I think so. So public comment, is there anyone from the public out there? There's not. All right. Move on to approval of previous meeting minutes. We've got May 11th and June 6th. We can take them one at a time unless you want to take them both together. Yeah. And just as a point of reference, the May 11th meeting, we tabled from our last meeting in order to update part of the discussion towards the under item Roman numeral five. So I've added some new language there for folks. What are the wishes of the commission? I thought both drafts were fine. You want to make a motion to approve both? Yeah, sure. OK, so I have a second to that. A second. Any corrections, edits, questions, comments? Bring none. All in favor of approving the minutes as presented. Please say aye or raise your hand. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstain? OK. Next, we have the annual election of officers. So that's right. What's that? Oh, sorry. I was just going to do a quick introduction, but go ahead. Oh, no, if you want to do an introduction, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, annually, we elect our officers, specifically the chair, the vice chair and secretary included with the agenda was a memo just kind of outlining the three roles and who has been in those positions for the past year. So this is something we've done annually. So just a more of a housekeeping matter. So we'll start with any any motions for chair.  If you want to become chair or want someone else to become chair, Mike, I'll make a motion that you retain your seat as chair. You're doing a fabulous job. Yeah. Thank you, Tommy. I'll second the motion volunteering, Mike, to remain in his position. Any other nominations for chair? Hearing none, I would ask all those in favor, please say aye. Hi. Hi. OK, now vice chair. Currently, I was the vice chair. Do I have any any nominations for vice chair? Well, I'll just take this again and say that I think both of you are doing a fabulous job. So Abby, please stay on as vice chair. I'll second that. Abby, I'm assuming you're OK with that. Yeah, OK. Any other nominations for vice chair? OK, hearing none, all in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Hi. Hi. And you want to pose. OK. So Abby. Is that and we have an open position as secretary is anyone anyone want to make a nomination or or volunteer for this position? Eric has been doing it. We've been getting along that way. But it is it is a officer position. So if anyone wants to volunteer or nominate someone, Abby, go ahead. Yeah, I'm happy to nominate anybody that's interested in this position. Is anybody interested? So everyone jump up at once just for reference, Brendan and Connor are not eligible to be officers because of their alternates. Too bad. Sorry. Oh, man. What was that big sigh of relief? I just heard it's been working pretty well the way we have it. I don't know. Just just for my own not knowledge, there's no by statute. There's no there's no issue with us continuing with this arrangement. I don't believe so. There's not not that I'm aware of. OK. Are you doing that? I mean, we could still nominate someone to the role and I can continue doing what I've been doing. If if that's if that's holding somebody back, just so we have the the the spot filled. But I'm happy to support the Planning Commission, however I need to. And Eric, I thank you for that. Yeah, this, yeah, they're good looking minutes. So I'm getting the sense that no one wants to step up. OK. Well, I guess we're going to leave that position open, Eric. OK. All right. So let's move on to review of the and approval of the FY 24 work plan. So included with the agenda was a draft of the FY 24 work plan. This is something, again, that we've been doing annually, really just to kind of lay out some of what the work tasks will be for the Planning Commission. It's not intended to be a hard and fast list of things that we need to check off, but really to try to coincide with whatever the city council has identified as their priorities. This year's list looks a lot like last year, the little bit of formatting differences. But a lot of the same a lot of the same activities, basically finalizing design review, just general zoning updates, review and update of parking regulations. And both of those will kind of go hand in hand with some of the requirements that we'll need to some sorry, some of the changes we will need to make based on the statutory updates that were incorporated with Act 47, also referred to as S 100 and then looking at any potential incentives for development priorities. I will also note that myself and Mike and the mayor met back in I want to say June, maybe to talk about what a draft might look like and kind of start to form up some of it. So they've both seen this draft in advance of tonight's meeting, but happy to discuss any parts of this that you might have questions on. Anyone have any questions? I would also mention that they're not necessarily in a particular order. So item one is not the first item that we'll be working on. It just happens to be the item we're currently working on. So we may jump around in this and add things as council updates, their priorities or other commissions work feeds into our work to kind of formalize what how that goes forward to council. So again, more just kind of a general guide for what what types of things we'll be working on over the next year. Questions, comments. Well, just one comment was that I noticed under one of the 2023-2024 work plan items was the coming up of the plan for the senior center in the future of that property. And I I have to admit a bit of frustration with seeing that because I feel like since probably about July of 2020, I've brought this up under new business as far as something for council to consider. And now here we are in 2023 discussing it when I'm not really sure what this this commission's role could be in that. Joe, we don't know yet. The sale hasn't completed. We don't know what the buyer's intentions are, even if that does go through. That's why it remains on the list because there's so much is still up in the air. It's on there for kind of a placeholder. There might not be a role for this commission, but we wanted to call it out just in case there is there enough. Thank you, Mayor Lott. Brendan, I saw your hand up. Did you have a question as well or was that inadvertent? It was inadvertent. Got it. OK. So if everyone's OK or has no other questions, I believe we have to approve this. So I'd be looking that. Or can we do it by consensus?  But if if y'all just want to give a nod and say, yes, this looks good, I think that works too. So I don't want to make a notion, a notion, a motion to approve the work plan. Or are you more comfortable just saying, yeah, we agree with it. Let's just move on. And I get the sense it's the latter. OK, why don't we just agree that that the consensus of the commission is that we're good with the with the work plan and we will follow it. As required, as necessary. OK, OK. Thank you very much. You're going to find my handwritten notes here. So then we're looking at the continued discussion of unified land use and development regulations, section 4.4. Eric. Yep. Thank you very much. So this will be a continued discussion of design review, as noted in the work plan. This is one of the items that we have on the list with that said, it is not a council priority, but they have given us some runway to continue this work since we've already started it prior to or so since we started it in the previous fiscal year. So this is something that we're trying to work through and to hopefully get wrapped up sooner than later so that it's it's not something that will get potentially bumped by other council priorities. So we did we got into a lot of the discussion at our last meeting on June, June 8th. So I will try to do a quick recap of some of that discussion and then get into some of the changes and the new language. I think what we talked about at our last meeting was was really pretty much the meat of the regulations. So I want to make sure that we're comfortable with what's being covered under this and what actions are going to really be covered by the design review section. So I will share my screen so you can all see what I'm seeing and give me one second to rearrange a few things. OK, so at our last meeting, we discussed the applicability and the covered actions. So there's really no changes to part B, the applicability from the last discussion. Under the covered actions, the first four are basically the same as well. There's no changes really there. Well, sorry, one, two and three and parts A and B of four haven't really changed. At our last meeting, we did talk about exterior materials and had some I think some some pretty good discussion about that and how changes to the exterior materials may not necessarily need to go through some level of design review. I think, Joe, you made the point of the fact that you can change the exterior materials, but then you can always change them back potentially. So so what I'm proposing here is that we would strike exterior materials, which is why it's showing up in both red and strike out. And then items five and six. I did edit fairly heavily from our last meeting based on those discussions, but I'm also proposing that we potentially strike these two items as well, mostly because they start to kind of blend into more building code related and they're not necessarily actions that would would automatically trigger any type of zoning review aside from being included in design review. So item five is really any modifications to doors and windows and other exterior openings. With the exception of life safety or ADA accessibility. And then item six is I think where we had a lot of the discussion was this this this notion of modifications to exterior elements and what that might look like. So again, these are both items that are more heavily regulated under the building side than under the the zoning side. So I don't know if it's appropriate to have these included under the zoning section as I don't know kind of what the pathway forward would be to really make sure that we're capturing those as they go through, because I don't always see applications for building permits as the zoning administrator. Otherwise, the rest of this section is still pretty much how it was previously. So I'll stop with that and just take any comments or questions on those changes. Anyone? Thoughts? So in number three, any new construction. So how are we, I don't even know how to ask the question really. If we're striking number six, if we're working on a building that exists, but part of the character or part of what makes the building historically interesting is where the windows are and where the doors are, how do we, how are we gonna incorporate that? Yeah, so I think depending on what they're doing, existing buildings would be covered under item four, but this is really only gonna impact height and dimensions. So some of those things like openings and whatnot would not be covered. But let me restart that over. We could cover those by leaving item five in. So, but again, as I mentioned, typically if somebody's coming in to replace their windows, I may not ever see that application because that's a building permitting side, not a zoning side. We don't regulate windows under zoning. That's not to say that we couldn't have some level of regulation through this design review standard, but it's not currently in the pathway. So that'll just take some internal administrative work to kind of capture those projects and make sure they are getting properly reviewed through some sort of design review district. But for new construction, it would basically cover anything that's new construction under item three. And a lot of that would be, the way that I would envision that is that the review would be primarily to make sure that whatever's being built fits into the context and the area where it's located. So if there were to be a completely vacant lot, for example, on mansion street, the new construction that would be incorporated there would be reviewed against the existing structures as far as kind of the rhythm of the building, the facade style, the roof line, things of that nature to make sure that new construction is gonna fit in with what's existing. Eric, I think that without either five or six, we're really not