I love it. Good. Good. I like to hear people over the top. It's good. I did it. Yeah, it's a cheesemate. It was kind of an odd, you know, just very few in attendance. Yeah. Yeah, and they have the presenter. He was a good presenter from St. Paul, Minnesota. But I felt as though, and I know we're probably not an oddly heritage in the county, I felt as though that we are eight years ahead of where they are, especially in the South Carolina and Burlington County. Okay, just check your microphone. Yes. Okay, I'd like to bring to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, October 15, 2018. We just came back from a lovely tour of the Allard Square building on Market Street. They're ready to start moving it. Well, they say they'll be moving in the 23rd. There still are some finishing touches for sure. But if you watch Fixer Upper or any of those places, it's like the day before they're doing all the less stuff. So our first regular session item is a Pledge of Allegiance. So please stand. Our second item is instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency. In case of emergency tonight, please leave out one of these two doors on the side and gather in the parking lot to the south. If for one reason or another, these doors are blocked, please go back out through the main lobby out the main part of the front of the building and then gather in the parking lot to the south. Tom Hubbard and I will make sure that the building is clear. So please leave expeditions. Thank you. So item three agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of agenda items? Seeing none, we'll move on to four, which is a possible executive session to discuss pending or probable litigation to which the city is a party. I'd like to move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the confidential attorney client communications related to pending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or maybe party would clearly. And having so found I now move that the council enter into executive sessions for the purpose of discussing confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the council related pending or probable civil litigation to which the public body is or maybe a party. We'd like to invite Kevin Doran, Hubbard, Andrew Bulldeck, Kelly Kandestin and Chief Sean Burke into executive session. We have a second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So hopefully we'll be back at 715. South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, October 15th, 2018. We've completed executive session and I would entertain a motion to accept the Vermont League of Cities and Towns Pacific. I don't know what that stands for. That's the insurance passive. We don't need to. Recommendation for the settlement of potential legal claims brought against the city for the purpose of avoiding protracted and costly litigation. Second. All in favor. Aye. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to item five. Excuse me. Six. That was fun. Comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any comments or? Okay. Seeing none. We'll move on to announcements in the city manager's report. The side of the table wants to start. Tom? I can't think of anything. We had a great firefighters dinner. Dave, we missed you, but it was a great event and I'm glad it was so well attended. The students take priority. There's not much I can do about it. Twenty-five people came and I think it was a nice event. That many? Oh, wow. Follow-up by thanking you, Tom, and the committee. I thought that it was a really nice event. Nice discussion at the tables. Really nice tribute to Chief Brent. And it was good to see our interim Chief Terry Francis take the podium as well and get to know him a little bit more. So, yeah, so thank you. Thank you very much. I didn't do much. Okay. David? I also attended the fire first annual. Firemen's work dinner and had great meal, great time, and they had some very nice beers on tap. Thank you very much. And great to talk to some people there and so many uniforms. I felt like I should have had a uniform. Everybody should have a uniform on it pretty much, except for me. So, look forward to it. Is it going to be put on next year? We're meeting and we're going to have to discuss that very question, so I'll report back. I also attended the multiple mini interviewer training at Lerner College of Medicine, so I'm going to be doing that again this year. Oh, nice. Excellent. Good. I have to go through my calendar, so I don't forget anything. So, I did attend last Thursday or two Thursdays ago, I guess. The community collaborative, they had a meeting here and gave us a pretty impressive update on how well the collaborative is going. The panel included three. They're in the process of hiring someone left, I guess. So, they're in the process of replacing one of the therapists, but they all spoke. And the woman, I can't remember her name, who is at Howard that manages the program also spoke. And it was really wonderful. And the statistics certainly show that we need this program. There are quite a few calls and visits for this community that they attend to. And there's a police chief there and I can't remember who's the other person on the panel. I can't remember, but anyway, there was, you know, really very positive feedback about how effective the program was and how they're kind of reducing some of the callbacks by the police and getting people into therapy that they need. And they also, some of the people, I don't know if many is an exaggeration, so I'll just say some of the recipients of this therapy in their homes will reach out to the therapist at other times versus calling the police and using that process to get the help they need. Could I jump in? Yeah. Because I forgot. The Community Justice Center director, Lisa Bedinger, invited people to attend coming home. Yes. The documentary, which I did attend. And it was a very powerful documentary. And it kind of ties into what you were saying. And just to put it out there, it is still playing. It's playing throughout the state of Vermont. It was in Burlington a week ago, but I believe it's in Essex. And then it will be in Montpelier and other places throughout the state free and open to the public. But they are talking about the importance of community for receiving back convicts and bringing them back into the community. And there are studies that show that the recidivism rate is lower for those that go through this program, which is escaping me right now, but where you meet with a group of community members and then your project kind of your case manager. Just to check in on you, see how you're doing, develop a relationship.  So it's a pretty effective program. So people can look into it if they're interested here in South Burlington with Lisa Bedinger and find out more about it if you're interested in being a community member who would be participating and developing, you know, a community so that people can be integrated and not feel, you know, the outsider, which is often a cause for, you know, criminal behavior. I also met with Kevin twice with the library board to, or the librarian and the president of the library board to really continue to discuss and plan for the engagement with the public about the bond vote. I also, let's see, I think I did this twice. We had two library meetings. I think it was two in the last two weeks. One at Mark, oh, maybe it's just one at Markhott Central. And the library, that's right, there were two. One at the library and one at Markhott Central. To meet with the public, Alana has put together a really good slide deck about the proposal and the building and the cost and the pluses. And so I've been speaking about the city hall aspect and then Patrick Leduc speaks about the library and its attributes and then Jennifer Cokman speaks about the senior center. So those are going well. Not extremely well attended but a lot of good questions and I think we're addressing those questions well enough or as well as we can. I, too, went to the firefighters' dinner and I guess that's all I have to report. Can I plug one thing? Yes.  Trunk or treat, trunk or treat, spooktacular by the rec department.  Sorry. Okay. Just picking up there, Helen, about the public information sessions. I just want to let the council know that Sobu Life will arrive in mailboxes this week. Sobu Life, the fall version, has I think a four-page or more spread on the community center. My understanding is that the library board of trustees are facilitating a neighborhood canvassing meeting this week and the new tri-fold or the new brochure, updated brochure will be available for that use. ADS will be in the other paper on 10-18, 10-25, and then an insert. There will be an actual insert on the edition that goes out 11-1. There are various media, TV media, interviews that are being arranged, including one on the, I think on the 29th, and we're coordinating on a production this Friday, I think, right? The public information sessions, just 10-16 at 6.30 p.m. at Orchard School. So this one's tomorrow. 10-23 at Chamberlain, 10-24 at Tuttle, and then you have your joint public meeting, public information meeting with the school board at your regular city council meeting on 11-5. So the night before, there'll be a joint meeting with the school board. The night before the election here is part of your normal meeting. And then we're going to have a lot of diagrams and pictures up at the library because H&M is now open and as you might also know, Target is scheduled to open on Sunday. I also wanted to let the public know and the council is aware that the council has entered into a multi-party agreement to be part of a conservation effort to conserve approximately 300 acres of land, the so-called La Claire farm, of which the council and the city are involved in 117 acres, but that closing happened on Friday. It was a day-long closing. As for closings, Allard Square, as you probably know, Allard Square closing is on Wednesday. Because we're one of the funders, we have a whole boxload of documents to sign for that. So that'll happen Wednesday at 11.30. We're sad and happy, I suppose, for Jamie Mills. Sergeant Mills, who many of you know, is retiring. His retirement, I'll just call it party, is Saturday from three to six at the 27th, from three to six at Goodwater's Brewery in Williston. But on the better side, we swore in new officer Michael Goslin last week and he will be attending the academy in February. Just a general update. The negotiations are ongoing with the three bargaining units. We're having a special meeting with all three of them on health care related issues this week. And so nothing to report by way of conclusion with those negotiations, but they're ongoing, they're cordial, they're good discussions. Paving, as you've also noticed in the community, is ongoing right now. Kimball Avenue is being repaved from Kennedy all the way down to the four corner stop near the police station with limited access depending on the day. Tom, I also wanted to thank you for your organization of the Fire Department Recognition Dinner. Talking to the team members who were there, they were very appreciative. They were very and genuinely appreciative of the community support. So thank you all for that and thanks to the organizing committee. The Economic Development Committee will meet for the first time on the 22nd. It should be next Monday. It's an organizing meeting and beginning to consider a work plan. The first meeting in the Dog Park Task Force was Thursday of last week and I understand it went well. And then lastly, I am attending a briefing at the National Guard, at the Air Guard on Wednesday to get an update on the status of the construction projects. Are you guys going to that too? I didn't see who got invited. I think we were all invited. Yeah, it's at 3 o'clock at the Guard and if you have an RSVP for that, you should. Make sure you have your lights on. Because they won't light you in the door otherwise. Wednesday is that? It's Wednesday at 3? This Wednesday. This coming Wednesday at 3? Yes. Time the Economic Development Committee meeting is on the 22nd? That is at 5. Here? Yeah. Upstairs in the medium conference room. Okay. In terms of the new officer that we have hired and is going to, or sworn in I guess, and is going to. So we have a couple there now, right? Two in the Academy right now. Okay. And so this will be three to fill the five vacancies we have? Well now we'll have six. Six when Jamie leaves. Oh, right. We have three scheduled for the February class at the Academy. And he'll be one of those three. So he's doing his pre-training with the department until February. Okay. And then he'll join the February training class at the Academy. And you two will have graduated. Yes. So by the end of the February, you say? At the end of the February. And we should be at full force then? No, we'll still be missing a few because of the retirements that we have. Oh, okay. And so it's a 39 week process. So from the