 Specifically, I didn't necessarily think that it would work particularly well with review of strategies, necessarily. But I mean, I think, assuming people have reviewed the strategies we can take that approach, I don't know if it's better or not. Okay. Well, I'll just I'll just hand it over to either one of you who wants to discuss the strategies and goals. Okay, that's cool. Let me share my screen really quickly. So we haven't gone over the strategies yet? Not as a group, not with the larger group. Okay. As a group, we did the aspirations and the goals because I really couldn't go through and compile the strategies until we had the goals, which we did. So then I went through and compiled them to make this draft for you guys to consider. And so just to take a kind of 30,000 foot view with this, the working group met, this is back in June, I feel like, and we worked through sort of the implementation strategies document and sort of reworked some of the structure there. And we collapsed things down to a single aspiration, reshuffled some of the goals to better group them under that single aspiration. And we generally left the strategies in place. And correct me if I'm wrong, Stephanie or Marcella, but I think our thinking was at the time that the strategies seem to be in pretty good shape. And so I think our preliminary thinking was, was there are probably in a good spot to be able to release to the public, and then we would do some further refining of the strategy strategies based on that public feedback at that point. So with that said, as we can walk through some of these strategies, like I said, I think that they're in pretty good shape. I think there's one strategy that I had some questions about, which is number 16, which is the development of a carbon sequestration management plan. I'm not sure if it is a medium resource type of undertaking, and it seems a little thin to me, but I'm certainly not opposed to leaving it in right now and see how what sort of public comments we get in response to it. Other than that, I think that generally the Parks Commission, the Conservation Commission, and the other groups that worked on this have done a pretty good job of identifying some pretty high value strategies. This significantly, I think the mapping strategies that are at the front end of this list, I think, you know, have a lot of value going forward. And it's really sort of a good springboard for all the other strategies that they want to pursue going forward. So I think that's again, that's a very broad sort of overview of I think the subcommittee's view of the strategy section right now. But if anybody wants to talk about any of this stuff in more detail, let's add that in. So I guess I can mention real quick, the first three obviously are all kind of tied together, the first one being the inventory. And then that leads to the mapping program in the development constraints mapping program. It was, there were a couple of ways this could have been boxed, you know, we talk about all the five P's, you know, you can do planning, permits, programs, policies, and projects. And so that we classify these as programs for the mapping programs, rather than a plan or a one time study, because they envision the natural resource inventory being an ongoing, having a cycle to it where they're routinely going through and updating the inventory. And as inventory updates, the mapping that comes out of it, whether it's a conservation map or a development constraints map would have this rolling update as well. So that's why we kind of boxed them as as programs rather than say a one time conservation map, and a one time development constraints map. That's why they're really classified as programs, but it could obviously go either way. But that's that's why it is classified the way it is. And then I think a lot of the other ones are kind of make sense. The carbon sequestration one that you pointed out was specifically targeted by Alec, the Parks Director. He felt that we have the parks and we have the land in Berlin, a lot of land in Berlin that we have forest management. And so he felt that with the energy plan, that we could get some credit for our forest management, especially if we adopt the forest management strategy that increases the amount of carbon being sequestered in those parks, that we could then help out our energy plan goals. I don't know what that is, but I do think it would probably take a study, which would take a little bit more money, you know, high, medium, low, low cost projects and they go up to $1,000. So it certainly wouldn't be that, which is why it's a medium resource. And I have as a medium priority, obviously could be adjusted. We have a lot of high and a lot of medium priorities and probably could benefit by having some of these just because it's low priority on the plan doesn't mean it's not important. It just means that as we prioritize what's the most important thing to get done first, it may be something that gets bumped down. But again, as you point out here, and it may be something we wait here from the public on and decide whether it needs some adjusting at that time. But that's the history of that one. That's a helpful explanation. It was just unclear to me, given what was on paper, what the sort of scope of the plan was, but that seems a lot more tailored to what the Parks Commission is sort of geared towards as opposed to a broader sort of city-wide frustration management plan, which I don't know what the overall scope would be. So I wonder if there would be, if it's more like, if we aren't sure what the forest management practices would be to maximize carbon sequestration, it might be good to like figure out what that would be first and then decide if that's what we want to do, depending on other priority uses for the forested area, given that at least some in the city have trails and stuff. I mean, I guess I'll just say that, you know, Alex is way smarter about this stuff than I certainly am, so I'll defer to his judgment and what he thinks is possible. Maybe we should just call it a program instead of a plan. Not so then do a more manageable sort of feeling. Yeah, I guess I just, I don't know enough about what would come out of that. It feels like we're already, my assumption is that what would come out of that plan in terms of strategies would be already things we were doing. I don't know what else we could do that we're not already thinking about. I guess that's the point of assessing it, but I'm not sure what those things would be, like conserve more land or other things that we're already doing. Yeah, I think it's supposed to come down to how we manage the plan, how we manage our forest land. I think they're, it's not simply a matter of not cutting down the trees, but if you manage the trees and manage the forest in a certain way, then you can end up with more carbon being stored. Yeah, I think I'm not completely familiar with how it works either. Maybe we may just want more information on like, maybe if we, we could probably wait on this, but if we wanted to decide, if we wanted to change its priority level, it might be good to understand what the current priorities for those forested areas are and then how compatible that would be for the forest or for carbon sequestration. I don't think it's bad like in and of itself would be interesting data that I know. I just don't know if we're like prepared to change our priorities because I don't know what those priorities are. My thing to get this point is, is like, let's put it out for public comments. Yeah. In fact, we can circle back around, Alec, get a better handle on what the thought process is on it and we can make whatever adjustments we need to based on that and any public input. I think that makes sense. Okay. Are we feeling good about this? I don't know if we've been, how consistent we've been, but in some cases we've been, I think we've been approving these just to, not necessarily to approve them that they won't be changed