kind of open it up because I know that, you know, there are a couple questions and a couple suggestions and so I would like to just kind of discuss that. Oh, do you want me to, can I start taking the pictures sometime? Sure. I was looking up King's Crossing in my conversation. I wrote myself. I'm questioning myself. All right, so I'm going to open the Planning Commission meeting of December 13th. Welcome to Housing Commission to our meeting. Thanks for coming. Are you expecting, did you say two more people? I think we're two more that will probably be showing up. Okay. We'll start our portion of it and hopefully they'll show up. So the first item of business is public comment. And this is a chance for anyone from the public to make a comment to the Planning Commission on anything we're not discussing tonight. And we're discussing the Housing Commission. Housing report is what's on the agenda. Yes. Yes. Okay. So for three things, additional comments. Excuse me. Can you just remind of your name? Yes. Richard Backer of Bellevue. Thank you. Yes. First thing is we have some retail establishments that have delivery for large trucks, tractor trailers, tankers, which can impact traffic. They actually can be turning around two blocks down on Bellevue to orient themselves and get back to the corner of Maine. And so we want to take into consideration on this project and conceptual of how we'll manage tractor trailers and tankers servicing our mostly gas station retail establishments. Secondly, staging areas for this project where it actually gets to build up, where we stage a multi-year project for construction and excavation equipment, piles of material, infrastructure to be installed. And also some sort of plan, another comment is how we're going to manage our pedestrian traffic that uses Main Street now and within the school complex. It's heavily used. I'm also curious about how we're phasing the project in at the north and south ends in regards to right away with, you know, I think we have 60 or 66. 66. 66. And I'd be curious to know what it is at the other two ends and how we're going to blend that. So you're talking about as it crosses into Colchester? Yes. And as it crosses the railroad tracks down here? Yeah. Okay. And I was looking through, I think, the transportation plan. I downloaded it on the phone and printed it on the phone. But thanks to the transportation plan, there are some objectives for looking at maintenance on the Wadooski River Bridge as well as rebuilding that bridge. So same comments that we're going to tear up something for a couple of years. How are we going to stage that on top of anything that could happen simultaneously or soon thereafter? Okay. Great. I will tell you, we're going to talk about it later, but there's going to be another meeting on the Main Street project, January 10th. So is it a regular agenda item for each business meeting? It is a regular update item for this, but it's not the update. There's not much to update right now because the consultants are in the development design.  No. That's fine. But like I said, it's still, a lot of the questions if you've asked should be addressed in the design at some point down the road. So at the January 10th meeting, I think it will be appropriate to bring those back up at the presentation. So just to make sure that we're in what we mentioned this at the previous meeting. We're in what's called the preliminary engineering report stage, which will get us to 30% documents. The consultant team, which is deep with talent and skills, is aware of all those concerns and we've had, while not definitive discussions, that's part of the PER stage of things. We get to the point where we have at that 30% stage where we have an understanding of all those things, including impacts to traffic. But again, I step back from that saying I think that the goal is to minimize through staging of the process or the construction, minimize impacts to the traffic. And I think just the last comment is the bridge and Heather knows more about this, but I think it's on a different timeline altogether. They're not at all in the same sentence. No, they're at least 10 years apart. But again, our team, which is a very impressive group of engineers is, and they have a ton of experience in this kind of stuff, is considering every one of those questions you brought up. So they will be able to address them in January 10th meeting and then we'll have one other meeting prior to the completion of the documents as a standalone meeting. I'm mildly reassured, thank you. It's not completely, it's a big undertaking to implement the concept of infrastructure replacement and it's a major thoroughfare and I don't see any way that there won't be disruption. Oh, there won't be disruption, but I think. Think back to, were you here when we did the downtown? Yes, sir. Okay, well, it was disruption. And there's going to be, and every time that they repair the bridge, and that seems to happen every 10 years or so resurfacing or doing something on that bridge, which is one of the reasons why it's being looked at should it be replaced. So yeah, there's certainly with any road project, there's going to be disruption. The question is how best to mitigate it to be seen. Okay. Thanks guys. Yep, thank you. Nothing. Okay. All right, so next item is review the municipal plan schedule and work plan. So I'm going to do this quickly. This is as you guys know, an evolving document. So, and what what we have on schedule for tonight, we're doing what we're doing. We, we might go Brian and I'm the chairman met today and discuss the meeting on the 28. And we think it would be prudent to have a meeting that day to just have you guys without commissions but sort of figure out what sort of regroup on the the the last regular meeting we had, which was very productive but get Mike up to speed with that. Get all of us on the same page. So that would be moving to a Thursday. We're going to be on Wednesdays until the end of the year. Whatever. Whatever. We talked about a date of December 28. We did, but she's right. It's a Thursday. Right. But we went to Wednesday because of Jonathan's schedule. Right, but it wasn't supposed to shift back until January. I thought it was December. I thought it was the end of December. But again, we can, I can just send out an email. That's an easy one to fix. But the point being that we have a meet second meeting in December. And then I'll just say the 28 works better for me because my son is going to be here from California and flies out the 27 at night at seven. So I mean, I could be here. I'm kind of in the opposite situation, but we can figure that one out. So then another thing that because of the aggressive schedule we are on with the main street project, we have scheduled for January 10th, which is a Wednesday. It's the only time the city manager can make it. The last meeting we had with the engineers, we heard comment about two potential alternatives, one with bike accommodations on main one without. So we're going to look at how those play out and have a kind of discussion slash presentation of those. And at the conclusion of that meeting, we would like to have you in joint meeting with the public works, have it come to conclusion or vote. And then after that the schedule, we can we can talk about the more of the scheduling out on the 28th. But the big thing is that on the 10th of January, it's a critical path item for the main street project that we have this preferred alternative this meeting. That's going to be at 6.30. 