 So I wanted to say something. It's just, this is a personal question. Ready? OK. Welcome to the joint meeting between the Essex Junction Trustees and the Essex Junction Planning Commission. Please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. If you haven't signed in, please do so. On the sign-in sheet, thanks. Welcome, Joe. We just started. So have us come in and have a seat. We've probably got a few folks. I think Lori is on her way. She said she would be here. Welcome, everybody. And I'm, you know what? Dave, do you want to say a few words to begin with? We're not really sure. We're going to try to run the whole thing jointly. No, I just think, you know, just everybody make sure that if you're going to speak tonight, sign in. And there's copies of the agenda up there. Enough. I think that for the idea was a little bit kind of loose. We, the idea for the meeting, grew out of the discussion that I had with the Planning Commission. I was here when you folks reviewed the conceptual plan for the McEwing property. And after you did that, there were a lot of questions about there were some questions about parking, green space, open space. I think there were some questions about affordable housing. There were some other general questions about design five corners. I think if I can frame it correctly, it was sort of like what is it that design five corners isn't telling you that you would like to ask of the trustees? What is it that the Village Plan isn't telling the Planning Commission that you might want to discuss with us? And so we talked about it a little bit. And I said that we would try to have the two boards meet and kind of have as much as possible a relaxed meeting, kind of an open discussion. But I thought to kind of kick things off. In the interim, Diane and I both went to a meeting sponsored by the Regional Planning Commission about the economics of housing. And I thought it was excellent. And Diane agreed. And so I thought to sort of help kick things off a little bit. I asked Regina Mahoney from the RPC to come here and do a little bit of a reprise of that meeting. And I thought it would be very educational for all of us. So welcome, Regina. And just let me know I've got this slide controller here. And I can tell you what you want. Great. So I'll try to stand here. Let me know if this doesn't work or you want me to be significant. So thanks for having me. Essentially what I'm going to cover tonight is a little bit of housing data from the county perspective, just to give you a little bit of framework of what we're looking at. And then do a bit of a summation of what we heard at that economics of housing conversation. And then what changes could potentially happen at the municipal level to help with that. So thank you. Yeah. So at CCRPC, we tracked housing for a variety of reasons. But really, we started thinking about this in a much more holistic way when we did the ECOS plan. So I don't know if folks are familiar. But in 2011, we did a pretty big, comprehensive look at the region, both from economic development strategy, transportation, and regional planning all combined. And as well as looking at education, public health, a variety of different things. And from all kinds of avenues, housing shortage came up as an issue. And in particular, with the economic development strategy piece of it, we found about 83% of businesses that we surveyed really identified housing as an impediment to their growth. So in the ECOS plan, we have a strategy. We have eight strategies. And one of those is sort of the overarching, smart growth strategy. And essentially what that says is we'd like to see 80% of growth happen in the areas planned for growth going forward. I've got a map later in the presentation to show you what that looks like. Basically, where we've already got existing infrastructure, let's continue to grow there, make more efficient use of that, and prevent sort of sprawling out, which means a lot more long-term costs for the municipality in terms of maintenance and operation for that infrastructure that goes out, and just a lot more sense in kind of building in a smart, more dense way. Then most recently, I think 2016, we partnered with Housing Vermont and Champaign Highway Trust to really figure out if there's a way that we could help from a variety of angles to build more housing than we were building. The goal itself is about 700 units per year, 20% of those affordable. And it's a five-year goal. So that would be in total 3,500 homes over the five-year course of time. So these are sort of our guiding reasons why we look at housing and why we try to help folks with this kind of stuff. So next slide. So I think I've got about four or five slides just to give you some overall data. Again, these are Chittenden County-level data. I'm not specific to S-ofs Junction. And this is the housing, unaffordable housing slide. So basically, for quite a while, it's generally thought that if you spend 30% of your income on housing, that's affordable. So more than that, you start to get cost burdened in terms of what your housing costs are. So countywide, 33% of our homeowners spend more than 30% of their income on housing. 56% of our renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Next slide. The other thing that we've been looking at is where our employees in the county live. So this slide is a little hard to see because the numbers are real tiny. But basically, it starts at 2002. And the top line, the orange line, is employees that also live in Chittenden County. The bottom line, the blue line, are Chittenden County employees that live outside of the county. So back in 2002, that top line, the orange line, makes up about 75% of the employees in the county. If you sort of go forward to 2014, that's the second to last date on the slide. We were closer to 64% of employees. So we really had less folks living here than we did prior. And we saw a tiny uptake, that 2015 number going back in the other direction, which we were excited to see. But essentially, if we can continue to grow in smart ways and build up our villages and our downtowns, we can try to reverse this curve a little further. And it'd be great if we could get closer to the early 2000s numbers of 75%. Next slide. Other big demographic shift that is impacting the housing supply and demand is that household size is shrinking. So this first date here is 1960. And our household size was about 3.5. And in 2010, it's under 2.4. Variety of reasons why this is happening. We're aging. We have more female single-headed households. And we have less people having kids. I think I just heard yesterday on MPR that we are. In 2017, we had the least number of kids that we've ever had since 30 years of evolution, or something like that. So what this means is that it seems so minuscule, 3.5 to 2.5. But basically, we need essentially the same number of homes to house. We need more homes to house the same number of people. And we are growing in Chittenden County. But even without that, we are seeing the demand on the number of housing units that we've got. Vacancy rate. So this is the rental vacancy rate. Again, these numbers are teeny tiny. And this is the orange line in the middle. That is about 1.8%. And that's the long-term average vacancy rate for Chittenden County. The blue line on top of that is the actual annual vacancy rate for each of those years. So this graph goes from 2000 to 2017. And I've pointed out 3%, which is basically at the top of this graph. And we have considered a healthy vacancy rate in Chittenden County to be somewhere between 3% and 5%. So we have only reached that in 2015 and 2016. And you can see in 2017, we've dropped down. So we were building a good amount of housing in 2015, 2016, and you can see that reflected. And then in 2017, we have dropped down in the number of homes that we're building. Just as a frame of reference, although vacancy rates are tough to compare to other places, because it's really very specific to your circumstances. But the national vacancy rate at this same time period never dropped below 4%. And so that's sort of off the charts. It also goes up in the recession to unhealthy, too large numbers. Vacancy rate is a sweet spot that you want to hit. National numbers went up to 8% and more in the recession, which was not good. But it's fascinating to know that it's not even gotten below 4%. So this is a number that we really look to a lot and hope that over time, we'll continue to see that number go up a bit. Next slide. OK, so these are just bringing us in a little bit more to what we're looking at in the last year, and specifically in comparison to those EGOS plan goals. So this map on the right, the dark color, the gray, that's our rural planning area. And the turquoise, or the lighter blue, are all of our areas planned for growth just sort of combined into one color. Excuse me. Take a step back. Sorry about that work. OK, so our goal, the strategy to goal, is that 80% of our growth happens in that blue area on the map. Over the previous five-year average, we were at about 86%. In 2017, we built 490 units. That's the number circled in blue. And when we sort of plot that geographically on that map, it's 79% in the areas planned for growth. So just shy of that 80% goal. And it does shift that long-term average from 86% down to 83%. So still over 80%, and these things fluctuate quite a bit. So we definitely look at that five-year average more than just one single year. And the other thing that's important to note on this slide, UVM built almost 700 beds on campus. They did also demolish some dormitories. So it's a net gain of about 300 beds, a little bit more than 300 beds. We don't include that number in the total housing number because it's sort of apples and oranges. It doesn't really compare very well. But it's an enormous impact on our housing needs. So it's important to point it out. So this is our housing numbers going back to 2010. Again, you see there are planning areas on the left-hand side. So you see the rural planning area in comparison to the others. So you can see, as I talked about in that vacancy, great slide, 2014, 2015, 2016. We were doing pretty good up above 600. I should say on this 490 number for 2017, that is still preliminary. We've got some corrections that we've got to work out. And so we may see that 916 and 2016 drop down a little bit and the 2017 number come up. It's pretty tricky to figure out exactly why the CEOs were issued in each town. So we will work through that a little bit more. But, and again, what's added to this slide is the bottom row. Those are the affordable units. I don't mean to interrupt you, but are these figures actually constructed or permitted? So what we count is certificate of occupancy. So it's constructed and it's ready for occupancy. The tricky thing with getting this number precise is that every, it's very surprising, but everybody does the CO a little bit differently. So it's interesting. And South Burlington doesn't do COs for single family and duplexes. So for them, we've been counting zoning permits, but so it's tricky getting this number right. But it's great to have this level of detail because it's not we're getting the real numbers from the municipalities. It's not some survey, it's not an average. It's really what's happening. So the affordable numbers at the bottom. So in 2016, that was the first year of the Building Homes Together campaign. So we hit that 700 mark of the total goal that we were trying to hit. But we came way shy of the 20% affordable. So 20%, I think, would have been about 140 or something like that. And we only saw 69. And we still are collecting that affordable number for 2017 to see what that looks like. Guessing it's probably low as well. I'll just keep the total as well. But we'll see what that looks like. Then this is just looking a little bit way back, just to give us a sense. Now, super important, especially because of John's question, this is now zoning permit. It's not constructed. So you're going to see the numbers be different from one perspective to the other. But this goes back to 2000. The top blue number are multifamily building permits. And that range that they're sitting at at the top, 700 at the low number, 900 at the top. So we were doing a lot more construction in early 2000s than we're doing now. The orange-yellow line at the bottom are the single-family building permits. And so you see all of that sort of drop down in 2007, no surprise. And then it's coming up a little bit more. Excellent. OK, so here's where we're transitioning. So those are just numbers