 Abby Collahan and I live on Fuller Street, which in our backyard goes up to Heaton Woods and that's my interest tonight. Great. Thank you. Welcome. Colleen Wilford here. Hi, Steve search. And we live on 40 Liberty Street. And so our property doesn't abut on the Heaton Woods property that does have the potential to obviously affect the area. So that's why we're here. Awesome. I'm Abby's neighbor on Fuller Street. I butt directly on to the Heaton property. Great. Anyone else want to introduce themselves. I'm Theresa Murray-Claussen and I'm on three Woodrow and I butt Washington County Mental Health's parking lot. So I've been neighbors with Washington County Mental Health for 26 years. But we also own another home on Heaton, which is right where Woodrow turns to Heaton that abuts until Washington County Mental Health also. Okay. So, yeah, I think that gives us an idea of what item on our agenda is of interest. Okay, well, for the sake of time, so we have plenty of time to go over everything. I think maybe we'll start the meeting and we have a quorum and commission. I'm missing just a couple members. So, we can we can get going and they can join us as as they come. So with that, I'm going to call this September 30th meeting of the Mobile Planning Commission to order. It's a special meeting. So, in a way, it's not at our normal time. But this is the reason why this is that it's different times because we're working on the city plan. City plan right now, which is taking up all of our normal time. So, first thing we have to do is approve the agenda. So if the planning commissioners will take a look at the agenda for tonight. And when ready, we'll take a motion to approve and move to approve the agenda. Second. Okay, we have a motion from Barb and a second from Stephanie. Anyone need any more time. Okay, those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. The next item is comments from the chair and I'm just going to briefly go over the what the plan is for tonight. This meeting is devoted exclusively to some potential zoning changes that have come from members of the public. They've asked the planning commission to consider adjustments to the zoning. It's a time to time where we just kind of do all of these suggestions together it's like several months worth all at once that we take a look at when we analyze this the idea is to take that public input and consider whether our zoning is not working out the way that we had hoped when it was first passed because you know no one's clairvoyant and these things come up and we learn new information. We, you know, make policy decisions in response. I just want to reiterate, because because it's when these things come up and there are sometimes their properties specific, it can look like we're making changes based on a particular property. But that's not really the analysis we try to do we try to look at the whole city that are our plans for the whole city and whether these adjustments are necessary to fit that it's not. In other words, we consciously try to avoid spot zoning. That's like that's not something that we want to be doing here. Another thing about tonight is this is a special meeting for us to learn about the background here for these proposed changes. This meeting is not the hearing on this. This is just an informational session with Mike so that we can learn a lot without spending our regular planning commission meeting time doing it. Mike, am I correct in thinking that we have scheduled the hearing for the next planning commission meeting. It won't be it'll be scheduled. It'll have to be a warned hearing so we'll have to go through a full warning process and it's probably going to take a couple weeks it probably wouldn't be till November. So, a lot of, you know, because we'll have to send out a lot of public notices as well to people who are going to be impacted so there'll be a lot of notice that we've got to put out. Yeah, this will be it'll be a couple of weeks, probably closer to six weeks probably before we have enough time to get all the notices out and get everything lined up. So I guess the other point I would add to this is that the meeting gives the planning commission opportunity to understand what's being proposed and if they decide there's something they don't want or don't think is appropriate to move forward to hearing. They certainly strike something from the list. That's there but, you know, a vote to move this to hearing doesn't necessarily commit the planning commission to vote to approve it after the hearing. You know, sometimes it's something is just like, you know, I'm not opposed to it but I'd love to hear from the developer on their idea of what they're looking at doing or why they can't meet the zoning currently. They'll put it to public hearing so they can hear more from the developer. But the first one is generally about making sure that when we have the public hearing that the planning commission is familiar with the rules and familiar with the proposal so we can maximize the amount of public input, rather than having, you know, an hour and a half of of the planning commission asking questions and then a small amount of time for the public we want to, you know, when we get to the public hearing we want the planning commission already understanding the understanding it generally and then we can invite speakers from the developers to neighbors to everybody else who's there to kind of give input and then then the planning commission can vote at that point to go through and say these should be approved and sent to city council for consideration by the council or these won't be and these will be so that's that's the general big picture of where we're at right now in the process. Yeah, great thanks Mike so you have the big takeaways are, we're not going to be doing a final vote tonight. And this is an informational session so we're off this is also not the public hearing time so it's awesome that people from the public are here but just so you know, if you if you want to provide input directly to us on this, then this meeting is not the place for that it will be at the hearing which sounds like will be in either the second or fourth week of November. Okay, does anybody else have any questions or anything before you dive in and I'm going to hand it over to Mike to walk us through everything. Anyone have anything else before we do that. Okay. Well, according to the agenda though we do have a general business section so we have comments from the public about anything not on the agenda. So just in case anyone's here to talk about something that's not about the zoning changes but just anything else that they want to tell the commission. Now would be the opportunity actually for that. Anyone want to do that. Okay. Okay. I'm going to move on to the fifth item on the agenda is to review and comment on proposed zoning changes as presented by the planning director with that. Take it away. Okay, so we'll try to. It's always up to you guys how much time you want to spend on each one there are 10 changes, a couple of them I think will be really quick and a couple of them I think there's going to be more conversation about and questions about so I'll just jump right in and I don't know if you guys would want me to decide how I want to do this if I want to share my screen. You guys want me to share the screen to show you or do you guys all have the printouts of the. I think you may as well share. Yeah, share the memo that you that you put together and then we'll use that as a guide to walk through maybe I can I can share it over. I can share it it's been my policies. My computer died at work so I've been having to work from home so what ends up happening is a lot of the most recent memo I sent you guys I sent from home. So it's not on my work computer it's on my home computer. So. All right so the first proposal and hopefully. People can get oriented to the first image so the right where nine for is is main street. It's heading towards on the towards the left is heading towards the school. And to the right it's heading uphill. And so what we're looking at is the highlighted area in red is mostly Harrison have also includes Whittier and a couple of properties on Liberty Street. So we had a proposal from somebody who has a house and accessory apartment and they wanted to add another tiny house they had room for it and they had the ability to put it in but they don't have the density. And so looking at the zoning map. What I noticed was that a majority of the developed land around it. So neighborhood nine for and neighborhood nine three are both residential 3000. The parcels here are very similar in size and character to those parcels as well. So it made sense that it would make sense that this area would be could be rezoned for residential 3000. And I think I have in here that there's 19 parcels, four of them are non conforming that would become conforming. And that would obviously make a small difference so we try to be as conforming as we can. And the amount of development that it would allow or create is is modest. It would help this developer to be able to put in a tiny house it's not going to make extreme change. Yes, when you look at the numbers it says it would, you know, double the density but it's not technically doubling the density I think we've all been through this analysis before doesn't actually work that way. But that is the proposal I guess I'll leave that open up to questions do you guys. I would just say that I'm, I think this seems like a reasonable decision to me I'm, I'm on board with more density and close proximity to downtown so I think this is a good change. Mike, how did that that particular street end up is res 6000 anyway, since it was adjacent to res three. Yeah, not sure. It was originally kind of cut out by brandy when she was working for us, and I don't remember this ever coming up for reconsideration at any other time so I think it's simply. This is where brandy drew the lines without really recognizing, you know, she she is was our consultant, who is not from the area and I just don't think she maybe understood that, you know, similarities. You know that it really, this is really part of our core downtown and isn't as much of a residential 6000 neighborhood as, you know, say Marvin Street or College Street. Could I ask the question, does road size sewer you know is there something about that taken into account here because would Harrison is much smaller road than the ones around it. There's a couple of roads that are very similar that are also like that I'm drawing a blank the road on the other side of Main Street. That goes up to the cemetery and then cuts back down. You know that's that's another relatively small as res 3000 even though it's probably