The NAP assessment program, or NAP as we call it, isn't just limited to NAP plan. Akhara also runs NAP sample assessments, which tests year six and year ten students' skills and understanding in three subjects. Science literacy, civics and citizenship, and information and communication technology literacy. Since 2003, we've assessed one of these subjects each year on a rolling three-year basis. This has helped us identify growth and achievement in these subjects over time. This year, 2015, we're due to assess year six students in science literacy. Our year ten students set the program for international student assessment, known as PISA. We held trials in March with around 50 schools in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. And we expect around 12,000 students to participate in the actual assessment in October and November. Back in 2013, we conducted our first NAP sample test online, the civics and citizenship assessment. In addition to the data on students' learning and attitudes about civics and citizenship, we learned about issues to do with school readiness to go online. For example, the technical readiness test we supplied to schools in the months leading up to the assessment helped ensure that the device is being used with the minimum technical requirements and could run the testing software. We also learned more about the kinds of assistance that schools require during the assessment, such as on-call help desk staff. Last year, we conducted the NAP sample assessment for ICT Literacy, also online. Where the results of this assessment will be released in a public report later this year, we learned some more about online assessment, particularly that schools and students can successfully navigate in the online world. Next year in 2016, we're due to do another civics and citizenship assessment. This time, it will be conducted on the online assessment platform, which Education Services Australia has been building to move NAP plan online. This is exciting because we will be able to sample thousands of students using the actual NAP plan online assessment platform before we go live in 2017. It's an evolving area of work and I encourage you to have a look at some of the past NAP sample assessments on our website, www.nap.edu.au


I'm going to call the meeting to order and the first item on the agenda is the minutes from May 2nd, 2023. Move the approval, that's under two corrections. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Go through them. Page one. Other item number five, it refers to develop housing for people with disabilities beyond the only choice currently in Vermont of adult foster care. I would just have that language changed to shared living providers because that's the actual program that provides that. Vermont shared living providers? Or just shared living providers, yeah. Anything else on page one? Page two. I guess just a comment that I understand and appreciate this is really a document to document decision making, but it's like board confirmed support for inclusionary zoning. I know Mike and I at least had some hesitation about that, about doing that carefully. I'm not going to ask to change the minutes, but it was just sort of an interesting. I guess I'm just confirming that this is really meant to be documenting decision making and not too much commentary. If that's true, I'm just going to let it go just with a comment. I mean, I think it would be reasonable to say members of the select board noted some concerns of war. I think specifically you were referencing. My brain has lost it now. I was really concerned about letting inclusionary zoning, letting people skip growth management and therefore it happening too fast. Oh, I think we had talked, yes, and Matt had mentioned maybe extending the process out and things, even just to say there was some discussion. Or some concerns, maybe with some members expressed some concerns on implementations. Yes. Did that make sense? Yes. You all set? Okay. Anything else on page three? All those in favor of accepting the minutes, say aye. Aye. Close name. The ayes have it. Public comment for general issues. If you do have something to speak of an agenda item, it might be better to wait, but legally you don't have to. So this is your moment to speak on any issue that you wish, if there's anybody in the room that wishes to speak, if you could come up to the table. Erin, is there anybody online? I didn't see anybody. That's a good reminder. Thank you. We have three people online, but only one is the... Nobody's raising their hand. Nobody's raising their hand. Okay. The next item on the... Oh wait, I'm sorry. Peggy Larson has her hand up. Okay. A lot. Peggy, are you there? Nope. There. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. I don't know if this is the proper time, but most of you folks know me. I'm the veteran Erin, and I wanted to speak on the trapping issue. Is this a good time to do it, or should I wait? It's up to you. You can speak now, or you can wait. The item that that's going to be coming up on is actually next on the agenda. So would it make sense for you to postpone and we'll get back to you? Yes. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And the reason that's next is because the interview and appointment that was on the agenda has been withdrawn, so it's nothing for us to consider. So we'll move on and try not to take it personally. So next on the agenda is the animal trapping policy. And Simon, are you going to be speaking on that? Yeah. Okay. Town Conservation Planner, Simon, how do you say the last name, Simon? Miles. Miles. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. I'm sorry. The floor is yours. Thank you. So members of the board who are here in February may recall that the trapping policy was presented to you then. It was then moved on to the town attorney for review before returning to you. I'll come to the policy in just one moment, but the town attorney did thankfully found it to be legal and made some minor comments on the content of the policy, just had a few things in. By way of background, I did go over this last time, but I know a couple of you weren't here at that point. In 2021, the town did receive a petition from a number of members of the public. Asking the select board to enact an ordinance to ban body hold and kill traps on town-owned land. This was partly in response to an incident that Mahan found where a trap had been set illegally without town approval and a court of coyote. Law enforcement did deal with that issue. We looked to explore the issue and found that trapping is regulated by the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, so the town can't regulate it by ordinance. But you do require the permission of the landowner to trap on another person's land. So the town can adopt a policy that states when it will grant permission and also stipulates the conditions and methods that it will impose on that. That's important to realise that this policy does only apply to town-owned land, so it doesn't apply to anyone else's land. The select board directed the Conservation Commission to draft such a policy. We worked very closely with the Department of Public Works and we also solicited public feedback at a number of meetings on the policy, which is the one before you today. So probably the key aspect of that policy is that the town will only approve requests for trapping on its own land for essential purposes. Such essential purposes are to manage a threat to public safety, to manage a threat to critical infrastructure or property, and in some limited circumstances for research. So it wouldn't be allowed for any other purpose and that does align with the sort of bust of public comment we received at the Conservation Commission. It also goes on to stipulate some better practice measures that will require people to do if they trap on town land and if we do trap on town land ourselves, anyone contracting with us will be required to provide us with a copy of their licence, notify us of any non-target species caught, and then there's also a bit more detail in there with regards to how we're going to manage beavers as that's the sort of main issue we face with trapping. The last issue which we did discuss with the Conservation Commission was maintaining public safety and where we reached with that was where there is a possibility of conflict between trapping and dogs and pedestrians such as on town trails. We will sign. We don't do any trapping on town land simply because there's not any critical infrastructure there and it's also sort of counter-intuitive to our conservation goals of trap beavers on there unless we absolutely had to. But that policy for signing doesn't apply in the town right away so culverts and things like that where people generally wouldn't be walking and dogs wouldn't be roaming. That's response to Department of Public Works requesting that we don't sign in those instances because they have had instances of traps being stolen and they need to make sure that they're able to do that quickly when a town critical infrastructure is at risk. So I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm looking forward to moving this policy on. Okay, thank you. Questions from the board? So this scene right between the memo and the policy it sounds like a lot of work went into making something that's agreeable to everybody but since I wasn't here for the whole journey who's going to be unhappy with this policy and why? So what I quite like about this policy is we may get some public comment on the contrary so this sounds like frame for those words because I don't think we did spend a lot of time working on it. We took a lot of public comment and we spent a lot of back and forth on the Department of Public Works. So the Public, the Conservation Commission and the Department of Public Works are the main people who are interested. I think it does satisfy, it certainly satisfies the Conservation Commission and the Department of Public Works. I think it broadly satisfies the public comment we received from the Conservation Commission. I assume there are some people who would just like to see none at all. Yeah, we did receive a few comments. An earlier draft of the policy had some language in it that was, shall I say, value laden about trapping and so that was removed to make it more neutral in tone because we do recognise that people do need to trap on their own land and we didn't want to feel like we were making a statement on that so that was probably one element where we did amend the policy as well.  