to give you a bit of perspective of what's going on countywide. And this is going to just be a summation of what we heard from the developers at the Economics of Housing workshop. We had two public sector, private sector developers and two nonprofit developers, Housing Vermont, Champlain Housing Trust, and then Redstone and Brad Ducevich. And I've got some information sheets that I'll pass out to folks before I go that has the URL directly to those workshops. So you could watch it if you'd like. And I don't know that the actual program was much more than an hour, which is a lot. But you could sort of scoot through if you wanted to. So sort of broader picture, land values in New England are more costly than other parts of the country. And so we're starting off with high cost of land values. High cost of labor supply just in general, as we know, are sort of labor supply is short all around. And that is true for construction workers as well. High cost of materials. So we are pretty much at the end of the line. Anyone going to Boston? Anyone going to New York City? They're sort of coming the extra mile to get up here. And so there's an impact in that. Also, we have to build to deal with the heat in the summertime and deal with the heating in the winter and trying to cool in the heat of the summer. So it makes the building envelope tricky to get that right. And then generally, permitting time, process, and the associated costs with that. Another sort of important point that does make it a little trickier to build in our places where we want to see this growth are urban soils. We've got some rules that really make handling those soils pretty challenging in the state. And the state's done some work to improve that a bit, but it's still a pretty hefty cost. So this is Ernie Carlos' famous spaghetti flowchart. So this is all of the permits that you might need to get in the state of Vermont. The first column are municipal permits, then state permits. So that means not active 50. That's all of your A&R permits, wetlands, all that kind of stuff. Then the third column is specifically active 50. And those are the criteria associated with active 50. And then federal permits, finally. And then the bottom sort of explains what the appeal, where you go for appeals from all of those things. So it's just, it is complex. So next slide. Well, I just got to say, I remember this slide in particular. I thought, wow, this was a real eye-opener for me. It's just seeing this laid out graphically. What development, you know? And I think this was pretty typical. This is pretty formal. And I will say, so I don't know how if you know about this, but there is the commission on the next 50 years of active 50 work right now. BPA and a number of other groups are hosting a conference next Thursday at the law school to try to get some input on what really should sort of happen with active 50. And definitely a question conversation on the table is, A, can those two columns at least between the state and active 50 get a little bit more in line? But also, could we get more in line with the towns? You know, like it'll be interesting to see. It may go nowhere, but it might go someplace. If you're free next Thursday, definitely come. OK, so this is from Housing Vermont. This is a typical, though I want to be clear and bring Nancy's voice here to the table. There isn't really a typical project. So it's difficult to say that these are, you know, generally across the board, always going to be the case. But so cost of construction, you've got your land acquisition, then you've got the sort of construction permitting piece of it. And all of the soft costs that go along with that. So what this is showing at the end of the day is a typical per unit cost. And this is for a 60-unit project. It's about $256,000. That's per unit. Per unit. So you can start to understand why it's difficult to build to a price point that we'd like to hit. Next slide. Quick question on that? Is that for a new construction or an acquisition we have? New construction. Was it, is there much of a difference between the two? That's a great question, and I don't know that answer. Sometimes it costs more to do renovations than the reconstructions. And 60 units is a big project, so you know, like most of the ones that we do are around $30,000. And that seems to be like the number, if you go below that, it's not even worth it. So it's very, very tricky to even bring them on a budget like that. Yeah. So this is another point that was made at this workshop. So the affordable housing folks have, it's even harder for them to kind of hit even the $250 price point. Because they've got a lot of other things that come into play. They've got a lot of different criteria that their funders are sort of asking and requiring them to meet. So it's even adding more to the cost of the project. They also don't recover funds in the same way that a private developer is going to recover funds. So it's tricky for them to do what they do to begin with. And it's part of the reason that capital is so important to sort of help them piece together and figure out how to get these numbers. So that's $256,000 plus another $32,000 down to a price at the end of the day that somebody could actually afford. So it's clear where the subsidy kind of needs to come in to sort of help the finances of that work. Next slide. OK, so I think I've just got like two or three slides left. And these are just broad and hopefully will help with the conversation for tonight. But so from a regulatory perspective, what can you do? And some of these things are obvious and also a lot easier said at a broad scope than when you actually get into the details of it. But increased base density. So I would say most all of our municipalities in Chittenden County have a bonus density. So you kind of like set the base regulation at a certain perspective. And then you say on the back end, if you do all this other stuff, like if you build affordable housing, you'll get extra units. And the give and take of that is not working. It's rare. Bonus densities are rarely used in the county. Essentially, I think what's happening is we're asking too much of the developer in order to get the thing that we're asking and hoping that they'll do. And the process for getting the bonus density typically is a more complicated development process. So it means more time, more effort, even to go through that review process versus something that could be much more by right and simple. And that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be approved administratively. The zoning administrator can do it. It can be at the whatever feels comfortable for the community, but it shouldn't be so much in flux and a risk to try to get the goal at the end. It should be pretty clear what you're asking developers to do for them to be able to meet the ask. Similar point to dimensional standards. Density is one component of the zoning, but then you've got your lot sizes. You've got your lot frontage, which often sometimes ends up being much wider than what we would want a downtown dense walkable kind of place to be. Setbacks can come into play there, too, and a lot coverage can also be a limiting factor. Then parking. So it seems pretty clear from the folks at the workshop that they know how to market their units. And with that, they know what parking they have to offer in order to sell or rent these units. So from their perspective, we could ease up on from the municipal regulations in terms of what parking we are requiring folks to put in. A simplified review process, again, that goes a little bit more to the first bullet point just in general. I think another component of simplifying the review process can be it doesn't need to be form-based code, but some kind of visual master plan that really explains what it is that you'd like folks to be building to rather than these arbitrary 100 foot frontage, 30 foot setback that are kind of out of context of what you actually have on the ground. Then last, inclusionary zoning. And so I say that knowing that if you're getting a lot of housing, the opportunity can be now to make some of those affordable, but it is a complex and not very simple thing. So I don't say it lightly by any means. It takes a lot of thought and really figuring out if you're ready for it and how it makes sense. And again, it's the same concept of the bonus density in the sense that you've got to be asking for the right, the give and take has to be correct. And with that, housing trust fund. So that can really help. If there's a local housing trust fund, that can really help CHT or other nonprofits come in and meet that price point because you're coming to the table with a little bit of capital to help them bring that down. And then some of those sort of nitty gritty, again, inside the inclusionary zoning, there's lots of nitty gritty to think about once you get in there. But a lot of times we will have very specific. You have to meet 80% of AMI or, sorry, area meeting income, but ranges, 80% to 100% AMI might be a little bit more effective and workable than just a base threshold. Does everybody know what inclusionary zoning is, by the way? What's your explanation? The way it works in my world as a person working for developers, it feels more like a mandatory, affordable housing situation where the zoning for a particular area says, if you build this many units, you must make some number of them affordable. And then it sort of takes away the incentive-based thing and turns it into a stick because they're now forcing you to do it. And all the rest of the numbers in acronym, she's using their ways of measuring how you decide if it's affordable. So if the average cost of a apartment is $100,000 or they average what the rent that somebody's paying for that apartment is, whatever it is, $1,500, then an affordable unit is 80% of that or it's something less than what the market rate is. Yeah, and it's tied to the income that you're trying to hit. So whether you're trying to hit a group of folks who make 80% of the area median income or 60% of the area median income, we've typically thought of workforce housing, professional, young professional housing at 80% to 120% of the area median income. And then it's 30% of that for their housing because that's the safe amount that it costs to spend on housing equated to whether that's a monthly rent or a mortgage that those folks could afford. So when a developer or anybody decides they're going to build a certain number of housing units, they have to actually create some that they'll be willing to offer below market value by however much. And so that makes it even more difficult to make the numbers work because if I want to build 20 units but I have three or four of them be offered or sold or rented below market value, I can't get my return. I can't get back to those numbers that cost me to develop them. So it takes a tricky situation. It makes it even trickier to make the numbers work. So I think it's been tough to see projects really jump out and do that. Sometimes they have to, so it happens. But just to add to that, I've spoken to several developers in Burlington where they do have inclusionary zoning. And they've made it very clear that the affordable units do not pay for themselves. And that's the market rate housing that subsidizes the affordable units. And because it's a private development, they don't have access to the affordable housing tax credits and so forth. And they said it usually gets to the point where if zoning allows them to put six or seven more units in the project, but if it triggers having to add one more affordable unit, they won't put those six or seven additional units in just because the numbers don't work. They could be a big challenge. It's a great point because if you think about doing the inclusionary zoning without any capital, you're not helping the issue. You are just making it more difficult for the developers to try to do what they need to do because you're right, you can't, which is clear from the numbers, you can't hit that price point below. You're getting in the way of the normal market working, and that doesn't all as there's something else has to get. You've got to have some tax credits or some housing trust, or there's something that has to make up the difference. Yeah. OK, next slide. OK, so from a non-regulatory perspective, again, the housing trust fund is here because it's really not in and of itself a regulatory tool, but in some way in terms of helping capital from a capital perspective. The other thing that can work is if there's actual