a less developable street than than this one is. Or Lincoln Street, something like that one's link yeah one's Lincoln and the other one starts with e and escaping me right now, we have a project. Ewing, thank you. But is that part of the process you look at is, you know what the sewer and all the aspect of what can be held on a street you know what what's available already is that part of the process. There is very very rarely a limitation only in the the largest redevelopment. Everything down here would would have enough utilities and facilities to accommodate those those developments. This is a case where we've run into this before where one side of the streets has a somewhat different character than the other side of the street. So, but we don't want to split zoning districts down the center of a street. So, because the, I'd say the parcels that are on the south side, this is oriented correctly right Mike. Yeah, this is north southeast west. Yeah, okay, right so the ones that are on the south side of the street tend to be larger have more space available than the ones on the north. But we want to zone that whole street in the similar way. Okay. That's good. So we have 10 items so let's go ahead and move along unless someone has something else. So yeah unless people have an issue with it it's at least worthy of going to public hearing for conversation notices will be sent out to all 19 property owners in that in that project. So the second project a second proposal that has come in is the proposal. It was actually from Washington County mental health so this is across the street so this is if you were looking at the street which is the number 10 is basically sitting on Heaton Street if you're not familiar with it. And so if you were going north on Heaton Street would be the property on the right is owned by Washington County mental health. The property on the left is Heaton Woods long term care facility. So the proposal that we received or the request we received was on the right hand side. So what we wanted to be able to do is to bring in some workforce housing and basically they they're having problems recruiting people. And so what they want to be able to do is to provide their employees housing. So they wanted to put in some housing units in there but they lack the density. And is that this street happens to be somewhat unique in its character in comparison to the rest of that same neighborhood so 10 to is a very big neighborhood it's called college north. As you can see on the map basically everything that is north of East State Street, Marvin Street, Liberty Street up into even up Main Street to 250 Main I believe is all in the same district it goes way out and is north of the VC, VCFA. So it's a rather large chunk, but these two properties tend to be very unique if you compare them to the rest of that neighborhood. So, the one thing when we were looking at this and observing was that the buildings here are significantly larger. The, the, the max footprint for this neighborhood is 2500 square feet but heat and woods for example is 18,000 square feet so you know these are significantly larger structures, we felt we could make a separate neighborhood out of them. And it would not be really something spot zoning, because they really are unique in their character when compared to the surrounding properties. We follow property lines as much as possible in our zoning, it improves our ability to administer our zoning so that's why we follow the property lines. And so the idea was, we would take the hospital we would take Washington County mental health and change them to res three, which is one zoning designation, less or above depending on how you're perceiving it. It's a shift of one zoning district, which would give them the density to be able to develop a little bit of housing on their property. So that's the general thought behind it it's you know there is no proposal for the heat and woods property. You know it is recognized and we recognize that the there is a lot of on that 11 acres there is a lot of undevelopable land we acknowledge that accept that. But they could develop in areas that are in the existing frontage. If there was interest in redeveloping in the future. This would give some ability to put a second story on something you know it's a 40 bed facility. It would be expanded to, you know, a 60 or an 80 bed facility in the future. Don't know, you know, I don't think anyone is playing. I think I wouldn't expect anybody to be deciding that they're going to try to be building in the wet steep slopes of the area. This is going to be something where we would anticipate if somebody did some redevelopment it's going to probably be infill redevelopment on the, I'm going to guess three acres that are probably up by the road. And not the eight acres that are in back, extending out to actually back down to Harrison have. So that's the summary of how we got to where we are. And what the proposal is. Was there a certain number of units that Washington County mental health felt that they needed to have, because they could develop some under res six. Was it just not enough. I don't believe they have the capacity to because they already have the building that is there is rather large and it takes up. The development potential goes away because of the FAR use of the three and a half it's it's three stories above a basement and it looks like it's a finished basement from the road view. So I think it's a full four story use of that building uses up an awful lot of FAR and it uses up the potential residential density that could be developed. Are there residential units in it now. And that I don't know the details of that I don't think it's a residential facility. I believe it's a, it's office in patient facility. But I'm not. I wasn't sitting in on the, on the proposal they sat in with the zoning administrator to talk about a proposal. And that was when they discovered they wouldn't be able to do the project. But because we were entertaining a zoning amendment. They asked if it would be reasonable to rezone this parcel and I said well we can't just do one. And we that's why we examined it in context of its neighborhood and looked at that in context with long term care facility across the street. I just, I also want to point out if we, if we make the first change, which I'm definitely for everything that's on the north corner of that parcel and down. Down. Sounds like you froze up Stephanie. No, I think we lost Stephanie. Hopefully, hopefully she'll be back. Well I see what Stephanie was going to say is that it would make it all kind of more contiguous res three, which makes sense and I just want to say a couple things. I just, I just moved right by this property and I'm really in support of this. I really need some workforce housing and the parking lot that's by this Washington County mental health building which I believe is all offices currently is, you know, has, I walk by it every day and it has like two cars in it so it seems like a really underutilized land and I also believe that just for people's knowledge I believe behind Heaton Woods, most of that property has a conservation conservation easement from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board where I work. I don't work in the conservation side so I don't know that intimately but I know we did a conservation easement when we funded the Heaton Woods project. But it would be really difficult to expand Heaton Woods but that's also like something that's really, you know, in need in this community so I support this rezoning. I guess I would point out that accepting number one this actually only makes the northwest corner of the Heaton Woods parcel adjacent, fully adjacent to rez three that still most of that is surrounded by rez six, as well as the Washington County mental health parcel is completely surrounded by red six. So it's sort of it. I just, it bothers me to insert something into the middle of a zoned area that is strictly because these two non conforming properties which have always been non conforming properties. And just to try and do something for them, whereas you know it does seem as if they have been integrated into the neighborhood now. But if they were to significantly increase, I, you know, I guess I would have to wonder how many Mike how many units would Washington County mental health be able to put in. Then, if we did this went to res, res three. I don't have the number I don't know exactly what the numbers that they were proposing. You know if this goes that this goes to the public hearing, then the developer will be at the hearing to kind of go through and answer what questions they can. I mean, obviously some of some of what they're doing now is conceptual plans. So, so they're going to be trying to get back, try to, you know, figure out what they can do before they can put in an application. They're kind of stuck at this point, not being able to move forward because they just don't have the density to be able to put some. I don't think it's a, it's a big, I don't think it's a big proposal. Something next to the parking lot. Yeah. Ariane, you said something about the, you know, the conservation easement. So would that actually reduce the available land for development for. On the other side, I realized. Yeah, well, I think it would just now I mean, you know, even if he and would sells that property, there's going to be an easement on it. So, what does the easement, what does the easement mean. I don't think you can't develop it. I don't, I, you know, again, I'm not on the conservation side of things. We could look into what the easement says, but I, you know, I think it's open as a natural and recreational use. So it limits. You can't build on it. The easement's going to have different terms. So like without actually having it, we won't know. I mean, the question. Yeah, sometimes you're selling the development rights, which means there's no development to transfer in some cases it's just putting an easement that says you can't build here. But they could go and pull the underlying development up to a developable portion of the property. If there is a conservation easement, and I heard from Bill that he thought there was, I didn't want to go and put it in the memo without having the backup to support it. And I haven't been in the office to be able to do the homework on it. But I had heard that there was a conservation easement on the back half, but we'd have to it would be up to and usually we don't look these up usually we leave these up to the developer if somebody came in from and said, Hey, we want to put another 40 units, we're going to, you know, we're going to put a second story on we're going to put another 40 units, we would go through and say, you