day you walk into the Academy, which is 26 weeks, when you get out of the Academy, you then have 13 weeks of field training before we release you as a full, ready to go police officer. Field training within this department? Within the department. Yeah. With a field training officer. Okay. Okay. Could I ask the website? You had reported the website's been being worked on. I saw in the... Oh, darn. In our payments this month. What is that called? Disbursements. Disbursements, thank you. The website support, is that a new contract to help us with the website or have they always supported our website? I have to defer to Tom on that. Website question, Tom, in the disbursements this month. Is this a new vendor or is this a vendor that... Same vendor enhancements to the program that we're continuing to make. We're actually going to be adding the clerk base platform into that so that we don't have separate fees in the future for both clerk base and the website management page. So this is another step of our laser fees that integrates our webpage information. You'll receive it the same. There'll just be a different platform that you go to to get the information. Something that I've experienced in the members of the public have reported to me is that when you look up something, you know, use a search engine and look up something about, you know, a document or something, that we go on to the old page quite regularly and that there's an error, right? And there's no redirect to the new website. Is that something that... I'll have our staff look at that, Alan, Corley, yeah. Yep, absolutely. In addition for the website, has any action been taken on the DPW's graphic that comes up that... I passed that along to Corley. I'm not sure. And I showed it to her. It did? Oh, it hadn't. I'll check on that again. I know exactly what you're talking about. Okay. I have one more little question. So the check that we cut from the warrants was for $605,000 for the Eau Claire contribution. Wasn't the actual number 600 6,000 minus a little bit of change? Well, there was a second check after it for 976 or something. Yeah. Oh, it can see. You're correct. Okay, 900. Oh, I see it, 967.72. Okay. Didn't see that one. Sorry, thank you. Why two checks? Mistake. It was just a mistake. That's another 10 cents for that check for the bank, darn it. Okay. So we're done with announcements. All right. We'll move on to the consent agenda. I'd consider an emotion for accepting the consent agenda as presented, considering and signing the disbursements, approving minutes for September 17th and October 1st, and accepting the cider mill stormwater system and easements. I'll make that motion. Second. Is there any discussion? Okay. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay, that passes. So now we're a little early, but Paul's here. So you're ready to rock. So we'll go on to item nine, discussion on sustainability related issues in South Burlington presented by Paul Conner, our chief sustainability officer. Well, thank you, everyone. Paul Conner, director of planning and zoning and chief sustainability officer tonight. I guess it's going to be a little bit of a hybrid presentation and discussion following the last meeting. Hence the first slide being essentially the same as what you saw last time. So what I'd like to do is to, in the first few minutes, give you a little update on a schedule for how we would want to, how I propose that we discuss all the different sort of elements of sustainability with the first part of it really being focused around the, what the council has been recently discussing, planning commission has been discussing, and then talk about a schedule for some of the other aspects of sustainability. And I realize that this will bleed a little bit into the next item. So if you'd like, I'll just sort of raise the ideas and the questions now to get your, to have you begin to be thinking about it. And then council really, whenever you'd like to switch over to the next item, then go for it. So there's really two aspects of what, the way that we've been thinking about the question of sustainability over the last little while. This photo, by the way, has taken last fall on Kennedy Drive, which is pretty cool. The first one is just a little over a year ago, in August of 2017, the council adopted a resolution joined the Vermont Climate Pledge Coalition, which pledges to meet or exceed the obligation of the United States and the Paris Accord. And secondly, which has, as we all know, some pretty significant and aggressive climate change goals with it. And then secondly, but in many ways closely related, are questions about the long-term community and fiscal sustainability in the city. In many ways, as I said, these are linked subjects. They're not, the direct objectives may be separate, but a lot of the same tools that are applied about smart growth and how we build out are related. So what I want to talk about with you for a couple minutes here, and would love to get some feedback, is sort of a general schedule for how we might talk about some of these sustainability subjects. So this evening, as I said, my primary efforts and focus has been on following up from your last council meeting, as well as some recommendations that have come from the Planning Commission. We would love at your next meeting to be able to give you some information around the subject of the cost benefit analysis, something like the Joe Minnicoz or Urban 3 project, what that might cost, what that might look like. We've started communications with both the State Center for Geographic Information as well as the Regional Planning Commission who's been in touch with these folks over the last year to sort of frame out exactly what we'd be getting. There's a lot of things we could ask for, and we want to help to refine that down to what is most useful for South Burlington. On November 19th, we would love to come to you with a request to approve a grant application to the state. We've probably heard the folks over at Volkswagen a few years ago were given a little tap on the shoulder that not all of their data was exactly accurate. And so we have gained states around the country have been given an award that they can pass out in different ways. The state of Vermont has decided to allocate the bulk of the money towards heavy fleet improvement school buses, things like that. But a portion of the money also towards getting electric vehicle charging stations up and running. And this can be in public sector, it can be parking rides, it can be private sector, it can be residential. The first round of it, the state was being fairly conservative and wanted to, sort of learn from doing a trial. So the statewide allocation is only $400,000 for getting charging stations in. I've had a meeting with folks from the energy committee and we're putting together a strategy for something that would be both the school and the city about getting some charging stations in around various parts of the community in the places that would be the most likely candidates for being used. So places like City Hall, the future City Hall should the voters choose to advance that in early November, which we'll know by then. The school district property, possibly Veterans Memorial Park and possibly one or two more locations. We were really focusing on areas where people, there would be a high volume of people using public spaces for an extended period of time, which is really the big cash benefit, the big benefit of this. We will happily also support any other folks who want. There's three different levels of charging. So the first level is just a plug in the wall. It costs the amount of a plug in the wall. So that's not a big cost. The third level is what's called the DC fast charging and they can be $20,000 to $30,000 per unit. They charge really quickly, but they also cost a lot of money. So the sweet spot is really these level two chargers, which is what you see, for example, under that artistic tree at Healthy Living in some various places. The install of the unit itself is probably in the three to $4,000. What we've been working with the vendors on and working with the state to clarify is making sure that whatever we install comes with all the warranties, comes with all the maintenance contracts, that kind of thing. So it's probably closer to about $8,000 per pair. So they tend to come in two, so you put it between two parking spaces and serves two. Yeah. Following that in early December, we'd like to really start to ramp up some of these discussions. We've initiated a conversation with our departments, starting with public works around how we would be looking at level of service. So you've heard some discussion over the last few years about when would we need another plow route, or when would we have sort of a tipping point of different service. A part of that is how do we measure level of service by different departments, and what's acceptable to the community. So how long between a road getting plowed, for instance, or that kind of thing. So it's really these two things go hand in hand, which is the level of service and one of the tipping points. So we're going to start that conversation and come to you in early December on that subject. And then on December 17th, assuming all works out well, we'd like to come to you with a more full report on the city's energy usage, the status on what we've been doing with regard to the climate accord, and an outline for a strategy for the coming period of time. And having met with some folks from the Energy Committee over the last year and talking with lots of other committees, really what a big goal of these folks and of mine in this area would be to work on how to embed these subjects into our day-to-day decision making. So not just it's its own project to go and do this, but how do we embed it into our decision making such that, for example, when the City Hall car came up for a lease renewal, first question is, is there a way to do this? It's a more energy efficient way. So how do we do that for all the actions that we do? So that's just some of what we'll be talking about at that time. So I don't have too much more to present this evening on this, but I wanted to give that outline and see what your thoughts are on that. Does that sort of sound like what you're looking for over the next little while on this? Is there other things? Could you elaborate a little bit on November 5th? Sure. So it's impossible quote on develop? Yeah, so quote meaning like a proposal. So we've heard some interest from members of the council of having a proposal for doing work, for doing a full analysis of cost-benefit development. We think we can probably get a quote from this company, Urban Three and or others, to see what the cost is and what's involved in a proposal so that you can evaluate and see if that's what you're looking for or not. So we would ask just to build on that. So we would be approaching some possible vendors or researchers and asking them what are the kinds of questions we should include in a study? Well, I think that's some of why we're communicating with our partners already so that we're not just asking them what should we do. We're learning from others about what they've done. So on November 5th, you might have an outline of, these are the elements of a study. We may have an outline, we may even have a cost estimate for you so that you can say, this is the ballpark of what something like this would cost, is this what you're looking for? And do we have a process? I mean, I'm just thinking there's a lot of professors who I think do some of this kind of work at UVM or St. Mike's or maybe even Champlain, I don't know. Do we have a process to, I don't know, query them to say this is what we're thinking about. Do you have anyone on staff who would be interested? Grad students, right? Well, we can certainly do that. I think that the question, right, I think one of the questions for you all in that case would then be how there's the benefit of having folks who are local in doing that. If it's something like grad research, then it probably needs to be scheduled out several months in advance. So it might not start until there's more professors at the table than there are back here, but start on a timeline of research rather than a consultant. But we can certainly pursue both possibilities for you. Well, if it's practical, I mean, I love to give the grant locally and support people who live here and work here and care about this community the chance to develop this. But if they don't have the expertise or it doesn't work until, yeah, we could do it next August, you know, that won't work either. So you're thinking you're going to put out an RFP for that? Is that where you're? Well, I think that ultimately, if it's over $10,000, it'll need to have an RFP per policy. But you could at least have a, oftentimes when we apply for grants and things we get a rough proposal so that we know the scales of what we're talking about. So