in the future, but just that they're done. I don't know if we want to do that or just agree that it's done and I can go through and move it up next. Does anybody feel inclined to make a motion or just say, okay? I'm sure I'll move. Are we moving approval of the goals and strategies or? It's whatever you want. I mean, I think that the thinking right now, I mean, the aspirations and goals we've sort of settled on, we're looking specifically at the strategies piece right now and I think it's just we're deciding on sort of moving it along, sort of handing it off to Mike to kind of get the ball rolling, get it into the public domain for comments and whatnot. Yeah, I'm fine moving approval of the strategies to get to the next step. Okay. Before we do that, I just want to give everyone a last chance if there are any other strategies that they wanted to point out or to discuss more. Okay. So everybody's super comfortable. Okay. So we have a motion from Arianne to approve the goals, aspirations and strategies. Do we have a second? A second. Second. I think Aaron, I think I had one change on the goals. You can click over to the goals tab. I don't think anyone will have an issue with this. I struck what used to be number three. We had approved it before, but when I went through and did all of the strategies, there really weren't strategies supporting this goal. And I think it's something that we do anyways. I don't think we need to have a goal that states we're going to maintain strong relationships with our with groups and organizations. So I think we can remove that as a goal because it didn't have strategies just so people don't think I'm doing things without kind of letting you guys know that you guys had talked about approving that goal. But it'll go away. I think they'll still do it, but it just won't be in the plan. Yeah, I forgot we had discussed this a little bit at the last meeting, but that's the one we didn't have a quorum. So thanks, Mike. Okay. So we can proceed. All in favor of approving the goals, aspirations, goals and strategies as they are now. Say hi. Hi. Hi. You post. Okay. So that lets us move on to the chapter and Aaron, take it back. So this was the document that I shared last week. I think we had discussed the working group had thought that maybe a more efficient way to go about or just an efficient way to go about doing this would be to just put it out there, give everybody a week, new review. This is just the reworking of the chapter text. Mike had done a first draft. I think it was structured pretty well. Marcel and I had just gone in and made some sort of line level changes across the board. The initial first draft is still in the is in the drive as a separate document. I think there's ways that you can look and see what the changes are. I came around to do that in Google Docs, but long story short, haven't received any comments or any suggested edits on this document. So I'm going to assume that we're generally okay with it, but obviously if anybody wants to talk about it, I think Mike did a really good job of structuring the chapter text and sort of getting the big stick issues out on paper. So there wasn't a whole, there wasn't a lot structurally that I felt like we needed to do, which was good. So yeah, that's what we have. So I didn't leave any comments or made any changes when I went through it. I was just like giving over it just for the purposes of the discussion. I think there are some little typo things throughout just that I didn't fix them as I went. I guess I was thinking that other people were going to be in there. I just wanted to flag that for whoever. Yeah, like with a lot of working documents, it became sort of a bloodbath of red line changes. So sometimes those little typos work their way in there, and I just, nobody sort of worked those out. Obviously you can go in there and shore that stuff up. I just find the sort of, if they're sort of larger structural or sort of conceptual issues that we wanted to talk about. Okay. I guess I can mention my one comment in there, although I think there's probably not a whole lot to do about it now. I was just thinking that we have the map section in each of these chapters below, maps and tables. And I didn't, I just didn't want it to be repetitive for the sake of gravity because we're trying to keep these briefs. So I was just thinking if we did have the map section at the bottom, which I think we, sorry, midway, which I think we will, if we wanted to put a couple of examples up towards the introductory part, I think that would be fine. I think we should just keep them like super brief, like kind of images and captions underneath, rather than in paragraph form. Yeah, that sounds great to me. Agreed. Yeah, I think I was hoping when we do the website version that those maps that are in that third section actually kind of get inserted into the document in certain relevant places, we wouldn't repeat them. I don't entirely think, in some cases, maybe we have to have a separate section for just some maps if we've just got them, but I'm hoping that they'll be more integrated into that page. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I think it would like, if they were kind of integrated into the near the appropriate paragraph, it would help just visually look nice and give, you know, nice examples, break up the text. So I think that's great. Oh, and there is one thing we did not fix, I'm seeing right now. It's right there where I've highlighted. I can try to figure out which is more appropriate. It may be that both are appropriate and we'll just have to pick one, but I can try to ask. Okay, I guess we're ready to pass this one along too. Mike, how are you feeling about it? I mean, I've always been good with you guys going, your edits that you guys have going through them. So I didn't see anything that was really major changes anyways when I read through it. I actually put the other one kind of side by side to go and see most of the edits were relatively minor. I don't think substantively we did a whole lot. It's mostly just kind of wording and stylistic stuff. So yeah, thanks again, Mike, for a good solid first draft. It's very helpful to have your perspective on what is important to capture. So you're good, Mike, you don't need anything more? No. And I think, like I said, I think as we get going, we're going to have other times we can get in here. Once we've put all this together, we're going to all have another time to go through it and start to see where things don't line up. So far, I've been pretty happy with you know, we've been able to meet our target lengths for the most part, you know, trying to keep it relatively short, trying to keep it targeted. So I think we're doing, I don't know, I think I've been happy with with the way the chapters have gone so far with the first drafts and then the edits. I think it comes out really comes out well. Okay. Do we have any more planning commission things to discuss about it? But one thing I'm just thinking, sorry, thinking out loud, not to belabor this, but I was just making sure. So we pulled out the goal about maintaining relationships. They don't believe anything that specific is written in here. So I think that still works. And then the implementation, I don't think we get as specific as like the forestry plan either. So if that were to change later, I think there would have to be a significant change to the goals and the implementation strategies. And like once we get public input for us to have to come back and change this section. But good to just keep in mind. Do you get that? Yes, that's a good thing to think about. Yeah, I should have quick search for anything involving sequestration. Looks like it's not mentioned. Yeah, I don't think so. And we talk a lot about volunteers, which like implies relationship building, but we're okay. I mean, it's all broad brushstroke stuff. Yeah, but it's all can it's it's couched well and you know the underlying goals and strategies. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't I didn't try and I haven't in any of them tried to have the a recitation of every strategy. I tried to hit these. These are the biggest most important ones. And there are going to be some other ones, you know, even like in historic resources, there may be a study of something that is a lower party that doesn't get mentioned. And I think that's fine. In my view, I thought that was fine just to give people the highlights of the most important strategies that we're working on. Okay, great. By the way, thanks. The thanks to the working group for all the work you put in on this. Okay, do we have a motion to approve the chapter as it is? I'll move to approve the chapter. I can second. Second by Marcella. Those in favor of approving the chapter. Say hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? Okay. Chapter approved. Need to through that. So it looks like we have quite a bit of time left, but only have one thing more on the agenda. I think I'll briefly, just to be able to time anyway, I skimmed over the comments from the chair part, but there is one thing I should make everyone aware of and that's that I'm meeting with this staff person from CJAC, probably tomorrow. So CJAC is the community justice, the social and economic justice advisory committee. They had a report from a consultant or they were working with a consultant to do a report and they've got that back. And I guess some of the feedback from the consultant is that there's big shocker. There's social and economic justice issues, maybe surrounding housing. So they want to talk about what the housing plan looks like a little bit. And so I'm going to have kind of a preliminary meeting. We haven't gone over housing yet. So it might be a little bit premature, but I'll try to let Shayna, who's the staff member, know about how I think it's going to go and then maybe I'll circle back to CJAC once we've done more with the housing. But some of this discussion or some of the stuff in that report might inform when we get to working on the housing chapter soon. I think that'll probably be our next chapter. Yeah. Yeah. So housing's coming up. CJAC's going to be updated. That's it though. So the next thing on the, go ahead, Arna. Well, I was just going to ask, I feel a little bit lost in terms of, can we just review what needs to still, what chapters we still need to review and then what the process is after that a little? That would be helpful for me. Yeah. Good question. If, unless Mike has it off the top of his head, I can pull up the Google Drive. What we have on the Google Drive, and Mike, feel free to interrupt me if you've got better. We have Arts and Culture chapter, which we have not worked on, which was kind of optional. It's not a statutory mandated one. It's not one that's been done before, but we had had discussions about the need for that. There's a Community Services chapter, which is a similar thing. I don't think that's statutory, but I think we do have some materials for that. Yeah. Community services would be a requirement. Okay. And that's, it's got a lot of moving parts and I'm still working on it. So we did parks or we did some preliminary look at the parks plan, but we also need to do recreation, cemetery, senior center, and then one more. So that our Community Services department has, I think, four, five pieces to it. Okay. So that's goodness. It's not as small as I first imagined. It's a little bit of a big area. So those two to do. We've not done economic development. That's a big one coming up. We've done energy. We have not done governance, but a lot of that's going to be city council, I believe. We've done historic resources. That's not required. Okay. But we may do it, but it's not required. Yeah. And I mean, I'm of the attitude, like the more the better. I mean, sorry, which one's not required? Governance is not a requirement. So yeah, I mean, my attitude is it's nice to have these extra ones in there because it's it's guidance for city council, right? So having having some documents have some planning in place for some of these other areas is better than not having it. Historic resources we've done, housing we're doing next. There's the implementation plan. That was actually the first one that we did. That was the little bit of that white paper on butterfly rainbows and unicorns. And, you know, we're going to organize our plan. So that's kind of actually is kind of the kickoff of all of the other implementation plans. Land use, which is going to be big for us. Natural resources is done public safety. We have not done knock on wood, but I don't anyway, whatever, it's one way to do six. That's that's six chapters. Transportation we've done and utilities we've not done. So there's so there's seven chapters that we have on the Google Drive to do. And we have done one to three, if you count implementation plan for five of them so far. So not quite halfway. And some of the chapters that we still have to do are things where we're not able to lean on an existing city committee as much like arts and culture and land use in particular are going to be more work for us. Because we won't we won't have that. There's some people on arts, right? And then we can get Montpelier alive to help us with culture. And we obviously there's more than just Montpelier alive. But the what we have for arts and culture is we have a public we have a public art commission. Yeah, I've talked to them a couple of times. But as far as I know, they don't have anything like directly to feed us. But they definitely we definitely have them as resource for input. I actually threw together. It's probably I don't know if it's been a year, but it's probably was about a year. I threw together kind of an outline where I went and spoke with some local artists and things to get an idea of what some of the public perceived need is. So we have we have that outline we had and I've had discussions with the public arts chair at that time as well. We have that. But yeah, there's still there's still more haven't I haven't been in touch with Montpelier alive about it. So does that answer your question looks like we've got about seven more to go five down. And then once we've approved all these, we will put it out on the website for public comment. Is that our plan? Yeah, the plan is we'll start developing the web pages. Exactly how that's going to work. We kind of lost a lot of our funding with the way the 2020 kind of went through. But we still are I'm still hopeful we'll be able to get somebody to help us kind of put these things into the separate web pages and start to build this out so that way we can start to get public comment on. There'll be the chapter which will kind of get inserted as a page with an attachment to the, you know, to the more of the Excel Excel table would be something people could go kind of click on to get get down to that level. Right. Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you that answered my question. Just have a reminder of where we are for me. Yeah, and a number of these I have like both the housing pieces I think are in there. So the number of chapters that are ready for review. I was working today on economic development. And I've been trying to work on some of the community services to start to get those wrapped up public safety. They they have they've had a public safety committee for the past year. Their report just came out last week. So I really haven't been trying to get to kind of get in the way of what they're working on right now. And with the new police chief, I just was kind of giving a little bit of room for them to kind of get what they're doing get caught up. I think they had to hire about four or five different police officers at the same time. So they've been pretty busy just getting their own stuff done. But I think I think once I get to sit down with them, it won't take long to develop their plan because they already have so much background information. It's not like I've got to find out from them what their mission is. They've they're an organization that is very mission driven. So I don't think it's going to be hard to to develop. I think it's just a matter of getting all the pieces because we've got a police, we've got fire, we've got the emergency dispatch, and we have community justice. So we kind of have these four different entities that kind of have to get fit into that chapter. There's also the the new oversight board, right? Yeah, I don't know if is that a permanent board or was that an ad hoc one time board to do this plan? And I should probably know that answer, but I don't. I don't know. I talked to the mayor at some point about it, but she didn't. I don't think she specified. But but I was just I was just saying that there may be a stakeholder that we could use. Yeah, there's a couple of them. And so I've been working on them in in there. So if people pick through and open them, you might see some some pieces of things that are in draft form. Because I've been working on utilities and facilities is actually pretty close to being done as well. We have a working group for economic development and we and I'm on it. We have not actually. So I'll try to schedule something with that group. It's good to know we have other a few other things to look at before we get to that. Yeah, when you do that, try to invite me in because I think there's a lot to the economic development that needs to get adjusted. The original one was done by MDC, the Montpelier Development Corp. And they're no longer in existence. So I've been kind of going through that's why I've been going through to try to do another revision of the existing draft because I don't think it's relevant anymore. So Okay, I'll try to set up a meeting with that group like in October. I don't think we'll need it before that because we that's only going to be two or three commission meetings away. Hopefully I'll have a draft by then for you, something for you guys to chew on. Does anyone here like remember if you're on that? I want to say they're John or Aaron's on it, but maybe Barb is the other person. Oh, maybe I should have led with this. Yeah, Mike knows. I guess I guess I didn't prepare my comments very well because I guess there were some things and now a stream of consciousness. Barb's planning to leave uh the planning commission. So reappointments reappointments come in October and I think she's just not going to be asked to be reappointed. So there's going to be an open seat and some of you may have also gotten notices from Mary Smith that may have said you're due to get reappointed. So if we didn't get those, are we not due to get reappointed? I'll double check to make opposite. Like half of us are this every other year, right? Yeah, no, I think you and I are both in the clear this year. Okay, great. I think maybe Arianna is too. I think I remember correctly. I don't remember. Like a long time ago when we talked about that. Last fall or something. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, no, I this is a foreign info. I'm just going to keep showing up until somebody tells them. Right. You have to show up until you find a replacement that I wasn't that I wasn't reappointed. Somebody let me know. I didn't receive a letter or anything, but I actually don't know. Planning commission time passes really weirdly. Anyway, I think I've been here for like ever and it feels like I've not been here long. But can you pull that for us somewhere, Mike? Does that live somewhere? The whose terms are up when? Yes. I thought it was on the website. Yeah, I think it is. I'll see if I can find it really fast. No, it doesn't have the dates. Okay. And I love that we don't even know if we're even on the planning commission. We're all still here. We have no idea. We're like, I don't know. Maybe I'm not even on. I don't know. Maybe they replaced me. I don't know. No one else showed up. We're like robots to keep doing our task because no one told us that it was pointless to stop. Yeah. Maybe we should find out about that. Maybe just, well, yeah, okay. Will you find out about that for us, Mike? Yeah, I was just trying to do a little bit of... Doesn't look like it's publicly available, but whoever sent the letter to Barville, how does finding new people kind of go about happening? Do we just post it? When will we have it? When can we reach out to people? I think Mary will be doing the posting for it. And if you have people who are interested, you should have them let Mary know. Or let Mary know, and I can forward it up to Mary. So we can make sure that they get on the list of... Because I think there's an application you're supposed to fill out a little thing of who you are and why you're interested in participating or volunteering. Yeah, there is. Okay. And so that should happen now. Yeah, because I think the appointment is coming up in October. Okay. So, okay, here we go. Planning Commission expires in 21 is John Adams, Erin, and Ariane. It looks like Barb was actually good for another year. So she'll be... It expires in September, so I was wrong. So it actually is coming up very, very soon. Wait, what? Well, I'm looking at who's in the annual report. So it looks like it's supposed to be John, Erin, and Ariane, and not Barb. But it sounds like Barb is going to be resigning anyways. Did Barb get a letter? I don't know. It sounded like it. I'm pretty sure I was contacted last fall to be reappointed for two more years. And I did the application. Maybe the dates are wrong. I'll double check the dates. I think what happens is the reappointment, like applications are due in the fall, but the actual reappointment doesn't happen until January. There's something like that. Well, I think they had readjusted it with a charter change. We had some charter issues for two years. Nice knowing you all. I guess I'm not going to be around. I didn't get a lot of... Yeah, I will definitely follow up with Mary to find out what the story is with everybody's reappointments. Maybe her official list is different than what's in the annual report. Okay. And I just looked up what Barb said. I don't think that she received an individual notification. I think she just... She saw that it's... that the... There had already been posted something from the city about looking for planning commission, people interested in planning commission. I guess in anticipation of these other seats in case maybe someone didn't decide to just try to stay or if the city council hates somebody. I guess I shouldn't be flipping about that. But so I think that's what Barb saw. I don't think that her term is supposed to be out, but maybe she's planning her design anyway. Is there a city council like an agenda coming up that's going to have planning commission appointments at it? That was a little bit of what I was looking to see. It doesn't look like there's a meeting coming up this week. So that probably means their next meeting's not till next week. So the agenda won't be out till the end of this week. But I will let everyone know if there's... If it's on the agenda, I can let them know to hold off or to make sure that all of you guys have a chance to apply. I thought they were going to send out information to everybody who's already on the boards. But I think one of the differences is, you know, I think three years ago we had Jamie and then two years ago we had Jasmine and then this year we have Mary. And I think that the fact that we've gone through a few administrative people, we've lost a couple of our processes that we usually got used to simply because people aren't familiar with all of the things that we used to do. So I may just have to follow up to make sure that she's notifying everybody. Okay, yeah, thanks. We will at least have one open seat. So if you do know anybody who is interested or might be interested, certainly let them know. We got to make sure we let John know. Yeah, I'll let all of you know what the status is of everybody. So you'll know if