 All right, we're going to call the Colchester Planning Commission meeting to order. It is seven o'clock. First thing is on the agenda considerations. Is there four changes to agenda items and orders? No. Staff memo. Staff memo. I think they just had to plug it in somewhere. Okay. That's what they linked it under. We send it away to a third party who helps us get the stuff on the website. Okay. So you want to run that now or you want to wait? Let's just put it there. They relate to items later so we can. Exactly. Okay. Comments and question? So you are changing the order. Oh, we are changing the order. We are changing the order. Very good. Comments and questions from the public, not related? No. Discussion, potential items working less for inclusion supplement 46 of the Colchester development regulations. I'll let you take it from there. In a while since we saw you, the last we talked in mid-July, we talked about a couple upcoming items for the next set of amendments. The bulk of that is going to be S100, that's the new legislation that was most effective or signed into law for July 1st, some bits, September 1st, maybe, still. So that sort of necessitated a bit of a rush on the next set that we weren't quite anticipating, but we figure well, we've got it open. There's a few other things we have highlighted in the book, so we're going to bring a couple of those to you tonight. I say a couple. I don't think there's going to be any more that's not on your list, so exhale. So let's just dig right in. You do have a pretty hefty set of amendments there. We tried to put the references in a separate document so that you can find them. You can easily do that. The other thing I'm hoping you've noticed in here is a fun new format. So I know you don't stare at our regulations all day, but we do. And they're really challenging to read. The text and the spacing and the various different fonts and the numbering system did not, you could be 14-0-1-A and subsection 1, but then it could be 12-A, subsection I instead of 1. So this aims to get some consistency in there as well as to use some fonts and spacing that are just much more readable. So you retyped the Tourette's? I know. So Jake, who you met last year when we did the Lakeshore Visualization Survey, he put all of the results together and gave a little presentation. Jake is also a newspaper editor for the university and had some skillset that we took advantage of, a mutual advantage, we paid him. And he used his skillsets and some of his publishing programs to get this done. And I think he was able to take what existed and convert it, but went through for consistency. I don't know all the details, but I'm going to do it remotely. And he did a sweep of the consistency for all of that, set up everything. So not only is it easy to read, it's also easy to edit. So when he's long gone living his best life post-graduation, we can make the edits that we need to by adding things recently. So I'm really excited about that. I think there's still some things we might do with them. I've been reading some other regulations where I think there's some cool things, where they have some little pop-outs that sort of highlight very key areas. We didn't get quite there yet, but this feels like a huge win. Just having. I should probably pull up a before, so much more readable. This is the new format. This is the new format. I mean, it's in a draft here, so you won't have all the spacing here. This is just because it's in a markup version. So this will go away. It'll look a little bit cleaner eventually. But the spacing is all new. So this before, there probably wouldn't have been any indents here. The ones may or may not have had any sort of parentheses around them. It's just so much, much, much more readable. I'm very excited about it. I think the crew is really excited about starting using it. Just a much neater, more organized, readable format. There's still some edits we have to make. Some of the graphics didn't quite move the way they were supposed to, as I edited things here. So we'll have to go back and do that. It's not quite ready for prime time there. So it's spacing a little bit off still. But that could be because it's a markup version. So a little bit of color even. Very excited about it. OK. So that's the first thing I wanted to point out. It shows up on the third page. OK. So what are we talking about tonight? I'm just going to go through the overview here. So all of the stuff that's related to S100 that we brought to you in concept last time now has text associated with that. So you can see all of that. If you were to be scrolling through, you probably saw a lot of red show up. That's because there are certain things that just occur a lot. Did you ever do a count, Zach, of how many? No. So multiple pages. I was drowning down there. So like single family, that terminology is no longer used as much because it implies family. And in fact, ours even had a definition of family. So Zach, I'll walk you through that. But that occurred in there so many times that even a finding a place shows up quite a bit. So walk you through those. Accessory structure, exemptions. I think I introduced this a little bit last time. So when we talk about this, it will be to talk about some of those things that people ask us about when we don't have a clear policy on. And for the most part, it's not been a problem because we just tell them the policy and usually they're happy with it and they go away. But at some point, it should be written down for consistency's sake. And because it may not be me or Zach or somebody else interpreting this in the future, and to save all of that, there's some certain things that we'll talk about there. We're proposing that you exempt them from review and a permit. We'll get to that list. Just an introduction there. Temporary certificates of occupancy. In Colchester, every time you get a permit, no matter what it is for, whether it is your deck, your swimming pool, your fence, a brand new 60 unit building, a whole new Costco, you need to get a CO for that permit. CO comes with an inspection. So what we'll be talking about there is a temporary one that's related to weather. We just don't currently spell it out, so we're hoping to spell it out right forward. I just have a question. When I think of building or being occupied, it's like occupied. What is the temporary CO? So occupancy, I guess it's a bit misleading. It also can mean use, because like a shed, you're not going to occupy. A new driveway, you're not really going to occupy. But it is the term that we use, and it's the term, not every community issues or requires a CO for every permit. Some pick certain things. But in Colchester, we do it for everything. It was a little slow to that idea when I first got here, but it's very much grown on me, because it allows us to know that if you've got that permit for that shed, that you put it where you said you were going to put it. It does take a lot of man hours, but we'll get into that one a little bit more, too. Fence regulations is sort of closely accessory structure exemptions, so we'll talk about whether or not current regulations we have for fences is still appropriate. You're going to find a lot of what we talk about tonight. I don't really have leading suggestions for you. They are items where I'm throwing questions out there, and really hoping you'll put your very unique hand on deciding the policy associated with it, but I want to ask you the questions. Sometimes they bring things together. This is best practice. This is absolutely what I recommend. These are, I think, over more open-ended, but so they'll be very much yours. We'll get to that. Science, sort of the same thing. This is not an overall of all our science. As much as I would love to do that, I don't have the time for the whole overall yet, but there were a few things that have just been flagged for a while, as somewhat problematic. So we've highlighted those for you. We'll talk about them in a minute. This list, F, is probably going to grow. These are just things where it's a cleanup. For example, in one section, we reference a sign language. We don't have a sign language anymore. It's just a language that was left over from before. So I think there's only one thing in there now, but it's probably going to grow. I call them just cleanup items. So all that, and now I get to let Zach talk, because he did the vote for the work here on S100. All right. So I will go through this list here. That was on, I believe, page two of the memo, but we can probably pull up the parts of the regulations that are affected. Can you see that okay? Do you want me to zoom in a little bit larger? Can you make the text gold, too? Should I say gold? Just a joke. I was like, how do you just tell me how to do it Zach? I don't know. All right. So starting off, I think we had a lengthy discussion at the last meeting about the various requirements to update your regulations, to accommodate this additional density in areas served by municipal water and sewer. And the short summary is that that area in Colchester is the general development three district, Severance Corners. And ultimately, the changes needed there were actually pretty minimal. The main change that was needed was to add on the ability to develop an additional floor of housing for projects that meet the definition of an affordable housing development. So the real changes here to incorporate that was to add an asterisk and a note to each table where the height limits are proposed in 4.03. So that's tables two, three, and four. Those tables are generally, do you want to actually go to those? Just because those, yeah, those are going to depict the dimensional standards for each street type, A, B, and C in that district. And it's a very simple update saying that projects that meet affordable housing development definition are allowed to develop an additional story beyond the maximum. We do define what a story is. It would likely fall into the upper story heights because it would likely be an upper story. And we did not, I think, Rebecca, you might have mentioned at the last hearing, well, should we take a look at the heights and respond in response to that? I think it's a worthwhile discussion if you'd like to have it. Those have not been modified at this time. So we're keeping the maximums at, oh, pull them up here. Sorry. So for an A street, we're looking at, what are we looking at for stories here? Oh, sorry. So five maximum is for an A street, your primary street, for a B street, your secondary street, looking at four maximum, and then on a C street, you're looking at three maximum. Then projects that meet the definition of affordable housing would add one to that. Any comments or questions on that? I was thinking that they were in the appendices. I understand what they're trying to do is just that whole, you know, form-based code area, you know, is developed. I mean, you probably have more to say on this than I do, but it was based on certain heights, you know, maximum heights we wanted in that area. Now, the section 100 is, overriding that, but I have these visions that we're gonna have buildings next to each other, one's gonna be five-story, one's gonna be six-story, and so on, it's gonna be up and down instead of kind of a nice, calming area that we kind of envision for our diverse corners. And all I can visualize is, when you look at a building, it's popped up another story, you're saying, well, that's an affordable housing development. I mean, it's gonna stick out. So I have a hard time wrapping my head around this one. I know it's a state regulation, I don't know how to get around it. I mean, it just kind of flies in the face of, you know, not just us, but all planning commissions of, you know, we were trying to do something and it's just, it says, well, we're gonna do this instead. You have to live with it. So I have a hard time with it. Does that just go for, the whole building has to be affordable housing or is it, if you build the building, you decide you wanna do another floor, that floor will be the affordable housing? Or should I say A floor can be affordable housing if you add another floor? Yes, there's certain thresholds in the definition of affordable housing development that would need to be met. And I think whether or not the building meets that requirement, if there was commercial on the first floor, for example, but the building still met the requirements of that definition, they still would probably be entitled to that additional floor. That's a state, Rick. Yep. Yep. I hear you. Definitely. I just have a hard time with this one. I mean, I support affordable housing. I just don't quite understand this one regulation that just kind of flies in the face of planning. Yeah, I know we talked about this a bit last time. I think the one story is not proportionate in any way. I think that that's some of my concern. You could have a community that's decided for whatever reason, 12 is the absolute perfect height. And now it's like 13. Is 13 really that much different than 12? I don't know. But 12 was probably created for a very specific reason. Yeah, so it's interesting. I don't know. I think as challenging as this is, I think it'll be slightly easier for Colchester than some communities where they're looking at like view sheds. I don't know how that's gonna work out. People have certain heights based on hills or obstruction of certain views. And I think our regulations along the lake, for example, I don't think this will apply here in a way, right? So we're service areas? It's in the areas that meet that definition and the lake does not. But if it did, and you had that, I think that would be really concerning. It doesn't apply to us in that area, but there's definitely, I think there's... How's that gonna apply to a townhouse look we have or should have? So they're all lined up. If the developer decides he wants to try to get another floor on it, he'll make that whole building figure how to fit into the affordable housing rules. So the whole building will be, I mean, obviously we can't change it, but just curious if you know. So does he get to make that whole line of townhouses now? One more floor? I believe so. I believe so, yeah. The buildings that just went up, sevens corners on the southeast quadrant, I guess. I mean, those are what? Four stories right now? I mean, they... One is four, one is three? Yeah, one is three, one is four. And one is