all the meeting to order. First item, second item of the agenda is approval of the agenda. Do we have any revisions to the agenda? All right, hearing none, we'll deem it approved by consent. Number three, comments from the chair. So for those of you who weren't here last meeting, which was really just of this group, Aaron, John, who also is not here tonight. But he has a newborn, we'll give him a pass. So I've submitted my resignation to the city council and I'll be stepping down effective tomorrow. I wanted to be here for this meeting because who doesn't want to be part of this conversation? But I appreciate everyone's understanding that it's just, I don't have enough time to give this the time it needs and deserves. So I'm sorry to be leaving because it's such a great group to work with and I will really miss you all. I actually made it really hard to step down but it's also a great time to step down when the group is so effective and working together so well. So because the time to elect a new chair will be January and that's what it is under the rules, Kirby will resume. You'll have to, it will fall to you as vice chair to run the meetings unless anybody else expresses an interest and wants to bring that to the commission to consider and take over as chair. You have any further thoughts about taking it on officially? Well, I'll have it put on the agenda next week and we'll have the discussion but what you just said might make sense. I mean, I think that's a possibility is that we change nothing and I'll just run the meetings as vice chair until January, we could do that. But if anyone does have an interest in being chair, I mean, I don't think it would hurt over the next two weeks to email the group about it to let us know. And if you're not sure. If anyone's interested in being vice chair, that might be a reason to formally change things so that we can have a vice chair. And the key duties of vice chair really just been running the meetings when the chair is not here, right? Yeah. And helping to determine what's on the agenda. That's one of the fun parts about being chair and vice chair. Be comfortable being chair and our RPC person? That's another conversation that might be worth having. So if anyone is interested in what's going on at the RPC, I would be relieved if someone would like to take on being a representative there. We know a lot of people with young children on this commission. That's a Tuesday once a month. And then Barb's already volunteering for every other commission. But yeah. I mean, and the member of the city's appointee for the Regional Planning Commission doesn't have to be a member of the Planning Commission for Montpelier, but it really makes sense if we can swing it that it would be. All these things are things to consider. Yeah. Yeah, so please think about it. So now that John's back, I could say that we've decided you're gonna be chair. That's right. Okay, all right. And that's it for my comments. So the next item on the agenda, item four, it's general business, it comes from the public about something not on the agenda. So I assume everybody here has to talk about items that are on the agenda. But if not, please come forward and let's hear your thoughts. Okay, hearing none, we'll move on to item five, which is our presentation and discussion of the proposed design review rules by the Historic Preservation Commission and with some input from our design review committee as well.  So you can move on to go first. I'll put the PowerPoint in while you guys figure that out. So we can't dim some of the lights. We're either have them all on or all off. So unless we open the back. Okay. What is your preference here? Let's see how it looks when it comes up. Okay. It's just a copy of that, but it's also for the public to be able to see. I don't have too much to say. I think the first thing is to... So the first thing is probably to introduce yourself because I'm not sure that everybody here knows you. I'm Eric Gilbertson. I am chair of the Historic Preservation Commission and sit on the design review committee. And you have a long list of credentials with Historic Preservation. 45 years of Historic Preservation stuff. For the state, as deputy state of historic preservation officer for 30 years. Eric, can I ask you to speak up? I'll do this, whatever you're going to quiet again. Okay. First thing I want to do is thank Meredith and Sarah McShane for all the help they've been in drafting and getting through and integrating them. We couldn't have done it without that help. And thank members of the Preservation Commission and design review because this has been a bit of a slog. We've been headed since 2017. I can't remember exactly when we started, when actually the Planning Commission, I think Charges or the city council charged us with developing regulations with the idea that then these would be regulations for the design review committee. And in the process, this has to be approved by the Planning Commission, who then recommends it to the city council. And maybe next year we'll have that. I'm not optimistic on time frames. We had some goals. The first you probably all heard about the, was a lot of complaining about design review. And I think a lot of that was unjustified, but nonetheless, the city council heard it and the Planning Commission heard it. And so they wanted to redraft of the regulations. The other thing I think that's pertinent is that through a certified local government grant from the state, we got some money to revise the regulations and we updated the National Register nomination, which is not a huge change. I don't wanna really talk about that now, but and I think we had some goals in terms of clarity and ease of applying and making it make sense to people. And the other thing we wanted to do was kind of provide some opportunities for benefits. We've talked to Mike about the idea of adding maybe some tax abatement for people who do work that meets the standards on historic buildings so that they have some reason to do it the right way. And either in the design review district or anywhere, haven't decided that. And we did base a lot of this on federal regulations, the Secretary of Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation because they are a nationally accepted set of standards that are used by a lot of design review people. They're used by the state to review projects and there's a lot of supportive material. And we looked at some other municipalities design review and we went through it. We held, I guess you'll see all this, I shouldn't talk about but we tried to be as open to the public as we could to get public input, particularly based on the complaints that were lodged. Did you have much engagement? No, I mean, we notified people, we emailed them, we called them, so no, we didn't have a lot. But we provided the opportunity. So that's it and one of the things that he noticed I was kind of looking at stuff today and the first couple of paragraphs are really a strong statement about how important the historic preservation is to the city of Montpelier. We would not be the community we are without the historic buildings. And design review is really the ideas to protect the historic building and protect our historic neighborhoods from people doing really outlandish things. It isn't to stop people from change. People can make a change as long as it's compatible. So. What is outlandish is something that sort of, people don't always agree, right?  Okay, that's not much, that's just a window trim. That doesn't really affect the building. But then you lose the door trim, then you lose the dormer, then you lose the windows and then you lose all of a sudden you don't have a building that really conveys its historic significance at all. And those just kind of creep up on you. There's a poster that I liked that was done by the students at the University of Vermont called Vulnerable Vermont that just shows buildings in various stages of change. Goes to a very nice but simplest torque building to one that nobody would care about. And I think the neighborhoods are very important along with the downtown. I think there's pretty universal consensus about the historic importance of the downtown and the contribution that it makes to living in Montpelier. A little less enthusiasm maybe for some of the neighborhoods but they're important as well. Any questions? Not yet. Leslie, I'm sorry to see you're leaving but I understand. Thank you. I need to follow your example. Okay, so let's do it next. Hi, my name is Jamie Duggan. I'm the Vice Chair of the Historic Preservation Commission and I also spent a tour of duty on the Design Review Committee for many years, about 10 years ago. So had some experience implementing some of these regulations. So I thought I would go through the PowerPoint we've put together for you folks real quick and see if there were any questions that came out of that. That's okay, it's right here. So as Eric said, we had started this process formally back in September of 2017 in response to some of the concerns that had happened and we looked to a lot of different sources and resources to help us sort of set the context of what we were gonna be working with. We looked at different towns across Vermont, some nationwide examples, some different unique situations that we could learn from. Again, best practices from the National Park Service and American Planning Association. We worked with a professional on the CLG grant, Land Works, helped us to kind of guide us and set up a framework to work within. And then a number of us have experience in historic preservation and different aspects both in our work and in our private lives. So there was a real rich input that happened to this process. So we started back, yep. I have a question real quick. So the example works from Vermont towns. Yes. How many of them follow the Secretary of Interior standards? Like just so we can have a sort of a baseline understanding of that. A good deal of them do. And it seems from review that the ones that do use that have greater success, it seems, and or less appeals, less... There's more clarity to what the expectations are. And so that's something that we, in this process, using those as a guide, we also made sure to include definitions for the terms that are found within there and our interpretation as a group and how those should be used. But following those standards. And there were, Elizabeth, I know, had looked at a bunch. A lot of them followed the standards. Well, I'm kidding. It's not gonna pick up unless you're right next to that microphone or if you go over the microphone over there. If you want to talk. Thank you. All right. It's okay. The state recently did a two years ago had a temporary staff person that looked at design review within the state. And the majority of them do follow the Secretary of Interior standards. And the ones that don't have not been updated recently, any recent updates follow the standards that we're aware of. But we also looked at design review standards, a scattering from across the country, the National Association for Preservation Commissions that has a great website that provided links to a lot of recent design review district updates. And so we were kind of referencing that and kind of pulling from different elements that we thought would be helpful. Okay. Sir, if I missed up the floor over there. No, not at all. Any questions as we go along? I think it's important to address while we're here. So April 4th, we had a kickoff meeting. We sent out a notice to all the property owners within the district, let them know what's going on. Started some outreach at the farmer's market, had a table out there, engaging with the public and getting some feedback. There were some walking tours and just trying to hear people's thoughts and see what was happening. There were, we had two more public meetings through that summer of 2018. We did get some folks to come down and share with us the positive feedback, negative feedback and a little bit of both in some cases. And David Raphael did a presentation on the 4th as well in April.  