 8, so I will call the meeting to order at 631. We thank you all for being here, whoever is participating. Anyone is joining remotely. We would ask that you change your name display to your first and last name on your screen so we know who's talking to us. And anyone who addresses the council, we would ask you again to to state your full name and where you live. Anyone who is addressing the council, we would ask you to keep your comments to 3 minutes and counselor. Bate will assist us with the timekeeping with the yellow. Card for 1 minute left and the red card for your time is up. And we can get started first. I'd ask a counselor to indicate her appearance on the record since she's appearing remotely. Okay, thank you. All right. And we next have up to approve the agenda. Are there any requested changes to the agenda? All right, we can move right along to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public. To address the council on any item that is not. On tonight's agenda and as with our other. Expectations, we would ask you to keep your comments to. 3 minutes or less, and we'll start with with people here in the room. John Snell, thank you very much, Mayor John Snell live at 17 1st Avenue. I'm here tonight as a board member of the. Farmers market I'm I'm the customer representative on that board. And we found out on Monday that BGS building scrounds and services. Has pulled the rug out from under us returning to 133 state street. They in November gave us the okay that we would be there. This was initially they were saying it would be 2 years. So we felt grateful that we were going to be back in. And it was a total shock. They listed 3 reasons that they might need to make deliveries on Saturday. During the market of oil and other things that they. I don't even know what the others were. There's something about. A generator generator running yeah, which I'm assuming if it complies with noise ordinances will be fine. And then they have an electrical box, which I'm assuming will be secured no matter what. So we, we realized that, you know, with 2 months to go before the market opens up, we can't screw around. And we're we're poking sticks at a hornet's nest here and trying to get as much public input in as we are able to. Some people have asked, well, couldn't we just go back up the hill to Vermont College? And I'm sure we could have an invitation to do that. The that location did not work for the farmers in a lot of ways, mainly loading in and out. And honestly, they probably lost half a million dollars of tourist business being up there because the tourists didn't show up. I would remind the council that in the 10 days we were at 133 State Street, we had almost 20,000 people attend the market in 10 days. We over the whole market, we raised nearly $1.2 million that kept that money locally. And of the we did a poll of the 237 people we polled, 221 said that while they're at the market, they also shop elsewhere in town. So I am asking you to do whatever you can to support us being back at 133. I think letters, calls are vital. Like I said, we really have turned out the troops here. And I think even if even if people get tired of hearing 133, that's what we need to do. So any questions I can answer? One question I have is I, I'll tell you, I already talked to, I heard about this last night, I already agreed to send a, send a letter to the state on me as mayor and I wanted to get, get straight the the person I'm writing to it's Ed Pembroke. Is that right? Yes, Eric Pembroke. And what's his title? He's the director of BGS. Yes. Okay. Great. Anybody else? And You like our signature on it to make it stronger? Sure. If people can say, if I can get a letter into the into city hall tomorrow and we can have it so everyone can come in and sign it. Yeah, Lauren, or maybe if we all just agree tonight, maybe you could just kind of write all of our names on it on behalf of. City council and the mayor and then we don't have to line up signature and stuff so we can get an ASAP. Sure. I'll do that. Tim, For some reason the 133 lot doesn't work. They have a number of substantial lots right in the immediate area. Is there a plan B? Well, they, thank you, Tim. They did offer us Taylor street again and we flat out said no, it's, it's windy, dusty, full of potholes. It's just not adequate to our needs. Okay. The other lots on that side behind the buildings also have the same sort of problems. 133 isn't perfect, but it's the best we got going. Okay. Yeah. Yes. They offer directly across the street from 133, like behind the. They, they did that last early last fall as an option. No, it really, it's just, when you really look at how it's laid out, it just doesn't, it won't fit. You've got a lot of vendors there every week, right? We have, we'll have over 50 vendors there every week. Yeah. Jack, would you like the motion? That, or do we just all nod that we want? You can just all give me the okay and I'll just do it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. You're right on our behalf. Is that my own? Great. Okay. And Lauren, did you have something else you wanted to say? Okay. I really appreciate that. Harry. Might I suggest that the, the commissioner of BGS also be included in this communication? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're actually asking the department of agriculture to request a meeting with the governor figuring if that's the best that it's an ag's interest to have us there. But whatever works, we're happy to have it happen. And I would like to point out to people who are voting next week that all of you are eating your dinner here tonight. So anybody who thinks you don't work hard is wrong. Thank you very much. Thanks, John. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We never would have known. All right. I don't see anyone else in the room who's interested in being recognized. Is there anyone participating remotely who'd like to be recognized? And I should, you should have mentioned earlier that the best way to ask to be recognized if you're participating remotely is to use the electronic raise hand feature on your, on your computer. And I'm not seeing anyone doing that. So we can move on to the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Is there a second? Any discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. One thing we should say about the consent agenda. Okay. If you want to, but it seems I had a couple calls today about what the change in the city managers. Oh, yes, I can mention that. Thank you. The, the city manager, we did the review of the city manager last week at our meeting and, and one of the, one change we have is that the, because the city manager has a multi-year contract, it includes an escalator based on the CPI from year to year. And people may recall that the city manager and the directors of all the departments agreed this year to not take the salary increases that they would be entitled to. And so the amendment to the city manager's contract is to state that he is foregoing the, the increase that he would otherwise be entitled to. Thanks, Tim. Um, next. Yes. I mean, just on that, just, I think all of us at council have expressed deep gratitude to the staff for doing that. I mean, this is our department heads that have been working so hard this year with the flood and you know, consistently work hard. So just, just saying thank you. And I know everyone shares that. And yeah, people should recognize that this is not a token sacrifice that the department heads are making that altogether it adds up to something like $50,000. So that was a significant significantly increased our ability to retain something else that would otherwise would have, would have gone, gone away if, if they hadn't done that. So I agree. I totally really appreciate all the work that they've done and, and their sacrifice in this regard. Carrie. Yeah, I want to echo that and also stress that this wasn't something the city council came up with and demanded this was something that the staff came to us offering. And so I want to express my gratitude to that. And thank you for, this was a way that everyone kind of recognized this was a tough year and we all kind of had to pull together and pitch in a little bit. And I really appreciate that so much. So thank you. Okay, time to move to the audit report. And as you're getting set up, we had a little bit of discussion at the very beginning of do we have to take any action or can we just hear the report? And I don't think that any action is actually required. But we'll, we got it yesterday or, or late Monday. There may be questions that people may have questions later. But I figured it was worth getting on the agenda tonight and hearing the report. Hi. So I'm Sarah LaCaroa, the finance director here with Miranda from R.H.R. Smith & Company, the firm who audited our financial statements for fiscal year 2023. And she's here to give that presentation. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Perfect. So the presentation I'm going to give is actually some excerpts from the audit that y'all were that was included in the present in the packet that y'all received. I'll try to mention the page number as we look at the schedules. But if I forget, just remind me if you actually want to look at the schedules with me. Um, before we hop into it, I will say one of the biggest or the biggest question is what's the opinion that can be found on page one in the letter from R.H.R. Smith. And in our opinion, the accompanying financial statements present fairly in all material respects as you go through the audit. If you're not going to read all, I think 100 pages or so. Um, and it puts me to sleep, so I wouldn't blame you. But the management's discussion and analysis at the very beginning of the audit is a good synopsis of what has happened during the year. There was economic factors. It also mentions debt and capital assets. And there's a comparison current year to prior year. So it's, it's a good synopsis of what actually happened. And that can be found on page five of the audit. The first schedule I'm going to talk about is the balance sheet for the governmental funds. This can be found on page 17 of the audit. This is the answers, the next big question that most people have is what's our fund balance for general fund at the end of the year? And this is found in the first column as general fund down at the bottom. For FY 23, you ended the year with about $1.8 million of this. $163,000 is non-spendable. It's already tied up and prepaid in inventory. $153,000 is restricted. This is done by outside agencies. So they're restricted to how they can be spent. The committed fund balance of $549,000 is management, council, restrictions on some of those funds. A list of the committed fund balances is found in note 14 in the back of the audit. If you want to view that. Which leaves an unassigned fund balance of just a little more than a million dollars for FY 23. This schedule also shows the other major funds that the city has, the community development fund and your capital projects fund. The fourth column is other governmental funds. So this is a combination of special revenue funds, permanent funds, and those schedules are found at the back of the audit. If you want a listing of your different special revenue funds like TIF, ARPA, recreation, your trust funds, your permanent fund cemetery as well. This graph just shows a five-year comparison of your fund balances from FY 19 through FY 23. So you can tell the decrease in unassigned fund balance from 22 to 23. You did increase your non-spendable restricted and committed. So they're actually more closely balanced. Oh, I should point out if council members have questions, yell them out when they come up because I think that's an easier way to track it. Yeah. This graph is another five-year comparison from FY 19 through FY 23. It's a comparison of your unassigned fund balance for the year as compared to your operating expenditures. So you can see that there was a decrease for FY 23. Is it neutral? What does it mean? It means your expenditures exceeded your revenues. But it could be good if it's planned. It could be something to look at if you have concerns. I know you have a stated goal that you want at least 15 percent to be in an unassigned fund balance. So maybe that's an area that you look at to say, is it a planned? Do you want to do a planned increase? Do you want to do a decrease? How do you want to maintain it? So it's not good or bad. It's just, was it planned? Was it unplanned? And is it explainable? Statement E found on page 19 is your statement of revenues, expenditures, and your changes in fund balance. So this is going to show how you got that decrease in your total fund balance. The general fund operating revenues were about $16.5 million, and your operating expenses were $14 million, a little over $14 million. And then when you add in some other sources, transfers in and transfers out, that's where you're going to see your net change in fund balance reduction of $754,000. There is a comparison of revenues to budget and expenditures to budget that can be found starting in, again, it's another schedule in the back of the book, schedule A for revenues and schedule B for expenditures. So you can see the more detail in what's provided here. Your community development fund was a decrease of $100,000, and this was a planned decrease of your fund balance with the transfer out. And then your capital projects did increase fund balance by $890,000. This pie chart just shows where you get most of your revenues, and you can tell 75% come from taxes, penalties, interests. Your next largest source is your charges for services, and then grants coming in after that. So it's a good depiction of where you're getting your revenues. And this pie chart shows how you spend your money, most of it 45% on public safety, followed by general government at 22, and public works at about 19%. I like throwing in this comparison chart for revenues and expenses, comparing it current year to prior year. So you can actually tell there's really not much of a change in the percentage of how your revenues and expenditures are broken down. There might be a one to two percent variance from year to year in the different areas. Statement G is found on page 21, and this is your net position of proprietary funds. This first page is basically the assets, as you can see, especially for your enterprise funds, a large portion, most of it, most of your assets are tied up in your fixed assets, in buildings, in infrastructure, and then your accumulated depreciation. The second page of this schedule shows your liabilities, and then your net position. So in looking at your net position, I can say water and sewer increased what's invested in capital assets. So there was an increase in your assets for the year without adding debt. So you actually self-funded a lot of those assets in these specific funds. Statement H is found on page 23. This is your revenue's expenses and changes in net position for your proprietary funds. You can see there's an operating revenues is the first line and operating expenses. So to get your to your operating income for the different funds. So like in water fund, there was actually an operating loss, but there was some non-operating income that came in for grants. So the change in net position for the water fund, you increased it by $143,000. Sewer fund was a slight decrease. Parking was increased and then district heat was a decrease, but I know that's a conversation. I do like to throw in the comparison of unassigned fund balance as a percentage of budget for compared to other towns. I will tell you Barry, Shelburne, and Montpelier, y'all all have about the same population. So it's a good comparison for those three. I also throw in South Burlington just to understand where they've been, we know they've been building a lot and so to understand where their fund balance has risen in the past couple of years. Berries is still smaller than y'all's and Shelburne, I would say it stayed the same, but a lot of that is information just isn't available for us to view, but there's still a good city town to look at comparative wise. And the debt per capita compared to these communities, as I said, South Burlington, they've been building, they've had TIF, Market Street, so they've heavily invested and now you see that debt starting to come down because they're towards the end of that cycle. Whereas Barry and Shelburne at this point aren't really investing right now. It's a cycle and it's a cycle that every town has to go through, so you have to and then yours at the end. So you did increase for this year, there was the bond sold in July of 22. So that's the increase that you see there. So for the presentation on the actual audit, those are the slides I have. Were there any other questions? Okay. The notes to the audit, there's a lot of good information in there, very detail oriented, but it's good pertaining to all the schedules. I know Sarah's read it back and forth several times. If she can't answer your question, feel free to reach out to me if there are any questions. The other, there are two other letters that we issue as part of our audit. One is called the SAS 114. I don't know that that was included. It was okay. But basically the point of that letter is to let you know if we had any difficulties with management and I'm pleased to report that we did not this year, not that we have in the past, but specifically none this year. And then we also issue a management letter and that's usually pertain to, you know, internal controls. Did we find something that might need to have best practices or suggestions for improvement? And I will say for FY 23, there were no comments in that letter. So, which I have to say, I have to give props to Sarah, Heather, Todd, because, you know, normally when you prepare for an audit, that starts July 1st. And you had a small thing that happened for y'all. And so, and then not to mention the office moving a couple of times just made things, you know, that much more difficult. So, I really have to have to give them props for sticking with it, for getting the job done and for allowing this audit to be pretty clean. So, anything else? Anyone have any questions? Gary? Yes, thank you for such a thorough presentation and for your work. And thank you to Sarah and your department for all the great work that you've done. Tim? Yep. Question. This is still been on the council less than a year. So, it is a learning piece trying to, not all the way through it to be honest with you, but trying to understand it. And there's just a different perspective than maybe we've discussed in our meetings throughout the year. So, one that I just, well, I've got you here that's interesting is on page 47, just looking at, it's basically the summary of outstanding bonds and notes. Thank you. And I guess my question is kind of looking at this is something that we need to be aware of or maybe I'm just not reading it right, but it looks like in 2029 to 33 there's going to be a period with a really big increase in our payments. Yeah. For reporting purposes in the disclosure checklist you have to do for this report, the first five years are broken out individually and then they're lumped in five year periods. So, that's the total for the five years, not per year? That's not per year. That's the total for each of the five years. Thank you. I'm going to give you a few more of them. No panic. I thought we had our own Act 127. Well, that's a great thing for us to know. Yeah. Anybody else? I'm going to say. Well, I just want to say that, I mean, I looked at this and tried to stay awake as long as I could. So, I appreciate the report and I could read it again and again and I would still rely on your opinion. At some point though, sir, I may ask you a question or two. Just as Tim says, it's been kind of a linear experience for me. I'm not looking for anything. I just want to understand it better. I was an auditor for eight years, so I'm happy to run through this with you. So, what you're saying is this stuff is fun for you. Love it. Not so much for many of the rest of us, I'm sure. Make sure Sarah and your staff go back and tell them kudos, really. It is amazing that you do it with such glowy remarks anyways, but then throughout all the movement moving in the office, it's just had to be very, very chaotic. So, yeah, they're double the next double things. Thank you. All right. And I think we're set. Pelin, do you have anything? Don't want to leave you out. Okay. Great. Thanks so much. I appreciate this. It's good to know that things are working well. Next up, I understand that from Mike that we're taking item seven off for tonight, the property acquisition. Yeah. So, property acquisitions, excuse me, is coming off for tonight. The two of the three applicants are away for the vacation. We contacted the third person and he was fine delaying the conversation till after town meeting day. So, we'll have it on the 13th. So, hopefully it won't be a long presentation, but we will pick that up after town meeting days. Great. Thanks. Yeah, town meeting day. You see this next week and we don't have a meeting the day after town meeting. Maybe sometimes too. All right. Up to item eight, zoning second reading or the second public hearing of the zoning amendments. Good evening, mayor, council of Mike Miller. I'm the planning director for the city. And I'm going to go through the zoning. I'll quickly go through the zoning presentation here. I saw on the screen we had a few new faces and we have a couple of people in the audience who at least one I haven't recognized. So, we'll quickly go through the public hearing for the zoning and river hazard regulations. So, I'm going to quickly run through the process. Where the proposals, where to find the proposals if you want to see them and describe the changes to the regulations, each one of them. And then we'll have some next steps and some questions and comments. And this is a public hearing. So, this is really all about the public hearing process. Mike, are you going to share your screen? Oh, I'm sorry. And in case it wasn't obvious, I'm opening the public hearing. I think I said that. Apologies. There we go. So, I see it on the screen, so I assume it's on the Zoom and it's not. So, the process, this is the second of two public hearings. This is really two hearings for two things. It's kind of a double public hearing because the unified development regulations, which are also known as the zoning bylaws, are one set and river hazard are another set. Because we're having this conversation and people may jump back and forth, we're just having one hearing to cover both of these. You have to have two hearings and this is the second. The first one was on Valentine's Day and this is the second one and the council can have additional hearings. If you choose, I'm actually expecting that you probably will end up having one more because if there's a substantial change, then there has to be another hearing. So, that way, the substantial change can go back to the Planning Commission for comment. There's not another hearing at the Planning Commission. There's simply an opportunity for the Planning Commission to provide you a comment on whether they agree, disagree, what their concerns might be about those changes. I expect, based on conversations I've heard at various times with committees, if you agree with any of those changes, that they would probably be substantial. And that's Country Club Road and potentially the shading requirements. So, we'll have more conversation when we get there. But I would hope, expect that we might be able to approve the river hazard regulations tonight, but we'll see how that goes too. So, if you're looking for proposals, because if there is another hearing, you would have this opportunity if you go to the main page, zoning and floodplain regulations is on the right hand side. And if you click on that, it would take you to the zoning subdivisions regulations page where we put the draft regulations right at the top. And you have both the zoning, the draft zoning map, and a list of the zoning changes, which is a shortcut way because the zoning regulations are very long. If you just want to kind of get a summary of what each one of the changes were, they are in there. And so, all those items are to date the changes that have been made since they've been proposed since our last hearing. Yes, it includes all the changes that I will go over tonight. It is updated. So, really quickly, the zoning map changes. We've talked about them. There's a change for 155 Northfield Street. A Country Club Road is a larger change. 