 I don't have the small version that you guys have. I have the 11 by 17. I'm waiting for the high sign from our board. Welcome, everybody. November 15th Planning Commission meeting. Town of Essex Planning Commission meeting, November 15th. I'm going to amend the agenda this evening to move minutes and other business, if there is any, to the first items on the agenda so that we can circulate the items to be signed while Sharon is working on her presentation. So if everyone had a chance to look at the minutes, I'll take a motion for the minutes of 11-8. For the minutes from 11-8. I'll second it. Are there any line items that anybody wants to enter for edits? This is in favor of the motion. The minutes as presented. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Minutes pass. Are we at 6-6-0. Any other business? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to start circulating these around if we can sign. And with that in mind, I will turn the meeting over to... You want to do public comments first? Oh, yeah. Public comments. Hey. Public comments. Public. Thank you, Derek. Tech, please. Okay. That picture needs to be rolled out. I was just thinking that. Okay. Okay. Public has been heard. Oh. Now you want to... The center of the picture, unless it's like part of, you know, over a table and it's part of another arrangement, the center should be between 5-3 and 5-5 high. Those, that's perfect. Well, I believe that probably falls under the purview of the staff on campus and not necessarily within the planning commission's purview. We have duly noted that. And I'll champion your cause. You need to. Every meeting. Okay. Onward. ETC next discussion. You guys. The three people. People. Well, if you didn't hear me earlier, Mark Kane has been delayed by bad travel conditions tonight. So we're going to move along. Sharon was just pointing out that her role in this project is sort of the big picture thinker and Mark's got all the detail. So we're going to get a little higher elevation tonight. Well, I'll try to get through. I am filling in mostly for Mark tonight. He's the better showman among us. He is very good. And I'm pretty much the nerd of the group. So I will try not to bore you too much. And I'll try to fill in for him a bit. So tonight's meeting is our, our third meeting in the series of kind of intros to the master plan. And tonight we're going to be focusing largely on connectivity and mobility. That's chapter three of the plan. According to dusty, we decided to set up some meeting goals and you'll see these in other ones too. But for tonight, it's basically to look at chapter three concepts and discuss them and the recommendations in the master plan in relation to some of your existing requirements and standards. At the same time, we've been doing an audit of your current regulations to see how you deal with some of these things already. And then we'll be looking at options for updates. And then in the end, if where there's time, a little bit of discussion about public versus private investment. And that discussion is probably going to be ongoing too, as we go through all this. So again, we're talking about connectivity, how we usually deal with it. And we typically deal with it under regulations and we've dealt with it in the master plan as partly connectivity, meaning getting from here to there. And for the past 50 years, that's mainly been how do we get cars from here to there. So a lot of it's about vehicles and the street network. But more and more, we're also looking at pedestrian connectivity, bicycling and transit in all modes. But again, going back to connectivity and streets, we often, again, under our current conventional regulations, look at streets as these linear things that cross the landscape. And again, move cars from here to there. But historically, and I really like this slide. It's from the Congress for New Urbanism. One of their studies and showing the history of the development of street networks. And this is what the street grids look like right up through the 19th century street car days. And that was based on thousands of years worth of just trial and error. But again, what we refer to that now is a pretty traditional grid pattern. As you evolve from that, starting in like the 1930s, and even under federal policy, when cars started being introduced into the environment more, cars were considered dangerous. And the whole idea was to separate pedestrians from cars and housing from cars so we started getting into a much more curvilinear thing to accommodate cars. And as we go further and further, there's a real push to putting call to sacks, dead ends, to the point where we developed a pattern, especially in our suburbs, that really has no connectivity in it. And again, this was partly due to federal policy. It was based on the recommendations of the I.T.E. and AASHTO all the way up through the 80s. We were really pushing the idea that we're dealing with cars and we want dead ends to keep the traffic down in residential areas. But the other thing that the street network does, especially when you're redeveloping to a more urban environment, is create basically the pattern of development, the framework for development. So it's not just anymore about getting cars back and forth. It's about how to do people and cars and buildings all fit into this space. So especially again, when you're getting into form-based code and that kind of stuff, the whole idea is to get back to some things more similar to this. To improve connectivity. And so to increase the density of intersections, to both define it in relation to the network, again, the streets. And often that's defined in terms of nodes and segments or intersections and street segments. Or the other way to look at it is the pattern that creates the block pattern. And again, under planning and zoning, back in the 20s, this was the only thing that we really cared about. You know, we'll establish the block pattern under our regs and then you can build whatever you want within that framework. What we've got under our current regs is more like this. So we're working back again towards that. And there's a lot of different measures for connectivity, increasing connectivity. And they either focus on the network, looking at, say, the number of intersections per square mile, or they look at the block arrangements. So those are the two things we've been looking at in terms of the master plan, especially in terms of higher density areas within that. You know, what is the pattern of development? What is the connectivity in those areas? So that should look pretty familiar too. You guys are probably aware that back in 2011, the state actually enacted some legislation that requires us all to consider complete streets now. And so this goes from the big pattern and network of development down to what's within the street right away. And in looking at your policies and regs, it doesn't look like you've yet developed complete streets policies that are specific to Essex, but they are referenced in your public works standards. Currently, I think the V-trans standards, which apply to the state network, are referenced locally. But there is a manual out there for municipalities to use. It's something that we may refer to, and I can send it around if you're interested in developing the regulations. The transect, and again, that should look pretty familiar from our last meeting. It was actually adapted, and that comes out of the complete streets manual, to show that there are context-sensitive zones tied to those transect zones with regard to looking at your streets. So in other words, it creates not just streets based on functional class, but streets based on their context. So right now under the current regs there, you have streets that are basically tied to what we all look at, arterials like Route 15, collectors, some of the side roads, and then the local roads that actually access homes and businesses. And that's still valid, but this adds