know, get us all the information to demonstrate that you have that that land because there's a conservation easement back there and they would go through and with their attorneys highlight the fact that the conservation easement says no building past this line, but it doesn't take a moment right so those development rights can transfer. And it's probably filed with the deed. So I'm, it's probably a public document that people could be a title just quick title search. I mean, yeah, it seems in order to consider this since the Eaton Woods parcel is such a large portion of this that we would really need to know what kind of an easement it was to be able to evaluate this because if it just transfers the development from that steep slope area to the top of the to where the building is now could end up with a considerably larger building as a result of that, or it could send end up with a lot of additional housing units as well. Because they won't fall into that to that restriction based on FAR with all of the land area. Right, Mike. It depends what they're proposing. FAR applies to concern applies to commercial and the in certain congregate living. So depending on what they were looking at doing, you know whether it was an assisted living or a senior living, you know if they added a wing of senior living that would be using the dwelling units minus the FAR that they've already used and if they're adding that congregate living then it would have to meet the FAR requirement. I mean, given the fact that we're including this it seems like we need more information about Eaton Woods. Yeah, I think that's a that's a good idea for the hearing hopefully will have information about the conservation. Before we move on to the next item I do want to make a kind of general point later on on on this list. There's a discussion of doing some other density changes and doing away with density in some neighborhoods, not these but one thing I'd like to put in people's minds is we like I'm really interested in having a discussion city wide and having people thinking about density and what it's meant to do. And in its and in its limitations and so that we're this particular items about density and density is just really about the number of people or the number of units but it's about the number of units but that means the number of people essentially in a place and overall this the city wants over and over again we talk about how we want more people living in Montpelier, especially in the walkable downtown. And what we want to preserve is the aesthetic parts of our community that we really like. But density doesn't protect the parts that we talk about that we want to protect density just keeps people out which is goes against what we always say we want. So I just want to put in people's minds that like, it would be it would be great if our community can think about density differently, and also all of the planning materials that are out there right now are our are encouraging this and this is this is something that planners across the country are encouraging and we've and we've learned about that and read about that. So I just want to just want to bring it up because I think it's relevant here but it's also, you know something we're going to directly talk about later. Yeah, you know as you know I don't quite fully agree with that assessment. But I think the biggest issue here is not necessarily how many people it is but how consistent the massing and scale of the building is in the neighborhood. So consistency with the neighborhood is really the critical element. That touches on what I'm talking about to them because if we change the density here, we're not we're not changing anything in the zoning about the mass and scaling as you said, like the, those regulations would all stay the same. There would be the same limitations on the mass scaling that exists now. It really is this changes really just about number of units and therefore number of people. And I guess there's, I'm looking now at am I looking at right, I'm trying to compare the elements of res six and res three since that's what we're looking to do is to change these from res six to res three and essentially what is that going to allow them to do that we they cannot do now. And, and so essentially I guess it would be sort of a more of an analysis in terms of the height and massing. You know if they're going to add another wing to Washington County mental health that's four stories tall. I think we would have some concern about that. So, in terms of yes these are unique, unique buildings in the neighborhood, but they are in a neighborhood. That's the part that I think we sometimes ignore. So, Mike, can you tell us about I mean, my impression is that that mass and scaling would not be affected by a res six to res three change. Am I incorrect in thinking that there are some minor changes that are in there but the building footprint is max is 2500 square feet still in the max height is still 35. When they go to build a new, and it's not going to it's not in addition they want to build a new structure, whatever that new residential structure will be it'll have to be it can't be bigger than 2500 square feet, which is the same, whether you're in res three or res six and same with height of 35 feet they would not be able to go above 35 feet so just because the one building is non conforming it doesn't give them the right to make another building non conforming on the property. I can't build a four story. I can't even I don't even know how big that building is huge, probably 5000 square foot footprint I would imagine at least five to six to 7000 square foot it's a good build good size building. But yeah, the difference is that right now with the density requirement of 6000 they don't have any available density to use. So going to three means there. It's not really a change in bulk and massing there are some minor changes to your setback requirements. You know setback in front goes 15 to 10. I don't think, you know, again, when we get to the public hearing we've got to be clear that the zoning approval is really we have to be thinking about the district in this case only two parcels we have to think about the district, we're not approving or denying an application, they're going to have to put in an application, they're going to be required to go through whatever design requirements. There would be a major site plan requirement. So the aesthetics of the building would be taken into consideration there'd be my major site plan require, excuse me major site plan requirements that would come into effect so we would have to be looking at landscaping and fixing any non conformities with respect to landscaping and lighting so there are a number of pieces that would come into this and be taken into effect. When it's an application at this point what we, you know, need to kind of note is that we're trying to approve what the ground rules are for when applications come in. And as I said I kind of laid out why, when they came in to say they felt the zoning probably didn't appropriately match their, their particular circumstances, we tended to agree and come up with a, an alternative recommendation. I asked a question about, you know, as a, like you say a huge building and the talk about infill and using existing buildings are they didn't want to consider actually making their existing building into kind of housing it seems like that would be like the perfect sort of solution to add you know I don't know how much of it they actually Yeah I don't have the answer to that. They apparently felt that they needed additional building space. So, that would be a question that commission could ask them, but yeah. I mean, well the other, the other concern I have is just that now we're taking, not one parcel true but we're taking two parcels and they're potentially making them into their own neighborhood, because they're going to be a neighborhood of res three that and no longer contiguous with the res six that's around it. So, and that was something that was mentioned in the memo that they might have their own neighborhood designation. That makes me nervous in terms of this is slippery slope, I guess, that these could be brought up and in various places in the city, where people have buildings that are non conforming to the uses surrounding them. So yeah, that's a that's a good point that something actually we should maybe hammer out before the hearing like like the planning commission like what are you thinking about, you know, we numbers one and two here are adjacent to one another. I mean, do people do people have thoughts on making, you know, the the areas that are in one and into into their own neighborhood that way so then that's more than a lot more than two parcels, or just, you know, another options are to combine them with nine three or combine maybe one of them with nine three and the other with nine four. There's there's different ways to slice this up. And I also obviously I want your thoughts on that Mike I mean I know you you've thrown some things out there but I don't detect that you're have like one way that you're committed to my sense with Harrison because it would be attached to nine three it really is most to that neighborhood geographically and it really is nine four is are the properties that front on Main Street and I don't think this Harrison have is not of the same character as somebody who's fronting on Main Street they're more like a property that is fronting on Loomis for example. That's the point the second and then, and then okay, and then this other one is probably its own because because the front is between these parcels is like yeah pretty far away from nine three also I see that. And it also comes down to the character of the buildings and you know we can describe that in you know each neighborhood has its own description and we can kind of describe. You know the uniqueness of the, you know the heat and street neighborhood, which is really only two parcels but they're really two very unique parcels. In the future if somebody felt if they were in a budding property who said you know what we're, we used to be part of the heat and hospital as well I'm not really familiar with that street I mean I Google drove it and I walked it. When I first got to the city a couple years ago I walked all the as many of the streets as I could to kind of get a feel for them. And if somebody had a property that was a budding it and felt that they were of the same character as these buildings, they could come in and requested and it's, I think, getting to Barb's point I think we just have to take these one at a time and evaluate them. And, you know, if there are two unique parcels on a street. Does that really make them unique I think in