It is November 2nd. I think yes, it is November 2nd and this is a meeting of the City of Montpelier Development Review Board. My name is Kate McCarthy and I chair the board. I will go through the other members and have them unmute and introduce themselves. So the other members are Abby White. Hi, Abby. Joe Kiernan. Hello. Roger Kranz. Hello. June Leon. Who? Kevin O'Connell. Hello. And Michael Azarcha. Hi Michael. Alright, thanks for being here everybody. So we're also joined by Meredith Crandall, whom you know. She is our zoning administrator and then Tammy Furry is on as the recording secretary and this is being broadcast on ORCA and also recorded for posterity. So we will start out with a staff review of how we're doing things given that we're on Zoom instead of in person. And for that I'll hand it over to Meredith. Thank you, Kate. I'm going to do a quick share screen. This is mostly for people on ORCA. The share screen part. Alright. So as Kate said, this meeting is being streamed via ORCA media. And it is, you can participate in the Development Review Board meeting via the Zoom platform. So I have up here, if you're at home watching at ORCA, I'm going to leave this up. So here's the link to be able to access directly in. You can also call into the meeting and participate via phone. And we have a meeting ID and password for getting in. This is mostly for via the phone option, but sometimes you have to do it via the Zoom as well. You can download the complete meeting packet off the city website. Oh, I don't have the link. You go to the city website. It's there. I'm sorry about that. You can email me right here if you need that link. And also, if you're having any other problems accessing the meeting, if you're in the meeting and you're having trouble accessing the video conference feed features, then you can message me through the chat function.  Public testimony is going to be taken verbally. And as noted previously, the chat function should only be used for troubleshooting or logistics questions. Chats will be added to the public record if they're used. Please keep your microphone on mute when you are not speaking to reduce background noise. And for those participating by phone, star six will allow you to mute or unmute if you don't have a mute button on your phone. If you're interested in speaking in a particular matter and didn't say so, then please raise your hand. That's not really an issue here. We only have one permit tonight. If you're on via phone and you need to raise your hand for some reason, star nine will allow you to do that. And it'll pop up as a raised hand on the zoom platform. We do have several members of the public on tonight, not just the applicant. And so I'm going to go through the participation process. Once you've reached your hand and the chairs recognize you to speak, then please unmute your microphone, confirm that you can be heard, provide your full name and address for the record. You're then free to provide your questions or comments. We ask that you try to keep them to two minutes. Board members will then have the opportunity to respond or ask questions of you or possibly the applicant. The chair may grant additional time for speakers who have follow up questions or comments. But then once you have finished, we're going to ask that your microphone again. The chair may then move on to somebody else. You can provide additional input later, but only after the chair recognizes you again. You don't have to state your name and address again, but you do need to be recognized by the chair. In the event that public is unable to access this meeting, I would probably get notified via emails, it will have to be continued to a time and place certain. If you're having connectivity issues, try turning off your video or closing other applications that are on your phone or computer. And if you're having trouble seeing the document screen share, all files are uploaded to the agendas and minutes page on the city website. Please note that all votes taken during this meeting will be done by roll call. I'll now hand this back over to the chair. Alright, thanks for that overview, Meredith. So yes, that is the staff review and how people can participate. Next time on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Are there any modifications to the agenda from board members? Okay, I'll take a motion to approve the agenda. Motion by Kevin. Second by Jean. Alright, I'll call the roll. Abby. Yes, Joe. Yes, Roger. Yes, Jean. Yes, Kevin. I didn't hear I saw you, Kevin, but I didn't hear you. Would you test the unmuting? Yes, great. That's all right. This also confirms that your mic works. So it's a dual purpose. Thank you, Michael. Yes, and I vote yes. So we've approved the agenda. Very good. Thank you. Comment. The next item is comments from the chair, but there are no comments from the chair. So we'll move on to item six, which is meeting minutes from October 19th. And the folks who can vote on the meeting minutes are Kevin, Abby, Joe, Roger, Jean, Kevin, and myself, because we were all present at that meeting. So are there any changes to the minutes as printed? Okay, then is there a motion to approve those minutes? Motion to approve. Very good. Motion by Jean. Second by Joe. Wow. Second by Joe. Very good. Motion is second. I'll call the role of those who are eligible to vote. Abby. Yes, Joe. Yes, Roger. Yes, Jean. Yes, Kevin. Yes. Thanks, Kevin. And I also vote yes. Okay, so we have approved our minutes from October 19. Thank you very much. All right, so we're going to move on to the to the only application for this evening, which is 713 Elm Street. If I'm looking off to the side, it's because I have notes over here on another computer, just in case you wonder. It's a request for a bit for variances for the area of a sign and the height of a sign, as well as a request for extended sign lighting hours, and it may be other than that. So we'll hear more. So the first thing we do at this point is anyone who wishes to speak on the application, I'll swear you in. So if you're here to be heard on the application, or even if you think you might want to pipe up, go ahead and raise your right hand. Okay, great. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury? Okay, see nods and thumbs up. Take that. Thank you. Thank you both. Great. So Meredith Crandall, could you please provide us with an overview of the project? Yep, I'll give this to me very brief for people who haven't done this before. This is going to be more a little more on press on sort of the procedural aspects of it, and then likely we'll go over to I'm guessing Emily to describe more of the details on the project itself. So North British Nature Center is revamping its signs. Well, it's one major sign. My understanding is from the application, there's been issues with people not being able to read the current sign due to its size and location. And the existing sign is larger than allowed under the current ranks that was allowed when it was put up. But they're coming back and asking for an even larger sign. So unfortunately, that's not something I can approve. It's not within the standard allowance and the regulations and we don't have our current sign regulations don't have a waiver provision for this aspect. And but we're stuck with the regulations we have, so it's moving them into a request for a variance, which as the DRB members know has slightly different criteria to go through. So really, the, you know, there's multiple things to look at when it comes to, you know, the height and other things. But really, it's that my sense is that the size variance is going to be the biggest issue probably. It's really more of a threshold question, even though the staff report talks about a lot of other criteria as well. And that that discussion just to orient everybody starts on page seven of the seven. Yes, sorry, page seven of the staff report, which is page 11 of the full meeting packet just to orient people as to where that big issue is located. That good for you, Kate. For me. Okay, so yeah, great. So what we'll do next is turn to it sounds like Emily will be providing a bit of an overview. So yeah, we'll give you an opportunity to tell us briefly about the project, including confirming what you're seeking a variance for and generally speaking why. And later on, we will be walking through the individual variance criteria, as well as criteria related to signs and lighting more generally, and you'll be able to speak then too. So this isn't your only shot. But if you want to tell us an overview, take maybe five or so minutes, turn it over to you, Emily. Thank you very much. And so, as Meredith pointed out, our current sign is smaller than the current regulations allow. And it's also considerably smaller than we would like. We are just a couple of miles out of town two miles from the center of town. But the speed of traffic by the time you get to North Branch is the speed limit is 35, which means of course, the range of speed people are actually traveling is, you know, there and north. And we're finding that a lot of people, especially as our center has grown over the last several years, considerably, and there are a lot of people coming to North Branch for the first time. People are not always finding us on their first drive by, they're not seeing the sign. And or by the time they do, they don't have enough time to slow down sufficiently to make the turn safely. And so then they some people go further and turn around in a driveway or at Gold Hill. Perhaps some people even go further and then realize they, you know, really headed out of town and have to turn around that point. So we would just like a more visible sign, both in terms of size. And we also have a lot of evening programming, which didn't used to be the case so much back when the first time was built, 10 or so years ago. And so being able to have some lighting on the sign so that it can be on during programming that happens in the evening, such as this time of year, we do alabanding in the evening that public is the public comes to. And in the winter, we do our Friday evening naturalist journeys lecture series. Obviously, when COVID's not happening, all of that is so it would be nice for people to really be able to see the sign as they approach and be able to slow down appropriately before they turn. As far as the size of the sign, I mean, this was sort of all laid out in narrative. I don't want to repeat all of what I said in that but the recommendation from Sparky Potter of wood and wood up in the valley was to have a letter height that is just impossible to fit on this on the eight square feet of content area that's allowed. And so, you know, in discussion with Meredith, we sort of brainstormed a couple of different ideas with Sparky and, you know, basically came up with a sign design that was our logo. It doesn't give us the full six inch letter height that we would have liked, but the visibility of the diamond and our logo in general helps achieve that desire for more visibility as people come over the hill and around the curve and start questing down and see from a distance. So I'm not sure what else you'd like me to cover right at this moment versus when you'd rather me respond to questions. So if there's specific things you'd like me to share that I'm happy to that's a great overview. Yeah, we'll take some general questions from the board. So Kevin, if you want to unmute and go ahead. Let's go ahead and unmute there, Kevin. I know every two weeks, we kind of get back to it. It's sorry about that. I'm doing that. I've been on zoom like pretty much all day. Oh, so anyway, Meredith, what can you just explain? I mean, there's a lot of paperwork there for what looks like a very minor amount of variants that we're looking for. What are we actually looking? What is the variance that's needed with the new zoning ranks? So the way everything has been zoned. The North Bridge Nature Center is in a pocket, you know, like a little pocket of rural that pops down in the rural zoning district. And in the rural zoning district, when they rewrote the sign regulations in 2018, they limited signs, commercial signs in that district to eight square feet. And that is measured not, you know, it doesn't have to be the everything that goes into the sign, but it is the area of the sign message. And really the smallest square, you can really draw around the proposed North Bridge Branch Nature Center sign and get just the message think it was 12, 12 and a half square feet as proposed. So I mean, it's an additional four square feet that they're asking to add on to what is supposed to be the maximum size for a sign.  