kind of another layer on it and says, okay, but in a T-4, or in this case, a C-4 or a C-5, the street network should also, street types and networks should also reflect the context. So in that case, they should have a more urban feel and design than they would if they were out in the rural area. So again, you've started to address that under your current regulations and standards by defining rural and urban streets. But for at least for the master plan in the town center, we might want to look at that in more detail. So again, in terms of the audit, what I've been doing is reviewing the subdivision regulations to a lesser extent in this context, the site plan regulations and the public work standards and also Dennis' highway management plan because it has a lot of good information and detail in there. And I've also been looking at the comments Dennis submitted in response to the master plan. And I think there are some valid things in there that we'll need to address for sure. But again, looking at your regulations now, you're actually way ahead of a lot of municipalities I work with. You already address connectivity to a certain extent as a concept. Again, that's actually missing in a lot of subdivision rags that I've worked on. Again, you define urban rural street types. One of the things though that's interesting is under your urban street types, you specifically allow and have a category for dead ends. And again, in terms of connectivity, it used to be dead ends were good, now dead ends are bad. So that's something we'll need to look at in terms of the master plan too. How we can minimize dead ends, at least where you want a lot of connectivity. I was going to ask a question. In the graphic that you showed first with the three. Right. Is there a graphic that shows what is considered ideal? Well, again, it's getting back again for higher density areas back to that traditional grid. It's a modified grid. It's not always a hardcore, you know, but getting back to just the network of blocks and intersections and streets. So that is sort of the ideal within that context. Getting more sparsely. Or greater separation as you get. Actually, the proposals, while it might apply in other areas of the town center, even in rural and suburban areas, there's a push for more connectivity. It's mainly to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists so that they have more direct routes to get to where they're going. But those might not be routes per se. They may not be, right. And we'll get into that a little bit too. And again, I was really surprised under your current subdivision, you already have some basic block standards, which is unusual in Vermont and much of the rest of the country. So we have something there to work with already in terms of how we define blocks and sizes. Right now there's mostly just guidance in what they should look like. There's not specific standards. There is something that I caught with the regular blocks, and I'm not sure how that came about or how it's been applied. But it's always interesting to read through regs and pick up things like that. So if you have a regular block, it has to cover two tiers of uses, so two tiers of blocks. And it has to be at least 300 feet wide. Nothing about the length of the block. And again, the length is actually what we're almost more interested in when you're talking about pedestrians and cyclists and stuff. How far do they have to walk? And then you do require sidewalks or paved paths mostly on both sides of the street. Again, that's becoming more common, but still it's unusual. And there is a provision for complete street compliance under the public work standards. But I don't know how it's been applied. Dennis does his own thing with it. Well, I've started going through all the schematics, the cut sheets for the standards, and we can talk about public work standards. I've been going through these two, and I actually at some point would like to talk to Dennis about these a little bit more. Maybe we can have a group discussion. Again, you do define streets, mostly in terms of their functional class, how much traffic they carry and what they're supposed to do, which again is fine, but we're looking at some other things in addition to that under the master plan. There's also cut sheets in there for street trees, how they should be planted and stuff, not much in terms of how they should be spaced and things. You've got specs for sidewalks and rec paths already, but it's interesting that in the cross sections of the roads there are no bike paths or sidewalks. Again, they're the traditional engineering. These are where the drains go and that stuff. So that's one of the things I'd like to talk to with Dennis in terms of how complete streets and things could be incorporated in that. It depends, but typically it's a combination of picking the species based on what kind of coverage you want in those areas and the fact that we're getting away from single species plantings because of the disease issues and stuff. So that's related to a whole lot of other different goals in terms of tree coverage, can be shading. That's true. And then there's some miscellaneous requirements, too. And there's a lot of stuff in the highway standards that are often in the land use regulations in terms of how things should be paid for. So it's my understanding that right now the developer pays for most things and then the town takes it over, which is actually not bad because in some cases towns don't, like my town, doesn't take it over. It's always private, but it means that it's hard to require anything in that case. Yeah. So again, in terms of the master plan, the recommendations in this area are to create more pedestrian-friendly street grids, eliminating the dead-end streets, especially. And I'll show a diagram of this in a minute, but defining a maximum block perimeter, again, based on walking distance. One of the things that I forgot to mention, when we talk about connectivity, we also tend to look at what are called pedestrian sheds. So the area within a quarter mile, because a quarter mile is considered an easy five-minute walk. It's something that people will have no problem doing. So in an urban environment, you look at the pedestrian shed, and it's available within a five-minute walk. And you look at, for transit, if you bring that up a little bit, you look at, like, a half a mile walk. Most people are willing to walk up to a half a mile to get to a bus stop or a transit thing. So, you know, those are rules of thumb. They're not hard and fast, but it gives you an idea in planning for your street grid, that a block perimeter should reflect what's an easy walk for a pedestrian, not just what you need to get around, again, in this context. Where the blocks are larger, and again, if you have a really long block length, that's when you start looking at mid-block connections and you also start looking at interior paths and networks for pedestrians and bikes, so off-street stuff. Again, we're looking at it, and they're recommended in the master plan, our street types. So, again, these diagrams are coming out of the master plan, and basically just give you more of a visual representation of what we just went through. So, it recommends a maximum block width. And again, this often applies to green field development. There's also an understanding that a lot of what we'll be dealing with in green field development. So, these are kind of ideals that you'll have to modify and adapt on the ground to be able to... But this is kind of the goal to make sure that things fit within these parameters. So, again, it's just really focusing more on the pedestrian environment in this case, on sidewalks, paths, off-street parking that's within easy walking distance of places, and mixed in with the buildings, interior block paths. Oops, I knew. How do I do that? The old-click method. So, again, it's visually depicting some of the concepts that we've been talking about, including