that's what we might have for here is what might something like that cost? Would we be eligible for grants? It's possible. We did put in this past year a request to the Regional Planning Commission and we did get some award with them. There needs to be a clear link to transportation and transportation infrastructure for the Regional Planning Commission to fund and we always keep our eyes peeled for other opportunities as well. Other comments or questions? We've got a question from the audience. Just want to know what land development... Jerry Silverstein, South Brompton. What land development are we talking about for cost-benefit analysis? I need some construct here to understand what you're talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about. What are you talking about? Cost-benefit analysis of land development in South Brompton. What land? I'm guessing this has to do with new greenfield development. Right. Non-development. So what's the... So you're saying the cost of keeping land undeveloped or the cost of land making a park, what does it mean? I'll field this one. I believe that what we're interested in, it's something that several communities have already undertaken it, that when you have residential development or commercial development, that there is, of course, a new property value increase that would be in the form of property taxes that would be collected by the city, so that would be the benefit. The cost, however, would be the need to service sewers, roads, emergency services, and so that's what we're looking at. With the remaining undeveloped land, what would be that balance? How much would it bring in in revenue to the city in order to pay for our employees and the services and maintain them, right? And would they be maintained? And what would be the cost? So when you pay bill for all of South Brompton with buildings across the entire city, how much would it cost and how much financial windfall would we reap, something like that? I'm not a consultant, so I don't quite know how... I'm just trying to put some wording to what you're talking about. There's nothing about maintaining land in an undeveloped state as valuable commodity for the city. Is that the cost-benefit analysis? In other words, if you pay a million dollars to keep 10 acres undeveloped, is that part of your cost-benefit analysis? If we were to buy land, if we were to buy land, is that what you're saying? Is that the cost that we... I'm trying to figure out what your cost-benefit analysis is including. Is it only development? Is it only putting up buildings? No, I think it also needs to include what are the benefits for keeping land open in terms of water quality, CO2... That's the final one, Dan. You have a very vague descriptor there, just saying cost-benefit of land development. I don't know what that means without some clarity. Put some definition to it so people understand what you're talking about.  If I were a visitor from another planet and I would look at South Bronx, I would say, this must be the construction zone of America. Yeah, but if you go down to the southeast quadrant, we just paid some money to conserve 375 acres. And for some reason, there's no construction happening down there right now. So when you say you see a lot of construction, you see no construction down there, just for the contrast of saying that, okay? If I travel on Kennedy Drive, Old Farm Road, Peer Street, everywhere I go in South Bronx there's more and more buildings. So please don't tell me... I don't want to get in a shouting match about this. I'm just trying to say... We've had this discussion before... Can we have one at a time? Yeah, we've had this discussion before about the amount of development and redevelopment that's going on in the city right now. Okay, but I'm just trying to point out for you that we've also spent $605,000 plus $972 to help with conserving 375 acres in the south part of the southeast quadrant. So before you start saying, all I see is construction everywhere, please be aware that there's also a lot of land that has been conserved. And we're trying to figure out, through this cost-benefit analysis of the remaining undeveloped land, what's it going to cost to develop it with all her respect, the answer Megan gave me had nothing to do with undeveloped land. Sure it did. Except if we build services, how much it's going to cost and how much we'll get in return. So it answers the question, should this land be developed? If this land were developed, would it be in the interests of our residents? And that's where we'd lead me at least to the question, if we need to develop it, how should it be developed? Or if it's more interesting if it's in the interests of our residents to have it undeveloped, how can we conserve it? I think those are the questions that we will reach at once we have the analysis. The slide says development of a cost-benefit for land development. It says nothing about conservation of land. It's all about construction and building. If it costs more to develop it, I will bring it up, then we should conserve it. So that has to first be analyzed before we can come to the conservation as a solution, a potential solution. Paul, do you have anything further you can say to clarify? Sure. So typically an analysis like this would be looking both at green field areas and also at existing areas. It would look at what are the factors that economically are most beneficial and viable for the city. I suspect that something like infill development on say Feral Street will likely be a very high return on investment because we've already built the road, we've already got the sewer, we've got the electricity, the transit routes are right there. Other areas something like this would be assessing what are the financial elements of different kinds of development. The goal with something like this is to look from a long-term fiscal perspective, it's not necessarily to in and of itself say this piece of land should be conserved or not, but it is to lay out the facts from a fiscal perspective which is not something that we've historically done in the city to help with the decision making about what areas should be left open, what areas should be developed and in what manner. So it's to provide a foundation for smart decision making long term. From a fiscal perspective. Where do we account for the sociocultural impacts of development versus non-development? How is that managed in a study? That's the part that I think having heard from people over the last couple of months, that's an area of great concern is the sociocultural fabric of the city. At what point are we tipping beyond what makes it a viable community where people want to live? I don't know how we monetize that. Not necessarily every element is monetized but I think that my recommendation that would be for us all to look to see what are the measurable manners by which we can assess that question. So one manner that that can be assessed is the amount of developed open space or I should probably use a different word active open space and the amount of passive open space that we're looking for as a community per 1,000 population or per total acreage. That's a facet of measuring what you're asking about. It isn't necessarily the only one but there's different ways that we can assess and the comprehensive plan does do some of that in terms of our goals for how much affordable housing, what level of service for emergency services, how much recreational programming, these are all aspects of the socioeconomic desires of the city and I think we're very open to any other ways in which council or the public would like to measure these or if not having the measurements then at least what are we after. That's a challenging question on that topic. Michael? I just wanted to say that the revised resolution that I brought forward has this coming before the committees that they then can prioritize how land should be used or not used and bring in all of the different pieces economic development, affordable housing natural resources recreation and parks so I can add of course. Tom and then we'll go to the audience. So would you see as part of this potential consulting engagement to roll in that effort to prioritize the open spaces for conservation in conjunction with the committees or would it really be the committees to take it separately? I think if the council wanted for a prioritization of open space to take place that it could be done with committees it might be helpful to have at least a consultant if not doing actual environmental analysis then maybe helping to shepherd it through it most likely would be a separate firm then somebody who does a cost of very different skill sets doesn't mean that they can't be happening in parallel they can't be coordinated but it's probably not the same firm doing that and I would probably recommend that however we do it that the starting point is to would be to do a review of all the work that we've done to date and help to see what do we know so far from the 2002 open space study to the 2004 wildlife corridor studies to the 2014 open space report doesn't mean that we have all the information yet but let's make use of everything that we got to begin with and then see what the holes are. Michael. Lady I can answer this question in a very simple way Please identify yourself. Michael Mitterick, South Burlington such a study if you really just distill it down to its very basics might tell us in the end give us a comparison of the net return to the city of an acre of undeveloped land compared to the net return to the city of an acre of developed land because I think that's one of the things that we will end up finding in such a cost benefit study and I guess I would add to it and develop in what manner generalization in my case. I think we're if I were doing this study I would take a map and I would say what's the worst case scenario what's the current state what's the future worst case scenario and what burden does that put on the city as well as enhanced revenue whatever it is but that's where your cost benefit comes like how many four story apartment buildings can fit on these properties because it's zoned for it and it might be developed that way in the southeast quadrant how much land is left to be developed and what sort of PUDs could fit there or might fit there and how many houses would they support and then take all of that into consideration and say and then the total traffic is going to be X right the total amount of CO2 and you know whatever else is going to be Y that sort of fits into this sustainability question which is you've got a bunch of dials in the city and some we can turn easily and some we can't and some we can turn through regulation and some you can turn through the energy committee just urging people to behave differently but the point is you're trying to turn them to the right spots to match the Paris Accord right? Yes although the cost benefit one is very at least as developed in this sort of Minnicozy type presentation you had this summer was really focused on the municipality so what is our fiscal bottom line as a the city there is also the much larger question of how are we collectively as a community being as efficient as we can be pursuing sustainability but they are they're related but a little bit separate focus as if that's the what we had been beginning to look at was really the fiscal sustainability of the municipality our tracks rates our services but we can do this however you like to do it it could be one it could be more there's no magic to how we do it could we look at I know the planning commission and you shared with us I think there are six different PUD designs each one's a little bit different and understanding maybe the economic impact the differences between all six might also help with determining where in the community each of those PUDs might be an appropriate development model and we're not or maybe some of them aren't appropriate given the cost benefit isn't there it looks good sounds good but it just is going to end up costing more in services and we won't get a signal on taxes to cover that so it may not be where we want to go at this point because we're already at you know we have a baseline where we are now I would also hope that leaving the land open would be we'd see those numbers as well I would hope it wouldn't just be developed this way or developed this way or developed this way that would be as is this type of development that type of development I'd really like to see that baseline number I would agree I think we need that too because there's a real interest expressed by the public in too many ways to enumerate that open space value is a high value we're not just talking about let's develop everywhere and some places will be less infrastructure or less paved over impervious services so I would look at it as what you're suggesting on the cost benefit is more of a tangible view because it's money, it's fiscal right but then the intangible