Whether it made sense or not is not really my, unfortunately, my job to be able to decide. But it's, you know, there's, there's information in the application and certain resources that Emily has included in there, which are recognized national sources on what size lettering you need to have to be visible at certain speeds. The speed limit issue. And this is my discussions with Mike Miller as well, the planning director who was involved in drafting the regulations. What speed limits are is not something that is was discussed or thought about when coming up with Montpelier sign regulations. It does have an impact. It is a potential issue that something Mike and I had discussed. But the rags are what they are right now. So it's kind of in the board's court to figure things out. I'm afraid. Thank you, Meredith. Sorry, that wasn't actually very helpful. No, I think you confirmed what I was saying, which is that, you know, this is this is wrong material that we're looking at. This hasn't been tested tremendously yet. So we're going down the path here for the really the first one. Yeah, Abby, wondering if you looked at other alternate designs that would enable you to have the proper letter height in the constrained environment that we have. And are you happy to share screen Emily or do you want me to I didn't I wasn't prepared to share screen. So I can check the out of the full meeting packet and scroll to if you tell me where to scroll. Sure. Yeah, so there's one figure in there that shows what the what is what basically a square would look like with yeah, there you go. If you can full size that. Yeah. So that page shows what the the science the the Science Association and International or National Science Association recommend 7.4 inches tall letters, which Sparky and I both think are is more than we really need. But if you go by what the speed limit is for our area, 7.4 inches is what they recommend. And you can see that you can't even fit the last letter of or two letters of each of our words on in that in a size and an eight foot square size for that. If you scroll onto the next page, I shrink the letters down here. This is again an eight foot square eight foot square. And those are six inch tall letters where you can technically fit them all within that space. But that doesn't leave any usable space for our logo. You know, the logo would have to be like really tiny down in the corner in order to fit on there. So that was one option is we could just put our words and not our logo at all. But we didn't feel like that was as strong of a sign. And it's not as attractive as a sign. So we decided to try just putting our logo. And when you put our logo at the eight square foot size, it's so tiny that Sparky just felt like that was really a non starter. So I said, Well, what if we were to make the logo fit to 12 square foot, which is the amount that would have been allowed if we were zoned the same as CCV and Turtle Island, which are just a third of a mile to our south. And this is what we came up with. So this is our first choice design, we did go through a couple of other sign, you know, possibilities, which I could share by holding them up to my screen. But they were definitely not as popular. And they also didn't really achieve what we were looking for in terms of getting the the look of the sign. So I'm not sure Abby, if you were wanting to see sort of other designs, or if you were wanting to just hear how we got to this design. Oh, this is helpful. I just wanted to know if you looked at other possibilities. And it sounds like you had. Yep. Yeah. Questions other other general questions. Alright, so, um, you know, folks probably reviewed our staff report. And what you would have seen there is that a threshold question before we talk more about whether 12 is appropriate versus 11 versus 14, etc. And whether the height being asked for is a reasonable variance to request the first thing we usually look at as a board is the variance criteria themselves. And we call those threshold criteria, because if they're not passed, then the other parts, it doesn't make sense to have them as part of the discussion. So I'm going to look to the board for for some advice, like under normal circumstances, what we would do is would make this determination by voting in the meeting, and then moving on accepting more testimony. For, for folks who are watching us for the first time, you may not realize that for the last month or two, in this in those of the Zoom environment, we have made the decision to temporarily at least conduct our deliberations in a in a separate nonpublic deliberative session. And we've done that so that we can come to good decisions by having a little an easier way to communicate in a slightly smaller group. We've been doing this with all applicants, not just difficult ones, so that everybody gets uniform treatment. So where I'm going with this is I want to ask the board's opinion about whether you would like to make those threshold determinations in the public session, or and then move on and accept testimony and do the rest in deliberative. That's one option. Another option is to take all the testimony about the variance criteria, the sign criteria, the lighting criteria, and then do it all at once in deliberative session. And I'm leaning toward that second option for the sake of consistency with other applications. But I'm also very interested in what others other board members would think is the best process, the fairest process. And I know some of you have been on this board longer than I have and I'm very interested in all of your opinions on that before we move on. So apologies to the applicant for having to sit through this little bit of process discussion. But thanks for bearing with us, Roger. Well, thank you, Kate. My memory of doing variances is that we know arrive at very specific measurements, you know, a two foot setback or whatever. In this case, it would be a eight square foot sign and whatever the height is. And then once we've determined those specific measurement measurements, then we go through the seven criteria, because if you don't have the measurements, then it's hard to figure out the seven criteria. And I'm kind of thinking we should do that in public, maybe not vote on it. But I think I think it's important for the applicant and everyone else to hear how we determine each of the criteria. Yeah, yeah, I think we can definitely walk through the criteria, even if we then vote on them later. Before I call on Kevin, I would just note that the first two variance criteria are very general to the site, but then the later ones like the applicant is proposing release deviation possible. That does depend on the the numbers that we're talking about that. That's helpful, Roger. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, I just I just wanted to support Roger, your comments that certainly is is the the time tested way that we've approached variances. Do other board members have any questions or opinions about our approach to variances? Okay, and Meredith, you know, I'm going to say when I say Meredith, I'm going to refer to it's going to be Meredith Crandall, unless I say Meredith Warner. I'll just make that easy. So Meredith, who's to my left. I would like to ask your opinion about proceeding taking into account Kevin's and Roger's recommendation. I should we look at the some of the variance criteria or just go through and take on the sign and the sign criteria and the lighting criteria and then go back. I think given how fact specific this is, and that a variance on the size of the sign is going to need to consider the full picture, really, especially if this is going to be a unique situation, then it probably makes sense to go through the full the full sign discussion. Sounds good. I think that's answering your question. You have the discussion about the variance and then maybe get to the lighting. Sounds good. Sounds good to me. Any questions from board members about what about that? Okay, thanks for walking through that with me. I think that's important because if two or three or two or four or six or eight weeks from now, someone down the street comes to us with the very same question. I want to make sure that we've done it because that we know what we're doing and why. Alright, so without further ado, what we'll do is we'll step through the staff report. What we're looking at today are the general standards and as well as some site plan standards. I'm just going to focus on those standards that are in question. So so I'll move on through. So the general standards related to dimensional standards, allowable uses, setbacks, demolition, riparian areas, wetlands and vernal pools and steep slopes are not a part of this application. Those criteria are all met. Do boards, the board members have any questions or concerns? So contrary. Okay. For erosion control, there's just a staff note that any project on any project needs to follow the requirements of 3008D. These terms apply to the construction and we understand that to be part of the project, stormwater management, access and circulation, parking and loading are all not not affected. Those things aren't being changed by this one sign proposal. But I will pause and see if DRB members have any questions just to be sure. Okay. Thank you. So that brings us to section three zero one two 3012 signs. And this is where we get into the details and why we're even talking about this. So as we've heard the standard in this area is signs are maximum of eight square feet in area and a maximum of eight feet high. That is the standard. Another standard to be aware of is that permanent ground mountain signs must be self supporting structures. And they must be built on and attached to concrete foundations. So let's let's just start there. And then we'll talk about lighting. Okay. So we've we've heard a request and we've heard some of the reasoning behind the request. So from the max maximum standard of eight feet square to about 12 foot square. Do board members have any any questions about about that request? Abby had a good question. We can ask more detailed questions if you like. Okay, we can always come back to it if we think of something else that that is fine. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the height of sign that you are hoping to build and why if you're requesting a variance for the height and why the height why the height that you're requesting. So in and of itself, we don't we're not interested in making a super tall sign, but we did want to follow Sparky's recommendation for a minimum clearance off of the ground of three foot six inches. With the setback from the road and the slight curve that is that you know the burning of the road and the ground slopes down a little bit. If you if we go any lower from the clearance from the bottom of the sign to the ground, we're going to be getting to the point where you won't be able to see the bottom of the sign when there's snow piled up on the side of the road. So we really didn't want to go any lower than that. The top of the sign as it's currently designed is eight foot three inches. So it's three inches taller than eight feet. If you count just the top of the sign, but the way the regulation is written is actually the structure that is the measurement that is supposed to be eight feet high. So that's where we really go significantly above that to what is it nine nine foot eight inches. So you know, we would be you know, certainly have three and you know, if that if bringing it down by three inches made a difference for if you felt like that would sort of get us closer to the the spirit of the of the law. I certainly not going to quibble over three inches, but I think that bringing the whole thing down so that the structure is at eight inches eight feet would be a problem because then the sign itself would the bottom of the sign would start being not visible from drivers who are coming downhill in this, especially in the winter when there's snow. And I would just note that if if the sign were eight foot square, it would probably fit. It would probably be able to achieve the required clearance and the required height. Or if it were, you know, it's kind of a square square sign, but if it were like a rectangular sign were like that, was that something that you that you talked about the possibility of a different sign shape in order to kind of optimize all those dimensions? We did look at other sign shapes. Ultimately, we thought that the the the best use of this of the square footage was to use the logo, which obviously is the diamond shape. But yeah, we did consider some horizontal ones. And yes, if you did the text across two lines of text north branch and then nature center, that would be you could make the the sign height shorter. I will also note that the if we were zoned next use residential like CCB and Turtle Island are I believe the 12 square foot sign area that is for that zone also goes with a 12 foot height. I'd have to go back and look at that. But if memory serves that there's sort of a proportionality between the height and the area of a sign. And so yes, we're trying to fit a 12 foot sign into something close to an eight foot height. And this was sort of as close as we could get. So so excuse me. What is the proposed height again? Sorry, the total structure nine foot eight inches. That's those two vertical cedar posts. Thank you, Meredith. Great, great. Thanks. I appreciate that. Other board members, if you have questions, feel free to pipe up. But now I can see well. Any any other questions about the sign height? Joe, did you have one? Yeah, I'm sorry if you went over this earlier, I was reading some of the staff report here. But so the letters you're proposing on your proposed sign are smaller than the letters you have in your current sign. Is that that's correct? They are they're essentially the same height. I think that they're within an eighth of a record of an inch of each other. I don't have that number in front of me. What's the current? It says that the current ones are 4.7, four and three quarters and the new ones would be four and three eighths. Yeah, which is not a lot smaller, but a little smaller. Right. And really it's just the logo that's larger now. Right. Well, and it's also the words arranged into the logo with the logo. This is the complete logo, the words around the logo around the artwork is the logo. Whereas before the old sign is the artwork pulled out separately from the words was how that was done. I can't really speak to how that design was made because it wasn't there then. But the impact, the visual impact of the logo, especially for people who've already seen it before is considerable. And the fact that most of our visitors will have already seen the logo, whether they've gone to our website or seen an event on Facebook or seen our newsletter or anything like that. That's, I guess it goes back to the, you know, an image that's worth a thousand words. Having that, having that logo with the words around it is a visual reading that is a visual reading that will kind of eliminate the necessity for people to actually read the words if they can recognize the logo. But the way that our current sign is where the artwork is kind of pulled out separately from the words, it kind of doesn't really do either. It's giving us a letter height that's similar to this, yes, a tiny bit larger than this even, but the logo itself is sort of divorced from the words and rendered so small that it doesn't really have that impact that having our actual logo has. I mean, if I could have our actual logo even bigger, I would be delighted, but we felt like it was important that we asked for the minimum variance that we felt we could get away with and have it still be a readable sign and still felt a character with the neighborhood and felt not in excess of the regulation for the MMU zone so close by. That sort of felt like, I don't want to ask for something that's larger than what Turtle Island and CCB could have. So we did our best to fit within that 12 foot area. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Joe. Abby, did you have a question? I was going to ask what the letter height is of the proposed 12 foot sign. And so we already answered that question. And okay, nothing else. All right. Do you have a question? Is this a David Kruch sign design? David Kruch is a, is he designing the sign? Who's the designer of the logo? I'm just curious. The logo was designed by Linda Marabale who is a local designer and has been doing work for North Branch for, Chip, you would know better than me, but I think more than 12 years, maybe the whole time, our whole existence, since back when we were part of VINCE, so 25 years. And Linda designed this logo, I guess when we broke off from VINCE, is that right Chip? Or was it even when we were sold and he's nodding? So Linda designed the logo. The sign itself, the sign proposal is designed by Sparky Potter of Wood and Wood up in Weitzfield. Great. The center, the decorative center post goes up four inches higher than the base or it actually gives the area a height, top height, 10 feet. Is that decorative center a structural piece to hold the top part? Does that go through the beam as a structural piece or that's just strictly decorative? I'm wondering if by decorative piece, do you mean the triangular shaped thing that's above the logo that's black? That's actually the light. Okay. It reads a little funny from the front. Yeah, okay.  Yeah, finial. It goes into the structure also and looks like it's part of it. Like it would go through that beam into the sign. Yeah. No, I don't think. That's a notification. Yeah, I don't think that it goes into the sign. I think it goes into the beam and then the electricity, there's a wire that goes in that beam and down the side. Correct. The black thing that's between the beam and the sign, that rectangle, yeah, that is just the way that the, there's three of those that attach the sign to the frame. Perfect. Thanks. I always enjoy kind of hearing about the history and how things have unfolded and including local designers and things like that. So that's good and interesting to know. I'll just remind our board members that we don't judge so much on the content. As on the shape and the compatibility of the sign, the size of the sign, the things that we can judge. We need to be very careful about the content. So that's just a reminder for all of us. I don't think we were headed in that direction. All right, so these are good questions. And I think we've gotten some good testimony on the sign itself. Why 12 feet is being requested as opposed to eight? We've heard about the difference in height that is being requested for clearance for snow purposes. Looking at, let's see. Are there any other questions about this section, about the signs? I just wanna get back to the staff report and make sure I'm hitting that. Okay, so the next requirement of signs is that they be self-supporting structures, which this appears to be. It also, we have a requirement that they're attached to concrete foundations. And is this side attached to a concrete foundation? That's not the recommendation of either Sparky Potter or timber homes who are just up the road from North Branch and who we are planning on hiring to create the cedar posts and install. The frame, Sparky Potter's wood and wood will create the sign itself, the white part, the sort of octagonal part, but and the connector pieces and they'll take care of the lighting, but timber homes would do the timber part and the installation. So I went back to them after you flagged this, Mary, I thank you for that and got some clarification from both of them. And so I'm happy to share what they said. The basic gist is that you can use concrete to put in your holes for this, but because it's a freestanding structure that's in soil, it's not attached to... We don't expect that there's gonna be bedrock under there. It's, you know, loamy soil and it's not like downtown where there might be other structures or infrastructure that exists underneath the, you know, by the time you get it down a couple of feet. If we did concrete, we would have to protect the posts from the concrete. Concrete's really porous and so it would basically be wicking moisture in from the soil to the cedar posts and actually contributing to the potential for rot. So what they recommend, what timber homes specifically recommends and this is what they do when they do kiosks, which is a big part of their business, is they would have us dig a fourth foothold a little bit more, put some gravel in the bottom to protect the bottom of the posts from the soil. Put a sauna tube in and then backfill with dirt on the outside of that sauna tube.  This part gets filled with dirt. Then install the posts on the little bit of gravel that you've got at the bottom, a couple inches of gravel and then backfill that inside of the sauna tube with gravel. So that you don't have any soil touching the posts and that would should protect it. And cedars already a very long lived, you know, species that's well known to withstand this kind of use. If we were to instead go the concrete option, first of all, it's not as environmentally friendly as a product, but I'm not going to quibble over a couple of bags of concrete either. But the problem is that because of the wicking thing, you would still have to protect it from it. And it also wouldn't give it as much structural integrity as the process that Timmerholtz described to me. So if you had concrete, you would need to add a steel, what did he say? You'd need to have like a steel vertical piece that would attach to the cedar posts. The cedar posts are really strong, but because the sign is going to basically act like a sale. So if you picture a day like today where it was super windy, there's the potential for racking where the wind would push so much force against it that even the timbers could be affected by that. So he would recommend if you had to go the concrete route that you would have to also install steel, which then becomes a significant additional cost among other things and just isn't their recommended process. So we were going with their recommendations for how to install it. Thank you. That's a lot of things that I didn't know before. It's really interesting to hear those. Me too! Yeah. Yeah. Kevin. Yeah, I'm just, Emily, I'm surprised by the recommendation for not using concrete because you look at almost any guide on how to build a fence or how to put it in post. You know, the fixation is with concrete. So our ordinance says use concrete, but we're going to consider not doing that. I think it raises a question as to the best way to actually anchor these things. Yeah, I was totally interested