 So calling to order the City of Essex Junction Planning Commission meeting, it is 636. I have on my screen. So first on the agenda, any changes or additions to the agenda that need to be made? So Regina suggested that we provide staff providing updates on the enforcement campaign on signs that we have started as of last week. And the related issues with the content neutrality and sign regulations in the land development code. I mean, this is, this would just be a, I don't think we'll have time to delve into the details of that, but to at least get us thinking about that. Should we just put that as F at the end? Sounds fine to me. Okay. Any other changes? No changes, but under the member updates, I'll tell you what happened at the capital project meeting meeting this week. And I assume Diane and I might want to say something about municipal day. Okay. So moving on to the public comments, any comments from the public for items not on the agenda. I don't believe we have anybody from the public here. Just looking at that. Okay. Moving on and welcome Elijah. See you joined. Okay. So is Drew Darrell a member of. Where? I believe it's town meeting TV. Okay, sounds good. So moving on to before the minutes. We need a motion on approving the minutes. I will make a motion to approve. Okay. Any discussion. On these minutes. I had, I had one thing just at the very end. Before number six, the reading file, it just says that. Chris provided a brief procedural update on the appeal for eight tap street. It's fine by me the way it's written, but I wasn't sure if as minutes that needed to be more descriptive about what was actually said. Because I went through here because I wasn't in the last meeting. So I was going through, through here with the intent of knowing what was discussed in the meeting. It only needs to be more. It only needs to be more explicit if you wanted to be more explicit. If you feel that's fine, it can go that way. It's fine. It's fine by me if everyone else is fine with it. Yeah, I was going to say in my experience of reading minutes from different municipalities. That's oftentimes more information than you get sometimes. Right. All right. Any other discussion on these. All in favor of approving the minutes for the October 5th meeting. Let's say aye. Aye. All opposed. All right. Motion passes to approve the minutes. Moving on to number five business items and a, an update on the rental registry and inspection program. Oh, so yeah, I think some of you may have been watching the. Council meeting yesterday, but that's when. The council considered the rental registry. And inspection ordinance. And asked lots of questions and. Pretty much they sounded like they wanted to move. Quickly towards implementation. So right now the schedule. Is based on the limiting factor is the council meeting agenda. And the fact that the next two months are pretty busy for them. So we expect that's the, it will. There will be a public hearing in January. The first one. You only technically need one. But I expect there to likely be some, some amendments and when there are amendments, we will have to hold another one. So any questions about that? I've included. Most of the material in the packets. The only thing I left out was the schedule because that's really, there's, there are a few things in flux over there. But in terms of the ordinance and when that would go for public hearing, I think that's pretty set. It's, it would be the second week of January. And then the second hearing, either the fourth week of January, or the second week of February. And in terms of implementation after that, there's going to be. A little bit of a. Work to do in terms of a. Procuring software and hiring, hiring staff. But. If all goes well in theory, we could be. Up and running within this fiscal year and like, you know, the registration deadline could be within this fiscal year. That means. Before the end of June. That would, that would be impressive. Any. Thought or. I guess. Should any of us from planning commission think about. Being presence at the public hearing. To support it any further and support you in the discussion of the ordinance with the city council. That would be fantastic. I think we'll have. More material available. At city council, I didn't go through like a whole presentation. We, we depended on the packets and it was kind of. You know, it depended on the fact that's a city council. I'd read it. But it wasn't really intended for. So much for public consumption. I do think there will be more public attention. At the next, you know, at the hearing. So it would, it would be really fantastic to have. Continuity from. You know, when this whole process started. Chris, is that something that. Would wait until the public hearing or is that could be at another. That's like the next. City council meeting. Right. So it would be at the public hearing until the public hearing or is that could be at another. Like the next city council meeting or another city council meeting before the public hearing. Sorry. What, what, what are you referring to? Either one or multiple of us attending to answer questions that council might have or anything like that. I think it would be at the public hearing. At the public hearing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Council, there's going to be a few. In December, the focus is going to be on the budget. So it's, yeah, there's, there's, it's unlikely to be. Discussed much more until that hearing. But in terms of. What, you know, what we plan to do for public engagements. Council made it clear they were. You know, they are the decision. Has been made to, to like. To advance this project. And the focus for this. For public engagement is really in, in. Outreach towards compliance. So, and, and also, you know, so my focus is on reaching out to landlords because they're the people who will, who will. Ultimately. You'll be responsible for registering and paying. And we want to make sure nobody is surprised. And that if they, if they have issues that they bring it up now. But we don't really anticipate. You know, a need to, to reach out and ask many questions at this point to. To renter specifically. Although that's, that can be done through once the, once the process has started, when, when it's up and running, when registration is complete, we can tell we could reach out. And say that's, there are. You know, this program is available and that if they have, if they have issues about their, their rental unit to always know to. We are available. Yeah. I think, I mean, to me, that approach makes sense. Chris. Reach out landlords. Now ish or so to get them involved potentially in. The process. Of approving and enacting the ordinance. And then once the ordinance does go live. Then it's a more of an education piece, potentially for tenants and renters themselves to let them know what's available and what. What a rental ordinance now might mean. For a tenant and what they would have available to them as a result. If the information to the landlords could express the fact that there might, that what date is chosen for the first hearing. So that they know that they can input. When they get this information in or at that meeting. Yep. That is, that's definitely the intention. Well, I'd be happy to try and do my level best to be there on January 10th. Fantastic. Thank you. Same. Thank you. Just just a quick comment. I listened in last night one Chris that is. Presentation. And by the way, as I said to Chris beforehand, he did an excellent job of presenting. Um, the ordinance and also his budget and the timeline for implementation. Um, and the council, um, as expressed by Lane Haney said. They were very appreciative of the work that Chris did. Um, and the council, um, as expressed by Lane Haney said. They were very appreciative of the work that Chris did. And the staff had done and also the planning commission. Um, one thing that came up though, that I think, um, in fact, of what Patrick you've been saying over time is, uh, whether or not there's some way to put together an incentive program for landlords who have. Minimal. Uh, revisions that we might have to have more substantive. Correctional. You know, um, construction to their properties. I think Raj brought it up and he also mentioned that, um, that we need to keep thinking about the possibility of housing trust fund. So I think that, you know, that probably is going to sit as soon with the housing committee, not with us, but it's just something that we should keep in the back of our minds. Um, um, um, the other thing that struck me last night, um, I've been advocating for a simple fee structure. And I think Andrew Brown supported that. Um, the one 15, as opposed to the egg disaggregated $40 one. Um, and. Uh, but I looked at the major landlords, the four major landlords in the city. And it's a hefty burden on them financially. Um, the one that has 455 properties. We're talking over $50,000 a year. Feeds. So I think that we should be aware that this is going to have some pushback. Um, and in, or at least questions about, um, the benefits to landlords. And I think that we should be aware that this is going to have some pushback. Um, the benefits to landlords. And I think it's something to consider as we move forward. Got to kind of. Right on your coattails. Along those lines of like potential pushback. There was a little public comment at the end of the presentation. From the renters perspective, primarily, um, one individual. And so I think that. That is just thinking about like, and Chris, I'm sure that you're very aware of this, but maybe for us thinking about supporting. Uh, an answering public comment that there is also potential for. Think in our discussions, we've been talking about that this is really. A benefit for all, but our primary concern is the health and safety. Wellness of tenants. But you know, in a situation like you just described Scott for a large landlord $50,000 a year. You know, the concern expressed last night was primarily like that cost getting passed on to tenants. Right. Um, and then already like a tight housing market where rents are high. Historically, you know, another cost, like what are we doing in the city of Essex Junction? And so I think. Messaging is obviously going to be very important. And I think, but. The council, but us as planning commission who are putting this forward to council in terms of supporting and answering public concern, I think it would behoove us. To maybe just take that the possibility of questions. And I think that would be really important. And I think that would be really important. And I think that would be really important. And I think that would be really important. Concern from the rental community. And be, you know, prepared to kind of answer. Those questions as well. In early January would be valuable. Yeah. And larger. Thanks for that. I sort of tuned out that last public comment last night. I sort of. Had to leave. Um, but the other. The other. Comments that Patrick had about disincentives to developers to develop affordable housing. Um, that comment came up as well and in a reference to governor Scott's press conference. Day before or whatever on the need for, for revisions to act 250 and other mechanisms to improve affordable housing. But it might be who the council to actually, as alive just said, kind of think about these things and sort of think about responses before you walk into the room. Um, so that they have some talking points. Um, how they're going to address some of these things, because otherwise they might be blindsided. Um, also. I don't, I don't remember if we ever talked about this, but something we could also suggest to council is. Um, maybe incentivize it like reducing the cost of. This fee for affordable units. So if it's an affordable unit, it's actually a less. You pay less for it. Um, to register it so that would reduce the cost on some of the larger landlords that could have a. Larger portion of affordable units. So I, yeah, I think that could be. Complicated. Um, a lot of. So, you know, affordability. There's, there are multiple definitions of affordability. We could set another one, but we already have. You know, there's already, and we'll, and I, we'll talk about it a little today act 47s. Uh, uh, requirements. Um, for the extra story, that's got, that's got, uh, an affordability piece to it. We're already trying to figure out how we even verify that. Um, there's. I, and there's, there's another definition within the land development code. Um, and also like related to that a lot of, I think a lot of, uh, the. Housing and, uh, the rental housing and as extension are. By that definition, uh, by act 47s definition, uh, naturally affordable and, uh, you're depending on how, what the rent. Distribution looks like we could be losing out on a lot of revenue. Um, and it's hard to predict because I don't, I don't know how much people charge. Uh, but there is, if we want to subset for. For, uh, something that probably like that, I think most people would agree like deserve a break. It would be the, I think the non-profits, uh, housing developments, uh, the, uh, cathedral square, uh, developments in the, uh, uh, West street area. That's the only non-profits, uh, uh, housing. Development that we have. And I think there are some South Burlington right now is. As they're working through their rental registry and inspection program, that's, that's what they're trying to figure out whether or not to charge nonprofit developers. Uh, and nonprofit housing providers who already are pretty stretched for, for their money. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I mean, to be honest. You have the, you talk about the four largest, um, landlords, they're dealing with this where they have other properties as well. So it's not uncommon for them to have to deal with this. I think, I think the concern definitely as I think, uh, either Scott or Patrick mentioned this, like the comment that the renters would bear the, the brunt of it. Yep. So if we thought that option two would have more compliance, should we go recommend option two here? Well, I think, I think, uh, city council has already talked about this and they seem to be strongly leaning towards one for, for simplicity. But if there's, you know, this, I think option two remains a backup if, if there's, if it turns out there's strong reason not to, you're not to, not to go with one. I think you should mention also Chris, that option two, as you mentioned last night brings in less revenue for you. Yeah. Yeah, that, they're, they're fully aware of that. I meant for us. Yeah, I mean, I think option, I think I'm, I'm in favor of option one. And I think that brings in the revenue assuming that we can move forward with some sort of housing trust fund that then can be used to help those renters that do need, you know, like in theory could be used to help renters that do need that assistance. Yep. So I'll also mention that I learned recently from South Burlington that so they were previously, originally they were looking at this, you know, 100, 15, 120 range. Uh, but then, but then when they, when they started thinking about, uh, having a fee waiver for, uh, for non-profits, uh, housing providers, they realized they had to jack up the, the price for everybody else even more. And now they're sitting at 150, which would be, I think among the highest, um, seen. Um, I don't think we'll need to go. As far, um, but also I'm assuming some efficiencies with the, with the way we've designed this, uh, this program. Um, yep. Any other questions? Yeah, I just, uh, this is just, you know, uh, subjectively from your perspective. Um, first of all, I want to commend you again for your presentation yesterday. Uh, you know, there were a lot of accolades being thrown out, but this really like, you did the groundwork here. And so, um, yeah, just your, your ability to, to present it was not unexpected, but it was, you did a great job. You answered all the questions from all the different angles when they came in eloquently. So, uh, was continued to be very impressed by you. Um, and your ability to, uh, explain all the different parts and pieces, uh, was a relatively complex, uh, thing that is being moved forward. And I was just curious, it didn't seem like, based on like the takeaway from like council clearly was like, they've been waiting for this. They're ready to move on this. The concerns or the questions or the clarifications they had don't appear to be anything that's really going to hold it up. They're just looking for more information or in the case of like the question about software, which do they, are we going to ultimately go with? It's just a question of what are we going to go with? We are going to go with something moving it forward. Uh, I just, I just kind of wanted to like do a, a pulse check. My impression was that like everything is, is going to move forward with this early January likely. May or may not actually like realize it this fiscal year, but, uh, is that accurate in terms of like all the requests for you for more information, for clarification, given everything else that's going on. Do you think it's likely that that information will be to council in the, in the timeframe that they actually are building like move this forward in the way that they were kind of projecting. Uh, yesterday without you having actually been able to do any of the research or clarifications. So well, so first of all, thank you. Thank you for those comments. Uh, I also, I also point out that said Jennifer did, uh, you know, a big part of the data analysis and, uh, and, uh, map making, um, for the rental units data and she did a fantastic job. Um, so yeah, that's my, that's my read of it as well. Uh, it is always possible. I think we are entering, um, a critical stage here where, where, where, like if, if problems, if there are any fatal flaws that could prevent this from happening, they will figure out very soon. Um, there's pressure to, to work out all the details. Um, there's one worry right now that, that I'm working through. I've set up, uh, uh, some meetings with representatives, uh, you know, in the appropriate state departments. Um, and, uh, this, that it is that's the, um, rental housing health code is being passed over from the, the, uh, uh, health, uh, from the, I don't know, I'd be the health authority. I don't know what you can call it towards the fire safety, um, group because fire safety now has some additional resources to do more inspections. It wasn't enough to have a kind of proactive, uh, inspection approach, but they have enough resources to be able to, uh, take on, uh, more complaint space. Uh, uh, enforcement. So are, we have always envisioned, uh, that the person we hire would be very much a generalist that they would be spending about half their time on this program, half the time on other, uh, you know, zone, uh, zoning compliance and other health officer duties. I'm now that the, uh, the rental housing health code is being passed to the, the, uh, fire marshal, uh, fire marshal's role. I have to make sure that we still have the full jurisdiction to be able to enforce the rules. Um, when we, and when, when we don't think they're going to be a certified fire marshal. And also we don't have our own building codes that, you know, that we're inspecting for. So that's, that is one worry that's, uh, that I have. And it's a, it's, uh, something will work out soon. Um, but potentially a fatal flaw still. Is it possible you could hire a fire marshal? Yes. Yes, uh, that is, that is not ruled out. Um, I think the whole, the structure of how we have been thinking of this would be, maybe wouldn't make as much sense. Uh, or at least in the long run, like if we're going to be high, if we're going to be having a certified, uh, uh, state fire marshal, maybe, maybe this should be run out of the fire department. Like, but right now as everything is designed, this is going to be out of community development. I, I don't anticipate this being very likely to be, to be a problem. Like I think we aren't the only municipality with this problem, but, um, I'm figuring out, you know, I'll, I'll have answers, uh, definitely by the next planning commission meeting. And before we start reaching out to, uh, uh, to, uh, landlords about, uh, you know, the expected dates of, uh, the public hearing. Any other questions? You know, there was a little bit of work on this, uh, on the cost side as well, but I, I mean, I, I don't think there's, uh, other than the software and, uh, you know, there, there being some comments about it being expensive, which is very true. And there are other options. Um, I haven't heard many, uh, huge concerns about other parts of this. Um, I do have a question on the presentation. Um, for. Uh, uh, two big, uh, on the part is called rental units data analysis. Um, on the chart that says the largest landlords. At the bottom it says by unit count, the largest landlords are listed above own combined combinations of properties, totally 58.1% of all rental units. blocks there. That's a heck of a lot more than 58%. So can you tell me some more about this please? That's me. I forgot to update the text there. Yeah, 58% would be before we updated it. We found a couple of properties that weren't included in the earlier chart. And so then we updated it, I updated all the pie charts here. So those are accurate. I forgot to update the text under it. As soon as you start to say it, I remembered. I'm so sorry. Okay. Well, it didn't jive. So I went, wait a minute. Hello, I'm missing something here. Yep. Okay. Yeah, well, we'll have a polished up version definitely before this gets a lot of public attention. The reason I'm being a stickler about information being accurate is I was at the strategic planning event on the weekend last weekend. It blends together. I'm sorry. And there was a perception that that people who rent would not be involved with the community. And so I'd like to have information accurate. Oh, it'd be one thing to say, it's here's this, but 43% of the residents are renting according to the information I saw. So households not not so we don't we don't know how the household sizes come in. Okay. Household 43% of the households. Right. So yeah, I know households could be one person households could be six. It's all relative. So at least let's have it in accurate here. And because people I'm finding that people are looking at electronic media. Some of them like to chat on Facebook. And some of it's not quite accurate. But at least let's have ours our side accurate. So that if they start misquoting, at least we can go and say, wait a minute, what day did you go there? You know, and whatever. Hey, if you ever written master's theses and things, you always have to say what time I addressed the net and what time of day was it? You remember all that fun stuff? Okay. So so we have to do that same fun thing. It's like, what day did you what day did you look at this? So because our landlords are probably going to take a look at this too. Certainly. Yeah. And thanks for pointing it out. I don't think we might we might have overlooked that and not if you didn't point it out. We got enough can of worms. We don't have that anymore. But you know, let's have the best worms showing. How's that? So that was my question on that. The presentation looks good. I like the way it's formatted. Excellent. All right. So that's all I have in terms of updates for a rental registry program right now. Okay. Moving on then to letter B discussion of the neighborhood development area expansion. This is all Jennifer. You should be able to share screen as well, Jennifer. Yeah. That's what I was about to check when we get my windows rearranged. So this is squished on your end. All right. Share screen over here. Squiggles. There we go. Can we all see the back with the squiggles? Yes. All right. So when we were talking about expanding the neighborhood development area, we came up with a couple of options. The main guidelines were that it could extend out quarter mile from the existing boundary around the village center. We got a rough idea of where that boundary was, which was two possible options. This is option one, which follows as much as possible those property lines within that boundary. And one corridor leading down Pearl Street, which you see is now a very prominent area, you know, graphic development, being the highway arterial conveyor. And there is an exception in the ADA expansion rules saying you can include areas that are outside of that quarter mile boundary if they need a list of criteria. And so we're working out an argument to say, well, we think it needs this criteria because of these reasons. So option one kind of fits to that circle and then extends out down Pearl Street. Option two, there we go. We can find a little bit more closely. This is based on zoning maps, specifically like which areas are more specifically bound for development. If we left out all R1 areas that are within that circle, as well as a couple of other more residential focused zones. And in exchange for that, as kind of a trade off extended that corridor down to Pearl Street. This is, in my opinion, a little bit harder of a argument to make for just the length that it is away from the village center. But we have a couple of meetings coming up where we can talk to on Tuesday, we're going to talk to a representative for the Vermont Housing Commission. And then next Thursday, we're talking about CCRPC and we're