transit stops. You know, I know Dennis had some comments about that, too. And that's something, again, we're looking at maybe 20 years out. We have to make sure that there's a density there to support transit and pedestrian. So, that's going to be a discussion for a future meeting. What kind of densities do we need in these areas, in part, to support what we're trying to do here? By the way, Dennis had some outstanding information when he wrote the first memo to us. So, we have a second memo that is coming our way. And then he has agreed to meet with us on a non-quorum selection of planning commissioners, whoever you want to be. Sometime during the day and we will really concentrate on the Dennis issues. Because it's really important. It's overdue. You get the picture. Yeah, and I will say that he does make some really valid points in his notes for sure, that we're going to need to address. He also mentions there are many ways to cut the mustard and we can look at those too. But it's also a matter of, again, what your long-term objectives and goals are versus what your immediate needs are. And that's often hard to balance in way. But the master plan is based on the long-term goals for this. So the other thing, the other diagram out of it again is more the complete street stuff and defining street types that don't just reflect the engineering designs like you currently have in your regs. But also define basically the streetscape elements too. So in this case there's a right-of-way, the streetscape and this cross-section defines what's called the public realm in form-based code ease. And it's defined either by the right-of-way if you don't have buildings but if you have a good building line the streetscape is typically defined by those building lines. So one of the proposals, and we talked about it last time is to make sure you have good building lines to provide some enclosure in context for the street that they relate to each other. There's two different street types right now that are sort of outlined in the master plan that again if we work with Dennis maybe we can pin down more specifically, again at least for the town center. But this includes things like on-street parking, transit stops sidewalks of specific width again based on the building heights and bike lanes and things like that. So those are all incorporated into the street cross-section along with the tradition all while we need 11-foot travel lanes and curving. So and you can see that depending on the context this one is for the McCenter neighborhood that's an interior streets that would be more of a local street within what we're calling it west now I guess with west and south or east and then along Route 15 obviously there's a different set of conditions so there was a different cross-section proposed for Route 15 and in that case with a lot more trees because there's a lot more space for it. So we'll be looking at those two either under and again we could address these under standards we could address them under related guidance they can be specific just to the town center or you might want to consider some of these concepts for application elsewhere in town too but we're going to focus again on the town center so this is Mark's part of the presentation and I'm not as up to speed on this but I should stand up there so I can read but these are the connectivity recommendations for each of the neighborhoods these series long 15 there's an obvious recognition that 15 will always serve as an important arterial through town and it's mostly there for traffic flow and I think everybody gets that and understands it there was a proposal in the master plan as you've noted and Dennis noted there's a portion of this a boulevard with a median and that's partly to increase pedestrian safety it's to help define the gateway into the center Dennis said that's not going to happen well there's a whole discussion around 15 as you know about whether or not the town might consider taking it over the benefit of that is you get a lot more control over the right way the downside is as Dennis you have to maintain a lot more within the right way so those are the questions but it was and even Dennis said there's ways that we can redesign that a bit to make it more pedestrian friendly and to make it more attractive basically and to present a gateway into this area there's a new road there is a new road connection between mixed-use west and the neighborhood in Lost Nation Road so that's a new connection along here as a planner I'd say can we add one along here but right now and I'm not sure what the calculations were in terms of the development capacity there which has probably affected it but again it's to create a connection here along 15 and to provide for some integrated development there two is the Boulevard along 15 right through here Meridian three is improving pedestrian crossings along right here especially especially as those two areas develop there's an expectation there will be a lot more pedestrian traffic in this area four is a new sidewalk north of 15 and actually Dennis said that's a good idea and then five would be to just create another pedestrian or bike loop around this area to get around without going through the center of it wait wait okay thank you so neighborhood commercial kind of that weird transition area on 15 which doesn't give you a lot of area to work with but again there's an upgrading existing sidewalks and paths in the area completely improving the existing crosswalks along there to price traffic to connect to a multiuse path on the other side of the road and then there's also this shows how infill development might be accommodated in that area again defining a very small block or it could just be a park with the connection off 15 to this area which could be redeveloped as another neighborhood commercial center and would suggest that at some point this lot could even be developed there is form of gray field development parking lots are becoming pretty popular where there's a demand for land and then interconnecting this street but admittedly there's not as much opportunity in this district to establish a lot in new connections sorry Historic center same deal anything here is going to be mostly infill does show though again a small grid there somehow connected through but mainly it's upgrading the sidewalks and then just connecting to the school making sure those connections exist and making sure all the pedestrian connections are saved so in that case it's more connecting to other paths that are in the area so the things that if you like we can talk about tonight get your feedback yeah so again some of the things that are recommended are whether these should be standards in your subdivision regs whether you prefer them simply as guidance under a design review district or even you know as kind of I don't want to say codified but presented in more detail in the master plan and there's certainly a recommendation in terms of connectivity to update some of your plan maps because you rely on those into the development review process but there's also a question of whether you've ever considered adopting an official map which is a map of your proposed plan facilities and services that is triggered specifically in the review process so we can talk about that yeah go ahead again there's some recommendations for updating the existing regulations one of the questions is whether you want to do that specifically for just for the master plan or whether there's some things you'd like to consider under your general subdivision regulations and public work standards and again with the public work standard since a lot of the technical stuff's in there that's where we really do need to have a discussion with Dennis on some of those cross sections and especially with regard to complete streets so those are all points of discussion in terms of the regulations and we'll be working through this with staff over the next few months too and we'll