And that's when we also had some participation. I talked to some folks up on Northfield Street that day as I recall. And people just wanted to understand the process better. We reached out to other committees and authorities throughout the city to look for their input. We've worked closely with the design review committee, reached out to the design development review board, the tree board, the conservation commission. We attended the DRC's public meeting the beginning of this year to have a discussion about that as well. And then our planning director, Mike Miller and Meredith, Zoning Administration were real helpful in looking at this from the city's lens and the enforceability and how to work this process. One thing through this, one of our primary goals through this was to allow easier pathways for people to get approval for basic, straightforward work that they're doing so that they didn't necessarily have to come to a DRC meeting, come to the DRB meeting. There are a lot more things that are being able to be handled administratively and that I think is a huge benefit. Again, we wanted people to be able to have more predictability with the process and have a consistent process throughout. It's important to be able to defend these decisions. We have seen appeals recently and continuing. So that's an important aspect. And we also wanted to look at this as a design review district, looking at the downtown development area and not just the historic district. Those boundaries are not mutually contiguous. So that's something that perhaps moving forward might see some adjustment. As Eric said, we're a CLG, which is a program of the National Park Service. And as a part of that, it is a requirement that these rehabilitation standards are included in this process in order for us, the Historic Preservation Commission, to keep our CLG status. So that is a really important point to make and that is also a standard that happens again throughout communities all across the nation. So we try to give some more flexibility and more opportunity for exemptions, things that were clearly a replacement and define those so that there's clarity within that. Sometimes flexibility without a certain amount of clarity can get fuzzy. So we tried to sharpen that a little bit. And also to see how these work with the overlay district boundaries and what future they may have. So we did add a few specific standards for alterations and additions to buildings, which you can find in these references. And I don't know if you wanna go and look at those now as we do that, or if you wanna continue with a sort of more broad view, but I'm happy to do either. Quick point of clarification, what is the title number for those section, statute section numbers? These are the zoning regulations. Oh, that's another, okay. This is, these are the changes in the draft regulations that are in your packet. Thank you. Sorry. So we added some standards. We clarified the application process and again added more opportunity for administrative approval and increased exemptions and clarified what the limitations of those would be. This kinda gets into the nitty gritty. Yeah, this is right down into the weeds, but. If you go back to the last slide, can you talk us through some of the specific comments that led you to create these goals? Sure, I think that there was a lot of subjectivity in the previous, the way the previous regs were written as far as replacement, when it's appropriate, what replacement in kind is, or how do you deal with a situation where there's deteriorated materials? What's the correct way to approach that? And there's many different ways that that can be achieved. So I think some of the feedback that we got was that understanding what the goal is in replacement is an important thing or repair. So we explained in the regs, I think a little more clearly what repairing kind means, which is the first sort of approach following the Secretary of the Interior's standards, retain as much historic fabric as possible, and then when you can't replace in kind and when you can't replace something in kind for whatever reason, then there's some alternatives that you can look at, but the process really requires going through that sort of iterative pathway in a way, looking at it. A lot of times, for example, when we look at windows, there is a value in the restoration of windows that needs to be understood in order to determine whether putting replacement windows in is the appropriate decision in a certain situation. There are many factors to look at, conditions of the window and what type of fabric is, how they work, if they're storms, energy efficiency. All of those add in, but there's times when certain factors will trigger a particular pathway and that can get very convoluted without I think some clear direction and understanding what the steps are. So we tried to lay out the process even, the application process moving to the next part so that it can be very clear and capturing the information that will help guide those decisions. Because folks I think are frustrated when they come and present something not really knowing what the goal is or what the design review committee might be looking for to check off the box that says that it meets the standards. So by giving a little more direction into what are the factors that need to be considered to get to the next decision, that's I think a lot of what we had focused on. And then there are plenty of things that we pulled out that just can be easily reviewed. And that I think we got a lot of feedback from folks that I'm just repainting my house or I'm just doing something that doesn't have an effect necessarily or an adverse effect, the potential to effect. Some of the things that the standards look to in basing their understanding on this stuff, is that? It's very helpful. Help a little bit? So just to understand better about what we're looking at. So the current regs are relatively short. Yes. Three and a half pages. The new one is quite a lot longer more than double the size. But from what I'm understanding from what you're saying, is that this isn't all new material. A lot of this is currently how design review happens. It's just kind of spelled out in a detailed way now. Is that? That was a primary goal, yes. Okay. And you know, anyone in the design review committee or other members of the HPE Commission want to respond to that as well because there was a lot of input and a lot of understanding of sort of what the process has been. One other thing, I don't think it's in this presentation, is that our next project is really to provide some guidelines for people that are, they're not regulations. They're guidelines to help people comply with the regulations. I think that would be very important to do. The other piece of it is that it formalizes a preliminary review by design review. If somebody wants to come in, they do it anyway now. Quite frequently, and usually say, here's my project, here's what I'm planning to do. And we have an informal comment period on it. And that's included in the regulations. And that should be very helpful to people just to have a question. Will the guidelines be illustrated? Hopefully. Yeah, that's the rule. Pictures and Shelburne's done some fairly complete guidelines. One of our goals would once we close out this process and we're able to apply for another CLG grant from the state, we would do that. And informally, we think that that would be the next good project to move forward to help us a companion to this. And are you looking for some feedback from us on this draft before you move forward with the guideline process? Yes, please. So, Mireth Crandall, zoning administrator and also staff for HPC and DRC. My suggestion would be that not just getting planning commission feedback, but that the guidelines and the investment of both time and money to draft those should probably wait until after the new design review regulations are close to adopted or adopted because it has to go through you as well as city council. And so there's a good chance that, there's a chance that swaths of this may change. So investing the time and money to drafting illustrations before we know what the final product is gonna be doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And just to address Kirby's point about the pretty large change in length here, as a zoning administrator, having something that is really clear cut and defensible is something that the design review regulations really needed. A lot of things in the current design review regulations, there's no definitions for how you deal with them. There's guidance, but that's not necessarily something that you can point to once you hit an appeal. And it looks like it's a huge change. As Jamie was saying, a lot of this is just spelling out how things have been done along the way and making it really clear for somebody who just wants to look at the regs and figure it out. And also just like I said, having it defensible, being like, this is why, having the DRC be able to point to this is why we made our recommendation and the development review board or myself to be able to point to something else when we make a decision that says this is why we made the decision we made. So Meredith, in your experience, is the proposed version of things here and the definitions that are part of it, aren't they consistent with the interpretations that have been made of the old regs in the past? To the parts that are meant to be that way, yes. I mean, there are substantive changes in here. And I've only been in this position for a little over a year, but I feel like the majority of what's in here is very consistent with what has happened previously except where it is intentionally different. You know, there are very clear cut differences in here now between brand new construction in the design review district versus alterations to or additions to current buildings and especially historic buildings. That's something that is a clear difference compared to the current regulations, but isn't necessarily different from how they were, have been interpreted along the way. But it makes it clearer for everybody. Does that help? Yeah, and just back to process, I appreciate your recommendation. We don't wanna spend our time focusing on something that's gonna be obsolete quickly. I'm curious for input, from maybe we'll get to this in the presentation and I'm jumping the gun, but how the regs and the guidelines will interact? And I mean, it's sort of like a chicken and egg thing where the guidelines kinda help flush out the specifics of the regs. And so I'm worried we'll miss something in the regs before waiting on the guidelines, but your facial expression tells you that's probably not the case. I mean, this may go to the current DRC members, but during our DRC meetings, it's not like the current guidelines that we used are referenced almost ever, correct? I mean, the guidelines are more for the, in some ways at this point, the applicants use. And I'm not sure that many of those will change too much. We'll still be able to use some of the current guidelines. In terms of, just to give some history, I've been on design review for probably pretty close to 20 years now. And I don't think that these are drastically changed, the decisions that are gonna come out, Steve, you've been on for a long time. You know, they're just, and the other thing I wanted to say is that, part of this process is defining the boundaries of the new district. And we felt we wanted to join with the Planning Commission to do that. I think that's gonna be the most politically sensitive part. And I think it's appropriate for the Planning Commission to be setting boundaries of districts within the city anyway. But so, and the guidelines now, this is what I got up originally to say is, are based on a 1977 Montpelier. It's a Montpelier. Cityscape. Cityscape that was done when I worked at the, early in my work at the division. So, you know, it's dated, you know, as are the current regulations, they've been changed a couple of times. Please, Eric, it's historic.  