 Okay. I'd like to call the village of Essex Junction Planning Commission meeting to order for May 23, 2019. On the agenda tonight, we have public hearing on the updated comprehensive plan update. Before we start, I don't have to warn about anybody in the audience. So, Robin, any additions or amendments to the agenda? I just want to remind you that this is an ultimate meeting before it goes to the trustees. Okay. So, just to clarify, we are going to discuss some last minute changes or updates, and then we're going to make a motion to approve and send to the trustees. Correct? The next meeting. At the next meeting. Their next meeting? No. One more meeting. And then it goes to the trustees. Right. Then we'll have a meeting in July and August, I believe. We have one more. That's on the chart. Yeah, I sent you the schedule earlier. So, tonight is just opening and closing, making a motion to open and close the public hearing. And then between now and next Friday, I will make amendments to the plan. I will send it to you by next Friday in advance of your June 6th meeting. And at that June 6th meeting, you will make a recommendation for approval of the comprehensive plan and decide to send it to the trustees. And I'm still looking to see when their next meeting is. It's okay. I'm not going to be here the 6th, so everyone has to show up. Right. Okay. So, I guess we can start with that motion then. I move we open the public hearing. Do I hear a second? Okay. All in favor? All right. Any members of the public wishing to speak to us all now? No members of the public are present. Okay. Do I hear a motion to, well, any other comments? Do I hear a motion to close? Make a motion. We close the public. Sorry. Wait, wait, wait. Well, I don't get, how do we open the hearing and not discuss the. Because we're only opening and closing the public portion. Okay. We get to talk about it as long as we want, apparently, but the. Okay. So, does that make sense? Make sense. Okay. All right. So, John made a motion to close. Second. All in favor? All right. Okay. So, we did have some updates to discuss tonight. I'm not sure, Melanie, I'm not sure what you wanted to go over first. Okay. Yeah. I'm just, I want to give you that date on the trustees meeting. So, the trustees will receive the plan on June 11th and warn the first public hearing. And then their first public hearing is July 23rd. Okay. And then they have a second and final public hearing, which is August 13th. I can send you. So, which meeting do we approve? You approve. June 6th. June 6th. To send it to the trustees on June 6th. Okay. So, we have to, we will have everything completed by that. Yes. And done. Yes. That makes sense to everybody. Okay. All right. June 6th. Okay. So, I was thinking we would start with the two-page overview of the comprehensive plan, the executive summary. I believe this was sent to you in advance of the meeting. The purpose of this two-pager is to highlight sample objectives of the plan organized by the heart and soul values. This was created in response to a desire of the Planning Commission to have something more graphically and easily accessible to understand the objectives and general direction of the plan. You know, given the compressed timeline, this is what our communications manager came up with and with, you know, my input on the appropriate content. So, this is the first time that the Planning Commission is seeing this. So, I think we should have a discussion about how we should frame these objectives. The way they're currently described is they are sample objectives. We, you could decide to kind of change that language and make these objectives more about a high priority action-oriented implementation plan, which would somewhat address one of the comments that we received from the CCRPC Planning Advisory Committee that there aren't really measurable outcomes in the plan and what are the measurable objectives to help the Planning Commission understand the successful implementation of the plan? So, that's one question. Do we want to just keep this framed as sample objectives or put some language in here about these being priority objectives? And also, are these the right objectives? Are there concepts in here that you want to add? Are there revisions to these statements that you want to make? So, yeah, I mean, I think we can have a conversation about the the two-pager. Get some love to hear your reactions on it. And where does it get put into the comp plan like somewhere up front? Yeah, in the back. Yeah, that's a good question. It will become part of the comprehensive plan if that's the decision of the Planning Commission. It makes sense to be part of chapter one or before chapter one because it's the Executive Summary. Yeah, I like this. I think it's great. What do you guys think? Do you like that the top, you know, the way they have it broken down? Or do you see something that should be here that's not? Well, I like it fine. It feels like a plug though. We have had this heart and soul process and it's compressed into two pages and then slipped in somewhere and it feels a little contrived in a way rather than kind of broken apart and put into the document where it belongs to go in, you know, like not all these things belong in the same place. But that said, I'm not, I'm not sure it's a bad thing because I think it brings highlighted tension to those six items. So it may not be the