these cases these are so extremely my opinion is these are so extremely different that they it could be argued and justified that they are kind of a unique little spot. We had a little bit of this conversation out at the old Woodbury College on route 12. You know, we kind of had that conversation about it's kind of what is this near what is this like I mean this is, this is kind of a unique property out here this old, this college campus brand new building sitting out here and you know what we do with them. And we combined it with the healthcare facility across the street to create a neighborhood. It's kind of all right that that's, you know, they're, you know, none of the buildings really match those single family ranches anything around them. And I think we just try to tackle each one of these as as they come up in some cases we're going to say, we're going to say 250 main interesting to see 250 main I think sits out there and is just. It is on its own 250. It's just sitting on its own. Is it possible to show, you know, I sent you and Kirby both a topo that was provided to me out this prop of these two properties which also show the adjacent houses not just the lots. Can you share that, because I can't share it on my zoom. I could, I could, I could pull it up Barbie what do you what do you hope in to communicate that I want to communicate is having more to do with the character of the neighborhood and the houses around it. So, that's what I'm trying to show and of course also the relative area that's developable within the two parcels is pretty small. But we want to you know what we're we're saying to them as well you could come in and, you know, nursing homes not going to be viable any longer you take that building out, and then as place you could put 150 units. So it's, you know, that's a pretty significant number of residential units that could be built in that space at at res three. Yeah, I mean we I think yeah I don't I don't think I need to pull up the map when we take your point like I get that and like somebody did do some work to provide that map so if you have it. It's yeah. Yeah, I think I think everybody everybody gets the point there that what you're saying. I'm hoping to find other people's thoughts on the on the item and specifically about how the neighborhoods are divided up like we have Mike's suggestion about having a new neighborhood here I just want to see what other people's thoughts are about that. So everyone in favor of. And as opposed to sort of grouping it into, hold on, I'm 93 or 94. Yeah, I mean, yeah, grouping of 93 is an option I mean there's other things that we haven't talked about that are options which would be. I don't know. The, the neighborhood south of there if we wanted to say that that you know it makes sense that that these parcels are part of that neighborhood and maybe that whole neighborhood should be res three or something I don't know I mean that's just like a hypothetical question out there. Just just to see what people's thoughts aren't about the neighborhood question. The neighborhoods I mean I've, I've generally been just against the concept of them in general in terms of what the amount of work that has gone into creating and dividing them to, to very little. There's no real reason or there's no real public and I don't understand why we do create them like we need to just divide and separate everything into these clean minds when like that's not like it's part of the neighborhood it's what it is and our neighborhoods aren't these like monolithic streets of homes that are exactly the same and then as soon as something's different like we categorize it as something something else, when it really has no implication on what the zoning regulations are, if we, if we care about aspects of design then we have to define those in terms of criteria that need to be met, not, not the description of a neighborhood and there's no fear that's like it's almost misleading in a way that we have these descriptions of neighborhoods and then it's like well, here's the description of your neighborhood it doesn't really mean anything here are the rules that someone has to follow. So we spent a lot of time talking about it. I don't know why. But the descriptions, the descriptions are part of the rules for the neighborhood. In what way, though, if you follow in terms of looking at terms of character of the neighborhood. That's why that's the reason we put them in there if you remember, because if we were going to say that something needs to be in the character of the neighborhood, we need to define what the character is. Yeah, we can't necessarily do it by rules. Well, I guess I would, I guess I would differ there if you, if you meet all of the design requirements and the use requirements. You'd be hard pressed to make the case that something is doesn't conform to the character of the area. Well, I guess, yeah, I guess we will differ on that john because I certainly think you, there are a lot of elements that you can look at and it's, you know, pretty clear to see what is in alignment with the character of the neighborhood. But I mean that's not what we really need to talk about here but I just want to. Yeah, if there's something specifically about it about the neighborhood that we want someone to follow or not do like, let's, let's be clear about it. Not like, here's it here's like a descript general qualitative description of the neighborhood and, and whatever you build should feel like this. We need to articulate exactly what we mean. And one of the things that neighborhoods don't forget to is that we have capital area neighborhoods now that are maybe not following all of our neighborhood lines, but at least you know it is important to designate neighborhoods to my mind. Marcella is very politely raising her hand. Thank you. I wanted to say that it seems to me like that parcel goes down to the street like the north side of that parcel to Harrison and so I would be in favor of just making the Washington County mental health this whole, you know, to change the other one to res three change this one to res three just incorporate that parcel into the, it looks like it would be the nine for neighborhood, but if it's nine three then great, I would, that would be my, that seems like a simple solution to me and that's what I would vote for right now. So thanks. And one thing I'm hearing from john is he thinks the whole concepts flawed so he doesn't really doesn't really matter if you put it in nine three or make it its own it's still like the same flawed thing is that Yeah, I guess it was a long winded way of saying I'm happy to go along with whatever. I'm not going to toss all of them now so. Yeah. And I get, I get Mike's point to the like the, these parcels interact with the street like their fronts are on. What's the name of the street there is a heat and street. Yeah. So they, and so since he didn't this way off of Harrison. I get that too. I can make this part of nine three so we can get going. And then that'll give us the ability to, you know, at after the public hearing there's always the opportunity to make changes and if people feel having thought about it for a couple of weeks that you know what, it better to be a different neighborhood. And we can make the change then but right now I can group it into nine three. And we can keep the move keep it moving. I mean, it sounds like you, you had concerns about it being a snow neighborhood so if you having to choose between either make it nine three or make it its own neighborhood sounds like you would favor nine three also. Is that correct. Um, no, I guess I would say none of the above. I wouldn't favor changing it to res three. So, um, so that would not I mean it wouldn't necessitate a separate neighborhood, because it's already part of a neighborhood now. Okay. How would you, how would you feel just just hypothetically how would you feel if we were making all of 10 to res three. It would all be that part of that same neighborhood and so it wouldn't have that problem you just pointed out. I guess I, I can't express what I just thought in a public meeting. I would say, 10 to and to res three. Now I mean, the whole point of doing this, these particular zones, these districts was to accommodate the existing layout that the new zoning would, would accommodate 90% I believe we ended up with 90% of the existing lots would be therefore legal. But to me that does help to describe the character of the neighborhood so the character of this neighborhood in general other than these two parcels is lots of 6000 square feet with one unit on them with one house. So I think that that definitely adds an element of the character that, as john said, we need to be, we need to have rules about it. Well that is certainly one of the rules. So I can't really see the point of doing that. Okay. Okay, so I think, I think we're good to move on to number three. We probably need to speak things up but we have we have about an hour left. All right, hopefully number three will go a little bit quicker so this is one for anyone who's been paying attention this is the habitat for humanity project so the large green and orienting people. The number seven dash four is on Northfield Street, and it is sitting, the seven is sitting on top of the icon a lodge just to give you guys some orientation of where this is the nine six that's kind of those large stately homes that are up at the top of the hill there on I believe it's cherry street and maybe pleasant street. And so Hill Street is coming up on the east side. So it kind of touches the parcel on the east side. So what we've got for proposal is relatively small in number there are only two parcels involved. And it will move the dark black line is design review. So under the old, the old map, there was a, the large green parcel also is part of one of the orange pieces. So it really is two parcels you've got that little piece. That's down at the very south. And then the next what looks like a parcel above it is actually part of the larger green parcel so we would just be changing the designations to res nine, which is that light blue color. So they would really be kind of become part of that other neighborhood and I don't see the name of it right next to me. So that's the proposal. The similarity. So what they wanted to do is in the general concept is when we developed our zoning map that anything that did not have sewer and water became rural. It was a designated rural because it did not have sewer and water. They plan to extend sewer and water up into this parcel and wanted to have the benefits of this being zoned res nine thousand. So we have a very similar scenario over on Crestview. So if you remember back off of Terra Street, Alan Goldman owns a very, very