going to see what they think about like how reasonable either of these requests are. But these are kind of the boundaries that we have initially going forward. Do you guys speak with anybody at Department of Housing and Community Development about these boundaries? I think they'll give you the most, I think, clarity on it and be honest with them as to what the purpose and idea of it all is. I mean, and they'll explain all the benefits really well as well as well. I hope you're like Richard Amore or Gary Holloway. Yeah, we talked with Richard and he redirected us to a slightly more relevant contact. I don't remember the name off the top of my head, but it said like, hey, this is the person to talk to. Perfect. Yeah, very helpful. Well, what's the possibility of having two neighborhood development areas? Can we have two of them or are we restricted to just one? Well, it's an add-on designation that's related to our Village Center designation. And basically, by default, you are supposed to be able to go out a quarter mile out from the edge of the Village Center designation or if you happen to have a downtown designation, you can go out half a mile out. We don't have a downtown designation and maybe one day we'll get one, but so we don't have that at this point. So technically, we are only supposed to go a quarter mile out unless there are special circumstances. I would note though that if we don't include the R1 and R2 zones, basically this option, the total area is actually probably smaller than what would have been allowed if you just did that donut around the VC designated area. So, I mean, I'm hoping that they would be receptive, but they could be strict. Yeah, I think they probably will be receptive and understand the argument, but they might be limited by what they can provide based on statute. We're expecting that going into this discussion of like, hey, here's some ideas that we have in mind and our reasons for doing it and then reason with them out what they find reasonable. We might have to reach a compromise that might be somewhere between these two. We're not sure yet, but based on our understanding of regulations going forward, we think that we have good arguments for either one of these and we're just going to kind of approach it and find out what the experts have to say. What are the top three benefits to the neighborhood development area? I have gone online and I looked at kind of like what's listed there, but like from your opinions, like what is the what are the main benefits for having this? I know, not off the top of my head. I usually have to have my cheat sheet open. Let me see if I've got that. I remember one of the things and this is that one that I would jump to, but one of the ones that I remember off the top of my head was that it was reduced fees for certain kinds of developments or development applications or something like that. That wasn't really an important one, just the first one that comes to mind. I know that they get all these areas. Reduced Act 250 regulations, which is a big one. Reduced fees and then they have more leeway on those regulations around Act 250 stuff. I think I forget. One of the reasons I'm asking is because obviously the doughnut has more of that R1, but if in R1 we're limited to fourplexes, let's say, and more of the development that would benefit from this would occur on Pearl Street or up that trunk. Maybe it's okay that it's less area if that area is going to be utilized in the way that would benefit from this designation. That's certainly what I'm thinking. Just from my experience from work with them, they probably would agree with you based on the geography, but they might be limited based on the way that the statute is written because the idea of it is also to try and concentrate development and reduce sprawl and having that one little cord or stick out on a map, it looks like sprawl. By definition, it's outside of that quarter mile, but in reality, when you visit the site and you look at it, you're like, it's really not. It is actually the transit corridor. It would functionally, it would probably, you would be getting a better non-motorized non-car mode share if you develop there instead of they are one or two areas. Any other thoughts on the trade-offs as we talk to them? Maybe there isn't much choice. Maybe we're just going to be talking to them by taking whatever we get, but are there any preferences, any thoughts on this? I look up my cheat sheets and I can answer a little bit more about all these developments, the benefits and developments in the NDA areas. So it's exemption from land gains tax, limitation on appeals of condition and use for promised residential development, municipalities receive priority consideration for state grants. Yeah, and then other stuff about Act 250. One of these ones, yeah, pilot downtown and build center tax credits. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Elijah. Thanks, sorry. This is probably would be a non-issue, but just because Act 250 is a thing and is just looking at the watersheds in the city, would there be any value one way or the other in terms of, I mean, we're not going to get a huge waiver if there is a serious environmental concern. But I don't know, just thinking about how water moves through the junction. I don't know, that might just do a topographical overlay just like before talking. I'll share a screen again across the motorways. I just have to keep flipping back. I'm used to having my two screens set up and just reduced to the laptop. There we go. That one's for historical centers, which one's for transit. Yes, so this one is based on a map from I think the comprehensive plan specifying, see this body's water. I know I had one that had something to do with flood risks. Oh, there we go. This is, yeah, bridges, roads, special flood hazards, annual chance flood hazards. So, kind of just pointing out the areas that are more at risk. But this is also from 2014, I think. There's another tool that we ran into recently that specifies, it's more on the side of roads that are at risk in cases of flooding. And I'd like to add that area on top of this. So, it's a little bit more broader scope of that topic over this. Historical things. Is it possible to sell the historical piece? Because that really is why there's that development on Pearl Street. It's because it's historically where our predecessors went is down Pearl Street toward Burlington. So, we do have this blob with the Pearl Street section, which is part of the reason I'm saying what could we have two of them. Now, I remember somewhere in history here, that there's a designation for your entire village. Of course, our village is 4.6. I'm thinking a lot of them think of the village as being the small little doughnut that's there. But we have a very large doughnut. So, is there any way to kind sell our large doughnut? Not sure. I don't know. Yeah. I'm just a designation. And so, like the center of the doughnut, we've got the village center and then we can expand it out and say, okay, this is our neighborhood development area. If we wanted to go for a downtown designation, that's an additional designation that I think can be located somewhere else. I'm not so sure. I'm not as familiar with that one. But there are different designations for kind of different ranges of areas. I remember speaking with Richard about the difference between village and downtown, and if there'd be any benefit to us transitioning to a downtown designation, now that we're a city, quote unquote, and no longer a village. And as he walked me through the benefits, it didn't seem like it got us any more benefit than what we already have. It would require more work because a downtown designation would require a board, would require almost like staff to run downtown programs, whereas a village designation does not. And we still get a lot of the same overlapping benefits between the two. So it seemed like in talking to them maybe in the future as we get a more robust community development, more robust municipal staff that might be able to assist with a volunteer board to run downtown programming or events or something, it might make sense. But at the moment, in talking to them, it didn't make much sense. So two things about that though, the downtown designation gets you the quarter mile. I think the quarter mile buffer, which I mean the half mile buffer, which is I think where you get the most value out of it. Even though the village center designation and the downtown designation by itself is kind of similar, the neighborhood development area is still very powerful. In fact, one of the things, the benefits of the NDA is that the priority housing, including the mixed income projects, are exempt from some Act 250 regulations within this area. So I can see especially once you get to, we've got the TOD district here, but if you can cover the highway arterial district as well, there's a lot of potential for mixed income development there that we could get a lot out of I think. Yeah, that's a fair point. About that half mile versus quarter mile gets us that more extension out Pearl Street that we would want. Yeah, unless they give it to us anyway, which I would be totally sure. And just to answer your question, Diane, a little bit about having two NDAs within they like them to be continuous and they like them to be attached to the downtown area. I can just speak from a little bit of experience in the town of Shelburne, has a really large housing development going on along Route 7 near the automaster, where the old days in property is. And that whole project is obviously very far away from Shelburne's downtown village center. And they were trying to, they applied for a neighborhood development area for just that particular project because of the large number of housing units that are to be built. And the NDA got denied because it wasn't continuous to the Shelburne Village Center. But ours is, it's attached. But I'm just saying they wouldn't want to, it would need to be continuous. So you wouldn't have to separate, you would need them to be attached in some fashion, some way. Yes, I'm familiar with the automaster area down there. So just to give you a little, yeah, a little background as to, in that essence, from that perspective. All right. Any other questions? I just wonder if there was any other, any other questions from commissioners, commissioners about the NDA expansion efforts? No, I say grab whatever inch or foot that they'll give you. And if you guys are meeting with them and you need some additional support, like I said, I work with them often. So I have a good relationship with all those guys. Happy to sit in meetings and join you, if it's appropriate. Great. Yeah, I was just going to mention something about the qualifications or the meetings where they determine whether we get the designation or not are monthly. And we would need to submit it by the first Monday of the month to be considered for any given month. So if this makes good progress, we might be able to apply for it as early as December, I believe it's December 4th is the first Monday. Otherwise, we'll just get pushed back to the year. All right. Moving on to the next agenda item, the update on the vision and strategic action plan. So Scott was also there. Scott's also on the steering committee. And I think a few, a few of you were participating as well. My wife is running a blender in the background. So maybe Scott, I'll let you speak to this one. Can't hear it. Don't want to hear it at all yet. Oh, I see. Okay. So yeah, there was the think tank events that happened over two days, Thursday and Saturday. We probably had about 50 people each, but maybe half of them were, you know, board members slash staff. So in reality, maybe like 20, 25 members of the public. But I think there was fantastic discussion. I would encourage you to take a look at the results on the websites. Yeah, the method was very interesting of how they asked the question. The focus on the first day was about the changes that are happening around us and demographic changes, migration patterns, and whether or not we adapt, this change is probably happening. So what do you think are the biggest drivers of change that we need to deal with? And that was kind of the question posed in the first meeting. And then there was a short list of these drivers of change and how important they are, and people voted on them. And then in the second session, those drivers of change were organized in a certain way that created two axes. One of them was basically the rate of change. Scott, I don't know if you remember the specific term, but it was like the willingness to adapt versus the desire to protect and preserve what we have. And the other axis was kind of the