on a B straight, one's on a C straight, or? They're both primarily front on B streets, but one of them does sit at the corner of a B and a C street. So they're, they propose the three-story building that can form with both street types. I think one reason, I mean, Rich can correct me if I'm wrong, because I wasn't part of it. The heights were determined basically because Colchester is kind of rural, and it's surrounded by a residential area, and having taller buildings would just be kind of overpowering that area. And we're not, it's not an urban area by any means. It's being developed, but I don't know. I just have a very, very hard time justifying going up to six stories on A street, so far we haven't really had those, but then the four story could have been five stories, and right now it looks big to me for that general area. I mean, I've put this on the list, we have a growing list. Should we ever finally get to the form-based code? I flagged building heights as a discussion point there, and you guys can take a real new look if you want to. Now that things are starting to be built, and you have a better idea, I think when you're looking at just like a basic greenfield and you're thinking about heights, what some might view as tall others might not. In context, I think matters a lot. I think maybe that's what you're saying a little bit of what I'm hearing anyway, Rebecca, about like we're still in a suburban area, but we can highlight this for a hardy discussion when we do get to the form-based code, keeping in mind that an extra story will be available for buildings that need that threshold. Yeah, but one thing I'll say is, you know, if talk to people who have been building there and are planning to build in the other areas, and I've asked them like, would you have done the extra story if you could have? And so far it's been no, and I don't know all the reasons why, but I'm not sure if the extra story is even gonna be enough of an incentive for people to provide the percentage of affordable housing in a building in this market at any rate. No, there's other incentives out there to put affordable housing. What we're seeing in the affordable housing realm is where is heavily subsidized, and really only where is heavily subsidized. You're not seeing anyone, you're not seeing a lot of people doing it voluntarily or for the incentives that are offered. The market is just too good and too tight right now for anyone to see that return by having the management in return for managing the complex financials of that level of housing. Yeah, I don't even know if it's going to be incentive enough having that extra floor just based on what I've seen. I don't know that even the CHT building that's there, ever would have happened if not for the subsidies that were available in the construction of it and the fundraising and everything else that goes into it. But I don't think a private developer without those, without access to those financial programs was ever gonna build out of his own, his or her own. I think a partner. Yeah. I don't know that we're gonna see too much of it just yet, but we'll see. Fortunately, we don't have much of a say. And I wonder how many people will go into their regulations and reduce across the board for fear of what that extra one means. And I don't see that as a win, personally. No, I don't either. But I suspect that there will be communities that do that and say, okay, we have three, we were comfortable with three and now you're telling us it might be four, so we're gonna go two. And that's unfortunate. No, and that changes. I'm not hearing that from your guys. That changes the dynamics, too. I mean, there is a lot of thought that went into that. Into rightsizing it, yeah. So we'll keep that in mind, I think, when we, I think it's topic number one, maybe when we get back to the form base code. That's gonna be a long list. That'll get to Z. Anything else there? All right. We can move on to the next item here. So in the S100 memo, there was discussion about aligning the requirements for both now single unit dwellings and duplex dwellings so that they have the same dimensional standards. A lot can support either of them. There's no additional restrictions for duplex dwellings. And from a review of the regulations, I think the regulations are generally aligned with that. We're gonna talk a little bit more about frontage requirements later here, but because it's kind of a two-prong discussion, but there were some changes while I was cruising through control F, searching the word family. I did find some requirements for the calculation of density under the congregate housing density bonus for planned unit developments. I'm not sure how often this section's been utilized, but generally the summary is that the regulations request that a density plan be developed by the applicant to demonstrate the density of the parcel, the buildable density, based on single unit dwellings and specifically excluding duplex and multi-unit dwellings. So really wanted to flag that and just say that I don't know that you can have that distinction in that section with these additional standards here. So proposed potentially striking those sections, but also noting that should you want to have a bit more discussion on it, we can talk about if you are to include duplexes, what does that look like? Can do a bit more research. Personally, I have not reviewed any projects with the developer review board that have utilized that density bonus, but I have seen it, or I have seen density plan calculations in certain project archives. So it definitely has been used in some way in the past, but that's definitely an area to address here. Any questions about that? I don't know, I'll have to read it. Every time I start to read it. Sorry. Yes. It ends up, I was trying to see if there was more down below. I don't want to really change for the duplex idea because the density is the density, correct? Well, so the density of the district is the density of the district. I think there's possibly an idea here that say you had four units per acre allowable and you had a 10 acre parcel. Your maximum density is 40 units. But I think that the regulations probably note here that it's gonna be really hard to build 40 units on that parcel just due to a variety of factors. You gotta put in a road. Road has to comply with the town standards. You probably need septic systems. All that's going to take up space that otherwise is not gonna be perfectly used for these units. So there was a requirement to calculate a functional density based on single unit dwellings. Perhaps, I mean, maybe this could be amended here to say using single unit or duplex dwellings. Maybe not fully stricken or we could do some more research on it. Yeah, because we're just taking the single unit, splitting it into two, but we can't really change anything as far as septic road setbacks, all that. So the amount of people were stuffing in there, using it or whatever you want to call it, will basically stay the same. If the ceiling is still the same for the parcel, the congregate housing bonus does allow them to possibly go beyond that ceiling, should all of these conditions be met. So I guess it really would allow somebody to come in. If they came in yesterday and they were able to propose a functional density of 15 units on that parcel, it could be up to 30, technically, because if they were duplexes on the same size lots as single unit dwellings, it's double the amount of units, still allowable if the maximum density of the parcel is higher than the actual. So that's a lot of verbal math. I'm not gonna tell you though, just this whole section is bonkers to me, but I wouldn't have proposed a change because I've got thrown enough at you, but this idea of like three pages of regulations, just in case somebody wants to create a, while we're changing words, I suggest removing words that say elderly. That's another word that I don't think belongs in a regulation, especially if it's in the same chapter as something that says 55 plus. That's just bonkers to me too. But I think those communities and three pages of regulations associated with 55 plus communities, I don't know how necessary they are. I don't just don't think that's happening anymore. And there's even, I think, some ongoing national court cases as to whether or not, how legal those are anymore, at least in terms of whole communities. Buildings which provide services, I think are a different animal altogether. But I don't know, I didn't mean to get into all this. I do find the whole section unnecessary there. I'm just gonna say it. Do we have any congregate housing in? Whole Chester? I think so. And most congregate housing is really meant to tie into services. Not, it may be different from skilled nursing facility, very different. But to have something that is offered to people of their needs, either due to age or to other social or physical needs, that don't necessarily rise to the level of needing nursing. Yeah, well, what comes to my mind is Lake Robbin down in Shelburne. Yeah. It has all the facilities there, but it has all these little apartment buildings scattered around it. And then they have one main building that's services. Yeah. That's the kind of thing we're talking about. I think so. I mean, that's a pretty big example of this because I think they do have to detached housing down there too, right? I think they do. It's not just large buildings. No, that's not. But I think that they're a pretty rare example. I don't think you see a lot of that either. Now, most of what you see is, like we see in Essex, you see the big apartment buildings going up. Yeah, yeah. And usually what you get out of them who don't get out of non-restricted living is you get a dedicated community center in the building or you get a dedicated adult service center or... Dining area. Dining area. Again, what's the one? The pines, I think. I would call this off of Dorset Street in South Burlington. Very able-bodied people, but there are certain things. I think they even have a hair salon. They're a hair salon. They have a dining hall. They have... That are really meant to create some activity options for this population of people. But I don't know the density. It's a whole lot of regulation for something that may or may not need it, but I've gone down a rabbit hole. I'm so sorry. Yeah, and just to clarify, the density plans I've seen in the files, I think were a requirement of the plan to your development process many years ago. So you'll see them attached to projects. I think that probably got approved in the 80s and 90s. The next version of this might see us strike the word elderly. That might happen sooner than later. Might do it right now. It might be nice. Especially the same paragraph that's gonna divide. Put that out there. All right. So possibly some more work here. You might see a lot more red. Okay. I don't think we use it a lot. Do we use it a lot? Oh, I thought you were gonna strike the whole section. No, no, no. I can't throw that much at them. I may propose removing the word elderly. Do we define elderly in the article 12? All right. Moving on, speaking of words and changing words, but not changing too much, hopefully. The next item in the list has a lot of references. The big, the summary here is three terms exist in the regulations. Single family dwelling unit, two family dwelling unit, and multi-family dwelling unit. All of those are being proposed to be changed, respectively to single unit dwelling, duplex dwelling, and multi-unit dwellings. So those changes start in article 12, but they really permeate through the regulations. And if there's any questions about those references, happy to answer them. I don't think we need to go word by word. No real policy changes here. I pulled out those ones just so that you're aware of them. This is really just updating the language to be, to remove any idea that me as the zoning administrator should be asking, well, are you one family? Are you two families? Don't wanna be asking those questions. Just remove that, say, hey, does that unit have bedrooms, kitchen, and a bathroom? That's I think what people care about. So simplify that. But took a lot of references to get to that point. Any questions there? Just in terms of septic appropriation, I assume the capacity will be able to handle something going from single to duplex to multi-duplex, because the kitchen, I think, is a huge, two more kitchens are big. Yeah, so that's sort of use, I mean, I'm not gonna speak out of turn here, but it seems like the state wastewater rules are still in effect, and they're regulating possibly based on a dwelling unit, so if there's two kitchens, they might need additional flow there, system might need to be bigger. And for example, if there's more bedrooms, they're calculating an additional, persons per bedroom. So ultimately, property owners in Colchester still need to get wastewater permits if they're going to add bedrooms, create another dwelling unit. The system will still need to be sized to serve the use on the property. So do our septic systems have that ability to expand that much? I mean, I just assumed that when they were installed, there was a calculation made of how many approved, what would the maximum approved units be? I'm just curious, and I'm not, I'm just, so I assume you could deny someone from putting in a multiplex if the septic system couldn't, doesn't have that capacity? I think we're gonna talk about that in a little bit here, but generally, yes, I mean, we would be wanting to make sure that new dwelling units have appropriate, except demonstrated compliance with the wastewater rules. Okay. And speaking of whether or not you can expand a system, I'm not an engineer, but I have seen people come in for permits to, you know, might need to construct a new system on the property, but without jumping ahead, the majority of people sort of right size their system when they build the house. So most people who have a three bedroom home have a three bedroom, have a system that serves three bedroom, but there's certainly quite a few people out there who say they built that extra one in early, that they built in enough for a whole other unit. That's gonna be, you know, individual case by case. I would say more likely no, that yes, you'll probably require a new system. All right. Anything else on that? Those word changes, modifying the parking requirements, yes. So there's a requirement