Like have a heart kind of trap is not covered here or is it? So the policy is that we'd only, everyone needs to come to us to ask for permission if they want to trap on town land. Staff will also follow this policy, Public Works and if conservation needs to trap for some unknown reason we would also follow it and we would follow best practice so making sure we use a reptile trapper who follows all the best practice guidance on the types of traps which are selected for their welfare, the selectivity as humane as they can be and safe for the trap to use and also making sure he's maintaining and setting those traps appropriately. Any other questions or comments from the board? I think just Jean, in response to I think one of the things that we had mentioned as being important in the policy was defining essential trapping and I think it looks like you all have done a really nice job of really providing a definition of that and clarifying that so. Anybody else on the board otherwise we'll go to the room. Anybody in the room have input questions or comments on the trapping policy? Hi. Jay Vichalov, any questions? One minute, sit there. Yeah, you'll need to speak at the mic. I support this and the neutral language used in the policy. For the past 12 or so years we've used trapping for beavers in our neighborhood association and the continued beaver presence is a problem and can cause significant amount of damage for those of you familiar. In fact, there's a beaver lodge by the new pedestrian bridge and there's quite a few trees missing. Anyone notice that? The pedestrian bridge connecting the rec path to the nature path. Anyway, the idea that for trapping I think all stigmas should be erased from it because trapping is necessary in some cases. In fact, if you look at Idaho, they use trapping as revenue source for a lot of trappers and also for a valuable meat source. If you look at beaver, beaver meat is very tasty and it's highly nutritious. And I think any type of stigmas attached to trapping should be erased. This is democracy and we should allow all types of discussion for this. And in fact, the survey that everyone uses, it's only 384 people that responded to the survey and they keep saying 62.8 percent and that's statistically insignificant and this is posted on Protect a Wildlife Vermont. And also the question, I teach English, and the question has they neglected the Oxford comma and that should be neglected totally. What kind of comma? The Oxford comma. When you use three or more, there should always be a comma before the and or the or. So that's all I have to say. And non-target species, yes, it happens. If you look at Idaho, which trapping is part of the culture, a deep-rooted part of the culture, yes, but it's very statistically insignificant and you can say the same thing about fishing. If I'm fishing for perch and I catch a trout, that's a non-target catch. So anyway, and Allenbrook is part of the state, it's not part of the town. That's all I have to say about that. Thank you. Peggy, are you still there? You've been waiting very patiently and thank you for that. And we'd like to hear your input. Thank you, sir. I don't mind waiting. I'm listening to what everybody says. Thank you for trying to move this forward as best as you have done so far in Williston, but as most of you know, I'm a veterinarian. I've treated animals caught in traps and I think there's two things I'm really most concerned about. Number one is the target animals. I've read that as low as only 18 out of 100 animals that were trapped were the target animals. It's impossible to specify with the trap which animals they are going to catch. Sometimes they'll catch dogs, cats, birds, and you know the story. I don't have to go into it, but trapping is non-specific. And the other thing is trapping is extremely painful. The animals that I have treated that have been caught in traps had rotting muscles, broken bones. They were an excruciating pain. And it seems to me that we could probably try to find a better way to handle the excess animals that we don't want in traps. Maybe I have a heart trap in moving them. You know, I don't know. It requires some more discussion I think. Beaver baffles are pretty effective as far as controlling beavers. Green Mountain animal defenders has a contact with a person that is very well experienced with beaver baffles. I believe he did one up at the UVM and took care of a beaver problem there. There's one more problem and that is that trappers, when they find an animal in a trap, their methods of killing them is pretty inhumane.   It would be so much more humane if they just put a bullet in their brains but they don't want to waste the ammunition according to whatever it. So anyway, that's my side of the story. I feel very concerned for the animals. I've treated them. I've seen what happens to them and I wish we could find a better way. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else online? No? Okay. So discussion amongst the board members. Pretty extensive beaver management part of this policy, which I assume will be actually followed and not just there for to make people go away. Correct. That would be important. The Conservation Commission are generally pro beavers so they would be looking to follow that however they possibly could. But it leaves opportunity for trapping if we have to? If we absolutely have to. We've been talking about this for two years, I believe, trying to get it right. And I think it's worth repeating this. We're not just trapping a town owned land. Not anywhere else in the town. We're bound by from a state law. So it seems like we should be able to take care of this tonight. Any other comments? Observations? If not, the chair would be looking for a motion. Move to approve the town animal trapping policy as presented. Is there a second? Second. Further discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. The ayes have it. Okay. Next on the agenda. Simon, that's still you. Memorandum of understanding Mud Pond Country Park. Is there anybody from Fellowship of the Wheel? Here as well. Nope. Okay. So you have the floor again. Thank you. So you're probably aware that the Mud Pond Country Park has a three mile trail on it that's for multiple uses. Snow shearing, mountain biking, running and so on. That was developed by Fellowship of the Wheel and we have an informal agreement with them that they will maintain it and improve it for us the sort of trails built out which is looking after it. And what that means is that informally they come to us to agree their trail plan and we generally approve it and then we work together to grant and volunteer days to implement the work. We're also looking at developing the Quiet Connector which is a very small section of a route of a trail between the parking lot in Mud Pond and Mud Pond Road and the crossing to Mud Pond Country Park that runs through the conservation area. And the purpose of that is to make that a better, less steep and challenging route for all users but it will also allow bikes to access the Country Park and without going down south road which a lot of cyclists find challenging. So as well as having the management plan for the Country Park saying we should really develop this informal agreement into something more formal in a memorandum of understanding we're also moving into a situation where they're managing slightly more of our trail section so this sounded like a good opportunity to actually take that forward and agree MOU with the Fellowship. So the attached MOU does that it's something we drafted with them to try and keep it as simple but it's set out the responsibilities of each party set out the response procedure by which the town will approve projects and how they will be implemented and then also sets out some responsibilities sort of key amongst them being Fellowship agreeing to continue educating their user base and others about trail etiquette both in the Country Park and the conservation area and also maintaining their liability insurance and naming the town. So that's the MOU essentially formalizes an informal agreement we've had for 10, 15 years with Fellowship so I'm happy to answer any questions the Board may have. Questions from the Board. To Geoff Seat, so he told me I had to ask three questions for every topic so I'm doing my best. I'm interested in the there's a comprehensive liability comment here which made me kind of interested in how our agreement works for insurance for a trail that's kind of mutually owned like this responsibility. So generally they in order to carry out work on town land and this isn't just them this applies to contractors in general they have to provide the town their certificate of insurance to show that they're insured to carry out their work should anything happen so they have been giving us their certificate of insurance but this essentially memorializes that they do have to do it and stipulates the amounts they've got to be insured for. But when the work is done I mean I assume they're designing the trails they have the expertise in what is safe and all that so do they take responsibility for that? I think that would rest with the town. How about? I think it would depend. I think it would depend. Well that's what's afraid of it. It depends. Yeah but I mean that's the way it is with so many different things that if it would depend generally speaking what we'd be talking about is negligence and who would be liable would it would depend on who had the duty that was breached. So do we look at the trails so we go out and we look at trails we generally tend to walk in with them to review what they're doing. Mupon Country Park is a beginner trail for mountain biking and I know it's used probably if not more so by hikers than it is by bikers so we're always comfortable with what they're doing and they've got a good solid reputation with us for designing trails. It's a great organization to have a partnership with for this kind of thing. Do we track emergency response calls to these trails? We do. I've not received any confirmation from fire or police that they've been out there since I've been in the job and I've been in the job for at least a year. We'll get one more. Thank you. It mentions educate trail stewards, volunteers if there's a trail steward are they identified as town peep town? Are they wearing a woolen shirt or are they wearing... So the trail stewards are the fellowship have people who sort of notify them about problems on the trail and they might do some maintenance like clipping back vegetations so overgrowing the trail and things like that. If a tree falls on the trail we'll either take it over ourselves or work with fellowship to remove it. I'm okay with that kind of if they're interacting with the public we'd like it to be clear if they're Wilston trained because they're making people feel welcome and safe and all that kind of thing it could be tricky if you just have the wrong person doing it. Understood. But if it's trail maintenance kind of work I think that's a little more clear. Great. Any other questions or comments? I lied I got one more. Three years Are you comfortable doing this three years? It seems like the first time is it because this is pretty much a standard? Like you said that's the main reason. I think we've ironed out all the major issues over the last ten years. Okay. It seems like a good length of time for me to give any minor issues that do crop up proper consideration and not maybe overreact to one particular thing. The fellowship has been very helpful in resolving any issues that have arisen over the course of their ten years working on the trails so I'm confident that anything that has come up I reckon. I'll add to the insurance question. We actually had our insurance review the draft MOU as well to look at it from their lens and they added some additional language there and also gave the suggested limits that we would request so you know there was another thank you. It called out for anybody from the fellowship here and I don't think anybody else in the room would be associated with this issue so I think we just move on to a motion if someone is inclined to make one. I probably should after all that really. I got to find it first. Okay. I moved to authorize the town manager to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the fellowship of the wheel for assistance with the management of mud pond country park. Second. Further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. The ayes have. Okay. Great. I'm wondering if we should move to the town sponsorship policy and skip over. Because the housing policy discussed. I was looking. I was like, that's not going to be quick. Yeah. So Aaron, could you introduce the issue in the town sponsorship policy? Sure. So the town has had sponsorship for events take place over many years. But there wasn't really an official policy in place. And so to kind of do best practices, we wanted to propose a draft policy for your