6.30 here. And it'll be, we'll do a fairly big public outreach for that as we did with the previous meeting with VHB. So that's our meeting for that week though or not? Yeah, it'll be on the 10th. It was scheduled for the 11th that Jesse and I met this morning and she can only be there on the 10th. So she would like to be there for that meeting. So that's it for me. Is everyone, I'll exclude Susan for now, available on either the 27th or 28th? Yes. On one of the two, yes. Okay, all right, that's fine. Okay, so we can do that. Okay. Great. Okay, any questions or comments? Okay. Good. So we'll move on to the next item, which is presentation of Housing Commission rental housing target recommendations. But that's about it. Yeah, a little bit too much right now. Yeah. So before we do that, since we're on channel 17, let's take the time to introduce, I don't know if the Housing Commission has been on the channel 17 before, but let's take a moment to introduce ourselves, as well as for anyone who doesn't know who we are or who you are. So we'll start here and I'm Michael Bryant. I am Pallie Soporin. Susan Etting. Terry Zygmund. Paul Dreyer, planning zoning. Heather Carrington, Community and Economic Development Officer for the city. Robert Malar. Bobby Arnell. I'm Christine Lott. And Anna Wagner. Great. Again, thank you all for joining us tonight. And we look forward to hearing your presentation. We did get via email a copy of your report. Very interesting. So let's go, Heather. Yeah. So what we're going to do tonight is we're not actually going to do a full PowerPoint presentation. It is available on the documents page of the city website under it. Thank you very much, Mike. So under the housing commission page on our website, you can find this document so anyone watching from home can find it there. But since you've already reviewed it, I think we'll probably just open this up to be more of a facilitated discussion. But I do want for the viewers at home to kind of lay the framework of how we got here. In 2016, the city received a housing needs assessment that was done by UVM graduate students in the masters of public administration program. And we were charged with taking that to the planning commission and reviewing a set of 11 recommendations that were made. And those recommendations were to create a housing commission to mandate that when housing is torn down, it's replaced within the city to invest in a gentrification risk assessment tool to expand limited inclusionary zoning program, create a Winooski housing trust fund, invest in analyzing housing quality data, create information and funding mechanism for accessory dwelling units, encourage more homeowners in the city, use Winooski's ethnic diversity to market the community, consider the successes of other mill towns, and create and monitor a map of parcels. So that was handed over to planning commission. Pretty quickly, I think we realized that without having set targets for the types of housing we wanted in the city, the income brackets that we wanted within the city, what was the sustainable mix, what were those goals, we couldn't really make any kind of assessment of all this list of recommendations. So what the planning commission decided to do, and please interrupt and jump in if I'm not correct in my recollection. So what the planning commission decided to do was recommend the creation of a housing commission, specifically to look at some of the data that we're looking at in this report, so that we could get a better sense of what it is as a community that is our goal and our vision for our housing mix. So does that... Sounds right to me. So that housing commission was created June of this year. It's been a very aggressive timeline to get to where we are right now. And what we're looking at tonight will be only recommendations around targets for the rental housing. The reason we've chosen to look at rental housing first is because there's so much development happening as a result of the form-based code gateways, and so much rental housing going on, that there was a concern at the council level that we would have a complete change in our mix before we ever came up with housing targets. So we have chosen to look at that piece first, and next we'll be taking a look at single-family homes and ownership opportunities within the city. So this is just part one. Okay. What I was going to say, do you want to kind of go through... You've kind of teased everyone about what's in this report, so maybe we kind of go through and hit some of the high points? Yeah, we can go through that. I'm actually going to have the housing commission. I'll flip through it, but I'm going to have housing commission members if you feel comfortable doing that, just kind of speak to the data that we did look at. Sure. So thank you for that introduction, Heather. So as Heather mentioned, we looked through a lot of data. A lot of it was based on census information, and we wanted to look at right now where we are currently in Lemuski as far as income makeup among rental units and then where we would like to be in seven years from now. So can I interrupt you, Bobby? You said you've got this from census data, but the number of units that you list here, is that from city data, from our rental registration? I believe so. Census data is a component of the overall data mix that we looked at, but I forget where the other, it was not just the rental. We have our rental registry, and this slide actually speaks to that a little bit. And I'll jump back up through this. Sorry about that. Bring my little chair with me. You just bring a microphone to you. Yeah, I could do that, but I'm planning on not talking that much, so that was the whole plan. So the city of Lemuski is actually pretty ahead of the game in so far as we have a rental registry. So our landlords all register that they have rental units available. We do a regular cycle of going out and inspecting those units, and that's on a four-year cycle. This year is the first year that we added a request for landlords to voluntarily provide us with information on what price they're charging for the units, how many they have, how many bedrooms per unit. So we actually had an unbelievably high response rate to that, so it was nearly 70% of all the units in the city that people voluntarily reported on. So rather than relying on census data, which can sometimes be a little bit off, in particular because during the American Community Survey, where it's really more projections and estimates, this would be real on-the-ground data speaking to how much is being charged in this community and what do we have for affordable housing. So much of the data that you'll see through here is actually from the landlord registry, and at the top of each slide it will say landlord registry if it is in fact part of that data. Okay, thanks. I'm not sure if you want us to go through the slides in order or just talk about how we got. I think speak at a high level to it, and I'll kind of go through if there's anything that I think we should highlight. Sure. So one thing that we noticed was that compared to our neighboring towns and cities within Chattanooga County, Winooski does have an overwhelming, has a much higher low income population when compared to the rest of the city makeup. And so in looking at that break up, it was, I think, currently it's about 84% that of the rental population earns less than 80% of AMI, of the area median income. And this is based on the census data? Yes. Yes, this is census data. So it's 72% of rentor households in Winooski do qualify as low income households. And that would be below 80% area median income. So can