to, and this one is a slightly delayed action date in S100, but to update the parking requirements, I believe to make them one and a half parking spaces per dwelling unit for duplexes and multi-unit dwellings. So with that in mind, and that's, you know, all across town. So that's the shift in that parking table in 10.01, table 10-2. And like I said, that's a state requirement. So you'd be looking at, if somebody came in to apply for a duplex dwelling unit, we'd be looking for three parking spaces on the property and minimum. Of course, lock coverage and other items wouldn't prevent them from building a few more if they needed them. And really where you're seeing most multi-unit dwellings in Severance Corners, there's no parking minimums in that district. So really seeing property owners trying to, you know, build the right amount of parking that they need for the units they're building. Anything else there? All right. Article, go ahead. I think it says a right. Which one is that from? I think we're talking about front. I think when we talk about table, the dimensional standards table. Loops in there. All right. Again, to that part, Article 12 added a couple of definitions, emergency shelter, like we talked about the last meeting, affordable housing and affordable housing development and all of these come from either references that were made in S100 or S100 itself. So those are new definitions. Like I said before, modifying the definitions of single-family dwelling, two-family dwelling and multi-family dwelling to change to their respective single-unit dwelling, duplex dwelling and multi-unit dwelling. There was a slight modification to common grid housing but we also probably going to revisit that and remove elderly if it's in there. Residential care home talks about being accessory or the same areas that's allowed single-family dwellings to change that to unit. Similar thing with small multiplex and townhouse, just changing the reference there to multi-unit dwelling. No change to the definition you already agreed upon there, the substance of it at least. Did get to cross out fully family and household, so that is a nice removal there, making some room for the new definitions. Any questions about those definitions, anything in them? Really the new ones are right aligned with state statute. So just moving down to the appendix A, so table A1 was updated. And the fun part about saying you're going to add a use to the table is adding a use to the table but then you have to decide where it's allowed and all those great considerations. If you're on clerk basis, you might not be on there. Oh, got it. I need something to reference. Yep. I think it's up at the top there, that little in the, yep. So the only modification to this table is to add the emergency shelter use, which we've inserted under as 1.800, so residential, kind of right underneath home businesses. An existing copy. So right where the cursor is is where this use 1.800. Area 1 and residential. Yep. Emergency shelters would sit in that line. And right now the only place that, you know, we've plugged in a potential area where it could be permitted is in the general development two district. And the reasons for that, we can talk through, you know, some different districts here, but just as some thoughts here about areas of town that might be appropriate to, you know, serve this sort of use, you know, having an area that is, of course, close to transportation alternatives, like a bus line might be appropriate compared to other parts of Colchester, like, you know, the R-10 district, it might be very difficult to get to that district. But also looking in an area with higher law coverages, more mixed uses, more slightly walkable area in town, it could be appropriate to have that sort of use. As we, you know, kind of shift towards discussion a bit here, just knowing that, you know, there might be some other locations, but putting any restrictions on, you know, hours of operation are not allowed under S-100 for these emergency shelters. So, you know, trying to keep things, I think, in the permitted use category is probably best there, but, you know, we can, of course, have some conversations if you would like to, you know, see it in other districts as well. Would the state tell us where we have to put it? No. No, so we will actually have to decide that part. Yeah, so Zach has proposed, well Zach and I have proposed, GD2, GD2 is the area mostly along... Long group 15, in the fort, yeah. We view it as not quite a residential use, but I've seen that the commission has been very protective of the business and commercial uses that exist in our business and commercial districts, which is exit 16, exit 17 would be entirely inappropriate because there's no sewer. The growth center, which I think have a hard time accommodating this anytime soon, especially with lack of services. So, GD2, I think the area along the fort, if we're going to pick one area, seems to make the most of all the sense. So, is that something we're gonna discuss now, or is this something we're gonna come back to? You can pick. It's quite a discuss... If you'd like, I mean, we've got time. We're not part of this. I mean, you can have ideas on it now, if anybody has ideas. Personally, doesn't something at the fort right now, is there some affordable housing thing going on now? Is it Essex or us? Us. And so, there were some buildings converted to... From dormitories. But they're affordable housing buildings, right? They're not emergency shelter style. Yes. They're not half-high houses, they're affordable housing. Right. Okay. So... They are for people who qualify through CHT's... Okay. CHT, ever north of CHT? Yeah, CHT. Through the established programs that they have. Whereas emergency shelter, I think is meant to, you know, outside of a pandemic house, people in a very short term, for a variety of needs. So that would be for a personal crisis, mental crisis? You know, I... I mean, I'm not really sure what the breakdown is here. Yeah, the definition, I can pull that back up if that's in your right. Yes. If you're all right with talking about it now. That's okay. You're good to go. I'm just trying to think this through, too. Yeah. Let me get down to definitions. Emergency shelter. So any facility, the primary purpose of which is to provide temporary shelter for the homeless, in general, or for specific populations of the homeless. And that does not require occupants to sign leases or occupancy agreements. So anything probably from what you're familiar with that COX might offer, to other reasons for short-term needs for housing, maybe a pandemic, maybe a very specific population. I know that they're also along the area of the Fort, near St. Michael's College. There, I think, is something that would probably meet this definition already that is for a very specific group, I believe, for women in need of short-term emergency housing. But this could fit a range. The Fort's all the same, right? So it's all the same. Yeah, GD2 extends. Yeah, so the general development to district is, it actually extends outside of what you would consider the Fort, pretty much all along that Route 15 corridor running from Winooski to Essex. Includes Camp Johnson, I think, at its western most, but that's probably just because it's a huge parcel. In the hospital, you have St. Michael's Rescue. Yep. Does the transit go into Winooski? Because there's CCB there. We always think of transitional with emergency. But how can they transition to the next level of housing? And it sounds like it's a really good idea because of CCB being there. If they can take us to take classes, if they're near emergency services. But the transit is huge. Access where they can get into Burlington or get to work. Do you know the transit line? Where it goes through there? Well, there might be more than one line. I believe there's more than one. I know from personal experience, there's one that goes from downtown Burlington to, sorry, talking to the microphone. There's one that goes from downtown Burlington through Essex to the Amtrak facility. Route 15 through 50. Oh, great. Yeah, that's great. And I'm certain that there's one that does go from St. Mike's into downtown Burlington. So there's service there. I mean, we've proposed just a single location to you. For now, I believe that meets the statute. Would you like to propose more? Well, the only thing I think of is emergency shelters kind of, you know. To me, it's more like a hotel building. I'd say, you know, you're giving rooms for people to temporarily stay. And I'm thinking of Tim's house and saying all of them. People come and go. But it's more like an apartment building. They each have a room. Not necessarily. I mean, I think if you're familiar with any of the, I think it could be under this definition, but not necessarily. I think if you're familiar with any of the Cots buildings that are located, you know, in Burlington, they're not full rooms. They're not long-term stays. It could be that somebody is there for a night when the weather is inclement. Well, no, I understand that. I mean, I say hoteling more physically that you have a building that has amenities in it, but also everybody has either their own room. I know Tim's house used to have two or three or four people for room. And now that it's being changed over, priority has been changed over, they're dividing those rooms up. So it's either like a little family unit or individual rooms. So physically, it seems more like a hotel. Yeah, it could be. I think it could run the range. I think that definitely fits in this. So I'm kind of disagree with you that maybe where the district is with Water Tower Hill and Costco and all that. There's some areas there that it might be appropriate. They do have the transportation there. They do have all the amenities there, the grocery store, the drug store. You can walk to it, especially when they get the double diamond thing done and you can now walk safely back and forth. That might be an area that might be appropriate for it. Yeah, we'll certainly work at your direction. I would encourage you though, that if you were thinking that that area starts to make sense for any sort of residential uses, then you consider it sort of holistically should we be adding any in that area? In some ways you do. With the hotels, people walking down the streets are staying at those hotels and it's temporary because it's not a long-term situation. It's not like it's a permanent housing. But it's a permanent housing function even if the people change. It's still permanent housing. Does that make sense? Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking the people that would probably be in that emergency shelter, the amenities are there. That's all I'm thinking. And I thought we were gonna just have a conversation about residential, maybe changing. Yeah, I think it's in your list of things. The last you talked about it, after form-based codes. He can tell you. It probably is also going to be a fine updates to the town plan. I just think there's a lot of empty office space there that's not gonna get through the work. I think it's a very long discussion. Yes, absolutely. It's a lot of pieces. But you have sort of indicated you wanna talk about it. Even if it is to shoot it down eventually. You do wanna have that conversation. So in Route 15 corridor, are you thinking there's buildings that can be used for that or new buildings? It may never happen. It may never happen. But we are required to have an area where it can happen. Got it. Whether it's a conversion of a building, a new building. So we want an area. So, but if we were to pick. You want at least one area. Yeah, so if we were to pick the fort right down Route 15, that would get us at least the minimum base and we're off and running before we get into a head to duty transition. I don't know if Costco in that area is the best. On the other side of the tracks is not interstate. You're right. I can understand that side because that hotel's been used like that for quite a while. I think that's all part of the same. I think there's two zones that sort of intermix in there. Yeah. So you're meeting again next week. We'd be happy to bring you a zoning map associated with that. Yeah, cool. I think we can circle back on this one. Absolutely. It was just a matter of getting our thoughts. So what you just have to say that you can provide this emergency shelter. You don't have to say that it's, if somebody comes and wants to build it or convert it or create the space in some way, it's different than the emergency hotel program. Although it could be a hotel building that is converted but the hotel program is meant to be here's a hotel that functions as a hotel works rents out nightly, whatever, that also does this. This could be a dedicated building that was never a hotel if it doesn't want to be. So you have to, every community has to find a place where this can happen. It can't be shut out completely from the community. So does it necessarily have to exist? You're just saying we could if we had to. So if somebody were to come, a non-profit or otherwise and say, we really want to build this and we want to build it in X area, if you create it as an allowed use, you can't say no because of the use. So you have to have at least one place where it can exist. You can have more, which you have to at least one. So we'll get a nice zoning map going. I think there's so much to talk about tonight but we have I think a little bit more time next meeting. So if you guys want to think about that, we'll bring you that and you can look at sort of where the different zones, they're sort of funky in the X at 16 area. There's two different districts that are very close in what they allow but slightly different. But there is some subtlety that's not divided just by the highway. Maybe you eventually decide that's what you want to do. But for right now, they're sort of more core in the mountain range as opposed to being divided either by Roosevelt Highway or the Interstate. So we'll bring them up. Any other areas too, do you think? I think you obviously want an area where they're sewer and water. I just don't think it applies otherwise. The more to me walk ability, the more they can walk to places. You know, that's why kind of the X at 16. I mean, Winooski's really building a town that's walkable where people can walk to stores and walk to grocery stores. So between that and the bus, people can get