doing anything for existing structures that we're concerned about. There's nothing in there that would tell me that I couldn't do something major to, I don't know, let's just use the stonehouse because we've been using that. Yep. So I think that something needs to be there or it's lost its meaning to me. Yeah, and you're absolutely right, Tommy. I think that is one of the challenges with striking both five and six. Now, for an existing building, if they were going to, for example, alter the height or some of the exterior dimensions, say for example, adding on new square footage, that would get captured through this design review. But if they were to look at changing, for example, the exterior materials or replacing the windows in the exact same opening, that would not necessarily get captured with the design review as proposed with what you're looking at on the screen. Picking up on Tommy's comment, I kind of have the same thing that we don't necessarily want to nitpick, but for windows, for example, if they replace what is really a historic feature of the building and double the size of it, so they take that away, I would think that we want to have something in there, but, and I don't know where we say it, but if you're replacing a window, it doesn't have to be specifically the materials that were used, but it should mimic what was there. We'll be in keeping with, yeah. I agree, and that kind of leads me to, number six seems to capture that in a way that does allow some flexibility, but speaks to the historic nature of the building. Yeah, I would agree with that too. Yeah, and it's, again, to be clear, I'm not opposed to keeping five and six in. I'm just suggesting that because those are more related to building code items, they're not necessarily, they don't take some additional work for us to capture those through a zoning standard. I think, yeah, I think six in some ways to me is more important than five, but. I agree. Yeah. And I would raise a bit of concern with on number three, which Sarah was discussing earlier, the 50 feet caveat. I don't know why if you have a deep law on that that exempts you from going to this review. Yeah, so I think that was really, I added that more as a clarification for what was previously there, where it just said a new structure, or sorry, any construction of a structure subject to view from a public street. I was trying to put some parameter on what that view could be. Okay. So that's why I added the 50 foot and mostly part of that comes from in our form base code, there's a standard that says clearly that it's the definition of clearly visible from the street space that is defined as any element that's within 40 feet of the street space is considered to be clearly visible. And so we have standards that do not apply if they're further than 40 feet from the street space. So that was kind of the reasoning behind why I chose. Okay. I added that additional language more just to specify what that distance from the public street was, but happy to consider other options. Yeah, the other thing I would add about three is three, correct me if I'm wrong, Eric only applies to new building construction. So, I mean, I think what we're most concerned about with this design review is like losing or altering existing buildings as opposed to, I mean, I understand a new building can affect the overall feel of the neighborhood, but I think all else being equal, I think we're more worried about sort of losing what we have as opposed to new things coming in. Yeah. I mean, we could just make number three any new construction and just leave it at that unless it's an exempt building. The other part of the reason I think why I wanted to include the 50 foot is because if somebody was putting up, for example, an accessory structure that would be behind the building that's larger than what we exempt currently, I wouldn't want them to have to go through design review to put up a shed that's, for example, that's 110 square feet rather than 100 square feet or if they already have one, if they already have an accessory structure having to come through to get a second one reviewed through design review. Okay, so I guess I don't have a problem with it if we're considering that this is entirely new construction. I guess I'm thinking of new construction as being like, in some ways, new construction could be an addition that outshadows an existing structure. Yeah, so for an addition, I would review that under number four where it's changing the exterior dimensions of the building of an existing building. Okay, and just as long as we're, that's clear, I'm fine with it then. So yeah, I guess I would say that six I would feel uncomfortable with striking because I think we were trying to wordsmith that a little bit last meeting. Yep, yeah, and what's here is that new language, the wordsmith language, actually I've got the, so the previous version of the design review was under E here of what is now that number six just so you can see the comparison. So D is now number five and E is now number six. So that's how they were previously worded in the version you reviewed back in June. Okay. And so now they're written up in this new language. Who would you've struck? Well, proposed to be stricken. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you wrote it and you struck it, right? Happy to, yeah, exactly, right. I wanted you to see what I was proposing but then also considering removing it. Again, the reason that I chose to show this as a possible deletion is because it's more, like I said, more building code rather than zoning code. So. I think we also were sort of talking last time about what we're trying to do is actually create a couple of levels. I mean, it's unfortunate that someone's gonna have to go through those but it gives some more opportunity for input. And so having this, even though I see your point, I think I agree with others that it makes sense to keep it. Yeah, and I'm happy to keep them both in. I have no problem with that. Just I wanted to have that discussion with you all as well just to make sure that. Well, I think in number six, Eric, you've covered much of what we would be concerned about in number five without getting to the detail of some of the doors, windows, siding, that kind of thing. Number six, I think captures that. I like what you did with number six. Yeah. Is there a reason not to keep five? Also. Well, that's true. Those including elements or reduction of existing windows and doors. I think that's a pretty important part of the conversation if you're trying to keep some of the integrity of an older structure. And in this case in five, I added the wording for just the front and side of the building. So if it's something on the rear of the building that's not gonna be visible, it's not as critical because it's at least from the, I would say from the streets side of things, it's you're not gonna notice those changes. Yeah. Which I think is good. Works for me. Yeah, I would be in favor of keeping them as well. I feel like it covers the intent, some of the intent of why we're working on this. Yeah. So keeping five and six? Yes. I would just in five, let's say look at on the front or side, I think I'd make side plural. Oh, okay. And then Joe, I just wanted to ask you the exterior material. So C, with comfortable letting that go, crossing that one out? I would say so. I think so too. That's gonna be too much of a can of worms. Yeah. And I think some of that will be covered under six because if the exterior is what's really contributing to the building, then I think it'll be addressed there. Right. And ideally, I think we're trying to write these too so that we can work with property owners to have some of that. That would be the objective. That's the objective. That works and I don't know. Right. Okay, so keeping in five and six, but eliminating, but okay with eliminating C, the exterior materials. Right. Okay, great. Let me, number three, are we changing that based on the conversation we had to say any new construction of a building or structure unless or leave it the way it is? Go ahead, Brandon. I like the 50 feet language that Eric put in. I'm satisfied by your explanation about not wanting to require like an accessory dwelling unit that's not exempt from review, like not wanting to add another layer of design review to something like that. Unless they're changing the height or overall size, correct? Is that how it works? But that's three only applies to a new construction of a building. So I read three as it's got to be an entirely new structure. I think if you're changing an existing structure, if you're adding to an existing structure that's covered under four. That's how I intended it to be, yes. That three would be for something that's brand new. You've got a vacant lot and you're starting over. I could also add in under number three that any new construction of a, I think it's we either define it as a principle or a primary. I forget which one it is, but I could add that wording in as well so that it distinguishes the primary structure versus an accessory structure. Yeah. That sounds a little airy. I think that makes sense. And then we could eliminate the need for the 50 feet because it would be the primary structure regardless of where it is on the lot. Right. Yeah. Christine, I see your hand up. Yeah, sorry, I'm eating my dinner again, but I got a little confused during this discussion. Am I following this correctly that in the district, building a brand new building has to go through this design review process? Is that what this is saying? That's what number three is saying, yes. Can I ask what the purposes of that is if we're focused on historic preservation? So the intent there would be so that the new construction would have some relationship to the location where it's being built. So if it is in an area that has, for example, a large number of historic buildings or potentially historic buildings that the new construction would have some relationship to those existing buildings, as far as things like the roof line, the overall height, the general character of the building itself. Right. And I think to, if I can further elaborate on that, what we've been discussing about as far as a design review district, it's not something just to implement. We can't quite do it only to target historic buildings. Am I right, Herrick? That's correct. That's to be a little bit more of a holistic approach. That's right. Although I guess to the members, oh, sorry. Sorry, I missed the last meeting, so maybe you discussed this, but have design review districts been identified or has that process not yet? Not yet. We generally had a, there's a, we had an initial discussion several meetings ago, but we have not, we've not gotten into that, into the actual district boundaries yet. So at this point, it could be like a couple small sections or one big section. We're not confined around that, okay. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I guess though, to the mayor's point, maybe that's a question for you all is, do we want to regulate new construction, brand new construction completely, or are we only looking at existing buildings? I'd like to have the new construction fall within that. That seems to be what I hear a lot of people in the community say, you know. I agree. Buildings are looking all the like and they're not fitting against buildings next to them. Well, in some, so also just to that point under, under B, it built up properties in the gateway district would not go through design review except for demolition. So there would be a, their design review would be covered under the gateway, the gateway district regulations. So those would not go through a design review except for demolition. But why, but why is that? Because there's already design review standards included with the gateway district. As far as the type of materials that need to be used for windows and doors and the type of materials for siding, there's a certain percentage of primary materials and secondary materials that need to be used. There's also specific standards on the amount of the amount of fenestration that a building can have or the building has to have within certain parameters. So there's already some pretty stringent design review standards for the gateway. So this would fall outside of those districts. Just to interject to them, my understanding is that Winooski is fairly unique in that to have form-based code implemented but not with design review paired with it. Well, I'm not sure if I can, that I don't know. I think all the form-based codes that I'm familiar with all have some slight nuance of difference in how they're implemented but they generally have their own component of design review because it's based on the form of the building itself and less about the use. So the form is really what is regulated in this, which is basically how ours is regulated as well that we have specific requirements on story height, on overall building height, on exterior materials, et cetera, et cetera. I think though that one of the things picking up on that and also what I think Sarah commented on people talking about, unfortunately in the gateway districts, we're seeing boxes go up. So even though there are design criteria, is it doing what we want it to do? Well, I think that would be a separate discussion for what we can do with the gateway regulations rather than trying to capture that here with the design review because then that basically undermines a large component of the gateway district making it more of an administrative process. So if we add in design review for anything in the gateway, then it basically kind of makes that a more cumbersome process than it was ever intended to be. And I see the mayor has her hand up. Yeah, I was just gonna along those lines. That is, correct me if I'm wrong, Eric, but that is a role that this body could play is to just adjust the standards within the form-based code regulation without adding a new design overlay. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So I just wanna put this out there. Given that the gateways aren't included by this, nor is the downtown because those areas already have design review. Whatever district that's likely proposed is probably gonna be a more residential like duplex or single family area. And are we asking people who build a new small home like that to go through this process and have their designs like gotten into detail by a board? Yeah. I would just reflect on that. Yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to do. Well, I guess to that point, we could also, for example, under item three, we could, as an alternative, we could limit the review to multi-unit buildings as well or only to multi-unit buildings. So if it's, for example, if it's gonna be a single unit dwelling, it would not need to go through design review. But if it was going to be, say, for example, a three or four unit building in the district, then it would go through design review for that new construction piece. I'm not sure I see this as really that tough. I mean, someone builds it, proposes a single family or a duplex and they know it's gonna take the character of the neighborhood. They design it that way. I mean, as opposed to, let's take Manchin Street. Someone proposes to put a duplex up on an empty lot on Manchin Street and puts a box up with all modern materials. Doesn't necessarily fit in, but, and single family homes typically are gonna be similar to what's there. They're gonna be, you know, single story or raised ranches or colonials or whatever. You know, as long as they design it, so it has some relationship to the neighborhood. I don't see that as a big problem for the builder. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. It does reveal, again, kind of like what I would consider to be the limitations of what's being proposed here is that when Britta was talking with us about her survey work of the, I mean, her survey work of the historic properties in the city covered the gateways. And we're talking about doing something to protect historic properties and this does nothing in the gateways. So what are we doing? And that is where the highest concentration of the city's most important structures are. So I would say that, so the work that Britta did was specifically focused on the gateways to do some level of review, but only in the gateways, I should say. And there were suggestions provided with that report on creating a local historic district or local historic review criteria and a preservation commission, et cetera, which requires much more work than what Britta had did or what was done through that process. This side view is kind of an interim step to getting there to have some protection without having to go through the process of doing all the individual surveys of properties to establish that local historic preservation component. I guess so that, again, I don't understand why in a gateway district with form-based code why demolition of a structure couldn't trigger this review. Oh, it does, that would be covered. Oh, it does? Yeah, it's like only demolition is covered in the gateways. In the gateways where the design review district would be located. So it's not a blanket. Just so I'm clear about that, okay. All of the gateways, yes. It's not blanket for all the gateways. What we're talking about here is only going to apply in whatever the boundary of the design review district is that we establish. But they could overlap in instances of demolition with a gateway district, correct? As the last version of a design review district that you all reviewed does include several properties that are in the gateway district, yes. So those properties would be included in the design review for demolition, but other properties outside of that design review district would not. Okay, understood. Abby. So I'm confused. What does a design review for a demolition mean? Because if they're demolishing the building, are we then reviewing the design of the new building? I'm just confused about that. Yeah, sure. So I would say the demolition would be, the demolition of the building would really be whether or not there is any significance of the, let's see, how do I wanna say this? The review for demolition would really be to determine if the building or structure has no historic architectural, archaeological or community character or significance and is therefore eligible to be demolished. Well, I don't know. So that, I mean, to me, that's like, that's in practice gonna mean you can never demolish a building in one of these districts. It's because anyone could always say, oh yeah, it's got some value. So that's a bridge too far for me. Well, I think that's where the design advisory commission would need to make that determination or at least make that recommendation. And then that would go forward either to the zoning administrator depending on the type of application or to the development review board. So the commission that would be established through these regulations would be an advisory body only. So they would not have the ultimate say, and then the decision either by the zoning administrator or the development review board could be appealed. And those are, that's all spelled out in later sections. So we can get into that detail as well. But... I have one more question while we're getting a little bit. Backed up. We just had with St. Stevens, right? So we've been concerned because we can't rely on the state historic listing to protect buildings. But essentially that is what just happened with St. Stevens. Can we not create our own local registry and have language in our regulations that points to that? And says like the specific local register buildings go through review or can't be demolished? The most targeted? Yes, we can. That's a good question. I think the challenge is in order to do that we need to have inventories and surveys of all of those buildings to document their historic value or cultural value or architectural value in order to include those in some sort of local historic register. And I think ultimately that is the goal, is to get there. But in order to do that, there's a lot of additional work and resources that are needed to conduct those reviews and those surveys. So that's not what Britta put together for us? It is not, no. What she put together was kind of the framework of what that might look like. She did some initial evaluation from the exterior just to look at the street view of the buildings but did not do a formal detailed survey of the interior of all of those buildings as well. She did not do that. Okay, thank you. And Eric, you might not be able to comment on this. I understand that you approve the St. Stevens demolition and then the development review board sort of reverse that decision. And I assume is, I guess what I'm wondering is if you can opine on whether you actually think that there was like a, whether the fact that the building was on the historic sort of register if that was actually a sound basis for the decision, right? Like is there really sort of legal protection based on that or not? And maybe you can't really, you can't say. Well, I can, so from the standpoint of our regulations as they're currently written, it says that any building that's listed in the state register needs to basically have approval from the state before a permit for demolition can be issued. And the state has a process to do that? Yeah. Generally, yes. I believe they, well, so the state doesn't want to be involved in that anymore is what we've been told. The state is not interested in being an arbiter of whether or not, let me start that over. The state does not want to have a listing in a state or national register be a component of any type of regulatory mechanism at a local level. They want local regulations to dictate how all of that will play out. One of the concerns being that if we're relying on state listings to protect historic resources, the property owners will look to have those buildings delisted so that they can then be outside of that scope. So we've heard from the state on multiple occasions that the existing language in our regulations and design review that speak to getting state approval, they want that out. So they're not interested in that role. It does have to be the municipality that does it. That's ultimately where they want it to lie. And ultimately that's where the most protection lies is at a local level. So to your question, Brendan, when I reviewed the state listing, there's no formal survey for the St. Stephen's church. There's only a listing for the rectory. In the rectory survey, it does reference the church building, but it doesn't include any of the other details like are included with the rectory listing or with any of the other listings in the state's register for Wunewski buildings. So that was what I was basing my determination on as well as some conversations with the state about whether or not the property was listed. And so that's why I moved forward with issuing the permit because based on my review and research and inquiries to the state, I determined that it was not included in the state register, which was later than determined that it was. So that's why the DRV reversed the decision and which is why it's in court now. And if I think if I can expound upon that and my understanding of it was that both, the state provided testimony saying that they considered that because it was mentioned as a referenced related structure, it therefore is under the umbrella and is listed. Yeah, that's right. They provided a written documentation that basically to that effect. So based on that, I've been interpreting other listings that reference something like a garage. And literally that's all it says, garage behind building. I've had other conversations with developers to now make sure that that garage behind building is not listed or else they needed a determination from the state in order to demolish it even if it's ready to fall over anyway. So yeah, anyway, that's a whole different tangential discussion here, but that's a little bit of the background on what happened with the St. Stephen's process. And to the point is that ultimately, Eric is not the final arbiter of that. It's the division of historic preservation. They are, it's their document. They get to interpret it ultimately. Am I misspeaking that Eric? No, I think that's right. And I was relying on their interpretation in my initial discussions with them to make my decision. I didn't go out on my own and say, well, okay, they told me this, but I'm gonna go a different direction. I was relying on the information that they provided to me to make that determination initially. I guess what I was getting at though is I'm going basically all the way back to Mayor Lott's