 Do not run on the stairs. Perfect. Okay. Sharon or whoever wants to. Issue the date. 605. Recording in progress. Plan and commission meeting. All right. Welcome everyone. Matt. Appreciate you're taking the time out to speak with us. I'm going to go out on the limb since we've got a couple of folks that are not here and say we're going to. Let's let's push off the election of officers to the next. To the next session. Is anybody have any concerns about taking that approach? You guys all motion to just keep bouncing it until you had a full commission at the last meeting. Yep. And just, just going to acknowledge that it's there. So. Thanks. Next item we're going to hit is the public comments. Does anybody have anything that they want to present to us? That's not on the agenda at this point. You have the audience. Paula. No, I don't have any comments. Yeah. Okay. So I just wanted to call out that Peter. Parkinson. Submitted some comments for the draft regulations. He didn't know if you were going to open up for conversations tonight. He knew about the meeting. So he might pop in. But again, that's just the FYI. So I just wanted to make sure that you guys, if you guys have any questions, please do dive in tonight. And you should have always seen the list. Thanks. Okay. With that. Matt, again, thank you for joining us this evening. You know, you guys have been in the, in the news a lot lately. And. It's real interesting stuff. What I saw. And, you know, Take it away. Show us what you've done. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I was talking a little bit about. It's it's a, it's pretty. It's a really, really important. Just to make it a process. It's, it's pretty much dominated our long-range work plan for the last two years. To work toward the. Hearing draft of the form based code for Taft corners, along with. Other miscellaneous zoning edits to fit it in. And a official map. Which underpins. And I'll talk about that. As you might imagine and probably know from history and Williston, the town has struggled with what to do in regards to land use in Taft Corners ever since it became a popular place to do something other than have a dairy farm. And really the development of Exit 12 and suburban expansion of the greater Burlington area dating back, you know, probably for Williston really to the mid-1960s has, you know, played out in Taft Corners in the form of the sort of developed form you see there now, beginning with big box stores, the gigantic battle over the proposed pyramid mall that ultimately resulted in the development of Maple Tree Place. And over the last probably 15 years or so, sort of a second wave of development related to more residential and mixed use build out in the Finney Crossing and more recently Cottonwood Crossing projects. So that's 50 years of land use in Williston in 35 seconds, leading to where we are today. And a 2017 Williston town plan that said, you know, continue to monitor the performance of the zoning we have in Taft Corners and also consider changing it and consider using form-based code specifically to continue to try to achieve the goals that have been stated in Williston town's plans going back to at least 1990, that Taft Corners become a downtown type environment with a strong pedestrian orientation. I think it actually says design conscious downtown with a strong pedestrian orientation. So walkable with buildings and sites that look good. And we've had, as you might imagine, a lot of citizen feedback over many years in response to new development, you know, especially that sort of second wave residential mixed use development from people in the town that it's not completely meeting expectations in terms of the quality of building design, some of the ways that sites are laid out or the way that different sites sort of work or don't work with one another. So we wanted to do a project that would, you know, consider the zoning tool, consider the idea of using form-based code to get a better grip on design of sites and buildings in town, but also really back out and look at those long-standing big picture goals that Williston has had to take, you know, all of the development interest in Taft Corners and channel it into something that could truly become a vibrant, you know, downtown-like or town center urban village as long envisioned. So we started this project with a budget conversation with our select board, going back to, I'd say late 2019, early 2020. I'm not screen-sharing yet, Darren. I see it in the chat. I'll pop up some images soon, so it's more fun to look at. I can... I'm going to miss it. No, you're not missing it. In fact, I'll just, while I'm talking here, I'll go ahead and share and just leave it on the My Taft Corners page. I'm just going to use my web browser. And MyTaftCorners.com has been the digital home for this project throughout. So this is the cover page if you go there. So we had a budget conversation with the select board about the idea of funding this project and putting some money aside to go in with a really strong case to do a match against the CCRPC Unified Planning Work Program or UPWP system to partner with CCRPC on this project. As you might imagine, like most towns, the Planning Department budget in Willisons is not one of the bigger ones. And it's not one that typically asks for a lot of money. But when we spoke to the select board about what we wanted to try to achieve in Taft Corners and why, they did they did ultimately vote to get that into the FY21 budget spanning into FY22 to take on this project. And the why beyond just saying, you know, we've wanted Taft Corners to be a design conscious walkable downtown forever. And we don't feel like we're quite there. The other the other why is why to take on this project at this point in the town's history. There's a couple. One is we were seeing this residential demand, even in 2019 and 2020. I think just looking at vacancy rates and knowing that there would continue to be interest in residential build out in Taft Corners. Seeing the rise of e-commerce and having a couple of empty big box stores in town at various times led to some concerns about how that built environment might evolve over time and what could the town do in its land use standards to make that better. And also really feeling like if you look at the image, right, it just passed. I'll talk about Trader Lane a little while later. But the idea that the town and private landowners and others, including State of Vermont, my partner on the construction of new infrastructure in the area, including Trader Lane, which, if you know Taft Corners would extend from the side of the Hannaford supermarket to where Texas Roadhouse is on Williston Road, providing another way in and out of that part of Taft Corners. And that's a Cirque Highway alternatives project. The state would be on the hook for the intersection with Route 2, but the town and private interests would need to come up with the rest of the money. So looking at something that Ball Park might be a four million dollar infrastructure investment that would unlock the potential of quite a lot of land in this area and having had about 12, 13 years experience with the current zoning, some concern that that current zoning, if that land use, if those lands were made more desirable for development, that that code might not result in development or development pattern that met the town's expectations for Taft Corners. So that was the case we laid out to the select board. They said, yep, let's go for it. We put together a unified planning work program application. And in the beginning of fiscal 21, we went out with a request for proposals to do a form based code, but to do that with a really pretty significant public process as the lead in. In other words, we're not just going to tell somebody what code to write for us and what the standard should be. We're going to we're going to start with really like a like almost a mini comprehensive plan process doing the Taft Corners vision. So I'll just pop over if I can get the right cover. Here we go. This is on the website. This was the vision plan that came out of our public process. This being 2021, mostly March and April and May of 2021. A lot of our process was online. And this document both contains the visualizations and drawings that came out of that process, as well as a record of the process that we went through. So we talk about the various tools we use, interactive maps, online meetings, Mentimeter polling, visual preference surveys, etc. And what kind of feedback we got from that. These are some of the documents related to the breakout groups that we held during the charrette week. We also had a consultant team that was carrying out technical meetings, meetings with stakeholders and major landowners in the area, as well as other town departments, of course, fire public works, especially as it related to this project. And, you know, what what came out of the vision at the end was a presentation that included a lot of graphics that look like the one I'm paused on here drawing in what kind of new development in what sort of pattern might happen in Taft Corners. My cursor, if you can see it, is over that trader lane alignment. This is Wright Avenue. I'm hovering over CBS right now if you're familiar where that is on Route 2A. So starting to think about, well, if we had a little more infrastructure and a little more development and we had a code that did some really kind of basic things that put buildings up on the street, that put parking behind buildings and didn't put parking up on the street and that contained some design criteria. What would that start to look like as it built out? And also, what would it look like if we started thinking about where our green spaces might go and how we might plan for those? So there was a lot of feedback from citizens that Taft Corners should be a place, especially if lots more people are going to live there that has pretty good accessibility to parks and green spaces and that there's some feeling of connectivity between those spaces. So that was part of the drawings that came out of that vision plan. In the background behind the development of this plan, we gave our consultant team every single piece of information we had at the town level about where things were. So existing building footprints, road right of way, utility layouts, every everything we could we could put together to help our consultant team develop something that was really well informed and was really really grounded in reality and at a scale that actually matched the existing conditions out there. We did have some three dimensional visualizations done. And this is if you were to stand facing north and had the side wall of the Hannaford supermarket to your right and you were looking down the future alignment of Trader Lane. So down here in the small image one, that's the current condition. If you took this left over here, you'd be in the bedbath and beyond parking lot and then imagining the