which kind of you just referred to in some respects Megan is the sociocultural sustainability of the city that makes it the vibrant appealing place to live that people love and it's hard to put a dollar figure on that and it's hard to figure out how you integrate that into the economic piece but it kind of has to be so all I suggest and I guess is that as we do any work from a cost benefit perspective fiscally or tangibly because numbers are tangible that we always have the perspective that from an intangible perspective we're trying to preserve and we must preserve the sociocultural fabric of the city that makes it the great place to live which is what seems to concern an awful lot of folks and that's not the easiest thing to put up on a screen or figure out on paper but I think we have to keep it in mind with everything we do and I think that there's relatively concrete examples of that and less so but as a simple example some of the things which make communities vibrant and interesting like festivals or the existence of say higher ground in South Burlington probably in and of themselves they're not a fiscal winner in terms of the demands on our services but as a totality what they bring to our community is a vibrant community that has people who want to live here who has strong jobs that make for strong economic activity so it's I hear what you're saying and we'll see what we can do with that the article that Roseanne sent us that had was out of the Vermont Land Trust annual report just for public land yes that's right and that had at the bottom a link or not a link but a website for the full study so I went to that and I read it today not every single word but I read a lot of it and then they had a footnote in there that I sent to all of you that came from another report so kept digging down that was done by a woman named Deb Brighton who used to she was in state government did land evaluation current use or something she was really a bright gal and she did an ROI on conservation for Vermont and there are some statistics there and then the other report the longer report really talks about the value in dollars this is across the United States in terms of having forests in place to prevent erosion so you don't have flooding wetlands that you know can help with the flooding and you know the irons and all the storms that we keep getting and it doesn't appear as if those were you know once 100 years because we've gotten three of them in about 10 so they seem to be more of a regular occurrence with global warming so I think there already are some statistics in dollar figures that you could look at that help put in a perspective of what open space or forests or you know how you develop the natural world can pay back to a community in lack of devastation which is really costly bridges, rush, washing out those kinds of things which then come back to the taxpayers have to pay for it we've got to replace the bridges that floated away I mean you know there's some real issues about those so there are some studies and numbers that I think can help quantify that Tom? I just want to say in this cost benefit analysis I don't want to lose one of the points that I heard Tim make earlier I don't think the cost benefit analysis is going to be the same for the entire city because we're going to want to look at this almost by an undeveloped parcel by undeveloped parcel I don't know if that's possible but there's going to be some parcels where it just makes sense that there are houses there I just want to bring it back to you as I've been trying to brush up on this topic this very comprehensive and complex topic and talked with other councillors I think it's really useful for us to revisit how we've done in the past or where we are now in the prioritization of different lots of land that we'd want to conserve more than others the unclear property is furthest away from our city services it makes sense to preserve it I just think in this conversation as you look at the cost benefit I don't know where we are with that important piece of information that I want to see out of this any of these efforts what are the ones that we want to conserve more so than others On the first resolution I put together there was a study about what the natural lands value was to us I took that out on advisement because of the fact that we have a number of studies that look already at the southeast quadrant and could we make use of these studies and I think that Paul's mentioned that we could have a consultant walk our committees through the studies in order to prioritize that that's perhaps a money saver but what my understanding is is that this cost benefit analysis is separate from what Deb Brighton has done that there are two different kinds of studies am I right? I guess it depends on so there is, Deb Brighton had done years ago the analysis that you were speaking about in open space she also did a statewide one on types of development it was very generalized it was for the entire state so there may be some aspects of that that have some relationship and similarity I recall her giving a presentation and saying that really if you really want the winner type of development in rural Vermont it's a second home worth more than $500,000 but to from the government's point she said that doesn't necessarily make for great community but as a direct fiscal thing that's a good winner so there is a balancing of all that kind of thing we'll take this back and think on this a little bit typically a big focus at least of the of the urban three work has been to look at within properties that are to be developed in a manner in which they are that is fiscally presenting a good return on investment to a community is that something that you would like to have be part of this only a part but not the all yeah tying to my previous comment I would say first looking at which lands undeveloped parcels would best be conserved for those reasons and then the ones that should be, no or not should be but seem to make sense from a cost benefit perspective to develop them that's where I think I would want your question which is what would be the best optimal development to encourage or foster on that considering both the economic benefit and the social exactly hand up in the back I think it's more than social cultural let's look at a few things which I haven't heard talk about at all if anybody's traveled through Wilson and waiting for traffic to move you've got new stores coming in you've got the city center you're going to get more cars coming in you've got more buildings, more homes going in you're going to get more cars has anybody looked at a transportation site to see what increased traffic is going to mean in terms of greenhouse gas production by those cars which are just sitting there that's point number one point number two is the more building you have the greater the impact on a heat isle in effect Montreal is a heat isle there's more chance to absorb heat energy during the day and then it's released at night the more you pave streets that's more asphalt asphalt is a great retainer of heat during the day and it releases it at night it's what cooks cities like Montreal then you deal with concrete to build the houses 5% of all greenhouse gas 5% of all greenhouse gases involve the production of concrete it's a major cause of greenhouse gas production so the more building you do the more that's going to require more cooling more cars you're going to get more greenhouse gases so if you're really concerned about climate you need to look at all the variables in the equation not just to cost benefit analysis of land development you need to think of climate you need to think of what causes increased warmth in the area and you haven't done that I haven't heard anything like that in these discussions you need to think in a holistic way you need to look at all the variables which impact climate change there's more cars more buildings more asphalt, more heat retention all of this is going to change the climate in this area what's going to happen is as often as the case, 10 years from now people are going to say, how did it ever happen why didn't we think about what was going to be the impact that's what's going to happen here I see it with the traffic on Wilson Road at a standstill I never used to see it when I first moved here in the 80s now it's a common theme you've got more cars, more buildings, more people I just want to say one thing to Dr. Silverstein I don't disagree with anything you just said climate change is a very pressing problem for the human species I'm just concerned that South Burlington is not an island we have to look at it from a regional perspective and I think the CCRPC does take a lot of this up I've read the reports the ECOS report there's a larger number of factors to consider that go beyond South Burlington's border is my only point and Paul will sum up your December 17th report answer his questions partly well I don't know that they're going to answer it though certainly I guess what I'd like to do is I'd like to take this feedback and see what's the best way to to develop the right studies at the right times for you so I may shuffle some of this around a little bit I don't want to sort of artificially say we're going to do the cost-benefit analysis this day and a climate plan on X-Day if really the council is interested in seeing something that's a little more conjoined then we'll reassess and do within the same overall time period but it may not be one and then another one six weeks later will you look at the production of CO2 here in South Burlington will you consider the things I think that that's a significant goal in here and I would with the council's okay would echo some of what the council shouldn't do from a climate perspective we do need to be looking at the partnerships in how we address it because transportation isn't especially just a South Burlington issue oh it's also the heating and air conditioning in South Star homes is that something that the sustainability the Paris Accord the Paris Accord asks for it across the board the interest the energy committee I'll be communicating with them about the expressed interest in the city working to be a leader in its own efforts first and to be focusing on transportation which is the really big nut in Vermont and South Burlington doesn't mean that they aren't making efforts on all the other fronts but yeah standing question then perhaps okay oh so why don't we have you I didn't hear you earlier about new development regulations for energy efficiency and water quality and conservation so you you're talking about what type of development would work best but within each of those development plans there's opportunities to have it be less impactful and there's any of the municipal buildings including your best interest to have the energy system a good model so I just wanted to put it out there that that's something that the community is interested in and we want to see regulations when you're done I don't know if we're at net zero yet but that's the goal and if you've read the UN climate report we had that passed because of our year two we have some big changes one good point in that area is that a year and a half ago the city did adopt a requirement that all new development meet the stretch energy code which is the there's the standard energy code in the state and the stretch and as far as I know we're the first community in the state to have required that across the board it doesn't mean that there's not still room for improvement stretch is pretty far from net zero though it is but I don't want to negate what we did that was as far as we could go but or felt that was as far as we could go but I would agree with you that certainly when we had the architects design what we hope will be the the new community building with the library city hall senior center that's between a gold and a platinum so it's not net zero it's not the highest but it's it's pretty good it's a good example it's set certainly a tone I think for the community we just took a tour through the Allard square building and I don't know what level of efficiency that is but they certainly feel that they tried to make it as energy efficient design as they possibly could so I think that's a I asked about the art nice and the walls and what did you hear I think he said art 23 walls with rock wall and exterior walls and I can't remember what he said to the ceiling I don't remember I hope Paul doesn't have all the time in the world but I think to get at her question we've been doing over time because those stretch regulations only apply to new developments so it's not like retroactively going to apply to existing stock but our new buildings are meeting much better energy efficiency standards but communicating that to the public with all your free time and I think the energy committee is reaching out and they do a lot but it is the existing stock that's so hard to change but I also just want to add