way I was anticipating your work though, but I think it actually could make it more, give it more of a punch to put it all in one place. I think when people open up the book and it ends it up, it gives them these topics right away and they can be looking for them. I agree. I think your comment, John, about the heart and soul is actually valid. I would almost say that it was, it's not just heart and soul that's responsible for what's in this summary and in this plan. It's a combination of a lot of different feedback from a lot of different folks that have made this take the direction it has. Wouldn't you agree? So when you say it's almost a plug for heart and soul then, you know, I would have that same concern to a certain extent. But what I meant when I said plug is that it's a plug for the notion that we took the heart and soul points and put them into it. Not that I'm plugging heart and soul, but they're fine. But as a community, these are the values that we came up with. We spend a lot of time getting to this point and they are scattered throughout the document and particularly the graphics do show up in some other places. So I think providing this as a highlight, almost a, hey, look for these things as you go through the plan, it's going to work out. Yeah, I agree. So I have a question for you. The picture of the young ladies around the taste of Ramon and taste of Essex, the arrow pointed at the young lady in the green dress, is that the best example that we could use? I got to feel is that having that arrow there and that sign is probably pointing at that young lady. I'm not sure. I know that that sign was probably taken from somewhere else. Can we remove the arrow? Can we remove the arrow? I will check with Emma about that. Because I think that would be much better. Which comes to most, we can light it up. Yeah, I think we can just put a white box over it. Okay, and there's a piece on the under local economy on the other side. Well, there's a couple of them that, and I just want to make sure I understand the intention that, so it's talking about collaborating with the town. And is that what we mean where we, the village are collaborating with the town or do we want to say village in town? Is it about the village or is it about the village's collaboration with the town? Well, it's the village, and this will apply. So, should it say village? It's probably just checking. One thing I want to say is with the train, it says free at rail service expansion. Can we say free at commuter rail service? Well, we can expand if it doesn't exist. Yeah, maybe not. Talk myself out of that. Oh, there's a gentleman that wants to start a commuter. I like this sheet. I think it looks nice. I mean, I guess my only, my only issue is it's not really an executive summary. It's, I mean, it highlights some points that are important. I think it's interesting. I think it's a good thing to have in the front. It doesn't really summarize the entire comprehensive plan. It's just, you know, it's some highlighted points, which is interesting. Yeah, yeah, some key areas that are important. I don't know if that's nitpicky or not, but it's a good point. For you. We're going to call it that. We're going to call it the executive summary. Well, is there another name that people prefer? Does it even need a name? Just cross it. Highlights. You could call it the Highlights. Comprehensive plan highlights. I mean, this is not a in-depth, you know, summary here. And it does look like a highlight. Or you could call it core values. We came up with these as core values. Core values, that's a good one. I like that. It's very good. It's not my document. I'm just going back and reading that piece I read a minute ago on the town. You need to put town in there. I don't think it works if you don't put town in there. I think the point is we're trying to collaborate with the town, especially on the second one. Would it be helpful to understand the inspiration for that one? So if you go to page 19, the inspiration for that objective is objective 5.7. Work with the trustees and the Essex Town Select Board on appropriate and feasible consolidation models regarding asset management and services for Essex Junction and Essex Town. In fact, I think, you know, I basically that's like intended to be a summary of that whole section about public infrastructure. In the second one, because the Enhanced Energy Plan is a combined plan covering both the village and the town. So I'm fine leaving it the way it is. I just, I wanted to make sure we knew what we were trying to say and that it sounds like we do, so that's good. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Do you want to change the language in the second paragraph where it says the following are sample objectives from the plan? Do you want to change sample objectives to highlights? And we're also going to change executive... Or we could just take a sample and put in the following are objectives from the plan. You could just put the following are highlights from the plan or sample highlights, whichever. And we're striking executive summary and calling that highlights. I thought core values. Oh core values, sorry. I'm the photo on the cover, I'm good. That's right. Is it, is it acknowledged? This is the question. Acknowledging, you have to pay. When you didn't, a photo acknowledgement? You have to take 75 pictures where you got that one, you better acknowledge. Are there roles? Any other comments on the core values page? Those going to defer education to Diane or just to make sure you're comfortable with all of that. I like the word rigorous. They're each other, they would probably agree with it. But no, I checked, I compared it to what the school has submitted and yes, that agrees with what they have. Good. Agreed to it. Actually, I like drinks in color and it gives you the answer. Yep, good. Any other comments on it? And so, where are we suggesting it goes right after the table of content? On four. Yeah, in the front, right? Just after John's acknowledgment. Perfect. All right. What's next? Okay, we could go through the comment spreadsheet. Yep. So, we will focus on the yellow highlighted comments. Those are the comments where I need some planning commission direction. If you have any questions about the ones that are not highlighted, please let me know that. So, we can start with the first comment related to page 20 of the comprehensive plan. The commenter was asking about depot street not being a former or current street name and wondering if that's supposed to be railroad avenue. And I was not able to answer that. So, I'm asking if one of you can answer that. I have no knowledge of that need to be changed, do you guys? Well, if he's saying that there's no depot street, I'm sure he will look it up. Yeah, I'm looking it up now and it doesn't seem to me either. I thought there was a sign at the end that says depot street. And a four? No. No? It's railroad avenue. It's railroad avenue. So, where is it referenced us? There's one in Burlington. There is not one in Essex. Do you want me to read the sentence in the plan? Early buildings included additions to the Stevens Tavern, the Central House Hotel at Central and depot streets. Oh, so it's historic streets. Yes. Yeah. Okay. The commenter was saying they have access to information. So, if it's not historically named, so why don't we just make it Central Street and railroad in this plan? Railroad Ave. Yeah, I'd make that change. Okay. Thank you. Since we're on this page, can we? Sure. So that the headings of 3-1 and 3-2, it should be historic. I'll defer to Dan, but I think it should be historical development patterns for 3-1 and historic resources on 3-2 because the resources they're talking about in 3-2 are like historic buildings of historic significance. What we're talking about and the first one is how development has happened historically. So, I think the meanings are flopped. Is that you understand? Yeah. Yes. So, historical development patterns is 3.1, historic resources is 3.2. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Okay, what's the next? Okay, so the next one is related to page 34. The commenter is concerned about retail business declining and is asking about focusing a discussion on attracting e-businesses core offices. Is that a direction that the Planning Commission wants to take for the village? I'm trying to find out where. There isn't any data in the plan that highlights whether retail business in the village is declining. I think we've taken perspective of encouraging businesses to locate here, whatever they generally are. Right. What they are. Yeah, we don't want to go down the road overspecified. I think the point is that if you have retail, you have pedestrian traffic intending to go into and out of these establishments. If you have e-commerce, you don't have pedestrians looking for places to go there because it's not a public offered space kind of. So, I would think you'd want to still encourage retail because we continue to try and develop pedestrian-friendly walkable communities and if we don't have places for them to go, then we're looking ourselves enough. But there's nothing stopping an e-commerce business from going into the second floor. Correct. Or even first floor. Correct. So, it's just business. We like having a nice healthy mix of businesses so we don't. Right. But I wouldn't want to be promoting one non-pedestrian type of establishment over another one. Correct. So, what does the actual language say at this point? That's 34. Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing is that we're not trying to track retail or e-commerce or anybody else. We just say, hey, this is what's here. Right. Yeah, I don't want to. Okay, so why is that pinned to page 34 because I don't really see anything on that. I think it's prior response to an area. Well, an area. The person probably read this and said, here are the employers and what about others? I'm thinking that if anything had changed, it would be in the goals. Yeah, this isn't really relative to what we're trying to talk about here. We're just stating what types of businesses there are here. We're not encouraging or discouraging any types of businesses. Yes, I think on page 40 it makes more sense if we're going to talk about it at all. Right. I mean, our first goal there in 2.1 is look for strategic opportunities, work with business and property owners on economic development. That seems to come for everybody. It's interesting the person said retail seems to be declining so maybe that it's a response to an interesting comment down the hall. We're not even here. We're not promoting any particular kind of business. We're just talking about our economic and development goals. So I don't see where we would plug anything in specifically about e-commerce or