construction of Trader Lane. The Cirque Alternative Road we're thinking about. In this case, envisioned with a central green with some one way vehicle circulation around it and then the buildings coming in under what the code might call for. So these visualizations were part of this vision plan. So most of this was presented to the community in May and June of 2021. The Planning Commission made some adjustments to some of it. And ultimately, we brought this to the Select Board in July of 2021, saying, OK, here's a vision plan that the Planning Commission is comfortable with and comfortable if they have a thumbs up from the Select Board with going forward working with the consultant to develop land use code that would that would make this stuff happen. So that's the vision beyond beyond that. I think I'll just go real quickly to the product. So starting in the fall of 2021, we started working on a draft code by I think late October of 2021. We were most of the way through. Actually, I'm sorry, 20 by 2022. I may have my dates wrong. We were through initial code drafting. Yes. And by January of 2023, most recently, we were on our way with the Planning Commission hearing. So a little bit about our form based code. You'll you'll hear these terms a lot when you talk to people about form based codes. It is based on a regulating plan. So rather than a map of zoning where these areas might each be covered with a different color overlay, we have existing and planned new street layouts that have a color. And that color corresponds to a building form standard. So red, darker, orange, lighter, orange, light, yellow. Those are those are the sub designations that the four different building form standards that you would see. And you can see on this regulating plan, we are also identifying some green spaces. There's a few other distinctions here, some hatched streets that would not be required to be created as part of new development right away, because maybe they run through an existing building or otherwise would be further out in the future beyond the horizon of this plan. But if you want to know under the Williston form based code, what kind of building you want you can build and how it needs to work on the site, you want to go to the regulating plan and look at your street frontages. That's how you're going to know where to look in the code to figure out what kind of building you can build. So let's let's go ahead and do that. So this is the map. It would take you into the building form standards chapter of the code. And this is a little diagram about the way the code works. It's generally going to have a line that says this is where the building needs to be placed. It's going to have another line that's back from the street that says parking can't go between this line and the street. Pretty much the build to line in our code is five to seven feet off the street. And the parking setback is generally 30 feet off the street. So strong feedback from the Planning Commission consultant team. Don't don't put parking lots right up on streets. Generally encourage them to be back behind the building. And then the building form standard is also going to talk about how tall of a building, how deep of a building and how large of a building and footprint you can have in each of these districts. And a little bit about a few other aspects of building. And then there's a separate chapter for actual architectural standards. So these colors correspond to the colors on map. The most intense being town center and storefront. Storefront is just like town center, except we require the bottom story to be a retail capable story that could be shopfront. And in this entire code, the only place where that mixed use building is is required is about 600 feet of right avenue next to CVS. So most of this code, although we like mixed use and want to see it in most of this code area, if you want to build all residential, you can. The Planning Commission was really interested in trying to bring some focus because we are dealing with a large area about 980 acres that won't all build out at once. It will build out in the vision. We're thinking this is, you know, an 80 year build out. How do you how do you get some cohesiveness? You know, it's going to come in a little bit piecemeal. And you're probably going to undermine things if you want mixed use everywhere. In fact, our market study that was part of this code said, there's just not enough demand for retail to ask for that much. So that's that storefront frontage. We drop down. There's a transitional neighborhood frontage. And then the least intense is what's called strollable neighborhood. This is almost more of a row home standard. So you looked on the map and you saw the color of your street frontage. This explains how that required building line and parking setback work. There are some requirements that if you've got a corner, you need to occupy that corner with the building. Don't leave it empty. Couple other things that are fun because of the way Taft Corners was laid out. We have a lot of curvy streets. So we had to have some special rules for not having to go right up on the required building line where it had a curve. So generally, you can have straight sections of a building. I think typically 60 feet maximum, you know, you can go 60 feet and just touch the corners up with the curve, but otherwise have a straight facade. There's some special things to think about if we have a parcel that goes all the way through and how we might handle that. Generally, the goal here is to fill up the street with building or something so that that streetscape, the outdoor room that's created by a good streetscape that makes it really walkable is continuous. But there will be times there's gaps between buildings and we do have a street wall requirement there. So so that there's still something in closing that space. Some other things about parking. We have that parking setback. But if you're if you're mostly underground, you can you can be forward of it. Just some other some other things here that talk about, you know, if you're building structured parking and just a few other things about how how jogs in the building can be handled and things like that. We talk a lot in the building form standard about windows, fenestration. This is all about what's happening on the street. We really don't have a lot of requirements for this or architecture. Once we're not on the street, but on the street facing facade, there's going to be a minimum percentage of windows. There's going to be a minimum spacing of or rather a maximum spacing, minimum number of doors on the street. So strong desire here from the Planning Commission to have buildings that have a relationship to the street that they're on. And we have a couple of things that are allowed to stick out ahead of that required building line like ADA ramps, awnings, bay windows, balconies, etc. So these things can can come right out and touch the right of way. A little bit of more about building height. This is kind of an interesting Williston thing. Building height is always talked about in stories with a height above clear sidewalk elevation. That's the maximum. But an attic story is generally allowed above that and can be occupied. We do have both minimum and maximum roof pitch. The Planning Commission in in a quest to try to come up with something that might be a little more unique or interesting about tap corners wanted to build in somewhat of an incentive to try out pitched roof configurations. It's not an absolute requirement. You don't have to have a pitched roof for any portion of a roof that you're using to hold mechanical equipment. Also, if you want to do a flat roof building, you can do that as long as you make that flat roof solar ready and show us that you could put solar panels up there if you wanted to stopping kind of one step short of actually requiring solar on a flat roof. So there were some energy concerns that went into the decisions on this as well. Some couple of special rules for civic buildings. They get to do some other things. Couple of things about not putting super tall stuff right right smack across the street from stuff that's not super tall. So having to step back when we're running into row homes or single family residential. And that's about it on building form. Then you go in and look up the actual standard for the for the color you've got on the map. We have a lot of pictures here. These are statements of intent, but not outright statements of policy. And then what our consultant calls a little bit tongue in cheek, the tofu diagrams, because they look like cubes of tofu. But these just show how you can use the build to line and the parking setback and the maximum depth line in different ways to create different buildings within the same standard. So there's there's a couple of different ways that that somebody can do that. And then you get a special diagram for each one explaining what the building form standard regulates. Again, you've got street right of way, generally a five to seven foot deep door yard, which could be hardscape or green. And you've got your building build to line, the parking setback. We do also have a private open area requirement. This is 15 percent of the of the building footprint that has to be provided as private open area. It doesn't have to be all one chunk of private open area. You can put some in a rooftop garden. You can put some into street facing balconies or put some on the ground. There's a few minimums in there. But in addition to the sort of master plan green space throughout the district, there's this idea of buildings inside should provide some private open areas as well. So then you just go through where do I need to put the building? How big can I make the building? How long can I make the building and how how how small can I make the building, etc. So really, really basic dimensional stuff in the building form. After that, you'd go take a look at the architectural standards. These are generally applicable throughout. We talk about materials. We talk about materials you are and are not allowed to use. We talk about what we want to see on the tops of buildings a lot in terms of, you know, parapets and, you know, things that make roofs look nicer, etc. Again, these are statements of intent, but then you're going to see the requirements. Roof pitch, overhang requirements for roofs, standards for windows and doors. The big one is requiring some level of recessing of the windows into the facade surface. We have a lot of new buildings in Williston that people have reacted really negatively to that are very, very flat with the windows, you know, just completely flushed to the wall and often the entire building then taking on a real boxy shape that people reacted very negatively to. We threw a Vermont window in there in case anybody figures out a way to do that in Taft corners just because it would be kind of cool. I don't know if that will happen on an urban building