29 Sibley is a small parcel change. It was a merger. It just needs a zoning match. We're just highlighting that that's there. And some home act changes because of to residential 24 district. On the left is the Country Club Road. It's really hard to tell. The little two symbol is on the roundabout. And it is so the one fourth at the top of the hill. That is the open area in the Country Club. And 9-9 is the change that's proposed for the upper part. All of the area 9-9 and 1-4, those are all your open areas of the Country Club. None of the forested areas of the Country Club Road property are included in these changes. So, these just include the two open areas. 9-9 is rural still? 9-9 was rural and is being proposed to be residential 3,000. Yeah. What was circled there is that's the small change that was on Sibley Street. Very small. And then there is a change due to statute, the home act. There was a requirement that said anything, any districts, any areas with sewer and water have to be zoned at 5-acre zoning, which is about residential 9,000. Very, very close to that. So, these two districts up in Town Hill and a little parcel there, part of a parcel that's Casey Ellison's part of Savins Pasture. It's not Savins Pasture, but it's next to it. Also needs to get rezoned. Did you say 5-acre or 5th of an acre? 5th of an acre. Excuse me, one unit. One unit for five units per one acre. Here we go. Which is 43,600, right? Yeah, for one for an acre. So, which one we get here? The changes in the text as a result of these to eliminate the 24,000, we moved those neighborhoods to the residential 9,000. And we had to change the density to of residential 9,000 to one unit per 8,712 square feet, which is five units an acre. So, rather than change the name of residential 9,000, we just kept it the same and the density is a little bit lower. There are proposals and we'll quickly go through these. Through the list I have, which I gave to all the counselors, just so we've got a quick checklist when we get there. But as the overview, there are a number of housing-related changes that were proposed by Planning Commission change the use table to add large and small multi-unit. Rather, right now, our zoning has multifamily as anything with more than five. We just split it into a small multifamily, which is 5 to 14 and one that's 15 or more. And that just gave us the ability to make more of the small multifamily's permitted uses in certain districts. So, if you want to do six buildings, six units in an urban center area, you could do it as a permitted use as opposed to a conditional use because it's going to not have as much impact. We added more types of congregate housing options and made them match with dwelling unit type housings. We view housing in two different ways. One's a dwelling unit where you own all the components. Another one is congregate housing where you might share some. You might have your own room and share kitchen. Some others may share bathroom facilities. Mike, I was talking to someone the other day and he raised the question about co-housing. And would that come within congregate housing? I always say it depends on how you, because people can define co-housing a little bit differently. So, I usually just go through and say, if you, there are five components to a dwelling unit. You have your kitchen, your bathroom, your living area, your bedroom, and one other. You got five requirements that are in there. And if you have all five and you own and occupy all five, that's a dwelling unit. If you share any one of them, then you're considered congregate housing. So, the classic is, of course, you live in a dormitory. You have your own room. That's your room. You have a key to the room. You have exclusive right to that room, but you share the bathroom and you go to a community place to have your meals. Other places, some senior living facilities, you might have your own room and your own bathroom, but you might still share the living, some of the other facilities. So, it just depends how the arrangement is made. It depends on whether it technically qualifies as a congregate housing. So, this added to accommodate existing buildings? This was really intended. We were trying to do a fair housing analysis of our residential categories. And what we found was that we were continuously holding congregate housing to a higher standard than we were dwelling units. So, a small boarding facility might be a... You might be able to put in a five-unit apartment as a permitted use, but if you want to put in a small boarding facility, that would be a conditional use. And so, we just tried to even them up, tried to make them fairer. If it's a small unit, it's going to match up to a small dwelling unit and we'll treat them fairly. So, we're not discriminating against a certain housing type. And the hope is that this will give more opportunities for these types of housing units to come online. As just as a point for most people who might not know, 40% of all the households in Montpelier are single people, people living alone. Congregate housing options, it has a bad reputation. It has a lot of negativity that comes in with it. But the reality is when you've got so much of your population that is living by themselves, congregate housing options make a lot of sense for a number of people. And it's not a requirement that people live that way. It's just providing more options for people. So, had proposals been made that had to be turned down because we didn't have this? No, we just had... We're just looking forward to... We're trying to look forward and we're, like we said, we're just trying to do a fair housing analysis. We want to make sure we're not inadvertently having rules to setting up rules to make higher hurdles for projects that, other than for their reputation, they shouldn't be held to a higher standard. Yeah, I've been involved a little bit and other colleagues have been involved with issues where a group home for mental health recipients might... Towns have tried to keep those out, which we obviously don't want to do. And group homes have special protections under state law, which is why I've kind of not tried to use the example of a group home for the purposes of talking about congregate living. But I know, I've had projects and I've won and buried. That was perfectly fine. Over at Gusto's, there were two units. Each one had the living space and a kitchen, but they shared a bathroom in the middle. So because they shared a facility, technically they were a boarding house, and so they had to get a permanent boarding house. In other places, there are a lot of opportunities, I think, especially as people are living alone, where having your own living space with your own bathroom and having your own space, but sharing those living and kitchen facilities is going to make a lot of sense, especially maybe if you're seniors or if you're younger. There are opportunities for people to live in more the congregate housing options without really disrupting the neighborhoods in the area. And we'll see what comes up. We're just at this point making the rules and trying to make them fairer. If it's something small, it'll be treated differently. And as these get bigger and bigger, obviously if you're going to do a big dormitory, you're going to be treated the same as a big multi-unit building. So those protections will still be in place. Michael Coop, we go back to that 40% single households. Now, is that from the census? How do you know that? It's from the census. Okay, and do you have it within that data? Is there approximate square footage that these individuals live in? I don't have that information. We do know the number of people living alone. That's a pretty easy number to come up with. And it always surprises people. People think, well, we got to build housing units for families. Where would a mom and pop and a child want to live? Well, less than, usually it's about 7% to 8% of households have two parents and one person 18 years or under. So you're talking about less than 10% of all households are those traditional family units. Overwhelmingly, families are either single family households, two adults living together, whether married or unmarried, without children, and people living alone. So those really are housing demographics. Much of our housing was built in an age when people had big families. And that's why we've tried to adjust our zoning therefore allow them to keep our existing houses, let's break them into smaller pieces so we can better utilize them. So really quick, expanded rights for nonconforming parcels. People who've been paying attention to this for a while know that if you've got a conforming lot, you can have a duplex, regardless of density. That was passed in 2018. It's been successful. There's now a proposal to up that to four units. So if you've got a conforming parcel, regardless of density, you could have up to four units. You still have to meet all the other requirements of zoning. You still have to have your parking spaces and everything else if it's required. But the hope is that we would get into this question of these large homes from the turn of the century, turn of the last century that were built for large families. This might provide some opportunities to open up some of these units and make them more usable because sometimes the density is what stops them. And that has been a barrier. Any parcel in the design review district will not have a maximum density. So currently in urban center one, two, and three, we don't have a density requirement. We had a study that was done that said we could probably expand this to more districts. We've had a number of proposals in the year that didn't. That weren't successful. But the premise of what the information we got from AARP and the Congress for New Urbanism was that if you have got good design standards, you don't need to have a maximum density because it really is however many units you can fit in the building, whether that's four two bedrooms or eight one bedrooms. Well, eight one bedrooms is eight units an acre and four two bedrooms is four units an acre. And you're like, well, that really is this almost the same, but not according. So density starts taking away the density, gives the building owner the flexibility to try to match their building to what they believe the demographic need is. So if they see a lot more families, they'll make more two unit and three units. If they see a lot more single people, they might break them into more single units. Any questions? Yep. So it says, any property and design review district or CC exempt from density, CC capital complex? Capital complex. Thank you. Yep. So that was the correction that we had to make last time. So the other changes, we made some changes to the demolition provisions to address recent cases. I'm going to go through a list in a minute of some other changes that have gone through. We also made changes to the sign rules, removal of the solar and access requirements, move the boundary line adjustment rules from subdivisions into administrative and made permanent interim emergency housing rules. And there are other typos that were fixed. We also made the three changes here. Adding the capital complex was one and adding in some time for delayed project changes. So that's if a permit is still valid, we're going to give it another extra year to commence development. And we'll talk about that a little bit more after the overview. The river hazard changes, really looking at few additional changes to critical facilities and some minor technical changes. And so I just want to reiterate, so the entire zoning river hazard is open to change when a public hearing comes up. It's not just about what's being proposed. Substantial changes must go back to the planning commission for comment, which I had mentioned in current expectations that we'll need one more meeting due to the Country Club Road zoning changes. We did get written comments from Mr. Thomas Weiss. I've got responses to all of them, which I'll go through pretty quickly, depending on what process we want to use. And there was questions from Mr. Harper on the sign last time. I'll answer those questions. And then we'll review Country Club Road and the solar. And I put these into a checklist. I'm going to stop sharing my screen right now, which I thought if everyone's okay with that, I'll go through that. I put it on your table, which I felt if we kind of broke it and went into these really quickly, I could go through them rather than having us be here until midnight. If we could kind of narrow things down to a few questions that are left. And I think that's going to be Country Club Road. And the solar. But if anyone puts anything else on, that's perfectly fine. But if you want, I can do the river hazard first. Sure, that's fine. But to be clear, what you think is that there are already enough changes in the zoning bylaw that they are considered major changes and they will need to go back for review to the Planning Commission. Yes, if the council votes to not go with the changes, I've made changes as draft changes in the bylaws because that was kind of the discussion we had at the last meeting. If everybody said nope, go back to the original Planning Commission version and we're going to adopt that, you could adopt that tonight. My expectation is that's probably not where the direction we're going to go, but that's your choice, not mine. So if we go with what's in the current draft, we will have to go back for one more meeting. Okay, thanks. All right. All right, so really quick, there are three decision points on river hazard regulations. I don't think they're too big and then I'll go quickly through Thomas's questions and then I guess we can maybe open it up to questions and comments on the river hazard and then maybe we can get that one put to bed. So the three decision points we have on the river hazard is the proposal is to hold critical facilities to higher standards, the 0.2% chance event. Some people may call that the 500 year event or it's the 0.2% event. And critical facilities are those that are defined as class three and class four buildings by the building codes. So that is generally buildings that are your police stations, fire stations, schools, nursing homes, hospitals, there's a very specific list that is in building code and so we could make that list as big or small or we could choose whichever facilities we want. The suggestion that comes out generally if you were to look across the country is they use the building code standards for critical facilities. And we have a definition of that already. We have the proposal to be the class three and class four buildings as defined in the building code. Okay. And the last thing is not really that major of a thing but we're going to also remove the prohibition on using sheet rock when doing non-substantial improvements. So as many of you who got flooded know sometimes if you get a non, if you get a substantial improvement you're in a completely different class but sometimes there's a lot of these non-substantial improvements that come up whether it's from non-substantial damage or just making improvements and there's currently a prohibition against using sheet rock. Well the reality of what happens is when water gets in you've got to dry out what's behind it. Sheet rock is really easy to cut off, dry, put new sheet rock back on. It's cheap, economical, it's the way everybody does it and so we just want to go through it's what we've basically told everybody to do it that way. We just now want to make the rules kind of match with what we've been telling everybody to do anyways because it doesn't make sense to put tile non-porous things there. We know water is going to get behind it and then you have an expensive process of removing expensive tile to get behind it because it wasn't built, when a building is built in the first place to be floodable they're built without spaces behind them. We have walls that have spaces behind them so you really can't. So those were the three suggestions and I'll quickly run through the comments that Mr. Weiss gave us at the last meeting and I'm going to summarize his he's more than welcome to come in and say I've misrepresented them but the first suggestion was used to kind of use 1927 flood as the flood of record and he also had a recommendation to increase the free board and so my comment on that is 1927 proceeds two of the floods he pointed out that one of the dams excuse me one of the we have three major dams one of them actually was built before 27 he did point that out to me the other two were built afterwards but what we have are scientifically determined maps right now that are based on the federal standards these are the FEMA NFIP maps there really no maps for 1927 NFIP is National Flood Insurance Program yes so if we want to increase protection we should use the existing maps and we could add more free board free board is you could tell somebody to build the base flood elevation free board says well you got to build two feet above it that's two feet of free board as we defined it so you could require people to add three feet of free board if you wanted where is two feet of free board in relation to 1927 I don't have an exact number but it's going to be the flood of 27 was the floor of this building the second floor water got up to this floor in 27 so it's a couple two feet of free board it's probably below that it's going to be a couple of feet below that but it's in the flood that happened in June the water got to just lapping on the doors of city center which was built to to one it was built it was built to no feet above it was built to base flood elevation and the water got just up to it the buildings that were built two feet above had plenty of room like the transit center Lauren Thanks so I know there's been a lot of talk of kind of the how outdated the federal maps are and the state I believe is doing some pretty extensive mapping or there's some contracts to be doing some like would this tie us to existing old FEMA maps or would it be able to update like if the state adopts newer maps or if FEMA eventually adopts newer maps as an update with those or is this tying us until like a specific dated our flood maps our regulations tie ourselves to the most recently adopted flood map so if the flood maps are re-adopted and ours are not as bad other parts of the state are really bad ours were actually redone in 2007 and were brought online like 2013 so ours for Washington County are not that bad they're really bad in other parts of the state that were still in the 70s or 80s so we're fortunate to have been updated from 80 to 2013 a few years ago so those aren't bad if they get updated the two feet of free board would then be from the new map elevations so a new FEMA adopted but like if I am pretty sure that Vermont is doing something like much more intensive like much more detailed mapping than what FEMA typically does but we wouldn't be able to use that so it could be more like location specific where it just it's a much finer grain mapping yeah and I think they are and getting to the the second point that Thomas made which was that he wanted land adjacent to the flood plain that are below DFE designed flood elevation those two foot of free board should also be regulated so think about if a flood plain is 520 feet in elevation and it's going down towards the river and you're right here you're building a new project you have to build the 522 so you're two feet above that that elevation if you happen to be just one foot over uphill and you're 520.1 you don't have any requirements and you can take a hole and put a basement that's the way the rules work and we're kind of like what you just made these guys be up here shouldn't you follow this out to where 522 line is and say anybody in the middle also has to elevate if you're building something new and I agree absolutely and so connecting Thomas's suggestion with your comment they are going through right now to do more revisions to our flood maps which is excellent even though they're not that old they are redoing ours so what we're going to ask what I'm going to be pushing for with them is that they also map when they give us the flood plain that they give us that line so if we're going to keep it free board at two feet I'm going to ask them to give me the what is the flood plain look like so that way at least council will have the option to then adopt regulations to regulate that area it won't be automatic we'd have to come back have to have public hearings have that conversation but it only makes sense that we would have the standards you're not required to buy flood insurance in those areas but we would require you to elevate so that way if there's a flood that's that much higher we don't have a lot of people getting damaged because they're just outside the line so we are going to ask they are doing the mapping we are going to try to get that map but we really can't do that right now simply because we don't have the map and but then getting back to Lauren's question is the proposed ordinance saying the most recent FEMA map or would it allow for us to use a state adopted map that's more recent than the most recent FEMA map ours reference the FEMA map okay thank you done it's the FEMA map is that also sort of included with any sort of standard of FEMA and therefore more in sync with them and their rules it's we're in we're a community rating system so we are in CRS so that whole program is based on the FEMA NFIP National Flood Insurance maps so if we adopted higher different maps we would have to go through and demonstrate that they are in all places higher than and of higher detail and higher whatever of the you know it would have to fully encompass what is in the NFIP map okay he commented about the term 500 years flood plain shouldn't be used I didn't think we did but he was right he caught a few I found them I changed them he had a suggestion to add references to how to find the state statutes I didn't make any changes about that I kind of feel this is the digital age I think most of these are pretty easy to find with a quick Google and such things change can also change pretty quickly and so putting references in a document like this that may not change can be problematic suggestion to use the Vermont Building Codes he's absolutely correct we there is no Vermont Building Code it is the Vermont Fire and Safety Building Code and so I made that change we also could reference our city building regulations chapter four of the city code of ordinances if the council chooses the last suggestion he made was to expand the definition of critical facilities that we talked about earlier to specifically reference the location of the definition of the category three and category four my suggestion is that actually being it's actually a benefit to keep the reference a little bit vague or a little bit general referring to the codes if we reprint the list into the regulations and the list changes in the code then we can't just use the correct code we've got to update the zoning in order to put the correct code in there if they change their code and change the reference number in their code such that reference you know 1611 become 1612 because they added another 1610 then our reference is going to be incorrect and we got to go back so sometimes keeping them a little bit general is a little bit better most of these we're going to know about we've got a building code and building inspector right in our office so hospital school police nursing facilities we're not going to have very many of these applications coming in and we're going to very quickly know which ones are going to have to meet this higher standard of building two feet above the 500 year as opposed to two feet above the 100 year that's what the critical facilities is saying you have to build effectively it's going to be about another foot higher okay so is that that's it for flood that's it for flood so okay so i'm going to take comments from the public and try to keep things as organized as possible let's take comments from the public on the flood regulations first and dr weiss you're here do you have anything to say about that i appreciate oh okay sorry about that i good evening i'm thomas weiss resident amok pilier district two and i appreciate everything that mike said about my comments and i can accept them all i would appreciate having more in critical facilities i will not critical facilities you know i'd i'd appreciate if if that extra elevation were added to everything housing and and all those things i realize it's added expense and it's a choice that you're