that even though we don't have the regulations in place it's something for us to keep in mind in terms of the cost benefit overall not just the analysis any other oh Michael you had it's too complicated okay are there any other comments people would like to make well he's not going to do this whole thing alone I don't need to say who I am again the elephant that's tiptoeing around here is growth there's not a single economic model that I can find where where you can align prosperity or well-being with growth and sustainability of the type that we're talking about are not compatible it's not going to worry me because of my age but it's going to worry a lot of other people growth GDP growth or whatever you want to measure if we continue with growth being the objective of our businesses and the way we run the country the planet is dead there's not something Paul can handle just reinventing the world economy but it's something we ought all ought to think about because growth is going to kill us it's just I haven't got the answer and there isn't a single economist that I've read that has the answer but we'd better find that's a great point but there are two aspects there's absolute growth and then there's regrowth and so for those buildings that have been knocked down in the last year and a half and have been rebuilt they were all housing and now they're a combination of housing something else they do adopt to the activity stretch energy efficiency codes so that's an important distinction to make the question is for the absolute growth part for those lands which were green that get turned into something then what is the cost-benefit analysis for the development of that land so you preserve some open and then make the rest of it in such a way that it has the best cost-benefit analysis cost-benefit period versus a lawsuit versus what other outcomes there could be I mean there are other options as well I mean Councilor Chitner has raised the idea of us having a bond vote on buying out the TDRs that should be discussed I think depending on the numbers that come back a bond vote to consider buying up open space and there we would see the social cultural value that this community would place on maintaining that space as open space with a record a couple that would not spending five million dollars on the city hall and spending it on that instead just because which wouldn't grow we wouldn't be able to build a library because you need the land swap in detail Monica, our NPR NPR thing yeah tying up to what Tim was saying as well there are some very interesting studies that look at tree canopy which is obviously very important when it's impact on CO2 with solar it's very interesting and so if there are situations where canopy is affected it's really amazing where more higher than integrated the outcome would be incredible and I think it would be really good to find a way to put that into a future cost analysis unless you're cutting down trees to be more solar than that it's well I'm just saying there are studies that can destroy the tree canopy to put in a solar farm on the ground exactly that on something that Tim said he has a point there's a lot of a lot being written and a lot can be done repurposing repurposing old buildings repurposing cars repurposing appliances all kinds of things that would mitigate but not solve the problem they would slow down the climate change because they don't generate new emissions it's an interesting point to make and it's being well written about there's the rub though if we solve it then more people will want to move here and hence hence zoning will never be static through Portland Oregon I just wanted to understand if we're talking about growth are we talking about population growth because there has been a fairly strong trend in the city of smaller household sizes and if that continues and we don't want our population to decrease we will need more housing units to maintain the same population and I also I guess I'm not clear on the cost and benefits of not allowing our population to increase I just must, I don't think we can control a lot of things we can't control growth with the TDRs in the city of South Burlington one big concern I have is if we try to squeeze it out of South Burlington it's just going to go to Milton and St. Alden's and elsewhere so I have to just recognize the limitations of our municipal authority and similarly the population I don't think we can legislate the population rates and whether that's it so as we well you sort of do, yeah limit development he has the dials and we vote on the dials and so does the city essentially right but the dials are trim tabs right and you don't get to actually say what happens you create the framework and then whatever gets built is within that framework and I think beyond that some of the effects whether it's vehicle trips or it's open land outside of the community or it's air pollution we're a piece of the possible if there's a big neighborhood that's built in Shelburne or Williston or Hinesburg and they choose to come through our community that's not something that we have direct to grow so Stan Still on Williston Road is mostly through traffic from Burlington out outside core from Williston through and toll booths toll booths right Sandy did you no you I'm still not clear on I know you can't control it but how you regulate development has an impact on within the city did you have another point and then over here I was just wondering what TDR stands for can you explain that transfer development rights it's a tool that allows someone who has undeveloped land that they own in the southeast quadrant anyway I think it's limited in the southeast quadrant to sell that density to some place else that property stays open and then some other place can have a higher density some more units per acre yes it is sort of like a cap and trade so I like that we should start using it yes I'm sorry Duncan Murdoch so we've lost a lot of trees over the years and I'm wondering if there's any initiative or any policy that tries to replace those trees so for example and who is accountable who can be held accountable for removing trees which are vital to to our our health so say a development cuts down three acres of forest will they be could they be responsible for doing the community planting or planting another forest I don't think we have that as a regulation now we do have regulations in terms of developments developers to replace a certain amount of the trees but you don't go from a forest to a housing development that looks like a forest it's I don't know what percentage of trees would get replaced but that is a requirement that's in the LDRs I mean but you know it's interesting when you think about there's a lot of developments we have well sometimes businesses have to do something nice for the community build a park or whatever in order to develop their building I hadn't thought about asking a developer to say if you're going to cut down a forest you need to buy some land somewhere and start a tree farm I don't know if anyone does that it's sort of an interesting concept because trees are really important for survival they're not just there because they're good looking and offer shade that is part of the storm evaluation of land to potentially be conserved the questions might be could that potentially conserve land become more valuable by reforesting some of it and then there's stewardship too you know they need the land that we have these open spaces need to be stewarded overrun by invasive species that compromises the health of the forest who we need men power we need people to take some accountability and take care of the forest that we already have and also create new forests I think if you went back 50 years you know for South Burlington and looked at all of the large PUD suburban single family home developments Oak Creek, Butler Farms all of those were mostly built on farm land meadow and now they have a lot of trees so it is possible that in the last 50 years we actually have more trees now if you count the street trees and all those developments than we had before because 100 years ago the state was 25% forested and now it's roughly about 65 or 70% although there's a report that it's becoming more fragmented by subdivision not sure about the canopy itself but you raise a really good point and I know for my time on the DRB we saw a lot of applications where somebody was going to cut down trees and I'm pretty sure that the resolution of those applications was that they had to replant so the problem you end up with is you just have to wait 25 years for the same canopy height ideally you don't want to cut down the first place but we've got them in the harm we've already done we did do a lot of development in pastures but I think recently we've cut into the woods any other comments on this part are people happy with council members with the timeline that Paul has laid out I'd say he's going to adjust it a little bit adjust the priorities Steve where we go Alrighty So the next item that I've got for you is an update on some of the questions that you had from the last meeting and then sort of perhaps integrating a little bit with some of what the Planning Commission's recommendations were for you You may remember this map on the left here this was the analysis of areas that are currently developed in the southeastern portion of the city areas that are approved or vested for development and areas that are open space through one tool and other whether it's through our zoning or through conservation and then what areas remaining that are developable you asked me to give you a number on the number of dwelling units so the little pie chart on the right is new from our analysis of the zoning district only we have approximately 1,970 dwelling units today we have approximately 600 approved or that have vested rights for being reviewed and approved which leaves per the zoning as a mathematical calculation about 1,300 dwelling units keep in mind that this is a mathematical calculation that does not necessarily reflect any of the conditions on the ground and so one of those yellows could have a large wetland in it it may not be able to be built out at full it may not ultimately whether this is how it all builds out or not we don't know this is just a straight math of the zoning says 1.2 dwelling units an acre we have 3200 acres in the southeast quadrant 32 times 1.2 is 38 and that's what we are so that's the maximum build out with one final caveat which is that this does not include affordable dwelling units which under our bonus structure don't require TDRs to be built we've only seen we haven't seen any built yet the south village has about 30 in it so it's possible that there's a handful more than that so that's that one I wanted to also show you this this is our southeast quadrant zoning on the right is the number of acres in our different districts and I think I should have made that one that's on the green a black color instead of a white but the green on the left of our 3200 ish acres of southeast quadrant about 1600 of it is the natural resource protection district the next largest one is our neighborhood residential where a lot of our existing neighborhoods are and some of the neighborhoods that are currently under construction at about 1300 and then we have about 100 acres in what we call the neighborhood residential transition district which could either be conservation or neighborhoods about 150 acres of excuse me 180 acres of the higher density village residential and then about 20 acres of what could be the village commercial which is either residential or commercial so just want to give you that as a framework for what exists in southeast quadrant for zoning all those numbers would add up to the total of the numbers acreage this is not units this is just acres yep yep yep correct it's about half yeah very limited development so if you have up to 15 acres you can have on a parcel that existed in 1992 in its current form you can have one house if you have more than 15 acres you can have three homes but if the property was subdivided in any way after 1992 there's none and if the parcel was split between the natural resource protection district and the neighborhood district the homes have to go in the neighborhood district part of it so it's not zero but it's a pretty low number those same parcels are holdings in TDRs yes those are the spending areas in the TDR program and so none of that green is in the middle of the development not there are some so a portion of side of mill right there summerfield drive is the neighborhood that's just been built is in the middle of the green the neighborhood was approved prior to this zoning and being in place so some of this is dealing with what exists or existed at the time the developer of that project did work with the city to try to widen out the distance between to create a little bit of a green green corridor in between but for the most part development