with a pitched roof, but it would be interesting. And just some rules about if you're doing that shopfront configuration, you can do the classic shopfront that dents in away from the build to line and some examples of shopfront configurations that the Planning Commission thought were good ones for people to kind of shoot for. Talked a lot about awnings with the Planning Commission and wanting to encourage them, but the right kind and the kind that would actually provide a little shelter over the door and provide some visual interest and. Just a little bit about having regular layout of windows. So generally, windows need to be aligned with one another in a sort of a regular, fairly traditional pattern. I think throughout both building form and architecture when the Planning Commission was asked to make choices, they tended toward a sort of a less modern looking style. Not that these buildings will look fake historic, but a lot of a lot of the elements sort of pull towards a very sort of regular style. So then we talk about, you know, places where you don't have a building on the build to line and you need to do a street wall. And we have just some pictures and examples of some different types of street walls. Ones that are landscaped. Ones that might include a gate to provide access, all of that kind of stuff. A lot of interest in encouraging porches and stoops. Things that make, especially residential properties, really interactive with the street. A little bit about lighting, a little bit about keeping mechanical away from the public realm and screening it appropriately when it has to be somewhere near the public realm. So, you know, the X through the picture is we don't want that. So, you know, here's a street facing, you know, kind of an alley, but all the mechanical has just been put there in a way where it's not screened. We talk a little bit about exterior lighting, a little bit about signage. The main rule on signage here is appropriately integrated with the building with a little bit of guidance around window signs. Signs should go in a sign band on the building. They should look like they belong there, when theater in there. That's it on architecture. So, you know, I want to go back out for a second to the regulating plan map. Back out so we can see the whole taft corners here. This is, it feels like a lot in this code. There's a lot of things to read through. But our experience has been when we sit down with an architect who's got a particular site in the district who's just sitting down with staff for the first time and says, I just want to know what I might be able to do if this new code was adopted. That initial conversation is usually about an hour. And we follow that process of looking at where the site is on the map, looking at what building placement is required by the form standard, and then generally answering a few questions back and forth about the particulars of architecture. Especially can I use this material? Can I use that material, that kind of stuff? And those conversations have demonstrated to me who may eventually have to administer this whole thing that we're on the right track. It is logical and explainable to somebody who knows a few things about how to build a building. You can get to some conclusions about whether what they want to do would work or not pretty quickly. So I just want to mention, and then I think we should just go wherever you folks want to go in terms of answering questions. The regulating plan as part of this adoption package is also underpinned by an official map. The official map is townwide, but it's mostly focused on tapped corners in terms of where where there's the greatest degree of detail. And the streets you see on this proposed official map are the same streets that are on the regulating plan. So we are really setting up a system here where the town is kind of taking the reins about how street infrastructure will be will be built and will be placed in tapped corners going forward. And, you know, if you look at this map, I think particularly under my cursor here in the area where the Hamlet, Finney Crossing, Chelsea Commons and Mansfield Place and a few other ownerships have all kind of interacted and developed over about a 30 year track. You know, we have some streets that line up, but we have some geometry that maybe makes sense with property lines, but doesn't make a lot of sense otherwise and, you know, leads to some real compromises. This this is a tough place to make new development work. We're reviewing a pretty big project up here right now under the current bylaw called the Annex. And, you know, in our heart of hearts, we wouldn't want these three blocks down here to just all kind of end in the street at the back. We want to get into this other grid, but we've got an existing development pattern that makes it really hard. So when we look at areas that are not very developed yet, like the perimeter lands around Cottonwood Crossing or some of the undeveloped land over in the Taft Corners Park area, where we're proposing an official map that really dictates where the streets go so that they will align with one another and so that they will have that opportunity to create that three to four hundred foot dimension walkable block pattern that's really going to be the backbone of what what's developed under this plan. So. Complete form based code for Taft Corners underpinned by an official map. As you see on the official map, it's it's about where the streets go. It's also about where the green spaces go. And the intent here is to ultimately create publicly owned and managed park spaces within Taft Corners. Right now, the town of Williston owns almost zero land in the Taft Corners area. And we're really relying on our existing development standards to incentivize or encourage the creation of private green space. And we've really had varying success on that. So again, doing something that's that's quite a bit more assertive under this code. And I guess the only other thing I want to mention that I didn't is that between between these two maps, you don't see them on here. But in the in the building form standard and the other development standards, it is essentially mandatory when you're developing in any of these blocks that you create an alley. And that the alley is how you access that parking that happens to the rear of the site. It's how it's where the utilities are going to go. It's where trash and loading box are going to go, etc. So we didn't we didn't draw the alleys in on the regulating plan because we're not dictating their orientation. But the other thing that really makes these streetscapes go is trying to not cut them up with a lot of curb cuts and driveways and utilities and trash and access to private parking, etc. But rather consolidate that access on each block to an alley. So, Darren, I think I want to stop there because that's a ton. And have you folks maybe ask some questions that fill in some of the some of the blanks here. And we can kind of go from there. Sounds great, Matt. I'll start by turning it over to Dusty. So thanks, Darren. Matt, again, thank you. This is this is after going through the last couple of months, after going through a few years of work in our town center, this is all like like very familiar, you know, discussion points. I would say it feels like you guys took it two, three, four, five, six steps beyond what we did. But it feels it feels, I don't know, it's like a planner's dream, I think. One question I had is, is, you know, we struggled with form-based code because getting acceptance and so forth like this. How has the reception from both developers? And I know you talked a little bit about this, but the public in general, to prescribing this before anybody brings anything forward. Sure. Well, it's certainly challenging. And I'll sort of answer it in two parts. So from the public, I think the biggest challenge we have is a negative reaction to any additional allowed building height. So this this code does allow in its most intense place is a five-story building with that with a sixth story attic story on top of it. The most you can really get in Williston right now is four stories. And I would say even internally with the planning commission that the group struggled about where to go with building height, but really wanted to put forward a plan that had the greatest chance of providing an opportunity for some affordable housing to come in and some abundance of housing to come in. So that's where they landed. I'm still waiting for the select board to tell me if they want to make a change in response to that public comment. In other words, reduce allowed height a little bit or add a maximum number or a maximum foot height limit regardless of story count. There's a bunch of ways we can do that. And it's really just a question of, does the select board want to do that in response to that comment? But it's just, it's hard to think about tall buildings being built. I guess. We, yeah, that's, that's, yeah. Commissioners, anybody have any questions? Tom? No questions, but I would say that it looks very well thought out. Very nice. Thank you. I have no questions. I do. We'll get there. Patty, you're up. Okay, are you ready? I got a couple. I read your whole plan and thought it was outstanding. So my questions are, what changed the paradigm, your paradigm from conventional zoning that deals with, at least in Essex, with prescript, prescriptive land uses to fore-based code and your public realm standards, standards which are outstanding among your new regulations, what made you change the paradigm? The developers, was it the public with a little, little both? Tell me your take. I think mostly the public and the planning commission. And I mean, you folks all know this as planners and commissioners that planning touches everything and you pull on one string and the whole sweater starts to unravel. And while what we initially sort of started from was really working with the planning commission talking from a staff level, because we're the same staff that staffs the DRB. So we know with current development where the compromises have been made and where the challenges have kind of revealed themselves. And there's a lot to like in Williston's current zoning. It wants people to pull buildings up to streets, but it doesn't prohibit you from also then building a parking lot on the street, for example. It is a design review district, but the design review criteria are challenging to administer. My favorite one to pick on is the one that says, use a variety of colors and materials, but with restraint. You know how fun that is to debate at the DRB at about 10.45 at night. You know, so we were able to go walking around with the planning commission and then our consultant and just give those kind of live examples from the staff perspective of saying, well, here's this building that people are giving us challenging feedback about. And here's, it's there. It complied with our current bylaw. And here's