to learn about it too. And I asked the person I've been talking with at Timberhounds is Timo Bradley. And I said, if they have, you know, if you folks have more questions about this, he said he'd be more than happy to answer them. So I didn't want to ask him to come here tonight. But I'm sure he'd be happy to respond to questions if we could have additional ones. I mean, from a construction standpoint, we'd make it much easier. Okay. I clearly am going to have to go talk to Timo so that Mike and I can, we were planning on revamping the signing regulations at some point anyway. So we're going to have to talk to Timo about that aspect of them. I think we want to be, Meredith, I think we want to be careful. I mean, this sounds like a great idea, but it's also unconventional. No, it's more of a, we have lots of things to consider. And it's something just to thought of reaching out to various experts when we get to that part of the regulations that we're ready to ask you. I mean, I'm all four, I'm all four giving us a chance using the proposed anchoring system that that's being suggested by the applicant. But being the fact that it is unusual, you know, if we're looking at a zoning change, we obviously want to bet that very carefully. Okay, we'll, of course. Well, let's move that to the planning commission and then we can maybe collect ideas later. So Meredith, if it is not typical that we would grant a variance for a standard like this, often variances that come to us are for people wanting to do different things within their setbacks or different heights or things like that. So is there a mechanism in our zoning that allows for alternatives to standards like this at the DRB's discretion? What's our authority to do that? I mean, that's, that is the variance option. You know, yes, it's typically used for, typically it is used for your setbacks because somebody wants to build a building. You know, you can't use a variance for a use. That's not allowed. But any other physical measurement is a possibility but you need to be able to go through those variance criteria. Okay, nice segue. The next item in our staff report on page eight are those variance criteria. So I'd like to, at this point, if it's okay with other members of the board, walk through those before we then go on to the lighting because the lighting change being requested, I do not believe falls as a variance. So board members, shall we go through the variance criteria? Okay, great. Yes, so one thing I just wanna say about variances for those who haven't used them before. We, a variance is a very specific thing. As you read in the staff report, there are these five criteria. All five need to be met. These criteria come straight from state statute. So in order for a town to do a variance, they have to do it this way. And that's why these are written the way they are and why we're following them. So let's just go through variance criterion number one. I'm just gonna read them in order to be specific. There are unique physical circumstances or conditions, including irregularity, narrowness or shallowness of parcel size or shape, or exceptional topographical or other physical conditions peculiar to this particular property, and that unnecessary hardship is due to these conditions and not the circumstances or conditions generally created by the provisions of the bylaw in the neighborhood or district in which the property is located. So it has to be a property specific issue is what that means. So I'm trying to think of the best way to do this. Roger, yes. Well, just to hop right in, I think that the several issues that the applicant enumerated, the curve, the sight lines, the visibility, the speed, the hail, the snow, all of that stuff relates directly to this first criterion. Okay, thanks, Roger. What are the thoughts of other board members? I'm wondering if there's a photograph or just any documentation that we could look at right now to look at the constraints of the property? I mean, I would back up what Roger said, when you come down that, when you come down the hill, just after making that turn right before the entrance to the nature center, it's the existing sign doesn't really catch, would not catch anybody's attention. I see this as an equalizer between the zoning that the nature center has and the surrounding properties, community college and Turtle Island daycare. So I would emphasize that the unique circumstances exist there. Other board members. So I see this a little differently. I'm very reluctant to make comparisons with the neighboring zoning district because there's a pretty distinct divide between the end of the residential and the start of much lower density residential and it's mostly residential uses. After that point with the exception of a few of the home-based businesses and Vermont timber homes, which is a conditional use, I sort of see the nature center through no credit or fault, no credit, but no fault of its own as being kind of the gateway to that new zoning district. And I think that's important. And so I would not, in my own opinion, I don't see that parcel as a transitional parcel between the mixed use medium, whatever it's called, the previous zoning district, and the one that is a part of, I see it as kind of the gateway property and the fact that it's aligned and that there is different treatment is in order to create that transition, which is important. Kevin. Yeah, I'm sorry. I understand your point of view there, Kate, but I do think that being that it's just the beginning of a different zoning district, right again, right past those two additional properties, you don't even have to make that anything other than a footnote or maybe just ignore it all together, but the unique circumstances still exist. So the unique circumstances about you, for example, the topography and the road. Correct. Meredith. So this is a technical difficulty. I was trying to pull up a Google Maps or other things for Abby. If everybody could stop for just a second, it's okay. My battery's dead on my keyboard and so I actually can't pull anything up at the moment. But you can hold on, and I gotta run to another room and get some batteries. Okay. I can pull it up on Google Earth. I'm actually looking at it right now. All right, Joe, why don't you go ahead and do that? Does that work for you, Meredith? Thank you. Go team. Keep it safe. Is this sharing the correct screen? You guys can see the map? Yes, Joe. Yeah. All right, so this is coming out of town and the North Branch Nutri Center is up here. And you can just barely start to see the old sign out there in the distance. And I believe that the new signs location is gonna be somewhere around here, closer to this telephone pole here. So you would be able to see it much earlier based just solely on the movement of the sign coming around this left-hand turn here. We're also going downhill here. It's not super obvious on here, but... Sometimes you can help the hill better go in the other way if you go down in the back. To this side, unfortunately, the car is over here on the right-hand lane. So when you're looking at it this way, you would be over here in this lane. You'd be able to see a little bit sooner, actually, your sight distance would be better. But you can see that the current sign is pretty well hidden in here. So the new location would be somewhere around here. Again, it looks like we're going downhill again here. Are they in the low spot here? Kind of looks like it. It's a bit of a low spot. Yeah. So with the sign being higher, no matter which direction you're coming from, theoretically, the sign being higher would put it more in your line of sight. It's not a whole lot higher than our regulations allow for anyway. Joe, when you say higher, you mean the height of the sign. You don't mean higher up the hill. You don't mean closer to town. Right, right. The height of the sign itself, since you're coming in from higher up elevation was, no matter which direction you're coming from, the sign would be easier to see being a little higher. You're going to see it sooner, especially coming from this direction, coming from out of town, coming from town. All right. So that's a good analysis. I think while we're there, I just asked board members to think about how this image does or does not represent a unique physical circumstance that's different than other properties in this zoning district. Because that's the other thing we're considering here. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Emily, go ahead. I just wanted to add that the proposed location of the new sign is only about 30 feet south of the current sign location. So it's a little bit closer to traffic coming from the direction from town, but not a lot. Thank you. Okay, so that's variance criteria number one. Is there anything else that anyone wants to add on that? Do you have any members or Emily or Trevor? All right. So number two here, I'm going to read. Because of these physical circumstances or conditions, there is no possibility that the property can be developed in strict conformity with the provisions of the bylaw and that the authorization of a variance is therefore necessary to enable reasonable use of the property. Yeah, Roger. I think that's clearly the case. So the property can't be reasonably used without this variance? Yes, it's outlined by the, as explained by the applicant, yeah. Okay. I don't see it that way. I don't understand that. Yeah, I don't understand that either. The property will continue to be used whether there's a 20-foot sign, an eight-foot sign or no sign at all. Meredith, do you have any, put you on the spot.  It's something that comes up in court decisions and things like that. Is there anything that you can tell us off the top of your head about this standard? Yeah, I mean, typically when this situation comes into play, it's because you're looking at new development on a parcel that was subdivided previously. Somebody bought it, so it was already an independent parcel, legally independent parcel when it was created. Then somebody purchases it and goes to put a structure on it and they're like, oh, wait, since it got subdivided, the setbacks changed in my district. I got these known, so I've got different setbacks that apply or some other criteria, some other requirement. And now I can't build even usually the judgment, that usually the standard is can you at least put a single family home on it? That's usually the standard. It's a lot, this is, it's a much rarer situation now that we have a change between waivers and variances to have a variance come in to say, we just wanna change how we're using it or we wanna put this new thing in. It's not gonna stop some sort of use of the parcel. Then usually it's, that's the reasonable use, that you can get a benefit from the property and that you can have some use on the property that is compliant with the regulations. And the smallest reasonable use, the least impactful use is almost always a single family home. That's usually the judgment line. It's interesting that says as much about our court system and habits of zoning as it does about what you can actually do with beast property. Because obviously the nature center does a lot of things that are very high value without being interesting. I think you're right, Kate. But I will say over the years we've gone kind of back and forth on that whole criteria and have reasonable use is really an open concept. What constitutes reasonable use? Is it like just because you have something there now that isn't broken, does that mean that's reasonable use? Or, so I just to put it in historical context, I think that, I mean, I agree with Roger once again on the reasonable use question with regards to the proposal. All right, well, thanks. I think we can sort of take that discussion and then fold into it what we've heard from the applicant about their stated needs. And when we consider this further, so I'll move on to criterion three. Kate, can I ask you a big question about this? Yes. So we're talking about enabling reasonable use. And I'm wondering if there's been any estimates on usage that has been affected by the poor sign that has been affected by the poor sign. And an estimate on what increased usage may look like with an enhanced sign. I'm just wondering if there's any data inside that we can kind of use to make this determination around whether this is reasonable use or not. I guess I would invite Emily to answer that. Or give it a try. Oh, your mouse pad. Yeah. Maybe I wonder if Meredith can unmute you manually. Are you able to unmute Emily? Nope. Sorry. Just gives me the option to ask to unmute her. Oh, that's all right. We'll give her a second. We'll wait. I'd also be happy to take a crack at this. Okay. You know, and I don't think there's any data that we can really provide. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if Emily may, may have something that I'm going to wear. But, you know, it's, it's almost like, how do you capture negative data? We don't know. Who doesn't stop at the nature center. If they keep going. It's, it's more of an issue of ease of ease of access, preventing people from having to go past the property, so that they can use it. So that's the sign at night. Cause it's not lit.  It's, it's more making it. Easy and convenient for people to find the property so they can use it. All right. Thank you. I'm going to move on to the next one. So. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was too. I hope she's not rushing around in too stressful. We will, we will, we will come back to this. It's okay. We'll come back to this, Emily, and just a second. Sorry for the rushing. I'll just read the third criteria and I'll get it and set up. It is the unnecessary hardship has not been created by the appellant. So these circumstances that we're talking about mitigating for with the variance request are not circumstances that have a 20-foot dirt mound on the edge of the road and then wanted a 30-foot sign, that would obviously be something that the appellant had done and that's not really what we're seeing here. Are there any questions about that one? Okay, for the variants, if authorized, shall not alter the essential character of the neighborhood or district in which the property is located, substantially or permanently, impair the lawful use or development of adjacent property, reduce access to renewable energy resources, or be detrimental to the public welfare. So, are there any questions about this? You know, we've seen that the scale of the variants requested is relatively minor given the size of the property. We, based on the size of the property, we can also surmise that it will not impair the lawful use or development of adjacent property or reduce access to renewable energy resources. Welcome back. Does anyone have any questions or comments about this one? That was variants criteria number four. And Emily, thanks for, thanks for rejoining this. Sorry, that's, that happens, it's amazing, it happened to both you and Meredith at the same time, so. It happened in a demo earlier today. She wanted to call that Chip and I were both on the person demoing software for us. Her, it's like, it's today. This is something weird. Solar flares or something. So, we heard from Chip about whether they're in answer to Abby's question about whether there is any data that shows just how much, what would the marginal benefit be of this, of the improved sign. And Chip said, you know, it is difficult to prove a negative to know what we're missing. I don't know if there's anything that you would want to add to that. Well, I guess I'm not clear on when in the meeting it's, you're inviting public comment, but Meredith Warner is a neighbor and so she might speak to this, I've also heard from neighbors and from people attending programs that they sometimes miss the turn and then go a little further and turn around, which of course is a hazard in terms of driving on a road that's 35 more, 40 miles an hour traffic, you don't really want people doing frequent turns in the middle of the road. So there might be some safety benefit to it, for sure. But yeah, I don't know and I think I hope and trust that everybody who is trying to find us eventually does find us, but is there some inconvenience? Is there sort of a sense of am I here yet? And it's this dark road at night and. Okay, all right. Kevin, did you want to chime in? No, I'm okay. I don't know if I was making some gestures, but I was disconnected for a minute and I'm just getting back in. Okay, you're fine, you're fine. All right, so thank you, we'll move on to that. And Meredith Warner, if you do want to pipe up at any point, please feel free to give away if we're on mute and we'll keep an eye on you so we can include you. Okay, so the fifth criterion of the variance is, and thank you, I do think it is important that we spend time on these because it's kind of the crux of it. The applicant is proposing the least deviation possible from these regulations that shall afford relief. And we've heard an explanation of why the sign height is proposed to be what it is and why the sign size is proposed to be what it is. Are there any more questions or comments on that criterion? Okay, so I'm going to move on from the variance criteria unless anyone has anything else they want to add about that. All right, thank you. So we've been through the general standards that included the sign standards and the variance criteria. And now what we are going to do is move on to the site plan standards, which is where we get into lighting. And like the general standards, I'm just going to note that much of this does not apply. Regarding landscaping and screening, the parcel complies with the landscaping requirements, but there is a staff suggestion that we request an updated landscaping plan because there's not one, is there one on file now, Meredith? There is one on file from, I'm sorry, I don't have the date, I'm trying to do a little tidal research. There is one on file from previous large changes, but even if we just got something with a slight annotation so that it's compiled, that would be, it's really what would be required to meet that. Okay, so is that less about where certain plantings are and more about where the sign is on the site? It's really not enough, it's more to meet that landscaping criteria of having a current landscaping plan because we ran into site plan got triggered, that's just to check the box. I see, okay, it's only to make sure that we've got the most updated plan, even if that is some annotations to the previous plan. Yeah, even if it's just taking the previous plan and writing in, oh, we're adding X, Y, and Z. Got it, okay. Thanks, would that be a doable thing for? Absolutely, yep. When I saw this in the materials, I was like, oh, right, I think I've seen that once in the past, sorry. We didn't manage to dig it out in time for this application and yeah, that would be really easy for us to. Okay. And if you needed a copy, I've got it here. I might just come to you, Meredith, thank you. That's just housekeeping with current versions, great. Okay, so that brings us to page 12 of the staff report in section 3204 of the zoning, which is outdoor lighting. And the key here is that we have a standard in the lighting that says in this district, lighting must be turned off by 9 p.m. or the close of business if later. The board may further limit the time period when signs may be illuminated as deemed necessary to achieve the purposes of the section and protect the character of the neighborhood. And the request that we're receiving is the opposite of that. It's that the lights be allowed to stay on a little later when there are things going on. So I think it would be helpful if we could learn a little bit about when things happen and how late they into the evening they usually go. So like how many times per week or month and what are your usual ending times? Sure. Let's see, naturalist journeys pre-COVID happened on Friday evenings in midwinter. So starting in early January and going through, I would say late March of the latest historically when it's been. And it's usually every other Friday unless Valentine's Day gets in the way, something like that. So a handful of Friday evenings that would, you know, it starts at seven o'clock, I believe. People, it's a very social community gathering time. So people often come a little earlier. But the lectures start, let's say, they usually go till 8.30, is that some right? And then I would say we're usually completely finished by like everybody's off the property by 9.30 at the latest. Does that sound about right? Yeah, I think that's accurate. The, and right now in the COVID era, everything's, you know, that program's completely moved online and has actually already started. We've, in October, we started doing that series and they're on Wednesdays and, you know, it's just evolving as we go. And so I don't know exactly whether we might expand that to be a longer period of the winter come post COVID days. It's really hard to predict, but if we just go by what we did in 2019, that's what we did. The other typical later in the evening season is October, maybe late September into early November is a saw-wit owl banding season. So this is when our little pint-sized migratory owls move through our area and we go out in the evening and capture them in misnets and on some nights for public education, other nights just for scientific research collection, data collection, we banned them, show them to people if there's members of the public there and then release them. That goes on well into the night, but the public portion of it is not, doesn't, it doesn't go, I don't think we would have the sign on, you know, till the wee hours. It's been a couple of years since I went, since I went to one of the public ones. Do you have a sense of when we usually wrap up in terms of when we would probably want to turn the sign light off and most people would have left? Those events can go as late as 10 o'clock, sometimes staff are there even later. However, the sign doesn't need to be illuminated that late. It's mostly for people arriving. The sign doesn't need to be lit when they're leaving, it's just so they can find us, you know. So it might only be on until eight or I'd say nine at the very latest. So it sounds like if we take some of these as a sample and these are some of the events, when it's a darker season, we're talking about usually about one event a week or fewer and till maybe 10 o'clock at the, at the latest. Yeah, I think that's about accurate. I think there was also the possibility of sort of one-off events, like, you know, a special event that might be an evening dinner, you know, sort of event where we might be open a little later. But again, I don't, I mean, promocularites don't really stay up past nine or three. So if we have an event going till 10 and we're not getting out of, and we're not turning off the light because people haven't finished leaving the parking lot so 10, 30, that would be a really rare thing, I think. Yeah. And if I remember correctly, when we approved this new site plan in 2016 or 17, there's some limitations on how you can be open anyway. And I think they're like, I don't know if Kevin remembers that from then, but it's something like, I'm not gonna guess at the time, but this has been discussed such that it's not a 2 a.m. venue kind of place. Yeah, okay. Great, okay, that gives kind of, I think that gives a pretty good sense of what the impact of lighting would be. Do other board members have questions or concerns or clarifications that like, regarding