consideration that would provide a framework for the town to make informed decisions about sponsorships. It's modeled on best practices. We referenced several other municipal sponsorship policies. Vetted it internally with department heads who are involved with sponsorships and then also had finance review from application lens. And having this policy will help ensure that sponsors are compatible with our values and our ethics. Ensure transparency and consistency. Mitigate conflicts of interest and also ensure legal and ethical compliance. So I can, I don't know if you want me to dive into any details, but it's a pretty standard policy. Okay. Thanks. Let's go to the board and see if there are questions or any other input on the policy. This doesn't pertain to I think those other languages are naming. So if there was someone who wanted to sponsor the building of a building or a community center or something or a community center necessarily that Yeah, so this is exclusive to sponsorships. And there's a donation and naming policy that you had recently reviewed. So these two would exist separately. They're similar, but there was a reason to kind of separate them out. And other than the 4th of July there's some sponsors for that. I think the general of when we had sponsorships what are do you know of any other? Yeah, so some other examples would be really it falls mostly in the Parks and Recreation. So Todd the director of Parks and Rec he has a website exclusive to managing really kind of the request he has and there's a sponsorship opportunity on that website. So it you know has a rotating window of sponsors for that department so he would probably have the most volume. There may be opportunities for the library to have some sponsorships. You know if there was another clam chatter challenge or something like that it could apply to other departments. I asked the question about Duke because I know that there's certain but that's a whole specific policy to him so that wouldn't fall under here. Duke has sponsorships. Yeah, I think he gets more donations but yeah for food and other supplies. This looks like it was modeled after the one policy that we did about a year ago. Very similar. Yeah. And this is really just a comment to think about but I know that the school has a similar policy and since a lot of rec programs go on at the school or on school property we should make sure that that's at least called out but which one supersedes it would just be a conversation with the school district. Put a big banner on the front of the school because it's for a rec program but it's something the school wouldn't accept but that would be uncomfortable so we should probably just figure out if that needs to be here somewhere. I also just circled and sponsorships will not consider that they relate to any of the following and it says the second bullet on the first page. Second page. Religious actually I don't know what rhetorical in nature means but I know what religious in nature means so I'm just wondering does that mean like the federated church would not be allowed to sponsor something or it's just they could sponsor something but it couldn't be overly religious that should probably be clarified. Yeah. It is intended that I want to exclude that as a sponsor but that the sponsorship will often promote like a specific religious belief or So the churches would be able to or any religion synagogue or mosque would be able to have sponsorship that just wouldn't be able to proselytize. Essentially. I had to get that in there because I didn't know about that comma. Did I miss an oxen comma? I did but I am dying to know because the ministry is going to spell that right. Yeah. Any other questions or comments? So this is a first reading and no formal action is required but I think staff is seeking feedback on the initial draft and whether we would like to proceed with developing this as a town policy so is there consensus Jean you had a comment that you're going to Yeah I'll look into how the relationship with the school and the factor in here. Did you need clarity about the religious or if the way you described it is that was what it was intended Ted as a lawyer do you think you can use any additional No but I mean if you can find a way to reword it to make it more clear make it more clear yeah okay and find out what rhetorical means I mean just can't argue no arguing Okay Okay So let's circle back to wastewater allocation requests for specific development Matt you are present if you could lead us off Thank you So before this slide forward it is a request by the Snyder group to purchase up to 10,000 gallons per day of sewer allocation which is wastewater treatment capacity from the encouraged specific development category of sewer allocation that's established in the fiscal 23 attachment A to the town of Williston regulation of sewer allocation ordinance It was not that long ago that I was before this board talking through the 2024 attachment A so you're likely familiar that the Williston Select Board through attachment A to the ordinance each year establishes an amount of sewer capacity that will be available for sale in the upcoming fiscal year in a number of land use categories as well as this encouraged specific development category and encourage specific development is a different category from all of the other land use categories in that it is capacity that is set aside to potentially sell to a development that will achieve town plan goals as identified in the allocation ordinance and it cannot simply be sold administratively by the town manager as the other categories can someone who wishes to purchase from this category must come before the select board and make a request and if the select board votes to agree to that request then that capacity can be sold so within this category encourage specific development for the current fiscal year there is 10,000 gallons per day capacity available Snyder Group is requesting it in partial support of their construction of a new hotel at the Finney building mixed use development in Taft Corners it's a 115 room hotel and as I said the tie here for the select board is to look at how selling this capacity to this development would achieve town plan goals so I prepared my memo a couple of references to some elements of the town plan that the project appears to support not surprisingly many of them are in the land use chapter and its discussion of the Taft Corners area and the town's desire that the Taft Corners area continue to evolve into a mixed use walkable downtown center where living arrangements and commercial businesses and other services are proximate to one another and can be accessed without always driving a car also this is the part of town where the town envisions the majority of new development occurring including things like large hotels additionally the land use chapter of the comprehensive plan we're under called for the town to develop a new sort of zoning for Taft Corners a form-based code which was developed and adopted by this board in October of 2022 I happened to tuck my memo inside the code I have it here with me and it's close at hand often and certainly has been as I've worked with these applicants on shaping their proposal to meet the requirements of this new zoning so this development that's proposed also is an embodiment of the development standards that the town's comprehensive plan called for it to go out and develop and that the town did develop so building this development would be part of the sort of completion of the cycle of town plan says to go do something in the zoning something's done in the zoning and then that zoning becomes effective there's also a chapter of the town plan called community design it talks about three things that I called out in the memo minimizing the amount of area devoted to parking and the visual impact of parking and avoiding what are called dead walls I'll talk about parking first under the new form-based code and in compliance with that code this project shares its parking with a number of other uses within Finney crossing in other words these different uses have different hours of peak demand and times of month and times of year of peak demand that can be calculated and therefore one parking space can serve more than one use and less surface parking needs to be created secondly minimizing the visual impact of parking one major element of the form-based code that's different from the zoning it replaced and that this new project follows is that all parking meets a 30 foot setback from the property line with the street and all parking is placed behind the building so from this building street frontages on Holland Lane and Market Street you don't see the parking for this building because the building is the thing that's on the street instead of the parking lot another element that shields the visual impact of parking that comes from the form-based code is where there is not a building right in front of the street frontage which happens at the ends of the building there is instead a minimum 4 foot high masonry street wall in compliance with the code which also breaks up the visual experience of seeing that large parking lot behind the building so even if you're not standing right in front of the building there's some sort of element there that does that lastly dead walls just think of the back of any large shopping center essentially that's a not very pleasant to walk past and in Williston and in its form-based code and zoning before there's always been this tension between what somebody wants to be the operational front of a building generally near the parking then the fact that the town would like the parking to not be the first thing right up on the street and then well if functionally the back of the building is the street can it be visually interesting and pleasant and you know work well along that sidewalk form-based code addresses that significantly the proposed hotel under this request that you're looking at tonight meets the form-based code placing more doors and windows at street level on the backside of a 115 hotel room hotel that I think I've ever seen so you know having a design that's responsive to the code having a code that fulfills the very important town plan goal and then being able to support it with infrastructure really kind of completes the picture here so those are the three elements in community design there's also some general aspirations in the economic development chapter especially its introduction that I did not address in my memo but the applicant talked about in their request letter and not to discount those I just went for things that were really important to the applicant look at the overall thrust of that chapter and found some connections there I would say I generally agree with those as well lastly the math as I mentioned there's 10,000 gallons per day capacity available to purchase from this category in fiscal year 23 which ends the last day of June of this year and not too long from now should the select board vote to authorize the sale could purchase the remainder of their needed capacity from the new commercial category in FY23 should the applicant not be able to purchase from the specific development category they could still purchase the new commercial capacity in 23 they would then have to wait until 24 to purchase the remainder of their needed capacity from new commercial in 24 I believe we put 15,000 gallons in new commercial for 24 so if the applicant needed to purchase 10 give or take out of that there'd be about 5 left for the remainder of that year we don't know what's going to come in the door looking for that capacity but there's in my mind certainly some wisdom to making the sale happen while the capacity is available now