question, right? If I'm understanding this correctly, it seems to me that the determining factor in this St. Stephen's decision, and obviously it's just being appealed, right? But was whether the church was listed in the historic registry or not. So I guess isn't the mayor making a good point then that like whether something is listed does provide some protection as things now stand. And just to interject there though, however, as we know, because there are instances of this, being on the state register does not provide protection from demolition. It provides a level of review, but it doesn't mean that the state is necessarily going to make a determination that it can't be demolished. Yeah, and the state. Yeah, if you had a localized mechanism for it, there could actually be a more firm declaration. So if this was part of, if these regulations were in place, because it was being demolished and if it were in this district that we're talking about, it would automatically go to our design review, not just to Eric, is that true? That's correct, yes. So this does provide a level of review that I think we all want as it relates to any building that's in the districts we identify. It doesn't mean that it's not going to happen anyway. So I mean, it could be appealed and it could be torn down, but at least we've got the opportunity to have more than one level of review in the areas that we identify. That's right. Yeah, and it's an advisory board, ultimately. Right. Eric, I have one more question. With the gateway districts, if they're not demoing the building, so basically this isn't triggered when they're adding to it or decreasing the size of it or adding another unit on the property. I'm trying to think like if they're, is that right? Yeah, for the gateway district, that's correct. Okay. But everything else in the regulations for the gateway district would apply. So if they're, and there's certain thresholds there for, if they're making modifications to existing buildings that they need to comply with certain components of that code. So ultimately they would need to meet all the standards depending on to the extent of what they were proposing. Okay. And I guess my follow-up question is, are we gonna reopen the gateway standards, like the form-based code standards as a part of our work plan this year? Kind of tackle some of these massing things that we've talked about are these block buildings. Yeah, I think we can. I think we can. How does that fit into our priorities? Well, I think the work plan doesn't say continue to work on the ULUDR regs and the gateway district is part of the regs. Yep. Okay. And I think based on this conversation, it probably would be good to open that discussion up. And I'm going back to sort of some of that incentive stuff that we were doing recently about facades and all that. And I can imagine that could be layered into this, maybe in a more less little less incentive by saying there are some buildings or some strips of the gateways that we'd like to have pretty much look the same. Well, I think about the roundabout, the west side of the roundabout. Well. So that's in our commercial district, but... Oh, God. But yes, the point is taken. The point is taken. It's never in the district you want to see. Okay, anyway, you get my point. Yes, yes. Okay, so just to recap here, we're talking about some potential language changes on item three and then keeping items five and six. I agree. Yeah. Okay. And you had said, yeah, I don't necessarily propose that you have to remove within 50 feet, but you had wanted to say primary building. So... Right, yeah. Yeah, I'll look at how to make that work out so that it makes sense and that we're not we're not making it an onerous process or an extra cumbersome process. Your explanation is very useful on that. Okay, so then moving along, the next section is the designer's view boundaries. I'd like to put a pin in this until we get through the rest of the text and then come back and review the boundaries separately. Really, all this is saying is that we're going to establish a boundary and it will be put on a map to where these regulations will apply. So I think the language here on D is, again, really more just to establish that there will be a boundary with what the actual boundary to be determined later on. Okay, next up is the actual design advisory commission, again, being an advisory commission. Basically, this section talks about the fact that their review will be limited to the standards of review in the next section here, part F, as it will be now called, and that they will advise either the zoning administrator or the development review board on rendering and the issuance of a certificate of appropriateness, which would basically say whatever the covered action is, whatever they're proposing is okay to do. And the reason it's an advisory commission is, well, two reasons. One is that's how it's outlined in statute is that it's an advisory body. The other part is that it, as an advisory body that maintains the current process for appeals. So for administrative permits, and something that's administratively approvable, the design advisory commission would advise the zoning administrator with rights to appeal to the development review board as with other zoning, sorry, with other administrative permits for conditional use and other specific site plan related items that go to the development review board, the design advisory commission would be advising the development review board, again, with rights of appeal to the environmental court as it's set up now. So that's why it's an advisory body, again, because statute allows it, it's laid out as an advisory commission in statute and that maintains that kind of appeal process as it's currently established. Can I ask one? Sure. I wanted to ask this earlier, just trying to find the moment to wonder about this. So is it possible to add review to design advisory commission? So it would be design review advisory commission because I noticed we're all using design review. It seems just, I don't know, I'm finding design advisory commission hard when the thing is about the review. Yeah, I think that's fine. So you're gonna change the acronymism from DAC to DRAC? Yes, to Dracula. We sure are. Yeah, I don't see any problem with that. Great, thank you. I also have a question. Oh, sorry, tell me, go ahead. I just need to interrupt that I need to leave early, so I'll be stepping out in a few minutes. Okay. Thanks, Tommy. So functionally, if it's just an advisory commission and it's just providing recommendation to the DRB and the ZA, what functionally has changed? Because my understanding of the DRB and the ZA is that they have to look at a specific standard and then reference whether it meets or does not meet a specific standard, statute or regulation. So I'm confused if it's just advisory, how that changes the process or the protection of these buildings. Sure, so the design review advisory commission would, they would have a standard of review as well, which is outlined under item F here. So they would make findings based on these various components for whatever the covered action is and how they apply. So if somebody's looking to demolish a building, these obviously wouldn't apply, but they would look at things like the existing architectural or architectural, cultural or historic features of that building and other resources that they have available, such as the historic register, any local documentation to say, yes, this meets or no, it doesn't. For the, in the example of an addition to a building, they would review these various items to say that, yes, the height seems appropriate to the adjacent buildings, the setbacks are correct, the rhythm is consistent, things of that nature. So they would have a standard of review that they're comparing against when they're looking at the actual project and what's being proposed. And when they bring this review to you to make a decision, how are you then able to take that information and say, yes, we should preserve it or no, we don't need to? Sure, yeah, so that would come from, it would be based on the standard of review. The way that I'm envisioning this is the, the design review advisory commission would make a recommendation on whether or not to issue that certificate of appropriateness based on certain factors. So they would say, everything seems consistent with what we're proposing. So we recommend that what is proposed is consistent and therefore it's appropriate and can move forward. Or it's not consistent for these reasons and we would recommend that these items change. Therefore, we're not recommending that it be issued the certificate of appropriateness until that happens. And then that's what would go for is the recommendation either to the zoning administrator or the DRB for their, ultimately for their decision. But it also includes then this extra layer to say, okay, well, I was given a recommendation to go, to do one thing and I chose to do the opposite. Then there needs to be some level of justification which could then be appealed going forward. Okay, I think I follow. Good question though. So any comments under item E as far as kind of the specifics of what's happening with the design and review advisory commission? Okay, here and none, I believe. Then the next section is item F. The only, so I originally was thinking about, so I'm just adding some additional language here to for clarification. Items one through four are as they are currently in our regulations. I was originally thinking about striking item five just because of the, if we're removing the exterior materials piece under a covered action, but I'm leaning towards bringing this back in just because of the other items that we're keeping in items five and six under the covered actions. So I'm inclined to keep item five in this case. Yep, that makes sense. And then items six, seven and eight are still the same as they were before and proposing to delete items nine and 10 related to open space and grading and planting. That seems to me like that's getting a little deep into subjectivity. I mean, I know a lot of these are subjective anyway, but those don't really seem like they fit with in the context of the covered actions that are being applied. Really setbacks are kind of, I feel like the setback requirements of a parcel are already kind of accommodating that. Right, yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. And I believe all these are, I think these are outlined in statute, which is why they're written kind of the way they are. So they're fairly straightforward, I think. I agree with putting five back in because I was gonna comment if you took it out that six should reference neighborhood somehow. Yeah, so I would leave five in and again, like I said, I was proposing to eliminate that with the elimination of the other items that are covered actions, but I think if we're keeping those, it makes sense to keep this one as well. Yeah. Okay, sir, do you have something to say? No. Okay. All right, so then the next section is the procedural part and kind of how this works through the process, which we've talked a little bit about already. And this will relate to the two flow charts that I included with my email to you all on the agenda items. The flow charts were really more just to kind of show a visual of what this would look like. So basically an application would come in if it does meet the standards for design review, if it's in the, one, if it's in the district and two, if they're proposing a covered action, then within 30 days, it would go, it would be forwarded on to the design advisory review, the design review advisory commission for their next available meeting, similar to what we do now with our development review board. So there's a timeframe placed on when this would go forward. They would review this basically, again, more kind of administrative, they'll have their schedule published. It'll be a public meeting like any other, like this is a public meeting. It wouldn't be a public hearing for clarification. It wouldn't be a public hearing, which is what the development review board does. They do public hearings. It would just be a public meeting. So it wouldn't, it would be, it'd be warned with the notifications like we do with other public meetings, but we wouldn't send out notifications to adjacent properties like we do with public hearings. So