I just ask a question here? This was the question I was asking before. So on one of your slides it says that basically the big developments that have gone in recently, the mill, whatever they call it down here, River Road, basically the redstone developments didn't report. They're not the only ones. I brought those ones up specifically. Right. Well, I think there were like five you said that didn't report. There were many more than that. Oh, okay. There were many more. Okay. I raised those ones in particular because those are some of the high-profile, well-known, higher-cost units. So that's what I was going to say about this was just that, I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. No, but equally, I also know, I know Winooski Block did not report. And that's 24 units that are much lower. So those are, you know, and I know that 325 main didn't report. And those are much lower. Those are actually lower than some of the main pricing. So I think that ultimately what you'll see is that if all of those were reported and we have 100% reporting, it would skew slightly higher than what I have for the median. But it's not, it wouldn't be a huge increase over what I have for the median prices. I just, I knew that those would be ones that people would immediately think of River House, River Run, Mill House are those in there. And they are not all in there. But there is an equal amount that aren't in there that may be much more lower-cost units. There really are an equal amount that you think would be the one cost? Because I feel like there's a lot of, a lot of units that we're talking about in particular those redstone developments. There are 616 that didn't report. There are 72 at River House. There are 56 at River Run. Mill House actually falls within market rate. They're not luxury units. So they would slightly skew it up, but not very much. Except for the terraces. Let's see, 24 of them are Wienewski Block, which is lower and if you do it down, something like 10 of them are 325 main.  Units that didn't report. Units that weren't reported. So when you have 70% of a city, you're actually, it's pre-represented. That's pretty significant. So if everything was here, that those medium numbers may be up a little bit or down a little bit? They'd nudge up a little bit. So that's why I called it out specifically. They'd nudge up a little bit based on the numbers that we have reported in. 70% is going to be pretty significantly and we want to base it on real-life. Right. So the other question I had about that then is that the income data is based on census data from 2010? 15. 15. So were those units all there in 2015? This is just about household income, so it's not anything about the units. Right, but if it's a household income and then we're comparing it to what's affordable and what's not, does it? It's the closest that we can get. So this is the best data analysis that we can do. And it's a lot closer than us just. Yeah, and I think we talked about, I mean, we tried to find the most up-to-date and comprehensive sources of information, but I think it was a little, it's, we had to use what we had available. Yeah, and frankly, this is better than what we've had in the past, and I would say it's pretty significantly better than what most communities have for us. Yeah, it's just a little bit like, I mean, like Redstone can have that information. Why didn't they give it to us, you know? Yeah, well, it's voluntary. And there were some people, to be honest, there were some people in the community, like people who just have one rental unit said, I'm uncomfortable with this, I don't want to share this information. Which makes sense, but when it's a big, like somebody that owns half the downtown, they have that information. Why not just help us get good information? I totally understand. Yeah, I mean, I would love for everyone to, and I think ultimately I would be asking this every year. And I hope that as people become aware of the fact that I'm using aggregate data, I'm not going, you know, this person on this street is charging, you know, I really am using it just so we get a sense of the community as a whole, and not to make sure that people are, you know, charging great taxes or whatever it is. Right. We need to gain trust. Yeah. I think we'll get it. But 70% is still the responsibility. Okay, I'm sorry. Great. Yes. So, yes, data was, we looked at a ton of data and we tried to reconcile what was the most accurate, what was the most up to date. And really what we wanted to do was try to, we kind of saw the focus of our effort being one, what is the appropriate distribution of affordability and luxury and middle income workforce housing within the rental market for a diverse and well integrated community. And so because there isn't a whole lot of, you know, that's not, that's not a definitive, there are definitive set parameters of what make, what a successful integrated community looks like. We tried to look at what, what we have currently here in Winnowski and where we want to go based on trends and where we would like to be in about seven years. So right now, you know, it was about, I think it was about 50, oh, here it is, 54% right now is dedicated to subsidized units. And we really, while we, we did want to increase the middle workforce bracket of income of families that are coming into Winnowski, we didn't want to go, we didn't want to take away what Winnowski has right now for subsidized housing. We wanted to keep it at least a baseline of 54% because we, I mean, I think it's, it's just very, it's the, the affordable, the subsidized housing that we do have, I think is, is important to the diverse makeup of the community. But we wanted, we saw a very distinct lack of that middle workforce bracket that needed to be bolstered. These two kind of speak to that. Exactly. So I think it was... Do you want me to go to the targets? Yeah, sure. I think it was 6%. Yeah, it's low. There we go. Which was way lower than all the other surrounding communities as well. And I think that's where we see a lot of need is this middle income. I think right now market, the market is providing luxury condos for new development that there's always an incentive for more rental units when it comes to that. But I think this middle 80 to 120% AMI tends to get lost and is a little harder to incentivize development when it comes to that middle income bracket as far as developers go. So that's something that we just definitely saw that we wanted to bolster. And I'll let actually Christine talk a little more about... I would add to that. We also looked at a study here about the trends, like of who's going to be moving here in the future. And what comes out of that study is that we expect to see more younger households, like in the 20s, 30s who are going to be interested in renting, who are making like a moderate to higher income. And so there's no space for them right now if there's 84% of units being affordable below 80% AMI. And then having 10% above 120. So if that is... We're expecting more growth in that middle range, we think that that's where we need to add to it. But again, like keeping our subsidies intact. There is growth expected above 120% AMI too, but we talked about this and that not everyone who makes that is going to want to buy, you know, have a luxury apartment. Another thing that we discussed is the making space for folks who are in low income housing to move out of there. And so right now there's not really anywhere to go if you're trying to, you know, you no longer need your subsidy, you're trying to get out of low income housing. There's