and leaving some flexibility in the upcoming fiscal year I'll stop there and answer any questions I can Questions for Matt How has the shared parking in the past work with other businesses I think specifically at the U.S. Postal Service so we've certainly heard some things about parking at the site of the post office 34 Blair Park Road the hotel that's been under construction there since 2019 has had a significant impact as a construction site on available parking on that site the applicant in that project came in under the Blair Park or business park zoning district standards they're a little different from the form based code standards but they do allow for a shared parking analysis which the applicant did perform on that site it's worth remembering that that hotel building has 50 parking spaces or I think 49 now underneath it that are not currently in use and neither is the hotel which is about a 96 room hotel there's a total of 134 parking spaces on the Blair Park site and the applicant shared parking analysis with a mix of retail the post office and the hotel showed that those numbers worked it is busy there I'm there to use the post office I'm there to go to the UPS store and I'm there to get my hair cut periodically when I remember that I have always found a space but it has been tight an important thing we learned from our consultant the last time we looked at parking standards is that most people perceive a parking lot as full when it is 73% full in other words more than a quarter of the parking lot is empty but if you drive into one that's like that you go gosh it's so busy here and it's tight you're waiting for people to back in and out of spaces like that but the numbers do work so shared parking is a trade off Finney Crossing makes extensive use of shared parking the healthy living parking lot and Hilton Home 2 parking lot and LL Bean and the other commercial businesses there all the way over to Union Bank all share parking with one another one way or another and you know it's funny what we're finding over by healthy living with the share with the Hilton Home 2 a lot of the Hilton Home 2 folks are parking in the healthy living parking lot or along the market street drive by healthy living and the Hilton Home 2 parking lot is quite empty despite heavy occupancy of that hotel so everybody does what we all do we try to park by the door or where it feels most convenient and then there's constraint I'll also say in regards to the post office that in the first 8 weeks that I was a planner in Williston in 2008 an old staff meeting an older gentleman came in with a drawing tucked under his arm and it was a drawing of the vehicle circulation and parking at the post office and he said you guys got to fix this it's so bad over there and anybody who's been to the post office knows it's bad over there one of the challenges with that site is that everybody I think categorically who wants to use the post office wants to park by the post office door who would and people turn over very quickly unless the line is long at the counter and then they don't so you won't always get the parking space you really want in a efficient shared parking arrangement but you'll usually get the parking space you need and we think that's going to work here at the hotel and applicants here with their engineer and can address it more with the numbers than I can sitting here I like the form based code I want to I personally want to see it work I think I like the flexibility of it all I think it's going to be interesting I'd like to see it continue to draw I hope it works well it's been really rewarding to work with the applicants through this project I will note that application materials for this project are posted on the agenda page for the project review committee for this project which is a staff committee we have not scheduled that project review committee meeting yet as we need to know what the path is going to be for allocation the applicant has some subdivision approval they need to go through at the DRB to move some property lines around and there's a few other things before we schedule that but plans for this project and the complete application are up on the town's website at this point if you want to take a look at it thank you thanks Mike that segs into my question which was essentially what is the benefit of allocating the wastewater now versus waiting a month and a half if we don't allocate it now what will we be holding up in terms of the project timeline so there's probably some timing delay related to this it's probably measured in a matter of a month or two from my perspective the more the bigger challenge is if the applicant needs to wait to purchase the needed allocation out of the next fiscal year they won't need very much for anybody else who comes in and when we're sitting here towards the very end of the fiscal year if somebody wants to buy it all there's not a lot of impact to that but it could put somebody a year out starting July 1 if these folks need to come back and make that purchase so that's I think it really just limits future flexibility for the town more so that's the potential burden on the town the burden on the applicant is a delay this is more a general question I don't have a problem with this I think it makes sense to use the FY23 allocation rather than hold up next year but I guess I should say but to say that another hotel is a planning goal for the town struggling with that a little bit but I think I understand it's more the how it fits with the plan but are we in a situation now where every time we put up a hotel that's housing that can't be built so all uses of land consume sites and they do consume some wastewater capacity but the town's always sort of strived for a balance of those things and hotels it's almost a sort of a hybrid between commercial and housing it's a sort of a short term housing we see them obviously we've seen them recently used in a really creative way to deal with a homelessness crisis but in Williston the hotels and especially those extended stay hotels it's often where a new Williston resident lives for six months while they're waiting for their home to be completed or they're waiting for the other person's home to be completed so they can move in so they add some flexibility that way as well Finney Crossing the site of this project under the old zoning bylaws was essentially within a few units of its maximum density already the density is dealt with differently under the new form-based code there is other residential potential in Finney now but originally everything from the power lines down to route 2 was envisioned to be commercial so I would say already the residential supply that's been brought by that project has exceeded what the town's expectations were originally and I can't say that everything's not a trade off it certainly is but there's a lot of opportunity for balance in the area Any chance we're going to get the stop sign fixed at that intersection? CCRPC is studying it for us Questions or comments from the board? Are there people here who wish to weigh in? I don't want to go No there Can you guys introduce yourselves? I know a couple faces I'm Chris Snyder with Snyder Group I'm Eric Hochstra with Redstone Thanks We don't have any questions The question was what your names are You did a great job Yeah that was really good Aaron Is there anybody online that has their hand up? Yeah So discussion amongst the board members? Well it's probably too early to talk about the design of a building at this point I would guess but to look at just oblong flat roof buildings is not my idea of a great looking spot but eventually Not just fun a beautiful picture of a hotel in my head I was If I could address that Under the form based code pitched roofs are heavily encouraged and the applicant has taken that up on this building So it's a four story hotel with a pitched roof on top meeting the minimum required pitch and other required architectural elements So it will not be flat roofed Windows on all sides The only comment that I would make is that I know that there is a tenor of conversation in the town about development and I see people talk about it and I hear about it I see it on front porch forum and Jean's comment about the hotel another hotel is a good one The thing that I keep seeing particularly on front porch forum is that people are complaining that the town allowed another steakhouse the town allowed another hotel or something and I just wanted to take this opportunity The town sets up laws and if you obey those laws it's your property and there are a lot of conditions on what you can do but it is still your property to do within those conditions The people who think that the select board or the planning commissioner, the DRV has the ability to say we're looking for something vegan is not the way it is but anyway I just wanted to make that comment I appreciate that I've been looking for a better answer to that question myself I don't know if you get to pick but in this case we are approving a six week acceleration by saying that it meets our town goals therefore we're giving this allocation It meets the town goals and it's very likely to be built anyway Six weeks acceleration Yeah Unless there is further discussion the chair would be looking for a motion So I've moved to sell the Snyder Group 10,000 gallons of sewer allocation from the specific development category of the fiscal year 2023 sewer allocation ordinance attachment A Further discussion? All those in favor say aye Aye The ayes have it Okay Great Thanks Melinda, hello Good evening Next on the agenda is the housing policy or continuing our discussion So Melinda, you want to take a second to get set up and when you're when you're ready Sorry, I made you a panel I'm so quite unable to screen check If we had that 10 minutes interview thing you'd be right on schedule I'm just going to make you a co-host And I did test it out if you need me to do it Matt, it's just leaving you more Yeah It's like I gave you the wrong info You haven't found select board meetings to be particularly dry before this Great Thanks for having us again to continue the housing discussion So based on some of the feedback that we heard last time we heard some concerns related to just acceleration of development and the amount of development, the pace of development So I wanted to provide some information to you to provide some clarity on those issues tonight So first of all just to give you an idea of how many dwelling units have been built over the past 10 years or so and where So from 2013 to 2022 843 dwelling units were built in the growth center 124 in the sewer service area outside the growth center which includes the RZB and the village and 74 dwellings outside the sewer service area which is the ARZB Basically the pace of development has been about 100 units per year from 2013 to 2021 and from that includes from 2014 on the build out of Finney Crossing and several apartment buildings within that development Looking at the percentage of affordable units for built and proposed developments the percentage of affordable as incentivized under the growth management system is variable across projects from as little as 5% in projects with affordable units to as much as 32% Inclusionary zoning that we're proposing would standardize the requirement across all projects to ensure a consistent minimum percentage of affordable units I have a question on that do you want me to wait until you're done or do you want me to just go ahead? Sure, go ahead I was actually impressed with that 23%, 32%, 30% like what incentive those builders to do that higher percentage? Well I know for summer fields a higher density so there wasn't a density incentive involved there and I believe that was