be back to you with some recommendations but if you have any initial thoughts on how to some of these concepts into your regs we'd be happy to get them at this point if we can go into, I'm just curious about the official map, I mean I wasn't quite sure what you were referring to oh okay talk about adopting something and it's a creature of the statue which enables a community to map out its future infrastructure roads etc and that's that and so that all development that comes in is along those proposed streets and is served by that proposed infrastructure and you're good to go it can be sometimes a hard process it can be, I mean it's right and to be going back to that original grid of the work when planning was introduced into Vermont back in the 20s and regulations it was all about that it was basically creating an official map for the community typically a village not that that laid out the street grid and said this is where we want how we want you to develop this is the pattern we want but we've gotten away from doing that for years and so we deal with connectivity by saying well you need to stub out to the lot next door you need to share your driveway shared parking again a very suburban form of connectivity that's geared mostly towards cars and forms of transportation so the official map as Dana said could set out a whole street grid typically it just defines that the community wants to make sure happen and we're seeing increasingly it's not that widely used in Vermont at this point but South Burlington has one Heinsberg has one towns that again want to make sure that specific connections are made for instance under the old master plan you had those street connections in a triangle so if you had an official map and somebody subdivided up there you'd say well you have to incorporate these streets within your master plan or your subdivision plan the official map what it does though is it acts as a flag and typically developers are fine with that especially if the town's willing to take over the infrastructure once they do it in some cases all they're required to do is make sure the right of way is there if something's planned down the road in some cases they're actually asked to build it the infrastructure like you do now but then the town would take it over at some point they also have the option of saying no I don't want to do that and then gives the town the option of saying well then we're denying your project so we're really focusing though realistically we have a small section of the community that's working out with this whole process so I can see some significant challenge trying to do this town-wide because it's don't tell me what to do with my place but this is a pretty small area it seems like it's with the exception of the redesign that's happening in Peter's section or the designs that he's brought forward largely it seems like it's already laid out for the most part again there's some, I think in your case it would be more the sidewalks and bike path connections and in that it would be these are the pretty much the approximate locations they aren't surveyed in right of way like I mean we've had challenging discussions with developers when we've asked for sidewalks we've asked for connections so this would be potentially a tool that could when they walk in the door they know that this isn't just that the regulation says you have a sidewalk on two sides of the road we have an official map that says we have sidewalks here this is where we want the sidewalks right I will say though that your current process may be working fine I don't know we need to go through that with staff too right now you do have those kind of maps in your town plan and you reference those in the review process they don't really carry the same amount of weight especially if you're challenged but 90% of the time the developers will probably respond to that I'm just, there's a couple that come to mind that don't need to be named but there are a couple that come to mind that are really significant push not necessarily on the where but more the when and it seems like something like this might be a tool that lets us put right up at front this is step one this isn't a 20 years down the road but this is a day one sort of process not a year 20 for things like bike paths and stuff that's important because you're right the development might not happen for 20 years but you still have at least the right of way for that it's a lot harder to get rights of way once properties are built out that's for sure I was going to say we do have that process and generally get the right of way but I think the challenge has been when it actually gets built some reason there's some recent projects where there's no existing connection it's just a path in the middle that goes to nowhere so when does it actually get built and we have the sidewalk impact fee that was brought up about a year ago that may help address that and sort of pool the costs over time so that when we are ready to actually build and have all the rights of way then it can happen and we've set that money aside but maybe another way to address that too that kind of gets into a set of considerations to construction and maintenance and again there's all different kinds of options you've already got some I think everything in there is mentioned in Dennis's in the public work standards that private construction and maintenance is out in some cases but typically you guys go with the next one private construction and public acceptance is responsible for the long-term maintenance and that is a legitimate concern with some of this stuff so there may be need to address that in other ways and you already asked for easements, payments in lieu and I understand you are working on impact fees too although you can't apply those to after the fact stuff you can only apply those to new development and there's always grants special assessments and bonding which you guys are familiar with for a lot of this infrastructure Dennis brought up the idea of doing an improvement district like Church Street Marketplace well that's a good question there are special assessment districts and that often those expire so you set up the district you tax the property owners and you build the infrastructure and then once the infrastructure is built the district expires yeah well I think Dorset Street South Burlington is up for Dorset Street that's the only example like it comes to mind immediately but yeah there are these other improvement districts I don't know that's a little bit more they're not TIF districts I think it would be hard for us to do a TIF district for the town center because you need to have other designations for that as you probably know the legislature is not really keen on allowing a whole bunch of them but that is in most places in the country a legitimate way to do this too the marketplace district is a business improvement district and I don't know I have a feeling it was done through their charter and not necessarily through a statutory enabling that's something I would need to check on but they do it is a function of the city but there's also a separate 501C4 the marketplace and it sounds like you know more than I do I know Jeff Nick who does that part and my wife's partner was one of the guys who founded it so I've gotten lessons over the years so it is an interesting they have basically two once for parking they manage parking through a downtown improvement district and then there's another that's specific to church street marketplace and it is a city district it's a city charter but it's private there's a cam associated with everybody that faces church street they pay above and beyond and it's part of their fee I mean unfortunately it's a tax but it's called a fee so they pay in each year and I think they have like a million dollar budget to maintain church street marketplace but again that's based on a lot of existing higher density development that's already in place I mean that's