nothing really on the market affordable to those folks. When you... Let me ask you because when I looked at this, I thought first, the information from South Wellington and Williston is pretty interesting how different it is. Yeah. It's like, wow. But Winooski, some of the other charts and I'm not sure if you showed them, but the number of affordable units that we have right now is... We've got a lot. I'm 84%, I guess it is right now. To me, what we need is I think you're right, you're exactly on point is we need that middle and even maybe some of the upper things. So I'm wondering if it would make more sense and I don't know how the 54 relates in terms of the total number of units. So we've got a total number of... The 54% is of the reported units. Right. So it's 36% of total units in the city, rental units in the city are project-based subsidized. Whereas going is the 84% today means how many units and the 54% in 2025 means how many units. Because we do have, in zoning, there are provisions that allow for density bonuses if you do affordable units. So we've got a provision in zoning that allows for growth in the affordable side, I think, reasonably. Personally, I think we want to see most of our growth in that middle range so that we get a better mix of units. And so I'm just wondering about percentages are great, but how does that relate in terms of real growth or real numbers? Yeah, we talked about that. The piece of information that's missing there is how many units could come up in that amount of time. Right, and Microsoft of all is broken, so I can't tell you. But I think there are projections as to how many more housing units there will be in 2025. You take those with a grain of salt, but... You could do, on the gateways, you could actually do a build-out scenario. It would be fairly easy because if you maxed out your building envelope, you would get to a real build-out scenario number that's within, I would say, 3%. Would that be on every property? I would look at every property that is developable, so there's some that aren't because of steep slopes and things like that, but I would say that for example 348 Main Street, which is the new four-story, that's at its max capacity. So that can't have any more units there. We can look at every single parcel that... It's fine because there's not that many to be honest about it. And look at what the zoning would allow for. And I think that there's a good chance that a high percentage of those projects will actually happen because of the current expedited zoning. So that would be one way to get some number... Rather than percentages, have a number. I'm thinking another way possibly to do it too is to say, okay, of the new units being developed, what's the percentage we want of the median? You know, the median things. So maybe it's like 10 of new units we want to fall in this range and 10 and 10 or 15 and whatever those numbers are that will bring you to your targets. Because I think just that alone, how do you, when projects come in, how do you kind of know how you're going to reach your goal? Yeah. And I think that's key looking at those new developments that are already coming in place or those zoning changes that spur that new development and what that new percentage we want to have made up. But we also talked about even potentially we talked about there's a lot of aging housing stock within Winooski too and so if there are ways to renovate some of that older housing stock that could accommodate that middle income bracket too, to increase some families moving in within that 80 to 120 percent that's another idea. I had another question that was sort of related to what Mike was just talking about and you touched on it and I know we talked about this here and I emailed you today about this, Paul. I thought you pointed me out. We had talked about the bonus story going to people, to developers that are going to provide low income affordable housing and if the developers aren't reporting that information how do we know that they're actually doing that going forward? So you're asking a question basically about our downtown district which isn't where that affordable that bonus is. But my question about it is that right now we have a number of developers who just built some pretty big developments in the city who didn't report information that we asked for for this survey or this study. And my question is I know we talked about this here in this group if we're going to allow for bonus story when they say they're going to provide for affordable housing or market rate how are we going to actually make sure that they do that how are we going to enforce that they actually keep it affordable going forward because they get this bonus story and they say they're going to and then three years later they don't and so we had talked about this I know when we were talking about adopting that and I don't think we ever resolved it I think there are ways to do it and I think the rental registry is one there's the ZCO zoning certificate occupancy is another so there's always going to be tries to game the system it happens with everything but we have a bunch of mechanisms in place where we regularly check on properties to see how they're to make sure they're conforming with the requirements of their permit and that's a regular part of zoning zoning is about granting the permit then compliance with the permit regulations and if someone point blank we found out that someone had applied for the bonus story with affordable housing credits are saying they were going to have affordable housing and then we found out that the rent price through a variety of mechanisms was not affordable we would simply find them in zoning violation and that is effectively a lien on the property they cannot sell, convey get a ZCO they can't do anything they're they're tied I just wanted to clarify that here when we were writing that bonus story thing and I don't think we ever resolved it and that's what when I read this I was like wait a second well there are other towns that have the same thing that have systems in place how effective they are is another question but so there are examples out there that we can go to and I will tell you downtown Fins Crossings is an example they've got 51% affordable but that's tied to the mortgage they're financing so that's how who enforces it right well that was I just remember we talked about it anyway sorry so it sounds like firm we want to go in the direction of trying to figure it to find out firm numbers of units as opposed to these percentages based on percentages of future development either one would be I leave it to you guys but that would be my suggestion is yeah either I think firm numbers are obviously good but also how we want to as we go forward how many units within the middle group we want so I will say though more challenging task for zoning is to there's a developer in our room in our midst today and saying to him for example you're coming in with 25 or 10 units I don't whatever we want you to put because we want you to 10 in high income or high cost 80% or 8 of them or 20 of them in 1 of them or 2 of them in low income he can do whatever he wants or the developer it's the market the market's the market I can we can make recommendations but there's no there's no legitimate way to compel somebody to do something with their private property I mean if there was federal funds maybe but in terms of the development community it is it's market driven and it should be market driven so so I think we need to be realistic about what what our goals and vision are and