also the case with Cottonwood Crossing Yeah, Cottonwood was in heavy competition with Finney Crossing for limited allocation at the time that they promised their affordability units and you note that substantial portion of what was promised at Cottonwood is affordable at 120% median income the 30% at Summerfield is all affordable at 100% median or below so it's a slightly lower percentage but a much higher affordability level Northridge at 23% was also looking to be competitive in the growth management process where the incentive currently lives So you know I'm going to eventually ask you this looks like the incentive is working just fine with both management why we want to change but I'll come back to that So as far as the impacts of development development has disparate impacts based on the type of development and its location this is 144 Night Lane a 31 unit apartment building on a third of an acre in the growth center took about one year to build out contrast that to Creek's Edge in the RZD which is a similar unit count but consumes a lot more land 23 acres and took four years to build out so this type of development has a much larger footprint and naturally elicits strong emotions while it's under construction it feels disruptive it's visually disturbing so looking at the units that are likely to be built between now and 2030 this is a rough estimate of what we could see in Williston based on what's currently in the growth management allocation table and on the historic pace of development so about 600-ish units in the growth center 200 or so units in the RZD outside the growth center and between 20, 30-ish units in the ARZD and getting into a little more detail these are the predictions for near-term development in each growth management area so there's moderate there's been moderate demand in the growth center it was low and uncompetitive but foreign-based code creates new opportunities for smaller infill projects and staff is anticipating requests of 20 to 50 units on a per-building basis rather than major plan developments requesting hundreds of dwellings all at once note that Cottonwood Crossing received its allocation in 2016 yet only 60 out of 209 units have been constructed in the sewer service area outside the growth center the demand is very high at this March's growth management hearing five subdivisions sought allocation for 114.5 dwelling unit equivalents but the DRB could only allocate 23 dwelling unit equivalents for projects like Summerfield it will take four to nine years for them to receive all of their requested allocation and that's assuming no more subdivisions enter the system so when many projects compete for limited supply no projects receive full allocation in one cycle and it's possible for low scoring projects to be denied allocation and then outside the sewer service area the demand has been very low two subdivisions sought allocation for two dwelling unit equivalents each in March of 2023 and staff is anticipating this demand to continue this low demand to continue in the coming years because developing this part of town is costly and challenging so now let's take a look at the area with the most demand can I just put on that slide by recent market trends increase the difficulty just because materials are more expensive land is more expensive there's more the demand is pushing costs up demand on what type of housing but demand all costs ago now taking a look at the area with the most demand the sewer service area outside the growth center so what land is left to be developed and so the parcels that you see that are colored and brown and yellow parcels that are greater than or five acres and greater and the hatched parcels are currently undergoing permitting so we see the glazer parcel that's in the specific plan process right now and the summer field parcel that is undergoing permitting and then a couple of other smaller parcels that just got growth management allocation so what you see is what's left the remaining undeveloped parcels with an area of five acres and greater there are 21 of these parcels and out of these there's four parcels that are greater than 10 acres that could potentially support substantial development of greater than 50 units or so but keep in mind that lands in Williston are quite constrained by wetlands so what we see here is not the actual land that could be developed so the big picture is that most future development will happen in the growth center not much outside of that here you see two images the one on the left is the future land use map from the 1990 town plan the one on the right is the future land use map from the 2016 town plan so in these two versions of the town plan future land use map the colors and the symbols are different but the lines that were drawn have remained the same the town made a decision a long time ago to designate a portion of the town for residential growth and that decision hasn't changed across the decades and generations of the town plan so changing course and altering the land use boundaries would be a major policy shift if the town wants to consider such a change it should be discussed during the upcoming town plan update so fortunately the town has done a commendable job in land conservation primarily in the ARZD but also in the RZD through the ERF this requirement so I'd actually I want to jump to the memo that we shared with you and just give you a chance to you know ask questions raise any concerns you have about these proposed amendments the planning commission is seeking feedback on this policy direction and would like to draft start drafting amendments that are supportive of housing so I guess if there are any in this list that give you pause or that raise concerns for you you would be happy to talk with you about that or just hear your concerns one just point of clarification the inclusionary zoning it's affordable for current market the initial buyer for instance it would need to be affordable to them but it's not perpetually affordable it would be we are proposing a violation of inclusionary zoning that would provide for perpetually affordable I have a problem with affordability when most of the jobs in Williston paid $18 an hour nobody in Williston can afford to rent or live here I disagree with what they consider affordable it's still too much for the average person yeah and you know I agree with you on that and I think that sort of deep affordability of below 80% I don't think it's possible to get that with inclusionary zoning I think that comes more with working with partners and getting funding for that kind of housing which again is something that the housing committee could start working on trying to further that development of partnerships and bring those kind of projects into Williston but that being said having an inclusionary zoning amendment or bylaw it would start to sort of start something start to spread that affordability around 80% median so it would be a start and what we've seen actually looking at for example some of the Finney apartments created in 2015 is that the apartments that started out at 100% median like the rent at 100% median are now at 80% so there is the sort of affordability that happens over a period of time this natural affordability so a house that starts out being affordable at a certain level is likely to become more affordable over time the converse of what Melinda just said the hardest thing is to have a brand new home be affordable have an affordable price most of us when we were first looking to rent or buy a home probably didn't go rent or buy the brand new thing we looked for the old thing that was more affordable in part because of its age and so inclusionary zoning gets sort of a foot in the door it gets a few units that are affordable at some level 80% of the median income 80% of the median income etc but it's the pipeline of dwellings that come into the system and continue to come in over time and then age into affordability that really creates the amount of abundant and affordable homes that meet the needs that we talked about when we started this conversation and another point I just wanted to make is that while it may seem like we're getting decent percentages of affordables with some developments some of them with the greatest percentage of affordable are stuck in the growth management system for years to get all their allocations so it just means that that project with a significant component of affordable would take a pretty long time to build out because there's a backlog I think that like with cottonwood crossing only 60 of the over 200 units have been built I don't really see the need for exclusionary zoning and more houses I think would climate change upon us rural Williston is more valuable than ever I think that the 5 Williston Town Growth Plan should take into effect the open spaces the grasslands the wetlands for carbon sequestering I think we should preserve our trees and pervious surfaces the offset to heat and heavy rains I don't think we should be selling off our open lands for exclusionary zoning I think we should be patient I think we should stay with the Williston Town Growth Plan and what changes we need to make for extra housing should be done that way because there's been so much once we give this out these houses we can't take them back it's gone forever and right now there's so much housing that we've already given out that is even being utilized essentially what we're doing is we're allowing people to put these houses in the bank so to speak 10 years from now there's a need for these houses they can build these houses and they don't have to follow any of the current town growth plan so if we come up with a town growth plan in 2025 that makes sense that is workable takes into effect climate change and the changes that we need let's wait, let's get the town let's get that what we need let's not give an open check 200 more houses in town and they might not build them for another 8 to 10 years during that 8 to 10 years we will have no say in how they build those houses or any of the rules I think it's important that we keep we keep it to ourselves right now, we don't give it out this is something we don't have to give out I don't think we should be giving it out is there a question you want us to answer out of that more of a comment I think I've thought about that for a couple of meetings that I haven't said it but this time I say okay I'm just going to let a little bit of that go I think what I do want to say to that is some of the maps Melinda had up with the red yellow green parts of town willison has made those decisions differently based on geography right so there's the ag rural zone where the creation of new housing has not been a priority at all in fact it has been a lot of what you said of really restrict the growth of new housing especially by not providing wastewater treatment in that part of town the growth center, the red where the town says yes build here meet needs here in the middle of the residential zone in the village where it's kind of a balancing test Melinda also showed the 1990 and 2016 land use plans with the boundaries kind of being the same that the line between ag rural and suburban residential in Williston has been Mountain View Road for almost 40 years now and those are some of the decisions that get made in that land use plan further just looking at again the green part of town the numbers we're seeing in the majority of the acreage of Williston everything that's under the green in that map are tiny so we saw fewer than 10 homes per year in the green part of town that's a lot less than growth management actually currently plans for we don't give out all of the allocation that's available to new projects there frankly it's a tough place to develop