just to make that point clear, it would be a public meeting, not a public hearing. Then within 30 days after their meeting, the decision would be issued on, or sorry, the recommendation would be issued on the certificate of appropriateness. So to kind of lay out that schedule of how time is being built in. And just for reference, I can show you the flow chart. Again, what that would look like, not very different from what we do now, just builds in basically the potential for an additional up to 30 days of time for covered projects. So if it's in the district, yes, covered, yes, goes forward this way. If it's not in the district, it goes straight to the administrative or conditional side. And then that's where it gets back into what we do now. So really just the first one to, the first two decision points really are what would be different than our current process. So that's pretty much what Section G is laying out, kind of the administrative process for it. Item H is just related to the certificate of appropriateness itself. And what is required to be submitted if it does need to go forward to the design review advisory commission. And this really kind of gets into more of the detail of basically, again, depending on the type of project, we would need architectural plans that are stamped by a design professional, site plans, a narrative outlining the specific items, any environmental assessments that are needed if they're doing demolition or some sort of alteration, just to make sure we can, which is something we require anyway, if they're doing demolition, that's required from the state to make sure that we're not dealing with leder asbestos. And then, yeah, more just kind of administrative and how that process continues through. Talking about, like we've already discussed, administrative actions go forward to the, or sorry, administrative actions are reviewed by the zoning administrator, conditional use other actions are reviewed by the development review board. And I assume you've taken this language as sort of a standard language that we've been working on. Yeah, for the most part, it's either items that we've included in other sections of our regulations for consistency or statutory components or just other general administrative components. Yeah. And then finally, striking these last two sections, again, kind of going back to the discussion on what the state is wanting us to do, this would clean up that portion of kind of getting the state out of this process. As they've requested on multiple occasions. And that would be section 4.4 on design review. Any questions about any of that? I know we went through that last section fairly quick, but I think it's, again, the covered actions is really, I think where the meat of these new regulations are coming into play. So that I think is gonna be the more critical piece, that and the actual boundary itself. So there are a quick technical question on A, am I the decision of the zoning ministry or DRB to issue a certificate of appropriateness maybe appealed? Isn't that, am I missing, isn't it the design review commission that issues that certificate? So that they make a recommendation on whether or not it to be issued. So technically they're not the issuing entity, but they're making the recommendation on whether or not to issue. Okay, and then zoning or DRB issues the certificate and then it can be appealed through sort of the normal. Right, that way. So the, and the reasoning for that is in order to maintain that appeal process, the commission is only gonna make a recommendation to either the ZA or the DRB on whether or not to issue. And then the decision to issue is either the ZAs or the DRBs. And then that's how the appeal process works, which is how statute is laid out now. So yeah, so it maintains, basically just maintains that existing appeal process. And this wouldn't go in front of, like this wouldn't move forward for public forum or approval until we have the design review districts identified. That's correct, yep. Yeah, we would need to. So my thought with this is once we are comfortable with the language of the text, figure out what the boundary is gonna be and then actually notify all those property owners that are gonna be potentially impacted by this new requirement. So that before we have a public hearing so that they're aware that this is happening and then have a public hearing before anything goes forward or any decisions are made from this entity to City Council. So who identifies, are we bringing in any like, I know we have some experts on the commission, but are we bringing in any external experts to identify like where the districts where the districts should be located? I mean, I think we could. We haven't gotten to that point yet. So I mean, I don't think there's nothing that says we can't. I think the big piece of it though is to make sure that we have a district that's not so large that it's gonna bring everything in, and but yet not so small that it's gonna be so limited. I don't know specifically, but I believe it has to be a continuous boundary as well. I don't know that we can have little pockets, but that is something I do wanna check on so that we could potentially have multiple design review districts that we can keep some properties out if we know that there's just nothing about them that's significant or of any type of community interest. So that is something that I do intend to check on as far as how we can draw a boundary. Yeah, hopefully it's not contiguous because I think it would then envelope structures that are probably not necessary to be in there, but I just imagine we're gonna get pushback from the property owners that end up in this district. So it'd be good to have some sort of consultant or external resource vetting locations. Yep, I think that's a good idea. And I think that's something that we can look at at a boundary first and kind of figure out where we want it to go or boundaries if we're able to do that and then talk with other folks to see if it makes sense what we're proposing as well. And I think some of that will be informed by whether or not we can do more than one boundary. It is kind of interesting. I was asking somebody who works in the field recently about, as I've said, kind of ad nauseam here, the state historic site survey that a lot of this is based off from, that's from 1979 is a 44 year old document at least now. And it's fairly old and antiquated. However, nobody knows that when they adopted that all those buildings were kind of batch uploaded on the state register. Property owners weren't actually, I don't think we're ever asked about that, but yet subsequent listings, they, I mean, it requires consent of the property owner. So it's kind of a weird way that that functions, dinner. Yeah, no, that's a good point. That's a good point. So there is another section that will need to be updated for design review. So unless there's any other questions on this, I wanna jump to that quick. Eric, I just, I wanna make sure under covered actions. Yep, I know we might say what the intent of this district, of this section is, but I wanna make sure as must be can that this, the covered actions won't be interpreted to exclude the intent which is for historic, architectural, et cetera. So I'm wondering if an intro to the covered action, something to the effect of in support of the intent of this section, the following, just so that it's clear what we're trying to do and that hopefully it will eliminate someone interpreting any of these actions as saying, well, it doesn't save for historic or architectural or whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah. A tie back into the master plan where it, does that make sense? Yeah. Under section C, just to make sure that it's clear that these actions are covered to support, I'm using the word support the intent of this section. Yeah, I don't think that does any harm to just kind of reiterate that point. Okay. All right, so moving over to the administration section, this is article eight, and you should also have copies of this with the agenda. Really what this section does is outline kind of general administrative stuff, zoning officer, development review board, planning commission, kind of what their role is, how they're made up, et cetera, et cetera. So this is really just an addition of a design review advisory commission. Eric, I'm impressed you keep remembering the stick that review word in there. Well, I wanna... It works better. I mean, we might just have a design review and that'll be fine, right? I need to make sure that I remember to say it. So really what this is doing is kind of talking about what the purpose of this entity would be, what their duties are, and kind of how they relate kind of what the makeup is as far as the membership with folks with knowledge of design, architectural, landscape design, historic preservation. I believe most of this is pulled from statute. I think, yes, or a lot of it, a lot of this is either pulled from statute or from other language that we already have as far as the makeup of the various entities. So that's what the purpose of this is just to kind of formalize the establishment of the commission. And what their role is and the statutory sections that are listed in item B are included with that handout that I've given you multiple times on the various statutory allowances. So any questions about anything here? And then there's only because we're looking at article eight, there's just two small cleanup things that I wanted to add, if possible, under D, public notice, adding in the language for site plan review, which is actually outlined in statute, statute allows for site plan review with seven days prior notice of the public hearing and other everything else, basically 15 days. So I just wanted to clarify that site plan review is seven days versus the 15, mostly because I was challenged on that at one time that somebody was coming in for site plan review and said, nope, you can't make me do it 15 days. So just to add that in, and then just two other small editorial items, just some language changing it from subsection D to article eight. And again, down here to article eight. I think that was it. Oh, and then just adding in item D, or just the letter of D. And that was the only other change, I think that's needed related to design review, again, aside from the actual district boundaries for consideration. So any questions on any of this information at this point? Excellent. Thank you for doing all that, Eric. Yeah, thanks, Eric. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's why I'm here. Good timing too, it's 7.54. So we've got time to get into city updates. Yeah, well, I guess that's, do we want to, I know I had asked for folks to be able to stay longer if they were able, but I'm happy to not, if you all are interested in holding here or we could start looking at a design review district map. But it may be better for me to figure out if we can do multiple districts or not first and take up the district at the next meeting. That makes sense. Sounds good to me. Okay, the map is going to be thorny issue, so I think it should know what the parameters are. Right, yeah, that's a good point. Let's wait till the next meeting for that. Yes. When we have some energy. Come in fresh. Yeah, come in fresh, exactly. So city updates, Christine or Eric? Mayor Lott, I'll defer to you. Well, since the last planning commission meeting, I think the only significant council update has just been setting the tax rate for FY24, which is Do we want to hear it? Lightly higher. What's that? I said, do we want to hear what it is? 1.2499. Nope. Sorry. That's what we predicted in the budget. It's 1.2514 because grand list growth was actually at 0.69% this year. We had budgeted at 0.8 because that's historically been accurate. So it went down. For the average home assessed at 2.25, that represents $140 increase or $35 per fee period for municipal site only. We don't have the state tax rates yet. And Monday's meeting, we will be digging into the last set of updates that you all set forth. We got an introduction from Eric at a previous meeting, but we're actually spending a bunch of time with it on Monday and also seeing the housing code enforcement updates that our fire chief and housing commission had been working on. Has the reappraised appraisal? I thought that was started. Where is that? Yeah. He