going to have to weigh as to who if any is going to have this extra expense by having to to protect the higher flood as i mentioned last week i've done a lot of flood studies the hydrology the streamflow hydraulics and i just think the higher we build anything the better we are because we're always going to have a bigger flood my comment on the classes three and four is not that we put them in the code per se but when i look up or when anybody looks up on the fire and safety division site all that's there is the changes that vermont has made to the national building code and so one has to go to the national building code to find the list of classes three and four so my comment was more that in order to find the classes three and four you actually have to go to the national building code because they are not in the one we get from the prior and safety division it can get a little complicated and if you leave it out that's the way it goes i understand being able to talk to the building inspector and and getting that information i do have one more comment which has to do with the way sections 644 which is design flood elevation is two feet above the flood of one percent annual probability and the critical facilities in section 720 which are two feet above the point two percent annual probability flood and when i was going through the documents there were several areas that reference the design flood elevation for example fuel tanks have to be built so that their filler pipes and vent pipes are above the design flood elevation which is a foot lower than the critical facilities would have but it's not clear that a fuel tank at a critical facility would have to meet that extra foot of elevation so it's i guess i'm suggesting and i know that sounds like mike was hoping that there aren't going to be significant changes but to look through the code or the bylaws and see what the design flood elevation references are and whether they would need to be changed for the for the critical facilities and if you only go with critical facilities that's great you know it as i said the more we can get higher it's better i i i appreciate it if you don't get everything well that's your decision you're the policy makers thanks i'm the technical guy thank you you're welcome um are there any other members of the public uh out there and in zoomland who would like to be heard on this uh proposal and then i'll get members of the council and i'll get the mike's response to that last comment or probably in reverse order okay so mike what's uh oh i'm sorry so mike what are your thoughts about that last comment yeah if i had a couple minutes i could probably tweak i think it's i think it's okay but i mean if if i were i see where mr weiss is going with the comments because this one it defines it for everything else is defined they define as design flood elevation and the free free board requirement is two feet if we had the similar provision or at least if the reference in critical facilities basically stating that the design flood elevation for critical facilities is two feet above the 500 year then anytime you see d fe and the rules based on which path you're going down you know where how that applies but it didn't use the word design flood elevation in the critical facilities so if that were kind of tucked in there then that kind of closes that loop although i think in most cases i think it's would be generally understood based on how the rules are written that that's the intent of where the board wants to go but so just thinking about what you're saying we could adopt it with the changes you've given us tonight or you probably would want to take it back to make sure you're doing it right uh and have it on for a different for another meeting also i guess i would leave that in in as i said i think i mean it's a really subtle difference i mean i tend to be a little bit about perfectionist to make sure i leave as few holes for an attorney to wiggle into as you know usually that's what we're trying to do is how would i if i were if i didn't want to meet this rule how would i fight it in court and that's how we kind of read the rules and i think some of you have a really hard time keeping a straight face and going through and saying that because this technically did not say the word design flood elevation that when we refer to the design flood elevation elsewhere it doesn't count okay donna if you feel it's already inferred inserting that phrase will be a significant change that you have to go back to the commission for it no it wouldn't be a significant change it's just i don't have that phraseology changed and and maybe when because we're not voting on this right now when we're on our break at 8 30 i'll spend a couple minutes and coming up with a way that because we'll vote on that i'll make a proposal when we have that conversation of how to add the dfe language in there to clean to close that up okay anybody else any other members have comments or quick questions i guess i mean i i think this is a good step i do agree it seems like as much as possible moving towards not doing new developments and blood-prone ways just seems smart and prudent i mean it seems like too obvious to even say but it seems like a good step and like let's keep moving in this direction which would be my hope okay anyone else any other members have any comments or questions then what i think what i will do is close the public hearing on the on the flood ordinance and move to the public hearing on the which we've already opened on the on the zoning and then we'll take a break and we'll have a chance to vote on the flood rules all right so i'm going to go through really quick some of these i had already mentioned in my presentation but i'm going to go through these and inserting comments that we've had again mr. weiss gave us a written list of comments want to make sure anytime anybody send us comments we do take them seriously we do review them uh we don't always agree with them and we don't always put them in but where where people make good good valid points we do want to go through or we want to go and answer those questions so we've got this we can just follow along with the sheet do you want to follow along um and i'm going to skip the two biggies um country club road rezoning and shading because those are going to i expect we're going to have debate on but this quick summary is to go through all the other things that are in the zoning because there are a lot of policy changes i want to make sure we don't get a thought that i'm sneaking something in and nobody knows about it um so these there are a lot of technical changes i'm not going over but these are the ones that have some amount of policy change to them we went over those zoning map changes that are in there we're saving country club road mr. weiss had a question about the hill behind the capital in urban center one why is that in urban center one when it's the hill that goes up the thing as a rule districts lines follow property lines as much as possible in this case that is the land that the state house is on the capital building all the same parcel uh it's completely exempt from zoning so we couldn't do anything on that anyways we could we could zone that whatever we want and um as a part of state law it is regulated by the legislature not even by bgs it is regulated and controlled by the legislature so the state could build whatever it wants on that property and that there's nothing we can do about it absolutely nothing so the home act changes um they're generally required by law as i pointed out moving the neighborhoods res nine to eighty seven hundred that's not really a policy decision but that'll be one change there was a question for mr. weiss about the density appearing wrong he pointed out about residential 6000 he thought a duplex should also be uh and a triplex and coaplex or those would would also be under state law under the home act duplexes must be allowed in a district and they have to they can meet all the same standards so if you have a density requirement of one unit per 6000 you would need 12 000 for a duplex under state law um now our zoning already allows it for most cases anyways but um the density technically still applies and i had this confirmed with our city attorney so it's um that's it's not may not be what the legislature intended but uh as anyone who i write zoning bylaws it doesn't depend what i intended to write into the zoning it's what i actually do write into the zoning and in this case they the way they worded it density still applies but we have already overridden that in most cases including in 3002 he had a question that is the part that says if you're on water and sewer and you have a conforming lot you can have a duplex regardless of density and he had a question of whether or not that should also apply to the ones that are non-conforming lots and i think based on the density question i just answered it does not get that benefit so i think we're okay in that category as well um but you have the right if you wanted to as counsel to go through and say we don't care strike that piece and allow non-conforming parcels to have the same rights as conforming parcels so there there are some uh properties in the city uh like at my house where we're on city water we have a septic system and the arrangement is that the city pays to have it uh pumped out every three years does that mean that i we're not within that category because we're not on city sewer correct you would not qualify for that and the pumping doesn't change that the pumping doesn't change that no uh you counsel you could go and change that rule the way the rule was written it was intended in 2018 we were trying to make a big jump from what was from 2006 to and so we rezoned everything to be 90 conforming so there's still 10 the parcels non-conforming but we also have a number of parcels number of properties that only have sewer or water or don't have either and so we just pull out the duplexes and this is going to go when we get to that next question of four plexus you also wouldn't get the benefit of being able to do the four plexus because you aren't on sewer and water you need to be on sewer and water and have a conforming lot and you have the right to change that rule you guys could say anybody has that right but the way it was proposed in 2018 that was adopted into 2018 only people who have conforming lots and sewer and water can get those benefits so so we had a we had an issue in uh the assessments this year where a property had sewer and water but it went through it was it it appears to me it was a parcel that was divided after sewer and water were supplied and so now the property in the rear has sewer and water that goes through the basement of the property in front and property in front is where it's been shut off so this rule I mean this rule would prevent that from happening well it would if we changed it to include non-conforming it would it would allow that it's assuming the parcel was conforming it would have access to sewer and water it not having sewer and water is not not that's for a a different reason that's more for a civil issue reason it's for a different reason so if they turn the water on they would it would conform they would conform they could have the access but okay Donna just going back to jack's property he says is non-conforming and and so and not on sewer is this conforming it just doesn't have sewer well in either case is there still not an out for a property to say you know I am an exception and petition to have something changed so that they could do multi units she had a variance he would if jack wanted to go through and go to four units he would have to meet the density requirement so if he's got enough land to um so if he's in residential 6000 and he has a 24 000 square foot lot he could do it he just will need to meet that the permits for that requirement but he doesn't get to do it if he only has a 6000 square foot lot in a 6000 square foot district he wouldn't be able to put four units in right but I was just thinking that people would still have the option to go at least a few steps beyond the initial no you can't that's all and and you could go through and say everybody regardless has the right to do a duplex that is certainly um and you could allow it for for quadplexes as well and say even if you're non-conforming you can do it because the sewer is going to be regulated when um you know jack can't put in four more units unless he expands his septic field in a septic tank four times bigger to meet state rules so chances are good he wouldn't be able to do it for that reason and once he starts expanding his septic field he's got to meet all the new rules so he's got to have a new an existing and a backup site and he's got to have not I'm not doing any this really isn't about it's what I'm going to do the hypothetical work so it's yeah that's good for we could you could go through and say I know we have this thing that says you have to be conforming but let's get rid of that and just say anybody who's got it can can do it as we said we only did it because we were we were trying to be cautious and and take small steps and make sure the public didn't think that everybody with every tiny lot was going to be able to drop duplexes on a lot that was a third the size of a required lot and it hasn't been an issue since 2018 and we haven't had an issue so far no okay Tim the conforming issues so how far does that go if it's somebody has 40 feet of street frontage and the zoning is maybe there wasn't even zoning when their house was built and now the zoning requires 60 feet of road furniture something so would that be a non-conforming lot I'd have to take a look at it I don't know if it says if it's based on lot size 3002 any conforming parcel so technically yes as it's written if you did not have appropriate frontage then you could also be excluded even though if you've got the correct size because it says non-conforming parcel I don't know how many non-conforming parcels we have based on frontage because I know that would be your next question I don't know that number I want a few of them so I know there's at least a few yeah we did we did we did decrease a lot of lock frontages as well so when we when we did those rules we did try to capture that we won't say we were perfect there are a lot of numbers to address in a lot of different districts so we think we've got that that wasn't one of the ones we took a really hard look at but we think we've got those but again if the issue of the non-conforming lot is a concern we can that's not a requirement the square footage was really the big thing as I recall and and I was struck by how you know some people had a real emotional reaction to being told that they were non-conforming and it was not didn't mean that they were doing anything wrong it was just okay keep moving all right and we can go through we can come back and revisit any of these uh the use table needs to allow multi-unit dwellings as either permitted or conditional that was another comment that the use table needs to allow multi-unit as either permitted or conditional in the rule under state law the new state law the home act is that only districts with water and sewer need to meet this standard and in our districts we all the ones with utilities do meet that requirement housing and density changes changes to the use table we went over the expanded density is another recommended policy we went over that that's now saying instead of two it would be four any project and design review would be exempt from density we've gone over that there were major changes to the demolition rules and we had a comment from Mr. Weiss again that the standard does not anticipate future redevelopment of space after demolition you must return to grade and revegetate revegetate and he was absolutely correct so and I forgot to put this on the table so the table that I sent out and put online does not have this change but it was an excellent suggestion I forgot to put this in the table I made a number of changes to distinguish between two types of demolition projects one that's demolition and return to grade and one that's demolition to redevelop we also separated out some of the standards for practice to put two standards into one standard so you shall screen and do this you should have you got to screen it and you got to do this so that way the DRB can make determinations on each one of them and if it gets appealed we're appealing a very specific thing so we had some things that were application requirements like you had to put in your application requirement how you're going to screen everything but then in your standards you had no standard for screening so we took it out of the application requirements we put it into the into the screening require as a requirement so we did make a number of adjustments at you know once spurred by Thomas's recommendation we made a couple of changes we think much it comes out much better with the new format we have major sign revisions and Mr Harper came in and he commented about the sign on state street that he wants to move over I took a look at that my estimation is that sign is about 14 feet in height the requirement that we have put into the zoning in the proposed zoning is 12 feet so the sign in question is a little bit too tall if he moved it I don't think sign areas an issue lighting will need to be shielded the historic light that's in there has these kind of these lantern light things but certainly on river street they're going to have to be shielded you can't have them I'm sure they're designed ways that they could have a little bit of illumination coming through to kind of have that neat effect but it would have to be a shielded light and it's right across from people's houses so yeah so it's going to have to have a certain amount of shielding so council can keep the recommendation as it is if you would have to shorten the post council could increase the height and the regulations to 15 feet giving everyone that same right or council could keep the requirement at 12 feet but instruct staff to develop some waiver rules that would allow the DRB to review applications for an additional three feet now yeah I know he's he was here earlier and he's not here now unfortunately did you talk to him about whether he would have an issue with the with what you're proposing here and would it be a problem for him a feed if you just told him what you got to cut two feet off the bottom of the post to make it I didn't get a chance to meet with him okay we got I thought he might be here tonight to kind of go over it but anyway so it would be the three options for kind of going through you know I think I put in here I'm fine staff is fine with any of the suggestions but would probably lean towards the ladder the waiver option if you pressed me to go and say which one would I probably go with the waiver option the the only reason for that being that especially for signs and freestanding signs in the downtown the design review commission might want to have things at a different height might be okay with a 12 foot sign but a 15 foot sign might interfere with you know blocking some historic feature so if they had to go to the DRB they would you know and but as I said that was a few smaller examples of something like that but again if you moved it to 15 feet I'm fine left to 12 and fine okay um there was a comment again Mr. Weiss about an orphan sign height header good catch uh rather than delete this here uh staff went back and moved the measurement that was in G5C back to this place because this section was about how to measure things so actually that probably should have stayed there so I moved that back in and left that there so and there was a question about what happened to figure 316 the requirements that were in 316 this old figure 316 have now been embedded into the text so that's why the the figure is no longer needed and then we've gone through these other policy changes moved the boundary line adjustment to be administrative make permanent interim emergency housing provisions allow valid permits to have an automatic one-year extension from the date of adoption of these rules so if we adopt these rules there'll be an automatic one-year extension to any valid permit we couldn't just allow every permit because technically once a permit expires it no longer exists and I can't resurrect it back so we would it's only permits that are still valid at this time that we could give an automatic one-year extension to and then they fall under the new rules where they just have to start to commence development so they don't have to complete their development in one year they have to commence it and this is automatic when your extension is really two changes in one right one it has they only have to commence within the period and two it gives an extra year yes yeah and that goes for everybody else going forward we're going to have rules once we once you get a zoning approval you have two years to commence development and then you'll have two years to complete the project and usually the reason for that is a lot of projects get their zoning approval and then if they have to go through act 250 they might spend 18 months of that two years waiting to get their act 250 permit so so there's also a policy recommendation to this was from Mr. Weiss about decreasing the automatic permit exemption for TV dishes he's he's right 15 square feet awfully big my recommendation was to is to reduce that to 3.25 square feet which allows for a two foot dish people don't put 15 square foot dishes anymore in their houses so most of them are either two feet or one point something and so 3.25 would be more than enough to accommodate most standard dishes and that will probably keep getting smaller as technology improves fix the uses where residential 24 appears we've reused that for the urban residential district which we'll talk about and fix top of bank and I liked Mr. Weiss's suggestion so I inserted his recommended language for top of bank definition so I don't know if there are any other policy changes because that leaves us with a late request from from BPW on a stormwater request which I'll go over which I can go over right now really quickly which you'll see there because we're probably going to have another meeting this will probably be covered by that anyways we've been having issues with how DPW handles and administers and runs stormwater reviews and so they really wanted to get some stuff cleared up and they've been having their consultant working with them and so they were like boy would be great to get some rules changed and I was like it's open get us something right away so they got us some quick changes this is not perfect it's not going to be permanent we'll come back again in the future to make things a little bit better but this cleans up a number of pieces that needed to get cleaned up so other than road and solar you just mentioned briefly what the changes are for the stormwater yeah so what we don't have right now in most of our zoning we have a rule that says if you get the state permit you don't need the local permit we don't have that for stormwater so even if you need a state stormwater permit you still need to go through a local approval process for the state and it doesn't make a lot of sense so the first thing you'll see is so everybody unless exempted below development that creates newer expanded impervious surface shall submit a stormwater management plan and receive a recommendation from the director of public works for approval or denial of such plan development is exempt from this requirement so there are two ways big picture how you do regulations you either list out exactly everything you need this this one this one this one this one this one if you don't meet one of those then you don't have to meet the rule you can do a small list or you can say everything is going to need it and then we're going to go through and exempt out a few things so there are kind of two approaches this is everything is going to need to submit a stormwater management plan and then we're going to exempt the whole bunch of things one the development has or will be obtaining a department of environmental conservation general permit for stormwater discharge or an individual stormwater discharge permit as applicable those don't need to go and get approval here too with in combined sewer areas the development results in less than 5000 square feet in total impervious surface on the subject parcel now dpw asked for zero square feet and we find that's going to be really difficult so we put in based on what we found