and it's an expensive place to develop because there's no water and sewer or no sewer and almost always no water and the parcels are big and they're expensive and most of the ones that aren't wet have already had houses put on them so a lot of what I hear in your comment Mike is keep doing what the town is doing in terms of planning for where it will grow and where it won't and nothing that we're talking about in considering an inclusionary zoning provision or inclusionary zoning as an alternate pathway to growth management would undo the general thrust of the town plan of grow here don't grow there that's still very much in effect can I just I thought I heard you say something else I know I had a question I thought what you're saying which is funny because I've never considered growing too slow which is what I think you're saying but I think what you were saying is that if we go with inclusionary zoning and there is a rush and it would give out all the allocation and then they just sit on it then they block themselves into the current growth rules I assume current today what about tomorrow I would choose to change them in two years it would be oh well I was Grand Robert in is that what you were talking about not so much the agro versus the growth sewer section would we call that part 10 I would make sure I understood that because I'm on the exact opposite side of that is to have the possibility that we're going to build 300 or 400 houses in order to get 30 units of 100 percent affordable or whatever to me that's the risk which is the opposite side of what you were saying this is very complicated it's a good thing you guys are on top of it the new town growth management plan could be entirely different it could be something that you know I don't want a grandfather I don't want a grandfather something in that we don't have to I don't feel we have to so the other thing I just want to mention is that we make bylaw amendments once a year or so so with this similar to any that we've made in the past we adopt a bylaw amendment we monitor it for a few years if it's not producing the results the town wants we change it and you know that's kind of the way that we've kind of gone about it so just I just want to say that it doesn't mean the town will be locked into this for the next 20 or 30 years there's always the ability to come back and revisit and make changes also note that we do have some exploration provisions in growth management that could be mirrored in any inclusionary zoning provisions so approvals if they're not acted on don't have to be forever and we can think about that a little bit that's good feedback that you don't want to be locked into a whole bunch of stuff on paper I worked in western places where there were tens of thousands of homes that were forever entitled because of the way subdivision law worked in Montana and the town doesn't have to have that in fact under growth management you're calling up applicants who have not proceeded on their project saying you're falling into what we call the slow build provision which is a minor inconvenience for someone who does a two lot subdivision but essentially a death knell for a 20 unit project because once you go so far beyond your approval you're only allowed to build that project at a rate of a handful of units a year and if you're building a 20 unit apartment building it doesn't work at all you need to come back and get a new approval under the new rules so to that feedback that's something that we could make sure was true for all residential projects regardless of the approval path they chose I've heard of instances before where say you give someone permission to put in 100 houses 10 of them have to be affordable those could be the last 10 houses they build so they build 89 houses and they're done they walk away yeah so that's another thing that we're looking at is just making sure that those affordable units are constructed along with the market rate units the phasing schedule would include both affordable and market rate units there's a way to make sure that you don't end up with that and I would say Mike we don't have that provision right now we haven't seen anybody walk away but we are seeing some projects where the only homes left to build are the designated affordables and it's causing us some concern we want to feed that back to the town in terms of we've talked about how many units were promised affordable in some of those projects we showed that table tonight but there's a much longer story than I could tell you tonight about the changes of working with applicants to actually make sure that all happens and happens the way it's supposed to including does it happen evenly throughout the project I don't see any emergency right now I don't see any reason that you know so wastewater obviously my favorite thing to talk about so how would this obviously we have a finite amount of capacity and so this inclusionary zoning would obviously speed up the potential growth to provide affordable housing which I find necessary thing at this point we are as I mentioned in previous meetings we are having housing shortage crisis I mean it is crisis level and so I support inclusionary zoning but also I'm very concerned about our wastewater capacity so what would the limitations be on how would we manage that on a year basis and you know what would be the tied to that also I do think there should still be some limitations on the amount of housing that could be developed each year including inclusionary zoning housing so if you could talk about that and what the I'll answer the sewer part a little bit which is that this change to the zoning by a lot does not require any change to the sewer allocation ordinance or the select boards attachment A procedure it's still a year to year decision by the select board how much new capacity they'd like to make available for both market rate and affordable housing generally historically we see that under we see that affordable housing category which we usually put about 5000 gallons per day in every year it goes really underutilized so I think there's some room in that system to support the reasonable amount of new permitted development we think we would expect under this bylaw change as Melinda said inclusionary zoning would create some fraction of what's needed but it's really that programmatic stuff and partnership stuff that's going to hit the the deepest need and the people with the greatest need this is another level of housing beyond that but yes the select board still maintains control over attachment A and the bylaw still contains provisions that say the DRB or administrator can't approve projects that are unable to acquire sewer allocation that's why we run upstairs to Bruce when we have a permit that requires sewer allocation to see if it can be purchased or if it has been purchased it's part of our permitting process on every new use that we allow under our zoning waste water allocation is still going to act as that buffer and that upper echelon limit to potential growth on a year to year basis as do a number of other things that you need in order to have successful development like dry land access to a road because I'm because I've always kind of conflated sewer allocation and growth management plan is the same thing right so and you can skip the growth management plan if you have your 10% affordable housing I always conflated that with you also get to scoops you get to pass on the sewer allocation I mean otherwise what are they getting you've got to buy your capacity so sewer allocation is really simple you want to do something you need some wastewater treatment capacity it's either available for you to purchase one way or another or it's not and you either move forward or you don't the growth management system is infinitely more complicated because it's not about how many gallons are available to purchase it's about how many dwelling unit equivalents are available to assign to your project in a given fiscal year on a table that goes out on a 10 year horizon that's tied to sewer allocation it is in Williston's policies and Williston's town plan it says Williston has limited resources in a number of ways and it will manage its rate of growth to ensure concurrency with its ability to provide services when growth management was established in 1990 it was as much about school capacity as anything it is again so that's you know we still have constrained resources and we still have growth management is one of the policies that addresses that but the way I see it we've created in growth management residential growth management a theoretical limit a number that's expressed as essentially a comfort level if we go too much beyond this it gets harder to provide services it's a number that was established 33 years ago when the town was quite a different place in a lot of ways and you know some years we see well over that some years we see well under that and the town does what it does to keep up with that growth whether it's you know adding staff or building infrastructure purchasing additional capacity of the treatment plant etc they do sort of sewer allocation and growth management kind of pointed each other and each of them in their policy document says we need this because of that I'd actually love to be working with the manager and this board to kind of disentangle that a little bit and really decide which one is going to drive the other in policy because I think that's really important the other thing is remember we just talked about a commercial development that would like to buy 20,000 plus gallons per day of capacity we have no such system in the zoning bylaw that says that hotel has to compete for incentives with other hotels has to get in line behind other hotels has to wait until other hotels have their permits it just comes and goes and then it shows up at your door and either there's capacity to purchase or not so I only say that to say that there are many policy pathways to ensuring that the rate of growth is manageable for the town residential growth management allocation is one of them it explicitly regulates and slows the rate of the creation of new homes in Williston Williston also has affordability goals and housing goals that are achieved by constructing housing and constructing homes there is tension there and that's why we're here that's why we're here on our third meeting right talking about this is because if it was as easy as saying well everything's all set up let's just build more homes we would just go off and do that the town is trying to do it in a way that's in consideration of all of these other limits and just to one more cool clarification on the sewer allocation I always thought that the annual amount of ten years that's an internal decision there's no technical reason why we couldn't give all the sewer allocation away now as far as the sewer plant is concerned you could decide in attachment A to make everything that the town owns available all in one year if people showed up and bought it then you would effectively be done don't put that in the minutes so I'm saying we're going to do that I just want to make an artificial barrier that the town has put together that the town creates the select board asked many years ago that it wanted planning staff to help it take a 20 year outlook on the way it uses its sewer capacity that's what we do I have a little more pragmatic question I guess oh my gosh I'm going to find this it's about five bullets from the bottom the addition of up to four homes to an existing residential property is exempt from growth management I was getting a little confused with lot sizes and things like that is that like somebody who has five acres could put a bunch of houses on what's that bullet pointed at