going to, we're going to count it. Aaron. Aaron. He may have burped or he may have seconded the emotion. Second. Second. Second. Second from Aaron. All right. There's a favor of adjourning. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Everybody in December.