large parcel that is zoned res nine thousand. It's an interior piece but it had previously gone through active 50 and never got built, but it was kind of plated out and laid out to be a subdivision in there. It is still zoned res nine thousand, even though it's an interior parcel so it's this is not a unique situation for us to do just for this application. But it's a project. There is an idea to run a new road up in there to do a development up in there in order for them to do their habitat for humanities project they would need to have this rezone for res nine thousand so and then we would just clean up that little corner over there to kind of make those all match up to the to the res nine character. So that's the a little bit of the history and background of this one. Like how how steep is this lot. I'm trying to get a sense of the topo here. It's got some steep spots in it. There is a location they have had it engineered where there is a path to get a road up the development is not near Northfield Street, it's going to run a road up into a flat on the top of the hill is a flat area. It would be within the sewer and water pressure. So while sewer always works it'll be going downhill water pressure would reach this point. So they feel it's going to be a very expensive project I don't know financially, you know, they're going to have to work some wizardry to I think to make this all happen but I think if somebody wants to take a shot at running running a new road running sewer running water up up the hill, they're gonna have to put a sufficient number of units to make it cost effective basically. So you know you're not going to spend a couple million dollars putting in roads and sewers and water and just build 10 units you you're looking at a 50 unit project at least I kind of share my screen I've got the topo up. You would have to undo his. That would be great. I also while we're pausing for a second here I want to, based on what Barb was just saying about matching up the neighborhoods I fully get the idea that we're the zoning was defined in a way that we wanted to make sure things were conforming. And I, but based on the sewer and water comment and also just thinking about what Barb had said I just I want to make sure that we're, we're thinking about zoning is not just what's currently on the ground but what we want to see in a location. And that's that's more important to me, not just that we're mapping what's currently there but that we're allowing for uses that we want to see in those areas. So that's my high level zoning thought for what it's worth. So, if you look, you know, I can't control the cursor on this so john would have to point to it there is kind of this ghost of a line that's going up to a cluster of three or four buildings. If you're across from the Econolodge, you can kind of see this kind of it's kind of a ghost of a road that you can see in there there it is. So that would be the road. It's going to come up it's going to go past these structures I don't know if they're staying or going, and then it starts to follow some. It goes up and it hits a switch back and then starts to follow up some of these gradients until it gets to the top of the hill. And then at the top of the hill is where they would lay out a set of streets to to accommodate the development. I mean, I'm not going to put words in Watson, his, his project, but you know he understands their paths and their stuff and he's part of how his funding is supposed to work is that he's going to be working on conserving pieces working with folks to, you know, put in trails and work so he's trying to he's trying to cobble together money from a number of sources because you know there's a large parcel. This is part of the town that doesn't have very many parks, you know, are there opportunities that we can, you know, this isn't just about, you know, habitat is more than just about, you know, making money for habitat for the humanity. They're, they're, they're good stewards good neighbors. And so they're, they're looking to put together a good project. So that's, they're, they're going to be getting funding so this will be a project as I said that'll, that'll need a lot but one thing that it needs is to be able to get in the door. And right now is zoned rural, it isn't feasible. The prospect of parks over there is really appealing and we talked about that when we were discussing the parks chapter of the city plan where, you know, we want to do studies to find out where park needs are but I think we're all aware that this area is definitely one that's very lacking. Well I'll just say again simply, you know, I, I'm I support this change I'm really excited about I don't, again, I don't know whether habitat can pull together enough funding but I think it would be great to take a take a shot. You know, it's, again, it's just going to be on the flat portion of the of the development as I understand but to add and housing units seems really exciting to me. How many units again Mike is is potentially around 50 but they're, they've just gotten there they've applied for community development planning grant, which will give them the ability to to start to study things out and determine all of the details you know they might find out that this project is only feasible with 80 units and then they'll have to decide if they can do 80 units and that that's what the planning grants do is they you start to put ideas down and start to follow the money and see you know how much, you know, per unit cost this is an expensive way to do it, you know you want to do affordable housing and build roads and sewers. That's a pretty expensive way to do it. But it's also one if you can get the sewer and water in there, it could give you a lot of opportunities. Once you're up to the top of the hill. So, yeah, and yeah, conversations about savings is like is that that's 40 units right. No, that's that's a potentially there I mean they're talking 74 units of 74 last I heard. So we'll see when something comes out there. This might be just, yeah, a little smaller than. Okay. And so we're talking about changing it from rural to to res nine. And that would also include those two parcels that you see right there at the bottom. So, it's actually one of those. So actually, if you were looking if you were still looking at the other map what you would see is there's a little bit of a jog, where these cluster of five buildings are. Those are already zoned res nine. And then as you keep if you pan to the north a little bit more john. You'll see that one parcel is is a separate parcel and then it comes back connecting back in so that parcel would go to res nine. Yeah, so you can see it's a little bit different, but basically what we're doing is we're taking this corner and making the entire parcel plus this little one, all to be res nine. Those two little slivers there are currently zoned mixed use residential which is a commercial zoning district that is a single family home. So we, and we look down here at these other ones. And I believe these two are multifamily and we decided we evaluated whether or not we should move them into the res nine and decided that it would not be appropriate based on their current use in their current layout they're probably because they're already multifamily makes sense to keep them in their excuse residential that's a designation. So again, I would be sending out notices to everybody who's got isn't a butter to this property, as well as to the properties that are changing in the note hearing notice. And that'll be a lot of notices. A question of how you choose res nine why not make that res three and packing a lot of housing if you want new houses like what, how do you guys decide res nine res six res three on this one. It's so res nine is the 9000 is the number of square feet so that's one unit per 9000 square feet so that's about quarter acre zoning so four units per acre. They'll probably end up doing a PUD, which we'll talk about later. So, on a 68 60 times four 240 units they have no need to go to putting What would be an awful lot more units. I won't even try to do the math in my head to go to res three. That's a that's a good question that way that 240 is that res nine downtown but we don't want to squeeze housing into the place maybe that world. Well, I know I think we are interested in squeezing in housing, but did Mike did you say 240. I believe if it's if it's 60 acres I want to guess it's about 60 acres so if it's four units per acre. Four times 60 is going to be 240 possible units up in there. Okay, so there's a lot of unbuildable unbuildable nasty land up in there there's going to be going to be. Okay, so so res res nine realistically res nine is matches it like colonial if you were to look to just to the north of this. There's colonial drive freedom drive all of those freedom way that those are all classic quarter acre zoning. So if you're thinking about you know these areas to the south excuse me. They're very classic. Those loop de loop roads those are all, you know, classic res nine quarter acre zoning. A couple of bigger parcels in there but for the most part that's what you're thinking of. They're not going to be doing them this broken up because there's not a lot of developable land which is why they will be doing a PUD when they're up in there and we will talk about the PUD is about two or three numbers down from here and we'll get to that. I do I do want to do want to revisit a point he was just making which is that you know one thing that we think about a lot in these meetings is walkability and not relying on cars and hoping that our development can. Match, you know, transportation in a way in which our community can be, you know, not car centric. So this like neighborhoods like this it's kind of like, not as conducive to walkable to downtown where a person can live without a car so. And that's why if if this neighborhood or this area would be less attractive for more condensed development it would be considerations like that. But what it sounds like is if we make this change then potentially a PUD can be put in here and it can be developed pretty much to the full extent that it could be with res nine so. Yeah, and if they can if they needed more density they would just have to come back and ask for another rezoning and you guys would have to consider whether or not it's appropriate. Right now this is what they've asked for. Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like some of us would be up for. And, you know, a res six or something but just sounds like it's that's not needed though. Okay, does anybody else have anything else on this item or should we move on? Let me grab the screen back from you. Alright, so hopefully the next one is relatively quick this goes back to our res nine we were just showing a few of the res nine neighborhoods there was a proposal to reduce the side and front setbacks and res nine. The front setback is 20 feet side is 15 currently, and I conducted a review of all of the existing res nine neighborhoods and found that for the most part, they are in compliance with these setbacks in a few areas some of the setbacks would make structures non conforming. You know, for example, actually on the on the previous picture if you had it still there. A little bit of the derby drive area is res nine and those those structures had a few non conforming. If you wanted an example of one place that did have a few. The front setback is fine, considering there is a provision in section 302 G for which allows the administrative officer the right to reduce front setbacks to match the two closest structures so if you have a neighborhood like Derby drive. So it doesn't meet that 20 foot front setback, it's still okay because the zoning administrator can match it to your neighbors. So if they're at 16 feet then you can be at 16 feet so I don't think there was a need to change that one. But I think there could be room to reduce the side setback to 10 feet. This would eliminate some non conforming is I didn't have a big push on this one this was a request that there are a couple of people who came in and we kind of had a little bit of a trend where we found it had a couple people people that came in from these neighborhoods, and I said I would look at it. So I wouldn't change the front, but I would maybe consider moving the side setback to 10 feet. That's a good reason for keeping the front setback. What time. What's a good reason for keeping the front setback at 20 feet well most of the others. Remember to look at you know colonial drive as I just mentioned those are all at 2025 foot setbacks. If we're trying to kind of match our character. You know the character of the neighborhood our zoning regulations rules match what's on the ground. That's what's on the ground. You know, otherwise you'll have ones and different. I guess it's just it's just consistency and character. I know you probably don't care if they're there. The quality of life would deteriorate if someone put a mud room on the front of their home. You'd be surprised just go sit in my office and listen to the complaints come in sometimes. I'm sorry it's just unclear from what's written here. What's the specific. What are the proposed reductions on both the front and the side 10 on the side and what in the front. There was a proposal to reduce the front it was 20 feet they didn't really give us a number and in the planning office they just said you know that you know they wanted to put some addition. And you know it didn't meet the zoning and you know there was a lot of non conformities in their neighborhood and I said I would look at the at the zoning for res nine to determine whether or not you know maybe those rules just weren't consistent or accurate. You know we kind of took a lot of what brandy did with with you know a lot of trust that she went through and did it and for the most part I think she did a fantastic job. And the first stuff when she said hey this is 90% of the property setbacks for res three and 1500 and and most of those were spot on res nine had a little bit of mix as I pointed out you get to a derby drive where things are a little, you know still res nine but the parcels are, they're a little bit different. And so there was a request. There was I think one up near press view or something like that that had a request about that that I would go through and take a look so I did I took a look. And my, my thought was, I think we're okay with the front setback. And the side setbacks of 15 feet. Remember a 15 foot setback means you're 15 feet from the side and their 15 feet from the side so every house is about 30 feet from them from the next house. That starts to really start to push things apart. And maybe push them apart unnecessarily. And the front yard setback is from the edge of the right of way. So not the edge of the street. Correct. So did, did we get an answer for Aaron there like, do we, is, is there a number set or are we supposed to be that I wouldn't change the front. They didn't give me a number I wouldn't give a number I think I would leave the front alone. If you want me to give a number I could, you know, we change that 20 feet 15 feet if you want and change the 15 foot side to a 10 foot side. I don't think it would hurt to move that to be closer on the side. Okay, so so 15 to 10 on the side is what Mike suggesting. How do people feel. And do you want to do the front as well. I think stay simpler just do the side. I think Mike is reasonable on it. I'd say take that to the public. I agree with Marcella. Yeah, that's fine with me. Okay. All right, so we'll jump on to number five and see if we can get through this one. This last one. So it's a little bit confusing and I will try if the picture you have in front of you on the screen. You'll see line is root to just orient you. You'll see in a little letters a little Gallison Hill coming out. And there's this big empty line that's kind of floating through there. Just above Gallison Hill and it kind of hooks up there. That is the now abandoned rail line. And that is the, the issue at hand so the folks that are in the industrial park there which you see, Cabot Creamery and all those. You see those buildings are right on the rail line, or the boundary, the property line of the rail boundary, but there is a 20 foot setback from the front and 20 feet from the side so they would have to any new buildings would have to be 20 feet from that rail line. And the people who are own that property asked to make that zero. So you can see the image you can see there's a lot of parcels in here on the abandoned rail line. There's nothing that goes on there. So I think I put a number of options in my memo. The one that I would probably suggest was number four, which was to add a rail setback would probably be the cleanest and I would suggest five feet. That would allow room for maintenance on the building without having to go on the rail property, unless if they want to go out and do the homework and get permission from the railroad. Then we could make it zero. I'd be happy making sure it's going to be vacant land indefinitely into the future so it doesn't make a lot of sense to to whatever but I don't think I can justify allowing somebody to build a zero lot line building and automatically assume that the rail division is going to give them permission to maintain their building into the future so I think we have to at least have a five foot setback. We don't have any thoughts about number four. Mike, do you have examples of other places where there's a five foot setback against rail property. No, so this was only going to apply in the Eastern Gateway Farm and Forest District up in that picture so that picture was included most of those. Properties you can see a lot of them are already on, you know, there's a lot of buildings already on the rail line. So that was kind of the thought and there are a couple other abandoned rail lines that you don't even know are abandoned rail lines until you look at the map. You know there's an abandoned rail line between Kasella, I believe, and Agway. You don't even see it there but there's another one there that they would have to be 20 feet away from in order to do any development so it kind of makes sense. Where these little abandoned rail lines squiggle their way through that we would, you know, kind of allow some development that's, that's a little bit closer to that property line, considering they're, they're probably not going to give up that property. What do people think about possibly following Mike's number four suggestion of adding a five foot rail setback? I think that makes sense. I mean five feet seems like not quite enough for him to do any maintenance but maybe it is. They could paint the building at least. Yeah. It's probably enough. Seems a minimum, certainly. I mean they'll, they will be at the next meeting. I'm sure they'll make their case one way or the other. I will, I will, you know, I'll be inviting them, Alicia to the meeting so I'm sure she will speak up specifically in, in defense of her. The property owners interests so you know I think at least the five feet gives me an ability to draft something. So again, a part of another thing that has to happen between now and when I warn it is I have to take any of these answers that I get and I actually have to do the strike out copy of the zoning so that was why some of these I have to give you a memo to start with because I don't know what I'm writing until I hear from you guys and if you guys say make it five feet I can make it five feet we can change it afterwards once we hear testimony from the applicant. Okay, let's just let's just do that for now it doesn't sound like there's a strong. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So number six is the PUDs. Yes, so number six and number seven are kind of related. Number seven we've talked about many times so we can we can skip it because you know what I'm asking. Number six is, it's not in here I emailed it late and I apologize. I didn't have it at home and I had to come into work to get it, but it was a PDF of the two PUD sections that we are recommending. So we've worked these out. There they are. So, I'll just highlight what the two are. So the first one is a general planned unit development. And the second one is what we call a footprint type PUD. So, general PUDs are what most communities have and really what it says is if you want to cluster, you have 20 acres and two acres zoning. So you've got 10 possible units. I'm going to cluster all my development down to half acre lots. I'm going to put them all down here and I'm going to conserve the rest. I don't want any density bonuses. I don't want anything special. I'm just clustering down the lots because it saves on infrastructure costs. It conserves open space. It has a lot of benefits. So that's what a general PUD is. So, I'm not going to go through line by line on these we have a couple of questions that that Meredith and I are still kind of working out from a technical standpoint. What it is, it is a subdivision where you're clustering the lots into smaller smaller pieces in order to make more efficient use of the land. So what we need to have are some rules on use. There are no special use requirements. Remember when we had all of ours, and we do still have all of ours, they have all these other use special uses you get no bonus uses. No bonus densities just allowed to make smaller lots smaller setbacks in order to fit all the structures in. There's