has finished most of the east side. Like they started at Florida last year. We're working in. He's running kind of slow because he's struggling to get help. Like the two of his employees are kind of not doing full time anymore. And I don't know if you all know, but like statewide, there's like a shortage of people with this skill set and certification. So it's still going on. Not exactly sure when those of us further to the West will. Okay. Yeah. I haven't gotten a knock on my door. I haven't either. Yeah. They can take their time. You'll be fine, Brendan. Your property was recently. Yeah, they said I'm good, but I'm only good until next year. Oh, okay. So it's not too much of a work. So Christine, is it have to be done for implemented for next year? Is that, if not, we get penalized or do we have a grace period? Eric, I don't know if you can speak any more to that. I think, yeah, I don't think we'll get penalized just because I think, again, due to the shortage, but I don't believe we were anticipating using the numbers until our FY 2025 budget. Yeah. Which is next year. Which would be for next, or it wasn't going to be finished until FY 2025. One of the two. I forget exactly what the specifics are on that, but. Yeah. But yeah, the state has been kind of lenient on those rules because there's no one to do the work and so many towns need it now. Yeah. Well, I know I was in Enosburg today and they were supposed to have it out this year and they're still working on it. So. Yeah. Yeah, I suspect we're going to end up delayed, but I don't know that yet. How does one get into that career, Mike? Good luck. All right. That's it for me. Oh, and just a quick shout out to many members of the city staff. They've been doing a lot of work during the flood. We have fared better than most communities, but there's still been a lot of behind-the-scenes activity. So. Christine, are we sending any of our public works folks or anyone else to other communities to help? Or are we that? We've dispatched a couple of people. I don't know exactly who. Probably, I think three we've been able to. Yeah. But we don't have a ton to spare. Right. All right, Eric. The only thing I would bring up under city updates is, as we've talked in the past, there was the big housing bill that went through the legislative session this year. S100 was ultimately signed in as Act 47. It had some provisions as far as effective dates on various components. The, there was a subsequent bill in the veto session, H171 or something like that. I don't remember the number, but it, the long and short of it is that subsequent bill basically changed all the effective dates to July one for the Act 47. So most everything that was included in Act 47 with the exception of the parking updates, the statutory requirements on what municipalities can require for parking are basically all effective now. So while our regulations have not been updated, if somebody came in with a proposal that was consistent with that language, it would need to be reviewed under the new statutory language. We still have some protections in place to limit what the impacts might be as we've talked in the past. For example, our dimensional standards with our setbacks with our maximum lot coverages with the current parking standards that we have in place. So that is one of the, I've been working on what changes we are going to need to make based on Act 47 and what that's gonna look like. I think there's, we may look at some fairly big changes, but not necessarily big impacts if that makes sense. So for example, one of the things I'm doing an analysis on right now is whether or not we need to have three residential zoning districts. It's possible we could actually end up with just one because of the duplicative nature of what's gonna be required in all of those districts. It may make more sense that we only have one residential district at the end of it all. So more to come on that, but just to give you guys a heads up that there will be some changes that we will need to make changes based on what's happening with Act 47. One of the things that I'm gonna recommend to council is that since we've just done a lot of work on the parking standards that we continue forward with those amendments as they're proposed so that we have a chance to come back and review what the changes to Act 47 are actually gonna look like. In particular, one of the components is the transportation demand management strategies. We may wanna look at making that not necessarily, excuse me, not necessarily an incentive to reduce parking, but we may wanna look at making some of those requirements instead of an incentive. So again, more analysis to come, but I think my preference would be to have council adopt what we've sent to them and then come back and revisit what that language looks like so we can figure out exactly what we want to continue on as incentive or what we might wanna change as far as make it a requirement. So yeah, Abby. Thanks for that update, Eric. I hadn't heard about Act 47 and was digging into S100 or I was digging into the timeline, right? And the way that it was, I was reading the timeline as we had time on everything except for the duplex and four plaques issue. And so I was like, okay, we have a little breathing room to figure out how, because what's now happening based on these new requirements is we have incentives in place to encourage like what we want and this, you know, three plus bedroom, affordable homes, but now that it's part of state statue, my concern is like, are we, they get it just under state statue and then are we further reducing and further densifying on top of this new dense or less parking requirement? Like how, if we can move forward, what's in front of council now, how does it, how do they interact when the baseline is different than what we started with? Yeah. So it's a good question. The only thing that would change right now or that would have to change right now is the allowance for up to four units per, up to four units in a multi-unit building up to four units on, in a residential district. Yeah, that's what I read too, but I thought you said that they moved all of the other requirements up to July one as well. Except the parking requirement. That's still December one of 2024. So, so right now in our residential districts, if somebody came in and proposed a four-unit building, we would have to allow them to submit that four-unit building, but they would still need to have two spaces, two parking spaces per unit. They would still only be allowed to do 40 or 50% of the lot coverage depending on the district. They'd still need to meet all the setback requirements. So I think in a lot of cases, the lot sizes that we have are small enough that it's gonna limit how that could happen or the number of instances where that would happen. But it is something that we will have to allow for the future. The other part is our residential A zoning district, the minimum lot size is too large because now statute requires that you have to be able to do at least five units per acre. So we would need to decrease the minimum lot size for that district by about 1500 square feet overall. Yeah, yeah, I saw that. So that's where we start to get some of that converging of the three districts that we have now and to make it almost unnecessary to have the nuance of the three. Yeah, and so I was specifically thinking like of the density bonus that we have in there that allows you to double the density of the units. And so for the Barlow Street Stevens property that because there were three units allowed in that RC, we were gonna allow them six units. So now that it's four units allowed under state statute, does our incentive now, I can't remember if it just says double or if we say like a number of units in our incentive. We do specifically list that it's either you could do up to four units or up to six units in a building. It doesn't say it doesn't double. That's correct. No, we specifically listed the number. Okay, thank you. Yep. So yeah, anyway, more to come on that there, like I said, we'll need to make some changes. I'm still trying to get my head around what all those changes are gonna look like and how to best propose those because some of it will, it's gonna impact a lot of different things. And some of it, I'm not even sure how we can, how the changes even gonna be made. For example, there's a required or there's a statutory component of allowing additional height for affordable units and an additional level of density, which we have at least two zoning districts that don't contemplate density. So there's really no way to measure what that looks like. So anyway, more to come, still more questions that I have as well, but that's really the only update that I had. I'd realized it was a long one, but just wanted to bring you all up to speed on that a little bit. And it's important. It's good to know that we have, yeah, it's until December of 2024 for the parking piece. Right. Yeah, okay. Okay, other things. As of right now we do, I should say. Other business, the only thing I had is our next meeting since we're only doing one meeting a month would be August 10th. So you've got a couple of weeks off here in July. If there's any travel plans that anybody has that you don't think you'll be able to make that meeting, please let me know so I can ensure we have a quorum. There's a possibility I won't be around. I have something planned that weekend. So Abby, you're going to have to take the helm. Sorry, I guess I should do it once or twice, Mike. Eric, I did have one more quick question. I saw a permit was up on East Allen Street by the Beverage Warehouse. I think it's needs properties. What kind of building or what's going in there? Which side of these across the street from the bevy? I thought it was on the same side. Next. I'm glad that he ripped down. Oh, there's nothing proposed there right now. Oh, so is it across the street that he's proposing? Well, across the street is, there is a proposal across the street. There's information on the city's website that went through project review because it's in the gateway. So if you go to the project review committee section, I think it's under the planning and zoning tab. They're proposing a pretty significant development there. Let's see, how many it's, I believe it's, there's gonna be, the way it's proposed right now, two buildings, a mix of mixed use buildings in both. I think what they've proposed is 186 dwelling units between those two buildings. Is that the lots that they had proposed like 60 or something several years ago? Yes, they've acquired an additional lot on that side and have expanded it. They've also are now proposing, well, it's a completely different project now, but they're proposing three levels of underground parking as well with the project. So all the parking would be subterranean, some big interior courtyards, things of that nature. So there's the plans and some of the renderings of the, of what's proposed are on the city's website. Does that change the traffic patterns there? I mean, that's... Yeah, they did do a traffic study that was reviewed. Interestingly, it doesn't have a really significant impact because it's mostly residential. So the kind of the ebb and flow of that residential traffic doesn't have a significant impact on East Allen Street. Again, I think because of the volume that's already on East Allen Street, it's not a very significant impact. This is what it was called the Wagner Project or something like that. That's correct. Yeah, same properties. Sorry, did you say it's under the DRB part of the website? No, it'll be under the, I think it's on the planning and zoning tab or the planning and let me see what's actually called. Yeah, under planning and zoning, on the left side of that is a project review committee tab. I think Christine, was that a reference to what we need to look up? Yeah, that's the website page. Oh yeah, I see, and I just dropped it in the chat. So it's an interesting project because the back, and this is something we may want to look at with the form-based code because this was never contemplated before. At the street level, it'll be five and a half stories which is what the code allows with two buildings. On the backside, they actually are proposing to put units below grade because the way the slope is. So it drops down much deeper on the back half of the