how it got there. And here's where the compromises were made. And here's, here's where things were challenging. So, so that part we kind of knew we were going to do. We know there's a housing crisis. We knew that going in. We know there's a changing retail environment and a moribund office market coming in and that those sort of things were not likely to fill in the whole area. And we knew we were going to make infrastructure investments. But I think what we didn't really know going in was once we saw the vision plan and started thinking about, well, what's it really going to take to make that plan happen? We need, we need really the most assertive way possible of saying, this is where the streets need to go. Well, that in Vermont, that's official map. And sort of fortuitously, we had actually started working on an official map for the town about a year and a half before we jumped into the form-based code project, mostly thinking about sidewalks, paths and trails and coming out of some other challenges we had had of coordinating and aligning those kinds of facilities as new developments came in for review. We had an ad hoc mobility committee that had worked on that. We were able to serve, you know, looking at that vision plan and saying, you know, this really, this really ought to have the official map underneath it. That was just, you know, kind of serendipitous. And I guess the takeaway lesson is just do good planning in all dimensions all the time. And sometimes those efforts will align with one another. So we were able to pull that official map in. The other thing I think that was a little bit of a surprise is that when you look at, when you look at a place like this and you look at that vision plan and you see those walkable, pleasant streets to be on, we identified pretty quickly coming out of that. Well, that doesn't really match our current public work standard specifications. The kinds of streets we would want to have in Taft Corners, we're going to need to update those specs. And we actually have a separate project going to create the engineering drawings that are necessary for the specs to identify that. And I should, let me see if I can grab my public realm chapter real quick about streets. I don't know if I have a map on this page. I might forgive my scrolling for a second. I'm just going to have to grab this map to show you. But the other thing, the planning commission really, really wanted was for biking and walking facilities to align with one another in Taft Corners. And so this map, again, it looks like the official map. It looks like the regulating plan. But what these callers correspond to is the type of street in the public realm chapter that is desired for that street. So whether it's a rebuild of an existing street or a new street, this code actually doesn't just say, well, you need a street for your development. It says you need this street for your development. And if everybody were to build to this, for example, this sort of bright green path that goes and connects the four quadrants, I believe that's the street section that has a cycle track all the way around. So you could be on a separated facility on a bike and you could touch all four quadrants of Taft Corners. So some of this honestly was inspired by that visioning process and coming back to it and saying, you know, it's not just zoning that's going to get us there. You know, the planning commission from when the vision was developed in the spring to when they brought it to the select board in late summer, a lot of what they did was write a transmittal memo that said, we know there's some outstanding issues here. There's some other things that are going to need to happen to make this plan go and things that we're concerned about going forward. How did the landowners and the developers that actually own the land, if Williston doesn't own any land, how do they accept your new paradigm? Not entirely. So, you know, the major developers, major landowners in this area, I can summarize the feedback a couple of ways. Most would like to see a regulating plan that creates more developable area. There are places in this plan, I'll use this map, but like here's a proposed street circling out around Cottonwood Crossing. It's a whole street that only has development allowed on one side. Part of that is we're falling off into some constrained lands with some wetlands down here. Part of that is a strong desire in the part of people in the town to maintain some viewsheds to the mountains. And, you know, this street would provide a facility that people could walk and bike along and have those views. There's also some gaps in the buildable blocks in these purple areas. Those are green spaces that create those sort of keystone-shaped viewsheds. So, you know, when you hand a landowner a map and say, this is what we're thinking of allowing you to do and requiring you to do, there's going to be some resistance to that. And I think we saw that both major landowners south of Route 2, so Omega, Realty, Alcenical, and Jeff Davis, Calf Corners Associates reacted, you know, pretty strongly to that. Question. Statistically, because I deal with statistics, I used to, if you, this is a great plan. If you kept track and actually not just with public input, but just your vision and stick to your goals and stick to it, regardless of what developers say, you could statistically prove that this is successful. And I would almost say, not just in Vermont, but nationally, if you had your consultant help you with the statistical analysis, I bet it would be statistically significant. Well, we're certainly, you know, we're certainly hoping for that. And I just grabbed the, I went back to the front page of the MyTef Corners, there's a map I'm hoping comes up in a second and I'll shout it out when it, there it is. That's dollar value per acre in Williston. And so the big tall spires are the residential buildings in Finney Crossing. Dense residential creates a whole ton of grand list value on not a lot of acreage. And that's one way of looking at it. There are other ways of looking at it too. You know, for the, for some of the citizenry of Williston, you know, the question was asked at one of the hearings, well, what if we adopt this and it's so strict and nobody builds anything? And it's like, well, first off, there's a whole bunch of people in town who have been telling me that they don't want to see anything more be built. They'll be really thrilled. But, but realistically, I think, you know, that would lead us to adjust and think about what, you know, what was creating the challenge and was there a solution that was palatable. Back to that, back to any of these maps for a minute, you know, I like to think of the official map as a little bit of a wish list. This is what a walkable block pattern could look like in Taft corners. It's probably not the only way to do it. And the only thing I can guarantee anybody is Taft corners will not build out perfectly like it's shown on this map. Things will change. We'll find constraints we didn't know about. Preferences will change. But what official map says is this is a regulatory map. And if you want to change it, you need to go to the planning commission and you need to go to the select board. And so there's been some developer resistance to that idea. Of having to go talk about street and green space layout with the planning commission and the select board and the feedback has been, can't we just make this a DRB waiver process? And our answer is no, because an official map is a piece of the zoning bylaw. So you functionally cannot. And then a little more sort of philosophically, this is big stuff. And it's the kind of stuff that I firmly believe the elected officials should be involved in. And we called this out when back in January of 22, as we were getting this draft going to the planning commission and we sort of realized the set of tools that were going to be necessary to put together here. We went to the select board with an update and said, here's the things that are going to cause the most friction for you as a board. You're going to hear about building height. We're struggling with it. The community is going to struggle with it. You're going to hear about official map and regulating plan because this is really prescriptive. And do you select board? This is us talking six months ago. Do you understand that this might mean that you're having people come to you talking about how they want to lay things out in Taft Corners? And we had nodding heads. Some of them might be thinking, well, maybe I won't have to be here for all of that. It's so far off in the future. But this really puts the town, I believe, in the strongest position of municipality in Vermont can be in to control its destiny in terms of the development of a place like this that's going to depend so heavily on how streets are laid out. Matt, question for you before I turn, see if anybody else in the room wants to ask anything, staff or whatever. You've got a street layout that you're putting on the map. We've had continual discussions with developers about when do they put the street in versus the development versus the street and so forth. So what have your discussions been around how to get the actual streets in? Because if somebody wanted to develop a small portion, like the partial you showed us where there's housing on one side, that's a small portion of the streetscape. But how would you be looking to manage that build out? I think a lot of it would probably happen about a block at a time or a half block at a time. So what we get into is if you want to build on the frontage, you need to build the street to have the frontage. At a minimum, you've got to be stubbing in some of your street. And probably from one single building on a 300 foot block, you're not going to be able to just build the street where it would be in front of that building because there's no way to turn around. You're probably going to need to come around and connect to something. So I think what we're likely to see in those cases where it's brand new development is sort of a slow extension out from the existing streets to the extent that whatever you build has some way of turning a vehicle around because it connects to another street or it at least wraps around into an alley or something like that. So in Williston's current public work specifications, the only way you're allowed to terminate a street is either in another street or in a gigantic cul-de-sac. We're not planning to build a lot of cul-de-sacs here. So the first developer in the door might have to put a large portion of the bill, potentially due to the infrastructure that might have to be laid down before they can do much of anything? They might need to or it might be that those are places where the town's investing in infrastructure. Let me just go into Trader Lane here if I can. I've lost one of my scroll bars, but so Trader Lane is this green and this piece right here. So if we were to