is outside of the green areas Tom? Maybe you're going to answer this on the next slide but on the previous slide have you tallied up the total acreage of the underdeveloped lands on the previous slide? The total acreage So the total of the development potential acreage you have that? I don't believe I gave you that I don't believe I tallied that up but I can do it pretty quickly in a break in this meeting That would be useful for me to take the 1293 and divide it by those to understand in a worst case scenario what type of density we could possibly see on the remaining development potential in the southeast part I don't know if that's a worst case Well with TDRs Right Assuming all 1293 are sitting or TDRs Which would increase that number? Those numbers are fixed numbers Well that's the TDRs So this is an important number that represents the potential of the TDRs floating out there of houses that could go in the southeast quadrant still Whether by TDRs or not Yes How many acres are here is if we squeeze all 1293 on there what type of density is there a potential to be on the undeveloped land? When the TDR program was first put into place the idea was to generally try to balance that out so that the number available had places to go We've seen thus far most of the neighborhoods that have been built have been building under their maximum So we are probably approaching a point where there's more mathematical potential than there is land available But I don't know the word there yet but we'll see what we can get for you Am I wrong in thinking that's an important number to get at because when we start thinking about the cost benefit analysis of our city infrastructures or sewer capacity we are interested in knowing what the potential build out is of the southeast quadrant under the current zoning rules So that's why it's useful to know that 1293 is really actually like 800 because of that point But am I off base here? No, I think it's not I'm looking at Tim But also in consideration of any proposed PUD regulations that are in the pipeline because that could be a limitation as well What this doesn't have in it I was focused in the yellow areas here in sort of larger chunks of land If somebody had three quarters of an acre of land and they've got a house on it they could conceivably through the TDR program put two infill homes on that I didn't go down to that level for the purpose of this So this won't be looking at the yellow wouldn't be the absolute maximum but it represents a pretty close approximation of there's always going to be handful of properties that are a little bit large in the minimum zoning That didn't appear to be the council's primary focus here So I didn't go down to that Is that what happened in Burlington? So Burlington did those lots and sooner or later they just tried to put more more houses in the back corners We're not thinking about that yet We're not at that density Well I guess Burlington and some of the older communities have seen a lot of iterations of that So you could see 100 years ago scoring homes that existed moved into three or four apartments and then maybe there was a back lot going on We're seeing a lot of that in places like Seattle and Vancouver and Portland where a second house is being put in a little accessory house is becoming very popular to put in the back corner of a property as a way to We have the We're seeing a little bit of it here We're seeing a lot of it out west What's the striped area? The striped area is an area that is the area that Councillor Barrett was mentioning that the city had just participated in the in the purchase of And so I guess I could have updated the lower half of that since the last meeting to say that the closing did take place So we have we have an option to conserve at least 40 acres of that with the goal of conserving the whole thing That option is now fully executed or fully available Because there's a small chance it could still be developed if the city didn't exercise the option and the money didn't come through 40 acres is now guaranteed assuming that the city chooses to execute the option that it's already paid for which seems that that's likely to be the case Can I make a suggestion? The colors between open space and developed are so similar in hue or value that you can't really distinguish where the delineations are So it's very blurred and those two are very you know different than each other So visually maybe making it an adjustment it would help I think it would help really see the difference between those two Okay, thank you So the next set here and I'm going to have Chair of the Planning Commission join me in a moment to talk about what the commission's feedback was I just want to start it out by saying that at the last meeting Councillor Emery had had asked about or had shown a resolution that might look at what are parcels of more than four acres that have working lands and or natural areas within them So I'm going to show you a sequence of maps of how we started to filter through this and some ideas of how we could assess this This very first one is just parcels of more than four acres It does not necessarily say that those four acres are undeveloped One of those is the airport This is just a beginning of a series of maps so don't pay too much attention but we're going to have some questions for you briefly in a few minutes about if you were to be wanting to assess what's open and what's not open how you would want to measure that because for instance the Hill Farm property is a 115 acre parcel it does have a single family home on it presumably the the the average person would say that that's generally an undeveloped parcel but it's not technically entirely undeveloped so we're going to talk about some ways in which we can help you to determine how you want to find the line between open space and development so that's the first filter but does it make sense perhaps to have Jessica talk a little bit about absolutely and so on this map the red is the little four acre parcel so everything in red there which is the bulk of the city is more than four acre parcels it's about I can't remember it's a few hundred of the 8,000 parcels but they take up the bulk of the land again at this level this is making no assessment about what's on there so the U-Mall is on this is in that and Kmart Plaza and the airport this is just the first of several maps which we'll talk about in just a moment well they're merged so do you have other questions you're going to answer I think that pretty much the questions that I was asked to look at are what's the development potential in the southeast quadrant and then things around the map that's four acres and undeveloped I think that this probably moves into the next segment of the conversation I can give you if you'd like maybe one more slide to wrap this one up that might be useful so this map we were sort of bouncing around trying to figure out what's one way to evaluate what it means to be a quote-unquote undeveloped parcel so what I did with this map was take all the parcels of more than four acres in size and then say what if we said that it's considered largely undeveloped if it's 90% not pervious 90% pervious excuse me so up to 10% could be homes or driveways or streets or parking areas things like that that's one of the 50 different ways we could do it we could do it by a number of housing units there's no magic to 10% other than to say that 10% of a four acre parcel would be a generous home with all of its driveways and all that kind of thing right so it could be we could do 5% also we just picked a number because we had to start somewhere but this represents all of the land in south Burlington that is over four acres in size in which according to our stormwater analysis has less than 10% lot coverage and then we'll talk about some more filters in a minute but this one says nothing about who owns it you'll see red rocks park is in there that's essentially conserved there are other pieces that are not conserved but we'll talk about that in a few minutes so different from the transit overlay district that the planning commission that's one of my maps in a moment so maybe that's a good segue to number 10 so shall we move on to item 10 which is a review and discussion of the planning commission recommendation on development and interim zoning so Jessica so at our last scheduled planning commission meeting last Tuesday we had a follow-up conversation on the series of different items that you had at your October 1st meeting so not just focused on the part that we were here for in our official capacity the citizens presentation and Councillor Emery's interim bylaw discussion so at that meeting we didn't have any kind of back and forth so at our meeting we did have a discussion where each of us kind of followed up with our own thoughts had a kind of bigger conversation and came up with kind of through the process of discussion basically what's up on the screen here so the bold is the one that we've made so in general we were kind of agreeing with Councillor Emery's idea of an interim zoning bylaw but we had a few different things that we thought were pretty important one was that it would not include development that might happen in the transit overlay district so that's our main corridors main development corridors and travel corridors where we've talked a lot about how it's areas where we'd really like to focus development that includes city center so it did have kind of a stop in those areas we also felt like there's a distinction between maybe an area that's being redeveloped versus an area that is open so I mean we have said undeveloped open space and forest blocks and like Paul said that's kind of a little ambiguous how you define that but you know the idea was that like a spot like Kmart which may be redeveloped that makes sense to do that I know that's also in our transit overlay district but that's an example of a redevelopment there was a lot of discussion about the time as well and we've put six months there which I know is extremely ambitious but I think that that's a real symbol of wanting to have a focused effort so that the people who are landowners aren't in limbo for too long of a time and really being responsive to those landowners that might be really worried about what's going on. If we found money in the budget to cater some of your meetings you might have a few extra meetings to accelerate the attention they are going to have more meetings we have actually talked about having additional meetings and we've done that in the past we welcome additional budget for food I think I can say that for myself maybe not the planning question but we have so during the real push for city center and during some of the last days of work we did do some bigger working sessions and I know we've already talked about maybe doing the 5th Tuesdays in addition I mean we have talked about it we understand that this is hopefully going to be a concise period with a big push and I think with that there would also need to be some resources so we have a list of studies that we all kind of agreed with there one of the big things that we have been working on for a while is a revision to the PUD standards and this is underway I mean we talked about this a little bit at the last meeting where we think we are about 80 person can you tell the public what a PUD is so a PUD is a planned unit development and the idea is that to give a framework for kind of smarter development so this would be if a parcel is developed to give stronger guidelines on what's expected more information on exactly what types of open space we need and that open space wouldn't just be the undevelopable land but it would be portions of lands that otherwise would be developable on the property and breakdowns of like what types of housing or other buildings would be acceptable so it's kind of a more defined look at what development would look like and there's multiple different types that would maybe be focused in different areas of the city so that is a big priority for us we hope that that continues to be a priority with your direction as well next on the list is to prioritize developable lands for conservation and we definitely understand that this is not something that would be done just by us at the planning commission but we'd really need to have kind of the buy-in and help from a lot of different city committees as well as yourselves on kind of what that looks like and how that prioritization works and I knew you were already just talking about that so and not just to prioritize but to really figure out what the next step in tools are and they we left that a little open because we understand that the land development regulations are not the only tools here and I know you would already actually been talking about some of those earlier like outright buying land you know and things that aren't necessarily in our purview so I think that that's why we left that as potential tools and then the next