But we can change it. Can't change it. So, yeah, I mean, that's sort of jumped a little bit to the end here in that, again, I don't know if you wanna go through some of the specific standards and how they were drafted and we changed them. But I think we're feeling a sense of that we're nearing completion on this. And of course, we're looking for, you know, your consideration of these and how to move this forward in that process. And then we can talk about what comes after this, but whoops. Do you wanna continue through some of the changes? Yeah, I think that'll be the most productive use of time is to walk through the changes and discuss the prompt for the change and the concerns that may have been raised and how you dealt with it and any implementing concerns that you have. I mean, basically, let's just go through it one by one. Okay. It might be a little tedious, but I think it'll be the most productive way. So, I think we had talked about that. So, the design review standards is the general design standards. We looked at both of these. So, an explanation of what the design review standards are and the review of applications, how those standards are implemented. And then went through and looked at general design standards, which are essentially the secretary of the interior standards for rehabilitation with a few additional specific, they're, actually, no, that's not correct. I think Elizabeth has some. Yeah, Elizabeth, you should. I think Liz is gonna step in. Good. Hi. You can also pull up a chair. Do you wanna sit here? Do you wanna sit? No, I'm not gonna stand up here long. So, I think that it would be helpful just to kind of set up that the current design review standards are established under the state regulation for a design review overlay district. I think one of the questions had been whether to be a design review district or a historic review district. And with all of the state activity and commercial activity in Montpelier, there is a lot of development opportunities in the downtown and we decided to stick with design review overlay district, which is why we broke out a lot of the standards between alterations to existing versus new construction. And then under alterations to existing, talking specifically about what would apply towards a historic structure or a non-contributing existing structure. So that a 1980s building is not held to the same standard as an 1870s building and really spell that out in the regulation so that people can understand that that just because they're in the downtown doesn't mean they have to keep everything. We're not looking for a snapshot in time. We're looking for a controlled and measured growth and change in our community. I think that was the intro you were looking for, Jamie, maybe? That is, thank you. I don't think you should go too far. Jamie, are you trying to figure out, this was me just breaking out how our general standards are different from our specific social standards? So do you wanna go through, I guess that's what I'm, I was giving more of an overview, but do you wanna go into look at these standards or are we still? Yeah, I think so, but maybe we should, we've been hearing from Historic Preservation Commission members, right? Yes, of course. Mainly, I mean, it gets confusing because Eric overlaps, you overlap, they just wanna make sure. We've been hearing from the Historic Preservation Commission's development of this. Has the design review committee been involved or have any overarching thoughts to share before we go into the specific language? And will you mind introducing yourself for the group? No, I'll be glad to. I'm Steve Everett. I've lived in Montpelier for 48 years and I've been on the design review committee for I think a hundred years. And your chair. And I'm the chair. And I look at the design review committee as a technical resource for people who wanna do something with their building, whether it's a rehab or remodel or paint job or whether they're building something new. We're very lucky on the committee that we have a number of architects, builders, people like Eric with a tremendous amount of experience and people who've had experience restoring buildings, trying to recreate the look that it had a hundred years ago. We're also looking at changes that make buildings more efficient in terms of efficiency, changes in heating systems, solar options, using current technology to make the building efficient or workable and at the same time preserve the historic value of the building, which is Montpelier's greatest resource. If you think about what we have in town, that is I think for downtown in particular, that is our greatest draw for people who wanna live here, visit here, work here. And we hear that, I have an office in town and I hear that constantly that people come here for the first time and they go wow and they keep coming back because they appreciate that value. And again, I look at our committee as trying to do a lot of those things with each application. We take the application, try to maybe give the person some feedbacks and alternatives. We frequently in an application will give them some options. We've had a number of people come back to us and thank us for those options. In one particular case, the person saved about $15 to $20,000 on their project based on options that some of the architects and what I consider valuable resource people on the committee offered. As far as the regulations go, we work with the general criteria and standards for each project and obviously there are certain projects that have more stringent requirements based on whether they're looking for tax credits under which programs. So there's a lot to deal with and again because of the variety of expertise on the committee, I think that we can try to offer some of that information to the applicants. And again, I see our committee as a resource for the applicants. Do you have any specific questions? Well, we got a lot of feedback from members of the public when we were first cracking open the draft bylaws and Eric spoke for both commissions pretty frequently. I'm wondering if there's, what is the design review committee have to say in response to some of the issues that were presented and what are your thoughts on how this is needed? I think a lot of the negative feedback that came out of some of those meetings had to do with some personalities from years ago. Personalities on the committee or personalities applying for permits? All of the above. Okay. And a lot of times people would come in with a project half done that they didn't even know they were either in the design review committee or didn't realize they had to come to get approval for something or we're doing something that some salesman sold them on and there are issues with what they were being done both technically and as far as meeting the criteria and when you're halfway into a project that's gonna cost you 10 or $20,000 they probably didn't wanna hear anything otherwise. So that's just part of the application process and that's part of the education process for people who buy properties and might peel your they should realize that they are in a review district. And again, we should offer our services as technical as a technical resource, as well as a you know trying to make sure that projects meet criteria for approval. Any other general questions for Steve while we have him up there? I'm sure we'll have more. Well, I mean, just a general concern I have is just the additional expense and time it would take for especially homeowners in the design review district to comply with regulations. So can you respond to that? I mean, it just seems like owning a home in the design review district, it might be limiting people to a certain, you know economic sort of and, you know able to deal with these kind of regulations to have that kind of level. So if you could respond to that, thank you. To be more sophisticated and have more money. Yes, that's what I was trying to say. That's a concern I have, but I'd be interested to hear your response. Sometimes that is the case.  But at the same time, if you look at it over the long haul, it's worthwhile to do a quality project that has lasting value, lasting efficiency, lasting value whether you tend to live there and have it last a long time or whether you live there for the next 10 years and you've done something in improvement that's gonna last 50 to 100 years in terms of either value to you while you live there or value 10 years down the road if you decide to sell the place. So again, that's one of the things that I think the committee can act as a resource because of the architects and people with building experience can offer people alternatives that it can still be cost effective. And not everybody can do a major rehab all at once. You know, some people can spend five or $10,000 on some projects and maybe other people come in with a total rehab that's a $200,000 rehab of a building. And again, we try to look at each person that's there, what they're trying to do when they're trying to achieve and what their budget is. You mentioned in the past that there being a problem with folks not knowing what they needed to go through the design review until they were into the project. Is that something that should be on our radar as something that we need to address as well? Like, is that something that's ongoing? I think that's something that any realtor in town who's selling a property ought to make the buyer aware of the fact that what they're buying. Number one, they may appreciate that it has value because it may be on the historic register or it's in a historic district. But at the same time, let them know that if they want to do improvements that because it's in a design district that they need to present an application to a committee. What I'm thinking of is even a homeowner for a while but you haven't really never thought about doing a big project and then all of a sudden you do get that idea. Maybe you finally are in a financial position where you can. Do you think that the residents of Montpelier in the design review district are educated enough generally to know that they need to go through administrative approval or is that there's some outreach that we need to think about? I think maybe Meredith's office alerts them sometimes. But if they have to go to Meredith first, it's kind of permanent what I'm getting at. Okay. Do you get a building permit? Yeah, I mean, this is sort of just the broad spectrum. If they come to the planning department with any project that they have to do and touch base with us, we let them know if they need, if they're in the design review district, if they need a building permit, if they need a zoning permit. There are people who don't get touch with us at all.  