economic choice of more government involvement and more program funding versus more developer-led growth. Then we were led to create scenarios and think about what a future in each of those quadrants would look like. People were prompted on specific issues like what they think housing prices would be like in this quadrant. What do you think the economic diversity would be? What kind of jobs would be available? What would the city look like? And I think people were really creative and people came up with some pretty interesting projections that I think these groups, at least internally, mostly agreed on would be plausible. That was the focus of the second session. I think the results of that and people's preferences will be driving force between the next steps, which is narrowing it down to coming up with an action plan. And a short list of initiatives that the city might want to take on. Scott, was that a good summary? Do you have anything else? No, that was very good, Chris. Just a few things to add. So I was on the selection committee for the consultant, so I'm also on the steering committee. And my concern, and I think it was voiced by Marcus, or Marcus Serta from the board who's also on the steering committee at the meeting, unfortunately at the meeting on Tuesday, Wednesday, sorry, Wednesday, the consultants couldn't attend. They were unfortunately delayed on a flight that we're on. So we had an internal discussion and we have another meeting next Tuesday with the consultants. There were a number of concerns. I think Regina voiced a concern that we don't really have a sense of how we're going to take what came out of the think tank and develop it into what they call pillars or what I would call sub-strategies or components of the strategy. And it's not clear what the next steps are going to be to get to that point. Ashley was assuming that we would get the pillars out of the think tank and we didn't. So Regina was a little bit concerned about that. Marcus and I were very concerned, and I think Tacey Lincoln from the walk-in bike committee or whatever it's called, voiced the same concern that we weren't really clear how we're going to do these activities. There's what they call the charrette. It's now been changed to Community Future Visioning, I think, which is going to be coming up on December 9th. And it was unclear to all of us what was going to be involved in that. It's basically a walk-in at TBE, at the same place beyond the think tanks. And the idea is to have it open most of the day on December 9th. And people can come in and basically give their ideas about what they want the future to look like. We have some concerns about that. One is we had very little participation in the survey compared to what they hoped. They were hoping for somewhere between 700,000 respondents. I think we got about 400. By the way, that's on the website. If you guys are interested, it's interesting to look at the open-ended questions. Not the detailed data statistics, but what people said about what they want the future to look like. A lot of its things we've been talking about, bike routes, village center being a walkable place, et cetera. So number one was how we're going to get to the strategies. And Regina was very concerned about that. So we're going to be led up with the consultants on Tuesday. The other one was, as Chris mentioned, we probably had 25 people from the community at the think tanks. And they weren't the same people both days, pretty much the same people, but a few changes over the two days. For me, it's not the number, it's the representation. And whether or not all the stakeholders that we consider to be important in the city are participating in the workshops or participating in strategy sessions or visioning or whatever you want to call it. And I made a list of about 11 different stakeholder groups. We had nobody, no students in the room, no high school students. We had no teachers and two board members, Diane and Marlon. We had no first responders, none. And Essex Rescue is facing a budget or a financial crisis right now. So they weren't in the room. CBE was there, fortunately. But you know, you can go down the list and talk about other people that you want to help in terms of stakeholders. So the discussion on Tuesday is to get a better sense of what's coming next, how we're going to publicize it to get maximum participation, and how we're going to make sure that we have the right stakeholders in the room. There are focus group discussions in January. Again, we need to understand are these focus groups around pillars? Are these focus groups around stakeholder groups? So we have a lot of questions for the consultants. Everybody was very confidant about what they did and think things. It generated a lot of useful discussion. And as Chris said, the one group that everybody wanted to be in, which was community-led economic development coupled with grow and adapt. Everybody wanted to be in that group. I got stuck in the most unlikely and most despised group, which was basically preserve and protect and have the developer's market-led approaches to economic growth. But the group that had grow and adapt and community-led came up with some very, very creative ideas. Unfortunately, I don't know where those are going to go. I hope they're posted somewhere eventually, because they came up with some great housing ideas for creating non-profits co-ops. They came up with some really good ideas about multiple use assets, where we could put those things. And those, I think, need to be captured in the future. Anyway, started to talk too much, but the bottom line is we're hoping to get a more clear idea how we're going to proceed. And then we need to make sure that we get community members to participate in this and represented groups. Yeah. And if this all works out, I think the output that we get from this will potentially really shape what the focus is going to be for the Planning Commission February onwards. I mean, if we finish in February as originally intended. That's all I have to say about it. Oh, we got the cat back. I was going to say, that makes for a very nice show. So cute. Yeah. Did you wear the cat out? No, he doesn't go outside. He's an indoor kitty. Can't get his room. Here's his face. There you go. Yeah, keep going, Phil. Just talk over us. Moving on to the discussion on potential act 47 affordable housing verification requirements. All right. So the background behind this is that we were probably among the first municipalities to adopt this part of act 47 s 100 47 housing bill. The part about how if you meet affordable housing requirements, which are not very, you know, the bar is not super high, but it exists. You can get an extra floor. This was originally supposed to, it kicks in for everybody by December 31st, 2024. So, you know, municipality, many municipalities have not added, put this in yet, but we happen to have it in because of our LDC amendment process that we had already going. But now we're finding that the multiple developers are multiple projects are coming in and asking for the five stories. And then we have to make sure and be able to verify and tell the public like what the results are. So that's, that's what this project is about. And, you know, Jennifer, maybe you can talk a little bit more about how what we've done so far. All right. Sorry, trying to get all my notes straight down. So for affordable housing verification, we had a meeting earlier today. We'll talk to a couple of people in a couple of planners in South Burlington. Regular Burlington. Oh, regular Burlington, I bet. I'm still getting that straight down. And I think I've ever heard it referred to as regular Burlington. That was good. I'm getting used to the flight. I've actually only been into Burlington or the Burlington area two or three times. It's on the up and up. So we talked to a couple of planners about what they're doing, what they're implementing to kind of get an idea. Part of it is that if a development qualifies for the Act 47 specifications to be an affordable housing unit, they have to price their units in a certain way and maintain that they have, is it 20% of units? No, that's active if you stop. That they have a certain number of units that are affordable for 15 years. And Act 47 recommends a covenant or similar style agreement. So we talked about like, yeah, a covenant would probably be the way to go. And then for verifying that landlords are actually maintaining this and pricing units affordably, we would probably require, well, the people in Burlington, what they do is that they get a request from the landlord copy of the lease and also contact the renter and request proof of income. Hey, there you go. Yeah, because affordable housing units are based on 80% of the AMI, so this area median income. Yeah, it is 20% of units, I thought so. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, it has to be 30% of the income, including cost of utilities, combined associated fees, all that stuff for it to qualify as affordable. But anyway, the people in Burlington recommended getting leases and proof of income individually. They did recommend a way of calculating AMI because we'd be using HUD data based on Chittenden County area median income. And then from there just 30%. But that's calculated based on household size, whereas people in Burlington talked about the difference that they were calculating it based on units, so that they have an easier way to tell landlords, okay, if you have a one bedroom, this is the maximum price, you can set that at and still be affordable for you. And that was assuming things like efficiencies would be occupied by one person, or one bedrooms might be occupied, like you use the calculation for 1.5 people. And so there's a slight difference for like how to arrive at that number and determine what is considered affordable, depending on if you're going off household income, or sorry, household size or number of units, there's different ways to measure it. So we're still kind of working through that and trying to find what is the best way forward that follows all of Act 47, all Act 47 restrictions. Yeah. You're saying Burlington uses HUD's fair market rental rates as their threshold? Not fair market. No, they don't even use those? No. And I was asking about that too of when do we use fair market? No, it's 80%. So area median income, that's 80% of the population and then it's the median income within like, oh, there you have it. Thank you. Yeah, so the median income of, they basically exclude the highest 20% of earns or whatever and then calculated based on their median percent. And then that median income, its rent cannot exceed 30%. So Burlington's experience is maybe a little bit different than what we're after only because they have, their rules are geared towards their own inclusionary zoning program. They have not figured out specifically how they will implement Act 47, the additional floor and the state requirements. We are working on that piece right now, but I do think it's similar enough. I think that the pieces that we will likely take is that I think we will we will ask to see the leases. We'll definitely ask to see the covenant and have legal review. But yeah, seeing the leases, seeing a list of probably, I think it would be fair to ask how many bedrooms that said each of these rental units are and we'll figure out if we can equate number of bedrooms to the number household size or whether that's acceptable or if we actually need to figure out and ask household size. That would be a lot more complicated. We're also hoping maybe the bar, the bar might be low enough that we can assume a household size of one and these developers will clearly meet it even if, you know, it's like a one bedroom. Yeah, those things we're trying to work through right now, but I think we'll have a a clearer, you know, more clear procedures that we'll recommend to the DRB probably within, you know, by the next meeting, not the one coming up. Any thoughts on this though or comments on what, you know, pitfalls we should look out for as we work through this? I think I brought this up. Oh, sorry, Diane. I think I brought this up when we were talking about our inclusionary zoning, but like what is the enforcement, the ongoing enforcement for these types of projects, right? Because you can obviously request it at the time that the permit is put in to get that extra floor. But the whole idea is these are affordable in perpetuity and how do you continue to enforce these? I mean, I see the rental registry as a potential way to enforce this ongoing, but just thinking about that as these types of projects come in. I think it would be considered a zoning violation if you're basically, if the condition of