partner with the private sector to build Trader Lane, which would also involve building this extension of Wright Avenue, we've just created street frontage along maybe 1,000 feet here. Yeah, that answers. Yeah, and then somebody might be coming in and building a piece of one of those side streets just to connect around or access a lot. And in a lot of cases, we've laid out streets in more or less the logical place where somebody would have done a driveway. And dimensionally, it's actually not all that different. There's more nice stuff in the streetscape than you would build in the driveway, but it's similar. Okay, thank you. Anyone else in the session? I see Jean's on other staff. Anybody have any questions? I'd like to wrap up within the next 15 minutes so we can go. None more. We've kept Matt longer than we told him. We were going to keep him, but we've got to get to some other stuff tonight as well. So, Darren, I can't see the room right now. There's anybody. I see you've got your hand up. Yeah, I have my hand up, but if anyone else wants to go first, by all means. Go for it. Well, so I have a lot of questions I'd like to ask you, Matt, but I'll catch you another time. But the one I want to ask tonight is, you said uses you left pretty open-ended and tried to be broad in your definitions of that. Tell us more about how you got to that decision and what that looks like and how that's going. Sure. Well, the first thing is in the sort of four to four and a half zoning districts that would be covered by the form-based code. Allowed uses are already very broad. It's most commercial that's not industrial and lots of different kinds of residential and most office, if you count that as a separate thing. So, I guess the first part of the answer is, we're already dealing with a pretty liberal, pretty big list of allowed uses. But there's some interesting things baked into that. Today in Taft Corners, we talk about residential density in terms of units per acre. The code doesn't do that. It says, here's the building you can build. But however many apartments fit in that building, you know, within reason and building code and that sort of thing. So, density is being addressed in a completely different way. So, that's an element of use. We did have some very general use categories in this code. We do have some, but our use table is about half a page and it's mostly about what you can do downstairs versus upstairs. So, there's more ground level commercial uses. There's office uses that can kind of go up into the upper floors and at some point it's just residential or hospitality. So, it's more about that than it is about the building form areas or sub districts here at this point. I'm good. Anyone else? Bestie, it's Catherine here. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. So, Matt, nice to see you. Good to see you. Question for you. And this is based a little bit on my experience in Jericho with the form-based code there versus my knowledge of, say, when you ski and then beginning to have a knowledge of your form-based code. But Jericho is pretty tight on how the review happens of any sort of development. So, it goes really through the traditional review process similar in standards, but it goes before the development review board for review and there's still conditional use even. Where I know when you ski has a much more staff focused review. So, the subcommittee kind of review. And now since the standards are laid out so clearly, you don't necessarily need as much time with your review boards. And I'm curious where your fits in there. I was looking at it a little bit and it seemed more like Willis or like when you ski. Yes. So, first off, our consultant is the same one. Jeff Farrell, who is the lead in when you ski wrote this one. So, there's a lot of similarities, which has actually been great because I can kind of Monday morning quarterback a lot of Eric's decisions in when you ski and then I email and say, I noticed you were looking at street walls on this one. How did you approach that? Because I'm, you know, just, you know, thinking about when I might have to administer us. So, this is an administrative process to the extent that it can be. We did identify that, for example, any planning activity, any subdivision activity still going to have to go to the DRB. Our council advised long ago just don't do cladding stuff administratively. So, setting things up will still happen at the DRB. And of course, appeals of any of those administrative decisions would go to DRB. So, but within that project review committee format and that meeting process, we've baked in a couple of things. The project review committee meeting, like when you skis, is a public meeting that's announced. It's not a hearing, but it's a publicly accessible meeting. We are requiring a butter notification and we're actually requiring it to adjacent property owners as well as anybody who lives in an adjacent property because we know apartment residents and folks who have subdivision common land are often left out of the notification process as it exists today and we wanted to correct that. So, planning commission was really, they were okay with the idea of an administrative review process, but they wanted a lot of transparency on it. It's really, you know, Winooski is a really easy website to navigate and read some of Eric Fourwald staff reports and application checklist to get kind of a preview of how we would do it in Williston. We are working with the consultant on a side project to develop a more comprehensive application form and checklist that would go with this process. So, we really want for every element of the code for the applicant to say, I am meeting this by doing X. You can look on sheet Y to find that and then a place for the administrator to say, I went and I checked and I saw that and yes, it's there. So we really owe that, I think, to the community that we're going to staff it in an open and transparent and careful, meticulous sort of way. That said, when our consultant raised the idea of administrative approval, we said, well, our DRB actually moves pretty quickly. And the select boards had some questions about that and my feeling just thinking about it is, if we ended up turning it into a one night DRB hearing instead of a project review meeting, that would probably be okay and the code would still function just fine. Great, thank you. One else, not sure who's in the room tonight, Darren. You actually had a few more people show up but no one is raising their hand. Oh, one. I miss the public meeting, at the public speaking part, could I be heard now or now? Not at this point. Okay, I just have one more. So I just have one little thing. The project review committee, that's not a legislative body. That's just like a subcommittee under the planning commission for transparency, you said? It's a staff committee. So it's the zoning administrator, public works director, probably fire chief or designate and any other town department that needs to be involved. Okay, let's see who's my participants. Dean, I'm going to reach out to you one more time and see if there's anything you want to add or question on this. Josh? I'm good. I don't have any questions or anything. I just, I really very briefly liked the thought that it may take a really long time to build out just because it underscores to us how what we're doing has ramifications for a very long time and we should be very thoughtful about it. But I really like this premise, the code. Thank you. Hi there, Jean here. No, I'm actually, I was fascinated by what you were talking about. I'm actually here to talk to listen and be supportive of any relooking at zoning and uses of the Ford. Okay, thanks, Jean. So, one more comment and Darren and Catherine, I'd like to not put this note somewhere. I really like the term you used early on, Matt, when you're talking about buildings being solar ready. That addresses a lot of questions we've had about how to put it in place, how to be ready for it. And I think that's a really good phase one sort of approach to this. So, it's just that's guys, I want to see if we can capture that somehow explore that a little bit. Matt, again, I think thank you very much. We're ready to move on at this point. I think this presentation was great. And it really, I think it's very, very reflective of our own work that we've been struggling, not struggling with, but we work through. And it's, I like the colors. Thank you. It just makes it, from a viewing point of view, it is a simple thing that makes it very quick to read. So, I think sometimes we forget about the visual aspect when we're writing out regulations and zoning and subdivision and borders and buffers and all this. And just some of these tools are very effective. Thanks. That's good to hear. Thanks for having me. It's fun to talk about this stuff. We are committed to keeping the MyTafthCorners.com website for probably a couple of years going forward so that we can actually report project approvals under this eventually. So, that website will stay up. And folks are welcome to reach out to me with follow-up questions. And as always, shout out to my entire staff, the amount of work that's gone into graphics and PowerPoints and making the colors look right. And we, Emily Heyman in my office will be giving a talk at the next regional planning conference about decision support, which is all about how to take a citizen planning commission through something as big and complicated as this. And all the grunt work that goes into preparing, surveys and, you know, we talk about all time. Planning commissions get about 40 hours a year of meeting time. Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. Darren, we're gonna have to start cutting back. Hey, that's all on you, Dusty. Nothing good happens after 9.30. All right, Matt, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Good luck with everything on this. Thank you, Matt. Okay, let's find our agenda again, guys. I had it at one point in time. So let's get back into our planning session at this point. And Dusty, I do want to ask, since we maybe incorrectly warned the meeting for 6.30, do you have a brief opportunity for public comments since folks who weren't here at 6 maybe wanted to speak? Just ask. Sure, that would be fine. So, Darren, again, I can't see the room, so... Yep, do you have someone? Hi, yes, I'm Michael Peterson. I live at 77 Saxon Hill Road. Moved here approximately four years ago from New Jersey with my wife and my young child. And when we moved in, we understood that there was a commercial building going to be put up on. I forget, what is it, red? Red pines, or red pines? Red, whatever. And in the last couple months, global industries have started doing whatever they do. And it's basically ruined our quality of life. We have no more peace and quiet. Last Friday night at 2 o'clock in the morning, they're going gung-ho. If we didn't have air conditioning on, nobody in my house would have slept. I just find this totally unacceptable that this can go on in the town. I'm looking at all this planning going on right down to where a sign can be put in a window. And I can have this put in my front yard. My house was there way before this building was built, way before any of this was even planned. And this is supposed to be some type of green development area. Come sit on my front porch and tell me what's green about this building. I got a pile of black crap out front that was in the rain today that I have a well there right in front of it that this is running into my well. They're poisoning my family. They give out toxic smell that they say they're going to contain. It smells like plastic. The noise pollution is three o'clock in the morning. Would you like that in your front yard? Would you like that in your front yard? Would you? I don't think anybody would. I don't. I still I'm dumbfounded at how this can happen. How a 24 hour operation can be given the okay to operate in a house that's been there for 60 years. How does this happen? 