light? Okay. I guess I'm not really sure why we're really, it says right here turned off by 9 p.m. or the close of business if later. Sounds like we fall into that close of business if later category. So is there another reason why this is highlighted? No, I agree. I think that we are assessing out what the close of business looks like and what later looks like and determining that this fits in pretty well with that. So yeah, thanks for, thank you Joe, that does pretty much take it across the finish line. I think that's what we needed to determine. So right on, we don't need to think about the variance criteria for that. Doesn't make sense because it's in the standards. So Meredith, Crandall. Just gonna let you know, and then you can ask anybody else has anything else to throw in first. I wasn't able to pull up an environmental court case that was looking at the variance standards that in a specifically talking, goes into the purpose of variances if and when you're ready for that. And then once you've checked in to see if there's any other public comments of people who are on here, I do have some additional emailed in comments that I received just recently that I would need to read into the records when you're ready. But since we're getting close to the end, I wanted to throw that out there. Good, good. Before we go Russian, Russian across the finish line, that's good. So are there any other questions from board members at the moment? Okay, are there any other member, any other comments from members of the public even if you haven't spoken yet? Is there more of an official public comment period or you're ready for my comments at any point? We're ready at any point. Okay, sorry, Tom. I don't know if Meredith, Warner actually got sworn in. I think you're right. And so we need that and we would need your, when you're ready, your name and your address for the record. Sure, I can give comment now. Okay, can I swear you in, Meredith? Sure. If you wouldn't mind raising your right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury? Yes. Okay, thanks.  My name is Meredith Warner. My address is 2068 Elm Street, Montpelier. So I live just north of the North Ranchanger Center, two houses up and have been a neighbor for five years. And I guess in relationship to the sign, I would say that the one that's there now and my, you know, that view that we saw on Google Earth is a view I see every day when I come to from my house, the sign that's currently there is easily missed where it's played. It's not just the placement but the scale. You're coming around a corner and down a hill on the way out. Again, you're going kind of up an incline and around again. You know, I think, you know, I can't attest to like why people use my driveway as a turnaround but I would say that my driveway is often used as a turnaround in my house that's close to the road. So I see that happening. And so people coming out of town might miss the North Ranch and my home is one of those places where people do turn around. The new signage looks great to me. The renovations that have been done in the last few years of the North Ranch Nature Center have included changes to the lighting that's been done away that is very respectful to the neighbors and of course is really respectful to the environment and the animals and all kinds of creatures passing through. So I trust that the proposal would be used appropriately. So when they say they're going to turn it off and only use it, I'm sure that that's an honest use and also I live a little bit closer to the entry to Gould Hill Road, which is also we have a streetlight down here. So while I am in the part of Montpelier, there's more rural, we're used to having some ambient light and it's not a problem. And I actually, I think from a safety standpoint with the entry at use during events, it would be really useful to have better signage and some lighting there. So I just wanted to speak in support of a person nearby. Thank you. Thank you, Meredith. Thank you for sitting through and waiting and then adding to what we heard. I really appreciate that. Very good. Any other comments or questions? All right, so I mentioned earlier that we've been moving into deliberative session in order to deliberate. And so at this point, what I would do, oh. I've got to read the public comments. Oh, yes. Very least. Go for it. Yeah. Okay, sorry. So this is a public comment from Leslie, LES, L-I-E, PAR, P-A-R-R. She lives at 53 Cityside Drive in Montpelier, it's unit 11. And she has been a member of the North Branch Nature Center for many years. And she says that she's very pleased with the lighted larger sign as designed. It is very dark near the center and the turn into the driveway comes up pretty fast. The lighted and larger sign will be a good indicator that the turn is coming up. In the winter months and with the North Branch Nature Center's evening programming, I expect the public will appreciate the larger and well lit sign. The current sign really doesn't do the job. And I know that people who miss it have to find ways to turn around, sometimes on Gould Hill Road and even in driveways. Hoping your board agrees that our nature center deserves better, brighter and bigger signage. Thanks, Leslie, PAR. So that's that. Is there another one? There's no more public comment. I didn't know if you wanted me to bring up the VAC variants context or if you're all good with that. Let's not do that. Okay. I think, thank you. That was some quick research. Thank you. I don't think we need to go into that at this point. Okay, great. What other board members like to learn though? I'm just one person. Oh, I just closed it. I agree with your assessment of that, Kate. Okay, thanks. Now you know where to find it, Mary. That's okay. All right. So at this point, what I will do is I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing on this application and move into deliberative session at the close of the public meeting. Is there a motion to that effect? Someone. Motion by Kevin. Second. Second by Jean. I'll call the roll. Abby. Yes. Joe. Yes. Roger. Yes. Jean. Yes. Kevin. Yes. Michael. Yes. And I also vote yes. The motion has been approved. So we, what we will do is we will deliberate on this, this evening, right after this meeting. And then just as normal, you will receive a written decision as soon as possible from the board with our answer. That's all. Any other, any other questions or last comments? We just have one additional item on the agenda, which is other business. Yes. Thank you. I'll get to that. I want to, I want to thank the applicants for, for spending time helping us think through this and for your descriptions. Appreciate your participating. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You had great questions and I appreciate the opportunity. And if you have other questions that come up during your deliberation, you know, pop an email or we're happy to keep talking if they're. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you everybody. Good night. Thank you too. Good night. So the next item on our agenda is other business. The only item listed is that our next meeting is two weeks from today, November 16th. Is there any other, other business or anything else you want to add about that narrative? Not right now. Currently we still have an item for that meeting. So I'll keep you all informed. I do want to just a quick little following note. This is also for people who are watching us over Orca. City Hall will be open for voting tomorrow. Other offices in City Hall, however, will be closed. And then City Hall as a whole will be closed starting Wednesday after, you know, after election day for detailed cleaning and will not open up again to the public until next Tuesday. This is, you know, can be found on the city website. City manager's office has released stuff about this but I just wanted to make sure everybody was aware. Thanks for taking that opportunity to get the word out. Any other announcements? All right, let's, we're gonna log off this public meeting. We're going to reconvene in deliberative session and let's do that at 830. Thank you all very much.


All right, we've got Scott Power with us with Prosper Trading Academy, Garrett Kalpam and Melissa Arma. Melissa, individuals, when they hear reports like this that come out, as you remind me, they also know how much they've gained if they've been in this market even just since the beginning of this year. What do you tell them? Well, honestly, we're up since the beginning of the year still. If you look at the open of the year, even today into today's close, we are still up in the year. We still have a gain and the market is still an uptrend. But remember back in May, I told you, I didn't think this trade war was over by a long shot. And I don't want you to freak out here, but I'm going to tell you right now. I wouldn't be surprised if a deal does not get done until 2024, five years from now. It might be the last thing that Trump does if he gets reelected.  And you can see that today. You can see what's happening. The Trump administration is going to be upset by what happened today. Those tariffs are probably going to be put on in September. And when you think about it, because they devalued their currency, all the companies that are manufacturing in China, now it's costing them less because they've devalued the currency, even though they're paying the tariffs. And you got to remember when the goods come in, they come over on the boat. And when they come in from China into the U.S., there's an invoice that goes. It's from U.S. Customs. And that invoice is paid by ABC Corporation. It's not paid by consumers, but then the corporations can put it on the consumers. And so we're going to have to see really how this transpires. But the longer it goes on, there's a chance that it will be put on by consumers. Well, Gary, that is the fear, right? I mean, as many of these companies and distributors that Melissa talks about, try to absorb the body blows of these tariffs and help, in fact, buy the Chinese doing what they're doing with their currency, that can only get you so far, right? Peter Navarro says that's wrong, but no doubt it's right. Look, I think the big story here is not just the tariffs. I think the big story is the back and forth on the tariffs, that the market sits and waits and hears something, and then it changes. And I think the markets were set up to correct a little bit, but I think this really, you know, lit it up. And I have to tell you, since the news came out, the Dow is down 1,450 points. Apple is down $115 billion of wealth. So if he was determined to do something that would work, we just lost trillions of dollars of the wealth effect because of markets. And I got a sneaking suspicion. There's probably more to come. And I have a sneaking suspicion. The president may have to pivot again. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the Fed is on big-time watch here. And I suspect maybe an intra-meeting cut sooner rather than later if this continues. So you'd have a cut before the next plan meeting in September, if you're right. Oh, if the market keeps going down, absolutely, because I think they're market people, not economy. You know, let me ask you about that, Scott. I noticed JPMorgan, a big financial firm, what says you buy on the dip. And I'm wondering if you subscribed to that view. This would constitute a dip. So what do you do? There's no question about that. And if you've followed that over the last, you know, five, six, seven years, you've done really well. And I don't see it really any differently right now. Maybe the steep decline has added some volatility. Maybe there's a bit more risk into doing that this time. But I really think that the bearers who have taken hold here over the last few weeks, last month or so, I think they really better watch out because just as we were a tweet away from the 1,400-point drop that we've seen over the last week, we're probably a tweet away at seeing much of that recovering on the upside. I don't know that that's going to happen. However, I really do think that the pain that the U.S. is now starting to feel that maybe our administration underestimated coming from China, I think that is going to start taking effect. And like your previous guest just said, I really believe we're going to see President Trump start to pivot a little bit just to stabilize. We know that he really wants to see the stock market stabilize. We know that he wants the Fed to cut rates even further. So I truly, truly believe we will see some positive news coming out before we see the next salvo shot across the bow here. All right, we'll see. Guys, I want to thank you all very, very much. What if I told you deal or no deal, whether we get one or not? The die is already cast. China's going to have to live with the fact that a lot of U.S. corporations have already made plans to do a lot of stuff outside of China. And the president's going to have to live with the fact that the bang for the buck that he thought he'd get might not materialize at all, even if he gets a deal.