building. I think there's, well, yeah, they go three levels down on the back to coincide with the parking, the parking levels that are there as well. So it's, when you look at the one rendering, it looks really kind of awkward, but when you look at the street views, they look, I would say, much different. So, but it's, yeah, there should be all the information about that project should be on the city's website there. So is it kind of terraced or is it just like a sheer? It's a little bit of both, I'd say. They kind of, it's not fully terraced, it is more sheer, but there are some kind of jogs in and out of it on the back. And I think only the one building has the extra units on it. The second building, I think, yeah, I think it's only one of the buildings has those extra units off the back side. I shouldn't interject prejudice here, but. But go ahead. The proposals, I remember it was brought forward, it came, some news source had the previous proposals that Eric had said were actually not even feasible based on form-based code. It's a pretty hideous building. Like just, I remember kind of the massing of it, it was, it was not an attractive looking thing. So I hope that they've come back with something better. And it sounds like if they're making use of the geography, it could be more interesting. It does look better than that picture that we all saw. When that feels de-listing, yes. I remember that too. So I will say, I will say with this building and the, so there is the incentive for the bonus story that's in order to do the additional height, which they have proposed to take advantage of. For this project, they are proposing to do the sound mitigation on this building. So they're doing basically the interior noise levels of the, I don't remember what all the details are, but they did provide certification from an acoustical engineer that the products they were using and the way they were designing the wall makeup would meet those minimum standards of the, to keep the interior noise at or below the 45 decibel requirement that's outlined in the code. So I was actually pleased to see that they were using that as their incentive rather than one of the other ones that we have. So I think that's a positive thing in this case. So they're using one of our newly created incentives. That's right, yep. And we had one that dealt with noise. Yeah, yeah, specifically because of the, I think because of the jet noise, we added an incentive before it was just the affordable housing component. So then we also added in the sound mitigation and also green building or entered. Yeah, I think it was the green building components to get to the lead silver or better, I believe is what we noted. And are these apartments or condos? They will be, I think some of, well, I guess it depends on they will be, they will not, as far as I know, they will not be for sale units. They will all be owned, but some of them, I think the first level off the street, they are two story units with like a mezzanine kind of loft space. And I think the upper units are also that way too. So they're doing, I think a pretty good mix of twos and of adding in a pretty good mix of two units in with it. This will have to go through Act 250 as well, just so you all are aware of that. So the processes is still ongoing. Why is it still ongoing? Why is it triggered is it because of the developer or because of the size? The number of units that they're proposing. Even if they were to do the priority housing through Act 250 and do the 20% affordability, this is above the threshold for our community. They would only be able to do, I think technically 74 units would fall within that threshold. So they'll have to go through Act 250 for this project as well. I didn't hear you right, 187 units? 186 is what they've proposed, yeah. That's, that's considerable, wow. Yep. Yeah, I'm surprised there was no traffic impacts with such a large. Yeah, me too. Well, as Eric said, I think it's because of the border. They did, last time for themselves. I mean, because they look at impacts, right? And if you get 10,000 cars and you add 100 cars a day, right? Right? But if you're in the street. Those cars are coming on and off the street, which they don't do now. They go through. I understood, but it's all relative, right? If it was on the Point Street and you added that many, it'd be a big impact. I'm not so sure. No, I'm not so sure of that. Turning on into there, living, well anyway. I think, Sarah, I think the traffic study is, I think it's on the website there as well with the rest of the information. If not, I'll make sure it gets put there. Okay, thank you. Anything else for other business? It's just, I know we want to go, but 70, a lot of seven days already updated on that. Nothing that I have to report. I know things are still progressing slowly, but still moving forward. Yeah, they gave us something. It was an executive session. So I can't give you details, but forward motion happening. Okay, good. Any, while Sarah asked that any movement on, I forget the parcel number, the roundabout hotel, that's just what I'm going to call it. The West Pad site. Lot nine, we're in court still over that. So I think it's probably the easiest. Okay, fair enough. So actually there's two court cases right now related to that. One is the property owner against us and the other is they are appealing the DRV decision that denied their request for a variance. So there's actually two separate actions moving forward in the courts. I think the one against us is in the civil side and the other, the variance is in the environmental side. So, but yeah, nothing happening right there currently. Fun, fun. Mike, it's the gift that keeps on giving. Yeah, yeah, we're coming up on 20 years. A bit of a sting there, huh? Give me 10 more. Don't say you're welcome. Okay, if there's no other business, I'm entertaining a motion to adjourn. I think it's your turn. I guess one thing I want to say very quickly is I'll note that at our last session on the sort of parking incentives and the other incentives, Nate had threatened to stop developing in Winooski. He did. He did. He talked a lot about that. A lot about actually the slope in Winooski makes it hard to build parking and here he is using the slope. So I'm happy, I think we need housing and it sounds like there's at least some two bedroom units, so it's fine. But I would say, you know, I think we made the right judgment all sort of about that. I guess I will say that the project, the East Allen project is not a nature-just project. He's not involved with that. At least not at this stage, he's not involved. If he pulled out somebody else came in, so that's fine. I don't think, I don't think I don't know that he ever had any. Okay. Yeah, I don't think that he did. His name was said earlier. So yeah, I thought so too, actually. I was told he was. So that was my part. I will move to adjourn with that. I'll second the motion. Yeah, that's good. Great. All in favor. Hi. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Have a good, have a good night.


Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS re-invent 2016. Brought to you by AWS and its ecosystem partners. Now, here are your hosts. John Furrier. Okay, welcome back everyone. Hello, day three of the SiliconANGLE Media is theCUBE's wall-to-wall coverage of AWS re-invent 2016. I'm John Furrier, my co-student minimum this week and Peter Burris is joining us for the kickoff of day three, day two of the event, afraid to be asked really kind of a third day early, on Tuesday for the James Hamilton, Tuesday night with James Hamilton. Guys, Werner Vogels gave the keynote here more technical, down on the weeds, wearing his t-shirts due, but really it's all about the technology. You had Twilio guy up there talking about APIs and scale. And I think the big story so far is Amazon's scale and the impact of that scale. And you're seeing it now in some of the technical announcements with glue and some other things. You're seeing essentially Amazon offering as a service scale thoughts on, so far in the show, impressions, keynote today, Stu. Yeah, so first of all, John, happy birthday. Great to be here with you for the event. I'm surprised Werner didn't have the 100,000 people watching singing his song, but it's okay. Yeah, Werner Vogels, it's developers, developers, you know, things about, we're talking containers, we're talking Lambda, CI CD, everything going on in this space, every year I come to the show and there's the little joke I put out on Twitter. We love our ecosystem, they're so tasty. Because it reaches to a point that they say, okay, what are they putting out and who does that impact, a nice chef with ops work talked to some of the chef guys. They're like, we are so excited about this. We spent the last 18 months working with Amazon, we think this is a huge opportunity. Is there a long-term threat working with Amazon? Yeah, everybody understands that, but you need to be there and this is where so much is happening. So they are super excited, they should be congratulated for what they're working on. They came out with X-ray, which really looks at kind of debugging trace end to end requests. It's got built in with Lambda, works with containers and Amazon's Linux and looks like things like what New Relic does. But Amazon and Google also have similar types of things. In a lot of ways, Amazon, just filling out, Peter and I have been talking about, it's not that they're building a stack, but it's all of the different tools and therefore, if I take various pieces, it's going to look like a lot of what many here in the booths have. So a lot of activity going on there, some really interesting users out there talking about how they're really transforming their business and a very interesting way. I didn't hear, did we hear who the musical guest is? Tonight, it was somebody big. No, I didn't, I was walking down, I missed the back end of the keynote. I left great, I always left at the glub. No, no, no, it's always, it's EDM here. I mean, they had Skrillex, they had Nails. They don't go old school. You know, it's just something like that, but. Although, here's what I'd say, John, that Amazon, the normal association is that as you get bigger, you get slower. And there's always been this assumption that one of the values of great design is that great design would allow you to scale and yet remain fast. And what we've seen is that there is a room, there is significant room for doing great design with an infrastructure. Because Amazon is getting bigger and their size is allowing them to actually move faster because they've got great design in place. They have, we heard this week that they made significant investments in extending and expanding their ability to do design at scale, including, interestingly enough, design all the way down to silicon. And so the, kind of one of the big stories coming out of here is the ongoing commitment to doing appropriate vertical integration around good design so they can add one of the more interesting factoids, the equivalent of a Fortune 500 data center in capacity every single day. And yet, for what you were staying to, still be able to deliver services at an unprecedented rate. So design, good design leads to scale, leads to solving the paradox of size and speed. Yeah, Peter, I want to get your comment on something because we've talked for years here about that flywheel. New features equals new customers, equals new features, equals new customers. The new flywheel that Matt would talk to us and the analyst session was, it's really about data. More data leads to better analytics, leads to better products, leads to more users, and that leads to more data. And we go round and round. Is that kind of a new paradigm, the new normal? Well, it's what everybody wants to be able to do. And it's kind of the centerpiece of our research, as you know, Stu. It's kind of the centerpiece of our research perspective, which is that digital business is about applying data better than your competitors to create and sustain customers. And Amazon is at the vanguard of doing that. They're showing that you can even do that in something as mundane and behind the scenes as building out infrastructure for information technology. So, yes, it's true that if you do good design so that you know what kind of data to collect, you can now apply data in a way that you couldn't before to improve