in excuse me St. Albans and other places that have um impaired watersheds so um we have an actual project on cliff street right now that is running into this issue is they've got a house they've got a driveway and they're going to be adding 200 square feet of new impervious surface they have a huge lot but because they're in an impaired watershed because they're in the CSO they can't have any increase so they couldn't couldn't add a doghouse to their property because it would increase their so there's usually a limit it's like well they only have 2000 square feet of impervious surface on their 19,000 square foot lot so we need a line that says if you're less than this and what is this in st. Albans town and in in these impaired watersheds is 5000 square feet so we took that number you could make it 3000 I don't think it should be zero we can always come back later our thought is we're making things better because right now it'll be clearer because right now the the question is how do we handle projects like that and so if you're an impaired watershed and they said they will get me a map of which parcels are in the impaired watershed so we will know who's in who's out that has to meet it two or three other than three is um 10,000 square feet of impervious surface so again you're talking a decent size amount of impervious cover although you might hit that if you lived on a really long driveway and you start adding up the amount of impervious on your driveway some places exempt single and two family the issue I have is I'm very interested in meeting with the stormwater committee and commission once they've got an opportunity because we really need to mesh these together um our single family homes are the problem or are they not the problem and if we can always go through and tailor our zoning to match where their goals are I don't think they're there yet so at this point we're going to take our existing zoning make it a little bit better wait for stormwater management committee to catch up in the utility to catch up and then we'll dovetail our rules with their goals so this would say if you've got less than 5,000 square feet in a CSO area you don't need a permit and if it's less than 10,000 square feet outside of a combined sewer area then you don't need the permit so that's what this is doing most of the rest remains the same of stormwater rules we have in effect okay thanks want to talk about country club road and shading now I can just jump right in we'll get everything out of the way and then start taking the public comments on on everything so yes that's the two the two big ones I attached in your packet that you have and if people are online and have downloaded the version off of the website that's page two dash 30 so what we have heard um the country club road rezoning um proposal so at the end of the last meeting we kind of had to figure out what what direction we wanted to go I said I would put this all together and you can vote as to whether or not you kind of want to go in this direction everything is open to change um I have no pride when it comes to these things so uh whatever you want to change I'm putting something out there just so we can start having the conversation I created a new district I called it urban residential you can change the title if you want to I added a new purpose statement uh neighborhood character some architectural standards most the architectural standards I just borrowed from the urban area so that way kind of matches some of what we have architectural character of the downtown pieces I adjusted the dimensional standards to match what was in the actionable plan and I went through and added a bunch of uses now um I'll go through that table really quick in a minute their number of permitted number of conditional it doesn't necessarily mean we're encouraging um something like that to happen um a hotel is a conditional use that's not to say we want one out there it's just to say that you know if if we had a large recreational facility and we were going to be trying to host a lot of events and and things it you know somebody might have something small that would fit into the character of that area it's a conditional use that's a decision that would be made but if something is not allowed then it's not allowed and that's where you end up in you know it's like well we don't want bars out here it's like okay well what if three penny wanted to be out there well it's okay if they're out there it's like well that's a bar so those are things we have to think big what were the things that might we might be okay with out in this area doesn't necessarily mean they'll get an approval it's just we're we're laying out things at this point big things that kind of go through and say yeah that would be okay in in certain circumstances I could see something like that okay um but I'll go through what I put in the use table so everyone can understand it um so I'm not going to read all this we would be here for a long time but I did go through and craft out a purpose statement remember purpose statements are not regulatory so putting in here requirements for the purpose of this is to have net zero buildings that would zero requirements to actually be net zero buildings because the purpose statement is just there to lay out what are our goals for it the character of the area the neighborhood character the reason that is there is to help as we're doing excuse me a conditional use hearing there's a requirement to be built to the character of the neighborhood so we want to have some standard that the council can or that the drb can use to judge that application I think I'm not going to go too much into all of this I'll kind of leave it open to questions the dimensional requirements I had a hard time didn't know what to do I put the parcel size at 9 000 that's what urban center two is that's the area from the library to roundabout so I expect the parcels will probably be much bigger than that but if we decide hey we're going to subdivide these and have multiple developers working on multiple projects maybe they would be 9 000 square feet but I tried to 80 coverage so that's similar again to urban center two the setbacks I put is 10 feet I thought if we wanted urban we could make them zero for front that's what urban center one is we've got zero lot line setbacks here but 10 feet gives a little bit of space if we're going to do five story buildings there's usually an architectural urban design piece that you want to move buildings back if you're going to go up higher because otherwise it gives you a tunneled feeling and I don't think that's what we're looking for there so if we're going to have taller buildings a 10 foot setback with some space isn't isn't a bad idea 10 feet on the sides um floor area ratio I put 4.0 max for residential so if somebody did a congregate living congregate living is based on floor area ratio it would be 4.0 and 1.0 for others so that means you very little for commercial so if you'd had some commercial and we could put in requirements that said commercial only on the first floor or you know not or non-residential let's say so no what does the floor area ratio mean I know what all this other stuff means all right that wasn't clear to me floor area ratio is um generally how we regulate commercial uses because you're not counting the number of dwelling units so what a floor area ratio looks at is the size of your parcel let's say you have 10,000 square foot parcel and you have a floor area ratio of 1.0 you can have 10,000 square feet of use so you could make it 5,000 square feet in two stories or any combination like that if you've got a 4.0 then you you're going to be looking at a much taller building because obviously you can't be four times bigger than your parcel size you're looking at having multi-story but it puts a cap on how big things can be and in this one here we also put a height minimum of two stories and a height maximum of 60 feet which is what is in our downtown so that's five stories five to six stories so again any of this is open to to change or rebuttal but that's kind of what I put in there um on the use table it's kind of messy because I also removed a whole bunch of uses combined a bunch of uses but really all the uses are permitted all the residential uses are permitted in this district lodging is bed and breakfasts and inns are and hotels are all conditional uses so they would have to go to a hearing an emergency shelter would be a permitted use we've had a conversation about maybe having an emergency shelter if because part of this remember not half of this of the country club road site is currently set aside for a recreation or a center and we've talked about potentially building an emergency shelter with whatever recreational facility goes there so if we did it would be a permitted use that doesn't commit us to doing it this just saying it's allowed commercial retail sales up to 20 000 square feet is a conditional use so again I'm not expecting things out there but at the same time a commercial use could be any number of things and we really don't want to box ourselves in to say something can't happen um the retail sales like like we said could be a lot of could be a small grocery store yeah off the top of your head can you give us an example of a commercial property in in the city that's around 20 000 that that's where the cutoff is so um 20 000 square feet is pretty big but in our zoning we have two classifications we have retail sales up to 20 000 square feet and retail sales bigger than 20 000 square feet so um this just happens to be that use category is is that um we could put in some language that says put a put a one or you know put a footnote that says anything more than hmm looks like we just got just got booted out yeah I think I think the yeah the power flicker probably was the power going out okay let's take our break okay I think we're ready to start up again and and Pella and I see that you're you're connected so thumbs up okay excellent all right so sorry folks for the interruption but we're we're back in business all right so we're looking at the use tables right yep Mike Miller playing director so we're just wrapping up the use tables and I think we'll um move into taking some comments I would guess um so continuing the last comment that was in was just about the retail sales indoor up to 20 000 square feet that's what's in um the new zoning so that's the use category we can always limit it we can always put nastrics if we want to and or a number and put a thing at the end to limit that again I'm not expecting anything that big but again if you don't say retail sales and you want to have a corner grocery store you can't and it's conditional anyway and it's conditional anyway so you've got a lot of flexibility to say no and the city also owns the property so we've got a lot of control over what happens going forward I'm hoping for reference the existing elk's club building is 14 000 isn't sounds about right so that'd be a good size store yeah yeah I wouldn't expect anything as big as 20 000 square feet I would say I would think 20 000 is probably about the size of Shaw's maybe I think that's more like 14 I think that's only 14 too okay yeah so we can always always also change that that use all together because that was splitting retail sales in the past had just been this goes back to the original thing we've made a number of changes just to the use table and one of the changes was to kind of collapse and combine a few things and then before we had a mall and we had retail so if you had more than one shop then you were a mall and you had to meet the all these requirements even if it was just two people co-habitating in one space you technically qualify as a mall so we were like look it's really all about your square foot footprint so we can also go through and say up to 10 000 square feet is the small retail and more than 10 000 is the big retail and maybe that's a better cut off and we can talk about that afterwards so we did in the use table the bank was conditional I mean again this is this is an area that could potentially have 500 people maybe there's an ATM or a small something that's potential personal professional services that could be any number of small things that if somebody wanted to have a small yoga studio or something like that you could have those types of uses restaurant restaurant takeout bar nightclub again I think I commented on you know these are all small things that do we expect this to be downtown Montpelier no do we expect to have some opportunities for little things you know going out and grabbing a burger and grabbing a beer um might not be bad uh painting studio just matched up with some other things I did not put any manufacturing or any of the industrial uses out there we did I did put as conditional a lot of the public assemblies so I don't know again what the direction of where this may go in the future but performance theaters movie theaters amphitheaters small game facilities that was actually talked about you know maybe they do indoor golf sports arena exhibition conference again I don't know what's going to happen on the on the city's piece religious facilities government facilities other community centers we've talked about a community center fitness gym athletic we're already talking about that on the city's portion did not allow golf courses up there by the way just to be clear camps and camping establishments I did not allow nature parks we I'd left it permitted permitted in every district and recreation fields are also permitted I did allow a health clinic as a conditional there's been discussions about maybe co-locating it's been done in a lot of other areas sometimes they'll have a health facility with either a senior facility you might have a rehab center that might be located in a part of a floor near a senior living facility or because this is a recreational facilities it might be located there as well again it's conditional use we own the property it just is making it possible and we can change this use table in the future once we have a better idea as well museum public safety or you know library cemetery is still in there conditional because it matched with the urban areas daycare center is a permitted use surface parking parking structure bus stop those are all permitted utility structure is permitted that's just generally in every district agriculture forestry and rural enterprise because agriculture is allowed in every district and rural enterprise is conditional in every district so again I put the use table together as a starting point to start having the conversation I'm not wedded to anything but that's what I put together for our starting point to discuss country club road like guess I'll turn it back over to the mayor all right well since this is the entire zoning package I will open it up to public comment see if there's anybody in the room who has comments to make and then we can go from there to people online Mr. Weiss do you have comments start to stop watch Thomas Weiss again thank you for holding this hearing I'm going to start out with my years of experience of reviewing and administrating contracts for engineering services and construction have gone into the review in the comments I made last time in this time and my comments I'm going to talk about the urban residential district and limit it to the table of uses you might want to allow water supply related facility in that district I can foresee the potential of needing perhaps a small water storage tank in there I'm not sure what the hydraulics of your water system are and whether that amount of use can be supplied coming off route 2 or not a small pump station down on route 2 and then a water storage tank I mean the other alternative would be to try and connect something up to the water storage tank off easy street and I that wouldn't be very effective to me to pump it all the way up to run it all the way back down that's a lot of pipe runs or a new pipe down sure would drive which would be really expensive greenhouses as part of a large community garden space greenhouses I believe are not permitted in the district I can foresee if we're going to have that many units with a large number of apartments having some kind of a larger community garden space then is allowed in the whatever the plan is that was came out June of last year they only have a really small one well I appreciate the other uses that were excluded from the table of uses that that Mike did I appreciate the the way he set it up I might have done a little differently but it's good and the last one going back to last week I do ask that you retain the solar access part and leave it into the in the bylaws so those are my comments great it makes up for last week thanks thank you and I do appreciate the detail and the time you have to go through all this stuff because none of us are perfect all right looking online looks like Nathan Souter you're up first and you'll have to pause while you're allowed to go there you go City Council thank you for your service Mike Miller thank you for all the work you all have done I've been not as attentive to City Council stuff but I'm quite interested in the zoning discussion and so thank you for having it I would listening to tonight I would include non-conforming parcels in language you know let's be I think as permissive as possible if we if we actually want housing let's take action that leads to more housing or at least lowers all the barriers or as many barriers as possible I would like to see expanding the ARP recommendation of no density max to further districts not you know not just the downtown um ARP I think is taking that position for a good reason and residential 15 residential 3000 residential six why not let's see what happens wouldn't it be great if we got some new housing um I heard somebody say well you know we did this in 2018 and it hasn't been an issue since and what that meant when they said it was it hasn't been an issue means we haven't built any housing uh so uh let's let's be less cautious and get more housing um and then I know that in response to the home act you're moving from duplexes to quads uh why not make it six right when I get ahead of the curve um you know what that's a that's a a third story on top of a second story instead of just you know or whatever um if if someone actually has the the resources and the will to build new housing the math is going to be way better on a six than a four um so from a you know from someone trying to actually put this into action and build something new or renovate you know the even the work of renting what renovating one of our large buildings into uh four units or six units it's it's a fair amount of work it's a lot of investment so let's let's allow it to be viable financially um um I think that's pretty much what I got um please please push push hard and let's see if we can create some housing thank you great thanks is there anyone else who's participating on online who would like to be heard okay I'm not seeing any hands up so with that I will close the public hearing and uh Mike could you give us a reaction to some of the comments we just heard uh all right so Thomas's uh three recommendations that I got I didn't pick whether they were um conditional or permitted but I think they all make sense uh I think they're likely is going to be water supply and and probably not a sewer related facility but it still doesn't hurt they're all operated by the city we could make them permitted or conditional uses it's probably not a big risk there uh greenhouses we can make them either permitted or conditional if you want to add those into the table um so if you want I can put a permitted for all three of those yeah definitely definitely for water and sewer and greenhouses why not see you have it permitted to have greenhouses I've visualized a lot of gardens up there but greenhouses are again a structure so let's say we have some clustered housing that turns out to be informed in association within their housing and the association wants to do something can they say no greenhouses even though it's permitted it's not doesn't have to be allowed it will be a conflict potentially with an association's ruling and something like this if it's so I guess the best example um the the condos up on main street Murray Hill thank you it's getting late but the idea is they are in they're in a zoning district and they have more they have stricter rules in there that they set for themselves that are stricter than the zoning so yes the answer is they could they they could regulate so if but in this case the city owns this property so we have the ability to decide what conditions would get put on it now if we sold it to somebody just if we just subdivided and sold it and said we're we're doing gonna just um not put additional conditions on it then they could turn around and condoize it and put restrictions on it um these greenhouses that we're talking about here are commercial greenhouses these this is a table of uses so it's not necessarily the the structure it's it's always gets confusing and even planers conflate them all the time you'll you'll sometimes see in here like uh you know a garage like a repair garage it's like well it's you know it's the structure it's not the use this is a use table not the structure the garage is the building that the use is going on in and so a greenhouse is it's kind of lends itself to thinking about the greenhouse as the structure but if if you're just a resident if you're just residentially owning a greenhouse because you like to grow your own food that's not regulated here as a use it's the commercial greenhouses so that probably should be more of a commercial or a conditional and a permitted use and uh we have a comment from the back yes thomas weiss again i would like to clarify that when i said greenhouse i meant small ones that individuals might put up on their own little garden plot i was not thinking of it in the terms that mike just mentioned it so and i was thinking a large commercial greenhouse would not be appropriate for my concept of what that district would be gotcha so that would be more those greenhouses you're thinking about are more like the standard we have now for a shed where you can as long as it's no more than what is it 10 feet or 8 feet high and you can go bigger than that but it's yeah there are certain extensions if you're less than that then you don't need a permit at all and if you're more than that then you need a permit but you'll need to meet a setback requirement so if you're gonna have a you know maybe a 20 by 20 greenhouse you could do it you just gotta be meet the setback in that district okay so um yeah so i just i changed that one to conditional the other ones are permitted and the comments from mr. suitor again we talked about the nonconforming for 3002 that's an option you guys can remove that if you if you choose expand arp to more districts this has been we've been at the planning commission in the planning department we've been trying to be a little bit cautious about taking incremental steps we made the big leap in 2018 and since then we've been trying to just take some incremental steps because there have been a lot of comments and concerns in the community we haven't heard a lot of them tonight but um in past meetings um jack has certainly been here and we've had folks have come in so our we've been trying to be very deliberate to make sure that we don't overstep things and get ourselves into a bad position so arp was pretty clear about you know as long as you've got good design rules you don't need to have density requirements and we have not yet made this proposal to simply go through and say if you're in the design review district you don't have to go through and have density requirements applied and it seemed to match up very well with the recommendations that we had and we think it's then it's the next logical step if you if you talk to planners we will tell you density is really a misnomer people get hung up on it but if the community is not ready for it and not ready to accept it then we're not going to be successful so we have to take this a step at a time so we like this next step it's a significant increase the in the size of the area right now it's the urban one two and three that don't have density and we're going to significantly increase that to some residential neighborhoods and up the hill um and we'll see how that goes so uh if you if you take away the density requirement because of the design regulations how does that affect the the applicant do they how do they get sort of a preliminary indication