municipal land that the community would be interested or open to having building housing on it. It takes a big cost off of the equation right from the beginning. Other thoughts, reduction of fees, this can be relatively, in the grand scheme of things, can be a relatively low impact, but it can still help quite a bit, particularly if you are thinking about trying to figure out how to incentivize the affordable housing. Maybe that's they're not paying impact fees or sewer connection fees or the whole variety of fees that are required at the municipal level. And it's something to think about, too, from an accessory dwelling unit perspective. So it may not necessarily be something where you're thinking about large or multifamily, but accessory dwelling units for single family homeowners can be really helpful in trying to just create some affordability in the community and also make their own housing costs a little bit more workable. And those folks, typically not developers, they're not really going to jump into this stuff unless it's really helpful, unless it's easy and makes sense for them. So reduced fees for those can kind of, again, it's not going to make a break it, but it could help it a little bit. Then reduced infrastructure costs. Typically these days, developers are having to do all basically build their own infrastructure if they're building a new project. And it's not very simple at all to say that a municipality could afford to build any of that infrastructure, but there could be some things put into place that could potentially help with that to districts being one of them if one could get it from the state. So neighborhood development area, you've got an asterisk here because you already have one, which is really great in the village. I think it's a super cute. The neighborhood development area designation of all of them is the most helpful, I would say, from a housing perspective because it really is helps take Act 250, some relief from Act 250. And then tax stabilization programs, particularly for some development in general or affordable housing, if you can at least ease that burden of the cost over the few years after the development, that can really help quite a bit. So I think that's it. Yeah. OK. General costs, and there was over a million dollars in construction costs for a nonprofit. Yeah. What are those costs? So it's the, is it in the additional costs? It was $10,000. It was towards the end of it. Yeah. It was the cost of money and development, wasn't it? Well, it's just at construction costs. And I was just curious. It was like another million dollars. Or was that what, am I reading the chart wrong? Yeah, I'm not sure. Well, I'll have to go ahead and get back to you. I think it could be a couple of things. It could be hypercarbons. And it's also hypercarbons. Have it sped from money, then it had to pay the day of the speaking rate, which is the federal rate, which is more than some of the market rate people would be paying, that they would put it on the contract. I see. That's one. That's one. Yeah. So there's a 1.1 additional construction cost. Well, yeah. And I think some of that, too, is the energy, higher standard of energy efficiency that comes with some of those programs, too. But it's a good question. I can find out. It affects all kinds of things. Some of the projects that we've done have three or four different funding sources. And each one of them has their own list of criteria that they require. And it might be so many cubic feet of storage in your kitchen to the bedroom size, to closets, to, you know. And those little things add up. So all of a sudden, the unit goes from 700 square feet to 750 square feet. And so depending on what they're measuring there, there's all kinds of little, you know, things that are strings by each funder that you have to follow. Yeah. Other questions? Virginia? I will, if the audience has some questions, please feel free. Linda. Linda McKenna. I have a question about the regional planning. I was wondering, I've been wondering for quite a while about the regional planning commission. And at what point do you take into account the quality of living or the quality of the environment in total? And I understand this is all from the affordable building costs. And that's very interesting. It's good information to have. But the other parts of less tangible effects that this has on these high-density areas are the hours. So maybe the neighborhood plan spoke to that. If so, I'd like to know how to access that. Or is there another way that the planning commission takes that into account? Do you mean the neighborhood development area designation? Well, you have that last slide, yes, that. But then does the planning commission take into account the total environmental or livability impact? Yeah. Yeah, in a few ways, I think. And from our view, from our regional view, the benefits of growing in the areas planned for growth do a variety of things. It helps keep folks on transit lines, which could potentially help them get to work over time, even in the later stages of life where you can't necessarily drive. It helps with environmental costs in the sense of that slide where we're seeing whether employees are living outside of the region or employees are living inside of the region. The transportation and emissions costs from folks traveling quite a distance into their job is not a great environmental outcome, we don't think. And yeah, I'm not sure if that's exactly getting at your question. It really isn't. As I understand, we're looking at the whole of Chittany County. I understand that. I understand the density growth and all of that. My question, though, is at what point does the regional planning commission, if at all, take into account the environmental aesthetic or feel of these areas, whether it's South Burlington or Essex or Essex Town, as this density is increased, does the regional planning commission take that into account? Oh, sure, yeah. So I talked a little bit about making the regulations clear about what it is that the community wants. And what I mean by that is really defining development that fits within the character and the scale of the community. More growth is going to look different. There's going to be a change associated with it without a doubt. But there's change that can be done in a way that feels right and change that maybe doesn't feel so right. And not everybody's going to be happy with where you land. But the benefit of doing visioning projects and really understanding what folks want to see in changes in their community I think is really pretty important. And then you can try to make your zoning regulations. You don't want to be totally prescriptive because you've got to give folks some leniency and some ability to really see a site for themselves and figure out how to build the best thing to build there. But you can put it in some parameters that the community is comfortable with. Other questions for Regina? Regina, once again, that was excellent. Thank you so much. Sure. Yeah. It was very, very helpful. You'll appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you for coming. Yeah. And you're very welcome to stick around. But you've probably heard a lot of this stuff already. So if you want to leave too. I'll put in a plug for the Chittenden Regional Planning is that the next housing forum that they're putting on is going to be about housing trusts. Some of our local communities, towns, have housing committees. And there was an overwhelming request to talk about local housing trust funds. So that's the next one that's in the series. I don't know Regina might have more of an idea. I don't know when it's going to happen. But I'm going to get a plug just because. Thank you. That's not a good idea. You've got a lot of different topics, doesn't Florida Regina have stuff of the general? Yes, please. Go ahead. Go ahead. What this, what it makes me think of is, I'd be curious to know of all of the development that has happened in the recent years. How many have been in that 120% to 80% of the area median income versus how much have just been pure market rent? In terms of the way of looking at is our, when I think of our zoning for our regulations, we don't have the stick approach of inclusionary zoning. We have the carrot approach. If you do, you can have more density. Is it being used so we can then have that policy conversation of do we feel the stick or that the carrot approach is working the way we wanted to or should we look at a hybrid carrot and or stick approach? And Robin, I don't know if you have the information available on top of your head. I only remember one proposal that got one extra unit of development. And I think I was on Maple Street and it was five units. The one on the moille? I think the one on the moille. No, right on the wall. No, the one on the speed. Yes, the one that's up near the, on the way to the pool. So we're on that side. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they were 75 square feet short in terms of the size of the lot. For one more unit, we've got one more unit for that, but I don't think anybody else, we can give it for four pause, we can give it for a renewable energy project. I don't think anybody else has actually asked for it or gone. So maybe that should be a topic for a future conversation is to plan on is the current approach working if we've had one in recent memory, when, as we just saw, we need more. Well, I'd say it's a topic for tonight. I think that's something we can discuss. I think that would be a very, that's right on target of the kind of thing that we want to project. So then also, along the lines and full disclosure, I do work for housing for moms. I work there for nine months. I don't work on the development side of things. I have very little understanding of how that works. I work around engaging residents of very struggling properties that are all outside of Chittenden County. So I don't feel that I have any kind of conflict of interest today, but I put that out there in case anyone does. Well, we won't be making any decisions here tonight anyway. So it's OK. And I'd rather have you err on the side of informing us versus restraining or restraining yourself. Because of your background, you might be able to give some insight that the rest of us don't have. So I wouldn't feel conflicted about that. So would I be happy to give the opinion that I don't think one unit is enough? And I think that our current something needs to change. And it's either we need to change how our regulations are or something outside of us needs to change, which the market, I don't think, will allow that to happen. OK. As Regina pointed out, the neighborhood development area designation does have a requirement for foreclosing. No one's committed for development. It's been approved. One has committed for development. Since we got that designation. And that's a state-controlled designation. If they meet the requirements, it's an arbitrary designation. That includes foreclosing. They have a smoother ride throughout 250 A&R and so on. If they don't meet those requirements, that disappears. They have to go through the normal channel. But we heard me from Ron. That was in what year, 2015-16? The lit 2016. Tell me if we had one proposal in the Middle Central District since then. Let me interrupt first. I think this is great. This would be a great lead-in for the conversation that we want to have. But I think I wanted to do Regina's presentation first. But then normally, we would have an opportunity for the audience to make comments or questions about something that we don't really have an agenda. So I can't say it's something that's on the agenda tonight because virtually, you have an unlimited agenda. So if there's someone, if you have a question or a comment right now, and I would say that I will, if you want to, if you don't have anything specific you want to say, but at some point during the conversation, while we're talking about things, if you want to raise your hand, I'll recognize anyone from the floor. So but anyone has a comment right now? Now is the time. Yes, Anne. I wasn't sure really what the agenda would be tonight. I mean, clearly, as many of my visits here have been, I'm focused on the neighborhood that I live in. And I'm focused on the effects of development on Park Terrace and School Street that is a direct result of planning commission decisions that affect very much our everyday lives. And there's decisions that the trustees control. There are decisions that the planning commission controls. I was kind of hoping that this