24 hour a day operation. Three o'clock in the morning they're out there with bucket trucks. Clang, clang, clang. Neil Villano lives a half a mile away. He can hear it. It wakes him up at night. I've been trying to be patient and Friday night I'm trying just just peed me off to go downstairs at two o'clock in the morning and the disrespect that I feel is beyond is beyond. We paid $640,000 for a house and I can't sit on my front porch. $18,000 a year in taxes. My well is getting poisoned. My air is getting poisoned. I don't know how you people feel. I just can't I just can't fathom how it happened. I don't know. You know if I moved in if I built my house after that was there it's on me. It's on me. This is on them. This is on whoever allowed that to happen. I'm not stopping here. I'm going after them. I want this done. You come over and you look at those black piles. I took pictures today. I have them on my phone. That rain out there those piles that crap is running everywhere. My well is 200, 300 feet away. 300 feet deep. Where is that going? Going in my well. I got a nine-year-old boy running around. I got plastic smell coming out of that plant. He says there's no plastic in it. I said as far as I know Ron or Rob whatever his name is. If you step in dog gas there's probably dog gas around. Right? You smell it? Why smell plastic all the time? So it means to me they're burning plastic. You know, my wife, we're looking at it. Why should we have to move? You know? Sir, thank you very much for bringing this to us, sir. I think at this stage, Catherine, is this something that the office can help this gentleman find the next step forward? Sure, yeah. I would encourage you to contact the planning office or if you want to leave with Darren your information, we can reach out to you directly and follow up with you. Happy to chat more about that. Wrong, it's completely wrong. We are dealing that this is an industrial park, so industrial uses are allowed. Now the quality of life issue is something that can be brought up, but that is... Y'all, I'm in a velodrome. It's their building, the front of my house. Everything that goes on echoes back and forth. How do you run on that road every day? Not anymore, but the same... So let's, Patty. I run on Sleepy Hollow. Okay, but she used to run in front of my house every day and she doesn't run there now because of that plant. So let's work with staff to find the avenue forward. It is an industrial park. The usage that was requested is industrial use. If it causes contamination, that's something that especially if it's well water contamination, that's, I believe, that's a state function. So let's get you into a place where your concerns can be heard. The 24-hour operation, I don't know. How is that possible? I was 24-hour bucket equipment operation in my front yard allowable. I was trying to be reasonable, 9 to 5, 8 to 5, whatever, but 3 o'clock in the morning, come on. Well, there's industrial... I'm right there. And Mr. Pugels say again, the town doesn't have the ability to regulate noise at that level yet. We can pass regulations that do that, either at ordinance level or possibly zoning level, but we don't have those. We've spoken about that at a town meeting, at a select board meeting. So I know that that's potentially in the works. I do know that Act 250 has some restrictions on their operations and their noise impact, so that could be another avenue for it. It's a huge impact. But I think we should probably, like Catherine said, sit down with staff and figure out what the avenues are for you to get the issue addressed, because there are avenues. Because last week, they did nothing all week. I'm in and out of my house all day. They did nothing all week. Friday night at midnight, they decide to work like gangbusters. And they drive around with these forks on the front of the machine. Every time it hits a bump, you couldn't try to make more noise if you wanted to. Ask Neil. I don't know if anybody here knows Neil. Neil was at a meeting. I'm going to get my neighbors. I think the smell is better though, because... Well, they haven't been doing as much. Okay. So we, right, but this isn't a place where we can regulate this, sir. I mean, at this point, it's an existing industrial use. We appreciate the impact it's having to you. So let's find the right way to get you to be heard where it might have an effect. And I think the staff, that's a great thing for staff to work with you on. Darren, Catherine can follow up. And the other side of this, it may not help you immediately right now, but we're in the process of beginning to look at zoning and subdivision regulations and uses and so forth. So this might be a good takeaway for us to include in our reviews. So, like I said, basically the poisoning of my groundwater is what I'm really worried about right now. It's, it's, my well is right there. I took pictures, if you want to see on my phone, you can see the picture in the backdrop of my well right there. Going this rain today, every time it rains, I lay there and I go, is this my being poisoned? Okay. Can I speak to the plan and commission system? This is not from the planning commission, just for me personally. You should definitely contact the state if you're concerned about your well. They will come out and test it for you, or you can have a local engineer test it. Okay. That would, that would be the route I would take if it were me. Okay. All right. That's, that's just me speaking, not the planning commission. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay, sir. Thank you for bringing it. Okay. So, next on our, next on our list is getting into some of the planning discussion. Let's, let's, let's hold on that because that could, let's knock off a couple of other, let's, let's change the agenda for a minute. Let's get rid of the minutes and the PC operating procedures, unless those are going to be lengthy. Any, any issues with, with my, getting those approved? No commissioners. You want a motion on the minutes? I want a motion on the minutes for July 14th. Whatever's on in front of us. And will we approve the minutes for July 14th? I'll second. Move by Schu, seconded by Patty. Anybody have any comments or questions or adjustments to the minutes from 714? Hearing none. All those in favor? Signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Minutes pass. Five zero. Five zero. PC operating procedures. No, we took it away for folks to take a look at. Darren sent us out a version with some updates to it. Anyone have any comments or additional corrections, changes that they want to offer? I'll just say that I think we should keep it because of what David Raphael said last time that the word. Keep what? Keep a G which says keep first sentence except written information presented to the commission but also keep I want to keep not strike documentary evidence shall be marked by the chairperson or clerk in order of presentation and and a record shall be maintained of what has been admitted and which party offered each document. I think that should stay. That's my comment. What why is that? We don't we don't do it. Oh well if we accept letters from the public or just you know that last person that came to us just now if we want to document his name or share it with staff we can say you know the date who it was. I think it's in the minute. Presentation is important to me because I worked in medicine. What's documented is fact. That's why and who said it is fact. Okay we'll take it off the we'll take it off the table. I'm not going to agree to that at this point. So we'll take it off and put it on for another evening or we can get into it. I think we have some miscommunication on this a little bit and misunderstanding. So let's let's not make it a challenge for the night. We'll leave them as written for the time being and we can review them again when we have a little more time. Moving on we're back I should say to the planning discussion what do we have in front of us Darren, Catherine and Sharon. What did you guys have thoughts on how you wanted to approach this? We want to go to Josh and get update on the what we wanted to do with the work groups. The last time we talked there was a question. Oh sorry go ahead Catherine. Oh go ahead Darren you continue. There was discussion about you know wanting to know the status of the work groups and wanting to figure out you know how some of those were going to get started. I do know Josh has some updates but I just want to frame you know this is why we put that on the agenda that this was a follow-up discussion. But we didn't necessarily have a specific approach that staff wanted to take. This is the planning commission's work plan and work groups so we'll look to you first. We can jump in with suggestions but I turned to Josh. Yeah so very quickly what I have done is I've reached out to two of the particular work groups that were of my interest that being the Fort Ethan Allen one and the 2024 town plan because that's where I got the most interest from the other committees and commissions and boards and everything and where we are right now is we're in a time period where I just told everyone or rather suggested to everyone that we familiarize ourselves with what the current conditions are whether it be Fort Ethan Allen zoning or what the previous town plan looked like and there's been some chatter back and forth about you know suggestions like I think in the 2024 plan we need XYZ which is is great but what I'm having everyone do first is just read and familiarize themselves with the original documents and the facts on the ground so they can sort of know where we're starting from and that's that's where the other the other groups since I'm not the point person personally I don't know where those stand there's obviously going to be a little bit if I don't have the excel in front of me right now but whichever one Ned was the point person for obviously we're going to have to figure something