of what's possible how much work have I got to do before they sort of feel like they're safe to proceed with the expensive part of their you know prep work so it would go in a lot the same way that we do for our downtown projects uh if somebody came in and was like you know we're looking to do redevelopment we're trying to understand what the rules are what we can do and the first thing we say right density doesn't matter it's whatever you can build within the box that you can build so we're going to give you setbacks we're going to give you height we're going to give you bulk and massing we're going to give you um lot coverage requirements you're still going to have parking requirements and somebody's in urban center one two and three you don't have parking requirements but if you're up at national life you will have a parking requirement um so they're going to be limited by certain other design requirements and architectural requirements they can't just build whatever they want but certainly if you've got and it makes a big difference especially with existing buildings you've got much more flexibility to look at a a space and go through and say does it make sense to have x number of studios or you know as as I said you can do eight single unit single studio units or I can do four two bedrooms so it's a conversation it's not a big role of plants yeah there's less of less going in I mean um you know Mr. Kelman isn't here but he would certainly go in and say you know he had he had project ideas that he had that it was the density itself that was the barrier and you're just like well you know if if he were in one of these areas and had land in that then the density isn't the issue he still has to meet the parking requirements and he still has to meet these other requirements if that's required in that district and then the last comment why not six instead of four again this just goes to our incremental stepping approach you know if the if the I think if the planning commission were were king for a day they would just go through and say we're not going to have density requirements in the city at all and we're just going to go to regulating through bulk and massing and doing all that but the reality is the public isn't ready for that and as we made the changes in 2018 the sky didn't fall and those were significant changes those were big changes to our zoning it really increased the density in those districts even though really just matched the zoning to what's on the ground and then we've increased those opportunities since then and with each step we haven't had the catastrophic outcomes that some people had been concerned about so we're looking at this we'd like to go from two to four if four is great and in a couple of years I once said hey this has been a really great thing it's resulted in a lot of good infill and it's had good results and here are the bad results we had these two bad cases then we can go through an address all right if we're going to change this let's make sure that doesn't happen again let's make sure these more opportunities are created and so we're just trying to take a step at a time and just to be clear for people who are listening when you we are talking about the conversation is talking about density requirements what we're really talking about is density limits right yes density limits correct um so did you want to follow up on that well I see Nathan Souter has his hand up and we the public hearing is done but let's get you in any way and Tim you want to be heard too so yeah thank you and I don't wish to trample on your protocol my only thought is you know I don't know how much housing has been created since 2018 I don't think it's been a lot the amount of time I think it would take for anybody to plan something permit it and get it done for us to see uh that hold on a second to see oh we we relaxed our rules too far we have these three really bad results ugly buildings that happen to be housing a bunch of people you know uh if we keep you know for sort of taking this asymptotic curve to that to that line wherever that line is I'm not sure we're going to find it I'd like to sort of let's let's find out there's so many so many natural controls right now in terms of the cost of building to creating any housing at all um and if you know I mean if Mike I was on that call you had a listing session for the planning commission and I was on that call and said look I've got a I've got I just bought a duplex it's got a huge third floor I would love to be able to add two units to that third floor getting you know getting this to four to four units I think will make that possible but I can certainly I can I can see buildings in town where allowing six would make the math a lot better and it I think for most people unless you just have loads of cash in a long long timeline it's it's got to pencil out and so if six units is a way better math than four please allow that anyway thank you very much lots of respect for you and since you're on this issue I think let's actually I was gonna say a lot of things and Nathan just said but and I to carry it a little further I agree with them I think based on my experience with it in our own home is when we converted from a single to a two there's a lot more steps to this in regulations than just the initial piece so and I know several people that have gone and wanted to do auxiliary apartments and just become so frustrated that they just didn't do them so I do think opening it up and because we really haven't created the housing we want to create we really need to create those opportunities I would go to a higher number and I know we're being safe and trying to do it incrementally but housing is a crisis right now and I really think we need to step out a little on this one Donna so I wanted to talk about the density if indeed we have all these other criterias and all the districts I don't think we're allowing anything to happen what would it take now to send this back to the commission I mean did the commission really hear from so many people about density that they still think it's I know it used to be I was here when we went through it before and people did show up loud and clear but the housing crisis has changed in temperament the community is really on board with housing what would it take to I think if you went through and wanted to vote tonight to go through and and I can help take through a number of these things removing the non-conforming from that you know that you have to have a conforming lot we can remove that piece there are a number of things we could go through and you could add in and just send it back to the planning commission I can almost I can almost guarantee that the planning commission is going to support it and send you back letter of support that says yeah we support this we've tried to you know I think we're the planning commission and the staff have tried to be respectful to all the viewpoints because we we've heard these before and we've recommended removing density from the riverfront district and that got voted down and then we recommended residential 1500 and that got voted down and then we've recommended so we've made a number of proposals to try to make these small changes they all got voted down and so we were like all right here's our next shot we're going to do design control and that's going to be our push if city council says design control is not enough I know the planning commission would support having more districts or more rules to make things more flexible they chose the two they felt that had the best evidence of support we we went from we said you could put a duplex regardless of density and the sky didn't fall and there are a lot of people who are concerned about it so our thought was I think we can get through four because it's just everybody knows it's a crisis we should be able to do this it shouldn't be a big issue and for people who were concerned the concern we heard was we're going to reach a point where there's an incentive for people to come in and buy up houses or buy up two houses bold those two houses and come in and put in this giant monstrosity that really doesn't match the character of our downtown so we tried to address the design the demolition rules we did we put the demolition rules in again we're trying to respond to what the comments where that we heard and we're going to propose this for this district so we were trying to come back with a proposal if council wants to go through and say that's you're not the planning commission isn't going far enough trust me the planning commission will support you if you say change the number to this change the number to this change the number to this and I'll send it back to the planning commission and we'll get basically a photo conference to come back to you at the next meeting just to so if you expanded it from design control which zones would be the next zones to expand it to are you thinking all or some specific did Nathan say six nine and fifteen I believe he said 1500 3000 and six six red six so the residential 1500 and residential 3000 for people who just hear numbers and don't know where we're talking about these are really the most downtown neighborhood so residential 1500 I think you'd be talking about St. Paul Street you're right in the downtown so just you know a small section I think it might have a part of Loomis and then it goes to three I think actually I think three Loomis is three Liberty's a little bit of three and then you start getting up into the sixes that are kind of in some of the the other surrounding ones here I think a college is red six college street so when you saying 1500 36 just for people is that mean 1500 square feet of land per unit in the R 1500 and yes 3000 square feet of land per unit and R 3000 that's what that means yeah yeah and and for the most part that's what is already there for res 3000 the minimum lot size or for res 1500 the lot size minimum is still 3000 but almost everything in that district is at least a duplex that's why it's allowed to have twice the density and your res nine which hasn't been mentioned are really more of your outside ones heading up terrace street heading out north field street independence green out that way and heading out Berlin street as you start getting out you'll get out to res nine as you are yeah Berlin Berlin street yeah so those are your res nines they tend to be more single family but again they are allowed to be duplexes under the current rules so just to get a feel for what people are thinking do you want to be aggressive and not ask Mike to do that or not so much just general impression I'm seeing nods over here carry all right and Pellin is that your feeling too okay there's there's some it's it's not a decision but it's guidance to come back with that well we'll probably have to have you guys vote on making a change to the draft okay that is what the planning commission will then decide on so we'll probably go through so first question removing the nonconforming right now we only allow this for conforming and we only allow this and I don't know if we want to break that into two things it's conforming with water and sewer do we want to remove all of those requirements or do we want to remove the nonconforming anyone my quick reaction would be remove nonconforming as long as it has water and sewer I think if you don't have any big problems associated with that yeah there are external problems that can be caused yeah all right so we'll remove the nonconforming which is currently for allowing people to do a duplex we've proposed four units and you are suggesting we make that six yep I'm saying yes I don't have a vote obviously I was looking I was counting shaking heads so I'm trying to think if there were where would be the next unless you guys are looking at expanding districts so we are currently talking about the design review district which also encompasses the downtown so what used to be this urban one two and three they're already in the design control they're now going to continue to be in the design control the next highest density ones I don't know for a fact that all the 1500s are in design control but probably most of them are I'd have to have the map open in front of me and I don't actually didn't actually bring a copy of the map or riverfront which would be berry street in those areas if you were looking at that I think I would have a little bit of concern about just picking districts without actually having some time to think about it and taking some public comment on that I think regardless if somebody has a small project and again our point was to allow these smaller infill projects to happen that was why we allowed take a single family can have a two you can have a four you can have a six nobody's going to go down a bulldozer house or bulldoze two houses to build six units that you know they you know they might if it's a low value a low value structure but nobody's going in your the density was still applied for these larger buildings and again that's just goes back to a little bit of taking this little incrementally this will be a big step to go from two to six and removing that requirement if you want to add zoning districts you're certainly welcome to there have been comments in the past I will only mention this some folks aren't here that would certainly have mentioned it the parking requirement can become a barrier to some of these we don't have any proposals in here to amend the parking requirements but that's kind of a double-edged sword for some lower income neighborhoods that have parking issues so that would be another one but I think I think if we made those changes there's no density in the design review which is a fairly large area and increasing those to six if you're on water and sewer and you have a companion if you're on water and sewer and we're removing the non-conforming requirement Lauren you had your hand up yeah I was just thinking perhaps the planning commission like you taking some time in the planning commission you could see if there's like a next obvious place to expand I do think like probably we'd want robust time for public comment for expanding into new areas so that might mean like maybe two more hearings so just to be cognizant I mean it could be that there's a next phase of this and we you know like clearly I think you're hearing a sense that you know we need to be doing more on housing with our timing I might suggest we move forward and adopt these rules yeah that's what I'm thinking is like you could come back with another round of recommendations like maybe we move forward with these the kinds of things we're talking about tonight and the planning commission could think about a next phase of changes moving in this direction as well or something yeah they're always thinking about how to to make the next steps in and keep continuing to loosen up the rules because we know we're also going to be back to talk about the the stormwater rules we're pretty sure that there's going to be something coming back because this was this was an imperfect fix but it's a necessary fix it's a good next step fix but at a certain point we're going to have to have a more comprehensive work on that so we will certainly be back usually for anyone new to the council we're usually here about once a year to do a zoning update so we've done two in one year once but usually we try to come back at least once a year because we'll build up a list of mistakes that we find but if we do this with some of the expansions that we've talked about that will include the country club road zoning which was sort of driving some of the timing because we need to get the zoning done before we can do the yeah we need that done before we can do growth center applications so we have to we have to get that approved again waiting till march to do this isn't a big deal but yeah i wouldn't want to hold a bunch more public hearings um donna so what exactly do you need an emotion so you could leave here and take it back to the planning commission we have one more hearing i would say the motion would need to be that you want to uh let's because you're not going to adopt it you're going to want to approve the public hearing draft number two as presented with the following or with the amendments that were made either or if you want i don't know if john wants those specifically laid out the ones i have on my list are the changes that the three changes to the use table the removal of non-conforming requirement in section 3002 and to go from quad to six from quad to six um and those are the changes that i have written down if anyone remembers anything i missed let me know i think those are the only ones i have on my list well there there are other things that we talked about that we should go through your checklist to to make decisions on before we're ready to vote the package as a whole so i don't know if you want to if donna if you want to make a motion on this particular part changes we wanted the commission needed to look at or the other sort of comments that we've received also issues that the commission needs to look at or is it just these three i will have them review all the changes that were made if it's going back to them i'll give them a list of all the changes that were made if for no other reason it helps to dot the i and cross the t on any making sure there's no appeal afterwards that we didn't follow proper procedure on a substantial change if everything goes back we'll have them review everything and go through and say yeah we're okay with all of these small changes that were made even if there were technical changes for the motion as far as the commission is it making a motion to do the three changes on the table remove nonconformance and go from four to six units are those the key ones that they need to hear us approve so i yeah there's a couple of ways of getting there i'm thinking in my head there are a couple of routes of getting there one is to go through and and vote those three changes and amend the draft you have in front of you let's vote to amend this let's vote to amend this or let's vote to amend these three or four things into this and then you guys approve this draft for a hearing on march 13th we're going to continue a hearing to march 13th and that and then the planning commission will have to review those changes and there's still other things that we've talked about that are not covered by this motion that we still need to figure out what we want to do and if we want to we can do all those changes before making that final motion or we can do this piecemeal why don't we do that why don't we go back to the yes well we might want to include solar shading here right i mean if we're talking about going four to six and people build up it could be it could have the Baron yeah we still have the question of solar shading which we haven't really dove into yet okay this best country club road right right we're still out there in country club road i don't think so what do you want to talk about country club road before i go back to the beginning of mike's checklist all right let's do that what do people think about the country club road proposal anybody india's um it's still based on kind of looking at the map it feels like we're just zoning this piece because it's our piece but really if we're looking at creating housing and looking at multiplayer zoning and what's right for the community it seems like there are other people pieces of land nearby that are big that are also in my figure that we would want to create potential for housing on why aren't we adjusting the zoning or a zone to get it right rather than just doing this kind of one knee jerk thing for this one property because we bought it and we really do something with it but i mean i think see really would have done something with it if the zoning had allowed the use or any other private person might have in the past but as we know the zoning wouldn't really allow what we want to have happen there and it's still the same issue for some of budding properties so i would encourage going back to planning commission and looking at a bigger picture and saying what about some of the other budding pieces if we're creating this new zone shouldn't it encompass part of a golden property or sort of golden property or you know even going the other way toward town hill there's a fair amount of potential land there that could be housing we have heard from we we know that there's there are notions of development on the savings pasture we've heard from and a budding property owner to the north who said well you know i might be interested they didn't really say here's what i want to do but how does that strike you mic uh i set this district up as a district with a general purpose statement and some and this has a neighborhood so the expectation was if this works out well it could be an opportunity for people to come in and talk about rezoning another parcel but we haven't had that conversation with other ones the concern with savings pasture it's always a very hot button issue we did rezone that one after a lot of conversation and it's zoned to match what is um on berry street so it is the same zoning as berry street so that's one unit per 1500 so that's 27 units an acre and because it was 10 acres they could fit so 15 acres of the lower area 15 acres of the lower area that's on that so it could hit some three to 400 units down there so that's riverfront is that what that's zoned riverfront and then the rest of it's all rural the rest of it was rural because it doesn't have access to sewer and water at this time and the thought is if there's a plan at some point we would certainly rezone it and in the same way that we have put a rez 3000 at the top of ours it's it's not there yet sewers not there but there's a plan in place that says we would run the sewer and water up here and i think i would expect we would come back if there's a savings pasture proposal or if we came up with a proposal that said hey we're going to connect this road across we wouldn't connect that road across through the zone rural area it may be rural in a spot because it's not developable but where it starts to become developable and where there's sewer and water we certainly would want to see development have that zoned in such a way that it would encourage development dana well in response to that when we were changing that for savings pasture we also had vermont college there and they were talking about senior housing and we left that rural area because zorzi was going to be looking at a land trust deal and a shared open public area on top and so we really were trying to work with the land owners both of the vermont college and with savings pasture and i think it was totally appropriate likewise i think it's totally appropriate for us to to do country club road tonight and then in the future put forth to the commission the tasks that tim is talking about and looking at the other areas i think it's late in the game to add that now sorry i go ahead late in the game i mean this is really the first substantive conversation we've had about zoning donna it's it's the beginning of the game i think well i thought we had directed them to do something for country code bro that's what they did maybe you did before i was with the council i don't remember um any other council members or at this point joe you've got your hand up jack can you guys hear me yes start out by introducing yourself yeah uh joe castellano saving street montpelier um i was actually reviewing the appraisal report that authorized the purchase of the country club property and i was reading what the appraisers analysis was currently it's zoned for rural and eastern gateway and he said that given the current zoning we can do up to 230 units 238 units of housing and i know that the proposal we're looking at from white and berk has just slightly more than that at 294 units i'm just wondering if maybe mike has tweaked zoning in the past rather than doing a whole new district can we maybe tweak the zoning or the boundary lines to accommodate more density up there i'm i'm just throwing an id out there thanks so the existing zoning for for the country club road site so the country club road site isn't uniformly all zoned rural right now the lower five ish acres right where the country club is right where the parking lots are those areas are zoned eastern gateway which is you know you're thinking uh gallison hill the industrial areas you're thinking um those types of uses uh tractor supply so root 302 and root two basically um so yes we could you know it's it had a certain amount of development potential