you're good or not for this year. And I would think it would be a good if you do, if your seats up and you're reapplying, it probably would also be good to go to that City Council meeting at least for the appointment part. Yeah, and they do have, they do go hybrid. So if you are in a position where you would like to just go through and make sure you meet with them and talk to them, you can always let them know you're going to be on Zoom and they can get you in that way. Even though it's a live meeting, you can still zoom in from home if you have childcare or other things that make that difficult to do. Okay, thanks everybody for the good questions and discussion. Feels like that was we stumbled upon some important stuff there. Okay, so I'm going to move along with the agenda. So we need to just discuss a way to review some proposed changes to the zoning bylaws that came from the public. You know, we get these time from from time to time and you know, we don't want it to distract from city plan work because we're making pretty good progress with that but like we can't afford to lose too much time. So Mike had mentioned us doing a working group type approach and then in hopes of it shortening the amount of time that we use a planning commission meeting to discuss it, I thought that maybe more people than just a subgroup would want to be involved. So I was thinking we could just schedule a different planning commission meeting on a different day that's posted, handle it completely at that meeting. That way we won't have to kick it like if it were a working group, we'd have to kick it over to a regular meeting. But if we just had a meeting, we wouldn't have to do that and obviously we just need just a quorum. So it's not like if there's a problem with someone not be able to go or if they're not interested or whatever, then it's not going to kill it. So those are those are the two kind of ideas floating around. I think it's tidy to just get it out of the way and having a side meeting. But what do you guys think? Yeah, I'm okay with that. With what? Oh, with that having and I agree that it's sort of like a special or from what I understand it like a special planning commission not on a Monday night so we don't interrupt the forward flow on the city plan but we review zoning changes and as long as we have a quorum like you know somebody is interested they don't have to come but probably most of us are interested in reviewing zoning ordinance changes. I like the subcommittee approach like put out there just because I think it makes a couple of things is one if you're going to have it's going to wind up having some people have to be in a side meeting anyway. Those that are really invested and interested in those zoning issues can be part of that subgroup. If you really do a deep dive with fewer cooks in the kitchen I think have a more focused sort of look at those zoning changes and then make a recommendation to the larger group and be able to sort of give a presentation as to what the working group recommendation is and the rest of us you know that are just sort of a part of the larger group and the regular meeting can ask any follow-up questions and we can have that discussion but I think I think it usually helps to have a subcommittee of folks that have taken a really close look at these things and it's sort of looked at it from a variety of angles and then bring it to the commission as opposed to having everybody just have a side meeting and everybody's sort of getting up to speed upon the zoning change all together just feel like in those instances we spend a lot of time just sort of sifting through and trying to figure out what exactly it is. Whereas I think if we have a subcommittee I mean obviously those folks are going to have that get up to speed on it as well but when we have the larger vote amongst the group you've got a really sort of well focused and well understood group of you know a group of people that really have a firm understanding of what the changes and have recommendation I just think that's a little more efficient but I don't I'm not opposed to the other idea either I mean I think that has merit too I just think the working group approach just it sort of helps protect the people that are that are that want to do that work can certainly join the subcommittee those that are not a lot less interested don't have to be part of that for a special meeting. Yeah one concern I have about doing like doing working groups on things like this is that it's just it seems actually overall inefficient like in theory it sounds like maybe there's some like advantages to it but what you end up doing in reality is just having the same discussion twice and just having I don't think it's too we don't have that big of a group where I don't I don't feel like it's uh too many cooks in the kitchen to have like a to have six people instead of four people in the discussion and especially for avoiding having the discussion twice. I think today's experience with the way we have had the working group do the work make a presentation to the group today and it lasted 20 minutes to sort of show that it's not an inefficient approach but I get what you're saying. But I actually don't think that the approach is that efficient that we took today I think that a lot of there was a lot of people time spent on it more more than normal um if it would be helpful to see specifically what we're looking at first so we know I is it do we have like the excel file spreadsheet where we're going through like we've done in the past of different specific areas that have come up within mic shop like what are where are we at with these changes right now. Right now they're being reviewed by by Meredith I I collect in the mall together we've got some final proofing to do but there are a series or a set of small map changes or larger map changes depending on how you're looking at it. So that's that's one group are kind of the map change groups there are um a set of new regulations so we've got some new plane unit development rules that are general as you know we've got a whole bunch of these very specific new neighborhood um and what we have is some requests that people just go through and say well we we just need some basic um either what we call um condominium type PUDs or just a general PUD so we drafted some PUD language that's just general there are no density bonuses just if you want to cluster some lots you've got the ability to do it without having to do the really detailed ones which give density bonuses and other benefits so we've got some language there that has to be reviewed and then we've got a lot of these little technical ones that have come up where for administrative reasons you know how we how we define um accessory structures so generally if something is a part of the structure you know it's not accessory um so you've got a porch the porch is part of the structure but if you look in one part decks even though they're attached to the structure are considered accessory structures so they can meet the accessory structure setback even though they're attached to the so we kind of had some these definition things where it's like well technically if it's just the deck then it's it's accessory if you put the roof over it then it becomes part of the structure um and we just had to make sure that we were consistent on on how we defined it because in one part we talk about accessory structures in another part we talk about principal structures and that starts to become really important when we start getting into things like somebody wanting to put an accessory apartment in a garage and then you're like okay now we're starting to get to a little bit more gray area because now you know we really have to start talking about whether that garage becomes a primary structure because it's got primary uses and those types of pieces so we just had to go through those those are little technical things that will need that's one of the few places that