Welcome back everyone of the lunch, so we'll start with the first session post lunch. So I'm very happy to welcome Neelish. So Neelish is going to give a talk on securing Kubernetes best practices and effective strategies. So he has over eight years of industry experience and I think we'll be really getting a lot of insights from him. Thank you. Thank you and hi everyone. So I'm here to talk about securing Kubernetes and what are the effective strategies and best practices that you can do. So I'm not from around here, I'm from Sri Lanka, so I flew yesterday and I also run a similar community called Cloud Native Sri Lanka back in Sri Lanka. So let's look at the Kubernetes attack surface. Before I do this, I just want a raise of hands. Who runs Kubernetes, like manage Kubernetes clusters, show of hands? That's a few of you, right? What do you use? OpenShift or Rancher? Or just Cubed here? Rancher? All right. Okay. So this is actually relevant to a lot of people. So the people who run in the cloud manage GKE, AKS, EKS, they only have to manage their application vulnerabilities, but the people who run their own clusters, the first entry vector is your control plane components. You have the API server running, you have the HCD API, you know all of your control plane components are over there, so you have to protect those. The next one is the application vulnerabilities. If somebody hacks into one of your containers, they can execute a remote shell, talk to your services, do mess up your cluster quite badly. Then let's say your VMs are on a public network and connected over the internet or something like that. So then Cubelet API is another place that you have to take a look at and protect because that's the place where all the container, the Docker daemon and everything that runs is managed by Cubelet. You can do quite a lot of damage if you get a Cubelet access. There's a lot of light coming from there. Then finally accessing your virtual machines. If somebody hacks in against SSH access or something into your virtual machines, they can again ping your services and because the network is still there, so they can do quite a lot of damage on that front as well. Okay. So let's start with protecting your applications first because that applies to everyone here. And then let's look at how to manage the cluster level components. So the first thing when you are doing application security is securing your CI CD pipeline. That's the first thing that you've got to do. Then in CI CD pipeline, there are a few stages.  And across all these stages, you have auditing and monitoring. Then at build and test, you have static security testing. And across again, all the stages, you have vulnerability testing. And then at deploy stage, you have runtime security. So at the source level, I'll just talk about auditing and monitoring for a second because I don't have a slide on that. At the source level, it's basically developer best practices, putting proper PRs and doing all of that which enables you to do proper auditing and monitoring. At build level and test level, it's the way you run your static scanning and then log them and then create GIT issues if there are problems, if you ignore issues, the whole process that you do. And at deploy level, basically the logs of your runtime security. So static security testing, the first one I'm going to talk about is image vulnerability scanning. And I believe all of you know how images work. Image has a base layer. So each image is built with layers on top of them. So if at least one layer is, you know, Compromiser has a vulnerability, it would go on to the other layers, as you can see from the example. So by exploiting a vulnerable image that is running, you can do quite a lot of damage, you can do privilege escalation, you can get remote shell access, information can be leaked. Like for example, if you are, I've seen certain companies like bake credentials into the image rather than mount. So I've seen that quite a lot. I see some of you are smiling, maybe you're doing that, don't do it. So DDoS attacks and all of that, right? So yeah, so to avoid this, so basically to avoid information leaks, basically scanning is not going to help you. It's a developer practice that you have to do, don't bake credentials into images. But other vulnerabilities, you can quite easily scan and fix using tools like Clare, Trevi, Snike and few others. And also a rule of thumb is use small images like Alpine images to start with or official images. They have the least set of vulnerabilities. And there are scenarios where, you know, there are vulnerabilities which has not been fixed yet. So in my company, what we do is in such cases, we create a gate tissue and then we ignore it and we move forward and then we fix it later if it's not critical. But it depends on the processes that you have and you know the risk assessment and all of it that your particular company has. Right, the next one is code vulnerability scanning. Basically scan your entire code, like there are tools like Sonacube, et cetera, which does quality gates and scans whether you have hard coded passwords and stuff like that in it, which would love you to figure out whether there are any vulnerabilities in the packages that you have imported to your code and all of that and fix how to fix those. Again, this goes with the security practices that your company has and the policies.  There are scenarios where you can't do it and you somehow have to fix it and then push it. Then finally, configuration scanning. So there are tools like Chekov, CubeSec, Conf Test, et cetera, which basically scans your configuration files, like the YAMLs that you import on Argo CD. It would test those and against a bunch of policies or best practices, it would tell you, for example, let's say that you haven't set security context on your deployment. So it would tell you that you have to do this as a best practice, et cetera.  So I thought I'd talk about Kubernetes Admission Controller here. So this is how it works. If you are using something like Open Policy Agent, which you can say, you can only run pods, run images of a certain registry and nothing else. What you can do is Admission Controller has two webhooks, one called Validating Webhook and another one called Mutating Webhook. What the mutating webhook do is, according to a given logic and a bunch of annotations, you can actually change the content of the YAML before it gets applied and executed. Whereas the Validating Webhook, all it does is it scans your YAML and then makes a decision where they should go forward and get applied or get denied. And then these plug into third party policy controllers like the Open Policy Agent. Yeah, so that's how Kubernetes Admission Controller works. And if you do employ something like Open Policy Agent, this is how it would look like once you enforce certain rules on Kubernetes configurations. The next one is Container Hardening. How do you harden your containers? Pretty basic stuff, removing Bash and Shell is one of the best ways you can stop people from executing into your container and doing stuff. If you look at Kubernetes API server and all of it, you can't really SSH into them because they have removed Bash and Shell. Then the next one is making your root file system read-only. We make sure that your application is your container and your container is stateless and also no intruder can come and write things into your file system.  Then you use MTDIRs. Then you mount it into your certain parts and then it allows you to do writes but the base-contain image at the file system you cannot. Then finally, run as a non-root user. So certain images, they do need privileged users, like for example, if you're running Falco, you need a root user. But other than that, normal applications like your Java app, your Python app, et cetera, which are non-system apps, make sure to run them as non-root so that even if somebody SSH is in and attacks your container, they will be restricted within that, they will not go into the VM level. Then let's say that the image is already built, you don't have control over the image, all you can have is the control of running it. Then there are a few things you can do as well. You can use a startup probe and execute a shell command to remove bash of your container. That's quite easy to do. Then there are in-security context policies. You can set as run as group, run as user, and run as non-root to set things up. And also, as I mentioned earlier, enforce these roles using Open Policy Agent. So that's how those are the strategies you have for container hardening. Container runtime security. This is where when we do all our scans and everything is fine, but at runtime, there are some malicious code that is running, and we don't know, like maybe a Bitcoin mining or something like that, we haven't captured at runtime level, the static scanning level. So little intro on how our containers work. As you can see, physical hardware runs below, and then we have the Linux kernel, and then we have the Linux container LXC running. It is like the virtualization. And then you have containers running. So basically, if all of these containers are now talking through syscalls to your kernel of the VM to execute processors and commands. So if there's a vulnerability in your kernel, the containers actually can exploit it and then attack other containers in your VM. So in a single, tenanted scenario, this is not a big case. But if your cluster is, let's say, multi-tenanted, like you have outsourced certain namespaces to third-party software vendors or whoever that's building in your infrastructure, this could be a problem. That's where container sandboxing comes into play. By using container sandboxing like GVisor, Kata containers, et cetera, they would isolate your container processors in such a way that they cannot be exploited and attack other. Your kernels cannot be exploited using those. If container sandboxing is not an option, the other option you have is using other app armor or seccomp profiles. Using either app armor or seccomp profiles, what you can do is you can actually restrict processors or syscalls happening in your kernel. And then you can actually say, these are the syscalls that are allowed and anything other than that is not allowed. So there are standard default seccomp and app armor profiles available. So you can use those to run your normal applications. And then there are other tools that continuously monitor what happens in your runtime processors. One