a good example of that started as a vision so when it started and was created to where it is today it's sort of where similar to where we are we're laying out a vision and they didn't do it overnight and we're not going to do it overnight so it's a good example of what can happen it's a very anxious decision to stop allowing traffic on church street to go forward with something that was very expensive to business owners but with a vision that would bring pedestrian traffic and increase business and bring restaurants and it's worked in my opinion so I mean we can look to that as an example of the way to do it at least a smaller version of it so there are some options that we can explore again it doesn't necessarily some of these things will actually have to tie into the regulations like if you have impact bees and stuff they should be referenced in the regs so we can do that as we go forward others are just something that we can look at on the side with staff as we go through this process so back to your last question you asked whether we should just lay these out as or we'd like to versus regs and for my two senses I would I don't think laying out the vision of this is what we'd like to see ever really goes well so I would like to see us if we're laying out a vision I'd like to see us adopt regulations that support that vision and then look outside of the district to see if for instance to your point if we decide that dead end streets and some of that doesn't make sense then we ought to come center district to decide if those same standards should apply to any new subdivision that comes or whatever we build kind of taking the long view okay I mean in terms of the construct one of the reasons again I'm the nerd on the bunch so one of my questions is always where do you want these standards you want them under your subdivision regs you want them in your design review overlay district do you want them again standards with more guidance in the master plan I think there's a risk guidelines without regulations don't have an effect I agree but trying to get too granular on this pass is probably a risky process as well because it's more like put a framework in place with guidance on the various points in that framework and then start seeing what works because if we try to get too granular it's almost like we're going to put ourselves in a box and not be able to adjust or modify easily when something is working or doesn't work it's going to be another 20 years the last pass was 1991 so we also build that into it that's reviewed on a regular I'm not talking about the how but I don't know that we know enough I guess it's your point about using other reference points but if we don't know enough right now to build a really solid regulation framework well I'm assuming that at some point because I keep thinking about this the second presentation in the last few weeks and we keep raising all these questions and I'm assuming at some point we're going to all weigh in on or staff is going to weigh in on where you want to land like do you want buildings up against the streets and say that the standard should be public space and we want 25 feet I mean I assume at some point we have to start getting definitive we do and again we're taking our direction from the existing master plan knowing that you haven't adopted it yet but we are using that kind of as our our guide in doing the regulations but you're right there's a lot of room in there and one of the concerns as you've said and we've heard from staff is that under the current master plan regulations there are guidelines I mean there's regulations in place but there's not a lot of guidance and the regs aren't very prescriptive so I think yeah you're right we're going to need to try to find a balance between being too prescriptive or granular saying block can't be more than so many feet versus saying this is what we want to do here and being able to apply that in a regulatory process so capturing some of the conceptual things like the I forget the phrasing was a mid block connectivity we did that with the development that's across from chase on 15 we required the connectivity back into the mel it wasn't that was something we built into it if that framework is established there will be connectivity we won't necessarily get the challenges from the developers about I don't really want to put something in that seems to me those things we have to put in not necessarily say how big where or what it looks like but there shall be something if we get the challenges these standards so that we prevail in the environmental court that's partly what we're working towards maybe to go away from the list for a minute what is the next step for you and Mark is it to get with staff it is probably sooner than later having I've been going through the regs on my own but at some point yeah getting together with staff bringing back things to the sounds like we've heard enough we haven't heard enough we've heard a number of presentations and now it's almost time to look at what is a real recommendation not just these of what we can look at but to actually look at something I think we've got to be close to that partly the initial is are you comfortable with these concepts specifically as they're going to apply to the town center area if we do an official map is that set in stone then or is there a way it is, it becomes more it is a regulation basically I mean you can amend it like you can amend any regulations but it has to go through that process it's like the trail map today we say there's a line on a map but then if somebody wants to put a building there the line can easily go around the building and without any amendments would that be possible with an official map? yeah again it depends on how you define it on the map again they're not surveyed right away so there usually is some room for moving things around a bit but you're also at that point defining it based on what you want for that like if you have a path you don't want a direct route you may not want it to get moved but if there's flexibility yeah again they're not surveyed right-of-ways on the official map but usually they're a pretty strong indication of about where it should go and we can it's not going where the official map says but this is why yeah or it's being accommodated and I will say the other things that official maps are often used it's mostly for rec trails and streets some communities are starting to use it more for things like parks or open space areas or if you were going to build a new school when you wanted it over here the danger in some of that kind of stuff is that all of a sudden that land gets become it kind of and I know working with South Burlington there's things they don't put on their official map because they know they want it but they want to be able to negotiate for it outside of the regulatory process so that's a consideration too that's why I said maybe you're that's one of my questions are you comfortable enough with your current process in terms of this we are looking at a small space though I think that's the other piece is we're not looking at the full community we're not looking at huge open parcels of land we're looking at stuff that is already pretty well developed and we're looking to try to guide the redesigns, the redevelopment or the infill so that's why this might be reasonable for this section might be more reasonable and help provide another tool for developers and staff and everything as compared to looking at the whole community which then could potentially have not just an increase in property values but it could decrease property values if we say we don't want something over there they're definitely winners and losers that's why it can be controversial yeah it seems like based on what we've seen come in over the last few years we've a number of times we've said our hands are tied this might just I don't know it feels like this might be an effective tool again just for this