need to get cleaned up front yard setbacks or front yard fences or another one that have had some issues so we just have a few little corrections I think those are pretty easy we can get through those pretty quick I think the the longer ones are really just an explanation of why and then there's one policy one that's in there and it comes down to setbacks over in the farm and factory which is over by past the roundabout as you're heading out a route to an east Montpelier road there that there's a whole set of buildings over in there that are where Cabot and all these industrial buildings are and they're all zero line setback to the old rail line that was there and the setback in that district is actually like 20 feet they're like well everybody's zero line and yet it's going to be 20 feet can we be zero was the question from the property owner and and we can talk about that and I don't think I would recommend zero I think I'd recommend five feet but I think there's some changes we could make to the setbacks in that area so we had a couple of those little little ones along those lines but most of these again as I said they tie back to people who've made specific requests about projects and so we've got a couple of them that are that are pending but I don't think it would take more than one meeting if this is not as Stephanie you probably you know and you guys remember going through some of these or the first set of fixes that we went through probably had 100 fixes then the next set kind of went through and had 50 or 60 and then you know now we're down to these much smaller lists of of things that I didn't I haven't put it into an excel table because it just fit onto a memo um outlining 10 I think it was 10 changes that we had identified so I mentioned this before Mike but I I think I am interested in for the for the density related things to for us to to maybe take a look at doing something even broader to to address the density requests that we're getting now but to also look at something broader than that to reassess how we how we use density um it's and it's because in my time here I've seen people get worked up over density because they think that it's a proxy for like the character of their neighborhood but that's not what it is and so people don't understand it very well and then we're always having to adjust it because it is stopping like certain development from taking place that we that's desirable otherwise so um I would be interested in maybe taking a broader look when it comes to those those parts and it sounds like yeah this list of 10 it sounds like yeah we could definitely fill up a meeting with those things just one one thing about the discussion about the type of meeting that we would want to have for this um just thinking out loud a little bit in terms of contrast like comparing and contrasting the way that we did today's meeting with the subcommittee and the presentation and um talking about targeted things versus the way we approached like maybe transportation or energy where we kind of went through the whole chapter together I'm feeling like there may be a nice way to kind of take the best of both of those two things because for me it was like I understand what you're saying about like okay we all get together for two hours and we spend we all spend two hours or we all get together for two hours and like a few other folks do extra hours of work prior so like in the end that might be more hours but I I am finding that if the meeting structure that we set up sort of incentivizes no prior work on anyone's behalf and we walk through everything together um I personally have a much harder time keeping focused and fully understanding what's going on and so I'm feeling like sort of really strongly encouraged or mandatory pre-work that's sort of well-defined would be really helpful and would help us not go through the line by line silly stuff in the meeting it would keep us much more targeted and engaged in the meeting it would require more hours I think but I think the quality would be better especially in the meeting um because I have a I feel like a couple of those meetings before when we were just going through I was just really struggling because I think we all were struggling I'm just gonna say we were probably all struggling so um I feel like there might be a way we can thread this to make it work I agree that this could probably be handled in a meeting but I would want everybody and myself included to come with targeted ways to discuss rather than just be like okay Mike take it away from the top and explain all of this because I'm not going to be able to do that in one meeting not for something as even if this is small small potatoes in zoning world I'm not going to be able to do that on my own in the meeting so yeah I mean yeah I'd like to talk about this too but hopefully I don't sound like defensive or touchy or anything but I like the walkthrough approach for one thing it's tried and true like legislators use this um there is an assumption that people are going to prepare ahead of time and so the walkthrough doesn't exist just to catch everyone up to where they should be so like I've never had that assumption or walking through for that reason but the the walkthrough does like it does take some time but it makes people consider everything as they go if you've done research ahead of time and you have your points like tonight we just said do you do you have some points you want to bring up and I don't think that that's as conducive for discussion and I don't think it's as high a quality I'll be honest it's if people didn't do work ahead of time then they had nothing to say tonight and they didn't read it and it's definitely lower quality with the walkthrough at least people have the opportunity to um stop and and because things are drawn out as you go I don't think it takes that much time and I think it is more thorough I also think it's more efficient because you're not you're having individuals work it on things in the background but but you're not having extra meetings with the subgroup on I mean the subgroup stuff we've done is fine but but the reason why the things work tonight is because we've you guys had several meetings to like to put it into shape but what I've been doing with the walkthrough is I've been going through myself and and rewriting the chapters and getting them up to shape also so I'm not seeing a huge difference other than we just have people have fewer opportunities to like really stop at every point and to concentrate on things as far as some of our conversations that get hung up I don't see that as relating to the approach we've taken I see that as relating to any individual on the planning commission can choose to be pedantic and and tie things up if they want to and if you're walking through it maybe you're giving them opportunities to do that but I mean I don't know I think some some preparation ahead of time is some self-restraint are actually like the things we're getting at right yeah it might be I just I think there we maybe could be I think we're probably saying the same thing I think there maybe could be a little bit more of a emphasis put on what you know what is effective prior work for each meeting um you know what what is ineffective walkthrough like walking through the chapters and doing typos I mean that's painful that's not helpful yeah that's why I started yeah that's why I started like just doing it and so that we're not doing that well yeah which I mean but still that puts a lot of extra work on you particularly and then you know I can't read your edits in the middle of the meeting while we're going through it you know it's it's I don't know I feel like there's there's some like we can thread it I think we can thread it I get I get what you're saying about the benefits of of having a robust discussion and maybe they're maybe we were particularly like tonight and there's a way to beef it up a little bit um based on what we did tonight but