might be an opportunity to have everybody here and not be told, well, that's a planning commission decision or that's a trustee decision. Clearly, when the trustees have jurisdiction over the street, but the planning commission is making decisions that affect the street, there is a bit of a disconnect. And I'm not sure if the discussion tonight, once again, I can give you my roll call list of fixes and ideas that I have that I don't think are terribly expensive pre-Park Terrace reconstruction. Park Terrace, much like School Street, needed it and benefited from, will also need to be reconstructed at some point, probably accelerated by the construction and the delivery vehicles and the oversized vehicles that are now using the street. So there's ideas that I have for things that could be done before. There are things that should be done maybe after reconstruction. But I would, just once again, make the point that decisions that are made by the planning commission are final. The projects get built. The neighborhoods and the roads get impacted. And then it doesn't seem like there's a clear path for resolution or fixes. I know every time a new development is proposed, there's always that throwaway line. And a traffic study will be done in six months or a certain percentage of occupancy to see what the impact is on traffic and egress into the major streets here. Do those studies ever get done? Are they ever presented? Is there ever any changes mandated? Because yes, in fact, the impact on the street is greater than what it said. It just seems like that's a throwaway line that's inserted into all these applications and approvals that I just don't think ever really we never see anything after that. And I suppose we forget or you assume we forget or you forget or it just doesn't happen. And so I'm just throwing that one out there to you as well. So depending on whether or not you want to talk about specific park terrace things, I'm game. The other concern that I have, and I think bringing it before you with the Planning Commission and the trustees, is the Crescent Connector. And the Crescent Connector as presented to us and approved and funded by the state as a road to funnel traffic, to mitigate congestion at the five corners, to act as a two lane throughway, tiny throughway, that was what was presented. That was what's been approved. That's where the right of ways and all the planning seems to be going. When the development plans for the buildings that have been proposed for the land that will be accessed when the Crescent Connector goes in, I don't know what you want to call that. It's Black Rock Plan, or I don't know if there's even a name to call it. Yeah, I know what you mean. We didn't call it the Bhekewin property. The Bhekewin property, OK. So when those buildings were presented at the Planning Commission meeting, there was a map presented that showed the Crescent Connector, a dramatically different, insanely different rendering of the Crescent Connector. There was in the Mr. Pierce's manager's report kind of a throwaway line stating that, well, hopefully this all gets addressed, and we can work with the state or whatever. This won't really be a big deal. But as I looked at the plan, instead of a two lane road now, it's basically functioning as an access road for the McEwing development. There's angle parking on both sides. There's a five foot wide bike path, presumably behind where people are entering and exiting the angle parking. There's probably going to be traffic making left and right turns out of the development, because it is a combination of four buildings with apartments and commercial. So you will have traffic. You will have pedestrians crossing. It's just a dramatic redesign of what was presented. So my question is, as not a traffic engineer, just a concerned citizen, is when changes are proposed by a developer that's so dramatically changed the design of the road, what happens? What mechanism gets triggered? Does it go back to the state for review? Does the Planning Commission have a say in what happens? Do the trustees, because it is a road, all of a sudden, are you presented with a change? But it just seems like there's a very dramatically different rendering out there. I might be able to help a little bit here. I think that the accurate plan is the one that's on the Regional Planning Commission's website right now. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think sometimes a conceptual plan that a developer brings in is conceptual. And they're not really paying as much attention to the specific details. They're looking at the buildings and other aspects of it. And I would go with the Regional Planning Commission. I'm trying to, while you're speaking, I've got a rendering up here, but I'm not sure I can get it on. If their plans to develop hinge upon having access and having extra parking because their proposal is deficient in parking, to what extent are you obligated to give the developer a heads up that this isn't going to happen? Or this can't happen without going back to the state and basically getting a redesign of the road? Yeah, I think that this, again, this was a conceptual plan. We're not really looking at an application here. And I know that that sounds confusing and maybe I'm shelving things a little bit, but really until the Planning Commission gets a real application for a building and we want you to look at this and it goes through all the details, they're not going to get too far into the weeds on something like that. Okay. You want to see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, I want to be confident that the plan as presented for a two-lane road with a parking lot at the end, not angle parking where people are backing into traffic, where pedestrians are going to be crossing the street, I mean, it just seems like it's a completely different rendering. And I just would like you to know that I think the village needs to be aware. I think citizens need to be aware. I think we're all looking forward to doing whatever can be done to mitigate traffic at five corners, but when the developer then shows up at the Planning Commission and says, we want to make X, Y, and Z plan, I'm just curious, what happens? Does the Planning Commission have approval to change the road, or does it go back to the state? No, not a construction project like that. It would have to go back to the state. And the plan, and so much of that is already pretty only locked in from scope and studies. 60%. Yeah, it's not going to be, they're not going to allow something that's going to have people backing into a major thoroughfare. Pretty sure they're going to do that. So, and that wouldn't even, that wouldn't even, yet, if they were going to do something like that, yes, it would have to go back to the state, but I don't anticipate that that's something that's actually going to happen. Okay, okay, because it seemed to my uneducated eye that that was a complete redesign of the road. No, they can't, a developer can't redesign a state highway. They can have a wish list, I'm sure. It's not going to work. Right, okay, okay. Any, is it the appropriate forum to talk about Park Terrace, or something we talk about in another time? Would it be okay if we could talk about it some other time? Yeah, I mean, I just, if we do it. If we do it. If we do it, and if I feel like changes can be made, something new. I think re-scribing Park Terrace would almost be more of a capital project for the village. I'm not really sure we go into the planning commission's scheme. You're not talking about rebuilding the road or changing the direction. Well, at some point, I think the road's going to get rebuilt. Yes, but you're talking about re-paying. But I think that it's really re-striping parking spaces, that sort of thing. Yeah, I was trying to present things that weren't more expensive. That's more of a public works capital kind of project. I'll just make a comment. So, Amber, you're still, you're still capital paying the commission, correct? So, do we know if there is a project? I was just going to say that, so with the capital planning committee, what we do is any kind of a project that's $10,000 or over, that's what we get into. That's where we come into play. Traditionally, those are road rebuilds. Those are waterline rebuilds. Things like striping and whatnot, those are the kinds of things that are really within Rick Jones' new house. Those are the kinds of decisions that he and village staff would make about how to re-stripe, when to re-stripe. If there's something significantly different, then I would hope that they would come to us, trust these and say, this is something we want to do in the community that is way different than what we've done in the past. Are you going to find out more of this? Yeah, yeah, well, we've been having, I've been bringing up these suggestions. We've been having this discussion for years now and nothing, nothing, nothing has happened and this situation just gets worse and worse. And the fact that we're a walkable community with a road with no sidewalk and more pedestrians and more people walking on it is, it's ridiculous. And the fact that more proposals for more development and more cars entering and exiting at the bottom of Park Terrace are being proposed and there's still no discussion about how we make this street not only safe, but livable to me is a travesty. I mean, there's no, I don't see how the village takes pride in getting awards for walkable communities, livable communities and it's not. It's just not. And it doesn't seem like we get, like I say, I keep bringing this stuff and writing letters and I just don't, there's nothing happening. So I'm a little frustrated. Okay, we hear you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And if you have something else that in the course of the discussion, let us know. Anyone else have a question? Good. If I, and thank you, Anne, I would like to maybe swing back to the kind of, where we kind of left off because what I heard you saying is that the village basically has a carrot approach and to affordable housing, is that correct? And you're wondering if we need more of a stick approach or something else? Is that, is that where we were? I think it's how we evaluate our approach and whether we all as a community think the carrot approach is working and it's not them looking to change it as something else. There's a couple of decision points ahead of that. One is, are we achieving targets for growth that we want? What are they? How do we get them? What are we doing about it? And then the second piece that is, are we achieving affordable housing targets? Again, how do we set a number? Do we want it? Is that part of our, or is that something we're looking for? And if the answer, once we get those goals on the table, then you can figure out if your incentives are the right ones because they're probably from evidence not. And yet, I don't know that we've answered other questions well enough yet to know. So my question would be, has anybody ever talked to the developers to see what might work for them? Well, they like to see it and it occurs in that kind of growth. I will say, going back to what you said, the Lego Block Schematic that they did through the beginning site, they are including affordable housing to take advantage of the, you've heard of our designation. So they propose 274 units. So 20% of them will be afforded on the spectrum, depending on, and they're doing smaller units as well. There's been some studies done that say that younger people are looking for access, not ownership, whether it's streaming music, calling an Uber, now it's into apartments. They want to be footloose and fancy free, if you like, they're gonna drop somewhere else. They don't have to, they have to sell a house before they move. So they're looking for smaller units, close to downtowns. So the McEwen's are talking about maybe 500 square foot apartments, which would be less expensive to heat, less expensive to rent. And, you know, they're combining that with bike spaces and the basement of the buildings. They want to put in a bike with per shell. So they're looking at that sort of thing very early days. But that's the sort of thing they're talking about. And that would be for the size of the buildings that would be quite a decent percentage of affordable housing though. It might be four to five years before the build-out, maybe six, but that would be a decent percentage of affordable housing. And, I just like your hands up, do you mind if I take you back on the road? So those are one bedroom, correct? The