approval is that they meet these requirements for 15 years. And within these 15 years, they stop meeting the requirements. The building that was built is no longer what was approved, basically. And it would be within our rights to issue fines, to my understanding. Right. But you would be checking leases every year for the 15 years. Right. And that's where we're talking about making procedures to, like making the condition of approval that they submit a report every year for 15 years. And we're trying to work out the specific requirements in the reporting requirements. I was going to add on that the other end of it is that the covenant would be part of it, that the covenant would have to be processed and approved as a condition of the building being approved. So if they stop following that, I just wanted to ask, wouldn't that have extra legal ramifications for breaking the covenant? Well, yeah. Somebody would have to sue for it. So the covenant is mostly for the purposes of if the building, if the property changes hands within those 15 years, if they sell that property, the covenant will say that the person who buys it also has to honor this affordable housing requirement for the rest of the 15 years. Gotcha. I don't know. I mean, we approved a lot of single and efficiency apartments. So having the developers go with a, I don't think we want to go with the household of one as the ideal, maybe the minimum, but not the ideal. The whole point ends up being is that you've got families. I guess I'm having a hard time thinking of a family of one. Is that really what we're, and I guess I have to go to our definition of family as, I thought it was more than one person. But as to the breaking the covenants, well, you know, we may have to put some money in legal and just break down and do it. If they're, I mean, the rental registry will have us keeping an eye on if those covenants are being enforced. And the only way, after reading this interesting article about light sites in the seven days, I'm getting to be a little more saying, you know what, if you, enforcement is a good thing. Okay. So if you want it, you need to enforce it. Otherwise, they'll run with it and it won't be occurring. So if the idea is to have affordable housing in 20% of a five-story rental apartment building, then we need to just have that enacted and enforced. So tracking it by who's renting, well, that affordable formula is variable. I'm sure it's not the same now as it was 15 years ago. So, but the number of units isn't going to change. That's pretty hard and fast. If you've got five stories, you've got 20% going to be. Except if you're not going to use that fifth story, which we've already seen on several developments. Well, they can't use the fifth story because in our regulations it says it's not allowed. But, okay, if they wanted to go through Act 47 and open it up, then they'd have to enter into these covenants, wouldn't they? And suddenly there's a floor they could use or segments that they could use. So if they want to capitalize on that and utilize that, then, okay, let's go for it. I'm not sure how many, we don't have that many five-story buildings around in Essie's Junction yet. Well, I mean, there's one that actually has five stories and there's one where it's closed off. Right. Yeah, I know it's down the street. So, but there are, yeah, there's probably some buildings that could push a fifth story if they wanted to. I don't know what their foundation's all about, but hey, if a foundation can handle it, then what the heck? Let them go for it. But the regs, I'm assuming that if they wanted to flesh out that fifth story that they would have to conform to the Act 47 covenants, correct? Yep. Yeah, I think they would have to go back to the DRB, you know, and it would have to be a brand new approval. They would have to go back to the DRB for conceptual and final site plan amendment. And then at that time, there could be conditions of approval, which is reporting requirements that we're working on right now. I think that's when they would kick in. Yeah, so I was just looking through some of the data that I've accessed, too. So for nonprofit development, depending upon their funding source, they're already required to do these reports. If they're funded through VHCB, it's affordability and perpetuity. So one avenue would be for you guys that reach out to, I'd go right to the top and reach out to Jenny Hislop at VHCB as the housing director and ask her how they enforce or monitor the affordability of these of the projects, the housing projects that they fund across the state and what their policies are and the way they go about it. Within the financial reports that do get submitted, you know, when my the program I work for, Monk Me Development Program, is involved, we do get some of the financial reports and they do list out the rent per bedrooms and break them down. And so they show you the number of affordable rental rates and the ones that are fair market rental rates. But again, these are all for nonprofit development sites. And so I don't know necessarily if the for-profit ones are doing these annual financial reports and annual audit reports, but that would basically be what you'd be asking them to submit on an annual basis for municipal staff to just to go through and ensure compliance with the rental rates. What was the name at VHCB again? Jenny Hislop, H-Y-S-L-O-P. Her email is simply Jenny, J-E-N-N-Y, at VHCB.org. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right. But yeah, I mean, I don't unfortunately have much experience in that because for HUD, it's a five-year... How should I best wait a phrase it? HUD views it as if the benefit of affordability is held or the benefit of the project funded through our program is held for five years, then they consider it being full benefit. But VHCB brings it to, they consider it a 99-year affordability, which is basically in perpetuity because none of us will be around 99 years from now to continue to enforce that in essence. As to amendments, Chris, you might want to model the amendments like the Act 250 does right now. You have your initial permit number and then you just keep adding subscripts to numerous amendments. I can tell you right now that IBM had like 52 amendments to their progress. So each one talks about each different project and had a different number. So if somebody wanted to put... I don't know what the permit numbers are. I think there's something like it's the year dash something or other for the city. It could just be, you know, it goes with adding some numbers and letters at the end of permits if there's somebody who wants to go with an additional piece. It would keep it cleaner, I think, using that system. Just nothing concrete, but just another thought. Understanding that we're kind of ahead of the curve on this, but we're having to deal with it the way that every other municipality in the state is going to be getting it on board. Has the Vermont League of Cities in town taken this up or put out any, I don't know, resources or suggestions, points of contact? So I think they are slowly working on this stuff, but I don't think they were anticipating that somebody would need it immediately. But like having said that, I think our plan right now is to come up with a proposed set of reporting requirements and then running it by VLCTs, lawyers, because I think if it works, it might work for everybody. Mm-hmm. All right. Yep. All right. Ready to move on? Okay. Moving on to the discussion of future planning commission initiatives. I put this on here because this was something that started the discussion of last time, although this is also related to how the strategic planning will work out. So I'll have it on to you. So when Diane and I drove over to Montpelier for the municipal take, and correct me if I'm wrong Diane, but she brought up the idea that we need to start thinking at some point also about updating, revising, rewriting the comprehensive plan, which is through 2027. And we're going to have the strategic plan coming up next year, February, March. So I'm wondering what our role is between now and March, and then what our role would be after March, given that we have about a year, a year and a half maybe to get the comprehensive plan rewritten, which my understanding is a requirement of Vermont State law that you have to have a municipal stroke, comprehensive plan, according to the timelines. So I'm just, I'm not proposing anything. I'm just wondering how it all fits together and how we would move forward. Does anyone have history from the last time it was done? Diane does. Yeah. Diane does. So last time we had, trying to get community involvement, we invited various people from various organizations. Patrick would probably run a whole list of places that we could invite. I know that we had more Collins, we had somebody from Energy, we had this, that and the next thing, all different components of the plan. And we invited them in hoping that we would get community involvement, which is part of the requirement to discuss things and get some impact as to all the various components. Now, since we've got the strategic planning going on, which is touching on a piece of the strategic plan, what sections are we missing as we're discussing all this? I don't know that we're really tangent on energy. I know that we need to talk to all the subcommittees, so it's going to be bike, walk, the capital plan, the whole works. So each of those segments, so it's a matter of having conversations with all of the above. We took about a year and a half to get testimony, in other words, have these conversations so that we could put something together. Of course, there is always what's also going on with the state, and as they're continuing to change things, so our maps, we had additions and subtractions and changes and a nice step of the maps. And that's where I think, so I guess I'm looking at, I look at from before, and after watching the council hold on to the LDC for a year before they actually looked at it, my concern is walking backwards from the due date of when we have to have this and when do we, and that added another year, okay, for the council to sit on it and cogitate. So I'm being gratuitous there, but anyhow, it's how do we back up to, so we have plenty of time and not to do in a rush. In the past, the past directors like to farm it out to the RPC, and some segments, we didn't look at everything. It literally was, what by state do we have to change? And if anything didn't need any state updates, we just ignored it for the next time, which is probably not the best way to go, okay, but you know, I can't do staff's job. I'm not supposed to do staff's job. And so it's, I guess you could say I'm frustrated a little bit by past pieces, but some things were just successful and other pieces slid by the side. And I think we now as being a brand new city, we shouldn't be letting anything slide. We're brand new, we should be doing it right out the first time, at least it's our first copy, we shouldn't be getting it done right the first time. How it goes from then on, you know, that's every 10 years or whatever it is. But I think we should get, we should do those all the evaluation that I think the counselors and our fellow residents expect us to do. That's my two cents. Oh, are we saying then Diane that we need to put together a timeline and start thinking about responsibilities and products that would be developed along the way, et cetera, et cetera? I mean, one of my concerns is the same concern I had with the strategic plan. And it's also highlighted in our comprehensive plan is continue to explore and implement ways to engage the public. And it's been a topic of discussion by us and by the council for the least of last year. So, you know, if we're going to start talking about getting public involved, I mean, that's a great deal of work. So again, I'm wondering, okay, number one, do we put together a timeline? And number two, who's responsible for leading the effort? I'm assuming, unfortunately, Chris, it's your office that has to do that. But I could be wrong. Well, it is here. It's, yes, we need to put together an outline, a checklist of what do we need to accomplish? And when do we want to start accomplishing it? And yes, how do we get the public to visit? I mean, it could be as simple as coming to zoom like we have here right now, okay, or asking, I've been constantly asking people to write me a note, okay, send me a note, send us a note, and tell us what your feelings are on things. But I'm counting on that they know something that we're up to. So how do we get them to know what we're working on? How do we get that information out there so that they can be informed and then inform us? It's