out there that was housing yeah I want to say it was affordable and I'm not just a like inclusionary zoning I want to say was that one right one related to that so we'll have to we'll have to figure out which commissioners are going to be which things still that's still sort of a point to resolve but I've got those two groups going and there was interest they did write like I said everyone wrote back immediately and had all sorts of ideas and they just said let's make sure we know what's what the facts are the ground and I said let's come back in two weeks which would be right before the next meeting so then I can report everyone has read the official documents that are currently in place and here's sort of what our next step is I want to do it sort of incrementally like that so it's not too much for people to chew all at once Catherine this is your your first swing at our approach on this you have any thoughts or any suggestions that we can maybe you know approach this additional tools that we can use so when you say your group that you're working with these are other boards and committees you're talking to chairs so what we did I probably should back up back when we started this idea we reached out to the chairs and vice chairs of all the other town boards and committees and commissions and irrelevant things and said could you give us names of people like go to your next meeting and say who wants to be involved in this and so when I say a working group what I mean are the persons from those committees who said I would like to be part of the process for Ethan Allen rezoning or I would like to be part of the process for the 2024 town plan and the other ones are like inclusionary zoning who's interested in that and I think the sacks and hill rezoning and those these are all members of each committee who had volunteered these aren't the chairs and vice chairs and since I'm on my a different computer I don't have the excel but what I I laid out this sort of progression of how things would go in members of the committees would form a work group and then the work group would report back to the relevant committee so if it's say something very energy specific that someone from energy was in a working group they would then say we really want this included in the 2024 town plan say and then they would go to the energy committee and the energy committee as a whole would say well golly gee that's fantastic and then they would eventually report the in a public hearing and the usual process for their approvals and recommendations then it would go to the PC and so we would get it as official energy committee recommendation and this was in distinction to the former process where we would do a town plan or development or what have you and then sort of solicit from these committees and commissions almost not after the fact but much later on in the process so they say well we we like what you did I guess and we'll we'll give it an official thumbs up but we would have preferred that you'd put in XYZ but it's too late at that point so this this was an idea to get interested persons who would then funnel things up to the relevant committees and then come to the PC so by the time it got to that point everyone every stakeholder interested party would have been able to say say their piece and we'd get a broader diversity of opinion basically and so the reason I started with as I said the two particular committees with facts on the ground is because I didn't want to assume that people had you know already read the 2016 plan or knew exactly what the ins and outs of for Ethan Allen zoning were and what the what the limitations were that is to say well it's the reason it was zoned this way is because in 1986 when they did the last plan here's what sewer capacity was and then just to know those sort of things going into it I hope that sort of answers what what your general question was it does it does I I think that's a great approach definitely bringing interested parties in earlier in the process you know your experts that are your on your other boards and committees makes tons of sense I think that's that's super clear is my my only other comment would be just staff is here to help with that process too and I know the initial if I remember correctly the initial thought was that let the planning commission do your work and staff doesn't have to be involved in every little bit of the process which is true but we we are happy to chime in and you know if you feel like there needs to be a little bit more of an education piece for people understanding more of a background of something feel free to reach out to us and you know in some cases it could be public work staff or the somebody on you know Allie from the parks department so yeah feel free to call on us right and that's exactly why we're starting like I said with initial conditions so if they have any questions of hey why is the zoning this or why the street width have to be such I can say okay here's an informed person so they don't say they don't recommend well we should do this and if you have a prior knowledge you know how infeasible that is for example great yeah and I'll add just you know keep us in the loop as much as you can even if we're not responding to every email or at every meeting we can try to follow where these working groups are out and and chime in you know especially if there's sort of this you know outstanding question of why is this this way or you start going in a certain direction you know we might be able to jump in and say you know jump in at an appropriate point so yeah we're there even if we're not active yeah absolutely yeah that's the that's the working group report okay so I have to admit I'm at a loss right now as to what we can what we can roll on if we can roll out anything else tonight so go ahead Darren we put in your packet all the materials you've been working with the work plan the collaboration groups as well as the drive zoning regulations so two ways you could go one you could talk about assigning pc members to these other working groups that josh isn't a part of and started the process going with you know background and forming those groups getting those conversations going and we also had that set of zoning regulations that was just updates you know housekeeping things that don't really rely on any sort of planning process we just needed to get some stuff done so we've had that waiting in the wings for whenever the planning commission wants to start the official public hearing process so once you give us the thumbs up we'll start that process so that that's your options in front of you or you could do none of the above you can ask here dusty can I ask a question absolutely um okay because I'm the newbie so I have a lot to learn but um I just wondered um this is just from an angle coming from the different groups just say it for example energy um somebody on the energy group their wish list might be okay a company wants to come to town let's have they might they they come up with some idea or standard that there'll be three um EV stations if there's a if there's 400 employees you gotta have at least three EV stations or and they just throw this out or um say 10 of a company's roof has to be solar the first year and after the third year it has to be 50% if they cut if they just come and throw these wish list ideas then it's up to us and zoning right to actually write the code or the standard for what what the groups are bringing to us am I understanding that correctly not not completely okay I mean it isn't it isn't that it is it isn't that prescriptive I mean in some cases in some cases we may be writing it but really this this this push is to get it's not just a random hey this sounds like a neat idea it really is having folks that are invested in this do the work the energy committee actually wrote the last you know much of the energy energy code that we have so it isn't it isn't that we're we're just looking for ideas we're actually looking for people to do the work and come up with the with the right code they're the ones that that and energy is a good example they're the ones that are doing the research and the investigation and they have the understanding let them prescribe we're not energy experts if anybody at the table says that they're an energy expert they're there we can have another discussion about that um but we can this is helpful because we we want to use the experts to be able to the other experts to be able to provide us information now the other side of this and that is you know the downside is that the planning commission we hopefully will be able to to just accept what is submitted to us but it does have to go through us so we may see something that we just don't agree with we don't feel as appropriate and that's the other side of a submission so it's part of the checks and balance we're getting people to to view it we're getting them to present it to the public in their groups and then it comes to the commission we also will get additional public input staff is going to be part of this all all the way because staff also supports the other the other group so it really is a is a from a from a purely selfish perspective it's a way to get some other people to do some of the work that we've always had to do and by getting some of the others to do it we're getting a greater a greater level of input into the formation of the rules and regulations and so forth got it so dusty one other thing can i be on the saxon hill master plan and and anything with zoning even if it's saxon hill that's the only thing i know because i've run on it for six years dr josh okay josh is managing the group yeah darin could you um share that i don't have it on this computer could you share the excel of who's on yeah thank you who's on which one there you go so patty if you can see it or if you have the document these this is what i thought having tom yando at least i'd have someone who can keep me straight with subdivision regulations i since i'm a newbie i'd like to be on a committee with somebody else that's also on the planning commission so that's why right yeah that makes okay yeah that makes all the sense and like i said now that we've got that up you can see that um we are going to need to make a change in the exclusionary zoning one we can add i didn't i didn't add myself to the 2024 town plan but i've i've taken that one so we've got um yeah i can take the question mark off that and then yep and we we talked earlier how etc next zoning is sort of in limbo for a bit and then the two things related to that but then we still need someone for the allowable conditional uses performance standards inclusionary zoning and i do want to clarify again the etc next is in limbo in the sense that uh we can't adopt higher density zoning yet but all of the other work the design work the you know business design control overlay the you know uh process you know that can be done um at any point yes yeah i know agreed i was