sorry, e-businesses, I should say. All right. So if we discussed it and we're happy with what was written, we don't need to do anything. Correct. Yeah, I don't see. I propose we do nothing. Yeah. I mean, it's a good point. It's a valid point. But you know, we're encouraging all business, not specific categories. All right. Next one. Okay. So this one is about being specific in identifying which significant wildlife habitat is being defined by use of the Vermont conservation design data. I think the best way to answer this question is to look at the, at map number one. I believe everybody has their maps, right? This is what map one? Yeah. So the language just generally talks about the significant wildlife habitat being defined by the Vermont conservation design project. But there's numerous components of VCD. There's landscape scale components, and there's species and community scale components. And then they're also rated based on their suitability for having ecological importance, you know, based on whether they're surface waters, riparian areas, forest flocks, and then at the species level, whether there's a presence of rare species or uncommon species. So our, is the planning commission comfortable with saying that both the highest priority and priority areas at both scales make up the significant wildlife areas? I mean, are we sure there, is there definitely not like a, in the industry, a definition? Is that like a term that's thrown around as a real thing? I mean, are we like redefining some of We are not redefining anything. We're just being more specific. Oh, and there's not a page number related to this. I apologize for that. So it's in the, yeah, it's in section 4.5. Well on the map, it has highest priority, priority areas for species and scales. So, Yeah, again, I mean, we're very specific about in the map and in the body of the, of the, what section am I in here? 4.5. 4.5, thank you, about the importance of these areas. I mean, I don't know how much more specifically we can get. Is there something more that we can do or I mean, do you guys think this is what we have here as adequate? Objective 2.5 seems to cover it. Yep. And then there's the map, which is good. So then maybe a way to address this comment is taking the language from an objective 2.5 and putting it to further clarify that the village is defining significant wildlife habitat as defined by the Vermont conservation design, both highest priority and priority areas. Yes, I think that sounds perfect. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. You guys okay with that? Yeah. Okay, so the next one is, does the village have building codes or not on page 76? No, it did not. Okay. Okay. So then I will, I will make those. We defer to the state. Yes. Yes, our energy code. So I will make that. Well, for all, there are codes for one or two family dwellings and they, and for commercial and everything else when they're driven by the state and the village has no specific other. Yes. Yeah. Okay. There's page 89 of contradiction in terms related to interconnected local streets. No, I just want to see what their comment was. Why they were saying it and why. So the sentence is the interconnected local street system reduces congestion on major arterials but increases the negative impact on local residential neighborhoods and should be discouraged. So it's in the second paragraph on page 89. It's the second to last sentence with the interconnected street system should be discouraged. No, using it should be discouraged. Well, that doesn't say that it says that it should be discouraged. The interconnected, if you take out the whole middle part of the interconnected local street system does all this stuff, but increases and should be discouraged. I think what they want discouraged is using side streets as cut cuts from the major arterial streets. So they're fine for local traffic, but most people who commute through as obstruction know how to get around five corners. Yeah. And that puts a heavy burden on on those residential areas that are right there. And I think that's what we want to discourage. School street, notably Montstriol Avenue, Vanceville Avenue, Pleasant Street. But we're going to fix the street. Yeah, but all I'm saying is that we need to have some extra words in there to say what we're discouraging. I mean, just simplistically, if we put the impact on local residential neighborhoods and cut-throughs or short cuttings should be discouraged. It was worth smithing the whole thing. We'll just make a separate sentence saying that that's discouraged. Neighborhood roads to like the five-quarters that says, you know, the ongoing planning should discourage, should implement measures to discourage cut-through traffic or something like that. That's more like that. Right. So there's all kinds of ways to slow traffic down. Like to put things in there that discourage the use of neighborhood roads. Let's see. We want to try and get people back or to stay on the major arterials is what we're really trying to do. Neighborhood roads should only be used for destination traffic. Everybody has this problem. We want to encourage appropriate measures to protect the neighborhoods and keep discouraged through traffic on neighborhood roads. There you go. So you want to take that sentence and take and should be discouraged off the end and do a whole new sentence. This discourages through traffic on neighborhood roads. Yep, that makes sense. There'll be a new sentence. I'm going to read it back to you on what I'm thinking. I wrote a lot of stuff. So okay, so ongoing planning should be implemented to discourage the use of neighborhood roads to discourage the use of neighborhood roads or for-through traffic. Right. The use of neighborhood roads by-through traffic. Okay. Good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Ongoing planning should be implemented to discourage the use of neighborhood roads by-through traffic. Yes, there you go. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Next. Is that the last one? Yep. The last one. Yeah, so the last one is about the goals and objectives are more general rather than measurable. Consider including a few key indicators to show success in the implementation of the plan. So, you know, it's the nature of the planning document to be very general. There are a lot of objectives. As I mentioned earlier, I think one way to address this comment is to turn this document into the high priority actions. And so that is a measure of success in that, you know, years from now, if the village realizes these core values, then they could say that there's a measure of success. There's also in addressing VHFAs comments regarding options for affordable housing, one of my recommendations is to add an action about the implementation of the municipal actions that were in the village and town housing needs assessment. I don't know if you guys have seen that, but I printed out the municipal action plan that's proposed. So we can just reference that. So we can just reference that. So that's another measurable way that we can address this comment. So it's not going to address it fully, but it gets at what the CCRPC PAC is asking for. And they've already made a recommendation to the board to consider the document for approval. It's just a way to, you know, enhance and improve upon the plan. What do you guys think about that? Providing off a lot if we decide that we're going to try and decide what the high priority items are and then summarize them and put them on these property pages. I feel like that's a lot that's just heavy to look at. What's the new reference to document like the UHFA one? If they modify it, then our reference is modified too. Well, there's a difference between deciding if something is a high priority and actually putting a number to it per goal. So there's a big difference. To me, it's fairly easy to say our priority is, you know, a more connected walking community to assign a number to that or what we want to see specifically is much more difficult. Does that make sense? So like Melanie said, the nature of the comprehensive plan is to be general for that reason because we're not exactly sure what shape it's going to take. We know what direction we want to go, but to assign specific numbers, I'm not so sure that's something that we have the ability to do. I have a suggestion. I'm looking at table 13, which is all of our goals and priorities and objectives. And what if we put in a statement that said that we would annually revisit the goals and objectives and discuss our progress? That's something that we do because we've got some nice targets in there, but if we just file this away and we don't go back to it, then that's a reasonable question. How are you medicating yourself against your goals? And if we say, okay, we're going to, on a scheduled basis, look at our goals and ask ourselves what we're doing. I think that's fantastic. And that allows us to change the priorities as things change. Sure. Things come along. The goals are, you know, our objectives are good. So I think we can, every time we have a chance to look at our land development code or any of our other rules, we go back to our objectives this day. Are we getting to our goals? Yeah, that's a great idea. And then we can tell them we've got them constantly in the forefront. We look at them all the time to make sure our decisions are getting us in that direction and we're checking them off when we achieve them. Okay, so what meeting are you assigning us to be done? January 1st. There you go. January's meeting. First meeting in January. Yeah, so we could put a statement somewhere in the body that says this is one of our goals is to have an annual update about where we stand with what we're trying to accomplish. That's a great idea. And then, because that's typically a little slow through the winter, great. Okay, so I can add a sentence that describes what we just talked about prior to table 13. Does it need to be anywhere else in the document? There was something that said, you know, we're committed to our goals and objectives. It can go even up front. I was just thinking the same thing. Isn't there a place where we talk about the document at the home? We talk about goals and stuff. Yeah, maybe some more words related to the implementation table and the reporting that we just talked about added to item three, the specific goals and objectives. Because that's essentially what the implementation table is. It's all those goals and objectives with information about the timeline and the responsible entity. Right. Yeah, I think that works perfectly. What are you guys saying? There's this big empty box at the top of table 13 where you could put in just, you know, a regurgitation of our commitment statement there. Okay. Okay. So that covers the comments