around. So I think that's, I mean, my sense is that's the direction about them is heading. So people just don't want to be driving that much all the time. We may have to add this to, did you create, did you add to the parking table? Oh, no, I didn't. Oh yeah, we'll have to make some notes on that too. For all these new uses, you have to find the appropriate parking to go with them. I won't be able to make next Tuesday's meeting. I want everybody else to be here, so they'll be at the forum. I mean, we won't. I'm just saying, I know I won't be, I mean, I can come in on Zoom and I'd be glad to do that. We can at least dial you in. Okay. If you'd like. So we've got notes on that. We're going to come back to that. All right, so next item was on table A2 if you just want to pull it up in Clark Base. So there were two real changes here. And apologies that you can't actually see them. We'll bring that to the next meeting as well. The first change to this table is the fourth column is labeled frontage. And this is a requirement for the creation of any new lot or determining what you can or can't do on a lot. You know, there's a requirement that each lot has at least, you know, for example, in the residential three district, 100 feet of frontage per one dwelling unit. So kind of going back to that second item we talked about of aligning single unit dwellings and duplex dwelling units. Under the current regulations, if you had a lot in the residential three district, a lot has, you know, you want to put a single unit dwelling on it, it's got 100 feet of frontage, you're good to go. Get a building and zoning permit, please. The second item here is if you had a duplex, if you want to put a duplex dwelling on that lot, you would need, you'd have two dwellings on the lot, you would need 200 feet of frontage, which gets restrictive. And you really don't see as many proposals for duplex dwellings, you know, likely because I think a lot of this, you know, built out settlement pattern of Colchester, kind of looking towards that, you know, triangle between Westlake Shore, Holy Cross, Porter's Point Road and Church Road area. You know, you're kind of seeing a lot of 1970s development, a lot of lots with 100 feet of frontage who, you know, might not be able to, it might have room on the lot to construct an addition or another building, but really can't, you know, create additional density if anything else, you know, that they would otherwise have access to. So the proposal here was to strike the dwelling unit requirement to say that, hey, a lot in this district needs this much frontage. It doesn't matter what's on the lot, how many dwelling units are on the lot. Still going to need to conform to all the same dimensional standards setbacks. You know, right now, if you took a look at the residential three district, 100 feet of frontage, 15 foot side yard setback gives you, you know, a building envelope that's at minimum, you know, 70 feet wide. You know, when we look at, you know, dwellings, you know, raised ranches generally tend to be 40 feet wide. Newer construction might be more of a square rather than a rectangle, 35, 40 feet or so. So just keeping that in mind, you know, there still wouldn't be plenty of room. Now, we've also proposed cutting pretty much every frontage requirement in half to 50 feet, for example, at minimum for the residential three district, kind of working up to, you know, 60 feet, I believe, and then 75 as you get to, you know, the larger lot districts. And you know, any conversation you want to have on that, happy to, you know, answer any questions you have. And you will see the red line version of that next week. I think it'd be easier to respond to that. Just when you say 50 feet, I'm thinking, what's the setbacks there? Yeah, so no change in setbacks and it's really a minimum. So lots, it's not, you're gonna see every lot come in with 50 feet, for example. I know. But, you know. 20 foot wide building and there's, it's, I don't know, it doesn't feel right. The idea is just that, you know, 100 feet can be really wide and we worry that especially in areas where you're trying to bring the new units out of the back of the parcel where the woods are necessarily and bring them up closer, either to the road or to an area where they're not having as much land consumption that if they can make that work that they're allowed to. It wouldn't be forced to, but that if they say 50 feet is all I need, that that's possible. It just doesn't force as wide, like, you know, I think of my own neighborhood. Every house in my neighborhood is like, so it's a pretty dense neighborhood, but it doesn't feel it because everybody's got long wide lots and we're so far from our neighbors, but they're shallow lots. So, I don't think it functions the way that a lot of neighborhoods want to be. It's not very efficient with the land and then should, if it'll ever happen later, it's just more challenging. But again, it's not something where they'd have to hit that number exactly, but you're looking at some other communities. I think I looked at maybe three or four. Summer is low as 20, which is pretty much wide enough for a driveway, but most are under 100, except in our most rural districts. I think that's sort of a throwback to 10 acre planning. Not very popular anymore. Yeah. So, we'll bring that to you. You don't have to weigh in. Let you see that first. That's entirely my fault because I forgot to attach it to this. I thought I attached it to this document and upload the whole document. And that's all for me for us 100 for tonight, but I'll be back for the next meeting and we'll get to talk about parking for emergency shelters. Accessory structure exemptions a little bit earlier. This has come about from, you know, I don't think a few days or a week goes by where somebody's not asking, do I need a permit for a flagpole? Do I need a permit for a treehouse? Do I need a permit for a carport? Do I need a permit for a swimming pool that I've only got to put up for a few months? That's inflatable. And I think we do a very good job in our office of giving consistent answers to the extent that we've all talked and communicated. But we don't give them necessarily based on anything that is very clear in our regulations and that leaves us with some discomfort. So this is an attempt to codify some of that. Chart here for where I have the 207E, let's start in there. Do we have a section for these? Just so you see where I am, temporary structures and uses. Okay, so very quick change at temporary structures to this title of this section. So these are ones that are exempt for review, from review. All of this is already been here. This is the use category of the ones we'll talk about. So not necessarily structures, so auction sales, et cetera, et cetera. Here I've added in temporary seasonal swimming pools. I've attempted to put some number associated with it so that it wasn't entirely vague as to what makes a temporary seasonal swimming pool. I actually browsed through various retailers to see who's selling inflatable pools. Most of them are not taller than 36 inches. I think that reflects the market for what you can buy for something that's not meant to withstand a winter. And you can get them greater than 15 feet, but it was pretty rare. And I wasn't sure we should start that day. 15 feet tend to reflect the large version. I probably could use a little bit of a fix because I don't think, oh wait, we did, not diameter, in any dimension. So temporary pools. We do not necessarily require permits for them, but it's a matter of time for somebody to put something up and if you told me I didn't need a permit, well you didn't tell us you were gonna leave it up for three years or that it was, because there is sort of an in-between category. I think you can invest more money in a temporary pool, but it's still not quite the professional installation, sort of a gray area. So everything in green here, these are not things that have been deleted, they are just things that have been moved to a different section because they're structures and not uses. So I'll show you where those landed. So fishing houses are like shanties. I think so, but that's the temporary, you're not gonna put one out in the middle of summer. Oh, I see that you're gonna move on to the ice. Yeah, yeah, it's like, how does that work? You know what, before I go on to where that stuff moved, actually I'm gonna come back to four. Let's go back to where things moved and all of the fun stuff I've since added as well, just to be thorough. The exemptions, okay. Ground-mounted flagpoles, you get these questions, is it a structure? Our definition of structure is an assemblage of materials by strict definition of flagpole is a structure. So this here, and there's a lot of detail in here. I'll ask you guys to noodle on this, we can talk about them if you think my numbers are wrong, but I wanted to get something in here for you to respond to. This is all in your packet. So ground-mounted flagpoles did a lot of more retail research here to see what you can buy if you wanna buy an American flag or a Vermont flag. So 35 feet in height, the 35 exists elsewhere in our regulations. I think in the lighting section on how you're supposed to light a flagpole. So the 35 wasn't what I made up, it exists elsewhere, sort of on par with both residential and small business flagpoles. 60 square feet is also a number that had already existed in the regulations. It's a pretty big flag without being a jumbo flag. I think it's very permissive for people who want to share without being the, I don't even know. They can put up other flags besides those three flags. I think that the idea for exemption is to stay far away from anything that could represent a sign. So in our definition of signs, that's the same language of what's exempt from a sign. So that's why we have here state, country, town flags. So no, it's not necessarily the flag that says, stop war, say Ukraine. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but they wouldn't necessarily be exempt once you start putting words on them. At least as I've drafted it here, if you guys would like to do that, you can. But again, we have a pretty, pretty specific definition of what constitutes a sign. And text has a lot to do with that. And we have to be very careful when we regulate signs and text because you cannot regulate the save Ukraine sign or flag differently than you can the flag that says, go buy more chicken. They're the same for First Amendment. Yeah, that's a good point. Whereas that flag behind you is not a sign. And so that's why that language is pretty restricted there. Staying away from signs. Okay, so again, any of these, feel free to stop me if you disagree about any sort of exemption or the numbers or you can come back to these. That's why we had sort of a quicker turnaround here because you might want to think of them. Generators grab gas, liquid storage tanks, utility cabinets and HVAC equipment. This is a pretty common one that's actually been tough for us. Somebody wants to come in and get a generator, technically it's still a structure. I think this would give them an exemption as long as it's sort of a reasonable size. 50 square feet is pretty good size. Yeah, I think it's pretty generous. It's not going to represent the one that say the business of the street. Hazel? Hazel is a really big one. Oh yeah. And they're awesome about calling us if anybody's paying attention. They're really good, but they're huge. And so it's not meant to exempt them from any permanent because those are enormous. So 50 square feet, eight feet in height. Do you want to put a generator on your property? You don't need a permit for it. I wish to put words on it. I wish to put words on it, yes. You can probably get me to put your name on it. I do say I want to go back up here to this introductory paragraph here. It still considers, if you're putting things in the shoreland or a flood plain, you're not exempt. You don't get to just go stick it on the beach. This does ask that all of those be 10 feet from property lines. So you don't need a permit for that giant swimming inflatable pool, but you can't stick it on your neighbor's property line. So how far are like, let's say the fire, but how far does that have to be from their neighbor's property line? 10 feet. 10 feet, that's all. 10 feet. So in a lot of areas, I mean, that's our accessory structure, except back as it is. Yeah. So it's just trying to be consistent. Just the smoke, I think. I think about if someone's deck is like right there and there's, you know, anyway. I wouldn't be happy. So fire pit structures, we get this one a lot too. And there's the whole gamut. There's some people who have very, very nice fire pit structures. And then there's folks like me who bought the little metal one for 80 bucks at Lowe's. But this is really sort of meant to be most of those as long as you're not getting really large. And it's 10 feet from all structures, even your own structures. Garden arbors, it's come up. Can you see here? It's because it's come up. I mean, I want people coming in for trellis structures or something or building for a wedding or their rose garden. Hot tubs and spas, get the questions all the time. They've been very consistent. You don't need a permit for those things. So this one's sort of fun and interesting. Heartscape surfaces intended to support those small ones as long as they're up to 12 square feet. Right now we require a permit for any sort of patio or landing regardless of size. Technically, if you wanted to put down two by two brick pavers to put your grill on, technically, we've never asked for it. Nobody's called us. But if you were to interpret our current regulations, they would be required. So this is sort of a gimme 12 square feet. If you want to put a few things down for your two add-around deck chairs, this would allow people to do that. I don't know if it's the right size. I don't know if you like it at all. It just sounds weird. It's hard to, 12 square feet is not that big. It's not that big. And some of these firings or grills and they're usually a circle. Sometimes they're three feet. So if you want any space around it, 12 feet doesn't really get you there. That's one comment there. Would you like a larger number? Discuss a larger number? I definitely would like a larger number. I've got a little tiny one in the back of my house. I would easily double the end of it. Put a