how how much teeth we have to enforce that so let me ask having as a percentage doesn't mean percentage within a single building necessarily but overall percentage yeah it's not saying what you're saying is it doesn't need to be inclusionary zoning on a single building has to contain so let me ask this question because I if I saw it in here I forget it right now the rents for units in the 80 to 120 percent what's the range it's actually a lot of the units that are coming in along the Corbett's Code are coming in at that range in any way that's my question is that it may happen it's happening without taking the bonus so that was interesting yeah you like that so the range and of a let me take a look for a bonus yes so this is 80 to 120 percent area of unit income you can see me doing math over on the side here so it would be 1,265 to 1,890 that's for a two bedroom or is that just for it's a one to a two bedroom I believe so it might work nope I got it you can you aggregate all of the oh at the bottom where it says average one bedroom and average two bedroom the average one bedroom and average two bedroom are what are coming in right now and the range would be 1,265 would be affordable for a one bedroom 1,898 for a two bedroom and what's coming in in our currently permitted construction is under that 1,180 for a one bedroom so what she's saying is Winooski's market is below what affordable is for 80 to 100 percent I think it's part of the max end of it's the max end yes that's right it should be no greater than that it's under the max end yeah you're not having landlords going I'm building a new 25 units I'm going to charge at the maximum range of even affordability they're charging within the within affordability or less and it's because of that's what currently the market will bear so my only question is what that AMI the 63 255 is that for four person or is that two no that's the two person okay and is that what year is that from 15, 16, 17 that was either 16 or 17 okay I think I did it before I had 17 numbers so I think it was 16 yeah that's probably something that's important to be clear about too just because it can make a big difference you know you can't cram four people into one bedroom necessarily okay I just think you know that's if you folks want to add anything just let me know okay so is what we're talking about make sense to everyone yeah I mean I think it's it'd be interesting to take a look at where we are a year from now and we may be working it sounds like we're probably working towards this goal just based on what's coming into the market anyway so yeah which I think is great as opposed to setting a goal that's really unrealistic as Paul was saying let's keep it you know based on reality here yeah and I think that is something that we talked about in some of our meetings is that we can throw out these percentages all we want but as long as there's no teeth behind them or we don't have any zoning or incentivizing incentivizing going into it it doesn't mean anything so we try to be as realistic as possible while working towards an achievable goal good and if I can add one thing one the reason that I spoke about the relationships between economic integration in school in your presentation is because in both the marketing and branding initiative that we're currently working on and in the economic development strategic plan the schools came up repeatedly as an issue in the community a deterrent to peak to young families staying negative perception of the schools needing to be turned around as part of our marketing and branding and so looking at the impact that our housing has on our schools you know in terms of turnover of students and ability to be successful as well as having the resources available through the grant list to support what is a high needs community was a pretty important piece of this and kind of pushing towards economic integration okay just to note that the increased density of the project has a direct effect on the affordability of the project one of the biggest challenges in urban district like this is the parking and as Paul mentioned often developers build parking as to what they think development needs so relaxing that parking requirement will affect affordability and help bring costs down as well that's a really good point that's a that's a under stated point and we had that discussion earlier when we talked about parking a year ago that's your hot one too it's something we deal with every time we can put 4 or 5 or 6 more minutes on and bring the costs of the project down and make the project more affordable but we're having to hit these parking requirements that that directly affect the cost of the housing so it's really important and I think right now in an urban district you don't need 1.25 or 2 spaces per unit I was just going to ask you what your experience has been is it like 1? it depends and I think it can be created but I think it can be even under 1 and then leave it to the developer to find the best way to utilize that parking some of the tenants we have don't have cars others are okay with finding alternative parking I mean there's a lot of different options and we're finding in our projects that our garages are never full we have even though a lot of the whole building the whole parking area to the building people aren't parking in there they're usually 50 to 40% full so there's a lot of opportunities for shared parking too that's kind of another topic but in general I think we're building more parking than we need I don't know how much of parking space is but it can be inside it's $30,000 for space so when you think about requiring tethered to the project 1.25 per unit that's a lot of burden the thing we struggle with on that though is if you don't require enough parking what happens to on-street parking or other spaces where those people who maybe shut out of space where do they go but I think as we get more and more projects with parking underground get more and more data I think we need to the zoning regulations we need to keep looking at anyway so it's one area that if we get more and more information we can tweak it if the data indicates we should thanks anything else you want to share with first of all I thought the information here was really interesting it wasn't shocking it kind of confirmed what I think I thought but it's always good to get the hard data especially and see where we sit in terms of our units and how they're dispersed the other thing is you had a slide of showing where the affordable units were and where the luxury units were both of apartments and single-family homes and the single-family home went through me because of course I didn't read the top so I'm looking at my neighborhood saying those aren't apartments and then read the top and said all that's right single-family yeah I'd like to just thank Heather too for all the work that she's put into gathering all this data she did a lot of work and did a great job at getting all this stuff for the commission so thank you the other slide maybe you can show is the poverty so this is something we talked about as well as far as economic integration and wanting to bring up the rates in those dark green zones get things a little more even and that that is possible because where the development is happening right now is a Long Main and Allen which are bordering on both of those so that's something that we would recommend considering too and where where developments are going in and when we were talking earlier about you know we've already got a higher amount of subsidized housing than everyone around