that I wanted the planning commission to pay close attention to. Does anybody have any questions about any of the other comments that were provided? Basically when it says thanks for your comment, okay, that means that the comment will be addressed as suggested. Do we want to discuss so the comments from Mia? Yes, that's next. Okay. Yeah, that's one other thing that I wanted to bring to your attention that I don't know that it's in here. And it's, I guess it's a comment that came from Essex Town staff about the enhanced energy plan right now. It's in the comprehensive plan as an appendix. And I think it would serve both communities better if it was taken out of the appendix and just it stood as its own document and was referenced, which it is already now referenced. Can we have Darren speak to that? Because I'm thinking we're both going to appendix to our plan. And therefore it's, I mean, the danger of separating it is it's somewhere else when you want people to see it. It's not there. And, you know, there is just because we put it in as an appendix to ours, I don't think has any bearing on what the town does or doesn't do with the document. It's our combined document. So I guess I'm not sure why I would, if it's important to us and it is our energy plan and we're required to have it, I want it mechanically in this document. I don't want to have to go take another book out of the library to figure out missing something. If we are focused also in the core values part of working with the town, you know, when we're talking about the energy plan, then yeah, I agree with John. It should be in the document. Which doesn't prevent it from being somewhere else. Correct. So it doesn't turn on. Correct. Does that make sense? It does. You can't read our, you can't read our comprehensive plan without getting the energy piece with it. So why not? I mean, it's part of the document. It could be also sided as a link, you know, so I guess it's separate, but it's attached. It's just like the map. It's just like the maps. You can't not have those things in there. So we're on agreement. So it gets its own hot link? Well, we have a town planner with us. So I'm saying if Darren could explain the note there. Actually, you should be pretty soon. It's not my other way back from the town meeting. Thanks for coming. Real quick, you know, to answer that question about, you know, should it be in your, you know, actually in the text, like the idea of having it in the text, but also having it as a standalone document in the town, I think, will eventually incorporate it into the main document of the town plan, whether it's a combined town village plan, am I allowed to say that? Or, or they are still separate comprehensive plans, but the intended thing is eventually to have it incorporated. And I will also add that I think Burlington has an interesting way of doing their sort of sub studies and their comprehensive plan by having the main document. And then they do have references to other documents and do like a little summary in the main document. So you could lean more towards having more of the main of the appended document in the main document, but there could be goodies to find in the appended one. So my personal experience working in Burlington is I'm almost thinking I'm missing something. And, you know, I, they have a fairly extensive, you know, set of codes and ordinances and so forth. And to make it easy for people who are planning in our community, I would, I would suggest that it's, it's nice to know that when you grab the comprehensive plan and the land development code, you've got what you need. And you're not looking or missing something else. Oh, did you know we also had to have, you know, these other documents and since it also helps in the section 248 proceedings. So if it's physically not, you know, going to make our document too big and it looks like it'll slip in there pretty well, I would be in favor of keeping it as an appendix and physically attached as part of our, and we can make it available separately as well. It's just fine. You know, it has a number of different hats since it did represents something that we are doing in conjunction with the town. So we'll have any document and they just have it on the website. Yeah. We've also over the years, we've had a click on the website, or you just click here. Yeah, you would just click a link. Yeah. Well, we've had feedback from residents over the year or two that they feel that they would appreciate it if we made it a little easier for them to access information and just another way to keep things all in one place so that they feel like they, like you said, they feel like they have all of the information in front of them that they need. So that's kind of my opinion of it. Okay. It will stay as an appendix. Sounds good to me. Okay. So now we can move on to VHFA's comments. I came up with some suggestions on how to address their comments. Okay. So their first comment is talking about adding some more or adding an additional action to section 2.3 that talks about the planning challenge. They're asking for the addition of a goal to increase more housing for residents earning 80% of area median income. So one suggestion for addressing that is to add an objective to that section and also replace one of the housing objectives in the housing element on page 87 with a statement that says work with the town of Essex to