market seems to say, for a studio, for a market. The market seems to say, studios and one bedrooms are what people are looking for. Which is great for the single person, the young couple, the retirees, people trying to downsize. My concern is the average family. That doesn't work. So there's a big segment of the population, which frankly is why, after leaving Essex to go to higher education, coming back to the state, why we came back to Essex is because of the fact that this was a family-friendly place. And at the time, we could buy our condo where we are. Those types of developments, those type of affordable developments for families is not what's happening in our community. What is happening in our community are beyond affordable, beyond what the average area median income, family, young family can afford in this community. I will say that the autumn pond development, they came to us looking to downsize some for two bedrooms, one bedroom, because they couldn't rent it. They decided no, they'd keep them because they wanted a bigger mix. You know, in a tenth of a time, the market could change in a reason for a two or three years. Well, so based on what Robin said earlier about how there's been one applicant that came by with came through with a bonus density request. We have the Village Center designation, which doesn't necessarily apply to housing. We have the neighborhood designation. We offer tax stabilization. And we also have accessory dwelling unit regulations. I'm wondering if instead of trying to figure out a way to make bonus density work, we work with what we have and make it a little bit more, make the public more aware of what we have and perhaps have some kind of initiative to encourage our residents to look into accessory dwellings. I mean, that's a great way for them to lower their property taxes. It's a great way to do some home improvement. And if they're done within a quarter mile of the Village Center designation, they're gonna get another tax credit according to the session that just ended. So, you know, maybe we'll see what happens next week. But it feels like the bonus density question is still an important question we should discuss. But in the meanwhile, we have some things that we could be doing a much better job of broadcasting and then educating our residents to say, this might be something you should do because it will actually help your pocketbook and improve the affordable housing stock in our community in the neighborhoods without having to build additional buildings. Even though those are coming, this would be a different way to have affordable housing. Modern law apartments, you know, those kinds of things. I just feel like we should really be focusing on what we already have. It's really low hanging fruit. And they can be two bedrooms. Pardon me? They can be two bedrooms. And they can be two bedrooms, so, yeah. That seems like a huge benefit and an opportunity. So I apologize for being late. So maybe this was already addressed, but I kind of want to take a step back and ask what problem are we trying to fix? Well, I think there are a number of problems. I don't want to say problems with issues. I think discussing generally the concept of affordable housing was one of the things. But then I wanted us to sort of be on the same page in terms of why we want housing, why we have, we're putting such an emphasis in design five corners on multi-story, mixed use buildings. Are we all understanding why? And sometimes I think we all sort of take it for granted, but I wanted to go back a step and say, let's all touch base and understand why we have designed five corners. We're not talking about building factories or something like that here. I mean, our economic development in the Village Center is going to be primarily from residential. And I think what Regina was saying is that we're contributing to the overall economic development of Chittenden County by doing this. We benefit, but other people benefit. So we don't maybe, this extension doesn't directly benefit, but maybe Essex Town does, or maybe Willison does, and vice versa. So I wanted to do that, but then I also wanted to take a step and say in terms of design five corners, I've heard some of the plan, as I've watched meetings, what is it that's not in design five corners that the Planning Commission, when they're looking at an application, they draw blanks. They're not totally sure because this isn't really telling them everything in the kind of detail. So is there something that they want to talk to us about? What's our interpretation? Does that make sense? And so back to John's original point, and I apologize, I haven't looked at design five corners in a while, have we had the discussion of how much housing we want to build here? What's our goal? Because I think to John's point, until we do that, it doesn't matter what all of the opportunities we have for developers to come in, if we don't have a succinct, we have a design. Right. And what does that mean goal-wise? And are we getting closer with Perl Street property and McEwing property, or are we missing out on the accessory apartments? And I guess I kind of feel like we need to somehow get to a vision. Well, it sort of feels like, Billy on what Lori said, we, because we don't have a specific vision or goal on what kind of housing we want in the Village Center, we're just going with what's presented to us. Right. And so- I was just, sorry, sorry to interrupt, but I was just wondering if Regina had any feedback. Is there a goal as far as each community, do you know what it was about? There are a hundred units. So, not from us. Okay. So we have that county-wide goal. Years ago at the RPC, we did identify targets at the municipal level, and we haven't done that again because they were not received well, I would say. But, you know, there's, you can do housing needs assessments that can really help you figure out those issues and figure out what's the missing price point, what gaps are you trying to fill, and generally try to get some frame of reference around that. Can I ask another question, Regina, just to follow up on that? Yeah. The 3,500, have you, is that goal broken down more? So 3,500, X percentage, one bedroom, X percentage, two bedroom, or income wages, it's just 3,500 units. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Oops, actually, I'm not really excited about that. Marilyn. Definitely. When, Andrew, you talked about affordable housing, we're talking about affordable housing for families instead of just the young 20-somethings, whatever. The other thing to look at is the age of our population in what we're retaining here. In general, the fastest growing segment is that 50-something plus, you know, the baby womb for here. I'm telling you, right now, we just had a meeting I was at the Regional Planning Commission. We met with UBM, and they were talking about keeping people in this state, young people here, and how difficult we're having with keeping people. I'm saying that there's a lot of people that are getting up in age, maybe they want to do a necessary department, but maybe they want to downsize just in their home, even some of these homes around here that were built in the 50s and 60s after IBM came here. Maybe they want to get out of there. That opens up inventory for families, probably lower than the general new structures would be. And it's still within the community, per se. And most people might want to go into these places that we have here like George talked about that have, they're very simple. It's a small unit, it's above commercial restaurants, what heavy stores, and as Regina said, it stays on the lines, the bus lines and other things, so that they don't have to need their car anymore. As we said, they're getting all that, they don't want to use the car, they don't want the complication of the rival, the maintenance associate of Moanalon. So the young families can buy up that stuff and use the existing inventory. Then we don't have to lean so much on it. Just to follow up on that senior living place in the town, they have a three-year waiting list, exactly for that reason. So according to the American Community Survey, that campaign time a little while ago, look at the American Community Survey from 2010 to 2016, the fastest growing age bracket in Essex Junction was zero to five, ages zero to five, at 28% of the population growth was due to, I'm sorry, the population grew 28% for the zero to five age range. From there it was 25 to 34, was the next highest at 15%, then it was five to nine, then after that it was a 65 to 74. So you're right that the older population is growing, but the youngest of zero to five, zero to nine, are outpacing nine, is because of the 25 to 34 year old growth that's coming into our community. And that's what I'm saying, yes, we need to focus on both, we shouldn't focus on just one, we should focus on the needs of our entire community and the future of our community, but at that kind of a rate, you can't just focus on the elderly and we need to keep in fact that there are families that are coming in who need to be able to afford to live here. Well then, the other aspect of it is when you talk about before to live here, as we all know, the cost of living index across the country is different for every area of the country. The northeast is the highest really in the country as far as cost of living. And so, and how you treat that in our communities, what we have for opportunities for employment that are increasing, provide a livable wage. And I don't look to Walmart or McDonald's to provide livable wages that affordable, what we call affordable living. I look at those as entry-level or related to schools. I look at them as like elementary schools. I don't expect the Walmart's and the McDonald's to provide somebody, yep, lifetime job, I'm gonna be able to afford to live here, I'm gonna be able to do anything. Just as much as I look at elementary schools, you teach the kid everything, he can go out and do everything on his own. No, there's different levels. As you move up through, you progress through things and that's what we need to do. We need to find ways to bring in the jobs or the revenue, maybe as Regina showed you, the permitting process is very onerous in the state. It's insane and they're looking at activity but that scares off a lot of people. There's been a lot of opportunities over the years for our county for a lot of things and those companies have left here and I'm glad we've got what we've got but it's difficult and that's another topic that was brought up in last night's meeting. The guy came in from UBM, he's talking about Vermont. He says as far as in the country per population, per capita, Vermont was in the number five, I think, in startup businesses, creating things, okay? But staying and moving on to that next level, launching, we were down at dead last and why I think that is? Because we don't, the permitting process, the taxes, the everything that is involved there, you need to get to that next level. That's what we're dropping the ball, I think. There's no doubt that no one thing is gonna fix the entire community's issues. We need jobs, we need housing, we need new childcare, we need good healthcare, we need good everything. There's no doubt about that, I'm not trying to dispute that. All that I'm trying to say is that there's a segment of the population of young families who are making up a significant portion of the growth and the current population that we have that is only affordable to a higher-than-average income in our county and even in our own community, especially with the newer things that are coming out. It's great the newest proposed development is gonna have some workforce housing but again, if any of them need a second bed, that's not gonna work for them. The developments that do have multiple bedrooms that are coming in here are beyond the 120% area median income and especially the home ownership opportunities that have been in the mid 300 to 400,000s which is well above the 120% area median income. Can I swing it back to get a little more focused on what Regina was talking about and try to get more into what, right specifically, the issue in front of us with the Planning Commission and the trustees. If I understand correctly, one of the things that in terms of giving us more flexibility in the kind of housing that we would wanna see or particularly affordable housing would be to come up with incentives and if I understand this, Regina, it lowers the cost if the municipality owns property versus the developer buying private property. That's