piece is an analysis of the city's transfer of development rights program and to really delve back into exactly what it does how it works and what are options you know now that it's been in place for many years it makes sense to maybe take a look back none of us on the commission were on the commission when it was originally conceived and I think even some of us could really use a good as I think all of us in the community could take could use some more information exactly is it working and what's it supposed to be doing in those things so sorry if you're about to answer this but one question I have is similar to the commission McDonald's statement did the do you have an argument as to why you need interim zoning to do these three things I think we had varying views on why I think I don't know that we would have necessarily come up with that ourselves until we were asked to look into it but it's not the first time that we've done this when we're close to a big change so like with our PUD project we're getting relatively close to having it done and that is kind of a good reason to maybe stop pause developments that we would like to use that new code those new land development regulations until it's done I think at least I can speak for myself that that was I think kind of a driving piece since there was already a conversation about interim zoning it feels like this is something that's going to really shape potential developments in a way that we've been talking about for a long time seems like it would be kind of a shame to have something else built in the next short amount of time that doesn't take into consideration our kind of newer newer look on it Will this do that would interim zoning force that new PUD on current projects would you expect over the next six months not on projects that have been submitted but that would be that is a use of interim zoning the city has done in the past back in 2005-06 when the current TDR program was put in place that's what the council did back in the late 80's when the scenic view protection district went in after one house was built sort of in an area that the city had been looking at views that the city did a pause on that very specific thing to put the rules in place so that development not occurred in the sort of six months to a year prior to the new rules being adopted and then your final piece not tied oh and also so a study on the economics of development and that's something I know you were talking about in your last agenda item but I think a few of us felt like that might be such a big undertaking that it would take possibly an undisclosed amount of time and we're hesitant to put that under interim zoning which we really wanted to be kind of a shorter term effort but we're in support of doing that and we think it's really important so so if you'd like we took the leap of some the map that I just showed you of going a couple steps further with it so again there's no magic to the four acres that's just what Councillor Emery gave us as a starting point and there's no magic whatsoever to the 10% impervious at this time other than it seemed like a reasonable number so this is a map showing what the transit overlay district is so it's everything inside that burnt red bubble so if those areas were excluded anything along the Shelburne Road corridor anything along Williston Road Kennedy Drive Northern Dorset Street and most of the sort of Tech Park area would not be included so from that map to this map there's a few properties that are removed and then this map shows tries to take a leap and says using the map that you saw from the last meeting the properties in the southeast quadrant and the southeastern part of the city that are either developed already or are in the natural resource protection district or have been conserved or are parks or which is association land what are we talking about in terms of land here that is less more than four acres in size less than 10% of what we cover outside of the transit overlay district and which excludes those essentially conserved or already built properties and that's what we're left with I this is a rough map it uses our 2010 impervious surface cover we have a more recent one but in the timeline we weren't able to put it into the data so I wouldn't say that this is 100% accurate it's a good first brush at what this represents you may ask why do you count these but not those for us as applicable those two that you pointed to are owned by the University of Vermont they are zoned institutional agricultural so while they could not be regular housing today they could be dorms so it could be built as campus housing whereas the other part is the natural resource protection district is that true of the hort farm as well yep that's correct, yeah, that's the hort farm yes for the most part there are some on the northern one there's two or three other parcels in there that are not UVM owned but yes this includes wetlands right this does not filter for anything anything like wetlands, correct so it includes wetlands I did take out a couple of the large floodplain areas like the belter farm at the very northern end is largely in the floodplain I'm not sure I captured every piece of floodplain but I got the big big ones so where is the belter farm that's that whole tongue the whole little tongue thing you see two little sets of streets there the one on the left is the Ethan Allen industrial park and the one on the right is country club estates the belter farm is essentially everything that's not those two the term zoning goes in with the wording as described all of these blue spots if they wanted to do anything they would have to go through the normal process and also come through the council for the next six months yes with the asterisks that it depends what you mean by anything I mean if anything's a lot of things you might say that replacing the fence doesn't count but in terms of significant development yes there are some examples where a condominium association as part of as their common land has used all the density in one part of a property and then the rest of it is essentially permanently open so off Van Siklin road there's an example of that there's a little bit of that with the veiledrive area and and dorset farms would be a few examples of that is it fair to say each of the blocks have a single owner no but a bunch of them do like UVM a bunch of them do the ferrule property does hill farm the hill farm yes although there's one property attached to that it's not owned by a hill I would say it's mostly a handful the way that we made the data made that a little bit tricky to show that again but I'm sure I could figure out a way to show that too what comments would you say to property owners of these blue parcels with the implications of interim zoning what would you offer those property owners seeing their little piece of land in this blue mark if this interim zoning were to go into effect and is it only southeast quarter no so all we did here was take the very first brush of what councillor emory had said which was in that the first memo did not specify the southeast quadrant and then we added with the planning commission's recommendation which was to exclude the transit overlay to answer your question councillor chitin I guess that to to a certain extent that will depend on what you all choose to have be the studies that you are undertaking with this in terms of what is your intent the commission for example suggested that there be completing of the PUD study and looking at prioritizing open spaces I might say to these folks that based on that that some areas of the city would likely see what the drafts have been in the planning development study and some other areas may be targeted for conservation in one tool another or another whether acquisition by the city or additional zoning restrictions long term in the short term there would have this additional layer of review but I think that that's only based on what we've got to date if the commission if the council were to say a different series of goals for the study or the outcomes then it might be a different set of answers all bridge all brick excuse me all this relates to my data request I'll bring up with my testimony do you have a overlay that shows existing parcels with the conservation fund we did receive from Mr. Albrecht a request a couple weeks ago for a listing of all the properties that have been acquired using the fund we have most of it in a in an Excel format we've not yet made the maps for it but I can point to them on the map if anybody would like there's about six of them so there's only six let me just pull up let me use so the properties that the city has invested in to date using the open space fund right here is the scott property it's a 40 acre parcel of land that the city acquired first through a permanent conservation restriction and then fee simple in 2007 in 2009 the city participated with the Vermont Land Trust in the permanent conservation but not fee simple ownership of two parcels here totaling about 60 acres the former of the Duke property and that was in concert with Shelburne in another 40 or 60 acres on the Shelburne side in 2011 the city acquired a permanent permanent public easement across 22 acres of the Goodrich property right over here which adjoins the piece of land that the airport had bought of about 40 acres and then donated to the Wuruski Valley Parks District so between the two there are about 65 acres right along here in 2012 the city acquired this piece here except for the little corner there that's the Underwood property that's about 60 acres of land and most recently last week the city participated in a joint effort related to the Eau Claire property the Eau Claire acquisition the city's participation is about 35% of the value of the Northwestern property to be tune of about $600,000 the overall acquisition which will remain in progress for the next couple of years with the goal of essentially complete conservation is for 375 acres in this area so that's the fund that I'm going to use today also true that most of the land around Shelburne is either conserved or is going to be conserved the vast majority of it is and there's ongoing efforts for the remaining part that's good for the perspective of not just our city but the town immediately to our south and all of its natural land and how much it's contiguous with our protected space well in the watershed UVM owns some of that land around Shelburne UVM owns Nature Conservancy Land Trust are you this is a bit of a rough mark up but this is the map that Councillor Barrett is speaking about here so everything in the cross hatched here is conserved these are the Eau Claire pieces here and then this is all conservation here and in Williston and Shelburne so it's part of the and with more efforts ongoing I guess in response to one comment asking about if it's just in the southeast quadrant I think we specifically said the transit overlay district because it does include areas in other parts of the city which we think are important anytime we're really talking about conserving open space or parks master plan I think it is really important to look more broadly in the city to make sure we have those resources so like the more densely populated areas so I think that's a specific point we really should include the belcher farm I mean it's a farm now but we don't own it Mr. Belcher could decide to stop farming and then what happens to it I think in particular the UVM land also is important to us and to have that conversation with them about what their long-term plans are is important to any hope you know all sorts of natural resources issues for the entire county as well as just the natural state for Vermont I mean just because it's conserved now and it's a hort farm doesn't mean it's always going to be a hort farm I mean they could develop crap out of that and I don't know how many houses they could put there potentially they could sell it they could build today university related development they could sell the land but the zoning today would be university related it doesn't necessarily mean the University of Vermont but university related yes I saw the planning commission resolution and I'm looking at what's in our packet that's before us tonight on this item we're going to see six months mentioned so what thoughts do you have for the council in my mistaken or in not having that six month time limitation I mean we definitely had members who were very strongly like they weren't going to vote on it unless there was the six months and that wasn't everybody but it was a mix so I mean it was in there for that short amount of time at the strong urging of at least some of our members and it was six months as opposed to longer than six months yes there was a discussion about two years in the draft version from your last meeting and the reality is Tom the council could vote for a two year interim zone after six months if in fact to be adopted so that