implement the actions identified in the town of Essex and village of Essex Junction housing needs assessment and action plan to increase the stock of homes affordable to residents earning up to and including 80% of area median income. We can also add a sentence to the first paragraph on page 78 which is the introductory paragraph to the housing section that refers specifically to the housing needs assessment and action plans actionable steps for the municipal government of Essex and Essex Junction to help meet the identified housing needs in the community. The rationale for these suggestions is the plan already already refers to the housing needs assessment. A lot of the data that's in the housing element was summarized and at the time of that summary the municipal action plan that is part of the housing needs assessment was not developed yet. This I got a copy of after we already warned the public hearing and the public hearing draft was already developed so I think it makes a lot of sense to really specifically and explicitly talk about the action plan and reference it in this document and I think that it does address Mia's comments and I passed out an excerpt of the municipal action plan that's part of the village and the town's housing needs assessment. It's in draft form currently in case you were wondering about the status of it. So everything in yellow up here is what we're adding we would be adding? Yes. Okay and discussion of definition of affordability is that we're deciding whether to include that as well? Yeah so that's the next comment about I think Mia felt like the definition of affordability that's in the plan is unclear and so she proposed a clearer definition that might be you know more accessible to the residents and understanding you know why affordability is important and what makes things affordable and what makes things unaffordable so it's a choice of the planning commission to decide which description of affordability you prefer. Okay and then the other two comments that VHFA proposed I think make sense to delete for the first one about why homeowners are cost burden you know it you can't really tell right we don't and then the second one is about the burden that new houses have on the school district and the data supports the opposite that there is no burden so I think we can delete objective 1.1 as well given the student population is also declining. I agree with that as well. So the real question is the definition of affordability affordable housing and including this text on page 85. Anybody have any comments on that? I personally I'm wondering if the definition of affordable housing can be shortened I mean do we really need to get into a discussion about you know the other things that I mean knowing that your housing cost should be 30% or less of household income is basic right that's a normal standard so so can we just put in can we just send that in and then put the federal maybe the last part the federal and state housing programs use this definition when the term may affordable rents and home purchase prices in terms of subsidies subsidies for households earning 60% I don't know if that's important to put in there what do you guys think? I think at some points do you have to read this that it's not us reading this that it's next to a neighbor reading this so if you're next to a mayor would they understand what we have in page 85 or would they understand what is recommended by well I mean I would assume I think I know that my next-door neighbor is a lot more intelligent than I am so if I just put 30% in there and I understand that that's what the term that's what makes a house affordable or unaffordable or can we mix and match and put what you think is appropriate and then reference affordability and change the context defined by the amount of housing finances that works for me because it'll change from year to year to right more elastic correct um you know I think we need to give it some target so that you're not stuck going to a reference to find out what the baseline right exactly like you said you've learned all in the one document yeah I think we can give information but not be comprehensive about it if you need correct correct all right so a general statement about what's considered affordable or this generally housing is considered to be affordable if right we like that sentence yep if total housing expenses rent mortgage and utilities cost 30% of a or less of a household income period yeah that's the explanation and then we want to jump to the chitenden county reference correct that was my idea yes right does that make sense yeah and then it's okay to have something about what federal and state housing programs do with this definition as long as they don't change that would yeah that would be my concern but they haven't changed so far they're still using that definition can I to believe if you guys want to leave it in that's fine the area median income so I don't mind the last sentence either and it may be that you put the chitenden county information in after the last sentence because then you've gone from general to what state and federal do and then typically area median and then you tell them what the area median is and you're done so all we're taking out is the sentence when households pay for more housing it can be more difficult to afford other basic necessities that sentence is the only one we're taking