one possibility and the other possibility is if the municipality were to supply parking or somehow we had parking, if we have municipal parking, pre-parking, would that helps lower the cost of all kinds of housing, not just affordable housing but even market rate housing. Is that correct? I'm not trying to put you on the spot but you wonder, am I generally in the ballpark there? That's a tricky question. The parking question is a tricky one. Uh-huh. It's possible. I was thinking a bit more broadly for new developments like help with building the road, the sewer, the water, the stormwater kind of thing. No doubt that what can be helpful in a downtown environment over time is potentially some form of municipal parking. Over time you might need that but I would not be able to say right now that that's what as a junction needs or how parking actually would be able to sort of help with that. From the regulatory side, it's helpful from the developer perspective to allow some flexibility in the required amount of parking per unit. Okay, thank you. I mean, I'm raising this because I put the slide of design five quarters up there. Obviously we don't have a parking garage anywhere. We have only multi-story residential units. We didn't, no one is gonna come to a community forum and say I want the parking to garage to go there. So it's not something that normally gets included but again, it is something that we didn't think about. We didn't anticipate when we were having the community discussion about this. We were thinking that the beautiful walkable community and all the things we want but we weren't thinking about if people come here where they're gonna park. And so I'm wondering if that's something that we need to address? Is that a gap in design five quarters? Is that something thoughts about that? And then the other issue we have talked about in the past was the possibility of if the village owned municipal property, if we owned property we'd automatically be municipal property but then if we purchased property and we developed it under some kind of arrangement with a developer, we could then put in the kind of housing that you're talking about that might be more affordable and serve a lot of purposes. I wanna throw those two ideas out there. I'll just jump in then. So the premise behind design five quarters is that there's an increased density in the let's say the downtown area of Essex Junction and with that brings certain types of housing that tend to be lower cost per unit. In other words, got a lot of services, utilities, things that need to come together to support the housing. That's easier to do if you have more units closer together especially if they're in an apartment building or something like that. So you're trying to bring your overall cost per unit down which is the key thing to making them more affordable. Plus you're trying to provide an attractive location by being near amenities such as transportation, nightlife, shopping, coffee shops, all this kind of thing that we're looking to bring into our downtown, our village center so that we can have this walkable community where if you have a car, and I'm saying if because that's not clear, it's sort of normal and suburban life but pretty soon it's not gonna be taken for granted anymore and if you live in a more urban environment a lot of people choose not to have a car. So ideally you might have a car for one unit, one car per unit but you certainly don't need any more than that and if there was a way to share parking or incentivize people not to have cars by providing other transportation options then you're starting to reduce that footprint and reduce that cost for each unit and that's really how you're gonna get this livable walkable community is by bringing more people together without having to bring all the baggage that goes with developing a housing unit. You go look to a single family home, we talked about how expensive they are and you need land and they're extremely inefficient when it comes down to it in terms of a living unit for a living. So design five corners is really trying to pack more benefit per square foot into a smaller area and the trick is to do it so that it's still a wonderful place to be and so that's what design five corners is trying to show us. How can we do that and still have the green space, the parks, the amenities that we want, the walkable streets and still put in more development. So if we can focus on design five corners for that portion of time that might be okay but then to get the rest of the layers and the development pie here we still have to go out to less dense areas and neighborhoods that start to be less about apartment buildings and more about maybe their townhouses or maybe their two or three duplexes or something like that. So before you get to the single family homes on their own lot because that sort of density pattern is looking to be more dense in the center and less dense as you move out. How can we get there? And maybe in a random that way and not to make anybody upset potentially but I feel like in a lot of the discussions we have we're especially in the VC and the real center and we're trying to create what John's talking about there's a lot of conflict with the requirements for parking. So you end up, you have to give that space up that could be used a lot more efficiently for other things. So what do we want? Do we want that compact village center with as much efficiency as we can or do we want a lot of black top out there for these, you know, so you're, if you're deciding to create a village center or a downtown, you kind of accept the fact that there is going to be less parking, right? Because we want to make sure these things or these spaces are used to their fullest efficiency. And we've seen some of the results of, you know, developers working to give up some of that space to get more in other areas to have larger sidewalks and, you know, contribute to the walkable community. So, you know, some of those requirements do cause challenges, especially with some of the unusual lots we have and, you know. So I wanted to say one other thing about design five corners. It was, you know, envisioned by the trustees that was created by the community in a number of open forums. It was, you know, packaged nicely by the consultant and now we've got it. And I know the trustees have essentially adopted or approved it, but it hasn't actually made it into the code yet, okay? So we know it's out there. We know what the vision is. It does guide us towards decision making but we need to actually, you know, make it real so that everybody who's looking at it and then decisions that we get to make are actually using that as a doctor. I will say that we applied for a grant from the CCRPC which is just starting out and the consultants will be coming to the Boys and King. They'll be coming in front of the planning commission. They'll be coming in front of the trustees. And the goal of that grant is to include design five corners in the municipal plan. When will that happen, Robin? I, it's gonna start next month, I believe. I'm supposed to be finished, I think at the latest, August, September, if I remember rightly. So we, I mean, we could update the land development code or the comprehensive plan anytime we want, right? We would only have to wait until... We're gonna start the comprehensive plan in January. We update. So I'll be ready to concur. I'll get us the vision into the rules but in terms of manipulating the language in the VC district, for example. Why can't we do that next week? Why can't we start doing something? We could, and I will say that when people come in, when the McCabeans come in, they understood that the design five corners concept was gonna be part of their proposal. But what do you wanna do next week? I'm not getting it. I wanna hear more. He was a man that's a big writer. Yeah. I wanna rewrite this. Can you have it by Friday? Just saying, you know, we, we, right, we just did this. So, and adopted in 2016 in December. So it's not actually coming around again for a while. Doesn't have a lot of just on it, right? So if we want to actually embed more of that, into it so that it starts to affect things that everybody can see right now. We just up the ante, we'll do some special meetings and we ask you guys to make some amendments to it and we don't. I think that's really a great idea because until it's embedded in the code, it's like this extra thing that's over here that you may or may not have to look at. Right. And we always feel like we're trying to figure out, we're trying to figure out how it fits in a box for each project and it's just not, there's that feeling there that you're missing something. Okay. But I do want to go back to David's point about parking. I feel like it's, that's another issue that we have to resolve. Okay. I don't know how. I agree and I think it has to be, it's at the, it's to the point where it needs to be a direction one way or the other. If that makes sense. It does. You can't, with the density that we're trying to do here, you can't have it all. And I want to be really sensitive to what Anne said because that part of the village has seen a lot of activity lately and stuff is happening over there. And we need to really monitor that carefully along with listening to the things that they have to say because it's real right now. And if we can make adjustments as we need to, and I think it's our responsibility to do that, including fixing roads and stuff, which the planning commission would never be part of, we could say, hey, can you do it? Please make sure that the road gets fixed, yeah. That needs to happen. I think there's a couple of things to look at. One is to address some of the issues that Anne brought up and other people have brought up in the community. It can be addressed through ordinances. We have ordinances, but we also have to have enforcement. They have to have teeth. The other thing that you're saying, John, about rewriting or mending the land development code, the LBC, it's fine if you want to do that. But if you recall what Regina said earlier in her discussion, what developers are looking at, you gotta be careful what you wish for, because as soon as you start, the more you can find, specifically, this is what you can do, this is what you can do. You're also limiting, you're gonna say, a lot of people are gonna say, well, we're not so keen on that. I think I'm gonna look elsewhere or not. It's, you're careful what you wish for. You can put it all in black and white, no gray, no opportunity for a waiver here and this and that. You can have real specific language, but I also caution you, because it's a double-edged sword and it can really hurt. Yeah, I just like to clarify. Well, I agree with you on this strategic direction and agreeing that. I'm saying this is where we want to go. We know that this opportunity, we're leaving it behind, because this is the way we want to go. Well, that's what the comprehensive plan is. The comprehensive plan is what we've got. We've got a direction we want to go. It's a guide, it's a map for developers. We're not the developers. They come to us and look at it and then they tweak it to what fits for them and we try and work together to come to something that works best for the community's whole. We're never gonna please everyone and that's one thing you gotta get going. As soon as we're out to please everyone, it's never gonna happen. We're gonna be spinning our wheels forever. So we gotta accept that, but try and, where it may not work for everyone this time, maybe you get something here. So it's give and take as Regina was saying before. It's this, you gotta give and take. Yeah, just to follow up on that, my comments were not to suggest that I think we tighten things up. It's to be, to figure out a direction and to be more flexible in that direction so that developers have a clear idea of what we're asking for. Just like we usually do when we're talking about design or any of those other things that are kind of subject to opinions, a lot of opinions. And that's a really good point, especially with the parking. I think there's a perception of reality about the parking issue too. That, and around everything that we have. So we have to keep that in mind and try and do a better job of educating, I think, the public about it. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I go back to one thing. Early on John, you said, you mentioned green space and we do have green space featured in design five corners. This course is a very easy to make a nice colorful drawing, very in reality, physical reality, it's a different ballpark. But again, it is something that we, I think it maybe speaks a little bit to your point because as we gain downtown urban-like density, obviously the opportunities for green space is gone. But if you're really just going for the density, then you're willing to take that hit. On the other hand, if you have a vision of it being a little more, I don't know what, a little more gentle and humanistic than maybe you find some areas for green space. Is that the sort of thing we're talking about? And if so, what do we do about that? It is, I want to also say that if the municipality values green space, then the municipality needs to create some and you're not going to tell, I doubt there's enough development pressure where you can tell the developer to create it because their goal is completely the opposite. I mean, they might see a small green space as an amenity for their own development, but if the community wants the benefit of a green space, then there's got to be some community effort to help that along. So if we want to provide incentives for people to live here and like it here, then the parking and green both might cost us a month. We might actually have to pay for it. We already know the community wants green space because we went through the heart and soul process and the six community values that came out of it included green space. So I had thought that we had incorporated those six community values into the comprehensive plan. I'm not sure if they're technically there. I think they are. Yeah, they're not even there. So it's really important that we reflect back on those when we have these conversations. And I think it's also important to, I'm sorry, James. No, go ahead. I think it's important to define what we want as green space. So do we want a patch of green grass in the middle of five corners and that's the green space or do we want a park that people can play in? And if we want a park that people can play in, it's back to reality of perception. Last night at Summit Street Playground, there were three families, a guy with a drone and another guy practicing kicking a football. That's our park. So I mean, they're here, we have them. So is it that we just want to visually see green here or do we want parks? Excellent point. Okay, I remember getting the pushback and I'm fighting for shaded parking lots. I'm asking for trees and shrubs and such. And they said, oh my goodness, it's on the north side. And it's like, yep, it is. So put one in. Okay, because the regulation says you're gonna put one in. You need to have so many trees. You need to have so many bushes, so much buffering and whatever else. So despite the fact that we're getting more urban as this comes in, it'd be nice to see that drawing updated to what the current permits are because it'd be a lot less green on there. But I think it would give us a tangible recognition that this is what's going on. There aren't going to be those oases like of the Park Street School. It's going to be green, okay. But I also remember when George Dunn marbleized this hall way back when, before Simons, that was going to be a pocket park right there. Okay, that was going to be our newest green. It's now a quick stop. So we need to pulling out and put our dollars where our mouth is if we're gonna go that route. Or we need to amend our regulations to allow more buffer mediums and things as things go on. But as I look at this drawing here and know the plans that we've seen and concept, there's more emphasis being put on putting parking under buildings when it's possible. Groundwater being of course a hazard around here. So where that's happening, those buildings actually could have underground parking on them. Especially that's, of course, that's not the concept where the mediums have that long block there. But it could, they haven't proposed putting parking under those buildings. Sorry, what was that? The concept proposes putting parking under the buildings. So there isn't so much asphalt on and with wide expanses of asphalt, it actually is. Part of the parking regulations right now say that that massive parking lot in the back would have to have green space in it, which is not shown. And to be, so if we set that regulation we have needs to be applied. Is that then saying we are definitely turning design five corners into now four corners? Because I know something we've talked about with the trustees that we don't have a consensus on at this point. I would get, I mean, just give me one second. I go back to something that Regina said, which is that you wanna have, what I, the way I see this, it's a conceptual, strategic plan idea of where we want, what we want developers to build to. Obviously we can't say this is exactly what's going to happen. The deal with pedestrianizing Main Street is that in that case, we're the builder. And that's, it's up to, no builder's gonna make that happen. If someone wants to make that happen, then we're the contractor that's gonna make that happen. We can look at what, you know, look at the other buildings on Park Street and Maple Street and say, here's the general idea, they can kind of more or less hit that. But the only one that's gonna hit the Main Street deal is us. Yeah, I totally understand what's up to us. I understand what we're on the road. My question though is, if we put it in the comprehensive plan, are we committing to making that happen? Because I just want to be very cognizant of the message that's gonna send to the rest of our community. I don't think the concept is anywhere near ready to be put on any plan. What is that, what are we talking about right now? That's not on there. Well, that's, that's, this is on Park Street. Okay, I see what you're saying, but that is such a massive change to the Village Center that I would expect we would have a lot of conversation around it before authorizing that particular project but it's kind of sure that that's the purpose it's serving is, is a concept of making, of causing and creating the conversation of this is something we'd like to do. All right, so when I said I want us to take this, I wasn't being that way. That's why I wanted to be a founder. Stand up, stand up, stand up. I mean, go back to what Regina said, another thing and John's brought it up to, when you were talking about, you know, putting in these projects, doing these projects, the developers looking at the cost. So when we talk, and I appreciate what you're saying, Diane, underground parking, underground parking, we all know comes at a great expense, huge, huge money. So then where does that cost recover? You think you're gonna do it out of the goodness of the heart? Are we funding that? I mean, obviously, if it's private property, do the taxpayers want to pay for, you know, a private entity or a private group, you know, to help them for this? I mean, I don't know, it's many ways, Regina brought up a TIF, and I don't know about, if we could get TIF, you know, approval for that, for parking garage somewhere within the village center, we have a very small village, and, you know, relatively speaking, for the size of the community, or, you know, you look at my employer, or St. Alvin, St. Alvin's in TIF, and they've got a beautiful parking garage, but their downtown is 10 times the size of the village here. They've got a park that's massive. Well, maybe not 10, the Village Center, George, I'm talking, the Village Center, there's at least five times the size. They've got a park in front of their city hall that's huge, bigger than Brompton's city, okay? So it's just different, we're constrained by a lot of things, and I just look at it and say, we gotta look at how much money people want to get and put into these things, I mean. And we also have to look at, we use a parking garage, you know, it goes back to the idea of the reason people think there's no parking is because they can't park right in front of McGilliputty's. Exactly. Because they could park across the street from McGilliputty's and put up and they don't want to, so we build a parking garage, it helps one half, but it doesn't help the other half. Well, I think if we did do a solution like that, that we would have to also improve the signage and the straight painting and everything, just to make it really clear that this is not for you to park in, you need to go over there and we would have to up our game and enforce it. Yes, very much so. Well, that's the other, get back to the audience, we need to enforce this. As I've said, multiple, multiple times, we have no parking enforcement in this village. And there's a guy that parks his real estate truck over on Railroad Street every summer and I guarantee he'll be there with his big face on it. You know, and it stays there for days on end, doesn't move. It's working. And when it's done in front of a railroad avenue and we have limited parking, we get the train coming, people using long-term parking, those businesses suffer. People, they want those practice spaces turned over. So I don't know if we really might want to look into enforcement. There's also, not maybe I'm speaking as a resident, but there's a cost to all this. And the parking and the parks and, you know, okay. So does everybody understand this is all going to cost money. And it's not free, it's not, it's coming from you guys. So a lot of education, a lot of, you know, everybody wants all the amenities that they don't want to pay for, you know. And that includes enforcement as well. Yeah, it does. Justin. I think the conversation tonight has been great, particularly on the parking and the housing, but it's clear to me that we don't know what the parking and housing situation is. We don't know what we want. And getting back to what John said very early in the night, I would like to make the suggestion that the village trustees establish some committees to really delve into these issues, a parking committee and a housing committee. And both committees would be charged with, you know, really collecting all the data, trying to understand what the situation is, perhaps doing some surveys of the people who live in the community, and then coming up with some goals and objectives and an action plan on how we should address these two issues. Because until we have a group of people really looking into this issue, we're just gonna keep talking and throwing out ideas and debating things. And I think that's a great idea. What I really would like to see is our timelines. We need to set times when these things need to be complete. Mainly because, you know, first of all, you have to set the goal, otherwise it's never gonna get done. The second thing is we're at a point now where we probably should have done this a couple of years ago because we're right in the middle of some of the biggest, the rest of the village center being developed. And we need some good guidelines and numbers to go by when we're making these decisions. Yeah, we should have established a TIF about three years ago. You think so? Before all the good growth occurred. Because now we can't take advantage of the increment in the taxes. There's still opportunity there, right? No, there's still plenty of opportunity, but that's if we did it a few years ago. In terms of the Housing Needs Assessment, though, that I know, Regina, you had spoken about, the committee would be great to do that, especially if, as Regina mentioned, some communities have an Affordable Housing Committee or it's a Housing Committee in general, and that could be the impetus for that. To expedite things, I believe VHFA does for a fee, will do a Housing Needs Assessment study. So if we want to try to get something quicker. Remember, we have our community. I didn't want to call it out. No, I won't. Someone's had her name, right? Or not. Yeah, exactly. She came in to talk to us, and she's seen that. She has talked about forming a Housing Committee in the village, and there are residents in the town who also want to form a Housing Committee. It would make really good sense to perceive that. Yeah, perfect. Would it be untoward of us to say that maybe this housing thing should really be a town-wide thing? I agree. OK, as opposed to us just doing it ourselves, because quite frankly, it's a community-wide thing. It isn't just a small within a larger town. So the needs in this VC zone are going to be very different from the needs out in the town or out in therapy farms. And I think it's very different. I would think that we'd want to look at all of that than I am. Because I mean, what's going on in the town, quite frankly, that does