And I know that the Historic Preservation Commission is thinking about outreach to say realtors or other entities along that way to help with the education. It's something that the planning department can definitely put on its radar, but that would also be basically a mailing to every single property owner and address in the city as to what districts they're in. So it would be something that we could add in, but it's also just an administrative sort of bandwidth question as well. And one of the many things- Is there anything in the bridge or something? Yeah, no, there's other ways to do it. And I can definitely talk to Mike and Adria and everybody about that down in the planning department to see what we could do about that. Could I interject something really quick too? Sorry to interrupt you. No, no, no, no, go. Also just through the process prior to this of updating the National Register District, there were a number of required mailings to every owner in the district. So those folks have been notified within the last couple of years of their presence within a particular situation that might need a little more understanding than it perhaps they knew what they're getting into. But at the same point in time, that's I think what we, there's a lot of things in the exempt development that is much more clear than was previous. So it lets people know when they don't need to. There are some very clear things that don't require. And I think that's a really good improvement or understanding when they trigger that process. I think there's a number of people that come in. Wait a second. They've got to stand up again. This is great. I usually have to do that, Meredith. I really appreciate having someone else. I think the number of people coming in with projects that they've started or completed is less than it used to be. I mean, in the 20 years I've been around, one case went to court. And you know, that's it. And I don't think that's too bad generally. And I think as we go through the complete this process and have public meetings, more people will understand it. I mean, it's anybody doing a title search should tell an owner when they buy a property. But I understand that somebody that's owned a place for 20 years, they might not have thought about it. They may have been told. I think for a lot of people it's one of those things where you don't care at all until all of a sudden you've made a decision where all of a sudden you need to care. And just also, I also think that there's some synergy with us going through the process that we're going through now and maybe doing some outreach while we're doing it.  And then you just want to reduce it. The other thing you asked about costs and I don't think we've had much of an issue was costs. I mean, most of the things that we talk about don't require people to spend a lot of money. Or it increases the value of their property. I mean, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has done a study and property values increase in an historic district that is under design review. Do you factor in maintenance costs at all? Like if you don't replace your windows, the maintenance costs are keeping older windows? No, I mean, there have been studies done that the new windows don't last very well in 20 years. Historic windows, 100 years, so. I don't honestly think the cost is a big factor. The other thing is the standards are pretty flexible because the standards, these are for rehabilitation projects. And you'll notice there's a possible in there so that there's some flexibility to deal with the solution. And in all the cases that I can remember where people have started, we come up with some kind of a solution. They might not like it necessarily. One case, the downtown building bought all the windows before they came to design your deal. In the compromise, well, you can put them in the back of the building, but you have to do the right ones at the front. So it's, you know, it's like any negotiation, I guess. So the reason we're asking a lot of questions about this is because these are some of the things that we've heard and we're concerned about. I mean, really, I mean, I don't think that anybody on the Planning Commission feels like historic preservation is not important. We all agree it's important. It's just, we want to figure out how it mixes and potentially, how does it overlap? How does it potentially impede other goals? Or are those false conflicts, you know, all of those things? And what is the impact on the average homeowner who doesn't have a lot of money? I mean, is this going to hinder growth or affordable housing? So that's where all these questions are coming from. And it's, A, to understand it better just so we can process it and understand how the goals are from a more holistic kind of goals of the city in planning are met. And also, B, so that when we receive public comment, we can't explain some of these concerns. So that's where all these questions are coming from. It's not meant to criticize. Can I just address the whole public outreach, public knowledge issue? It's a situation, you know, if people come to the planning department and say, hey, I've got this project I'm doing. I've already lined up everybody. This is what I'm doing. Or, hey, I've already done this. But suddenly my contractor says I need a permit. That happens with everything. It's not just design review. So I don't see that happening anywhere with design review than I do with any other thing, even just a driveway. It's one to explain kind of following what Leslie's leading, explaining some of the background behind the question is, you know, like as Leslie was just suggesting, we're trying to think of every stakeholder involved in the city. And there's people who may be skeptical or whatever you want to say about design review. And so if we can think of ways to help prevent conflicts while doing this, then that's just, you know. Well, and that's also one reason, as I said, we tried to clarify in here a bunch of exemptions so that when you do get to the potentially redrawing the design review overlay district or potentially districts, however you want to do it, people who are looking at, oh, I'm going to be in the district or I am in the district. How does this apply to me? There's some more clarity in what it actually means. And that's also part of why I'm thinking of outreach and how it could be maybe important in this process because if we're having new exemptions and things, getting the word out about that seems important. Yep, there's been lots of public notice through the drafting process and I think it's, when you're ready to take this on, I think coordination with the planning department and figuring out additional outreach options would be good. I don't know if, you know, I think we want to coordinate that all, if that makes sense for you. One of the challenges we see is that people don't necessarily engage until something's about to be adopted because they're like, well, why would I bother if it's not going anywhere? So it's just an issue always. I would just like to chime in that Eric said that we didn't have a huge amount of public participation in the drafting, but I would say that we did have some really quality participation. You know, the open house that we did, we did not have a huge crowd, but the folks that came out for that open house were able to look at a draft of the exemption list and the administrative review list. And so we were able to get some really good feedback on that. Some people came because they were really unsure about what design review would be. And I think through conversation, a lot of their questions were answered by saying, oh, I won't have to come to get my house painted, but I do now. And so I don't think that was necessarily something that they were expecting when they first got the postcard saying, hey, we're talking about this. They were expecting the standards to get a lot stricter. And so I think that there was a fair amount of relief that there were avenues for single family homeowners and for business owners to do the reasonable and standard maintenance that we all want, you know, local property owners to be doing. So, and we also got feedback of people outside of the district that wish they were in the district because they are aware that their neighbors at the moment could do almost anything, specifically up like on the College Hill, College Street area, so. That you raise a, you triggered a thought about one of the important pieces when you're revising regulations is having a comparison of what the current regs allow or prevent and what the new regs will allow or prevent and what changes will be made is really gonna help city council, I think, in looking at these and make that a more productive conversation. Yeah, that's just kind of hard to clarify since there are no, there's a very short list of exemptions for the current. I mean, you can do a comparison. It's gonna be difficult to really do a true side by side of those. We tried to sort of do something like that in here and it wasn't, it was not really presentable. Okay, okay. Because when we were going through the big zoning rewrite, that Mike kept getting asked over and over again for this and he kept saying, I can't, I mean, it's a completely new product, I can't. And that's, I mean, we can, you can, we'll be able to do a here's the exemptions list, here's the exemptions list. It's not gonna be a red line because it's just new language. And there was no avenue for administrative design review approval previously. If you're in the design review district, you're either exempt or you have to go to the design review committee. In the new draft, there's also a whole subset of things where, yeah, you're in design review, you're not exempt, but all you need is administrative approval. You have to meet these select criteria and you've got it. So I mean, there's key differences but it's gonna be very hard to do a red line of any sort. Yeah, I don't think a strict red line would be, and then I'm just. Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's definitely something that can be worked on. Go back and do this. It also just takes, when it comes to what you guys decided you wanna do in going to city council, I'm sure we can support and find a way to create something like that as a more elaborate presentation or posters, things like that. We just have to find the bandwidth. Okay, that's all it is. Couple of things. What you're saying is one, the reasons we put in the first three paragraphs. Okay. Explaining that this is an interest to the city, it's a public interest to have design review. I mean, design review has done pretty well in the city. Oh, these three, okay. For the last 40 years. In terms of preserving, it's a stark character. I'm not sure the decisions will change a lot. What do you think, Steve? I don't think so. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, You know, the biggest challenge is the, you know, designs of new buildings that may be going up in town and don't swim. Steve, we can't hear you, the public can't hear you. Just the biggest challenge is gonna be new buildings, which is one reason these regulations, the new draft regulations have a whole section on new construction. I think the other going to be perceived as new regulation? I mean, we should definitely. No, it's a clarification. The current, the current design review regulations cover new construction. It just, it's not, because they're very fuzzy. It's so subjective, right? Yeah, that it might not be interpreted consistently when board members change. Versus having clear cut. This is what applies to new development. This is what applies to, you know, existing and, and modifications to that. And, you know, it's, it's not, the current regulations regulate new development. This is just gonna be clear and to be, be specific about things that we, the design review committee really doesn't care about for new development. Can I chime in? Can I chime in? Sure. So, so in the, in the current regulations, the two that are really most applicable to new construction at the moment is harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district. That's that full statement. And that's the full district. The full district. And then prevention of the use of incompatible designs, buildings, color schemes, or exterior materials. So it's regulated in such a broad open way that it really leaves the, the city very vulnerable to appeals of any decision by the design review and DRB. Classic example is the Calog Hubbard Library. Gotta come up here. So the classic example of a new, new construction or a new addition is the Calog Hubbard Library. Years ago, they put that addition on the back. That addition on the back is compatible with the original design, but it's not identical to the original design. So again, there has to be enough leeway to allow a design, a creative design in a lot of the architects feel like they want to make, whether it's a new building or an addition to an existing building, they want it to be a statement of the time now rather than 140 years ago when the library might have been originally built. So again, there has to be enough flexibility on that to accommodate some of those newer projects, but at the same time sort of form a template for approving something