number out there for discussion or come back with it next week? Yeah, definitely come back with it. Well, then you look further down where it says patios. I mean, made of gravel or natural stone materials under 120 square feet in size. And then cumulative. So if you have two patios, they have to add up to less than 120. So this one's out there for discussion because this is very different than what we do now. The two could go together. You could have a far pit on your patios. Yeah, right. You know, I added G after F had been in there. Maybe F needs to go, it can go away. I had a 450 square foot deck. I loved it. Maybe F isn't needed. I think it's confusing the issue. Okay, so let's just talk about patios whether you put anything on them or not. Is there a desire to exempt them from permit requirements or some subset size of them? I don't distinguish patio versus the lontae, the truth. You put all your lawns- I think your patio is sort of like a deck. Yeah, but it's, you're talking about a patio laying right on the ground with stone. So I get it's like a deck, but if you just let all your furniture and you've got your fire pit and you've got your whole lawn, you've got your whole lawn and we're not going to say boo to you. So we let them put a bunch of, I mean, I'm not big on lawn mowing, so the less I do, the more rock I've got, the happier I'd be. I like mowing lawns. I don't mind it, I do a lot of it, but I don't know. You are limiting this if you have a very tiny patio, I guess, you're exempt from getting your permit. That's what this is saying. Right? Well, I think that, you know, having talked about this, maybe F goes away in place of G, if you like G. Maybe you don't like it all and don't want to exempt it at all, but that's not what I'm hearing from you. Well, right now, if you didn't have G in there, if you had a small patio, you'd have to go get a permit. Yes. This will at least exempt you if you have a very small patio that's gravel or natural stone. Yeah, maybe F and G are two different options other than status quo. So status quo right now is you need a permit no matter what. Yeah. F sort of says, you don't need a permit if you're doing sort of something, put it under your picnic table or something like that. G says, patios aren't decks. We don't want you to get a permit for small ones. That number's out there as a placeholder. But it's not decks. You're saying patios of gravel or natural stone. Right. Right now we treat them like decks. Right. This would differentiate them from decks. In size and what is made out of it. Yes. I'd just like to see more than 120 square feet. Other than that, I'm good. Right now it's zero. Yeah, right now it's zero. So 120 is the start. I would probably add another note in here. Should you guys even like this concept to just basically say, lot coverage allowances still apply or a lot of coverage restrictions? Yes. 120 square feet at Rich's house might be very different than 120 square feet on my little camp out at Mill's Point. Yeah, and that covers all, everybody really. So I'd still want the coverage restriction. I think that's there for a good reason, for stormwater reasons largely. I like that one. Rich likes it. I'm voting all right off. Yeah. Anyone else want to hang in? You want to continue to think on? I can leave 120 as a placeholder. I think patios are one of those things. I think people don't know they need permits to work. I don't think they do. And when they're sort of busted either at a compliance letter or something else, it's tough. It's tough for our staff to say, not only do you have to get a permit for it, but because you did it, you got to pay twice the fee for doing that. And I think it's just one of those areas that most people don't expect to get a permit. And it's just especially hard when you deliver that news to them. But I have no allegiance to it. If you want to still permit all patios. No, I think it's great to kind of limit it. Yeah. I don't know whether 120 is the right amount or not. Definitely not. I'm still voting for it, definitely not. You're voting to increase that amount. I triple it. You triple it. I would triple it. I'd go to 360. That's a pretty good size. I had a 500 square, 450 square foot deck. And it was like this and it came aside and had a permit. And had a permit. Yeah, I didn't have a permit. We did the next meeting, we did tape out. So if you do it on the ground, here's what we're gonna do. At the next meeting, we're gonna tape out 120 square feet. That would be great. I think these are two by two tiles. And we have some aberrant actions. It should be, if it's a deck and it's less than 120 square feet, let's say, it's a deck. Or are you saying even a little three by four deck? It's gonna have to be a permit. I think the reason that some communities draw distinction within patios and decks, patios are almost never visible from the road. They don't add to a building's massing. Whereas decks can sort of add to a building's massing, especially put up the railings because they're not, then they become a porch, but we see porch and deck the same thing. It's a porch and a deck the same. At the moment, yes. Okay. It's not until you enclose it and make it finish space that it starts to become something different. But right now, whether you put a railing on it or not, we count it the same. Whether you put a roof on it or not, it's counted the same. Whether you put two-season siding on it or not, it's the same. So there's a lot of real estate in the deck definition. So if you had a little deck right outside your back door, just as a step outside, maybe it's three feet in, so you can sit on it, maybe six feet wide, so it's 18 square feet. You'd have to get a permit for it. We make exceptions for landings. Five by five. Yeah. I actually had no idea about the patio stone, too. So we do make exceptions for landings. If you need a doorway entries wherever you have a door, you can have a five by five. I think it's five by five landing. Something similar, anyway. Plus the steps? Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. I don't know. Yeah, I think we've received some direction to sort of find things that make, that just make things a little bit easier for the population. I can see getting a permit for his back. How do you do that? Apparently, if you do the 120, make sure you get the layout for the grill, the two chairs, the extra chairs, the table that goes on it, all the accessories. Well, I'll tell you, without me in the names, we do have a staff member who has told me he's got quite the patio with a fire pit that he's not perfect. Oh, perfect. Now, is a concrete slab considered a patio? Good question. There's other materials. There's brick, I mean, now. Yeah, I don't know if you can limit it to materials. I don't have to work on that. Ground level patio. Yes, it's on the ground. Ground level materials, yeah. It's natural stone. Sure. I've seen it. They do have the patterns in them now. They're pretty fancy. Logs, you know, kind of logs. Use that as patios. I mean, it's, it's a hard surface. Yeah. So I don't think you can limit it into materials. I think it's going to be a... Well, we're going to a different definition. Dirt and grass are one thing, but if you want to see it. You guys work on the size. So you're saying you're okay if it's not, if it is wood or brick or concrete, or concrete, there's no distinction for you. Except the other water. I don't mean to say that, like it's like it's a bad thing. No, it's not. It's like it's on the ground. It's not really safety issues but it's on the ground. Right. Yeah. You're not going to, it's not going to be a, you know, a raised platform like a deck. It's great. You're not going to chew it on your neighbors because you already have the land. You're just making it usable. Yeah. Again, the idea is, you know, I could drive by your house. Today, right, you feel the patio. I probably never even see it. Yeah. You know, a good sized deck or a porch. It adds to the mass of the building. I think that's the idea. Okay. So we'll work on a definition that doesn't talk about the materials but that does seem to reflect that it's sort of like ground level. I'm going to throw another one at you. Well, if you have an existing deck and you want to enlarge it, you have to get a permit. Currently. I didn't make up the rule. I know. I just, you know, that's curious. I mean, a lot of me, but it's like, okay. It doesn't make us any friends. I can tell you that. I bet. It's easier to get a sign on a deck. You're a flag. You're a flag. You know what I think more than the money, I think that's the problem. Yeah. And I tell you, we don't make money on these things. For what we charge for them, it doesn't cover our stuff type, even with the new one. Okay. So we'll come back with something different there. You think about size. Speaking of sizes that are too small, you previously exempted play structures if they were under 50 square feet. Now I was a parent of two children who have recently had play structures. 50 square feet gets you a swing and a half. It's not much. And I can tell you anybody with a, even a Costco size play structure, is probably getting over that 50 square feet real fast. Well, I kept ours under 50. Huh? So we kept ours under 50. Did you? Yeah. Because of this? No, not because of that, but it was under that. It was kind of small. But it doesn't get you much. And I think you go around now, you got two swings, you got a slide, you get a little fork, it has a little canopy. You might have a lookout. Kids are very lucky these days. But even something that's not. But that's a structure. I mean, that's a safety thing. What's up? When you're getting to 200 square feet, that's a good size room. Yeah, you know, I was trying to think of the structures that, I mean, my kids have outgrown it. They've since dismantled it and given it away. But I think the length ends up multiplying that really fast. So like the structure that I had was a basic like rainbow play structure. Had two swings on a A-frame crossbars. A little climbing wall that got you up to a little fork and then a slide. Well, the slides themselves, I mean, 200 seems like a lot, but it's not solid, right? There's a lot of interesting things. I'm just thinking the DIY, you know, the person building it themselves. They don't find a pre-made or a kit that you know is pretty sound. I'm thinking of the guys banging some two-byes together. Here's a little fort and a swing, you know? But it could be pretty big, I mean. It could be. I think that they just, you know, you put the slide on. They tend to go out five feet, probably. And then that's if you got the one slide. And then, you know, I got my climbing wall in the back that's gotta be at an angle because they're not mountaineers yet. And, you know, that makes it probably seven or eight feet wide. And now I'm at probably eight by 15. I'm closer to then, I'm closer to that 200. And I'm not just saying this for me. I don't live in Colchester. My play structure's gone, but I think 50 is pretty tiny. Yeah. I know our kids, we came in a box and a lumber company drove up, dropped the truckload and you built it. And we had the same thing. We had the fort, three swings, a teeter-totter, a rope structure because it wasn't in the climbing yet. So you got that one side. The whole thing must have been 15 to 20 feet long. Okay. But you have to get a permit for a shed. That's what, 12 square feet or something? I don't know if it was part of the water block. That's the chicken coop. No. You have to get a permit for a shed. Yeah. You do. A shed's the store's thing. Whereas you've got to have a huge play structure. I see it as a safety issue. I don't know. I see it as a big safety issue that if someone's building this structure, I see it as a more safety issue than a shed. That we're only going to regulate the size. We won't regulate the safety of it. Can you tell me a little more what you mean by safety? Well, you're saying that you're exempting it from a permit. Usually you need a permit making sure it meets certain regulations. Nope. We're just making sure you're set back 10 feet from your property line. Okay. That's pretty much all we're looking for. Okay. Although I think in my two years here, I've never seen a permit come in for a play structure. And I know they're overfitting. Have you ever done one? Oh, no. I'm sure you have. I know people buy and sell them out. You don't think about it. Yeah. I'm just curious. I think if you want to make anyone mad in town, it's the only thing you can do. So you just want to make sure they don't put this. Go around and look for them because I'm sure they're over 50 feet. But you're saying if you have a play structure that's over 200 square feet, you have to get a permit. Yes. Like, I think again it goes to that nascent thing, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. You could tell me it's the wrong number. I've put something else. If all you're doing is getting a permit to make sure it's 10 feet off the property line. That's what we're doing with Sheds. I know, but I don't think, even this is gonna be in the regs, I don't think anybody's gonna know it. I don't think practically it makes much of a difference, I think. We can eliminate it all together. I think what it does is if somebody wants to appeal their neighbor's play structure because they're mad at their neighbor for something, maybe it stops that avenue. I hate to throw anything on the fire here, but is there anything exempting someone from calling something a play structure that is not a play structure? It just happens, like, first it was like, oh, my Sheds a play structure. It is a little, like, thank you, I think. Yeah. Are they just saying all play structures are exempt? I don't know. We never had anybody permit for one. No. Correct? And this is more like them. So we almost just should get rid of the thing. And as long as everybody's within their setbacks, I mean, they're being built anyways. It's probably. All right, well, now we're really going. Oh, well, if we're not. The common sense is we're not doing it now. So unless somebody complains, we're not, we're not going to, and even if they complain, can you imagine you have to go in and, you know, beat up the playground owner there? But I was thinking about this too, because I have seen this in my years of planning, not so much with a traditional play structure, but with the cabin I built for my kid, which so often sometimes looks a lot like a shed. And it's not a very clean line as to what the difference is. Sometimes it's just painted purple with polka dots on it instead of looking like your normal garden shed. It's got an extra window, maybe. And then, you know, I've seen there's a tree house being built off the road. It's actually kind of cute from what I can see, but that tree house, if it was much larger, I could see that being a concern for somebody who might. That's what I'm thinking. Probably because people are such jerks, neighbors sometimes who make things, they complain and what they want to do is like make sure there's a regulation because it's an eyesore in their backyard or, you know, they hang. You know, of all the things I thought we'd step on today, I don't know, but the clarification here, it's what exists from? From any permit. From a permit, which is also saying it can be in setback. So it's not a permit. No, no, so just to go back up, just to go back up, if you meet these things, you're not in the shoreline, not in the flood bed, and at least 10 feet from your property lines, you don't need to come in and get a permit. I just, interesting. I've had two play structures. I've never thought about getting a permit, so. I don't think any of it does. I mean, who does? It just, it's a temporary structure. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah. So I thought I'd go crazy with 200. 200. 200 is good. Sporting equipment. Are you thinking of there? That's the basketball hoop, the soccer net. It's just clear. People call. I can see that. Sandboxes should be exempt. 50 square feet. I left the tree houses at 50 square feet. Yeah. I kind of get the tree house, because now we're on to the deck territory. Yeah, yes. Yeah, you're looking over your neighbors, so yeah, you're intrusive. Okay. We're going to have to come back to that. And there's sort of four walls. It's just a play structure. There's nobody's going to think of that one anyway. Yeah, because you're right about the shed thing. Now that I'm thinking about it, there's all these plastic doll houses out there too. Yeah. You see a ton of those. It has like furniture though, plastic ones. It's the ones that get a little bit bigger. It's like a little play house where you go in, have a little chair and what have you. Yeah. When the kid goes up, it becomes a shed. Yeah, right? Yeah. No, it becomes a storage shed. My good friend's daughter has one. I can stand up in it. I don't even have a duck. But I can have tea. Great. It's perfect. Okay. All right. Well, if you would want to come back to that weekend, none of this is cemented. The pier's docks don't pay too much attention to the regular. That's the one that was moved. I didn't make it up. Didn't delete it. Yeah, that's been in for a while. I need to go back up here. Where was I going to go? Maybe change the size of it. Top of this one. Okay. This is me throwing something out there and you telling me if it should stick or not. So here's a little bit of a fine point for you. Right now, all of these accessory buildings, so your sheds, your detached garages, can exceed 50% of the first floor of the principal structure. Presumably, its intention is so that it's clear which is primary, which is accessory to it. 50% is often very problematic for folks that have detached garages. Those tend to exist, people with small, single level ranches, for example, and their detached garage is already over that 50%. And so they can't even have a shed. So these are the people who have come to us, who have had issues with that that we've really struggled with, or they're very close to it. So I've thrown out there. I don't think it's exactly extreme, but food for thought, 75% for the total, with no one building exceeding 50%. I don't know how often this comes up. How long do you think? Most of the people who have pre-existing conditions, I think. They still have to follow the lot coverage. They can't exceed that. Lot coverage would still apply. We would want to make sure that applies. They couldn't get up to 75% of the first ground floor if it exceeded the lot coverage. We could clarify that and make that super obvious, but that's the intention of how we've written it. I have no problem with it then. I don't have any problem with that. I think it's largely an aesthetic thing, and I think even some people don't care if it's bigger. I can probably name three or four properties along Blakely and Severance here, where you have a small home and a very large garage next to it. Some people find that, and some people get under those. So, there's the person. You absolutely know it's not necessarily on here, but I've seen where it's, it's like a monster next to it. And largely you see that one with height, more so than you do, I think, with its ground floor area. But that eliminates the tying it to the house of the little tiny roof. And you could even say that everybody gets at least X square feet, just like any of you, I don't know. So that the small property, the small homeowner, with the tiny home or the small ranch is not being penalized differently than the person with the 4,000. Yeah. So you could put a minimum even too, that certain people are just allowed. So you get at least a thousand square foot ranch that limits you to 500 totals. You could come up with a number that benefits those with very small homes. The guy with a big home in today's world will have his lot pretty much covered. They won't be building a structure of 75% or anyway. He's gonna be the guy that has the five acres or more. Yeah. Probably. I mean by and large, people who have run into this problem are the people with the very small homes. Yeah. Or very small footprint homes. Yep, I can see that. They have one little garage. It's not, I can't even put modern car in today. You wanna enlarge it, put two cars in. Yeah. Yeah, those people can't tear it down if you build them because they're already sort of stuck. You know, on the other hand, again, I see you don't want that small house to have the garage that's four times the size of it. These aren't really those. So those were numbers for discussion. I'll leave them until you tell me that they're wrong. Sounds like you like the idea of it. Noodle on the numbers. Yeah, it's one of those things you'd come across first when people start asking, start using it. That's gonna test it. All right. This is just clarifying language here. This was something we added in the last supplement that just says it just makes an allowance. You can have an accessory structure in your front yard. Just take it right in front of your house. You still wanna see your house. Still creates a nice street presence. But we did inevitably have somebody come in and say, what's the front of my house? It's our house, especially if it doesn't straight on. It's not straight on perpendicular to the road. Well, now you're talking about my house. Is your house creepy? It was pointy. So it would take your two outer walls and create a line. Yeah, it couldn't have anything in the front yard. Do you have like a two house? Well, if you say this is the lot, I'm like this on the lot. So that means nothing in front of your house, right? Take both sides. Not that I have anything, but. This was meant to be an extra allowance more than what it had before. Okay, I can't. I'll come with a picture next time. Okay. We're gonna get away from there. We'll come back to it then. But we did come up against the house where the road was like this, but the house sort of faced this way. Kind of like, and the structure was not really in the front of his house, but it was between the house and the roadway. The house still faced, we still had, so I think it meant spirit. This was just meant to clarify that that one wouldn't have been penalized. That would not have made it. We allowed it. Right, you wanted it allowed. Yes. Correct, that's right. Yeah. What did you do with the corner lot thing? Nothing yet. Nothing yet, okay. S-47? Yeah, okay. I had a 46. That's right. I did, I just, I thought I'd read in there something you had made a change in the corner lot. I think I had it on the list and it came out because I didn't write anything on it. Okay, that's fine. Hey, Neal. Let's see, what's next? Temporary COs, okay. This one, let me just find where the language is. You can look at it. Two, 10.01 and 11.04. So, right now our regulations say, if you've completed everything you're supposed to, this really applies to site plans more than it does anything else. Where you have some requirements that you strike parking spaces that you put in landscaping, et cetera, et cetera. There is currently no exemption in our regulations that allows for a Tempsio, except for a painting of lines in a parking lot. So, if you are deciding a fantastic building, been going all winter, it's going great. February comes and you're like, we've done everything. But we can't put landscaping in. Just throw our money out the window. But we're ready to put our people in our business and put whatever it is we're gonna put in. Right now, we have to say, we have no allowance for a temporary CO. Your CO says, you've done everything you're supposed to. And if we give you that, we can't later hold you responsible for doing the things you haven't done. And it's a very tough thing to do because it doesn't make any sense. So, what I'm proposing here, we do allow it again for painting and striping, but we're not aware of anyone actually having taken advantage of that because it's easier. It's a little less seasonal. You can get paint to stick, good paint to stick in pretty much any weather. At least seasonal weather. It's not impossible to do in February, I guess is what I'm saying. So this, you had it as E, 207 E. That was the striping of parking lot. 11, oh, let me just show you, created a new section, pencil on chapter. Gotta regulate the cell towers. That we can't regulate all the time. So what are the conditions of a temporary CO? I hopefully we've included that in here, so let's, okay, so temporary CO. So this is the whole new thing that says, the administrative officer can actually issue you a temporary CO. Provided that A, you've done everything else you're supposed to do. So you're supposed to build a disc golf course as part of your outdoor money. You're supposed to put in trash enclosures and you haven't done that. That doesn't qualify you, you don't get it. But if you've done everything else you're supposed to, except for things that are uncontrollable due to weather. Required landscaping, final line paving. In this case, temporary paint markings are still required. You can't open up a residential building 60 units without any idea of where people are supposed to park. You put straight paint down, you do something so that there's at least something until you can put down. We added in the third one because sometimes we simply can't see that you've done X, Y, and Z because I don't know, two feet of snow fell over the last week and a half. So this one's more for us. If we go out there and we're like, boy, we're pretty sure you've done everything, but unless you're gonna shovel it off or demonstrate to us in some way, this gives us a little bit of time. It wouldn't be the same six months, I think, that's loud elsewhere. But we can say, you know, it's probably gonna be three weeks before we can actually see this. It gives us the allowance to issue that temporary CO and get your financing in order. That's why people mostly need the COs. Any lender's gonna want one in order to release. So it becomes a very sensitive issue for folks. What if they can't get supplies or they can't get people to do the work? I mean, what if, you know, instead of defining what if they have a really legitimate reason why they cannot complete some aspect? You know, let me think on that one. For example, we did hear from a recent building that their elevator, of all things, was on back order. We don't regulate elevators, so it wasn't a big deal to us. It wasn't part of their approval. But, you know, I suppose that's probably something worth looking at. If someone was supposed to put in a pickleball court and netting is impossible to find. I mean, it could be up to your discretion. Yeah, I'll think on that one. Striping would be a bugger this year. They're so far behind us in the rain. If you haven't scheduled from last year, you probably can't get a bot striped. So we'll think about material availability. I do want to tread very carefully, just because we're very protective of those seers, because once you issue them, it says you've done it. There's nothing else we can do to, once we've issued that, too. And the temporary one would prevent that, like you do. It would prevent that. It would say, here's enough to say you've done most everything. So you let them occupy the building? Yes. There's no recourse if they never end up doing the most part of that. Yeah, I mean, so you have six months and then you're in violation. So if we give somebody a temporary CO because they haven't put their landscaping in, summer comes and goes and they still haven't done it. Now they're in violation. Okay, there is a recourse then. I think by and large, people want to do the stuff they're supposed to. It's just one property side. I love the only one car. Only, not more than one unregistered vehicle may be kept on the lot. You're going to change a whole culture of Vermont. Is that what you do if you already see that one? No, it's not anything we're working on. But it's just a number. I didn't read it. I was going to say it already. I thought you'd see that one. No, it's just a number H. It was just funny to me. All right, great. Sensing. And then Rich, I know we talked about it before. If you want to do a time check, I like nine o'clock. It's nine o'clock right now? 1550. Final spec time. We can get through fencing now. Fencing. Okay, the big question is, and we can look at the language, but the big question is, right now we regulate pretty much every bit of fence you could put up. You want a two foot tall fence to keep your chihuahua in your yard. You got to come get a permit. So I'm throwing out a suggestion that anything under four feet still is to comply with what we say for fence regulations, but you don't need to come get a permit from us for it. But getting a four feet high? No, does that make it just, you just don't like the five feet fencing? Just for permitting. So right now we'll have to have a taller fence. Just to have to permit it. You have to permit it. So if you want to put a little picket fence? Yeah. No permit, just go ahead and put one up. As long as you put it where it's supposed to. And it's okay to hate that idea. Throwing something out there. Because right now, some of our garden fencing, my garden fence would need a permitting cochester. It's chicken wire stuff that goes two feet behind me. Maybe a little higher. I can just barely step on it. It's quite chicken wire, right? Yeah. It's in the ground a little bit, yeah. 36 inches, I think. I can step over barely. This thing's tech buried about. 