tool is called sysdig falco, which is open source. By utilizing that, you can quite easily it has a default rule set as well. So if somebody has executed a remote shell or if someone is writing into the file system, it automatically gives an alert and you can act accordingly. So these are the strategies for you to manage container runtime security. This is a general rule of thumb, basically. Don't use environment variables. Always mount them as files. And then if you are managing secrets, it's recommended to use an external vault like HashiCorp vault or in the clouds, they already have secret managers available. And as a developer discipline, do not log sensitive information. I've been with certain organizations that there have been PII issues and other issues where they've logged tokens and et cetera when an error has been thrown. So yeah, that's a developer discipline that you have to do. So that's it. And then this is for if you're running multiple tenants on your Kubernetes cluster, isolating your network. One is namespaces. But I think a previous peak already spoke that namespaces is a very weak isolation. So you have to harden it. So one way of hardening is using network policies. By using network policies, you can quite easily say the containers in this namespace cannot talk to the containers in the other namespace. It's sort of like a firewall. And then even if you have API gateways, you can actually make sure even the internal services can go through the API gateway with authentication. But if not, then there's nothing much you can do. Or use MTLS with a service measures, I think Syllium now has MTLS with EBBF. But here's the thing. Just because you install LinkerD or Istio and enabled automatic MTLS doesn't mean you are secure. It basically identifies who's talking to who. That's it. You have to attach network policies to so that you can govern and say, only this can talk to this one. MTLS would just encrypt your network traffic, which is good. But you need the whole solution. That is it, or isolating your tenants in the network. So here's a small example of how network policies work. As you can see, there's an ingress all allowed policy for the simple app namespace. And the request do come to web server. And within it, we have added network policies so that web server cannot talk to database. And web server can only talk to the Python backend. And Python backend can talk to the database. So because web server is the public exposed one, if somebody hacks into web server and gains shell access to the web server, they can only attack Python backend. They cannot directly attack the database. So that is how you do security. Right. So the next one is protecting your control plane. I think I'm about time also. Right. So hardening your Kubernetes cluster. So I heard from some people that they have created clusters using Rancher. I think by default, Rancher do enable audit logging. But just to make sure, I think the default way they do it, they don't mount the audit policies and then mount the logs back into your VM so that you can take a look later. So that's very important. So when you enable audit logging via RKE or something else, you have to make sure you give a path to log the audit. And also, not just the path is enough, you have to mount a host path. You have to basically provide a path on the host and mount it to the API server so that it's actually retained. Even if the API server dies and restarts, the logs are retained on your master node. So that's very important because I've seen a lot of enterprises when I asked them, oh, I have audit logs enabled. So can I see that? And then when you access into the VM, there's no audit logs that you can see. So they have actually enabled the audit logs. But they're actually writing within the API server container, not in the VM. So you have to mount the host path volume so that you can retain it. The other one is use CIS-hardened node images. I think if you're running even Azure or Google and if you're running your own clusters rather than managed services, they have in their marketplace CIS-hardened images. Use those to spin up your nodes. And even on-premises, I think there are CIS-hardened Ubuntu and whatever available. So you can use those. And then another one is encrypting at CD. I don't think Rancher, by default, encrypts at CD. I'm not sure. But it's a good practice for you to encrypt at CD as well. Like if somebody hacks into your VMs, like let's say, an example, or somebody from Mission Impossible comes into your enterprise, right? You hack into your VM, but you look at the at CD. It's encrypted. But yeah, of course, if it's Mission Impossible, they decrypt it. But in the real world, I think they'll find it hard. So yeah. And I already mentioned this. Mount your secrets as files and not as environment variables. Because if it is environment variables, what happens is, if somebody hacks into your VM, they are able to actually list the environment variables via the process. There's a way you can do it. But if it is files, then actually you can't do that. So that's why it's recommended for you to mount your secret as files. And also, don't keep the Kubernetes secrets. Just use something else, like Hasagop Key Vault or something else, or even Bitnami Secrets is fine. So yeah. I'll just do a quick round off on Kubernetes RBAC. I think there's another talk coming late on OIDC and how to connect with Kubernetes. So just the basics. In Kubernetes, there's nobody, like, doesn't have a concept called users. So users are managed externally. So Kubernetes don't have a resource called users. It's a matter of where we create a key pair, and then we authorize it with the CA of the cluster, sign it off, and then that person who has the key pair can actually access the cluster. Kubernetes has a concept of service accounts in which, using the service accounts, you can provide some roles, and et cetera, and which can be mounted into your containers. And then you can use Kubernetes API. So when it comes to permissions, we have roles and role binding. And then we have cluster roles and cluster role bindings. As the name suggests, role is binded with a namespace. So if you have a certain role, like read secrets, it's only available in that namespace. And when you do a role binding for a user or a service account, they can only execute that only in that namespace. Whereas cluster role is cluster level. And if, let's say, me, Nilesh, I have the cluster role of reading secrets, if I do a cluster role binding to me, then I can actually read secrets of all namespaces. But if I do a role binding with a namespace, attached, I can only read from that namespace. So there's no way in Kubernetes you can do, like Nilesh can only read these namespaces. There's no way. If you want to do something like that, you have to do role bindings per namespace. That's how you do it. And this is an example. I just gave an example too, so I'll just quickly go through. John has a role binding. So there are two secret roles, read secret role, and read write secret cluster role. And then on full namespace, John has the read secret role bind into John, so he can actually read secrets in the full namespace. But if you look at Jane and Admin, Jane is connected to the cluster role with a namespace bound role binding. And Admin has a cluster role binding to the cluster role. So as you can see with the red markers, that Admin can actually read all the namespaces, whereas Jane can only read and write into the full namespace. So that's it. All right, so we are at the end of my presentation. So final thought is, in Kubernetes, it's not new now, but for a lot of security engineers and et cetera, it's still new. They are figuring it out. And there are vulnerabilities exploited every day. And if you are running cloud-managed Kubernetes, you only have to worry about your application security. Everything else is managed by the cloud control plane. And if you do run with proper best practices and proper developer self-discipline, you should be all right. So that's the end of my presentation. Thank you so much. Any questions? Right. What level should we use, PSP, or what are your thoughts? So her question was, I think, pod security policies versus open policy agent. As far as I know, with Kubernetes 1.23 or 2.2 onwards, pod security policies were deprecated. And they are also enabling you to work dynamically with something like open policy agent to have some set of rules and then go through that. Because I believe pod security policies are a bit limited on scope. That's why they deprecated it. So now the Kubernetes community, Kubernetes is also recommending you to use something like OPA to have set of rules and then use their gatekeeper to enforce those with the webhooks that I explained in the slide. All right. Any other questions? Yeah. Day nodes, master nodes, and the EDSD will be there. The synchronization between the applications and the ramp with request comes, load will be very high. So in that case, when we do for each request is there an encryption mode. So it will increase the load of performance in the grid. So how we can increase the input mode if the performance is very important for the EDSD type? Right. So interesting question. So his question was, when you have multiple EDSD nodes and when you enable encryption, and then if you have a lot of load coming in and if performance is your core requirement, how do you do it, whether there's a problem? So I personally, there are limits in EDSD as far as I know as well. And of course, encryption and decryption would give you a performance, a slight performance one as well. So I actually managed the Sri Lankan government election Kubernetes clusters. So we did encounter that as well, because on election nights there are a lot of requests coming in and polling and all of it. But here's the thing. It's a trade-off, either it's performance or security. In the government scenario, it was security for us. So the performance issue was a trade-off that we had to endure. So sometimes those are trade-offs. There's no magic solution for stuff like that. One more question. So these security things, right? So let's say the read-only and all these things, even if I said, how can I monitor that all my nodes? Let's say if I'm running a big cluster or multiple clusters, how can I monitor? Are there any tools from which we can see what are the open security issues that are right? Because, let's say, part of the teams are implemented and some don't, right? How can I manage that? Yeah. So this is where the build versus buy thing comes into play. So there are tools that actually love you to do that, but you've got to pay for them. One thing is, I don't know whether it is. I think I can talk about Sysdig, right, and CNCF1. So Sysdig is one of such tools. Then there are other new act and few others as well that does it for you. But if you were to do it yourselves using only open source, then you probably need to have a good platform in your team with CubeSec, sorry, Falco setup, Open Policy Agent setup, and do continuous scanning. Because let's say I scanned my image today and it passed and it's now running on the cluster. And then you haven't done a deployment for about a week or a month. They have a lot of, remember the log4j incident? Log4j was an exploitation that has been existed for a while in Java. So you have to continuously run static scans as well against your stuff, yeah. But Sysdig, it will automatically do the live monitoring. So in Sysdig, can we see a live monitoring? Will it automatically keep looking for that continuous? It does. As far as I know, it does. So don't take my word for it, check it out. But as far as I know, they do. Got it. OK, thank you. OK. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Loh. Thank you. Thank you so much.