process as an overlay you're saying as an overlay district well it would be a separate it's not part of the zoning it's a separate map it's like a zoning map but it's what it is so it would just be a map that functions as a regulatory tool it would function like the you know trail maps that we have in the town plan but it would be incorporated into the regs right and say these are where these are supposed to go so I mean in your review I mean you guys would obviously talk and if you feel that we already do that and it's already accommodated by our existing maps then let's not throw another piece of paper in there just for the sake of throwing something else in but if with the ETC next process and project in mind if it provides a better tool for that sort of redesign like we want the sidewalks, we want the streets we want the buildings up here it might be a better design to help deal with this this rebuild or renewal for this area so South Burlington's official map is in its what the core that they're redoing now the city center and some other places they've used it for rec for rec paths and trails they actually have a pretty aggressive rec path program so with the city center or whatever it's called that was just blank and that's a very different backdrop to already developed I mean in this case it would probably be just showing where you want key connections you know where you want to make sure they happen and redevelopment if we end up looking at either new buildings going in or old buildings being replaced if we have something laid out and expected it might help guide some of the you know you talked before Ned about placement of buildings arrangement of buildings I look at a lot of this and you know what we do with streets and all is pretty we can set some pretty objective guidelines for that which you know once we agree on what we want to do I think that's almost the easy part of what we're doing atc we're not into the subjective part yet you know it's what we really want to see come up above grade all we're talking about is street layout how we do all this stuff I still think that the tough decisions are still really to come I think this is good it gives us a good view of how we can do this and where we want to focus what we do Sharon would you be able to incorporate some of the view corridors that we've talked about into an official map would that be the proper tool for that or would that be more of a stay in the planning guidance document that would be more planning or actually zoning I think but the one thing that relates to that we haven't gotten to that in our discussions yet about the height I think especially in the mixed use south there's that terrace thing so one of the recommendations is to have basically a height difference overlay based on that view corridor but again that's also stuff that we can incorporate in the standards and then beef it up in the guidance but not in the official map wouldn't be the right answer the structure and facility stuff the land rights of way things like that so that was one thing I wanted to cover was official map the other we sort of touched on was whether you wanted stronger prescriptive standards versus more general standards tied to more specific guidance and then the third one and I just lost my chain of thought oh was the working with Dennis on some of the infrastructure things that aren't necessarily in the regulations they're in your public work standards so what's the practical difference actually I think it's great that you do that because again public work standards are very much more technical standards and you can change those without going through the bylaw amendment process if they're in your public work standards and not in your regulations but you definitely need to link the two and I think you guys have done a really good job with that again working in some other communities either all in one or all the other and never the twain shall meet or they're actually conflicting that whatever the land use regs conflicts with what's in the public work standards you know and there's as you probably traditionally there's been a budding of heads between planners and public works and fire departments really that kind of extends everywhere we're all trying to get on the same page because I think you know again there are valid concerns on each side of that so it's that's why I would suggest that we try to work with Dennis and public works guys because we've got to there's a significant difference I mean the public works is trying to make sure that we can do everything that is being asked of them and the planners are trying to ask more and new so it's it's you know catching up versus looking ahead and it's although I will say that sometimes we ask for less it's like street rights away everybody you know especially under form-based code they want to go down in some cases to 20 foot right away which is the absolute under fire code standards is the absolute minimum width for even a fire lane is usually 20 feet but again in urban areas are adapting they're buying mini-pumpers versus full-blown fire trucks are buying smaller plows urban streets and again you have a smaller area so it's always a question whether it's you know at some point going to be cost effective to do that probably you know as Dennis said it's probably not right now but again it's a question and that's the question for the planning commission and the select board is do we want to stick with this vision and if so it does mean that it relates to all these other decisions down the road does the public workspec have the same force if we wind up in a adversarial situation maybe less that's a good question if the public workspecs are adopted as an ordinance and I don't think they are I think they're just specifications at this point they wouldn't carry the same legal weight as the land use regulations but boy I really hope we can avoid butting heads too much because that creates problems for everybody including applicants and developers so no I meant adversarial situation between a developer the developer in the town the public works is a guideline well again if you reference them in the rags and that's what I usually recommend is you reference your technical specs rags but you keep those specifications separate yeah I think you do too like I said I think you guys have done a pretty good job with that that was my original question practically it doesn't matter where they go so I look forward to those discussions but I think I would recommend that we have them so it sounds like yeah I think we're going to learn a little bit about this today I think we're having these discussions which are great because we need to know what the planning commission is feeling before we get into the weeds we don't want to start writing regulations when you're not on the same page and don't have the same vision and don't want to use the same tools but those those days will come we're really going to have to get into it we're not here right now but we will be sooner rather than later so what do you feel you need or want from us tonight beyond the discussion that we've had so far are there pieces that you feel we need well no this is the guidance in terms of the path forward is what I'm really looking for at this point so if all of that makes sense I think that gives us some direction and I don't think we haven't without seeing the actual application of some of these concepts I don't think anybody at the table said I haven't heard anybody having any really drastic you know I'm not we're not doing that I haven't heard anybody say that anything that's been presented has been drastically raised any major flags or anything I think until we start seeing it applied I mean Ned might be an exception but I'd like to say lucky you you said it lucky me but I mean it just we have to this isn't something most of us don't live and breathe this so it's you know you're building this and you know there are all these different