some requirements that talk about how do you manage common land if you have common land. There's always an unbuilt piece. So how is that unbuilt piece going to be managed. So there are basic questions like that that are in section 4301. Section 302 is what is called a footprint type PUD or condominium PUD. There's a lot of names you can put to it. What this, what makes this one slightly different is you're, you're talking about sharing a number of pieces. So what you will do is, you may be in a condominium. Murray Hill. When you make townhouses. You own your townhouse. It's the land is subdivided. So the difference between, you know, one type of condo is a condo can go through and say, you don't own the building. You only own inside the walls. So what the association do is the building is owned by the association, but you own your unit but only to the extent that you own that piece but you don't there the land isn't subdivided in this case the land is subdivided. But you still share resources so there's a common parking lot there's a common, you know, usually they're really small they their footprint. That's what I call footprint it just go just around the outside of the building. And they're pretty common. They're very common if you were in a place like stow or smugs or killing 10. It's very common if you have a, you know, time share, you're going to probably own the you'll you'll be a condominium owner of that building and it's a footprint and so this just is another option you will see people use from time to time is, and the big question between a condo, the footprint type PUD just comes down to the question of, are you subdividing the land, or are you subdividing the building, if you're only subdividing the building and not subdividing the land you don't need to do this. If you want to subdivide and own the land under your townhouse, then you need to go through this. They're just two two basic types. So this just goes through that spec those special rules because there's a little bit more shared things so we have to have a little bit more review of how these, you know, usually your parking is shared and your, your recreation areas are shared, because you know you literally just own the building. So you have to provide for recreational opportunities and you have to provide for these other things so that's a little bit of the difference between these two new ones that we would be creating. And I don't know if people want me to go into more detail than that that they're certainly all written out here if people have want to review them over the next couple of weeks and come prepared with some questions will get a final draft out. Again, no don't no density bonuses for either one of these. And then number seven is, I'm going to charge the windmill again for number seven, and try to eliminate under the new neighborhood development the required new neighborhood development, and under the conservation subdivision the required conservation subdivision. These are again going to come down to projects such as the one on the hill where these guys are looking habitat for humanity doesn't want a density bonus doesn't need a density bonus, they want to do a PUD. They're going to do a PUD, but because of the neighborhood they're in they're going to be required to do a PUD. And that's going to mess them all up again. So it's just this repeated thing of stop forcing people into these PUDs. If we can strike the required PUDs. And just if people want to do them if you want a density bonus, if you want to get more than your otherwise allowed you have to jump through a lot of hoops and do more. And if you don't want those density bonuses, then, then you can use a general PUD or you can use a footprint PUD. And so, once again that's what number seven is we're back we've had this discussion before you know my arguments. So, that's where seven is. Did anyone have anything say about six or seven. I guess I'm just challenge for me is that I don't think it's the right incentive I think we've talked about this before and saying that density should be something you have to work for isn't I don't want to make people work for density I want more density. That feels like the wrong incentive to me. Yeah, that's it's pretty much been what I've tried to advocate is that I've tried to set up the zoning continuously keep improving it to get people to the easiest path is to do what we want them to do. So we did we set up the waivers, you know we don't want people building these these oversized, you know, building so we set footprints such that hey if you meet our footprint requirement. Great. If you want more than that then you got to go to the DRB and it kind of encourages people to meet that requirement. It makes it harder to not meet the requirement, as opposed to this which actually makes it harder to do what you want them to do. So the challenge with it is, is that that. I don't think when this was passed anyone realistically expected that the benefits provided by the density bonuses were going to be were like why this was being passed I think it was like a type of compromise and trying to work with a lot of the neighbors and people who had showed their concerns around the design of the neighborhoods. So, it. I feel like that's some of the background behind it wasn't, it wasn't like, here's an incentive to do this. It was, there's a lot of concerns about these properties being developed in a way that was like, and the design of the new neighborhood and the rural UD sort of tried to address those specifically. So it was like well, we would feel less bad about this if we were assured that X percentage would be dedicated to open space and it's like well okay yeah we can live with more housing units here. But this space will be kept open. Thank you john. I think that I think I agree with what Mike saying a number seven here. It seems like a classic like problem that I've started to learn is this part of planning sometimes versus where you try to plan in the abstract. You make thing requirements that in reality end up being bad ideas, but they happen because you plan in the abstract, like, giving the flexibility here number seven seems to me to be like a wiser course bear. It's more optional where we're not like saying ahead of time out of context that it has to be a certain way. So that's that's my thoughts about number seven. So if we're good with that I can skip. We'll skip the next one really quick because the number nine talks about a lot of technical fixes which I don't think we need to go through each one of them I think they were relatively self explanatory a lot of these are ones that come up as a result of different projects. You know somebody hasn't attached to garage and we've got a question so does the attached garage need to meet the primary structure set back or can the attached garage meet the accessory structure set back, because it's attached to the primary structure. So we've got these. Anyways, that's just one of them, some some little bit with signs we had a couple of signs we got a lot of sign issues we got to fix our sign rules at some point but there are a couple of little sign fixes that are in there to help clarify them. There's a question about front yard sent fences. So again these are all interpretations somebody wants to put up a front yard fence it's on it's in front of the house but it's on the side yard. Is that a front yard fence, or is that a side yard fence. It clarifies as to what what what rules apply. There's just a little bit of some landscaping applicability rules. Somebody goes through and replaces a lamp in the parking lot and next thing you know they have to go and replace all the landscaping because they got on non conforming landscaping. It's just, you know, a little thing to go through and say hey if you're if you're doing something it's not affecting the ground you don't have to do that. So that's what a number of these are again you're more than welcome to go through and review them and email me with questions. Number 10, we had adopted interim zoning interim river hazard rules and never made them permanent. So we are actually they're they've expired. But we need to go back and make them permanent. And then there was just a reference in there to accessory structures. So the section that says you can't build structures unless it's allowed elsewhere. Well the only place it's allowed elsewhere is in one place under accessory structures. So we might as well reference it because it doesn't come up very often and zoning administrator kept missing it. So, we wanted to just put a reference. And then I guess we can back up to eight which is kind of Kirby's thing. Which was the removal of residential densities from riverfront and residential 1500 districts. So the idea is kind of I think Kirby introduced it a little bit already, the let bulk and massing of structures limit the number of units that can be built rather than an arbitrary requirement. I think we've had this conversation before I don't think this is new. So the two of us talked about it a little bit and you know my suggestion to him was that we, you know, it's already that way for urban center two or one two and three. So if we wanted to extend it. I think it's going to be a controversial topic but if we started with the next layer out, which would be riverfront and residential 1500. And that could make sense as this to get the public used to the idea of, we're just going to regulate bulk and massing in the riverfront district, and in the, in the 1500 district, and not have a set density which is one unit per 1500 which is 27 units an acre. So, I don't know if it would be helpful but I pulled out. I applied from presentation I gave a bunch of years ago. And it used my pillar as an example. And focus on our last zoning changes but I have in it there's photos of like a whole bunch of different homes and what the densities are. Just to show sort of how meaningless density is or how people don't think it is what it. Anyways, I don't know if like, maybe framing things or if there's any utility and trying to use this and queuing up the discussion to kind of hit, hit the column that it's around design and not density. I would like to unshare your screen Kirby if he was going to pull that up. Yeah, do people, do people want that I mean, it's, except everyone else. How long is it. John how, how much is it a long PowerPoint. Yeah, it's as long as you want it to be. I don't feel like I need convincing specifically although I'm sure it's very interesting and I'd love to see it. My question is around what which which neighborhoods are res 1500. Can you remind me. I have the zoning map up but Yeah, I could try to pull it up and So we know what neighborhoods are talking about. Does this include if