like that. I mean, I think that works very well. A lot of people, you know, there's a lot of mixed emotion about that, but I think overall, I think people thought it was okay in its design stage, and I think that people find that it's very tasteful in its completed state. So, John hasn't been saved, but after that, I haven't heard anything from Barb, which is very surprising. Well, I mean, I've read through, and I have a couple of really sweet questions. Okay. So I'll confirm all that. Okay. Before I sit down permanently. That's definitely not going to happen. I've been in a regulatory environment, the state level, the federal level, the local level, in two different states. And people do not like regulations. There's a segment of the population that is just not going to like regulations. They're going to find reasons not to have it. They're going to find reasons that's are intrusive on their private property rights. They're going to go into all of this stuff, but that's one reason why the statement that it leaves in the interest of the city to preserve its historic building. So that's what you kind of go back to with all of it, that this is a public interest matter. And the cost differential, I realize that's significant, but it has, we all agree we want clean air and the cost to businesses for that is expensive. This is going to be an incremental piece. It's what, depending on what people want to do. Yeah, so I had a question about the, I think the committee is like a great asset to the non-piliar and people should use it. And it's an underused resource. I'm wondering is there, or is there an opportunity to capture some of the advice or the decisions beyond, sure we have meetings and approved or denied building permits, but people don't really like to read those. I imagine you give a lot of similar advice and guidance to people and there are a lot of reoccurring situations. So I'm just thinking is there a way where we can capture that advice and present it in a way that's more digestible or demystifies the process a little bit, maybe even inspires people or gives them ideas on what they could do for their property. And that would, I love the idea that I think the guidelines will be really helpful, but oftentimes we adopt guidelines and then they'll never touch them again. So this could be an opportunity for more of like a living documentation that continuously update and make a little more human than just regulations. One of the things that's... I'm not gonna hear you right now. I don't think it's good. Pull the tape out, pull the tape out. One of the things that, all the designer view meetings are on tape. The city tapes the designer view meetings. They don't do the historic preservation commission, but they do design review. So somebody wants to go back and as a particular they can go through agendas. They can figure that out if they wanna listen to that. I think it'd be great to do kind of a summary of decisions, but I don't know how practical or possible that is with the current staff. Could it be an addendum to your design guidelines? It seems like some of the design guidelines actually do show you existing conditions and what not to do and what to do. We're gonna do that. Hopefully we'll use examples for the positive stuff in the community and use the negative stuff. The positive stuff in the CaliCovered Library is a really good example of, okay this got through designer view. I think a lot more positive outreach would be valuable with maybe an introduction, some photos showing some successful projects, offering committees as a resource. Even for somebody, I mean send anybody who buys a house in the historic district or buys a property that's on the historic register. We'll be sending them out a letter saying congratulations. You now own a very valuable piece of property because it's in the historic design review district offered to use our committee as a resource. If you're thinking of doing something, you don't have to come file a specific application and pay any money, just come to it before the committee for an informal presentation, what you're thinking of doing. I think that would be really helpful to people. And again, there are people on the committee who have a lot of expertise. I think it's incredibly valuable. Can people not in the district come? Free advice. Anybody in the city, you might pill your. It's an open meeting. Any taxpayers already prepaid, so you might as well. I have one of those houses that lost its character over time. We can get all the advice we can get. Great opportunity to recapture some of it. Couple of things in. We do have a couple of design guidelines that are on our website that are, they were done maybe 10 years ago that are on a couple of particular architectural elements on porches, on windows, but they're really just kind of discussing best practices. And so I think, and I don't wanna get too far ahead of ourselves, but I think what we've been envisioning is taking those and updating them and showing some success stories and showing ways that the standards are met and ways in which they aren't. Visually showing examples that can help folks to design their project and going through even, we've updated specific submittal materials that are needed so that the design review committee can really understand the context of this project. So if someone is coming in looking to replace their windows, now it's very clear that you need photographs of the windows that are deteriorated that are a problem so that they can understand also with these design guidelines that'll help illustrate be a compendium, sort of a compendium to going through the application process. And I think that that's sort of where we're trying to usher this eventually, but we have to take this very first step here with the regulations, but we have been providing some of that guidance and there are other ways you can tap into that sort of great information that's coming out of those specific meetings, but you have to know what you're looking for to do that. What sections have, did you say some of the sections address the materials that need to be provided? What sections? Under the, there's the application process that's 22.01G, section G, submittal requirements. And so this is really, I think, providing a lot more clarity to the application process for when folks have to come and present, I guess prior to that, we've already figured out whether or not it's exempt and whether it has to go to the design review committee or not, but if you do have to, if it's not exempt and then going through the application process, there's in that process right off the bat the opportunity for administrative review. And again, that's a new feature that we were able to create within those existing, the existing framework. Then the submittal requirements talk about what type of information needs to be presented and how to the design review committee so that someone can't come in with a half-designed project and expect to get through that meeting with an approval unless it's clear. I think that helps the design review committee as well protect their ability to consider these projects because sometimes they do take a little bit of charrette and figuring out back and forth and then it's on to the homeowner to figure out the best way forward. So that, I think that section helps and through that process, there's no requirements, for example, to have architectural drawings or something that would come at a cost to a homeowner, but providing the information in a way that the design review committee can understand the context of the project. So we developed them with a sensitivity of allowing homeowners to be able to navigate through this process. I think giving them the ability to not incur extra cost or have to hire specialists to do this but because there's a certain amount of information that needs to be obtained, that's why we tried to clarify that. Of course, the design review committee also sees projects that where owners hire architects or other professionals to present with architectural drawings and you need to accommodate for that as well. Okay, Bob. Yeah, I was glad to see under the submittal materials that you're asking for photographs of neighboring structures too because so many times someone thinks all I'm doing is adding onto my house and not recognizing how it affects the structures around them. So yeah, this is a very clear list. It seems really helpful. I had one question from before, something that came up. So a lot of us don't have a background with the Secretary of Interior standards and the various standards that exist out there. I know that's a surprise. Yeah, I know, right? And it's good that we don't have any background in this because we're able to approach it like any resident. Anyway, so based on this conversation, I'm understanding that different versions of those standards must exist. This is not completely boilerplate. So this is a one version of those but if you could talk about that though, that would be great to help us understand it because I mean that's inevitably going to come up. So the National Park Service, their guidance for historic design review districts is start with the standards but then customize them so that they are specific to your community. Not every community is the same but the goal is not to contradict what is in the standards. So we did not include every single standard from the Secretary of the Interior explicitly in this but we also did not contradict any of the ones that we left out. Some of them we combined to rephrase or change the emphasis about what we think is important specifically for Montpelier but in general, design review districts can either take the boilerplate language and just cut and paste and then add a few on specifically for their community or they can modify the language a little bit as long as it's still within the intention that is behind the original language. Can you give us just an idea of what percentage of the 17 pages of regulations are in addition to those standards? Most because most of these, most of the 17 pages is specifically talking kind of the logistics. The Secretary of Interior standards are most directly relevant to what we call our general design standards. So one through 14. So the actual criteria that are looked at and then the process and everything is the separate? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all of the intro material about administrative review and all of that, that's specific to our community and then getting down into section K and after that that is also items that are specific to our community that are basically trying to go into more zoning language that support those general design standards that are based on the Secretary of Interior standards. I mean, one way to look at this is your general standards are your overarching criteria statements about what is desired. Correct me if I'm wrong. Your specific design standards are in some ways how these are being applied to very specific instances like signs or how to deal with a roof shape. Because and those are things that aren't in the current ranks. The current regulations are mostly just here are general design standards. How is an applicant supposed to know how that's gonna apply to them changing the shape of their roof? They have no idea unless they have worked with the National Park Service standards on some other project. But your standard homeowners can be able to dig down and go, what's my project? Or have us point to it? This is what I'm doing. Okay, here's your subset that applies. You're probably gonna be fine but let's go before the design review committee. And also let's, these specific standards are also how the administrative officer can do some administrative approvals. Without these specific standards, the zoning administrator can't improve anything. One of the, we picked the most flexible of the Secretary of Interior standards. There's Secretary of Interior standards for restoration. If you took all the paper on the desk there and piled it up. There's just lots of different, there's standards for landscaping, there's standards for it. But they just really don't apply. I mean, what we're doing is, if somebody wants to restore a building, really go back and restore it. That, you know, it can be done under these standards. What is the, Eric, can you go over the restore, replace, rehab, the difference between the three? Yeah, rehabilitation. Restore means you put it back the way it was. You pick a time period and do everything that matches. And it has to be documented. It can't be speculative in the standard. You can't say, well, a house of this period, that's probably what you wanted. The house of this period might have had X, Y, and Z. You have to have some kind of documentation. If you're gonna do the Secretary of Interior's standards for restoration, if you're gonna do rehabilitation, you can do the speculates. Better to do, you know, have documentation as to what it was, whole photographs or whatever. But the Secretary of the Standards are really extensive. I actually sat on the committee for the National Congress, the State Historic Preservation Officers that reviewed these a few years ago. Is there any kind of precedent that exists for interpreting these standards? The Park Service actually publishes a series of interpretive guidelines and basically- So if someone walked into the Park Service, you're on with the- And they said, I have some precedent here. Would we follow it or would we say, well, this is our interpretation of the standards? I think this is, I think, a difficult in drafting standards. If you draft them with too much detail, they become totally inflexible. And you're gonna miss something because you can't cover everything. And then it becomes, instead of 17 pages, it becomes 170. But there's guidelines for all the standards that the Secretary of Interior publishes that are available online. So as Montpelier, are we going to try to stay in line with what the Department of Interior- You answered his question with an, it's complicated. Yeah. I mean, I think, I don't expect you guys, I don't expect you to be able to answer everything, but I do think just conceptually, each of you who are going to be making these interpretation decisions, do you conceptually see this as, this is Montpelier's version of this that we own or we must follow other interpretations closer to the source, such as the Department of Interior. I say it's Montpelier because you have to make decisions and changes based on code, based on use of a building. And each state is free to do that too. I think it means that we need to be careful in talking about this with the public as something that exists set in stone because it's actually more fuzzy as I think Meredith said earlier than that. So I think we just need to be careful about. There's someone else jumping in. I don't talk much, but I'll check it out. When we were drafting, my name is General Apachinsky. I am on the Preservation Commission and I work for the Preservation Trust of Vermont. When we were drafting the specific guidelines as they applied to projects, we pulled information from the guidelines that exist through the Park Service and applied them to projects in Montpelier. So while they are specific to place, the content of them is based on precedent. So I think if there were questions about it, we could point to the Park Service's material in almost any instance and say, this is how they interpret it and that's why we're doing it that way. That helps, thanks. And one other point of clarification. We've referenced right above in the design review standards the actual Secretary of the Interior standards as a reference in the review of applications. Along with, we left the placeholder here for our future guidelines, our future design guidelines because those will help to take those two things that you were just talking about, the sort of global view and the local view. And they do get merged together in these general design standards. So if you were to take the Secretary of Interior standards as written by the Park Service, and if we were to put them, as we were saying earlier next to this, you would see a lot of similarity. And then a few things added in that the standards don't necessarily cover to the development or the things that we're trying to achieve here. And with that, this is all dealing with infill development. And so, or at least what's going on within the district. And so, understanding how that ties together in the response of those things together. Example, Kirby, that made me really helpful and it's from a long time ago. Eric, you're going to have to speak up more because I have to turn this down because everyone's got the phone. The bank downtown, the one with the clock, used to have a metal cheese grater on the front. And that's what it looked like. You can see through it. And the division where I then got some money to fix that. Well, part of the, in putting that on, they'd removed lentils on the top two floors over the windows and they were cast iron. Now if you strictly follow the standards, you replace them with cast iron lentils. But they're fiberglass. And really on a cost basis. So, I mean, that's a little bit of flexibility. And I think they are, I was part of the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers and they really wanted flexibility in the standards. And people are going to make the decisions. And they're going to have different ideas about things. And I think that's just the way any board or commission is, it's not everybody's in lockstep on things. Yeah, I mean, of course there'll be some element of discretion and you need to have that. It's just figuring out how these regulations align with the precedent and how there, it sounds like there will be a lot of guidance about how to interpret these based on what the parks service is already published and the development of these guidelines. Although, to me, that's unclear. If it's going to be for applicants, then is it binding on the design review committee? It's not binding. It's guidance. The regulations are the binding part. Right. The guidance, people can refer to it and say, hey, this is what we want to do. But in any set situation, what is in that guideline may not specifically work. We don't want them necessarily copying the guideline if you're saying, I'm working on building B. It needs to be consistent with building A and building C. How you interpret that is going to vary. So they're going to be examples. They're not going to be, this is exactly what you're supposed to do. Okay, okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, perfect. So in 2201 I, it talks about the, actually including the secretary and your standards as appendix. Does that mean appendix to this for its page? Yep, so they're going to be appendices as a reference. It's not something, and there's, you can also, Planning Commission can do what they want with that paragraph. It was trying to find a way to reference in here that these are potential guidelines for the DRC to use. But these design guidelines, I mean these design standards were developed from the secretary's interim standards, not in addition to. Right, and what's in here is, so right, so this is explaining just that if they're, in trying to deal with applications, if they run into an issue here, they can go look at the secretary of interior standards for rehabilitation as guidance. It's guidance, but not necessarily. It's not a rate, right? It is not, it is not the weight of these, it's guidance, and that language can definitely be played with. Are you, yeah. But it's, I mean, we were saying this in appendix, it might be a link on the city website. You know, and that's, I mean, they're currently linked on the city website. That's another thing, just going back to the resources and reaching out to public and all of that. That's also a measure of just staff bandwidth. It's been, I've been in this position for a little over a year, updating DRB, DRC, Planning Department, and HPC websites has been on that agenda for a really long time, and I literally have never had a breath to do it. Neither has Audra. So anything you come up with as wish list items for that, send it to me through mic, we'll add it to the list, and eventually we're gonna get that all updated. I would be concerned that someone's going to use this against you, and say that this is an exhaustive list and you can't use anything outside of this. Because it says that you may consult those things. Right, and any other supplemental educational public creations or brochures prepared by the committee or the city's historic preservation commission, I mean, it's a, we can throw a bunch of stuff in there, or yeah, or you could get rid of it, or change how it's phrased. This was one way to throw it in here. Yeah, this is where having all the lawyers on the commission gets a little tiring, but it's important. Oh, no, no, no, no, trust me. It's important. Practicing maturity for six years. There's been lots of minds go, and there's been lots of minds on an office and trying to find a balance. I'm not usually a stickler, but I think recently in the city, we've seen some lawsuits that are like, holding on things like this. Oh, oh, yeah. So, you know, this is one reason, this is what HPC came up with as sort of their wish list of how to deal with this. It's now coming to planning commission to poke holes, do what they need to do to make this document something that you support, to then move up to city council. And I think, you know, I don't necessarily want to talk for everybody here. I know that if there comes a time when you need me to come up and be here along with Mike for a meeting, and I'm sure other members of HPC and DRC would be willing as well, you know, let us know. It's not, it's not like we're only available for this meeting. There's a lot of people ahead, thoughts. Erin, you haven't heard much from you. Hi. So, kind of taking off from Kirby's last point. I'm looking at this document. I'm looking at the original guide, looking at the original regs. I'm looking at the new ones. The way I'm sort of reading, this is just because I have zero experience in how this works in practice. Can you walk me through? That's why we have a bunch of people from the boards here. Can you walk me through how you guys, under the current regs, you know, there's some pretty broad sort of general design standards that you guys are looking at. That's in 2201D and the current regs. That's supposedly embodied in 2201J, I think, and the new ones. But after that, you've got specific design requirements, even in the old regs and particularly in the new ones. That to me are, when I read them, they seem kind of prescriptive. It's, there's a lot of shouts in there. Like, it shouts you this, you shouts you that. And the list is pretty significant, particularly in the new ones. So how does, how do the committees now approach that language? Like, how do you sort of synthesize all of these requirements when you're reviewing a project? Because I guess my concern here is like, if ultimately what you guys are saying to me today is that you don't see that there's gonna be a lot of change in the way that you, like how projects are approved under this new language. I just wanna make sure that the process that you envision undertaking and reviewing these things, is consistent with the language that you're posing. Does that make sense? I'm sorry. I think so. So a lot of those shouts in the current regulations are dealt with at the administrative level. We're not letting something go necessarily to the design review committee unless they've already met those shouts. And then the, and so we get that stuff incorporated into the application. And then for all the things where it's a judgment call, it's a should or it's your general standards. That then goes up to the design review committee. Right. One reason I think there's so many more specific shouts in the new regulations, if this goes to your question, is to allow that administrative approval. Because right now there isn't specifically administrative approval for