not go quite so deep um as some of the previous meetings I I think um has there been any problematic meetings since I've started um doing the edits beforehand can you remind me which one which ones those were the last two or three I did and before that we were um kind of like not as structured about it I mean we we were still like doing some word smithing ahead of time but but not as um not to the same extent because I don't I think our chapter walkthroughs since I started writing them like we actually haven't had that many comments and I understand that it's hard for people to read it that's why that's one reason why I do read it out loud so that people know what uh what all of that track changes stuff is saying yeah it's better I still think reading I am on the side of reading the chapter in the meeting is not not helpful I think helpful for strategies helpful for goals potentially helpful for some of the zoning stuff I'm not really sure I've done a whole lot of that with this group myself um just because we haven't had too much of it but um I don't know the chapter itself I don't find I don't find that to be it was better after you know when we did the pre-editing but um still pretty painful yeah I mean it's it's not something that occurred to me as like something that's like a bad thing because I mean in in the legislature they they read the bill line by line to the committee it's not to say that the committee can't read it's just you know what's done yeah I don't know I mean I think I think for purposes of this discussion it seems to me that there's like a basic threshold question that used to be answered before even getting in and stuff which is like if everybody here is interested in having a meeting to go through these zoning changes we can we can adopt a broader like let's have a separate meeting approach but if not everybody wants to do that and there's only certain people that are interested I think a subcommittee approach lends itself a little bit better to the process so does everybody on this call want to have another meeting just to deal with the zoning piece and then have a sort of meeting or you some of us not want to do that okay well yeah Aaron Aaron well the conversation we were having though was like it was more it was more broad for like purposes of future meetings to see if like people are unhappy with the way we're doing city plan and like walking through it so we are kind of having two conversations at once but again it was worth it but that that conversation is worth having so I don't want to just like drop it and and interrupt it okay the agenda item is whether or not we have a subcommittee approach or something else with respect to the zoning issues yeah and I probably brought that so forgive me for that I and on the zoning issue I think that is sufficiently technical in terms in my world that I would appreciate having sort of some targeted pre-work whether it's on a subcommittee or not and then but I know I'll benefit from hearing like fairly detailed stuff from Mike at that meeting I suppose in my experience so far the chapters for the plan and something like zoning are kind of different for me yeah that's good to hear this I agree with that completely yes I think that's also the approach that I would want cool so yeah it could be it could be subcommittee depending on how many of us care to do that part I just um wait Stephanie can you can you tell me the part that you're yeah agreeing with yeah that I think for the purposes of zoning and those changes it makes more sense to have that more detailed overview and I it's also hard for me to read the chapters line by line in the follow group it's just hard for me to follow that it's not the way that I think it learned so I it's nice to have someone who is reviewing it a little bit more detailed we should all be looking at it still and then providing those comments but but I think yeah I agree for the purposes of the zoning that's that's a little more particular and there might be some things where Mike will say well this isn't really substantive it's it's pretty minor and maybe we don't have to dig into those as much but for the bigger things I think it's helpful to have a broader conversation with everybody at a more detailed level maybe I'm maybe I'm not following very well some but uh I'm hearing you say that not a huge fan of walking through the chapters right and for the purposes of the zoning discussion were you were you all right so I was actually where the other no I actually have the same thought Aaron did which is if we all want to do it let's all do it and if only three people want to do it then only three people do it but I think the threshold is over three right there's a corner I suspect that we all want to do it which is why I'm fine having this other broader discussion to see like what other people's preferences are but say I if you're interested in talking about zoning apart from a regular planning commission meeting I yeah I mean that was my assumption all along so it so it looks like it makes sense for us to just have a meeting because everyone wants to be there anyway could we um to the extent it's possible uh can we be really could we be specific about what kind of pre-work would be most effective I'm a little worried that if I just read the changes I will be like I don't know what's going on if there's um any specific yeah specific stuff I can read that would be I mean Mike will have some materials ahead of time the way this goes is I mean he's gonna he's gonna give us the background in meeting like like like he's already he's already he's already done that for most of these things he just did a little while ago well yeah but I don't I don't know how much like there's not a whole lot of pre-work other than Mike does for this kind of stuff I put all the canons of statutory construction you know just something I haven't read already I put I the memo I put together which has the 10 changes it goes through with an explanation of a little bit of the background of what it's about and why the request so the only thing that's really going to be the kind of the reading the actual zoning changes the the two PUD sections because it's just you know there's there's a request to be able to do it so I've developed two sets of language so they're just chunks that are separate from the memo so that'll be the only one that's going to be kind of this this is this is what it says and this is why it's broke down but I really haven't gone into explain it so that one I might have to go a little more line by line but the other ones I think like the three map changes I think are pretty straightforward once I explain what is the basis behind it you know I've taken a screenshot snap of the zoning map to kind of show what it is today and what they propose to change it to a lot of times it's an area like one of them's Harrison Ave which is over off of Liberty hooks over to Maine on using Whittier so it's just little but it's all residential three on all sides of it but it's residential six and a resident on the street can't do a project because they don't the if they're residential three they could do the project and they're like look we're residential three on Liberty on Loomis on Main Street all over the place everything around us is all residential three why can't we be residential three so that's one of the proposals okay that that sounds just for an example it gives you a little bit of a context I can give you that and I don't think there's much else that you know that sounds perfect two other changes like that I kind of explain why they they want to change most of the technical changes end up being self-explanatory yeah okay perfect thank you and Mike if we if um I just I just don't want to I don't want to make it seem like I'm trying to like pull something when it comes to it I'm trying to get everyone noticed so like I'd like to get rid of density in some of these places I mean do we need to do anything ahead of time to prepare