that conversation piece, which is what takes time, which is why I'm saying, yes, Scott, we need an outline, and perhaps a timeline, and who do we need to involve, and that sort of thing. So I think it's never too early to start talking about this. The unfortunate part is I'm going to tell you, we should be already starting working on that, because backing things up, I mean, it's how do you say, hi, Chris, nice that we hired you, by the way. A few months ago, we needed you to do X. You're only just walking in the door. So it's, we're not that tight, okay, we've got a couple years. So in terms of public engagement, you know, one thing, this falls in nicely with initiatives as well, that we've discussed in the past is stuff like a farmer's market, and should that be on the planning commission to assist in the organization of and administering and implementing such a thing, finding a spot within the city that could host it, you know, community block parties, is that something that the planning commission could take a lead on assisting maybe the park and rec department, or something like that, to throw a couple community events or something. But in that way, it also coincides nicely with community engagement, where, you know, we can hold these monthly meetings, which we've been doing for planning, before any of us were on this planning commission, been going on for years, and how many people show up on a monthly basis. It's just us. So we need to get in front of people, and we need to be creative in doing that. And in my mind, one way to do that is at a farmer's market at a community event that we have to make a commitment to table, and get in front of people, and sit there as a volunteer planning commission. And if we're making a commitment to engage people, we sit there and say, here's, this is who we are, this is what we're trying to do, this is, please have a discussion with us, and maybe we'll only have two or three discussions, or, you know, you might not talk to anybody the first time, but it's about, in some ways, it's about presence, it's about continually being there, on over and over again. And, you know, I think, in large part, most people, and I'm generalizing sure, would appreciate a community block party, and those that do show up, be like, this is wonderful, can we do more of these, and be like, oh, great, we need a committee to help us plan these things, they weren't the planning commission, we could use some assistance, and just being, being there, and just getting in front of people that way, you gotta, I think, you know, that's, did one thought that comes to my mind, but just in terms of community engagement, it's about how do you get, in part, how do you get in front of people, and what are different strategies we can, we can enact to just get in front of people, to stand in front of them and have that conversation. Well, I will say that last time I sat at TAML handing out tickets for the economic opportunity we had for Essex out, gets out, okay, and I sat there in the rain under the tent, I was talking to people, not a whole lot of them, but handfuls better than nothing, and so there was that, and yes, the economic development was paid for out of the planning commission budget. There's a block party that already exists, if it currently is going on, not sure where they are, I know that Bridget Meyer and Darby, oh gosh, what's Darby's last name, Mayville, okay, we're part of that, I'm not sure if it's still existing where it goes. That there's my point, is the idea of not knowing where it goes or if it currently exists, is that something we should try and push forward as a potential initiative, as a community development action that we could put forward as a planning commission? I think Patrick got KO'd by COVID, okay, it makes it back, okay, so the farmers market, which I was part of the group that got it started off on its legs, Elaine Heaney was also part of that, Lori Hutan, a whole slew of people that were part of the farmers market, and it ran for eight to 10 years, I'm not sure why it folded, I think it may have been part participation, competition with other farmers markets, the fact that it had to be outside, not under tents or anything, may have had something to do with it, could one get off again, I'd say let's look at how that might happen and talk to other markets again, so yeah, that's all I'm saying, it was an endeavor, okay, for sure it is, yeah, absolutely, so you know, I see these things as in part, they come and go as you're mentioning, Diane, and it takes an ambitious group of people to push it forward and COVID certainly drove a spike through a number of community events, and I guess all I'm suggesting or saying is could it be a role, an initiative of the planning commission to try and upstart some of these things again, to try and corral a group of community members where we have a small steering committee that one of us sits on, or maybe we don't sit on, but we're able to engage and maybe Elaine would be willing to do it again, I know she's an awful busy woman, but she does tend to enjoy some of those things and do some of those special projects, you know, who knows, but I'm just saying like it might be worth re-engaging in some of those conversations. I just wanted to say that the Pumpkin Palooza booth that was hosted by the city, Regina was there, I was there, Kristen was there, Raj was there, I think that was it, and we probably engaged with about 150 to 250 people in about a four and a half hour period, and Ashley said that they got a hundred more surveys completed because of that interaction, so I mean that's an example of what you can do with these, but my point, I think, and when I think about it is the strategy that's being developed by Futurak, by the city, should have a pillar in there or a chapter, whatever you want to call it, or an underlying theme of building engagements and public participation approaches, or how we want to call it, strategies and approaches, because you know, when I went around canvassing for this thing, there's no business association in this exemption, as far as I know, there's no way for business people to get together, and we have now a fair number of new American businesses in that exemption in five quarters. Those people don't talk to each other as far as I know, that could be a stakeholder group, for example, and then you could work through that group to talk about issues affecting businesses. The same thing could be community block parties are great. Pleasant Street has a fantastic block party every year. Phil and Elijah, you guys put together a really good block party, and they have a bunch of other events, but these mechanisms have been not formalized so that we can use them for outreach and planning, and I think the consultants would be well tasked to think about how to integrate that into the strategy. Backing up a bit just on the comprehensive plan as a whole, is there any sort of process that exists for completing it, just thinking with what happened with the LDC, Regina came in, it was when she was with CCRPC, and kind of led us in that entire process, so is there something similar for the comprehensive plan that we will be guided, whether it's Chris by you or someone else comes in as a consultant? Yes, I would have to say it is something that has appeared on my planning horizon yet, but this is a good reminder that it is never too early to start thinking about this. The reason why I haven't even thought about how to move forward with the comprehensive plan updates, because we have other related plan updates. We have planning initiatives that are coming up that are ahead of it, including the TOD study that is now pretty imminent. I'm on the selection committee for finding the consultant for that, and that is something that will inform what would have to go into the comprehensive plan. A comprehensive plan update can be a little bit formulaic. The formulaic part of it gets you through the minimum requirements, and I think it is important to draw in the expertise from CCRPC to make sure we at least check the boxes, but we should be thinking beyond checking the boxes as well, of course. I think a comprehensive plan is by definition really comprehensive, and just to engage the public separately on separate topics at different times, I think over a longer period of time is probably a good idea, rather than having it all done and having a draft and go like, what do you think? I don't think that's the way to get the best results. I would say in terms of supporting your thoughts on this as staff, I mean, I'm always happy to do some sketching out of potential timelines, but to me, it's a little bit early in terms of being able to put much thought into this, because I'm more focused with the TOD study right now. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying, and I understand. I'm just thinking of the structure, if you call this, you call updating the comprehensive plan a project, right? So the structure of updating that project, what does it look like? And it sounds like maybe having a consultant come in and guide us through that process. So I think it's good for us to be thinking about that, but I don't think we need to be, it doesn't sound like we need to be in the mode of creating outlines, creating exactly what we need to do at this point. I think it sounds like we should all read the plan if we haven't, or at least read it again if we haven't, and start thinking about what we want to talk about in more detail and what seems like these are the things that should be updated, changed, and things like that that we want to do. It would help to have a concept for everyone to be familiar with the comprehensive plan and to have thoughts about what's good and what's deficient from it. So the next budget cycle right now, we are thinking about projects that we want to fund coming up, but when it comes to the year, that's probably the next year I'll be putting in a budget request for consulting services for the comprehensive plan update, and that's that we'll kick in the year after. And if we have a clear set of, if we know what, how much of an effort we want to put in at that point, it'll make it easier for me to decide how much of a budget ask to go for, and how much of a, if we're using, how much we're relying on consultants or how much capacity we have to do things in house as well. Could I make a suggestion? I happened to be talking to Marcus, and I think in the past couple of meetings we've said that we wanted to have, reinforce our idea to have a joint meeting with the council, planning commission council meeting. I mentioned it to Marcus the other day when we were sitting waiting for the consultants to come in. And there seems to be an interest by Marcus and Roger leads to have this meeting. Would it be useful to have this as a potential topic for joint meeting with the council to talk about, you know, ways to approach this or concerns or issues or ideas? And I would suggest that that meeting maybe be after the strategic plan is drafted so that we have something to think about. Yes, I think that's it. I think that is a very good idea. I mean, it's been kind of something that Regina has been trying to fit in for a while. And I think now that it's already mid-November, it's clear that with this rental registry thing, that's kind of the next thing on the priority list. It will be after a strategic planning is done. So I think that would be a good time to do this. And I'll bring this up with Regina again, the next meeting I have with her just to start planning a time to make this happen. I think there's been a gazillion things that she's been trying to fit into these agendas, but it might just have to be a special meeting. Any other? Yeah, I guess one parting thought is understanding that we do have time, but it's never too soon to start. I feel like as we have been talking about community engagement since Scott and I came on as a group, I really appreciate the creativity around what new spaces or events can we create to create a space to engage with people. But I think just listening to Scott talk about the one person work he's been doing just around the current visioning process and trying to figure out who are the stakeholders and where do we engage them. I think that if we just sit down and spend a little time, and maybe we could devote a little bit of time in one of our meetings to this, maybe before meeting with the council, but where are existing spaces where people already congregate? I'm sure we could each come up with five in a minute, sporting events or pumpkin pelusa or the park just as the park. Certain local businesses that we all pass through. So I think not to dissuade us from like reinvigorating a farmer's market or