I guess okay the addition of up to four homes to an existing residential property so I think I'm not sure if that was intended to be a four plex yeah it's a little bit trying to mirror what we think we're going to see from the legislature this year which is that you have to treat a four family residential structure the same as you would treat a single family home this is an expansion of the treat a duplex like a single family home legislation that came out a couple years ago and the other thing I'll say is in a practical sense when we start running projects of three, four, five units through growth management all of that scoring and incentive stuff kind of falls apart people start doing kind of silly counter intuitive things to their developments to make points in the system and the other thing is that those small projects and I'm going to use a word that not everybody's comfortable with infill projects tend to create naturally affordable homes kind of off the bat you know it's the person who does the duplex conversion or converts the old Victorian into the four apartment unit or you know adds on in some way or divides an existing home up and we think it will be easier for those applicants to just promise the affordability or sorry we think those applicants will simply create affordability by the nature of what those projects are like so just take them through make sure they meet all the other development standards and our experience is likely to mirror accessory dwelling units we allow them everybody with a single family home can get an accessory dwelling unit as long as they've got the sewer capacity and the physical space which most people do and we permit half a dozen a year so there's been fear as the state has continued to expand permissiveness around accessory dwelling units that they would just everybody's going to have one and it turns out not everybody wants to build an addition on their house not everybody wants to be a landlord it's a small part of the solution but we've seen a lot of flexibility added to that over the years a handful of units that mean a lot to the people who build them and the people who live in them but from the perspective of a town of 10,100 people you don't really feel it we think the four unit thing is kind of like that as well my only comment on the accessory dwelling units is I don't know that the town has a short-term rental no it's come up in our conversations at the planning commission there's about 60 something short-term rentals in Williston over half of them are in units at the Sinesta that are listed through Airbnb the other 25 to 30 about 2 thirds of them are a room or or efficiency unit in somebody's home the remaining third so we're down to 10 ish our entire homes we have suggested the town continue to monitor that and think about when those numbers when do those numbers get big enough that you would want a short-term rental ordinance just two bullets up simplified growth management criteria for rating projects that will not provide affordable homes what's that mean so that means there's a lot of criteria that are I think what you were sort of the silly like there was one you know related to focal points and if your development is near a focal point I think there may be two focal points in town and it scores points so it's kind of getting rid of the kind of the silly criteria and narrow kind of honing it down a bit to criteria that makes sense and actually to achieve its goals so we assume if people were using inclusionary zoning as a pathway alternate to growth management that that's how your affordables are coming in so we would take the affordable incentive out of growth management and what's left after you do that and you pair away some of these ones that we're seeing as being relatively ineffective or actually causing people to do things that are developments that don't make sense the big criteria that are left are energy efficiency sustainable transportation facilities and in the ag rural area the provision of permanently conserved open space where a third party enforces the conservation so kind of we started with a system that was about managing growth it evolved into a system that managed growth and also incentivized all these desirable things that the town either couldn't or wasn't quite ready to outright require and it kind of became like well everything we want we'll just throw it into the incentives of growth management the scoring system has become very complicated and we would see the opportunity of if the scoring around affordable housing just turned into its own pathway take what's left and make it really meaningful and really push those 100% market rate projects to do creative things to be competitive especially around energy production and storage and things like that so somebody with a big expensive parcel with views of Lake Champlain who just can't figure out how they're going to integrate an affordable unit instead goes into growth management they may pay a fee in lieu for not providing that affordable unit and they may in that home need to do some really extensive things about energy efficiency production or energy storage in order to get what's left of the allocation in that conventional system right like so the idea is really if you're not going to provide affordable units in your development you go through the growth management system you wait in line and you have to you have to attain a high score some other way the in lieu payment would put you in the inclusionary zone fast path though right? No I thought there was a buy my way out of this if I wanted to, no you're either in the affordable inclusionary or you're scoring and you're going to pay I mean I just to be clear I know I'm putting you guys through the ringer but it's you know I I think we do have a housing crisis I just want to make sure that we're solving the right problem like we're having a housing crisis of four bedroom homes so I just want to that's why I'm asking all the questions you so okay so one of the things I noticed too and one of the bullet points is the conversion of hotels to affordable housing do we have a sense of what the office space like vacancy rate is and like is there a potential to like to incentivize conversion of you know that to did I miss it it's in there I missed it okay that's fine I don't know how I my brain was not okay so I just want to do it because and we know what that open unused office space is now currently in town so there is there is some vacant office space it's pretty reflective of what it looks like all over the county right now I could not give you a percentage or a number of square feet off the top of my head and some of that space is probably pretty unsuited to residential conversion some of it is a little more suited to that and you know we we had that I think I brought up at one of our previous meetings the fellow who has a building that's commercial on the ground floor with one office in one apartment upstairs and he wants to have a second department he's going through his growth management process right now there's a few of those out there you know so we do think there's some there's some potential and again not so much that there would be a you know a tidal wave of office conversion to affordable but again a trickle here and a trickle there and eventually you're starting to see your housing stock change I had a question it's probably not critically important but the percentages of inclusionary zoning for projects of 10 homes or more so it's a minimum of 10% of those homes as affordable at 80% of the area of median income minimum of 15% as affordable at 100% and a minimum of 20% those homes as affordable 120% so that's 40% those are oars oh they're oars there are they see that right there yeah you need that that's not 40% okay you know that thank you that goes back to that comma thing earlier okay I have no question so we've talked a lot about inclusionary zoning but also on the table is fielding a housing committee and also funding the affordable housing trust fund yes thank you so I mean those are also things that it sounds like would simultaneously ideally be built and worked on what do you envision for the housing committee what stakeholders do you envision being on that or community members or town staff what's your vision for that so my vision would be to have a diverse group of stakeholders represented ideally at least one or more renters people who rent in town a member of somebody who works for a housing organization a member of this DDI group trying to think you know I would most likely staff it I wouldn't be one of the committee but I would staff it and you know I mean I guess if you guys weren't also overworked I would say one of the select board members but I know that you have a lot in your play but yeah that's kind of that's kind of what I'm envisioning and so I think you mentioned the first step is really just developing the charge for a committee and so timeline what do you see as the timeline to get a committee up and running and you know if the select board is supportive of this and wants to move forward I've already drafted a charge I can bring it to the next meeting and as soon as the select board gives the okay we could start recruiting and hopefully have people apply and possibly be appointed by late summer or fall so I mean I think the more pieces and the more always we can address the immediate needs I mean obviously this is something that's imperative to deal with as soon as possible and I think obviously in the headlines we're seeing the end of the state's policy to get folks into hotels and things like that and so obviously this is not going to address that a very very immediate need but the sooner we can act on things the better and it feels like getting a housing committee up and running is something that we can do at least you know much sooner than we can enact inclusion of his own or you know any of these other things so it's the first step in this multi-step process so I would love to see that like housing charge next meeting I would too we are tasked with two separate things one is the creation of whether we should whether we agree to the concept of a town housing committee and the other is general direction from this board on possible zoning bylaw changes that we would give to assist the planning commission so that they don't do a huge amount of work only to find out that we never thought it was a good idea to begin with so if I could ask for discussion on those issues maybe we could talk about the housing committee first I mean that Greta just hit it out right there but I mean I think it's something we if the town has talked about it a long time we should really move forward now it's the time to move forward I would be really interested in seeing the charge because I could see it being a little convoluted with too many hands in the kitchen thank you and I don't want to set up a committee and say that's great you're all here but we don't actually have the ability to listen to anything you're going to tell us I would be interested to wrap it up and what that charge would be and how it interacts with the other committees and things on town my understanding is that the charge could be brought to us rather soon okay we have a consensus that we'd like to see that and make a decision okay and then the easy one the general direction from the board on any possible zoning by law changes to consider in the short term to assist the planning commission in its forthcoming work is that the slides we didn't go through yeah I didn't the last few slides just for general summaries of these amendments and you've seen them before it sounds like there might be multiple opinions on the board does anybody want to start off I mean I think I've made it pretty