because of its size you could do um some development some puds and cluster things down but it really wasn't going to give us an effective way of enticing a developer running lines up there the truth is if you're going to run sewer and water in there then it should get it should get re-zoned to an appropriate zoning designation as opposed to necessarily kind of tweaking around the edges because we're really not going to be using it in the for that eastern gateway type use if it was we i probably would have suggested we just expand eastern gateway but because it's going to be a completely different use it makes sense to be a different district all right okay anyone else on the council with the uh and do you have any other specific comments about the the new urban residential proposal or is it more a general idea that it should be expanded i think it needs to be expanded okay lauren thanks um when i think this is a question for mike when you were describing this a lot over and over again you were kind of like well i'm putting this in but we've got control of the site so we'd have a say of what goes in if we expanded this to a bunch of other properties that were privately owned we would not have that control so it sounds like maybe you would have you would write it differently if we were kind of create a broader new district in town or am i just over interpreting what you're saying i just i just heard you say that phrase a lot yeah no i think i think i would we would probably want to not necessarily and it could be a little bit on both sides i mean it could be do we need to adjust the urban residential or do we need to you know consider how we do it let's say the the proposal was rather than making lower savings pasture riverfront maybe we should make that urban residential it'll have more flexibility to do things and then i think we would have to have that discussion of well if we make that change that's going to allow these other uses so we could then adjust the use table or we can say it's really not appropriate the way we have its own now is the most appropriate way and i think we just have to have a public conversation about that but i do think i do want to make this available such that it could be potentially applied and i was trying to think when i was putting this together where might this kind of fit and i couldn't find anywhere but that's not to say that we couldn't come up with a place where it might be probably won't be as big as what we're talking about but there might be something that comes up at some point that's a smaller version of that that's like you know here's here's an area that um um you know something about route 302 you know uh if there's an area in there i don't i don't know i'm trying to think i i really can't think of anything that really would fit because we're so built out or flood plain you know there's just so many so many other restrictions out there but we might rezone something else that we currently have zoned um rez 1500 and we might say hey let's make this urban residential or something so you're definitely thinking as you drafted what urban residential means that it's not isolated to this parcel or it could be it's a model that could apply to other other parts of the city yeah i tried to make it broad enough because it's a district uh the neighborhood we want to be specific to the to the country club road site but the district itself should be written in such a way that it could apply somewhere else and i as i said i can't think of any place that it would fall into but you never know somebody might have an have an idea well there's a jason land to our parcel it oh oh i mean oh onto the the piece that's owned by um steve right next door yeah um yeah we the property line yeah the property lines in there have been tricky but we could yeah we certainly could look at some of those we didn't in this in this instant but um there's some topography challenges on that other site but um we should we should look at what rezoning that would do and we don't know what the owner wants to do with that so all right joe do you have your hands still up or okay i'll very quickly yeah can you hear me now yep perfect yeah i know that one of the things that mike and i have been discussing back and forth via email is i know that there's going to be a brand new master plan that's going to be coming out soon and my thought was okay with some of the rezoning that tim had brought up would this better fit under doing the new master plan or under the master plan umbrella there's just a question yeah i think that's a good point i think they also just know the true spirit of a master plan yeah okay um is there anything else that uh are people in general will it ready to say yes let's add this uh urban residential as proposed to the uh to the ordinance figure we'll make a motion at the end but general nods or lauren yeah i mean i support doing this i know there's like timeliness around moving this forward so we can keep the country club project moving forward i do think this broader conversation and look and i mean i know you said you generally try to do once a year i mean given the housing urgency and this you know the master planning process and all that like maybe we just want to be looking at more proposals sooner um knowing that there's a lot more we want to be doing on this um and it seems like there's some kind of logical next steps that would just build on what we're doing um right now that we could we wouldn't necessarily have to wait a year so i just i kind of that's what i would like to see yeah i like that all right uh donna that was also saying then move on these now but then continue to keep moving on things yes quickly yeah yeah um all right what about solar we haven't had any discussion real discussion about that so i brought it up because um the energy committee had a discussion about it with with mic president mic presented the uh the the the new zoning proposes to eliminate entirely the solar access and shading provision so we had some discussion of you know why it was originally in there and you know whether or not it should be capped or modified somehow um i mean it seems obvious that it was in there to try and um protect and incentivize people to um to use you know solar energy um photovoltaics or whatever um and there was quite a bit of discussion i think we ended up um one one thing about it even even if it was currently capped it the standard that you're measured against the the the shading is measured on december 21st which is the uh winter so it's like the darkest day of the year right so you're likely even on a bright sunny december 21st there's not a lot of energy to protect uh the standard ought to be sometimes between april 21st and september 21st and and uh we think we can probably um rewrite it to reflect that uh but the general feeling of the committee was um let's see what did we conclude um we ought to change that test condition but um at the very least we ought to protect existing solar installations and passive houses which depend on solar radiation uh for their heating almost exclusively and um and the possibility of protecting potential roof rooftop solar installations so that it's not an arcade game between neighbors like who gets their solar up first um that if there's potential for solar there at least has to be a discussion around it um and mike thought that he could probably draft um draft something that would change it seems to me worthwhile that particularly at country club road which is almost ideally positioned for to gain solar on everything that's built there so it would well and then thinking about the change from fourplex to six if somebody decides to do that by building up a story that could affect neighboring properties so it kind of throws a little wrench into the discussion but it's another consideration if we make the change from four to six it might the solar shading might counteract that somewhat so if you know to me it seems like we we still want to encourage energy efficiency and the move away from fossil fuels and the easiest way to do that is to promote solar energy and at the very least we should be protecting existing installations um passive houses you know we may we may get some passive houses up there i don't know but um potential potential rooftop solar i think is worth protecting as well there are a lot of people who want it and just can't do it quite yet we ought to preserve the ability i think we ought to preserve the ability for them to do that so so your general proposal is to keep some solar protection measures in the ordinance but tweaked a bit yeah right right now it's pretty pretty severe not only is the test date severe but the the amount of shading that's allowed is ridiculously small i mean you want to you want to prevent shading when it matters most but there you know some shading is going to be inevitable so the question is where do you draw that line it's it's a very strict measure right now but like you thought you could probably come up with language that would accomplish those things yeah no i mean you actually made a made a run at it i think yeah i mean i gave you what was basically the the the 2021 proposal that that got voted down but we would have to amend the the formula that's used so for the test for the test so pretty much right now the requirement the rule is that you can't shade roofs walls or yards um so you can't park your car just just to count towards buildings how far you want to take it's pretty strict pretty strict it's true total trees so those those were the the three requirements so i mean if we the 2021 proposal eliminated those three requirements and that proposal said protecting existing and permitted solar devices and solar devices could be pv or it could be hot water but if it's a solar device that if it's either already permitted or already existing then we would protect it um and that kept in i believe that kept in the the December 21st number because it wasn't looking at much but if we were to go through and say have some other requirement you know if it were existing solar and using the equinox march to september date instead yeah because december 21st to that's the lowest angle so it's the yeah and even if it only clicks for for two hours on that one day it would not be allowed and it's kind of well geez that's kind of so adjusting it so that way it's really affecting the amount of sunlight in those um we still haven't really talked about how much interference at this point it's kind of any interference so if for one hour on march 21st it hits it technically that would be the violation so we don't have any ability to kind of go through and have a determination of waiver of whether or not that's of something but we can incrementally work towards what council is comfortable with trying to approve once once we have a framework of where you want to go we can go through and start to answer the rest of those questions but i think even if we just went to the march dates that's going to make a big difference even if it's just looking at i guess you were commenting maybe just roofs but um or is it just existing and if you wanted to protect as a house might not have to go to walls too i guess which could be very tricky to do um yeah that's and that's the policy question you have to answer we i can write the rules if you're telling me what the policy is yeah it's harder in infill than it is in you know development that's being planned from scratch yeah and that's what they that's um john adams did a good review of the properties and found within the downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods that most properties violated the shading rule already so it's kind of like most of our if you want that rule that's like here's a rule you can't rebuild mont pillier because of the zoning that exists well most of it can't be built because of the shading rule because if you're going to live close together you're going to shade your neighbor and that's just that's going to happen and you're going to have some sometimes the sun goes through the window and sometimes it doesn't because it moves and you get a little bit of shade but that's urban urban residential living loren yeah thanks how how much do you think rooftops are being shaded how big a problem is that if we were trying to think of something that preserved existing solar which i do think if people have made i mean it's a big investment so to say that you can build something that all of a sudden makes that investment kind of moot for someone that does seem like at least should be considered um and then you know but how often are like roofs being if we're just talking about like potentially thinking about a consideration of rooftop solar and is this like is there a way to have kind of considerations or if somebody wanted to raise this issue they could um but it doesn't necessarily always mean like you couldn't develop it like if nobody raises the objection or something um i think i don't know exactly how it works yes um so i think it's the the tough part about answering that question is that we have got so much topography um so it's not always how close you are to your property line and how close um you know you might be far away geographically you might be up on uh east state street and somebody might be down on marvin street you got a whole bunch of trees in between us but according to the model on this date it's going to cut across here and because your house is downhill might be 300 feet away but it matches the you know you so sometimes there's just because the topography it it can so how much i i really can't say it's it's going to be tough on a flat the amount of time we're going to be shading somebody is going to be when somebody's got a two-story house two and a half story house next to a single story ranch then you're going to have if they're close together you're going to probably have that shading of the roof for a period of that time seems like the standard ought to be closer to noon either side of noon then dawn or dusk right because you want i mean that's where the that's where the peak solar gain is and if that's blocked then there's almost no point and how much at that point if you're talking about a noon i mean really at that point how much shading is there i mean it's not well i'm saying we're at this side of noon if you went two hours either side of noon let's say instead of six hours either side of a noon or whatever the current rule is four hours either side of noon you might you might you might have a more reasonable rule for rooftop i think because you would still get the benefit of the the best part of the day in the best part of the season we're not talking about just you know january and february we're talking about july um i mean something to think about and then tim one question maybe the energy committee or mic or anyone is there not some best practices put out there about solar shady that other communities have that we can look at no this is what i had mentioned last time that there's a legal theory about we are the one of the only ones there's a theory of um legal thing of called ancient lights the theory of ancient lights and basically what it says is you of all the things you have the rights of you have rights going up and you have rights going down into the ground but you don't have the rights to the light that that's why new york city that it's it was a big thing for new york city as it was building up was but what about my light i always had my light you're building this big skyscraper it's going to take away my light and they said you don't have a right to the lights and so it's actually in you know legal theory that people debate that you know that's not a it's not a thing you don't have a right to the sunlight that hits your house um so with all the solar development all over the united states there's no community that's taking this on i can't i i don't know if they are um i i do know when we first proposed this back in 2018 it came you know jerry taren was in and gave a long thing but he also had lots and lots of complaints of things and in totality we kind of just rolled off like i don't know anything about this ancient light until after it got adopted then we realized that this is really a thing and and that's why most solar projects will try to go through and try to locate in areas where they're in a place where that's not going to be an issue we're going to be high enough on the hill where development isn't going to interfere or trees growing they're very they look at where the topography is because hey there are no trees over there but there could be and somebody could plant them and we either have to control it or stop it tim then lauren yeah a couple thoughts um and you mentioned jerry chard so i see it sounds like a full employment act for internees well that's that's good i mean just potentially and is there anyone i mean how would you empirically determine this like if for the storm water potential issues you require the developer to hire an engineering firm to estimate what the storm water would also be a certain point are we going to also now be in a situation where we have to hire some certified light specialist to come in and tell us what we're doing for shade i yeah how's this going to be determined there are models for it um so going into 2018 we picked our battles and i didn't particularly like this rule and so i intentionally steered it into a part of it only applies to major site plans which don't come up very often so most projects won't trip into this in the first place and if you trip into it then there's some exceptions in there that go through and say well the building is less than 20 feet tall it doesn't have to meet the requirement or or it's a certain distance based on the setback from an imaginary 20 foot wall there's a theory in there then there's a certain exception so most properties most projects that had happened tried to stay within that exemption because they didn't want to spend the money to hire somebody to do this study but now there are a lot of anyone who install solar have people who know how to do this studies because put in a solar project that's what they do so you just hire a solar guy so just one more cost to develop but it would be one more develop something to prove it thank you loren well just on that point i mean there's very simple tools solar developers do free assessments of every house like it's like literally you go around you can do it from google earth now apparently like it's this would not be a big expensive new thing it would be another hoop to jump through like yeah but like just just to be clear there's really good cheap to free technology right now that does this so i don't think it's that's a big barrier even just doing a quick google search like there's a dc zoning regulation on solar shading like so i do think this is happening all over probably since 2018 it's popped up a lot more with the massive explosion so i do think if we wanted to think about like theirs is you can't if you are this is just for existing solar and it's like if you're going to obstruct more than five percent of the system so it's like a impact on the system's productivity i don't know if that's a good standard or not but anyway other communities have thought about this we do have a little more time now we could throw it out to the energy committee to do some research and come up with some ideas if there's a simple way i mean and i do just want to be clear like the energy committee did also very much recognize or i heard this anyway like we want dense housing and that is a huge priority and that is a climate strategy like having people in walkable compact community centers so there was people were not trying to be like let's throw out barriers because solar is more important than housing it was how do we have a minimally you know how do we like protect solar but not but be as little intrusive as possible so i just want to like share that context because that was the tenor of the conversation as i was hearing it so i think it was like if there's just a way especially in my mind to protect existing or like projects that are in the works it does seem like you're impacting somebody else's property value and something they've invested in so that seems just worth considering to me and then if there's some simple way of looking at other but i would happily throw to the energy committee to do some some research and see if any communities have figured out a good simple way to look at this but you know that's the thought that it was going through my mind as i was listening to this conversation so it just seems like we don't really know enough yet you know there's we could but we don't yet but you know because we want to want we've already encouraged people to put solar collectors on their houses and stuff and you know we put the subsidies into it and that's a good thing and we now we don't want to screw them by letting someone shade their their solar panels just one more question but like you said that you in 2018 you steered it toward new sort of major projects or new new development is that is that how it currently applies that's how it currently applies so so that can be done because i think it's especially important for new development in places like country club where you know you can plan this in advance and not have to retrofit stuff but it also applies to infill projects at this time as well so you know the infill building on ewing street was one of them that had to do the analysis to make sure it wouldn't impact fortunately in that case it sits on the south side of the road so it had an entire road between it and its neighbor across the street so it had extra space so it that in that case it got approved because there's enough space difference between it and the neighbors but if you were thinking about um say something on on in the meadow on fine street or something it's going to have a different orientation being on which side of the road you might very easily end up trying to think about the the other one's what winter street that runs kind of north south you're going to very easily block your neighbor who's to the north of you to the north of you to the north of you because you're close so where do we come down on this leave it the way it's it has come to us at this point figuring that we will be reviewing it again at our next public hearing or is there another proposal or Laura I'm sorry just process wise for things that the planning commission would consider is it does it have to be specific language or if there was a kind of general motion that we're looking at language to try to protect existing solar or consider existing solar and um in new developments would that be enough or would if we then changed it if we don't change it now and we change it next time does that then trigger another trip to the planning commission it probably could but if we went if we got the general policy I can write the general policy and they can approve it so if you said what we want are the rules to say protect existing pv we want the analysis to be between March 21st September 21st and we want the analysis to look at 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock I can write something up that then says we're still going to have the protection of existing pv and the analysis would come in in these these time frames and pv in hot water what's that pv in water pv in hot water yeah so uh existing solar devices I think yeah okay does that work for everybody and also to speak any requirements out to passive that seems really hard to that's the house yeah well passive any passive structure I mean if you think about even if you yeah because yeah everybody gets some passive it seems kind of nebulous yeah difficult yeah so yeah I mean this is pretty straightforward it would be easy to study and analyze and put together several rules that says that's that's what we're doing and now with any of these changes we'll go through we'll make you know a draft number two or draft number three or whatever we're on you'll still be able to make adjustments if if we get everything back and you come back next time you're like oh we should make this a little tweak or that little tweak they're probably not substantial changes at that point I mean it's still possible you could come up and say whoa we missed something we'll make a substantial change we get kicked one more meeting it is what it is we had 21 meetings in 2017 those are the days remember those like could we see what it would take to protect passive I mean I think I think if we could see what it would how it would be different from that was if the basics was