parts that are going to have to come together and you know you got to pull tennis's part temperate with our part then we decide what we want to do with the rest of it we still may get to a point when some of this when you have gotten granular that once we see how it applies that's when some of these big flags may start showing up this is no we didn't either we didn't understand it before or actually seeing it is have to raise that flag yeah I think you know as far as you know connectivity once you start putting some of that on top of how you're deciding what your building types are and everything else it should make a lot more sense it'll all yeah I mean we're you're helping us become more familiar with each of these layers that we're talking about and again we're kind of working from the ground up I mean we did start with locks but the street network does create the plan or the pattern of development and then it's a question how we fill that in you're also asking how we're this where we're to put a language right you're asking this whether it's in the regulations or in the guide I will say that you know if we decide to go with really prescriptive standards and you're right I don't think we're there yet but if we do because so much of this involves some redevelopment we'll have to do what the form-based code guys call calibrating we'll have to actually go out and get some measurements to make sure that what we're proposing fits that it's not just some ideal that would never happen on the ground or it's such a big change because everything would be out of compliance right exactly it would create a lot of non-conforming properties so that's part of the challenge too and that's actually as the nerd part of the team and the designer guys that's often the tension there it's like well that's really cool on paper but how does it work on the ground you know what kind of regs will make that happen so you know again that's a discussion going forward too but that's one of the questions I had whether you were okay with really strong guidance or you wanted actual the block shall be this wide this long and I think there's room for both but we'll have to be very careful it would be it might be helpful as we've talked about this and other things that as we're starting to talk about we want this regulation here and so forth is to actually bring some examples and if we did this in this section this is what we could to start maybe putting it in context again to make it three-dimensional and not just a one-dimensional you know if we did this in a couple of applications or something yeah if we did this in the southwest block this is what could go there you know or this could go there a couple of them to start demonstrating how that could be or even look back at past applications and say how could this have been improved with actually that's a great idea putting it in context I think is going to help us it's going to help me see what these things might be doing and obviously it's not going to be there's going to be limits what you can do and we're not trying to design for the applicants but to know what that might mean I think this might come in there for a lot of the building things that you talk about you know putting some of this might help demonstrate to us what we're trying to do okay that's definitely one for Mark I'll throw that to him actually they have some really good example 3D examples from probably bring in a big bucket of Legos too and just build this out actually that would be fun put the tables together and just build it out that's a workshop Dana Dots Dots for you Dots I have a detailed question well was it a Lego set or was it a block set I think she still has that maybe we can ask you Tom you had a do you guys know what's up with the railroad right of way is there a right of way anymore my understanding is that that right of way got broken up and transferred to the properties that are there I don't know that there is any right of way anymore at least not for the entire length so that would be a challenge in terms of getting that path and you'd have to re-acquire those ransom way if that's the case I'm pretty sure that's what it is but putting it on a map says okay this is where we want to put it there's possibly some you know something in the ground that makes that a little easier because there was a railroad bed there at one point maybe isn't completely gone that's too bad I got thrown up I'm not 100% sure about that we haven't done title searches or anything but I've heard from people that's the case so do we have any other thoughts, comments, questions I just like I think I'm a little nervous about creating all guidelines I'd like to see a nice mix there so that it's really clear to the applicant and you know it's really clear what it is that they have to do while providing a little more the guidelines are sort of a little bit more the gray area but I think one of the places where we get in trouble is we throw out guidelines and then go oh yeah that's really tough soon we've whittled it away so it's really vanilla again we don't get the guidelines so I personally am in favor of trying to beef the regulations up with this as much as possible it makes sense without being burdensome I'll put, I totally agree and a lot of communities that look at more prescriptive regulations do have to immediately tweak it afterwards because their first application shows all those little things that you haven't considered but that's part of the process of calibrating and tuning as well I will say, you know, form based codes are intended to be very prescriptive so that you basically just get a zoning permit for major development because they're so tightly defined that it's an administrative review process at that point but you're right that you know even in South Wellington where they have it in city center they're already trying to deal with nonconformities and developers who push for form based code and that and now they want flexibility it's worth remembering that I don't think any of us have embraced the approach that we're going to full form based code but we're talking hybrid so yeah exactly that's something to remember and that's where the leeway comes in and I think it's the balance I mean you can't have guidelines without having regulations to provide some make some requirements if you don't have guidelines without regulations are just nice discussion points I will say discretionary standards without guidelines are often hard to interpret and consistently apply so you're right you need both that's the challenge that's the fun part so before we wrap up for this evening our audience and our public would you like to chime in which has been a concern from the start and it's more it's an individual question because the property that we have is it's not all encompassed by the boundary of the ETC so when you talk about adding guidelines and so forth what will happen to the property outside the ETC? that's a good point our first session of this we talked about the boundaries and looking at them in relation to properties I mean the intent is to not divide a property like that unless there's a really good reason for it so I think we will be re-looking at those boundaries I don't know which particular property you have but the first layout had a lot of properties that were split and I think that was a discussion point that we didn't think we shouldn't split the properties whenever possible it's an important part in that case it is a pretty big property but we can talk to you I mean certainly there's going to be at an upcoming meeting where we bring in a proposed zoning map effectively and that would be the time to discuss it but yeah, based on this it is a pretty parcel but you wouldn't want to include the whole thing necessarily and the zoning may part of the reason that that area in some areas are splitting those boundaries based on where the sewer core goes and that really is something that we don't have a lot