us and that's not where we see the need coming in that like in these areas perhaps we don't want to encourage any more subsidized housing right there for now so I think the thing that struck me as a lifelong resident here is when I was a kid the west side was always thought of as being you know low income and the second lowest the west side which I take I'm assuming that bottom line is the tracks the railroad tracks and the right side of the 18% is mouse bay avenue just it's kind of interesting to me is a good way to maybe blow off people's you know perceptions long held perceptions of how things are and really get back to reality yes Gene I have a question about what you said about I don't know if you said attracting the 20 to 30 year olds or did you say that that's where the trend is going that's what we, the study shows that's where we anticipate the most growth in when you ski but are we seeing that are we seeing more 20 to 30 year olds coming to the city if you will that they will come I think we're seeing our development strategic plan we had a consultant firm that looked at projections and that was a result of the projections and right now I wish I could remember off the top of my head we have a very high percentage of our population that's under 40 years of age so it has been happening and it's projected to continue happening because the state of Vermont now we're seeing the country and we're supposed to be the third oldest in the next three years when you see as fucking that trend our median age our median age is 30.5 so we're actually it's decreasing except because our speakers are just dying off careful, careful, careful I I actually think it's because there are more units being built attracting more young people I don't think it's that older people are leaving I think it's that younger people are coming there are certainly some older people who have left I know a bunch of people who have sold their houses and moved across the river in Colchester or in South Browinton but and if you know it's funny because if you talk to folks around the community and when you go to vote we used to know like the clerks we used to know everybody now maybe we know 50% of the people so it's a lot of new people and if you look at different boards the city council city council 4 out of 5 are less than 40 years old I mean yeah I mean you folks look like a young board thank you except for me we're a young board over here but but if you look at different boards and commissions folks who are getting involved it's people who are I'll say the next generation the 40's and under which is speaking volumes and is a good thing I think much as maybe some of the ideas could flick with mine but I'm just an old curmudgeon anyway so I think and as Heather said Whenuski tends to buck the trends of the state okay anything, any other? Yes, Rich? How quickly can form-based codes only change to meet the objectives of this study so we don't have two or three more density bonus projects on Main Street that drive us in a way that if I'm picking up the blues here I want to go because when I look at Main Street I see two or three more properties that would be right for a development initiative that would tear down the motel type residences and give us better quality of stock higher rentals probably but still give us a higher density of the rental units that we are not looking for in the breakout I think what we've seen by the slide that Heather had up a little while ago is the new units, the rents are actually coming in at the target we're looking for in that 80 to 120 percent immediate income range and if you guys want to jump in please feel free Yeah, I mean it looks like that's where the trend is but it sounds like But is your question also the type of housing as well like a high density development that still reaches those targets as opposed to single family residences it sounded a little bit like I'm not sure how to answer your question I see what's happening on Main Street with new projects that don't which is what we've all intended to form these goals which have changed the character of Main Street there are a number of properties that will likely follow this pattern and okay, that's what we want but it seems like that's what we want it changes the nature of Main Street when we lose older buildings and we put up new buildings And that's one of the things that we've struggled with because when we first developed the new zoning we had a provision in there historic structures and historic what's the they don't do that they don't do that so now the struggle is okay how do we ensure that historic properties that we want to keep are maintained as opposed to ripped down we spoke about for gens Dan was a nice little Main Street project, St. Albans and I don't see those three cities those Main Streets fitting what's going on on Main Street I don't believe any of them have form based code like we do so we went through the whole process of what we want our Main Street gateways to look like and that's where we're heading the other piece of those communities you mentioned so Main Street currently is what I would call for the most part an underperforming string of properties they don't perform in terms of what they should in terms of tax revenues they don't perform in terms of what they should in terms of capacity for number of units so it's a highly underperforming stretch of of roadway Virgin's downtown was pretty highly performing buildings, same with Danville same with St. Albans the impetus to change building or building type is to get it to perform at a higher capacity so that the city benefits and the residents benefit but in those communities you mentioned they all Main Streets in general that have the traditional Main Streets infrastructure tend to perform at the highest level possible but a Main Street building on any block in say Bratland is if you look at the cost per square foot earnings it blows away almost everything so and that's in Bratland and you can do the math and say what is that earning per tax per square foot what is the rent per square foot and you contrast it with some again underutilized tracks of land on Main Street and they're not doing what the city needs them to do in terms of services in terms of tax revenue housing, much needed housing but at the same time I do want to say that we've discussed here the planning commission as part of the master planning process including a historic preservation piece to that and I personally will be presenting the city council in February the proposal let me go for certified local government status and part of that allows us to access grant funds from the state for preserving buildings it also requires us to have written into our codes of kind of preservation requirements and it also requires us to have a preservation board of some sort so that is coming but it's going to be a little bit downline one thing that we do need to address here is I think we should probably have because we're going to be taking our recommendations because we're going to be taking our recommendations on to city council on the 27th of January we do need to have one person from the housing commission and one person from the planning commission who can come and do that presentation so I would love to have that discussion and also I will make adjustments to the presentation that we have here today and send it out to both board so that we can get it the way that we want to present it to council. So based on our discussion are you going to tweak this with some hard numbers and some different target? Yes what I'm going to do is I'm going to see what I can do as far as hard numbers if I can't get the hard numbers that I need in the next month then what I'll do is I'll make it we'll work together to do percentages of new construction which I think is an easier thing to arrive at in that period of time but I'll see what I can do as far as projected numbers. And that will be for the housing commission? Yes and then we'll touch base. So you guys need to select one of you to be the duly appointed representative to the city council. What is the date of that meeting? It's January 27th and the meeting starts at 6 p.m. I'm available unless Terry or Alice wants to do it. I nominate you. You have a lot of experience.  