design review projects. You know, Steve, I don't know if you're best to discuss the actual process of going through the criteria when it comes to getting an application before the design review committee. I mean, it's... Steve, it's probably the best part. Yeah, I don't wanna come up to the mic and go through that. It's all, it's a judgment call a lot of the time. Again, we try to do what's, it may be many times it's a compromise. It's a compromise between what people wanna do, what they can afford to do, what the shell says in the application or in the standards. So again, we view these as guidelines and we try to adhere to them as much as you can. But a lot of them are fairly flexible. The removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize a property shall be avoided. There are a lot of ways to maintain the character, especially given the new technology, new materials that weren't available 100 years ago. So a lot of times you can replace a cornice, as Eric referred to one, you can replace it with fiberglass or a material that will give you the same appearance. It maintains the integrity of the building, but you don't have to have somebody go up there and use plaster or concrete or a technique that was used maybe 100 years ago, maybe even with materials that nobody even uses anymore. So a lot of times you have to adapt it to current availability, current construction, procedures, current materials. So again, that's why we have a mix of people on the committee that make it a valuable resource because of what people know what's available, people know what standards are. So again, a lot of times it's a compromise. Steve, under the new building standards, there's one of those shell statements about new construction shall incorporate historic architectural elements that reinforce or add to the character of the area. And it seems like that's in contradiction to one of the earlier sections that said you're not going to replicate something from a previous era when this is clearly a new building. So this is all, this is for new construction. I was just surprised. It says you shall not use historical elements and two pages later it says you shall incorporate historical elements. I know there are some. It's at the top of page 11, bottom of page 10 under context and connectivity. It says new construction shall incorporate historic architectural elements that reinforce or add to the character of the area which seems to be in contradiction to 2201J8. I think adding, I don't know, maybe you can talk about this. I think that this might be a word in confusion that maybe we can clarify. It is not that it is intending to incorporate a salvaged front door. The intention behind this one was that if you are in a string of buildings with really large substantial heavy cornices, the new design should have a cornice element. It can be a contemporary cornice element, but it should not be completely departing from that sense of rhythm and balance of that block. Then in that case, I think you'd want to reconsider the use of the word historic at the bottom of page 10 because that makes it sound as if you really do want them to replicate that cornice. Just take the word historic out. That would be the... I mean, I certainly understand you want elements that are consistent. Sorry, that was my one little thing. A good one. Yes. I wanted to give an example, I think, going back to what you were just asking for about how these two might play out. So for example, in the current regs, under section D, number six, Toppe says the design review committee shall evaluate design review plans based on the following considerations. And number six just says location and appearance of all utilities. And it gives no direction. What does that mean? What should they look at? So if you go to the page seven of the new regs under section J, number nine, top of page seven, second sentence says location and appearance of all utilities, mechanical trash storage, fencing. We've lumped a bunch of other things in there, but shall be cited to minimize adverse impact, visual impact or adequately and appropriately screened from the public view. So that starts to give some direction about locating them on the sides or the back of buildings or places where they're not visually obtrusive. That's just one example of many of the different elements where we try to add a little more detail to give guidance to the design review committee. And so again, we're not recreating the wheel here. We're just adding a few more spokes and to help it run a little more smoothly, perhaps. Sure, let's assume you can't with this project. Let's assume you can't, you can't change the location and the appearance of utilities and mechanical equipment, trash storage, fencing, to minimize adverse visual impact or adequately and appropriately screened from the public view. What if that's just not possible? That's where the whole fact that the design review committee is a advisory committee comes into play. They put forward their recommendations and then goes to the zoning administrator or the DRB to look at the bigger picture of the rest of the regulations and the rest of the project that the design review committee hasn't looked at at all to figure out whether or not that is necessary. I can't remember if this says... It just says, so the shall is shall be compatible, right? Compatible is a pretty broad, subjective idea. The fencing shall be the size of the legs? Yeah, to minimize. Minimize doesn't mean you can't see it. It means minimize, so minimize and you could just throw in there, minimize to the greatest extent, allow, or you can throw in a qualifier in there as you're getting into the finer points of it to make it so that you feel like it's more enforceable. However, there's an administrative aspect of it. Sure, no, I get that. I think that the core of my question is getting lost here. What does this... So in the old regs, it says they just consider it, right? And it's vague. I get your point. I see why you would want to do it. What does this language instruct the committee to do? Let's say it's violative of sub-9 with respect to utilities. There's always a way to minimize. Yeah. So you make them ads and screening? Either location or screening. In case in point, in these frats, these multi-story buildings have balconies and everybody's gone to heat pumps and the compressors are very small and they've put them in the balconies behind railings and they're usually against a wall and they're painted or somehow colored so that they blend into the building. I've got pictures of them and you walk in down the street and you can't tell they're there. So you're dealing with a 800-year-old building that's now got heat pump for heating and air conditioning. It's indicative of the time. And they're outside so it's technology that you use creatively to make an efficient building and they've got heat pumps. I mean, there's 50 of them on the face of the building and you can't see any of them unless you work really carefully. 800 years old. Yeah. No, they heat pumps. No, it's not about fear. I think that might have been lost. It was in France. These frats on the right hand side of the history are not in the U.S., no, not in the TPs. So one other thing I wanna add is that whether it's the secretary of the interior standards or our general design standards, they're written in a way to be applied broadly because they have to be. Every project's going to be different. Every streetscape is going to be different and how something is achieved on one building may or may not work next door or in another neighborhood. So what this, as someone goes through this process, there are a lot of, there's consultation that can happen and that's where we trust in the members of the design review committee to help usher this to the place where you have to allow a little give and take. So these, the shals, I think, are directed towards goals and philosophies, but there's always a way, as Steve said, there's always a way to find ways to resolve this if you come up against a hard stop because that has to happen. If not, then nothing would go forward because lots of things. But also you can't vote against anything if you have too many outs, basically, too many loopholes. Well, and I think in my time with the design review committee last week might have been the first, or the last meeting might have been the first time that the design review committee has said, we're not approving this because of X reason. And so then what ended up happening is we approved most of the permit from the ZA standard, the administrative permit, but we said, but this one feature, you can do. Your sign can't have this lighting feature. We'll see if it gets appealed, but that was the old, yeah, well, that was the applicant. I was thrilled by because it was an important issue that he didn't want to follow through with. He was thrilled when we said no, because he could go back and say, they won't let me do that, so you have to do this. So that worked out. Which is what he was looking for. For now. So he was thrilled. Can I just go back to the utilities example for just a second? So when it comes to exterior placement of utilities, that's one of the things that administrative officer can approve. If it's certain ones, it's in subsection H1C, as long as these things are on the side of building elevations. When I then go down and look at the specific standards, and it tells me we have to minimize visual impact on those utilities, I can then say, I can point to that and say, oh, you know what, applicant? Yes, I can approve your heat pump on the side of your building, but guess what, it can't be neon orange. Let's try and make it a color that blends in with the color of your siding and or put up some screening. That gives me something to point to to then put conditions on my administrative permit. Without that shall on there, there is, you know, on the minimized visual impact, there's nothing for me to point to for that condition that I'm gonna put on an administrative permit. And it's the same thing for the DRB. They're just throwing conditions on there out of nowhere that are really hard to defend if somebody appeals it. I think the other thing that you're saying that I'm kind of reading between the lines here is that the DRB or administrative approval, maybe the administrative approval is different actually, but you're not going to, just because there's a shall in sub nine, you're not necessarily gonna flag that on every single project if it doesn't seem like it's going to be an issue. Right? Right. Because they've already met it, right? That would be the interpretation. It's already met or if you just acknowledge that it would be impossible to improve on, you're just not gonna go there, right? Well, especially if it's shall minimized. You don't have to just because it's a shall. Most of the time people who are coming in with projects and they're upgrading to heat pumps or to some outside utility, they're trying to hide it anyway. I mean, we've seen a number of commercial projects come in and they're putting in new propane tanks, maybe a larger propane tanks because they're moving, they're going to some high efficiency heating system and they're burying them because they don't want to see them either. And they, or they're in an area where they don't want it to block public access or a driveway or something else. So they can put it, they can bury it and then you don't even see it or you screen it with landscaping.  So again, most of that's creative problem solving. And I think the way of utilities, some of the difficulty comes with the electric company, you want to put the meters on the front of the house where they're really easy to read and we would say, no, it's possible to put them around the corner and that minimizes the impact. I think that's okay. And the same thing with dumpsters, the guy's got a small lot. Maybe you're going to be able to see the dumpster no matter where you put it but don't put it in the front.  