35 years. I'm not against the four, no, I'm permitting for the four foot. To me, no. And again, I don't feel strongly about this. It's just something that comes up frequently. I don't have a fence in my yard. I'm just trying to picture other people's senses. I only put it opposite of, you know, my chihuahua didn't run into the road. Yeah. What's the big deal? It's two feet high. You could say the same for like a German shepherd's eye. So you have it at four feet. You could say it's bigger. Yeah. So currently it's any high. It'd be at my test. I know, but if you're changing it, you don't need it if it's four feet or less. Yeah. I put four, but. I know, I'm just trying to. I think four feet. It's a height where most people can see over. Four feet around because that's the height that you would need for swimming. But. Is that what you need around a swimming pool? Yeah. I don't have one of those either. 40 inches, yeah, I need it. It sounds reasonable to me. Yes. It does. You could not want any exemptions. You could have a different height. I think that's a good exemption. Yeah. Everybody's agreeing. Everybody's agreeing. Oh yeah, everybody's not. I think it was something that also came up at a select board meeting that I'd had maybe last year. I think so, there was some direction on that. And so it's sort of been on my to-do list for a while. Just don't put the fence on your neighbor's lot. That's all right. Yeah. Yes. But let me show you some text because there's some other stuff in here that's been changed. This is, okay, so quickly going through here. This has been removed because we define how to measure it later. So this is just redundant. Okay, fence over four feet in height shall require a building and zoning permit. Fence over six feet in height, okay. This one. Right now, if you come in with a fence at six foot six, seven feet, eight feet, 12 feet, 15 feet, you got to go to the DRV for conditional use. Conditional use criteria is very specific. So we send these applications to the DRV for a lot of things, fences over six feet among them. Let's say here DRV evaluate this fence against conditional use criteria. Conditional use criteria is everything from effect, municipal services will no fence is gonna have an impact on your fire department or police department. Effect health safety, welfare. You write much more with conditional use than I do. Surprisingly, not that much. Not too many at least, but effect on renewable energy resources. Also the character of the area as well. The what? I mean there's. I'm wondering like if it blocks someone's view. Yeah, so I think we can talk a bit more about that. But. I think that's the one place where it might make some sense. So I think instead of having conditional use review because I think it ends up being a paperwork exercise for the DRV and ends up being $300 plus in an application fee for somebody who wants that seven foot fence. What I've proposed here is that there's still there's still some restrictions if you get over six feet, but they're a little bit more objective. So we would regulate it as an accessory structure. You gotta meet those setbacks if you're gonna be that tall. You're not right on your property, neighbor's property line with that tall fence. Unless it's otherwise modified by the DRV as part of the site plan. So if the DRV is reviewing Costco and they're like, we wanna put a fence up here, the interstate dampen some of the sound or something. The DRV could review that as part of the site plan and figure out the appropriate hack for that. And it's not an internal office question. And I think that's sort of what the next one says too. And then it would give the DRV the authority to put restrictions on that in line with the purpose. I think it's a more applicable set of standards than conditional use for a fence. And if you read the purpose of 801, it's actually pretty well written. So it talks about all of those things that you care about in a site plan review. So the changes from what we have are basically saying in this section, if you're under four feet, no permit. If you're over six, you still don't get to treat it like a normal fence, but you don't have to go to the DRV for approval if you meet setback regulations. So you're not right up on your property line. That's all there is. Why do you want to move it in? Yeah. Somebody feet. Why? So you couldn't have your fence near your property line. If it's like an accessory structure has been letting it happen, but saying that you're not having the stocky bit. Up to starting at eight feet. Starting at six feet, six feet, so it's how she has it right now. So right now, you have to go to the DRV for approval. Right. For everything. Anything over six feet. Right. And you want it? We had one issue and we gave the applicant or the person that inquired about a constructing eight foot fence conditional use application and we never heard from them again. So it was a good faith inquiry. So right now we're a foot off the mark. So where we come across this a lot is people will put them in without permits. Turns out that they're six to half. I mean, we're not talking much over six feet. Yeah. DRV is just a very expensive time consuming process. I was just trying to find a way to get them out of that process while still respecting the six foot limit that the town has. And I think a lot of towns, I think every regulation I've found, any town I've ever read has a cut off at six that either requires, that either is either not allowed or requires additional review. So six is a fairly common number because they also come in that standard. You got a home depot, you're getting a six foot panel. Anything over that is probably custom. Yeah. The other thing I didn't get is this setback deal. You want to move as the fence goes up, you want to move it more to the 10 foot mark? In. Yeah, that's what I mean. You want to move it in. To me, it just defeats the purpose the whole reason you want your fence, especially the bigger one, is you want to eliminate your neighbor. Yeah. And you don't want to lose property because you have to eliminate your neighbor. Yeah. That's the only thing you can do. Yeah, I don't understand that either. Well, I think if you want to respect that six feet creates a limit, there has to be something open to something different. This is something I've seen in a couple of other ordinances. I'm not opposed to the fence. I just don't understand why we want to move it in. Is that just for ease of not having to go to DRB, make an accessory? I think it's that, but I think there's a trade-off, right? Especially if you're in sort of, it's one thing if you're thinking about the people who have the 10 acres out in, you know, on Middle Road. If it's somebody who lives on, say, Bluebird, you know, where you're on quarter acre lots and you're very, very close to your neighbor, and you're putting up an eight foot fence. I don't know. Your neighbor may love that, I don't know. That's what my next question was. Will there be an opening? So your two neighbors say, yes, I'm all happy about that. No, I wouldn't suggest that at all. So there's no way once we say, you're over six feet, we're going to put you in accessory, you're going to be. I think what it does is create a little more of that separation for what can be a very imposing structure on small lots. Yeah, I can see something over six feet of being kind of. If you're on that tight lot and you want to put up that really tall fence, it might be that now you are blocking somebody's sunlight or, well, we're talking about over eight. We're talking about over six. Over six. We're five. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. So effectively on a very tight lot, like that it probably says you can't put that fence in. If it's set to two inches, you can't put it in. So you just dig the hole deeper. We love, I had last supplement, we added six inches. That's right. We allowed you to set it up a little. So you can, we whack nicely. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that's the right catch, but I wanted to have some. I saw on a raised ranch, they have a deck upstairs, and there's a six foot fence in the backyard right now. But if it went above that, right on the line, but if they went above that, it would make their pool disappear. It would make what? It would make the pool and the patio disappear, but because it's six feet, you look directly at them because of the way you don't have that angle. She's saying they would have benefited from the top. They would have benefited from the eight foot fence, but they don't have enough lot to push it in 10 feet. From the front? From the front? Maybe from the side. From the back. From the back. Right. The lot's not that deep. They're mad. I don't know, this is a tough one. Maybe it's a tough one. I think we're trying to balance two things here. This was my attempt at it. I'm not sure I succeeded, but... There's fences and there's like screens. I mean, what you're describing is more like a screen, the screen of fence? We're specific on that. Is that? We got to fix that too, because right now our definition of fence is something that's enclosing. Right. And a screen could be just, just one thing. But that's not how we get fences. That's not how we treat it. That's in the definition, but that's not how we get fences, that's where it encloses. Kathy, what is your rationale for that distance? Again, I think it's so that once you start to have something that really becomes, it could be an opposing structure, that it's respecting, it's creating a little extra space between what could be close to, or right on, probably. So this is something that could be, fairly tall, could be from your neighbor's garden when your neighbor's something. Yeah. One option is that it could only be x feet, not a side probably, why not, I don't know. I'm throwing stuff, just, yeah. I just see on a small lot, losing 10 feet's a big deal, because you might as well just give it to your neighbor. That's what I was thinking. And say, you might as well pay the property taxes on that. No, because I just lost 100 feet, 10 feet all the way across. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I mean, it's a small lot to begin with. I get it. But 60 all the time. We're in the fence. Yeah. We'll assume the property line. Yeah, absolutely. This is human nature. Yeah. Especially if it's 10 years old. I don't know the answer here, but I feel like the six wasn't there for a reason of trying to respect it. You know, seven, eight foot fence can start to feel opposing. Yeah, I get that. You can also, you know, be ready to notice if I, you know, take the property across the street from here, for example, you know, their house is probably set back to 57 size seats in the road. They put up an eight foot fence, sort of screen their, you know, just in the front. I don't think anybody that's nine. Seven foot level fence, I'm sorry. You know, this is a panel to sort of block cars going by from viewing their side of that yard. They just can't put wording on it. It becomes a sign. Oh, my neighbors have this hot tub outside. Don't go any further. Where are we going about this? I'm like, why don't they put up a little fence? They're great neighbors. I mean, it'd be nice if people put up like, you know, landscape, you know, instead of fencing, because that seems like it would be nicer to look at. So I think what I'm hearing is the process for over six feet, I don't, I really advocate that it not be conditional use. I think it's a lousy standard. But I think I'm hearing that this whole setback thing is not going to work. Well, I don't know, a fence over six feet might. I mean, six feet is kind of a standard height. Those three, four, six. So if you're getting a standard height fence, you can put it where you want to. But if it gets starts getting over that, I can see it being more imposing on the smaller sites on your neighbor. I can see that. I can see that. You don't see that many fences over six feet. You know, I don't think so, I think what we see actually is those people with the six foot fence that have then added like that foot of lattice. Yeah. And then that ends up being pretty tall fence. But they start with those six foot panels and then they put something down. Definitely the guy with a small lot will pay or do whatever it takes not to have that moved in 10 feet. So it's not for- It's a nine to six foot fence. Yeah, yeah. But for some reason they want that extra two feet. I mean, it doesn't bother me. I'm short. I can't see the fence anyways. I can't see the neighbor at six feet. I think I'm hearing that this is probably not gonna be the one that works either. But that's something right. Is that something there? Yeah, I agree with you. Get it out of the conditional use. So we'll go back on that. I'm probably all being looking at fences. I'm going to look at fences this week. Yeah, we'll grab around town so we can look at fences. Yeah, I know but it is pretty open. Do you want to do, I promise last meeting we'll do time checks because we were going a bit late. Do you want to pause and let me get back to the agenda. Well, aren't we supposed to make a notion if we're going to go over. Yeah, we can. No, everybody has to agree with it. So when you left signs, I think I want to leave a little bit of time for. I'd say that's probably at least a 10 minute discussion. That's not much. So we could finish up a sign. Actually, I guess it goes pretty quick after that. You want to just bang through? I'm fine. You're fine? I haven't met for over a month there. So maybe I can make this quick. We'll not go to the fine details of what I put in signs like references to knits. Even the best electrical engineers out there seem to be confused by. So, yeah. But the big one that I've sort of highlighted in here and we'll come back to the fine details later, but the big one policy one, our current regulation