creating other new spaces, but I think that we do have maybe slow hanging fruit. We do have spaces and events that already exist that bring the community together that the community engaged with regularly significant portion of. And I think Scott as you've kind of suggested, we need to be intentional about that because there are certain spaces that certain segmentary community engage with more regularly than others. But I really encourage that we haven't dropped as a group, we haven't dropped off our interest and our intention for this community engagement piece. And I think just wanted to bring up that as part of that, I think those spaces, some of them already exist. It's definitely like we've got to identify them. And then obviously there's the commitment of like, who of us are going to show up or how are we getting engaged with those spaces? And that's going to take some thinking and some effort and some commitment. I just wanted to include that in our kind of conceptualization of this piece, which is we move towards this comprehensive plan update. No, it's a good point. I mean, you actually did a very good job actually of identifying a number of groups for a communication outreach for the think tanks, like the Rotary, like Places of Worship, etc. There are a number of organizations that exist, just there's no structure to get to them in a systematic way. Yeah, exactly along those lines, like let's take that. Just because, so we got 25 members of the community on these two days, maybe definitely less than we wanted, but that's a starting point. We've hit them up once, let's hit them up again. And I do want the farmers market back. I miss it. All right. Moving on, we added enforcement of signs, fine conformance. So yeah, this is an item that Regina suggested I bring up with the Planning Commission. So actually at the direction of Council, there was definitely, we heard a lot of desire from members of Council to beef up enforcement efforts on certain LODC issues. There wasn't consensus on what the issues we should focus on were, but there was a perception that we're the wild west in terms of zoning compliance. We heard complaints and questions about very visible issues like signage and cars parking on lawns. In some ways, maybe not the things that impact the community the most, but it's also something that is relatively easy for us to respond to. So as a kind of pilot effort to do proactive enforcement instead of just waiting for complaints, we put together, Jennifer put together a flyer about what you're allowed to put up as a business in terms of signage, temporary signage, sandwich boards, those wavy flags. Jennifer and Terry went out last, I think it was last Wednesday, along all five of the major streets and tried to get a hold of all the business owners who had non-compliant signs handed them some information about how they could make a complaint. It wasn't very threatening. We weren't saying we are going to find you if you don't do this, but it said something along the lines of please fix it by this date. Jennifer, you can say a little bit about more how receptive people were and how many people, yeah. Well, we visited something like around 20 or so businesses, plus or minus a little bit. Most people are receptive. Well, I'd say it's pretty split, like half of people like, oh, okay, well, I didn't know that, okay, whatever, we'll see what we'll do that or not or whatever. A fair number of people reacted with simple explanations of, like, since when? Since when do I have to bring in my sandwich boards and things like that? And we just didn't inform them, like, well, this is part of the municipal code and regulations. Here's where you can look it up in ELDC. If you have any concerns, you can talk to us. You can complain to the council if you think this is unreasonable or needs to be changed, things like that. There were a few people who blatantly just said, oh, we're not going to do that. No, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, I'm not going to follow these. It's not going to change. But there were a couple of places that acted immediately and we're just like, oh, that sign's not allowed. Okay, we'll take it in right away. We'll get back to you guys about changing our sign and trying to do something else that is compliant with municipal regulations. There was one place that's like, oh, well, that sign's kind of old and worn out anyway, we'll just bring it in for the winter and then maybe in the spring we'll do something, you know, think about taking it out again or doing a new sign, things like that. And then a fair number of places just think this. Just kind of ignored it and just kind of gone on doing, I think. But for the handful that actually changed things, that was really nice to see. Generally, people took the information well, so they seem a little bit more well-informed out of the people who complained about us, you know, speaking to them and informing about their non-compliant signs. There were none who seemed actively perturbed about it enough to try to like bring it to anyone else's attention or try to attend any meetings about it, anything like that. But we tried to make sure that everyone was aware that if they had any questions, they could ask us if they had any objections about it, they could approach us, City Council, whatever to let us know their feelings. So, yeah, to a certain extent, we, you know, this can be treated as a one-off kind of information, I guess, outreach effort. But if we are to follow up more as an enforcement effort, this, you know, here's how it is potentially a bit of a can of worms and why I'm reaching out to Planning Commission right now. During the last round of Land Development Code amendments, Regina had had on the wish list and, you know, as not the highest priority, but something that was very important, to go over the sign regulations and make sure that they meet content neutrality requirements that are now required in response to some Supreme Court cases. You can't regulate a sign anymore based on what it says. You can relate it, you can regulate it based on, you know, the type of sign it is, you know, the placements of it and the timing of when it's out, but there are limits as to what we can say. Like, we can't allow some like directional signs, but not something that has a message on it, for example. But unfortunately, that's what RLDC right now has a ton of stipulations like that, like you're allowed an extra sign if it's for directions, if you're advertising this, it's like not allowed. And so it's actually making it a little bit difficult for us to follow up with some of these folks who have had problematic signs in terms of coming up with the solution that would help, you know, that would assist with their business activities, but be compliant. We don't need to come to us so any, you know, do much discussion today, because it's the end of the meeting already, but we will, I think I'll be coming back with some possible ways we can move forward. And it's probably going to be along lines of like, you know, we could, we could really limit, we can limit our enforcement activities to what there's no legal risk of, you know, like anything that has to do with content we ignore, or we could amend the RLDC to strike out parts that don't really need to be there. I mean, those are the, those are the, those are the, or we can amend the specific wording so that the mean, so that the intent of what we wanted is preserved, but we're content neutral. I'm happy to take any questions right now, but yeah, I mean, I don't think we need to come to a, to a solution, or today I just wanted to, you know, put it in the back of your minds, because this will be on the back burner, back burner for the next meeting. If my, if my memory is correct, I think we were coming down to the wire as we got to the signs section of the LDC and focused, like you said, only on that neutrality issue and fixed what we could at the time. And just with the intent of re, of going back into that sign section and updating it later for just to have it as an updated, I remember it as an updated section. I remember it being very confusing as to what, what are the actual restrictions or permissions around various signs that are allowed. So, yeah, I think, I think if that's something that we can drill into at some point and update the LDC on for sure. Yeah. And even if it's not, even if we don't go as deep as updating the LDC, which is sometimes a gargantuan task, to know what you think are the most important, you know, what's in the public interest to focus enforcement on or focus enforcement away from could actually, I think, help at least with our internal procedures. Like even if we don't change the rules, we could, yeah, we could prioritize in certain ways. I think I would leave it at that for today. And but happy to take more questions. Good with me. Moving on to any member updates. Scott, I think you had mentioned you had a member update, but I don't know if you talked about that already in another section. No, I didn't. So just quickly, the Capital Projects Committee met on Tuesday. And I think I mentioned at the last meeting, there is, there was a discussion on how to use a lot of funds, local options tax funds that come to the city. And I think I mentioned also last meeting, we're expecting about a million dollars a year. That will probably grow depends on obviously how much how much is spent on meals and services here and as extension. There was a need to develop a policy. So there was one drafted and approved at the meeting on Tuesday for council consideration. Basically, it just outlines what it can be used for. And it's basically for infrastructure projects that include roads, bridges, culverts, sidewalks, and water lines, wastewater, sewers, et cetera, not included stormwater is covered under culverts. But all the sort of municipal wastewater, water, stormwater is covered under separate funds, enterprise funds. So it does not include paving, rolling stock or revisions, renovations to buildings and new buildings. I questioned and I think it was included sidewalks could include new multiple use pass, not paving for bike lanes, like a pro street would make a bike line of three feet, but just repave it so that it was that way. But within the street itself, it wouldn't be considered. But if it was a new multiple lane sidewalk, it could be considered. So West Street, for example, needs new sidewalks. So if that became a multiple use lane, it could be considered for a lot of funding. Because we talked about using it for other things like landlord incentive programs, which I mentioned at the last meeting, there's no applause in there that it has to be used for capital projects, except it's specifically approved by the city council. So other projects could be proposed, but it has to be approved by the city council. There is a set aside for sidewalks because there's a concern about deteriorating sidewalks in the city. I forget the figures that RPC has given us figures on how many sidewalks, how much percentage of sidewalks need upgrades and improvements. But they felt it was important to put a set aside in there. So I think we agreed on 25% of the lot funds would be set aside for sidewalks. And that's not going to cover all the sidewalk improvements, but over a 10-year period of time. Scott, specifically on the sidewalk improvements, is that just existing sidewalks, just replacement, or does that improvement include potentially putting in new sidewalks? That's a good question. I think it's talking about existing sidewalk upgrades. The discussion at the last capital meeting was not paving them with tar. No, tar. That's not the right word. Asphalt. Asphalt. Thank you. Sorry. My language is sometimes influenced by where I live. But concrete is more durable and has a better approach. Probably they'd be upgraded to concrete. The other thing that was discussed is, and I don't know if you guys know this, but there is a list of infrastructure-proposed infrastructure projects, and they've been prioritized according to a list of criteria, rating criteria, that was developed a couple of years ago, at least. And according to the priority list, the projects that have been completed in the last year and a half is the Densmore culvert over by the Essex Pediatric and the Community Health Center. And that road was repaved for that as well. There were two culverts that were upgraded. And then this year, Brickyard Culvert was upgraded, and the road repaved there primarily because it didn't make sense to upgrade the downstream and not upgrade the upstream portion. And the Main Street Waterline was approved and constructed this year. But those were the highest priority projects on the capital list. If you're