impact what's going on here. OK, especially as the Susie Wilson Road senior housing out there is definitely impacting the coming and goings. People are there. They are coming into our village, too, to use our commercial area. And the bus keep coming and going. So I mean, I just read a discussion about possibly canceling the CTA bus down in the Williston where I'm kind of going, we're going to do what? No, it was a discussion to do it because the ridership isn't there. But yet that's a large commercial area that quite frankly, with the urban density we got, we're going to have people going there for those things that are available there unless we have them here or they're up in Essex Center. So maybe we should be talking about how housing is happening and how we're creating that here jointly. And I think it's also important now that the school board, the school is one, that we engage the school system in that conversation as well. Because to your point, we have people moving in for the schools. We're no longer separate. So let's work together, including the school, to say how can we make sure families are able to get into this community. I don't want to keep everyone here later than you all work today. And I think this was an excellent meeting. We probably need to do this more often. But I'd like to maybe kind of wrap it up. What do you think you've made? Unless there's any more questions for anybody? No, good. I would just be curious. I wouldn't want to waste the opportunity for the Planning Commission to ask us stuff. Yes. Do you have questions? Do you want us? Do you need us to change some policies? Do you need things to happen? And is there a confusion about our goals versus people? Are we not sharing? What do you need? What can we do to help you do your jobs? Anything? I don't know. I mean, we've had some challenges to solve. So there's going to be these situations that have to come up for many, many years. So we're using what we have. And it's all great opportunities for us. Oh, these are all great problems. Yeah, it's fantastic. I'll just say that the only handslap we've done in five years is on the height of building in the village. I was going to bring that up, but that's a sign. So, you guys, aside from that, I guess you're OK with what we're doing. Yeah, absolutely. We essentially are on doing our job to enforce the rules and visions that the whole community has, essentially, through your election and your guidance. So as long as we're not really hearing that much, I have to assume that it's. We've just been very busy, that's OK. We talked about that. But certainly, sometimes we feel like we wish we knew what you were thinking, and I don't know of that. Can you just Skype us in? Sure. I'm just like, could you follow me? When you say, I wonder what they're thinking. Why do you wonder that? I mean, you probably don't really want to know. Well, let's say we're considering certain projects, and we've had quite a number of large projects in the Village Center, especially, and they have been, you know, I won't say too controversial, because in our opinion, as a committee, and I'll speak for the whole committee, they generally are falling within what's been asked for in the Land Development Code and Design Five Corners. So I don't see them controversial on that side, but to some in the community, and certainly the people that are most immediately affected by it, it's a big change. And so we kind of want to make sure that we are representing the community's overall interest on these things, so we're not feeling like we're going in a direction that is uncomfortable, and we're going to hear about it later. So as long as we've kind of got the crowd behind us, I think we can hold on to the specific decisions that seem to be desired in our regulations. And so when you have a great idea, like, hey, Design Five Corners, and we all are happy, and aren't we, you know, it's just great to know that you were really behind a lot of these things. And so the chance to talk a little more and find out that, yeah, we are all headed in the direction that we have collectively envisioned is a good thing. OK. Yeah, I think, I mean, not to contradict you at all, but I don't really think about what you guys think. We serve in your pleasure. No, no, it's great. But the idea is to utilize the comprehensive plan in LBC to make the best possible decision that we can. And that's sort of what I've explained to me before, right? And so that's the goal. It's a little bit tricky when you talk about some of these pieces. I was agreeing with John. I'm glad he wants, you know, he wants, I got the nuance, the difference, but by all means, when it comes to actually applying and looking at applications, we don't want you thinking, wondering what we think. That's not your job and that's not what we would expect of you. We didn't appoint you to be conduits or just mimics of what, you know, try to figure out what does the trust know. It doesn't matter at a certain point. You may do something that we don't like. That doesn't matter. You've got the LBC and you are supposedly the experts and we defer to you. So what's the deal of restricting our building rights? Talk to me about that. Yeah, I think that was a case of on paper. It didn't seem to be a problem, but then when the plans came out and the scale became apparent, it became a problem. I really do think that was the case. And we have to think about the community. Exactly, and there were neighbors that didn't want to tolerate that. And now seeing that there's gonna be additional development down the road of the same height, it's disconcerting for people who initially, who are talking about losing that village feel. And it's a struggle between that density that we really want in that village feel that we wish we still had. That's a good point. You know, I don't know when Peter Welch was here, I don't know if he said it or someone said it, but it was putting the village back in the village. Yeah, yeah. And I thought, I think that was the issue. We know, we like design platformers. We like the concept. But at what point does it do, because density would become more like a city and less like a village. And I don't know what that, I couldn't tell you what that is. And it's probably not a technical, but there's a feel to it. And putting the village back in the village doesn't only mean buildings. No. It's the community. It's what's in the buildings. It's the people. It's how we get around the community. It's our schools. And there's so much more to it. We will still be as extension no matter what's out there because we are as extension. And that's, we really have to try to remember that. Can I ask a completely different question? Or do you guys have like a work plan for the summer? Or are you like booked up with applications? Work plan? No, no. No, no. Because so back when we were planning for the summer, in the summer especially, we would just sit down with the code and start doing stuff with it. Like looking at it, what do we want to fix? What do we want to change? I'm wondering if that's on the agenda. And if it isn't, could I put a plug in for looking at accessory dwellings? And just look at the code that we have now. What are some ways that might, if we, do we ease it? Do we think it will clear to make it really easy for our residents to do things to their homes. And then work with staff to make that aware, make everyone aware of it. And say, hey, did you know that you can do this? Did you know that there's money? Did you know that this might work out better for you financially? And that would be our, the village's way of communicating to the general public that affordable housing is important to us. And here's an easy way to accomplish a little of it. That's a good idea. Rob, when we changed the code the last time, we made an accessory apartment administrative strength. Nice, okay. So you can come in, they need to repounce the code, they get to permit that thing. And is there, are there, I've been seeing that, sorry. I read a lot of stuff about, you know, cities and governing and that kind of thing. I'm seeing a lot of interest nationally regarding accessory apartments and tiny houses and, you know, drop-in houses on backyards and stuff. Like, what are some innovative things that we might be able to do to our code to encourage people to really think about doing that? Well, we can put those terms in because at the moment with our density requirements and so on, they can have a secondary unit, no more than 30% of the square footage of the existing. So if it's 10%, then that's okay. So there's a lot of different ways to look at it. I think it's more making it. You can get creative in being, you know, make them clearer. Right, exactly, making it understandable to the average resident. Right. The other aspect of this is all contingent. It's on an occupied property. And when Dan Karen decides, okay, I've got, I'm 65, 70 years old. I've got an accessory apartment and Robin Pierce lives in my accessory apartment. I'm gonna sell my house. The new homeowner isn't tied to the deal, keeping that that way. So if there'll be ebb and flow, there's a whole thing. And the whole thing we talk about, all the stuff we're talking about and Joe brought up, looking at things. It's, as we all know, it's dynamic. It's moving, it's changing all the time just as much as we look on the map and see it's constantly changing. So, you know, we try and predict what's gonna come in the future and we try to do the best we can. Yep. Well, I will not try to be, you know, a gap or anything, but I will say to remind you that in the last push for infill housing, a lot of people in the village were not thrilled. Okay. And in fact, the people at Park Terrace were calm compared to some of those individuals who didn't like having the infill housing. So our accessory partner, I'll put that question out, as our accessory partners or accessory parts of housing going to do that same infill effect that we heard from residents that they were unhappy with. When was that? That was like 10, 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago at this point in time. It was, Well, we had at least a, no, the mortuary was mine like three years ago. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, we had a couple of them. But I suspect that there's a lot of people who live by houses in a single family neighborhood want their single family neighborhood to stay a single family. Yes. Yeah. It could be like, yes, but. Well, there's a balance there because it's one solution to affordable housing within a family. You know, it could be for seniors. It could be for just graduating college students. I mean, there's a tension between what neighbors want and what's going to work for me and my family and it's my property and it's my house. I should be able to do what I want with it. So I would like to explore that. The regulations is make sure that they're doable, make them more clear, make the benefit clear and then see what happens to the neighborhoods and who comes forward and whether those complaints arise and how they might address them. One thing you just, It feels like low-hanging for you. One thing I'd like to be able to do, we did, Darby did a couple of years ago and we could reprise it. Is it takes certain sections of the code? Yes, I remember she used to do that. I forced it and we did put the accessory apartment in. We could do that again with a few of the others in. I only got some feedback, not a lot, about that. It's a way to take the chunks out and we try to make the language easy to read as well. So we give the sense of what it says, but not the totalitarian ones. You know what's really good at that is Sharon Kelly. She, every time you read from porch forums, she says, this project is happening on this street and here's what they're doing and here's what it needs to your street and it's just super clear. And if we could write something up about accessory apartments in that tone and that easy to understand, I think that might be helpful. We might get like one additional accessory apartment out of it, but it's a low cost attempt at making people aware of what their options are. Any further questions, comments? Everyone good? I want to thank Regina, thank you for staying with us. Thank you. Any, very much appreciated, thank you and great talk. So I will hear a motion that we adjourn. We didn't open the meeting. We never had a motion to open it. Oh, we didn't? No, it was just a work session. And we'll just stop. You said the motion. Thank you. That's when we open the meeting. That's a good job.