Well, they're really good drivers so they can take care of it if they want to. So one of the items in here on page seven, number 10, this is something that we did get some feedback that was generally supportive and was in the previous design standards. I think the language has changed a little bit and this is talking about Vistas but this is something that I do want to just kind of put out there that this one's going to be a little bit open ended until the new master plan goes through and we're really hoping that some of what we've drafted in here can kind of help direct the master plan to then kind of support back into this because you know, the preservation commission, we love the Vistas of this city. I don't know that any of us are landscape specialists to really evaluate and establish which ones are important to the city to preserve and so this was just one example where I think that you all as planners can kind of help add back into maybe some areas that are not our strong suit or if there are other items in the design review regulations that maybe we just completely missed because it's not something we think about in our professions or our volunteer lives so I just wanted to put that back out there that this is a larger design review district that maybe there are other aspects of design review especially maybe with new construction as well that some other folks might have some expertise that could get added in here so. Yeah, and this language here is this one of the, was this from the Secretary of Interior? No, no, no, this was something that we had added in because it had been in our current regulation. Oh, I see, okay. Okay. So how is it being interpreted in the current regulations? Currently the main gateway views being discussed are basically gateway views of the state house and this is something Mike Miller and I have discussed a lot that the Planning Commission is probably gonna need to take on at some point as to figure out or hire somebody to do or find a way to get a grant to have somebody do it to figure out what are the viewsheds that are important to Montpelier, not just of the state house but any others and something to throw into that mix is when you're thinking about those or any of those views views of green space and green space that you might potentially want to exempt from being allowed to have solar development. Solar development because right now you really can't limit where, especially individual solar is put at all but one way it could potentially be limited is if there is a viewshed that is very important and protected and mentioned in the master plan. So just since we were getting into that discussion point I wanted to throw that out there. I know that's a big head explosion point but it is something that sort of goes into this. I don't think that the viewsheds needs to be specifically dealt with to adopt these regulations because there is currently a standard that the design review committee and as zoning and administering the DRB we all look to is different views as you're coming into the city especially the view of the state house but it's something to mull over especially when you're starting to look at potentially in the future redesigning where the design review districts are it might be throwing in some other viewshed overlays. Longer term thinking. Yeah, nice. But since the question got, since it got brought, yeah. Well and to just build on that a little bit more it's not just solar development it's really any development because this language is actually included in the Quiche analysis. So within Act 250 looking at how the fit part of a project having done reviewed a lot of different projects both solar and otherwise within that lens it's where it is written in the master plan is where it is defensible for a city to and that is a real subjective thing these what is so they have to be established and identified in order for them to be protected. And I'm sure you're aware of this. Mike has done work with viewsheds. He has a lot of, he can guide you much more than I can on that. So when he's back, feel free to discuss it with him in depth. He's not gonna let me for saying that, but. Yeah. Well my thought is some of those properties might not be within the district. So how does that work? Yeah. That's why it's part of the larger question of the whole district as a whole. And how you, whether you add new overlays whether you expand the district. All right. Well thank you very much. We're running low on time, John's leaving. So, it's our clock. Okay, thanks for coming. Well, yeah really it's very, you've done a lot of great work and given us a lot of explanation and answers and the planning commission without me will be able to take it going forward. We should talk about next steps real quick. Yeah. We'd be happy to meet with you again if you look at him and have a discussion and figure out some more things. And I wanna thank you for your efforts on this. Yeah. Certainly the members of the Historic Preservation Commission they worked hard. There's a lot of different views and expertise and it's good. Yeah. All right, do you wanna leave the discussion on? Oh, Barbara's just like. So do we need to, I mean finish out their presentation or go through all the points? That's my question. I'm not saying necessarily that we should. See you, thanks. Appreciate it. Next steps. I don't think we'll get folks to come back. I don't know. I mean my recommendation would be that the planning commission take this up for the next meeting and go through the actual language. Everyone should review it in advance and then come prepared to talk about concerns that they have. I think that walking through it and then the last will probably be a good use of time even though it's slow. At this point, and this is, I'm asking this question to the room. Would, if the planning commission started to review this, would it be preferable that we review it with the idea of making any recommendations to the council or it seems premature for that, right? We should be reviewing it to make recommendations back to historic preservation. Does that sound better? Well, yeah, I would agree with that. And based on the examples that, I mean, Bar flagged something where the elimination of one errant word resolved the issue. So maybe inviting the planning commission can go through, put together a list of notes and then bring you back to answer questions about the specific language. I wonder if we could borrow Meredith for that conversation and she could be the liaison between the... I can do that whether or not I can attend your next meeting. I'm not quite sure because it depends on when your next meeting is. But that's the other thing is I can also be a liaison in between a little bit if there's anything that specific questions that I could answer ahead of time and also, yeah, however we wanna do it. It can go back to HPC as a full and then we can, you know, address your comments either in person or in writing. It kinda depends on what you wanna do and how quickly you wanna do it. I think whatever you want, we can find a way to make it happen. Maybe do some informal discussion next week and then tentatively plan to schedule something in the future where you come in and we go through and have and flag suggestions to bring back. Is that okay with everyone? Yeah, I can do that. HPC meets once a month. But we can also have special meetings if need be.  We'll talk about it next week but just tentatively, we'll say that. Okay. We can get something from here. Okay. Do you want HPC here next week, next meeting, or do you wanna do it solo? I don't think next meeting. I don't think we'll be ready yet. Is that okay with everyone? So we'll wait for an invitation. Okay. Thanks. We'll try to be polished in our presentation next time. Yeah. All right, we'll let you go. We've gotta go over the minutes from the last meeting and approve those but thanks again and have a good evening. Okay, so moving on to item six in the agenda, consider the minutes from June 10th. Do I have a motion to approve these minutes? Any discussion? Oh, I should write down who moved. Your final act is chair. Okay. Okay, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Okay, they are approved. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Okay, if I've moved. Second? Sure. Sure. All right, this is a non-debatable item. So all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay, we are adjourned. Thank you.


Well, good morning and welcome to the 25th RIC. This is a pleasure to be here to speak with over 3,000 people living in 33 countries, and I guess that includes the United States, right, where one in 33 that were included in that. And it's a particular pleasure to be here this year because it's the first year to welcome Chairman McFarland to the Commission, her first RIC. She's brought seismic changes to the leadership of the agency. I'm the first person to use that joke, so I'm quite confident in that. You know, speaking of jokes, I mean, I've been talking to people for the last day and they've been saying, well, you know, the boys were said really high, Commissioner Sidenick and Commissioner Apostolakis really were. The problem is, you know, because of the Sunshine Act, I didn't know this was supposed to be a humorous occasion. And so I'm rather ill-prepared for this. So at the end of the list, there was a lot of late days, so I didn't have time to really think of anything. So this morning I got onto the NRC computer and, you know, because Commissioner Sidenick had, you know, sort of covered the proton and neutron. I was looking for another complimentary joke, so I went to the elementary particle humor page on the internet, but the NRC computer blocked it because it was a cyber threat, so I couldn't hit. So, you know, and so I don't, so the humor is probably going to be lacking in my, and because I didn't get the memo, I also don't think that either, you know, my speech is probably kind of down here compared to this. But anyway, it's still a pleasure to be here. And I wanted to thank, you know, Eric and Brian and your staffs for the work you've done to put this together. You've done this several years in a row. You've done a fantastic job. I also want to recognize the Protocol Office, the Office of the National Programs, whose staffs have been very active in all this. There's many other volunteers as well that have participated in putting making this conference a success. And I also want to thank the people who are doing the captioning for today because, you know, we're webcasting this, there is captioning, and they don't have my written speech because I actually didn't know what I was going to say this morning, so there's no speech to give them. I'm making a lot of this up as I go, although I do have some things written down and I'm not going to completely wing it.  And I said, really? You know that? Well, before I forget, I also want to thank my staff. My staff has worked very hard over the last year and they're sitting here, I think they're all here. I don't see all of them, but Patti, Patti, Rebecca, Molly, Rene, Rene who's new, welcome Rene. And where's Vic? I know we also have Vic. Now I know you were thinking, what is it, all female staff? No, you have to have at least one guy on the staff because if I don't have Vic then there's no one else who can change the water bottle on the water cooler. At least without making me feel guilty about it. Yes, I know Molly, I've seen you do it. But it's just not pretty to watch. On a more serious note, you know, every year in the Rick there's always this sort of very sweet because you know that there will always be people who are with us today that they won't be with us next year because we're reaching this point in our ages where a lot of people retire. So I know there will be several people who either have or are thinking about retiring or are likely to retire in the very near future and we're going to miss you. Hopefully you'll come back and see us again if you don't come back next year, but thank you for your service and thank you for everything you've done for your country. So thank you very much.