interested, I can share with you the list. It's about four pages. The total demand for infrastructure is $33 million. You can see we don't quite have enough funds to implement all this at one time. So Scott, there is an upcoming DRB case that might be relevant to that. I would recommend reading the staff report when that's available. This is about two river streets. There's a future sidewalk in that capital list. There's a potential requirement that these people trying to do a two-lot subdivision contribute towards that. But we don't know for work and it's related to the capital, how the capital program works. So I would just say yeah, when that's available, take a look. I'll send it to you when it's available. I suggest to send it to Amber. She's the chair of the capital project committee. Okay, thanks, Chris. I had another update, and I don't know, Diane, if you want to talk about what you did on municipal day, but I'll just give you a quick, I know it's getting late, I'll just give you a quick update. I went to four sessions that day in Montpelier. I tried to focus on sessions that talked about funding opportunities that could be accessed by the city. The first one I went to was useless. It was water source protection, and it was all about wells. We talked a lot about flood law and flooding and so on. The second one was interesting in a broader context, because the state in terms of implementing the climate change adaptation or climate change strategy and plan has now improved its climate change team to six or seven members. And one of the things they're doing is a vulnerability, climate change vulnerability index map. And I was interested in this because I've done something similar in the past and I wanted to see how they're doing it. It's going to be ready probably for beta testing next year, early next year, and it's going to basically use a number of key socioeconomic and climate indicators to try to determine where various sections of the state are vulnerable to climate change. And they're going to use a very accessible climate prediction model to look at future impacts using past and past climate events. I thought it might be useful to this extension, but it can't be disaggregated down to the level that we have in our plan, our zoning plan. The data are not disaggregated enough to do that, particularly socioeconomic. Another two sessions I went to, one was on inflation reduction act funding. And there's a number of possibilities here. Unfortunately, my mind doesn't remember things very well. And it was what, two weeks ago now, or three weeks ago. And so I just have summaries here. I think I need to write this up to certain extent and share it. There are some opportunities. One is, and I think Chris, we, I remember asking Regina this couple of times and I can't remember the answer, but I don't think we have a hazard mitigation plan for the city. We have something similar, but it's not really hazard mitigation plan. But if we don't have one, or if it needs to be updated, there's potential funding under IRA for that. There's also funding for local governments to complete unique climate plans, climate adaptation plans, up to $5 billion for grants for this. Of course, you're competing with all the local governments across the country. But you have to have a climate or an energy comprehensive plan, comprehensive energy plan that was approved by the state. And I think we do. There's a number of examples here on how this could be used. It could be used to put up EV charging stations, for example. It could be used to develop, to do an energy assessment of municipal buildings. And I think Regina knows about this already. And I think she's looking at opportunities for that. There's also money under ARPA, which is the American Rescue Plan Act, I think it's called, that was passed. And there's funding there for potential hiring of energy coordinators if you want to do energy adaptation and energy resilience. So there's potential here for some funding. And I'll try to write this up in the chat with you guys, even though I can't remember exactly what I found out. But it was useful to go to. I suggest that next year, if people are interested, it was an interesting, fun activity to be involved in. Funding's available. If you want to go, it was $35 a person. I can send all of you. So, most of the sessions I went to involved dealing with data. There was census data, there's GIS data, there was a new GIS update that since the last time I looked at GIS, it's incredible as to how much information can be collated with GIS to give us all kinds of information as to what our community, it looks like, what are basic information, how much housing, this, that, and the next thing. It's an incredible source and it was reinforced that don't overlook the census data or GIS data as to how we can get the information you need to put your plans together or anything else. I did go to a session on critters. It was also using GIS data, but it was tracking how animals go from one place to another and how that's important to have contingent, connective landscape trees and that sort of thing so that critters can go from point A to point B because unless it's connected, it's little islands of things and they don't really help anybody, people or critters. And the interesting thing is the guy that was giving speech was from the West Street connection. One of the pieces that's important to know is that this was done by Agency of Natural Resources and I got an email which I think I will forward to the PC address so that everybody gets it. They say that they're constantly updating the information from this coursework and so I have not gone to the site yet, but I've gotten the email that says here's where all this information is located. As Scott had mentioned to me on the way home that some of the participants had already gotten some email slides and things from the various courses. I hadn't gotten one of those, but I could get the overall email that said A&R site's going to have all this information. That way, everybody can take a look at it and see if anything becomes relevant to our discussions. It was very rewarding. Unfortunately, the content was on floods and how various communities were impacted by floods. I guess we could knock on wood and say we're lucky that we haven't had that. Other communities weren't so lucky, but they did have a session on numerous sessions on flooding and how to deal with flooding and the financing of getting people access to monies to do that sort and who would contact that sort of thing. It doesn't quite relate to S6 Junction since we did another session on how to use maps, how to use maps to get information and where to find all that information. I think the best bet is just to send you the link from A&R and let you guys go to the slides and see what feels relevant to what you read when you read it. Unless I start showing you some slides and stuff, it's just like, okay. I will say I was impressed at how much GIS has improved since the last time I was sought. It's jaw-dropping, exciting. It really is. It's just impressive. It's all get out to me. One of these days, I guess we'll have a GIS person at the city hall, but until then, I guess we'll just have to farm things out or ask requests at various places. When it came to mind with the housing that we've been talking about and the information, I went, oh geez, look at this. We can get a lot of information we get just by calling things up. But hopefully next year will be even more exciting. It's not going to have a lot of things on how to deal with floods, because there's more to life in Vermont than just flood. But I can see the sensitivity. Lunch wasn't too bad, by the way, guys. They booked us in such that we did not have to deal with the people who work there. They have remote work on Mondays and Fridays. So we had mostly the building to ourselves. We walked down the hall and there's two people in this massive building on the floor. In the past, I had to park down the hill and walk up sort of the thing. And this time it was just to park at the top of the hill and walk right in. It was pretty cool. So hopefully it will be interesting for others to go next time. So actually just being conscious at the time, but because both Scott and Diane's comments touched on it, I just want to get it in the minutes. And actually it touches on our opening with Jennifer's showing us some of the map overlays. Thinking about future planning, acknowledging that we as a city got off really well compared to so many of our other municipalities in the state with July's flooding and then August's continued deluge. I think it's really... I don't know that because I don't know that much about it because I'm not a hydrologist. I just want to give in climate change, give in climate mitigation. I'm sure in our comprehensive plan update or some other piece we're going to be looking at it. But I would be really interested in as a city see someone coming in or someone within the city taking a look at... Because we saw flooding east of us and we saw flooding west of us. I've just been assuming that because we've got that change in elevation at the Park Street bridge, that's what saved us. But I don't know that. And I don't know that we can depend on that for future events. And so again, just like both of your comments, Scott and Diane had a touch on that. Everybody's talking about flooding. We're like, ah, what flooding? But I don't know. I think that that... Obviously that needs to be part of our ongoing conversation and in terms of planning as a city among all kinds of other effects of a change in climate that we need to be aware of. So what I would suggest because right now at the think tank, what came up for climate change with climate change migration, looking at people who are moving here because it's too hot in Texas or flooded in Arkansas. And there wasn't, I don't remember Jennifer and Chris, any specific mention of climate change data patient in the 20, 30, 20 drivers that came up. But what I would suggest is December 9th, Champlain Valley Exposition, make sure you go there and you get your ideas down. I don't know what the format is yet, but we got to make sure that what we want to see in that strategic plan gets recorded. Because otherwise it's not going to be in there. So I was there on Thursday for the strategic plan meeting. And one of our topics, I was actually at the discussion table for climate related factors. And we talked about people migrating here as well, but I did put on the sheet, the work sheets that we're doing, like what is the city's climate mitigation plan. So I wrote it down. I don't know how far it got into the process. At least there's some comment to that effect already, already entered into the system. Yeah, I remember I was at that table. Yeah, we were there. So Elijah, as to the flooding and such, if you remember what went on in Densmore Drive and that it got washed out due to Indian Brook coming through, a lot of the, a lot of that work was due, I don't know, due to flooding. Okay, so our flooding plain maps had just been, I thought we just upgraded them like a year or two before that. So that might be the 2014 or whatever. And so that plan was put together to do the upwork and the downwork of the stream and get those culverts done because things got washed out. The floodplain with the, the other part is the Winooski River as it goes next to Whitcomb Farms and farmland being wonderful, floodplain sort of thing that's down there. So yeah, I mean, that's why we got off because we had already fixed a lot of that floodplain and the elevation. One of the pieces of work that was due to floodplains and whatnot was actually on Main Street near Taft and up the hill there at Fairview Farms. That work there was due to flooding and that's why that was being corrected. So it's, yeah, we got off scot free this time, but we haven't necessarily in the past. Yes, knock on what? Yes, let's, yeah. But if you get nine inches of rain in 24 hours, it doesn't matter if you're above the floodplain or not, you're still going to get flooded. So we don't know what it's going to look like, but we could be looking at storms that are at that intense. So anyway, go to the fairgrounds everybody, put your ideas in, make sure you get them in there. All right, it's nine o'clock. I'm going to say let's move forward to the staff updates if there are any. Great. Oh, Chris, you're muted for that. I don't have any additional updates. Yep. I think we covered everything. Great. Then we just need a motion to adjourn. I move that we adjourn. I think that was a second from Elijah. Okay. All right. All in favor of adjourning the meeting. Say hi. Hi. Hi. All opposed. All right. Meeting is officially adjourned, 9.01 p.m.