just yeah making sure that's clear and then um darin could you also if you've got it put up just for everyone's benefits we can see it again the workflow one if you have that one available you have that yeah i was gonna just you're talking about it but i didn't want to interrupt no it's fine yeah yeah so those who haven't seen it yet you can just tab there we go just yeah full screen and then just hit the down arrow so it looks like i did this magical presentation yeah so we started again started the planning commission someone from pc leadership or as you had just said uh darin and catherine the community development staff as appropriate we send requests for input on work plan line item for so for example inclusionary zoning and then next step boop the relevant board or commission sends interested people whoever they may be and you saw that other excel you saw the names then interested members from both that's your work group then the work group and the pc leadership or community development staff if it's an overall thing the pc leadership here is me because i'm i'll be the sort of go-to person of oh this this work group needs this they need that and then if necessary or appropriate again community development staff we'll give that that background or whatever we need then we go back up boop assist us check in then at that point ideally they'll have some sort of the group will have some sort of idea in answering the charge if the charge was say is inclusionary zoning a good idea yeah there we go the work group says why say yes it is and it happened to be let's just the energy committee thinks this is a fantastic idea or the affordable housing group they think this is a great idea they go to that particular body and it's a public hearing on a proposal again if it is an actual bona fide proposal so then there is that level of oversight and public involvement so people can come to a warned meeting of a border commission that says here is what we're going to tell the pc people can say wow that's just great meanwhile whichever pc member is on the group tells the planning commission this is happening like the energy committee will be vetting this at this public hearing and i will be there as relevant member and then again if necessary the proposal for new regulation will be carried up as it were if it passes by the chair an appropriate person and just saying the energy committee is proposing to you this regulatory change or this zoning change or whatever you like the planning commission of course will know this well ahead of time but now it's it's official we're having ourselves a warned public hearing or series if necessary and then at that point loop public hearings proposal for new regulation as appropriate goes to the sx select board where of course they will hold the various public hearings or be part of the process as necessary so there's three three different places where the public themselves can be directly involved and like i said we've the reason we like this process is because no one will be no one will be surprised at any point it'll be the third time someone has seen something it won't be the what what has happened for in some instances where a zoner sorry the air conditioner just turned on here um where another another board or commission will say well okay that's good well if this is what you're doing it's okay but we would have liked to have been involved earlier this this is the earlier so there there is the workflow document thank you i have a question just ask boston go ahead batty gosh oh yeah actually it's a question for josh if that's okay yeah yeah yeah josh um yeah i i i'm following you i i just my concern is it's just a little flag red flag is how can we as a group or maybe i could do it somehow um in coordination with staff come up with a website to advertise you know to all the committees and to the public that that all these committees are going to be having these meetings that the public is welcome to please come and if they can't because a lot of these meetings are during the day when people are working i want us to have i'm suggesting we have some kind of website like that wilson guy that was here that said you know people can anybody can type in their ideas and and and if it's me that goes to the staff location and looks at the website every day or once a week to collect facts i'd be willing to do that and steer them let let me let me let me take this one josh um patty one of the things is we're not trying to we're trying to build this as we go so this isn't this is we're not telling the other committees how to do their work we're not telling other commissions how to do their work we're not telling them how to do public meetings we're not telling them how to include people they already do that i mean this is this is we're giving them an opportunity we're giving the public an opportunity that already exists um and we're letting this process grow as we go through this so this is our first time and if if we try to make it too complicated my fear is that if we try to make it too complicated too detailed too too process oriented we won't ever get through anything so we we're really looking for the committees zoning energy housing to incorporate this this asks into their normal workflow their normal processes we can always make adjustments as we go we can always make adjustments as as as we get through things to find out if there were gaps in the process but we're not really telling energy or zoning or housing how they need to conduct their business and i think that's one of the things we're trying not to tell them what to do this isn't we're asking for their help we're not telling them how to work so i i and i just was saying because some of the meetings i want to go to are 8 a.m like that um is it economic development you know if you work you know you can't as a public person forget planning commission i'm talking as an individual public person you know what if these people can't go that i was just suggesting a way to work with staff to help funnel people not to tell them what to do but just to funnel more public so the attend but even even that is have to be telling them what to do so let's let them let's let them have those ideas so we're not we're not controlling them and that's that's a piece we're trying to list them as a collaborative team member not as a as a you know somebody who does our bidding right this is so we're really looking to collaborate with them in their workflow and their processes and let's let's let's see what let's see what what's broken as we go through this and where there are opportunities to improve as we go through josh anything else uh no i think i think that pretty much covers it and i would i would just second what you said that you know for some of these these groups there isn't anything for the public to see yet because we've just again asked for their help and we've got a work group that'll be going and before anything filters up there's there's nothing to be done because like yeah we're not we're not making them do anything they may not have anything to say they may say you know what you're doing is just spiffy and we have no no changes to make whatsoever we don't know okay okay so folks for tonight we're coming up on eight um this sort of feels like a new kickoff since since patty's just come on board it's it's new it's a new process or we want to get you into this as well um i guess i'd like to suggest to to the commissioners and staff that we that we don't take any action tonight other than what josh has already started um and you'll have a report for the next round and i would actually like to say we use the next planning meeting to kick off the round of the turnstaff loose on on their their list of things and use that as sort of the new kickoff for our planning process that's my suggestion bestie when you say turnstaff loose on our list of things do you mean the the zoning updates or more of this um these planning projects or both the the list that you just asked us you did you want it you wanted to get the go ahead to to start on something on the commissioners to do this um is the zoning yep i i think we we get those cleaned up i mean if we target the next meeting to actually address them and sign off or whatever whatever you need from us um and we can use the update from josh at that point to actually maybe get the inter collaborative group sessions rolling um and get things moving and actually take some steps sorry i have a lot of questions i'm a newbie i have so many questions tom how does that sound for you or do you have do you want to tackle anything this evening tom me um no i'm good shoot uh yeah i'm i'm a little top of the bed i think we should get going on the work groups yeah okay patty i know there's a lot coming at you this evening is this this proposal to to feel okay at this stage to get the work groups fired up again and then tackle the a lot of my questions dusty thank you okay um who did i miss me josh i think we're on the same page with us yeah no we are um i'm like i said i'm interested to see what people say after having reviewed the initial conditions like the um i have gotten like i said a lot of input and i think we should do this i think we should do that and they're they're interesting suggestions i just really want to know that everyone is squared away with what's going on right now first that's all but yeah i think we're gonna we're gonna do some interesting things with some of these so katherine darin sharon i know sharon's virtual katherine's virtual does this feel reasonable at this point i mean do you want to pull anything out and address it this evening no i think i just a reminder that um if we do bump it we'll have more time to review the info i was telling you about from mr parkinson um i'm on board sounds sounds like a good next step okay then since we've covered everything else is there other business that you that staff wants to present to us i would like to just remind you that um i can't remember if i sent you a um a pc email but i did um put marcella players coming in for an added um storage building on 220 colchester road so i he's missed the first meeting in august anyhow i'm gonna once i get a chance to look at it i guess i'm going to try to try to put it on consent if i feel it meets that criteria otherwise um i might slide it on the second meeting um because we've missed the first meeting in in august so i think it's going to be relatively easy but i'll feel better about it once i you know as i said i review it so just i wanted to give you a heads up about that coming down the road i was going to go a different direction but since we want to wrap up i think that's a good good a good alternative okay uh darin nothing for me how the did you not have anything dusty quiet sorry sorry sorry all right with that in mind i haven't spending too much time in meetings i will uh take a motion to adjourn so moved second moved and seconded shoo and josh all those in favor hi hi