clear where I stand so I would like to see inclusionary zoning I think it's important and you did a good job of clarifying that does not replace the growth management system but the growth management system still exists that people have the option to go through either avenue potentially but make that payment and I think it is you know with stipulations again on how often or how quickly the affordable housing would be built as part of the project I think that's really, really imperative because what's the point of doing it if we're not going to actually have those units available but but yeah I supported and I think that yeah it's sounds like it has the support of the planning commission as well and I trust them that yeah I could agree if there were rules to follow through to completion just give them something and then not ensure that they follow through with it and also a limit you know I don't think this should be an open ended here you know this is allocation see is it do is it when they without a limit to it I heard three major points of feedback I think tonight and the night before one was that affordable units should be built in concurrence with the market units they shouldn't be left till the end another was that there should be a similar expiration of approval as there is to the growth management system in other words you can't get an approval and just sit on it forever and then the town gets hit with a whole bunch of stuff building at once and I heard that there should be still some concurrence with the availability of wastewater treatment capacity and all of those things can be incorporated into a draft they're sort of if we do this we've got that are sort of the things that might produce more homes we still need to do this so I hope that helps that we can bring that back to the planning commission in their draft and make it part of the package that they consider it helps me, thank you that last one we say sewer to be really clear we can't ramp up and be building more homes faster that much faster I think we're saying the same thing but I don't want to see 300 houses built because they're putting in a couple of units yeah, I'm not a huge fan I think if you're looking at 200 houses 10% is 20 units and we need how many? 800 I mean it seems this is almost like a red herring this is not going to solve our problem can't hurt if you think it'll help get some spread around the town more that's fine I think you infill and things like this with the 4 units and be more effective than trying to talk our friend Chris into putting in a whole bunch of a few those smattering of houses here and there for his next so I'm not a huge fan I just don't think it's that big a deal so I'm not going to get in the way of it as long as I would get in the way if I thought it was going to ramp up housing building in the town would be not what I'm understanding the town thinks they can accomplish so the the state obviously has a housing business and has Dewey and we need to do our part and I'm not sure what that is at this point when we get somebody back from the planning commission to react to I think we can do that at that point we'll know what the moving parts are as you mentioned we can get more into the details of how each of these things work and interact will we solve all of our problems maybe we will in 50 years we'll look at the town that started out 50 years ago with a thousand people and now we're up to 10,000 and we also need to look at the infrastructure costs that go along with everything so there's a lot of uneasiness out there including myself probably about where do we go, how do we get there and when I'm in favor of inclusionary zoning as a one tool I shared Gene's concern that and there's probably a huge conflict in this that 10% is probably not going to make a huge impact so I don't know it's one of the things where if you pull on that strand what does it do, if you say let's just arbitrarily bump those numbers up I don't want to sit here and say that but I am overall in favor of it I'm just concerned that it doesn't do enough to address the issue I do think Williston does have an obligation to address the housing situation I not we're never going to have enough housing in town to house every single person that lives in Williston and I don't think that's even as a matter of principle something that is needed anyway I hope he works at Williston, I hope for housing he said we can't house all the people who live in Williston all the people that are housed in Williston do live here yeah but I mean that's kind of a false metric that everybody has to live in the town that they work in so I'm not concerned about that but I'm in favor of the overall tenor of it I appreciate all the input but we're going to move forward working on a draft with the Planning Commission I would expect them to work through that hear it and transmit it to you for consideration if we get to that informational meeting and we find that we're off track enough that substantial changes are required we'll follow the process to do that we know how to do that but we would anticipate working on this through the middle of summer with a hopeful goal by midfall of 23 okay great people these maps were really very helpful visually by the way actually yeah great job by everybody really great presentation yeah Melinda thank you you did a lot of work putting all this together thank you you're welcome we've already covered the town sponsorship policy so I think we're up to managers okay I'll be quick so in Eric's report he provided the local option tax report for the third quarter that was included in the agenda if you read his memo there's some additional background information for new members that gives kind of the overall what this looks like through the year but anyhow it's a very favorable report I don't know if you have any questions on that but surely I hear she'd be the one to answer those the next item that he had is for your June 6th meeting there's going to be a possible executive session so he wanted me to pull you all to see if you would be available to start at 6.30 is everybody good with that? no scheduling thank you also he in his report noted the town has been awarded $4,000 to the local energy resilience program mini grant by the state department of buildings and general services and Melinda will be managing that grant and then just an update on the scoping committee for the library assessment and community center they recently wrapped up their first phase of community engagement which was a lot of in-person interviews and collection of data from that data and then created a survey that will go out electronically and also be provided hard copy that will give a little bit more quantitative information and hoping to finalize that survey and launch it by the end of this month I would like to shout out Erin because when she says they we did a lot of arguing over specific language and Erin really did the brunt of the work in creating the design survey and worked really hard on that so thank you it was a fun effort she appropriately used her commas though as far as I know she did I'm going to go back and check so that's the status on that process and that's really all that Eric had in his report we're supposed to sign some other business that's under other business so the Vermont Bond Bank requires the select board to approve a certificate of completion for the muddybrook culvert replacement project and there was a copy of the certificate included in the materials that you received but I have the hard copy for your signature I don't know if he sends a specific pen around or if you all know we muddle through so I'd move approval of the certificate of replacement for the muddybrook culvert replacement project is there a second all those in favor say aye all those in favor say aye the ayes have it maybe under other business I don't know what the protocol is here but I was cleaning up all my paperwork from different meetings and my notes trying to keep order with four whole meetings under my belt now and I know some things that is there a process or is there a way and I'd be interested in coming back to the parent group that was here last time do we just thank you for your information and move on or do we that's just an example do we have a process for sort of are there things that the board would like to follow up on at some point not a formal one but in the past I know I've contacted either the chair manager to ask for statuses something needs to be put back on the agenda I ask for that that particular piece that we heard 2vcl should go to the planning commission part of our discussion about housing so we should ask them to do that as well so that's a great example like any time you have to bring it up talk to the chair I know it's just a personal burning question I have but all these folks are expecting not to just be dismissed and so what's the you know so what I'm hearing is I do agree that when things come to the select board directly there's probably appropriate either staff or committee or commission that it should go to and then maybe we just ask Ted or ask the whole board is this something we'd like a status on in 6 months or something like that on that specific issue I recall Matt saying that there are things that the town would be reaching out to these people about and looking into and stuff so many are going to follow through on that but yeah we can bring it back up we had a member of the group tonight here for this meeting the other thing was the emergency plan that we just kind of signed off on and that was just kind of an interesting we had an interesting discussion about does the town do anything besides put that emergency plan together and put it in a drawer and Eric said well we've been talking about doing tabletop exercises or something that would be another thing that you know it could come up next year when we sign up on these papers again and I can ask the same question or is this you know is that the process for that too yeah okay yeah we can let's talk about that yeah like give me a call I mean the school board does come back you know at the end of the meeting they do come back to say is there things that we heard today that we want to follow up with and then the superintendent writes them all down and then the chair and the superintendent decide at some point how to circle back on them if that's the will of the board so it shouldn't just be the will of me but I want to I mean that doesn't need an answer today it could be something we just kind of start up in the fall when we kind of regroup after the summer but I would be interested in at least having some kind of understanding as a board as to how we follow up with things that come good issues to bring up can I advocate really quickly but people go and grab the Williston 2050 cards from out front of the parks and rec department and fill it out the planning commission has this project and I just think it's a really fun way to see where we are as a town now and to think about the future and to you know for Williston 2050 to see what our priorities were in this year okay and there's a permit yep one more other business for me so after the meeting materials are distributed a request to cater permit for Bevo LLC for a life celebration event to take place at Isham Farm on May 20th 2023 it's a permitted events venue and staff have no concerns so it would require the board to pass a motion to approve this request to cater permit to approve is there a second all those in favor say aye did we have an abstention oh one abstention am I supposed to abstain yeah I didn't say anything yeah silence was abstention for the minutes we had that's all for other business okay if there's nothing else then I will declare us adjourned