I have a lot of experience. He tries to take the gavel when he's at city council. That's right. Sorry, January 27th appears to be a Saturday. That is most unfortunate. It should be a Monday but whatever is the Monday of the meeting. I'm in Florida that weekend. I come back on the 28th. The 29th is a Monday. I'll take that. I will take the 29th then. I knew it was the last meeting in January. I'll follow up. I'll make sure it's that date. We can figure it out. If you want to do it, that's fine. I may come anyway just to be more appropriate. If you really want to do it, go for it. I'm happy to do it but I don't need to do it. We can work out the details. The way it goes, I'm happy to do it but I don't need to do it. I'm just going to weigh in here. You're an old season pro. She's young and has a new face. It might be nice to have a new face in front of council. So you're saying, kick me out. Kick the old dude out. You want Palestine. I understand. You said it in a nice way at least. It is on my calendar.  Are you going to do it later? I'll do it. I love when you do that. No doubt. Perfect. Does everyone feel comfortable with that? Definitely. Good. That's all we have to talk about today. The housing commission. Anything else that you folks want to talk to us about? Let me ask the next time we see the housing commission we will be talking about did you say the next thing you're going to look at is single family? What do you mean by home ownership opportunities? What do you mean by home ownership opportunities? Ultimately what we're driving at with this one we need to look at affordability for home ownership in the community and we're driving it looking at our home improvement program. So we have a pretty significant fund that has been underutilized in the past. I think it's over $300,000 to revise the types of housing opportunities that we want in the city. So I think in looking at what our targets are for ownership that will help us to drive the next decision, the next set of decisions which is how we'll utilize the home improvement law program. So when you're talking about target for home ownership you're talking about instead of what are we 60-40 rental versus home ownership? Like 50-50 or 60-40 the other way or something. Yeah, are we looking at developing new, also types of properties? So are we looking at developing new condo opportunities, you know, for first time ownership opportunities? Are we, you know, they're a wide variety of different things. Okay. So the other thing I think there's no answer for this but ultimately we want to be integrating your work into the municipal master plan. And so just to put it in the back of your head as a commission, think about what and how you think that might be best integrated into the plan or what pieces of information that you would sub-select from the overall to go in the plan. We don't need an answer tonight but it's something that I think the planning commission is going to be both asking for feedback input but also asking for direction from you as a body. So, and that's will obviously be you'll discuss how the federal facilitates that but it's just a general it's a great opportunity for your work to become part of a bigger document which becomes the vision for the community. It gets codified essentially in the plan. How often do you revise the municipal plan? Well, in the past every 20 years or so going forward. At this point it's on the state it used to be every five years was a required the state is now allowing a community to do five to seven years. So it would, depending on how aggressive this community wants to be with its next provision, it could be you can do it as frequently as you want you can do it every year if you want to but you would typically see a five year cycle at the minimum and now a maximum seven year cycle. In the past it was just the time came took the last plan, you changed the date but I think the conversation I've heard is that we get this plan adopted and then we look at different parts of it after a two or three year period so that at the end of five years or seven years we've actually gone through and revised as necessary and update as necessary. The other interesting piece which we've talked about with the mayor and the chairman is that the plan is sufficiently broad and it's goals and aspirations and it references perhaps a document that you guys produce and that document can be a very changing all the time if DB but so that the broad stroke document is here and it references a very specific or more specific action plan or matrix or whatever you come up with so there's chance for there's an opportunity for your commission to produce more I would think nimble work and the plan itself probably has some some broad strokes from you and then as you guys evolve with the format's code and with the housing market changes your documents can reflect that immediacy. Yeah, I think that sounds great. I think it's great to set these goals now but I also think every couple of years see where we are, see if it's working are we going towards our goal and then have the flexibility to adjust them as needed and move on from there. Yeah. Good work. Thank you. That was very impressed. Thank you very much. Yeah. It was an excellent report. So we have no other business that we have talked about. We have one other planning commission needs to talk about. Okay. You folks are welcome to stay with us if you want or we should adjourn the meeting. Oh, okay. Either way. When are the regularly scheduled housing commission meetings? On the 4th Monday. 4th Monday. Is that January 27th? 29th? Is that January 29th? Yes. I have a their adjourn. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Nice to meet you all. Thanks for your work. Do you know if the 4th Monday of December is Christmas Day? Now is no December Christmas? I told my family I wasn't going to be there. I will leave our list with the one that we scheduled and then after that we are currently having a mini break but no, I'm just stuck down. I feel like this is a huge project and I'm not going to have to like and I don't want to be half-assed about it so I just with taxis and coming up I just have so much work to do that I feel like the best thing I do is stuck down. It is a huge project. Planning commission item. Other business. Other business. I'm stepping down as of tonight. Did anyone bring a cake or anything? I forgot. I knew too but I forgot. I was hoping that you were going to change your mind and you know maybe now that we don't have a cake she will. If I come back next week will I get a cake? We won't be here. Come to 28th the 27th or 28th whatever day that is. Come on to 28th for five minutes and we'll have a cake for you. Perhaps. But I mean that's all about looking forward making the new plans so I'm not going to be involved in that. But you've been on this commission for five years? Six years? A lot got done while you were here. We thank you very much for all your efforts. You're absolutely an asset to us. You balanced me out. That's the best thing. Not cherry's going to have to do that. Sorry, Tad. It would be huge. But no thank you so much and we're going to miss you. Thank you. I'll miss being involved and we'll see what happens with the plan. And I just know you guys are going to do a great job. And we'll be calling you to say, hey Susie, remember when we talked about this? You might have your guest lecture. That I would be willing to do. I'm not going to have the time to put into it that you'll need this winter.  