we're taking out density then does that include the floor every ratio as well. Or is this strictly residential density. I believe it was only going to be the residential density. So, FAR would still be there. FAR would remain. But again, it's really up to to the proposal. It could go either way. I mean, I was thinking residential density, but I'm of course completely open to how people want to adjust this just to I think my cover everything that I would say it's just the two main points are use this as an opportunity to to talk about how dimensional limitations achieve our goals, density does not do a good job of that and can lead to us going against our own goals. Let's start that conversation. The second thing is this particular proposal is very incremental. These are already relatively high density places and we're just going to go ahead and just remove the the caps on there because they're arbitrary. After a period of time a year or two we'll see how you know this this doesn't lead to any like negative like and that's the idea is just getting people like around the understanding that that nothing bad is going to happen here this is good stuff. So the neighborhoods can everyone see them the map. Yeah, so it's the number eight that you see there. I don't know if there's a fourth one but you can see three of them there and eight one down here by Monsignor Crosby and eight three that is over Loomis St. Paul have to have to it's it's the light no a two is up actually Franklin Square and a three is the Paul Loomis. And then the orange is the riverfront the dark orange. Yeah the dark orange is the riverfront I think we'll have to have more of a conversation about that one because you know the one elephant in the room on riverfront is that the lower portion of savings of the pasture is riverfront. So, just making everybody aware that that proposal would, you know, have a potential. You know, and again, I'm not necessarily for it or against it I think in concept I like it as I look at it with my political hat on. I see, I see danger signs. Yeah, and that's my hope and maybe I'm super optimistic here but my hope is that maybe we can change the political attitudes to make people. It's like a teaching moment. That's great I think just worthwhile just even again I think trying to reframe the conversation. Even if we do get a lot of negative feedback I think it's worthwhile and john I wasn't clear on what exactly you were saying you had pictures of but maybe that could be helpful and sharing in the public hearing, but I was a little confused about what you were saying. Yeah, so the idea was to try to bring it, bring it to life and demystify what we're talking about. So I've got photos, you know, of homes around Montpelier and what their, what their density is and it's set up in a way where you can like you're supposed to guess how many. I can share my screen. Go for it. We do in a few minutes here. Yeah, the whole idea of it is getting to like the origins of density in Vermont and how it came originally from public health and how we were industrializing coming to our downtown village centers but sort of then shifted to eugenics and, you know, keeping people different than us out of our neighborhoods. Skip through these things. This is, again, I don't think, you know, want to go through all of these parts of it but this is just showing our revenue per acre and across Montpelier. This is the whole idea of how we've before and after zoning like we've built, we've built our community that's far less valuable or generating in terms of revenue and we've made it illegal to build sort of the most valuable parts of our country and this again was like before our last zoning changes. So, here's my house. This is, you know, 17 and a half units an acre. Our neighbors. Sorry, Charlie for showing your house when you're putting primer all over the front of it but a 33 units an acre. You know, just this is this is literally like a just all a walk I did five minutes outside of my house. This is a duplex at 10 units an acre. These are at seven and two units an acre. These are 40 units an acre. These are 12.5 and 18.5 is 42 units an acre. And I think if you stop there I think that was the good example for that one. That's the point of what I think Kirby's proposal was, which is that that's a building of a fixed size. And yet it could have. It could have 15 units that are four bedroom units. It could have up to 80 studios. They're all, they're all fitting in the same box. So why do we ascribe density. When we could regulate the bulk and massing and say, let the free market decide how many units in the past. Most, most units were family units. You had, you know, if you were to look at our demographics you'd see the number of people that were living alone was relatively low. You were generally living with somebody else today 30% is the largest group is people living alone. And yet there are you know if you were to look at a map of all of our available units you'd see very few one one bedroom and studios. There's going to be two bedroom or three bedroom or their houses with multiple bedrooms. So, the idea is if the market says we've got a lot of people who are single, I can put 8680 studios in this. But the density of the zoning would only allow 40 or 20. Because we're counting dwelling units as opposed to just looking at the bulk and massing. And, you know, that's that's a little bit of what the conversation is by removing the density and just regulating to bulk and massing. Then we can say, however many you can fit this is probably a non conforming building on that street but it's it still gives an idea of that's what we're talking about is you don't know how many units are in that building. So what we really care about is how big how big the building is and what does it look like. Right, and we would. You couldn't build this now anyway. Right. So this is like, if you're scared of some big new thing well like still not going to happen if you change density, even though maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Yeah, this is 1.3 units. This is like 36 units you know like what's the difference between this and this 36 units and acres. Anyways, these are examples of maybe how density isn't a very good indicator of of what the character of a neighborhood is. When we defined density we're not using it a units per acre, we are redefining it as square feet per dwelling unit. So we kind of flipped it on the edge there that you know it might be helpful to go through those same examples john and say okay. This is this is in a district right now that's 1500 or 3000. So, you know, to make it more in keeping with what our zoning is right now. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. So like this is like 2000 or so it's apples to apples if we're talking about they're not confused this like well you're talking about 20 units an acre but then you're talking about our 600 or whatever. So I don't know if it's useful or not. This together a while back. It could do more than good. I know I think it I think it illustrates the point and some people are visual like that so for some people I think it would even help it hit home. Could you just modify this to make it more of a comparison to our existing zoning. They just change the units. Yeah, yeah, just say okay this is in this district and you know or the multifamily one is in is in, you know, resident 6000 or something. Anyway, just to kind of make it apple as you said apples to apples so people have a really clear idea of this is what we have right now. And is that what we really need. Thanks, Sean. Does anyone else have any thing to say about the about this this item is this is something people are interested in proceeding with and talking about the hearing and possibly passing on City Council. Two questions from my perspective one is everybody's comfortable with the riverfront proposal. And then the second one is are we also eliminating far which I think had been mentioned earlier. Because far is usually says floor area ratio so that's looking at the percentage of the lot. That can be used for non residential, generally non residential it also applies to congregate living because congregate living doesn't have dwelling units to count so congregate living is measured in far. So, but do we stick to the same prescription for commercial as well just to unregulate bulk and massing in the riverfront district. I'm concerned about housing. But so I didn't I didn't care much about far before but now that you're talking about congregate living maybe. Maybe that is a reason what other people think. I guess I would recommend that you keep your argument as simple as possible. So maybe in keeping the far at least at this point. And just going forth with one part of it. Because you're going to have enough to argue about with that. Okay, just one clarification so the other people have thoughts. I can definitely see a barb point I think it's confusing for people if we're already going to make a big change. So starting with, I think leaving that out for now makes sense. Okay, but I could probably be convinced the other way if I knew a little bit more about it. That's where I'm at. I could go either way too. The whole thing's meant to be incremental. And so I'm fine with leaving it at the residential. Okay, well that went smoothly. Let's hope that the hearing goes smoothly as well. Mike, do you need us to do you need to vote on anything or just just save it for the hearing right. I think unless there was unless there was something that was contentious that we felt we did not want to put forth, then I might say, you know, let's have a vote because it seemed to be a split decision on a point. But again, this doesn't commit anybody to supporting anything once it gets to public hearing. This is just what are we going to put on the public hearing. We've got to go and now take what we had in the memo, finish the strikeout copy, get that all set to go. Get that back out to you guys draft up a whole stack of public hearing notices to get out to everybody that is potentially impacted. We probably won't send it to everybody in res nine when we're changing just the side set back a little bit. But everybody that is in Harrison have who is surrounding or in the, the map change for Heaton, and everybody who is in and around the map change for Northfield Street. And I think the only like point of clarification that I'm remembering is it seemed like more people were in favor of with numbers one and two putting those with with the neighborhood nine three as as the starting point or the base. Yes, the hearing. Yeah. Yep, that's my no. Okay. You want to have anything else before we adjourn. Ocean to adjourn. Okay, we're motion from Barb we have a second. Second.