of flexibility around but the zoning can be a little more flexible potentially to allow the development to happen in a way that makes sense but still is in line with the standards in the sewer core and the sewer ordinance well tweaking the sewer core is one of the things we have to talk to Dennis about yeah it's like we have to do it already anyway right yeah but I think we also need to stop we've been on the history of no changes to the sewer core and that's great and that may work for our lifetimes but long term that's not going to work if that is done because of a new framework that we want to put and not just because we want to expand it because of the developer walking in the door but because we've expanded a framework and done a structure that makes sense and we're not expanding it because of a development opportunity we're not expanding it because of a plan well and this is a great example of that I mean if we're saying this is where we want our density and development and they're going to be your parcel as a prime example that may be where you want to stub out and have a slight expansion of it to get a little more density in the back half or so that you're not how does that work now there's a property that happens for a half now and they might put a building that straddles that often that occurs in reality ultimately each property has an allocated capacity so that's what you get within that a whole piece of property is essentially in the sewer core I believe so we've done it when we have parcels that are partly in R1 and partly in we see that come out as part of the development app and it affects the density and usually you guys take the more restrictive I think is that right we're allowed to but for a property that is split that way you might just say we actually do want the development mostly within that sewer core because we don't want to expand the service too far out depending on the development that would have actually become public so it was really related to what you were talking about I was just going to say that given people's concerns that have been brought forward over the past five years the standard retort has been well we need to have more regulations in order to make sure that those things happen or that those other things don't happen so I am also very leery of guidelines and also just for a little background you know for a hundred years Dennis has been saying no expansion to the sewer service core period ever that's helped the select board out it's really worked because we've had this de facto urban growth boundary and but recently you know Dennis is changing his tune a little bit he's like if this is a result if this is needed because an open community planning process that's different it's a lot different than a developer walking in and saying I want to develop this I need the sewer over there this is not just a as you said it's a community redevelopment design has he ever done you know I was actually really impressed with the highway management plan that he did compared to what I'm on our select board and what we get we get like a one piece of paper saying this is what I'm doing for the year but has he ever done that for water and sewer kind of a similar infrastructure management plan there's the capital budget plan and that contains a lot of stuff related to water and sewer he's got some document that lays it all out in the big picture I've seen different stuff from him on pumps and stations and multi-year plans and he's got a really good handle on our capacity and and what structure if you were to say to him I guarantee if you were to say to him hey if we added X amount he would be able to come right back at you and go yeah except for boom that's actually what's happening right now with the sewer study that is almost ready to come back to us so we'll probably see that pretty soon and with water a lot of it is part of CWD's system so they probably have some documents around that as well and we're going to see more information on that specifically for this area well good, yeah that'll be timely then well unless we've got some more stuff this feels like a good break point thank you this was a good discussion tonight in my mind it was good it's certainly helpful it gives me some direction there's a couple of things I thought might go on the bike ride just to run them by you based on the discussion so one was maybe looking at special assessment or infrastructure improvement districts like the church market place we're going to get more information on that and see if that could apply here and then the pros and cons of having an official map and what that would look like question, the special assessment is that supposed to earn its keep in terms of economic benefit is it expected to show it's not quite a TIF district it's basically it's basically is just defining infrastructure improvement district again my recollection is they use it for Dorset Street when they upgraded Dorset Street so they created a district of the property owners there and I don't know how they prorated the cost but they taxed those properties within that I think they bonded for the improvements and then taxed the properties to pay back the bond and once that was done it went away so in that sense it's sort of like a TIF TIF district is a little bit more involved it may have been calculated and distributed based kind of like they do for impact these and sound it could yeah I mean there's different ways to do it it could be on your size of your property the amount of frontage you have the square footage you have when you set these up are you expected to show that okay we have a plan where it's going to cost as much in fees and we're going to generate as much in economic I mean it's not anything you have to document for the state though like you do at the TIF district because it doesn't affect the educational tax rate the local tax only the same with the improvement district in Burlington that's a fee that's assessed separate from property taxes so you don't have to do that officially but do we do people normally do that anyway just to get agreement on that the plan requires a vote normally when they do these things they dot all their I's and cross their T's because otherwise there's a big pushback it gets voted down I mean it certainly helps if the businesses see some benefit from it yeah and a reason for it but you're right it does require a town vote in order to do it an example of that might be sewer pumps stations need upgrades and you're going to be able to see higher density and better service if we do this whereas if we don't you're going to have to pay up front every time you do your development so well Dennis is very protective of the town incurring any cost and so he he just yawns about these issues he's like oh in urban areas the developer pays for all the boosters and you guys guys start doing it approaching it that way not bonding or anything silly one thing I'll just bring up quickly for you to think about for an upcoming meeting about uses and stuff but one of the recommendations and I am reading through Dennis's is to allow for parking areas as principal uses and not just accessory to a that would allow for municipal lots indoor private lots commercial lots it was pretty clear Dennis is a fan of municipal parking lots but even you know like working with Waterbury they're looking at municipal lots just to handle their prohibition pig traffic so if we allowed for municipal lots we could require that they have solar coverage there you go because of the town property that's what Alchemist is doing right now so there's something to think about because again it would involve some incurred cost to the community unless it was it's got that solar coverage it'll be a feeder but if you have any charters on it and you charge people for that um good for tonight folks? yep Sharon thank you tell Marquiozio you have to do all the lifting tonight motion adjourned all those in favor we are adjourned