the three things we mentioned and then passive was potential fourth that we could see how how much difference it would make in the ruling it might be might be easier to evaluate would be that much more work to try and work that out I think one of the differences I'm just trying to think off the top of my head word word we've discounted winter we've taken it out of December and moved it to March to September so you're automatically going to be moving more into where shading is going to be helping to cool rather than you're doing analysis to cool not analysis to heat so I think we'd have to have a different analysis and I think that's a trickier trickier one I think we because how much how much shading would affect because he certainly probably wouldn't have a rule that says you can't shade any part of any passive solar house I mean then we're I got what percentage of what wall or what percentage just the energy we need to tackle that one see yeah see what they come up Carrie you haven't been heard from yeah so I am completely unqualified to make decisions like this and I think that most of us are and and I'm sitting around having a discussion like this or what if we try this what if we try that does not feel like a great way to create public policy so so I think we're we're giving some guidance to the kinds of things we would like to know more about and hear more about but I would much rather hear from the energy committee or back from the planning commission with more specific recommendations like I don't know if 10 to 2 during on march whatever is the time I can't make that decision right now Donna the concern that you're doing it wants to hear the test because the sun is different in the summer and the winter and your solar operates differently so it would seem to me you would want a test at both ends that's just practicality but I mean Carrie's right and just and Tom mice I step up okay thank you all right are we good to go ahead without without that we've got some other things that we still need to figure out what we're going to do I assume that all the things that are in your checklist where you said so and so had and a suggestion and you said fine well we'll do that those are all good I haven't heard anyone say yeah we don't like those we do have still the sign question and what we want to do about that and remember reminders to the council we have three options keep it as is 12 feet increase it to 15 feet or 12 feet with with a waiver rule or a waiver option and Donna rule that goes to the D rb that's would be my preference okay seeing everybody nodding okay and the stormwater rules that's the other big thing I think that we don't that we haven't made a decision on yet do we incorporate the question just is do we incorporate this proposal into into the ordinance well it means it seems to make sense and it came from public works they ought to know yeah there are experts in this yep everybody else is okay with that okay sorry are we ready for a motion that says we move to adopt this with the following amendments and does someone have a list in their mind of what all the amendments are we think we there's so much here and it's been kind of cobb together and put out in a couple different formats I I really want to know what I'm voting on and I don't feel like that's what we're going to get tonight it'd be nice to have it written out for the next one so we could say these are the amendments and we can do that I mean this guy's Mr. Weiss's comments enthused in it and all kinds of other stuff I just don't feel like it's something I can work with it was a good tool to get us here but that's fair carry yeah I think I think that the information is all here somewhere but but the public isn't going to be able to understand what it is we're doing right now if we've made this decision right now so I'd rather wait and have a clean version of everything prepared and give people a chance to see it it before we vote on it we're gonna have to have another hearing anyways because there's going to be a substantial change but we need to to to kick into the substantial improvement you need to make an amendment to make the changes that you discussed tonight so what we need we're probably looking at two more hearings right just just one well what I'm hearing a couple of people say is that they're not ready to vote on anything at this point Donna well I feel like voting on a draft because it's another draft that he's taking back to the planning commission they're going to make their comments and come back it's just one of those another rough drafts so I'd like us to be willing to go with the roughness of this just to create a draft that is more clear more readable understandable and that will have probably two more hearings on it and Mike says one but we could have two but just to kick it further down the road so the commission then can work on it before the next council meeting would be my dreaders Lauren so essentially can our motion be to it's to amend but it will be like for future consideration like we're not actually adopting it tonight we're just we're we're we're amending a version that we can then consider and discuss further and have a clean and have another full robust conversation and it could be multiple conversations if we want so that's just what we're voting on to be clear we used the word adopt came up but we're not actually adopting anything no we're not adopting tonight we have further draft so somebody Lauren you look like you're not willing to make that motion but I did not take all the notes on what we need to do so I don't know if Mike has a list handy or I can run through the list really quickly on what I had all right so the it's a motion with the following amendments to accept the following amendments they would be to amend the use table regarding water supply and sewer related facilities and greenhouses and to remove the non conforming requirements from 3002 and to expand the density exemption from four to six and to draft new solar protection requirements with a policy of protecting existing piece PV or existing solar solar devices and to adjust the analysis March to September and 10 to two we can always adjust those depending on what Miak comes back with and to amend the sign rule I got the number there 12 feet with a waiver provision yep to add a waiver provision to the sign the freestanding sign height and add the storm water and to add the storm water yes so is that your motion no that was put into this this draft what you have in front of you at the revised draft yeah these are the changes based on that so that's a motion is that is there a second okay is there any discussion Tim is it still not comfortable having to amend zoning for the country club ruin property and yet till we work it through more I just that's a really big change okay it's so uncomfortable that we're doing it for this one property because we own it it feels like animal farm to me you know it's it's it's a fair policy it should be enforced fairly to all the properties that it should apply to and not just ours because we own it and I've said it before I'm really struggling with it it feels like bad government any other discussion are we ready to vote Tim is there an alternative for what you're proposing you can take the country club road piece out for now we can keep discussing it I don't want to approve it as well we're not voting to approve it we are voting to draft another draft if if there are changes that you'd like to see in another draft we ought to include those and if they include additional rezoning it does we can add that to the motion okay you can add that I'd appreciate it I mean I don't know what people think about Soviet amendment to well um we have a motion that's been seconded if if you wanted to move to amend that you could make that motion okay so I guess I move that we include provision to expand the urban residential zone or provision to study expanding the urban residential zone to other adjacent properties that may be appropriate in addition to the country club road property is there a second for that motion I'll second okay is there uh Lauren are we asking the planning commission to study and come back with a recommendation or you know if so I think that's fine I just want to be clear direction to yeah is that what you are actually being okay so it's trying to get a recommendation from the planning commission on okay Donna and is there a time on that is it supposed to come back with the draft of the other changes I assume that's what you're thinking right yeah okay any more discussion about that oh sorry Lauren just I I'm fine with that I like the idea of looking more broadly I think I would personally caveat that with I like I don't want to slow down the process knowing there's a bunch of steps so if they come back and say there's potential but we need to spend more time thinking about it and looking um you know but we think this is a district the form of this would work in other areas and we're just assessing that to me that would give me comfort that it's constructed well it's the kind of district that could fit with some of the surrounding parcels and be woven into the master planning process for example but but I don't want to like my vote is not contingent on all of those questions being answered to keep moving that forward so I just don't want the planning commission to think they have from my perspective supporting this motion I don't mean that all every answer every question has to be done before we might move forward with pieces of it personally but I don't know what other people think if like because I just want to give direction that it sounds like we need this entire next phase done before we would move potentially move forward with other pieces of these zoning changes. I hear the wording because I thought it was just do at least a look to see if they thought there were other parcels that it would apply to but that could productively apply to or something like that but it but that was the real scope just to say yes there is or no we don't think so and yes there is there these right okay I can deal with that to find scope and thank you okay very oh yeah I agree with all of this I definitely want to hear more about where else it could apply and I like the idea of applying it more broadly and not just for one specific property and and yeah I just want to be clear that I'll vote for this and I'm not going to expect to have all the answers before we can move on with the rest of it to just so just reiterating what Lauren said that that's where I'm coming from also all right are you ready to vote on the motion to amend Lauren's motion do you have the motion in mind John I'm gonna check on this okay okay with that all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed all right so Lauren's motion has been amended and now we're to the original motion with that amendment is there any further discussion on that if not all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed all right there we are we've got we've made progress once again yeah now now we have the river hazard that we kind of left off that we have to we could probably adopt this one if you guys chose to I said I would look at that design flood elevation so I have suggested language I would put in there I don't think it would be a significant substantial change but it just would be a 720 point C there's an A and a B already this would just be a new C for the purposes of critical facilities the design flood elevation referenced in these regulations shall be equivalent to the point 0.2 annual chance flood event plus two feet so that gets addressed at the point that Thomas had made so at this point we need to vote on where you could vote to adopt as amended the design river hazard area regulations as amended is there a second okay do we need further discussion or to have a clear have you just say once more for everybody's benefit what exactly this vote is this is a vote to adopt the proposal you received plus that amendment all right and this so we're not coming back for another here not coming back river hazard will be done I will not be coming back to talk about that one in two weeks okay ready for a vote so the question about the maps and the adjacent areas that that would be for future because we don't have the maps correct this is just for critical facilities as you've outlined before or is it the end critical facilities the sheet rock question a couple of minor amendments that were in there it was not not big yeah there wasn't a lot that was really big it was mostly to address the critical facilities question and these were proposed before the flood and just got held up just hypothetically if we have to renovate the fire station and it's a critical facility is there some little place we can get hooked by doing this where all of a sudden oh no now we have to raise the whole building it's it's the same rules are in effect right now so you um existing buildings they can't be substantially damaged so there's not a requirement to tear down the fire station if there was a decision that we were going to build a new fire station because this one was just not appropriate in its location then it would have to be a few feet above the 500 here thanks all right ready to vote all those in favor signify by saying hi hi anyone opposed all right now not done with me yet we are to do we need to take a break before we talk about the building code amendments it's uh it's been about an hour and a half since our break or there are people wanting another break okay let's take a break till 1015 I'm going to get us started again and I see that Pelin is uh is still connected well I want to make sure when when her face appears we'll start because we don't want her to have to miss here we go so Mike we're on to item nine second reading or second public hearing of the building code so I will open the public hearing all right so this is the second reading so this is adopted as an ordinance this is more typical to your process um because we have all the same faces I'm not going to bore everybody with the same presentation I made last time and I'm going to kind of jump to the end um do you want to share your screen maybe you are oh I can just real quick I've I've just I had to open up the program first so I can get back into zoom I can share screen so really quick I mean these I'm not going to go through all of the pieces but I'm going to get to the end so really the big thing was we got into this for the fees um I will stop at this slide to go through um some fee examples so this whole purpose of this was that two things first um we have a we did our end of year survey of permits and we realized that uh 25 percent of all the permits that we get for building we're not collecting any fees on so the proposal was um to and those were all tied to the energy efficiency exemption so planning department and myself we proposed that we have council consider removing that fee exemption because it's having an impact on our revenues that we are collecting so just so people know fees for commercial projects this is for any commercial project is ten dollars for the first thousand plus eight fifty for each additional thousand that's what the state charges I'll have a few examples to show you what that means and fees for residential are ten dollars per thousand for the first thousand plus three fifty for each additional so some examples if you had a commercial project to do an eleven thousand dollar efficiency project there'd be ten dollars for the first thousand eight fifty times ten for eighty five dollars ninety five dollar permit for an eleven thousand dollar project plus thirty thirty dollars to go to john for the recording fee if you had a fifty thousand dollar project that's a four hundred and twenty six dollar fee plus thirty and a quarter million dollar project if you're doing a big solar project or a big big something you might end up with a two thousand one hundred and twenty six dollar fee plus thirty dollars except right now you wouldn't pay anything because we exempt fees residential um these are some projects I did I did a heat pump at my house I live in hardwick so it doesn't wouldn't matter but that four thousand dollar heat pump is ten dollars plus fourteen or twenty four dollar permit and for thirty thousand dollar home insulation that might cost you one hundred and twenty one dollars plus thirty dollars for recording fee if you had to pay fees so those are the border of magnitude that we're talking about for fees um and so obviously much larger projects could have uh much different uh much larger fees and we still do all the work for these projects we're just not collecting any fees on them and then the second half of this was we had a whole bunch of problems in our actual ordinance that did not address certain important things like we have a a cooperative a cooperative agreement that cooperative agreement is not reflected in our ordinance or any of the requirements in that cooperative agreement um we have penalties but we don't have the proper rules to let us to actually enforce those uh penalties so we have to kind of clean and fix those up and we had outdated codes from 2003 and 2010 so we needed to update our codes so decision points so I gave you a bunch of revised ordinances uh that made all those changes but um we have a couple of final things to make final decisions to make and then you can either vote to approve it or you can vote to have a third reading to reflect these changes first when I was doing this I was having a conversation and it turns out there's a third fee so there are three exemptions I told you guys about two I told you about the energy efficiency and the accessibility but there's also a sprinkler exemption so we need to talk about that we could leave the sprinkler exemption we haven't had any applications for them by the way that's why it really didn't show up um you could leave it you could remove the exemption at this time or you could amend it um to be similar to energy efficiency and the other ones if it remains and we'll have that conversation in a minute I also noted related to the sprinkler in section 201-1 the sprinkler we talked about the fact that sprinklers are not required for one and two family structures but that really didn't clearly appear in the actual document so my suggestion is the easiest thing we could do is to add a number seven one and two family structures and it would be very clearly in there that those are exempt so that's a recommendation um we had a recommendation um from Councillor Heaney that maybe we should consider extending the building permits as well so I would suggest section 107 we change one year to two years that would extend any building permits to be open for two years and the other three decision points are the energy efficiency fee which was the point of this we could keep the exemption we could amend it to something less such as only residential is exempt or only residential projects less than $10,000 are exempt um or we could remove the exemption uh altogether which is actually what is proposed in the draft is to remove the exemption uh we briefly discussed the fee refunds for projects that have not been completed that's not a big deal we can certainly not need to deal with that and then there's the accessibility exemption which is similar to these energy efficiency and sprinklers commercial projects are required to do them we do all the inspections but they don't have to pay fees so we also could go through and say all three of our exemptions maybe they should only apply to residential considering if this building were in Berlin or berry or in any other city they would be required to pay fees it's only a month pillier you don't have to pay the fees residential we could have a system so that would be a thought to consider is to have all the fee exemptions kind of be similar maybe commercial pays for all of them maybe only accessibility sprinkler and energy efficiencies that are $10,000 or less are exempt or something to that effect those are just some ideas but that's it those are the the decision points that we have left on the building regulations all right I'll first see if there's any member of the public who wishes to be recognized on on this item and there aren't that many members of the public left out there see seeing no requests for participation from members of the public I will close the public hearing and we can move to council discussion should we just go down the list of questions and see what people think yeah I'll go let me go back to previous page here yeah here we go so sprinkler fee exemption the first one sprinkler fee exemption was the first one or we could talk about all the exemptions at the same time and just skip that one for now okay what do people want to do about exemptions Tim because there are all things we want to encourage people to do and they're all I mean the sprinkler fees having put a few of those systems in and it's it's not in homes it's where we're going to have the most impact and safety it's it's old buildings and it's just crazy costly but I think we you know we still need to help people do it and make it happen I'm not sure this exemption is the best incentive so maybe that's the conversation I mean maybe if they're going to put in a sprinkler system we find a way to waive the hookup fee because usually there's a separate hookup fee to the water system for that that's separate um just something that would encourage it because it really it is a good direction to go and the hookup fee is probably more than the application fee that would be more than that because it's around a thousand or $1,200 for the water hookup I don't know off top my head what the hookup fee is right yeah um I don't know that's one to think of and then the energy piece I mean how can you discourage that I didn't know Lauren you look like you're about to so I mean more on I can just share briefly the conversation that me at CAD although Sal maybe maybe took better notes but I mean my my impression of the conversation was basically people were really trying to like directionally they were like you know we still want to be encouraging energy efficiencies so we don't want to be doing things that go in a different direction but in the spirit of trying to be responsive of this um city staff recommendation they had talked about some of the ideas that Mike had put here like exempting commercial from it and maybe putting some kind of cap on residential like was was one idea that was discussed I mean people were also like these are kind of nominal fees there were different opinions I would say like among the committee of like how big a deal this really is um but yeah so I guess you know so my impression and I think Sal and I might have slightly different feelings on this is like I just feel like there's federal incentives right now for energy efficiency there's state incentives like where people are like wanting to do everything possible to like encourage and like so to me I don't like any fee it's bringing in $10,000 total it's not even that much money like it just seems like why are we picking this fight to like go after it just seems like the wrong thing to be focused on if we want to raise $10,000 let's look at other places to do it then from energy efficiency and like you know but if we're go if we want to go in the direction then I think like the commercial with some kind of like I might put it more at like 20,000 or up for projects like there's like the place to me where there's like decision points are more like if you're doing 20,000 and up that's like that's a big project that's presumably probably more work for the city looking at bigger scale projects um but like a heating system decision you might have to do like two heat pumps you might be getting over that $10,000 mark and then you're like well do I do this do I put a fossil fuel boiler in and like those are real decisions people are making and so I want to be doing everything we are to encourage and to just demonstrate that the city is encouraging that through its actions so to me I just feel like at a minimum like maybe commercial and some kind of like cost parameter but I'd be happy just not doing this at all yeah I think I was the lone member of the energy committee who just said let's get rid of the exemptions um part of my thinking was that as with sprinklers I mean you save on insurance over time right um with energy improvements the you know the fee the permit fee is part of the payback calculation and and the payback is never you know next week it's always a couple of years down the road and people are making that calculation