your targeting, to improve your design, to make sure you're delivering the right stuff, to fail faster. They're demonstrating that all these things we've been talking about for 20 years can actually work if you stay committed to doing it. Jay, John, I got a question for you. So, you've been talking to the VCs. We look at all the startups here. Adrian Cockroft, who's been on theCUBE many times, is working on the open source activities at Amazon. He actually tweeted out and said, hey, instead of joining a startup and spending lots of time on funding and marketing, just join AWS and help build a new service. Yes, we're hiring. What do you think on that? Well, Stu, good point. So, one of my core objectives this week has been to, I'm going to have the Andy Jassy exclusive two weeks ago at his house, so I got to kind of lay the land from the chief executive himself. But at the show, I was looking at the startups because this whole premise of the show, and we want to get your comments after my comment, but it's about the old guard getting disrupted. And that's kind of been the jassy theme. I wanted to go out and look at the startups, look at the VCs because those are the guys creating the new guard. And that is the canary in the coal mine for me. So, the thing that I'm seeing is startups are certainly seeing the cloud as an opportunity to be disruptive. But the question is, how meddling will the old guard be in polluting the innovation opportunity because they have incumbent positions? So, market power from the old guard is something that could affect the startups. So, that was kind of my goal. So, with the course of the three different nights, that my takeaway is that there really isn't an impact of the old guard on the startups. I think the startups are certainly being funded. This reinvent probably is the biggest of all time in terms of startup activity with VCs. There was like six zillion parties going on. So, I think there's a healthy funding, but a lot of collaboration, a lot of M&A discussions, a lot of kind of formations going on. So, I think, Stu, to your point, the people realize that the old way of doing it, the playbook, get funding, go to market is changing. So, I think, yes, I think the marketplace is compelling, but at the end of the day, technology and the go to market are the two critical paths that are in play right now for startups. And I think the opportunity Amazon has is not to be going after the old playbook of sales forces, and that's why I've been asking the questions to James Waters around Azure Salesforce. So, I think that's going to be a very interesting dynamic. If Amazon continues to make the market on the technology as a service at scale, and can provide a seamless self-service-like cloud vibe on the market. Well, here's what I'd say, John. Here's what I'd say. I think it's a great point that, and Stu and I were talking about this this morning. It's a point that Stu and Dave Floyer and others have been pressing within the Wikibon community for quite some time. Amazon is clearly disrupting. They're doing things as a service that has enormous implications that we could spend hours talking about. But what startups and VCs and folks trying to do these new things, and the big companies, is they want to escape to where Amazon's going to. And Amazon is going to have to make a decision. Are we going to be a little bit more forward thinking about releasing information about some of the APIs we're using so that these startups and these third parties can anticipate where we're going so that they can create derivative value when we get there?  I think it's one of the big questions that the industry's asking right now. How am I going to anticipate where Amazon goes so that I can be there with them and add derivative value? And you know, it's a big question about how ecosystems work. But I totally agree with your point, but here's what's going on, Stu. I want to get your comments on this. I've seen so many different stories come out of Amazon re-invent this year, where headlines and the media have been kind of putting the foot in the water. ZDNet had a story on misquoting Andy Jassy's partner speech. James Waters obviously nervous calling out Andy Jassy here in the Cube. Stu, I saw Werner Vogels on stage actually saying some people in the media are saying it feels a lot like Trump kind of rhetoric where it's like, hey media guys, you don't understand. There's going to be a huge cottage industry set up to predict where Amazon's going to be. So just getting to where the puck is going to your point, I think that Amazon is not going to capitulate to the press. They're not going to capitulate to any competitive force. I think they've proven they're going to stay on track. If they could build the scale as a service, they will be the intel of the cloud or some huge enabling. And now if they have that with the marketplace, Stu, they could really create a kind of an indirect, seamless channel for sales. And if they could do that, they will make the market on the revenue side of startups that ultimately will be, to me, something where startups can stand in their own, not be second fiddle to another ecosystem.  So it's an interesting game. I don't know what the answer is going to be. John, so just data I've been getting, talking to as many people as I can at this show. First of all, on the software vendor side, startups in this space, anybody, we've talked to companies that are 30 years old that are partnering with Amazon and how they're moving. There's always been that threat that somebody else is going to be, that you're partnering with is going to erode what you're doing, just things are happening faster. And I think most of the people I talk to are comfortable with it. Yes, Amazon is kind of, I got to partner with the devil a little bit, not to say that Amazon's the devil, but absolutely you know the relationship you're making, you know that it might not be long-term, but you need to be in the marketplace, you need to be there, or you're missing out on all of these kinds. The second piece I just want to get to real quick is the go-to market. Those channel partners, the feedback I get there is, they're a little bit nervous that, oh wait, just like an EMC used to do or Oracle used to do, it's like, well, we need to be not only your best partner, but your only partner. And if you don't do that, we're going to muscle against you. And that doesn't play in the channel. Here's my take on that. I think that the rules are changing. So I think everything that we speculate on is kind of old data, how it used to be done in the 90s and other markets. If there's new rules that are developing that Amazon's creating, we're seeing stuff unprecedented scale. We're seeing services with the marketplace, too. 150 partners announcing products here, the ecosystem's robust. The question is, will there be new rules of engagement for, one, componentizing services that can stand alone as independent companies inside of its marketplace and ecosystem? And two, what are the new rules of engagement? I think that is to me, the one thing that Amazon has a trick up their sleeve on is if they can continue to pioneer that approach, then essentially the competitive strategy of Microsoft and others are going to fall on them by the wayside, in my opinion. So it's something to watch. And again, we're watching it closely. Well, John, we had conversations earlier this week about this as well. It's hard to create a new technology. It's really, really hard to create a new segment and category. It's really hard to create a new industry. What we're really seeing, and to a student's point, is Amazon saying, you guys are going to have to follow the rules that we're setting about how technology gets created, how it gets packaged, how it gets delivered, and how we all go to market. They are not compromising their approach to creating value for customers. And that is what's not being compromised. What's going to have to happen is all these other companies are going to have to decide, am I going to be a product play, which follows certain sets of rules, and the customers pay up front so that I can get my money now and I can use that as a basis for further investment, or am I going to be willing to be a service company which says that the customer pays later and I have to use other means to determine whether or not I'm going to be successful, which goes back to the point about using data as a way of engaging to determine what's going to happen. Amazon seems to be being pretty clear. We're setting some new rules. You want to play with us? You got to follow with them. And here's what they look like. And a lot of companies and a lot of startups and a lot of ECs are going to have to agree to play by those new rules if they're going to play in the Amazon. Yeah, I think one of the things I see happening right now is from a competitive standpoint with this new rules and the new environment that's in there, it's a speed game. And I think speed is everything. And scale, they're knocking down the scale. They're constantly raising the bar on the scale side. They're interested in new services. But to me, I don't think that the competition can actually run at the speed Amazon's doing. So I think Amazon's key competitive advantage is to stay on their course and just, it's a speed game. The competitive strategy is not about lock-in. It's about speed, sets of services. And I think Microsoft and whoever's out there, can they move fast? So here's an interesting question, John. And Stu, again, it goes back to this notion of the role that data plays as the difference maker in a digital business. Is Amazon going to be willing to share its data about the customer ecosystem with partners? What do you think? If they do, then a lot of the problems that we're talking about get solved, although you may end up with- I mean, to me, ecosystems are kind of a generic formula. It's kind of like communities. Value creation with a path to a market, exchanging cash for value is a business model of ecosystems. The question is, can Amazon do it in a cloud-like way that feels like self-service? And if developers of the core constituency, they have to provide their service in an easy way You're right, John, but at the end of the day, a VC, a startup, a big company has to make capital bets on where they go. And the historical norm has been, we place capital bets, customers buy our products, they pay upfront for the service that that product provides over the next three to five years, but they pay upfront, and that's how we return, generate our return. Amazon's saying, we're going to place that capital bet because we have data, and we will reap the rewards of that over time. So the question of data becomes critical, and the question of Amazon's competitiveness and partnership is, is Amazon going to be willing to share some of that data so that people can place better bets in their ecosystem? Well, analytics was certainly on stage today, it's a big component of that. I think the data is one of those things in the stack that's going to be a land grab, but to your point, if it's product-centric thinking, go-to-markets, everything. If it's not product-centric, service-based, the go-to-market isn't that much of an issue per se. If it's product-centric, it's old school. That's Amazon.  You're close to these, to what's going on here. Yeah, no, I mean, it's an interesting, really interesting discussion, Peter. You know, we see that Amazon is willing to work with partners and talk, but I mean, the information, that seems to think they hold it real close to the best, so I'd like to see them being a little bit more open on some of those things, but time will tell, and the other thing I'd say is, there's so much that came out at this show that are like the seeds of where they're going, and they barely started. We're still so early in this adoption and where Amazon can take this, what's this going to look like when it's 50,000 people next year at this show and beyond? Well, there's a lot more work to digest. Go to wikibond.com for all the research from these guys, but it's still going to angle.com. I've got a three-part series with Danny Jassy and a lot of great coverage. We're coming day three, wall-to-wall here on theCUBE, live in Las Vegas for AWS ReInvent 2016. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman and Peter Burris, kicking off day three. We'll be right back.