out is that correct all right so if we're okay with that then can I go back to this the two bullet points that are yellow I'm sorry I kind of jumped ahead well I'm a little we we all wait before we go back to that I just want to make sure I have this right so looking on page 85 in the note about affordability we're ending it at income where it says generally housing is affordable to a person if the housing costs are 30 percent or less of their income of a household's income yes yep so we're ending it there and then we are we are only taking out the next sentence we're only taking out that all residents want their housing costs to be low we're taking that out no we're we're not 85 yeah we're taking are we taking that out too it's on the average how much money do you want to replace what's on 85 with VHFA's definition minus the sentence that starts with when households pay more for housing it can make it difficult to afford yes that's what we want to do because all residents want their housing everything after that is it's on page 85 yes okay and then we're inserting VHFA's definition minus that sentence I just read and we're going to reference what VHFA defines as affordability correct okay thank you sorry for the confusion with that no that's that's good um all right so the two bulleted points in yellow if I understand it are referencing a document that we haven't seen yet this uh village of s extension town of Essex and village of s extension housing needs assessment and action plan do we have that I believe I believe you were given a draft of it when we talked about the housing element earlier in the process and it includes statements about what we think we want for the future going forward yeah the version that you saw was about data you this is the first time that you're seeing the actionable steps because it came out this is in early May okay all right so I guess what I'm trying to avoid is is including um objectives and other targets that reference things that we're not we haven't seen we haven't seen yet or we don't know what they are or that we don't have control over them or we haven't and this is just part of the action plan that we're seeing yeah um we can hold off on including this statement and it could be included um I'm just I'm thinking about this it can be included on June 6th when you make a motion to make a recommendation to the trustees to approve it it could you your motion couldn't include um you know this language that I'm proposing here so long as you're comfortable with the action plan there's a lot of stuff in here that is pretty significant so I guess what I would say what I would suggest is that we um include a commitment to move forward with a municipal action plan that addresses housing and an affordable housing but I don't know that how we can uh go out and adopt this thing that's not even you know hasn't gone through all the steps yet and it feels like that's approved that's recommending or approving something that isn't hasn't been done yet but what you suggest the approval way to do it because it talks about it and says we're okay yeah and then we can check it off our checklist in January when we see how that works all right so can we have language that says where we uh we are commit we consider or no we're not considering it we're we're actually um you know we're uh we're committed to to moving forward with uh work on a municipal action plan in conjunction with the town to address housing costs and affordable housing done ending so whatever however you want to write that to have a goal and an objective and or whatever you're welcome to do that okay so committed to working with the town of sx um on the development how is it the development development of a municipal action plan to address identified housing needs in the community correct reading it right off the period because that's all i'm doing so far because this is this is pretty interesting we're agreeing to revise land use regulations we're agreeing to inclusionary zoning no we're just not necessary we're we're reducing development fees for affordable housing private yeah we don't have to do this establishing a housing trust fund we're struggling to get a landscape fund how are we gonna get a housing fund we don't have impact fees why don't we have impact fees everybody else does encourage to go to the center do i think no you've got a lot more of the village than just the but i think neither we got the neighborhood designation of the disney village center if people meet the requirements in the arbitrary designation avoid actually 50 the issue you know the hardship pay fees to the village yeah and if you had impact fees you could use not paying them as an incentive to get the things you want all in favor of impact all right so we'd have to talk to the trustees about that yes all right so let's see there's something for the planning commission to be working on work work work okay so we're okay with the language that we decide to use on on this about working with the town and the village yeah that's pretty close to what it says here yeah so now that we have everything on this page we're all set i think so yep till next time thank you very much thank you good work yes excellent does anybody have anything else do i have a motion to adjourn do i have a second all in favor all right thank you very much you go so you have to write an essay why i want to be an architect