And I think you guys will have some great new members who will have some fresh ideas and some under 30s, right? Hopefully. Mike seems to think I'm on the lower end. Me too, apparently. It's called being gracious. Or is that the word? So he doesn't really think that. I know you're over 20. Come on. Yeah. Thank you. It was a tough choice because it was the right thing to do. Yeah. I think you'll get some new people who have good ideas and will be able to... And just because you have to take notes that's why you're stepping down. No more minutes. I knew that was going to come up. And actually, Paul Sarn provided a computer last week which was really helpful. And I never think to bring my own. So whoever does take over that really wants that option. Gotcha. But yeah. Thank you very much. I feel like just because of my work with the Formits Code I've watched both of you guys in that process. So it's been really fun. You will definitely be missed. Thank you. I will miss it. Who knows? Maybe in the spring I'll pop up again. Oh no! I'll just come to the meetings. I'll take notes like Joe Pair and us. You'll be back making faces like this. You'll become Planning Commissioner Emeritus. Yes. It was funny when Nate was talking about parking. I remember that guy. I can't remember his name. He used to come visit us about that little triangular shaped piece of property. Across the street. Yes. What was his name? I can't remember. I think you were around then Paul, weren't you? Yes. Because he was upset that the form based code line was on this side of East Allen Street. West Allen Street. Anyway, that's it. So no other business. I'm looking for a motion to adjourn. So moved. All in favor? Okay. Oh, January 22nd. Wow. Perfect. Oh, yeah, yeah. He said that she would.


Hello, everybody. Hey. My name is Alyssa and I'm from Orlando. I am a web developer there, but it's been really fun getting to learn a lot about DevOps and meet so many of you cool peeps.  Oh, cool. That's awesome. I thought there was just like, you know, silent 10 seconds. So really any excuse to break out the cat jacket, though. I love visiting your chilly weather here. So, all right. So innovating is not about technology, but psychology. It's my quick talk today. And as I said, I am a front end dash full stacky web dev from Orlando, Florida, and a Google developer expert. So I have a few ideas I want to share with you today. One of those starts with this quote from Linda Holmes. It is the recognition that well read is not a destination. There's nowhere to get to. And if there was somewhere to get to, you would need a thousand years to even think about getting there. Why do we try so hard? Why do we do what we do? Why are we here right now paying to listen to people talk? Maybe it's because we're lifelong learners. Maybe it's because we just want to commune with other devs and nerd out. Or maybe it's because innovating is not just about the technology that we use, but about psychology and the why behind it. I love the 15 second rule. At this point, I'd be like clicker. So the first time I gave this talk, I asked the audience to come up to me afterwards and give me some things that I had missed. Because I went over some things that I personally struggled with as a developer in the tech industry. And so I said, what do you guys struggle with? Come and tell me. And something that I heard from a lot of people. It really shocked me over and over again was fear.  I don't know about you guys, but when somebody looks over my shoulder, all of a sudden the code just is like, whoa, like, but I, I'm in brave adventure. So at the time when people came up to me and told me that fear is something they struggle with, it wasn't something I recognized. It wasn't something I had ever dealt with before. So if you're in the audience going, it's not really me. I'm not really there right now. It's important to remember that there are people, friends, coworkers, people around you that do struggle with this. So when they come to you asking for help, it's really great to be patient and understanding and realize it's not as easy for some to come up and ask for help as it is for others. So as I said, I had at the time not experienced fear. A few months ago, however, I woke up to this overwhelming and horrifying feeling of nausea and fear and this repeating voice in my head saying, I can't do this. What am I doing? I just accepted a developer's job and I'm like supposed to like actually push stuff into production. Like why did they give me access to that server? So I'm going to tell you what I told myself then. It's okay to be afraid, but we cannot let it crush us. And then you turn to your wieners. Now I use wieners and winners as synonyms, but it's really important to be surrounded by people in your life. They can speak truth into you. They can tell you the hard things that are sometimes not easy to hear, but they're telling you out of love and a desire for you to grow. We cannot be great alone. It is the fastest way to get chewed up and spit out by this industry. Innovating is not about technology, but psychology. I can't tell you the number of times I've been told by someone, man, you're so passionate. If I could just get like an ounce of that a day. And it's great. I'm not, I'm not gonna lie. Like always being excited to learn, being like, oh, what are you doing? You're SSHing? What is SSH? Tell me everything. It's great. It's a great place to be. But I acknowledge that not all developers are there and too many of my dear friends are in this sitting, waiting and wishing club. Right? So if you're there, I have three steps that will help you out. The first is to ask why. Asking why is the most important question that we can be asking. It shows that not only do you understand what you're doing, but you're ready for more. If you're not asking why during development, why are we doing it that way? Why is that method named that? If you're not asking why, I have to wonder, are you actually learning, growing, being challenged? The second thing is to teach. Teach others, but mainly teach yourself. You can't be spoon fed. You can't wait around for information.  The last thing for sitting and waiting and wishing is to want more. I've got a good job, great benefits, got friends, I'm comfortable. Sure. I know what's expected of me, right? But are you growing? Are you challenged? Are you recognized for not what you do right now at the company, but for your potential one day? Do you even realize what you're worth, right? Want more out of your career now, out of yourself, out of your life, because you guys are worth it. Now, back to Linda Holmes. Her article was entitled, The Sad Beautiful Fact that you will never be able to do it all. It is sad and beautiful, but it's also freeing. Having this attitude will allow you to embrace the things that you really love in life and to be great at them. It will put you over others who try to do it all.  Let it out, and I know you'll do great things. Thank you so much.