and so to me it's really sort of insignificant and we're doing the we're doing the work um we might as well include the fee most of those projects are amortized with a loan of some kind I mean it's it's just uh it's it's not an overwhelming amount it's not the a large enough amount that someone's going to even a residential project of ten thousand dollars it's it's just not that big a hump to get to get over and um and we were we just spent a couple of weeks fighting over ten thousand dollars so that's my two cents I'm with you I feel like we do all these little exemptions that are just a blink of the eye and I feel like the planning does the work and sometimes one is as many as a large project so I would tend to just get rid of all the exemptions including the handicap accessibility accessibility can also include some large projects I mean elevators and those sections so they're projects that take a number of inspections and a number of work so that's why some of the if it were to apply to commercial and residential as a term is also big it also could be a five-story residential building but you've got more exemptions than we're seeing here I was thinking of the ones we were talking about it's just the three there are the three there's the accessibility but because accessibility applies it might access I had the sprinkler the energy efficiency it's three it's just accessibility is the third yeah but so you're you're you want to make a motion to keep them all there to eliminate the exemptions I would for the energy efficiency in the sprinklers so I have a question about the sprinklers um are there some properties that are required to have sprinklers and some that are not so it looks to me like we have some cases where people have to do these things they have to put sprinklers in they have to make things accessible and so if we can kind of ease that burden a little bit by whatever we can and I don't know if the if the fee exemption is the way to do it like Tim pointed out that might not make that much of a difference then I'm okay with that I think the energy efficiency I I'm compelled by the idea that we want to show that we're supporting this and do whatever we can to encourage people and especially if it's just a small amount of money um relatively speaking but I also I'm dubious that anyone's going to decide not to do the energy efficiency work because they had to pay the permit fee so I'm not sure it's making that much difference and that's an interesting point the way you phrased it is it would it sounds as though you would think that you would exempt projects where some measure is required from a fee but you would continue the fee for someone who's choosing to do it even if they're not required to which seems like kind of backwards because if we're looking to if we're looking to the fee waiver isn't it or a fee exemption as an incentive then that it seems like it's counter to what you what I expected you to say yeah that's very clarifying you're right it doesn't work as an incentive that way so I'm definitely looking at it from a different perspective yeah Laura based based on camera um I've just had a number of conversations with people who are in the field trying to encourage energy efficiency and like like our utilities for example who have really wrestled with what is the right amount of incentive that actually motivates people and I do think people get you know when we got quotes on heat pumps for example like you get the whole breakdown of the cost that would include permit fees and everything so I think that is part of the line item that goes into your bottom line and you're weighing do I do this and like we decided not to and we went with a pellet boiler which I still don't think was a good idea but like the cost breakdown and all of that so like my understanding from a lot of that is that people are really looking at it's like a hundred a hundred dollar incentive is a meaningful difference when that when gmp went from 200 to 300 for heat pumps they saw a massive uptake and some of it I think is just psychological really and so like yeah I don't know for sure but it just feels directionally wrong to be just adding expense making it like that many more people like a little bit less likely when we have this urgent crisis we just had a climate catastrophe in our town to be like well now's the time to like make it slightly more expensive to do energy efficiency and to switch to those heat pumps that get your stuff out of the basement and like I don't know it just feels like like I'll go look for 10 000 other dollars I don't know like this though just like the heat pump that has a wonderful recognition of their going from one price to another I don't think we get credit for our exemptions I don't think the residents really appreciated that it feeds back into their feeling about the city or their you know maybe I agree with that I think it's more a like behavior thing when we're looking to try to get as many people to do something I mean I think we could ask me to do a public campaign like go you know do energy efficiency the city's encouraging it in these ways we've got this program we've got a fee exemption like I I agree like if we're if we're gonna keep any exemption we should probably promote it as part of like the package of why it's affordable I think that's a great thing we could and should do if we decide to keep it even if we keep like a small like if you're doing a residential project under 10 or whatever like I'm feeling cheap it's like I feel like they should not refund things that aren't completely at least keep half of it you know it's like a deposit well I'm with you on that but but but let's focus on this let's focus on me okay so where are we let's have a motion one way or the other so I don't think you actually made a motion is that I move that we we remove all exemptions zero second from energy projects ADA and sprinklers is there a second I'll second it all right do we have any further discussion I think and mostly have a sense of where people are but I don't want to prematurely cut off discussion all right let's have a vote and I'm going to call the roll Donna Kerry no Sal hi Tim no Helen I think that's a yes yes okay and Lauren no so what are where are we with that three three it's what we always do chair votes yes all right next so that was all three exemptions are out then yep okay just making sure I'm keeping it on straight in my head so the next one would be and this was really just a clarification to add number seven one and two family structures to section 201 that would just clarify that the sprinkler exemption is for one and two families which it is but for some reason it's not really clearly written in the ordinance so do you want it motion for that we can do that one separately or we can add it to the next one which was your section 107 request to add one year to two year and are there anything else just those two before you get too far ahead of yourself let's move on that most of us make a motion that we extend the permit periods from one year to two years and then we clarify the language to be clear that sprinkler systems wouldn't be required for one and two unit residential properties so yep those favor signify by saying aye anyone opposed okay and I think the last one was just the if we want to do anything about the refunding of fees for projects that are not completed and currently we refund 100% so sometimes people come in they do projects and because we were talking about fees I wanted to come in and just go through and put that on the table that is one of our things we do give 100% fees so in a lot of cases we put a lot of work in it to start to approve projects to plan reviews and the like and then the project doesn't go so we return all the fees now what about we're fine with that but it's just to make sure everyone knows that's a policy that you have the right to make what what if we went to a system where we did not refund the fee but if they came back in with the the same or a similar project within a couple of years that they wouldn't have to pay a new fee I think keeping track of that might be tricky over the long term there'd have to be a time period on that yeah building inspectors come and go and how many times does this come up we get a number of them especially for projects that either got cut short so somebody got approved for a large project came in smaller and we'll have to give a refund of a certain amount like I said it's it's not a big item like I said our big thing is the building for years and years and years for the first six years that I was working the building department and the building inspector raised enough fees to cover his his salary as Chris Lombra and over the past three or four years we have been having to get basically subsidized by the general fund and so we're we were just trying to identify different ways that we could you know we're that's not the intention our intention is that we pay for ourselves building permits pay for themselves and right now we're not and part of this is fee exemptions big chunk fee exemptions and some of them are these little things but I don't think this will make a significant difference I don't think we need to address it if you don't want to but I wanted after going to all the budget meetings and the questions were like hey can staff kick over some rocks and see where there are opportunities this is where we thought if we're already talking about fees let's at least mention the fact that we refund projects maybe there's a portion of those that don't get refunded get refunded except for ax amount would it be too much administrative work to say refund 50 percent or I don't know at what point you the staff is done 50 percent of the works 75 percent of the work if the deposit could be refunded as to a proportion to the level of work I mean what would you suggest would be administratively possible or easiest I would probably say because usually because people can come in we ask people to estimate their costs and we expect it might go up a little bit more and they owe us a little bit they might come down a little bit more we give them a refund that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about for the projects that happen big projects that don't get developed they pay the fee and then don't come in I think if there was a you can get a refund except for even if it was except for $50 we've gotten some part of our time you know that wouldn't even cover a portion of the amount of times you know at $50 an hour there probably more than an hour's work that went into processing the application Audra's work on her end Michelle's work on her end to go through and do the review of the application to make sure it determines make sure it meets the rules so I mean if there was an easy thing it would probably be you can get a refund except for $50 then at least we're keeping a policy higher or lower than 62 percent a 50 percent would be I mean in some projects if a big project got canceled for some reason that I mean that could be we have fees that could be 20 30 thousand dollars so somebody were planning a big project that for some reason financing fell through on and they decided to cancel it you know I would say a lot of times you do a deposit that's not refundable on things so that's why I was thinking 50 percent sort of a flat number yeah I would be I would not be I'd be more inclined to go with a flat amount than I am a percentage because and on a big project let's say uh the on on Main Street the the new facility there for Alzheimer's so that when that project was built that was $28,000 permit something in that area so you know obviously if that fell through most of our work in that project is going through and doing the inspections the weekly inspections and going in and seeing these guys every Friday so there's a chunk of that that's just going to pay our time for all those inspections that don't happen if a project gets canceled so it wouldn't seem right to be charging the 50 percent because we're not really doing 50 percent of the work upfront what that the dollar doesn't seem worth the paperwork wasn't I would say at least 100 or yeah I mean but like I said 50 100 if there's if there's a fixed dollar amount that would that would work if you have a problem if you're if you're a non-residential applicant and you're doing a big project like that it seems like the reason it doesn't happen is because the financing falls through or usually that's the last permit you get so it's not usually because there's a permit or there's an appeal usually you're building permit it's your last permit that's when you are ready to build you're going to come in and drop your check on for the for the building permit and they've invested whatever money they were going to invest on doing the planning and the design and everything else yeah and for a big project that could require a plan review and you know there's a lot so usually those projects don't fall through but we we have had somewhere it's just been like so everyone's like we shouldn't refund these I'm like I'll mention it you know um any motions seven moves that we don't refund once you pay the fee right like would be my take it sounds like that's yeah I'm done enough permits I don't yeah I can't I just can't think of a time I would have gone back in so things and things don't always go the way you plan but yeah it's up to you yeah by the time you're into that you're at that point you probably don't have a surprise that's so big that you decide you can't go forward you might but because that's the other way that you would you would cancel a project I moved it once fees are paid we don't refund on building permits they were and you had your hand up yeah I was just curious do you know how other communities with similar permit programs deal with this I don't actually have that I don't actually know that one I mean they're only a handful of communities that do it very Burlington so I think permit fees are adjusted upward if the project costs more than was estimated when the fee was applied for are they adjusted downward as well they're adjusted downward so if a project comes in less but that's usually those are usually smaller amounts so somebody will estimate you know this whole building this new addition is going to cost you know $110,000 we pay the fee and it comes in it you know 102 so they get a refund for the $8,000 and that's fine because we're getting a chunk of fee along with that usually those are pretty close to the estimates Gary yeah I'm thinking about the very small projects someone who's like renovating a bathroom would that fall under this or you know not building a whole new building but just something small in their house or they're doing something to the garage and then it doesn't work out they decide not to do it and in that case the permit fee could actually make a difference to that you know that one person who's trying to do something to fix up their house I did I like the fact that we haven't been that we've been refunding them that just feels nice to me it feels like if you didn't do it you don't need the permit so why are you paying for a permit if you didn't do the work and I'm also very sympathetic to the idea that you're you are doing a lot of work the city is doing a lot of work for this so so I think you know a flat fee of that's basically like the processing fee you're sort of the administrative fee that you don't get back makes more sense to me than no refund or a percentage so that's what I'd be more inclined to go with so you want to move to amend the motion you can move to amend the motion or I can do it right because I made you you can move to amend your motion too so make the motion if the project isn't done retain a $500 processing fee and return the unused portion of the permit fee is there a second to that sorry what's the permit fee the first $500 for a processing fee and then after that we close back but on those big projects they've done all that work already so it's better than nothing but I still think we're letting the the staff have all this time put in and it doesn't happen they're not being paid we've established those fees for a reason because they're more complex they've spent a lot of time you can go either way yeah so I'm I don't so we have a motion we don't have a second at this point you don't have any second on any motion oh no you have a second on Tim's motion but we do not but we do not have a second on Tim's motion to amend the motion I'll second that okay do you want to say something about it I guess I'm just thinking about the past few years we had a flood we had a pandemic like I could see circumstances where people can't finish a project and it could be a senior living facility like if that one hadn't gone through because of the flood all of a sudden now we're going to keep the entire twenty eight thousand dollar fee I don't know I just could see scenarios I think we could reassess this if like I would want to know does I'd feel comfortable doing this if I knew other communities this is like standard practice if most places give it back having a flat fee still seems fair to be like we are doing work that's just the expectation you know that's it's very clear up front there's a set amount and I would be open to revisiting it in the future if we get information like yeah most communities just keep it all and there is no refund then I could get on board with that so I just think I mean $500 buys a lot of project I mean it would be more than the fee for a small bathroom yes yes so it should be somehow up up to I mean you're not going to refund more than they paid right of course if it's a flat fee it's got to be something that covers you know 99% of the projects if it's $500 for commercial and $100 for residential or something like that just thinking this I think it needs to be something something like that you know I'm thinking double drop the motions it seems like I really just go back and see what the staff feels good about it's really a relationship of staff with citizens and then maybe next time we can talk about it but really it's they're doing the interaction with people and have a sense of this let me tell do you want do you want to just not do this at this point yeah and so everywhere everybody votes no on this mode on this motion and on the because technically under Robert's rules there's not really a way to draw a motion because once the motion is made right once the motion is made it belongs to the body it doesn't belong to the maker of the motion so the first to to do what Tim is suggesting what we would do is vote yes or no on the motion to amend and then vote no on the original motion also moved postponing definitely yeah can we do that once at this stage in the process okay yeah so we could do that first you want to move to postpone indefinitely as long as we remember when we come back what the other two motions were at first yeah maybe let's let's let's vote on Tim's motion Tim's motion let's vote on Tim's motion to amend his motion all those in favor signify by saying aye all those opposed okay now we're ready to move vote on Tim's original motion all those in favor signify by saying aye all those opposed all right there we are so the fee the fee thing can come to us another day Mike that's fine and and is that it or is there one no that was it so we want to so now it's right for a motion to adopt the ordinance as amended once it's building code as amended all those in favor signify by saying aye anyone opposed all right roll call it's okay Donna aye Perry aye Sal aye Tim aye Pelin and Pelin voted aye and Lauren no Kate the motion carries we've adopted the ordinance thank you for your patience all right we are on to yeah I will here I do this to you no it I really appreciate it every time you come in here with this stuff you know what you're talking about and it is very helpful for us to go through it item 10 change the April council meeting dates that's Kelly it's been a quiet night for you Kelly because of Mike and Sarah you know not much to see here um so we are recommending that maybe we adjust the meeting schedule in April sorry that's way better a lot louder oh my goodness um so we're recommending that we amend the meeting schedule in April we have a scheduling conflict for the first meeting I'm just actually pulling up our proposal right now so get the dates specifically so here we are so what we're looking to do council typically meets the second and fourth Wednesday this would be the 10th and the 24th the April 10th meeting complex with an ICMA northeast regional conference in the April 24th meeting complex with school vacation week we don't necessarily have a conflict with the school vacation week but we do with the first meeting so if possible we were hoping to maybe move both meetings up a week so do the third and the 17th to eliminate possible conflicts the work for everybody that works for me and I am out of the town on the 24th or first school break so yes and you're and you're not the only member with kids in school so it seems like that would probably be a popular thing they're okay with everybody all right I'm sorry and Bell and you're okay with that too great all right thank you um I don't see anything in it any under other business uh city council reports starting with Lauren tonight yes the only thing I was trying to get an update because the budget adjustment act has been moving um so and with Bill out of town I don't know if you had all of this Kelly so I can just wait for you if so but I did have her text me the numbers oh great you'll be willing to share them that'll be okay so what I got uh was that Montpelier will be getting 825,000 dollar grant for the city for helping with the flood related costs and ERAF fully covered so that's good um unfortunately no immediate funding for an individual mitigation but that request is in for the budget the fiscal year 25 budget so again this is the budget adjustment from the previous budget is that 825,000 and the ERAF um and as well as there's an ongoing request for additional money for municipal abatements and revenue replacement um so we'll keep fighting for more money but there's 825,000 and the ERAF fully covered for now thanks uh Pelin nothing Tim Sal no nothing Harry I was talking about the upcoming eclipse earlier today with the city clerk and talking about um I had ordered some of those eclipse glasses and the city clerk let me know that the city apparently has thousands of them or is getting thousands of them or something that there may be some available for people and so I would love to hear more about that and let and if they're you know if that's something that's available to the public hear about that so that people can cancel their amazon orders for the special sunglasses like I did if they don't need them you have the answer to that John I'm feeling alive has a whole bunch yeah we have a bunch in our office stack that we're giving out so I'm not sure how many they have but I think I know it's quite a bit so so you think you're gonna have them out like on uh town meeting day for people I don't know um I'll see if I can yeah that would make a lot of sense so if I can go grab you I'll sum down there we've got some uh Donna thank you uh this making my last meeting this is my third time I've been challenged in my five elections and so they all been difficult but it's been great serving here and uh I haven't been on the council with all of you that long Lauren and Jack the longest but it's been really interesting it's always a delight when people just do their thing and they study the material and they come here and share all these different opinions and personalities so thank you for serving the city and agreeing to disagree with me thank you mayor's report I just want to let people know the annual report is out um we've got uh nice on the back there's a nice picture of the of the city council from one of our meetings at the uh at the senior center and it's full of information uh if anyone's got some questions about how your city government works and you want to review that before uh before you come out and vote next week um it's here and online and uh I encourage everybody to come out and uh and vote on or before uh next tuesday city clerks report a really great picture of us with the back cover it really came out pretty well yeah so it's pretty good I just mentioned Saturday voting hours um my office will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday for early voting city managers report I don't have anything to report thank you all right then that means we are adjourned at 10 59 p.m. where you got out before 11 o'clock