says that if you've got a pile on sign, that counts as, or a pile on base for your sign, it counts as part of the sign. And I get why that was in there. Because I've seen examples where you get huge things. People even might put stuff on them, call it a base, and you end up with something that's really big. But I think more often than not, you end up with something that's actually pretty nice. And I'm going to show you an example. Will you finish this one? Can I talk about it? It's good. Yeah, it's public. So we had this sign come in recently. So this is an existing sign on the left. It was approved erroneously because technically in the regulations at the time, this counts as part of the sign. So you're limited to 40 square feet. The whole thing's over 40 square feet. Pretending that that's not the case. New one. It's even bigger. I think both people would say it's still pretty nice. So the scale's a little weird because this part actually here is actually smaller than this. It's hard to tell the angle. But if you count this, there's no way. I mean, that takes up most of what they're allowed for square footage. My concern that I have with the way it's written is that what that wants this to do is be on a lollipop sign, a post. Yeah, thank you. Which is pretty darn outdated. So it sort of penalizes people from having sort of what I would call a modern face here. So my thinking is, and I don't have all the language for this yet, but provided the base is no larger than X percent of the sign, no larger than a certain height. So we're not, let me show you, I'll show you in a minute where it can go bad. No lettering on it has an address on it. I would want to see an address that it or a certain percentage of it would not count towards the sizes. So maybe this counts, but only 50% of it counts. What I don't want to do is to take a sign like this and have them say, fine, we'll put in the lollipop stick. Right, I agree. I think that's an unfortunate result. I mean, that base could be out of stone as well. I mean, it could be something that fits into the landscaping. Right. I wouldn't want to just say bases don't count. I'm going to show you why. Because there are a couple that have gone bad. Take a turn on it. Mm-hmm. This is the rest of the place that you're on. Ah, no, I'm right. Oh, no. No, I'm right in the, okay, see that thing? Can you go closer to it? It doesn't seem to want to put me on that side of the road without putting me in the parking lot. I was trying this. I don't want to ask all those to. I was trying this for my office. I don't know why it has such a block. Okay. There you go. All right, so there's a base. They put lettering on it. Mm-hmm. It seems to... It's a huge sign. They've got this sort of weird thing. That looks temporary. That's still space, even if it didn't have the banner on it. It looks the same as the sign. It doesn't look like a distinct base. I think that's part of the problem. Even if it didn't have lettering on it, it looks like one big sign. Mm-hmm. So I think you'd want something that says it has to be a distinct base. Mm-hmm. So this is why I wouldn't just get rid of it completely and say bases don't count, because you end up with this. Yep. Yeah. I don't think this is what we want. But I think something like this doesn't offend people. I agree. Yeah. But I think the elements are that it is a different color. They're very distinct. If this whole thing was black, or the same color. Yeah. It looks like one big sign. If it's lit up in any way, I think that's bad. Hope you don't have to see it like if they're coming at night. I mean the base part. Oh, the base part. Yeah. The letters can be lit up. Yeah. But so you'd want an unlit base. You want a base that's distinct. You want a base that didn't have lettering, or advertising. You probably want a base that doesn't exceed the size of the sign. So you're generally okay with that. I'll put more text for your review. But I wanted to check the general idea with you first. So how does St. Michael's, I think it's very well done. It's like a big stone wall and it's just St. Michael's on it. It's very nice, but it's a sign. I don't know because like I said, in this one that I'm showing you here, the base wasn't counted, but that's very clearly in the regulations and it's existed for a while. No, I'm just saying this is a big wall. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like the size of, you know, it's huge. Yeah, it's a sign, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a sign. I don't know the history of our, it's been updated a lot. Richard, do you know like, have you done signs since your time here? Oh yeah. We went through them. You went through them, right? Oh yeah. Multiple times because it was crazy and then we tried to clean it up and there's just so much there. It takes a lot of time. So is the base thing somewhat new? Do you recall it anyway? I have no idea. And again, I get why it's in there. Yeah. I just think practically speaking, it doesn't work. I think it's going in the right direction. Okay. Yep. Let's just go back to the agenda and fly through. Okay. Is that okay? Sorry. Nope, you're good. That's your job. Sorry. That's your job. Would you like me to go to the next one? Yes, please do. What do you want? Sorry. Perfect. Planning and zoning monthly reports, especially if you look at the July one, that gives you the fiscal year ending of where our permits are. Look for the annual report to get a good idea of what that actually means and how it compares to the year before. That's not out yet, but when it is. Updates to chapter six and a half fees. This doesn't affect you guys as much, but just a heads up that I spent a lot of time working on updates to our fee schedule. It's been quite a while, I think, since at least 2015, since they've been updated. And so some increases were made, mostly in the development review side. There are very, very modest increases for homeowner projects. Sheds, fences, et cetera, very, very, very minor. The next step on that will be to bring back some sort of indexing of annual increases related to inflation or something that just keeps up with our costs. It wasn't anything terribly controversial, I think it went fine. You have in your packet an open meeting loss summary that the town manager has sent to you and all committee chairs. There's nothing new on there, but it's always good to touch base. Open meeting loss, it's a very good memo, I think, highlights all the big points. If you have any questions about that, call me at any time. We can also put you in touch with our attorney or you can view the DRV training on this matter from last fall. That's all right. I actually think it might have been the spring. The spring? Yeah. So there is a DRV training on that if you're very interested. There may or may not be video with it without sound. There are slides though, the slides are very informative. So if you wanna know more about open meeting loss, touch base with me, I'll get your stuff. Item D, there's a letter in your packet that the town manager has asked me to send to you. There's no action needed. Somebody, a resident is upset with some things that is asked or will be asking for our shoreland designation to be revoked. If it affects you, there's no action. I don't know if it'll ever take another step, but I've been asked to share it with you, so I have. Meeting schedule, meeting start time, we'll meet next week. The big thing on that is just a touch base, back on a few more things of these. We're not rushing to get S46 to warning. We're still ahead of a lot of our peer communities on implementing S100. We're also waiting for some clarity to come from folks at relevant agencies on what does a duplex as a right mean? Is it a duplex as a structure or a duplex as two miles? So that's being hotly debated in the planning circles. So I don't think we should make any adoption of any of this until those things are clear. So we'll meet next week. The reason that I didn't wanna wait too long is we're also gonna be bringing some grant ideas to you. Haven't done any since I've been here, but I think it's time to seek some funding for some of the projects that you've already identified as priorities. So we're gonna bring a couple ideas to you in lunch break. Good. But a lot of those deadlines are coming up and I didn't necessarily wanna wait because they also have to go to the slide board. I didn't wanna get in a time crunch there. So that'll be what next meeting is. Meeting start times. Definitely want Wendy to be here for this discussion. Your select court starts at 6.30. A lot of people ask us why we don't start at 6.30. I'm not necessarily proposing anything. But sometimes somebody just needs to put that out there and see if people respond that they like it, hate it, wanna be earlier, wanna be later. We're gonna be one. I like 6.30. This is the opening of the conversation. 6.30 is fine with me. As a board to decide. I'm the only one. I work in St. August. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. No, that's fine. So trying to get home, get something to eat coming here. Sometimes it's like, I got free. So stick with seven or? Yeah, I can. I have no problem with seven. That doesn't work. Again, I'm not pushing my desire on this. I just figured it was worth to ask. This is the other one. Yeah, can I just have something about the monthly report? That two things I'm curious about. First one, I'd like to educate myself. One is I notice and kind of, if this has gone through, but the increase in slips from 31 to 166 slips in the water, in both slips. So I'm just wondering who, for some reason I thought we don't regulate the water or the land, I mean, I'm just curious how slips get appropriated equitably. Or how does someone apply and get an increase of that many? That might be a discussion for another day. I still need to learn a lot about that. I think the select board is currently investigating and learning a lot about that. I'm just curious how it's regulated. Not through planning is okay. Not through planning is okay. That's the quick answer. And the other thing I just noticed was, you know, I get, what? Yeah. The Army Corps that allocates the slip. So they can appropriate one marina that many more slip. Oh, okay. That answered my question. That's what I was curious about. Just I'm noticing, and is it my imagination that a lot of storage buildings are being built in Colchester? Like, I'm seeing not a lot of commercial development, but a lot of storage buildings. And I'm just wondering in terms of, you know, taking up land for storage buildings when something else might bring us more tax revenue, like manufacturing or retail or something. I'm just curious, is that planning? So that's you. Storage of some text isn't allowed use in certain districts. If that's a concern, you know, if you guys want to put that in your parking lot of things to address at some point, you could take a look at allowed use, allowed districts and figure out if it's still what you want it to be. So it is you in terms of setting the parameters. It's our office and the DRB in determining whether or not the actual layout of them matches. You're not off base in saying that commercials really tailed off. And I think it was a direction the last time I had the select board to figure out what we can do to encourage more commercial growth or at least to make sure that the commercial uses we have stay. So some of the things we'll be looking at might even be as simple as the sign thing you just looked at. You know, what can we do to make life a little bit easier without compromising any of the other values of the community? But there has not been much commercial growth. Right, yeah. I'm just wondering, like, are you concerned about the amount of storage spaces we're creating? Yeah, I haven't really thought about it. You know, there's probably a lot of schools have thought on that. One thing, on one hand, they're not the most aesthetically pleasing. They don't necessarily generate a ton of tax revenues, and I'm wondering. But they don't generate none and they don't need services. So when you have the equation come together of something that does generate tax revenue, and I imagine they pay a lot of tax, what do you think? A lot of tax, yeah. They must, yeah, because it is still, so there are taxes that are raised from these uses without a lot of resources needed. I'm not sending kids to the schools, they're not needing emergency services. Is there a higher and better use? Probably in certain areas, I would be curious to explain it, but that's just me. Yeah, I don't know. There's probably papers out there of the economic impact of these things because they pop everywhere. It's just balancing, you know, town, you know, storage units, retail, manufacturing, you know, what is a good balance in the community? I'm just curious. Nobody's ever accused them of being pretty. I know. Yeah. Okay, I don't want to hold up. Yeah, so that's that meeting schedule. We will meet next week, and then we will not meet again until October. Oh. So we'll get back to the first Tuesday of the month. That was the other impetus in trying to get this one here or else we'd be waiting three weeks, and then we're still off cycle. You're still trying? Speaking of rich, the idea is to try to keep that first Tuesday very consistent, and then the third Tuesday is added in as needed. Good. Try to keep it free on your social schedule if you can, but know that we're not gonna force anything if it just doesn't make sense. Sound good? Mm-hmm. Meeting times will start at seven. The minutes I realized didn't get posted to clerk base, so I printed out a copy for you. Actually, they are on clerk base. They're just not under this agenda coming up there on the other one. They're pretty short. Yep, we need a motion. Put them in a drop-off and make a motion that they approve the meeting minutes of July 18th. Second? Yes? Yes, yes. You seconded? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, you can go ahead and go ahead and go ahead. You're good. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye, all right. We're all good for tonight. We need a motion to adjourn. I don't make a motion to adjourn. You seconded? Perfect. You're good. All in favor? Aye. Meeting adjourned. Nine-third. Thank you. Be the man. And there is a copy for you guys tonight. Yeah. Thanks for the camping. Yeah. Yeah, that's because she made us run over. She's bribing us.