for a discussion like that like would it be helpful for me to write something up and send it out or um I think to the extent that we get I mean that's not the first your idea isn't the first one that's kind of come out of the planning commission uh John has proposed removing parking as a requirement and we've had some lively policy debates on that as well so um I don't have anything prepared on that so I think if we want to change something I think we'd have to at least have have an idea written up of what okay yeah thinking and if you want you and I can sit down and talk separately offline to kind of go through and say you know to really drill into it and then I can give you some ideas that would go through and say well you know here's one approach we could take um and then see what the planning commission wants to do with it okay yeah we can we can plan to do that it's it's it's not technically difficult the thing I'm talking about it would be you know neighborhood by neighborhood just having certain neighborhoods not having a zoning cat or a density cap we already do that in some neighborhoods as hopefully everyone already knows um just doing it in more neighborhoods that are that are close to the downtown yeah and I think that's just a matter of making sure we have our bulk and massing requirements pretty close to what we think is appropriate because I think that was you know I think we've had this conversation before the idea is that if you've got the bulk and massing of structures then whether that building that you see there has um four three bedroom apartments or eight studios shouldn't make that much of a difference the building is of identical size and character um it may have some differences in that you may potentially expect to have more you know cars but I'm not sure that would be true if you're renting a three bedroom you may have you know multiple adults with multiple cars it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be families renting those three bedrooms um you know I I lived in a three bedroom um and it was me and two of my buddies from college so that resulted in three cars even though it was one three bedroom apartment um so I don't think it necessarily those those translate straight through but the idea is from a character of the neighborhood standpoint um we look at bulk and massing rather than the density um because the density would say you can do the smaller number of two and three bedroom apartments but you can't do the eight studios um that's the basic premise yeah um okay yeah you and I can can maybe work together a little bit on so that so that there's more something more developed so do you want to think about maybe a separate meeting that we try to fit in in early October set the thought I can get you everything in advance and you guys can have a couple of weeks to chew on it uh yeah at least September early October is uh how how are people's calendars does anyone anticipate not being too available during those times okay yeah I mean middle middle second week of October will be a little bit tricky for me um just because I'll have some presentations at a conference I'll be doing so I've got to not overload myself for that second week is that the 11th I'm a little busy that week too yeah the week of the 11th would be out okay that's up for me too but everything else looks pretty relatively good is there a day of the week that works better for people do we have to plan around availability of the chambers um we do but I might be able to I'll have to find another room other than the council chambers unless it happens to work out um I'll just have to also work with orca to make sure that they're available to to broadcast a special meeting so we just can't overlap with other broadcast events so um but I don't think that's I think there's certain times and days that it's easier um but Mondays and Wednesdays are typically difficult so we'd probably be hoping for Thursday maybe I don't know everybody's Thursdays are Thursdays usually good the first two Tuesdays are just CBRPCs so I would prefer Thursday as well and the third Thursday I think or the third Tuesday I think is the parks commission my husband's on that so that would be hard for me but like Thursday sounds good I think Thursday would probably work for me no Thursday Thursday in October maybe the uh the first Thursday because you said like after around October 11th isn't good yeah I could do the seventh Thursday so is that what it is the seventh yeah that's the first Thursday yep yeah that one probably that Thursday probably won't work for me not to look it's my anniversary I don't tend to schedule so we won't make you do that no I mean September September 30th maybe that looks good for me yeah yeah September 30th could work we'd have to get to get the what two weeks notice we do have to get that posted yeah I don't know if this would be the public hearing um we may but since it's I mean not that it's a public hearing but just that it's a it's an open yeah the open meeting the open meeting is uh is 72 hours so we'll get the notice out as early as soon as we know it's a good time that works for everybody including Orca then we'll we'll get it noticed um as a special meeting and then okay let's tentatively plan for Thursday the 30th 5 30 because it's our normal time all right so I will firm up that with you guys and we'll have one more planning commission before then anyway so um and then I'll email you guys on the reappointments awesome well looks like we've got everything done that we plan to you won't have anything else to bring up before we adjourn I'll move to adjourn for for there motion by Stephanie do we have a second a second second by Marcella those in favor of adjourning say aye all right everybody have a great night thank you thank you Mike thanks for the info on um the water park oh that was uh I was like surprised but also like oh of course all of these things would need to be taken into consideration so I'll just keep thinking about it until I'm ready to take it it actually made it onto city council's priority list and I don't know how it's but they meant to do a strategic planning thing last week two weeks ago and they uh and on Thursday when we I think they'll you know there's going to be it's going to come up in conversation when we start talking about dam removal again that same conversation about water parks is going to come back up and having creation as a key pillar of our economic development plan you know and suddenly this conversation is going to come up and we'll be back too this is great would love to support it if we could do some feasibility studies first that would actually prove that it's okay to do yeah yeah that's the trick but yeah it's it's it's been an interesting idea that just needs it needs a champion to kind of get it to go yeah and it's a big project it's one of these ones I I've tried to tell people when when it comes to these big projects you know it got to think in about three years takes about three years to do a big project I would think at least I mean even just the thought of like not even with ownership or environmental impact issues just thinking about like where would be a put in and where would be a take out like the space along the river is that's that's just a big question in and of itself yeah and then a lot of times when I talk to people they're always like oh just get in there rip these things out and like uh you really got to think probably this is a three to five year project to from from the idea to actually big ribbon cutting is probably in that three to five year window yeah sometimes people don't have the bandwidth to champion something that long but yeah yeah I think it's just comes down if it's a council priority it can happen and if it's not a council priority we don't won't have the resources to put behind it to make it happen so great right well well I appreciated the background that was helpful yeah all right have a great night you too see ya