it has is in effect can we do it can we resend it at any time yes you can the last council resended it after a year we can also extend you can extend it up to one more year yeah correct so is that right years and then to another year you are allowed to do two years and then vote to extend isn't that right Andrew for one more regardless you don't have to set a time frame in this you have two years under the under the statute there is nothing in the statute that says yes what the time length is council has the ability on a public hearing to rescind it at any point during the time when the interim by-lives in effect so I guess just to follow the point of the six months in the discussion we have was to really like make sure we weren't saying oh two years we have forever and just you know it was to put some urgency on it so that we weren't just kind of dragging on and leaving people hanging on you know the people's land is important to them as well as everyone else so I think just to try to be focused okay leave a comment from the public yeah my name is Denise Olsky and I just wanted to tell you about my observation of that meeting there was one commissioner who pretty much bullied the other commissioners now they may disagree with me but he sort of said he wouldn't vote for it if it was any you know a day more than six months and so the other and also I understand that he really works for a construction company so maybe his motivation was different from the other commissioners so that was my observation so I don't think his motivation to limit it to six months was what the citizens really want and maybe what his company he was pretty obvious about that what I know is what we voted on not everyone spoke individually about the time length okay thank you is this a good time just to take a quick break so do you have more comments that's the end of what I had to say so is this a good time to break for a few minutes and then we can move on to the resolution you post those on the website we can put it right alongside the prior presentation can I make one quick comment one quick comment the advantage of growing slow is that you get to see what the impact is of that amount of development as opposed to this wall of water happening a few years down the road you realize that things happen too quickly too much and you cannot go back in time now it's already happened wait until after Christmas let's see what happens with university mall target massive traffic jams for a period of time the greater the impact is going to be if you slow down a little bit you get to see every six months what's happening going too fast you leave yourself open for being disappointed with the result I don't disagree alright so why don't we take a break thank you let's really keep it for five minutes so we don't have another thank you City Council meeting of Monday October 15th 2018 and we will move on to item 11 which is a discussion and possible action on a resolution to request a public hearing on draft interim bylaws and I'll turn it over to Councillor Emery because she wrote this council resolution she can present it we can have a brief conversation as a council and then I would like to get comments from the public understanding that it's not a public hearing so you know brief ones because you'll have an opportunity potentially for the benefit of those who weren't here last time I just wanted to say that the impetus behind me writing this came from a long time concern of mine over the past few years I've heard staff of the city state that given the rate of development at some point development and the services required to serve that new development was going to reach a tipping point which meant that our city services would be stretched so thin that we would need an acute increase in funds in order to buy both equipment but also pay new staff members to service either our roads, our sewers our emergency services and I know just from speaking with residents that there is a real interest in not only maintaining open spaces but being good stewards of the planet and I think that the two combined really you know when we were having many many conversations in the city not only before this board but before the DRB the planning commission and individual committee members from residents very concerned about the what are what was potentially going to be being built in the southeast quadrant that this presented a moment for me forward and present the arguments for us to think carefully I have no interest in the transit overlay district just so everybody knows so I am not preserving anything to my benefit I see this as something that the community has been calling for and that our staff have been calling for some kind of focus on determining priorities and so I think that when I read the motion that was passed by the planning commission and seeing that transit overlay district as a priority for that if we were going to develop that that is the most logical place for that development to happen that was something that I had been looking for and I didn't have that expertise in order to say what to exempt from the four plus acres throughout the city and so I was very thankful and I found that map to look at it online but also the prioritization of the conservation of the parcels that we need to conserve I was glad to see that coming from our planning commission and I was also glad to see that there is a real concern to solve both the TDR issue which I think we have to study whether or not we do interim zoning I think we have to study for various reasons and I think it goes along with the PUDs if we are going to be putting in place new regulations for how our undeveloped lands can be developed I think that we need to know what the impact will be on the TDRs and vice versa so I think that what the planning commission brought forward I see as a source of hope that they are on board for what is in their immediate work plan I would like us as the economic oversight body to really look at the fiscal implications and I believe that our committees are also well placed to look at the environmental implications as well as the economic implications so that is why when I saw the prioritization being worked on with committees I think that our committees do tackle various facets of this nut that we are trying to crack our economic development is a key piece so we have our economic development committee that is going to be meeting the first time next week we also have affordable housing we have identified that as a community as a really big priority for us when we look at what the cost of land is however affordable housing seems to be only a wish list item I am not clear that we have yet the tools in place in order to meet those affordable housing goals that we have set as a community but we also have recreation and parks needing to have more space because they need to have fields that can lay at rest from time to time and we also have our natural resources which is also I think of key value here in the questions that we are facing bike and ped should also play a role in terms of what makes sense where development should be and what kind of development it should be and what the regulations should be so those are the committees that I identified and I did not put a time limit on it and I am glad to have the attorneys say that is not our role to put a time limit on it within the motion itself or the hearing itself but I am very open to looking at what are the points we should really see as six months going to be when the planning commission comes through with the PUDs and the study on the TDRs and I know that the cost benefit analysis and the committee work will probably take a little bit more time I think six months is probably a little ambitious for the committee work and definitely ambitious for the cost benefit analysis and for this body that oversees the economic facet I think that we need to have that done I've heard that call from our staff now for over three years and I think that we need to see where these PUDs should go in I think we need to have that analysis I think it fits in nicely with what the planning commission has put forward as a proposal so I bring this to you I did take out the study on what are natural lands the value of our natural lands and what they bring to us there have been studies that show that conserved lands every dollar we put into it the community gets nine dollars out of it that is a statewide study I certainly do not take that as a measurement for our city itself but I do hear the statement that we have had many studies performed about our natural areas and so how can we really now use those studies and do our own analysis using our committees using a consultant as Paul suggested and trying to do something that is of equivalent value but for much less money so that is what I propose before you discussion comments I appreciate your resolution I would like to tweak it a little bit here and there I do not want to tweak it tonight I do not think because I really want to go through it with a fine tooth comb but it hits all the major points that you see from the map that Paul showed which is not there anymore I made you look great there really is not a lot of land in that greater than four acre parcel criteria that Paul had in the southeast quadrant but there is elsewhere in the city outside the traffic over the district so just focusing on the southeast quadrant by itself the two things that really bother me about possible development that could happen are developments that are the sub act 259 home standard that has happened three times at least that I know of near where I live and that is one of the types of things that bothers me that little infill that is not related to anything else it does not fall under any PUD rules and it is sort of like a little waste piece of land that somebody buys up and develops and to me that does not land itself to really good term land use planning so that is a strike against doing that anymore in the southeast quadrant right the next thing is for the larger parcels and you can see there are a few excluding no one farm road because that is already spoken for right but all those remaining parcels that are large we got to get right and we are not going to get right until the planning commission gets the PUD model finished because I do not want to even let those things get right until they are near being started until they know exactly what the best arrangement is for open space and density within those parcels so just on those two things alone I am ready to vote on this and we do not have to do it tonight but we can talk about what is the next step but I think that those two things with a laser focus plus then you know outside the south quadrant there are other valuable areas that need to be looked at understanding that in the long term as we go through this process there will be compromise and there will be unhappiness on both sides that is an important thing that you all have to realize right that there is going to be some land that gets developed regardless of whether you want to develop or not but the question is will we get to will we allow it to be developed in the way that the developer only wants to do it or in the way that we think is best for the long term growth and sustainability of the city so that is what I would like to see done and I would like to have it done at the pace that it takes to achieve it correctly I have a statement because every time there is a big topic and I spend a lot of time thinking about it I like to put my thoughts down on paper so I am going to go ahead and read this so I have the following concerns with this potential action and I did tweak this a little bit from hearing the testimony tonight right off the top I would just say that I think all three of the be it resolves which I support that is our job as a city I just see them as being accomplishable without interim zoning I wasn't convinced with the answer that interim zoning was the necessary tool to do it so I think that these can be prioritized by the council, the planning commission, our standing committees and staff with a hard deadline and also maybe some funding to cater some special meetings so that they might hold to work on this directive some other concerns I believe our planning for the last 40 years has definitely guided development towards higher density, more desirable housing with some exceptions but I don't want to list those exceptions here but I have the same concerns about the Act 259 units I think that is undesirable I'm not convinced that interim zoning is necessary to address that concern so I would say that with some exceptions while protecting many of the natural resources in the southeast quadrant I just think interim zoning is a heavy handed tool that undercuts are responsible for existing planning processes currently employed by our current staff I also want to say that this region needs more housing and I'm concerned that this action might be motivated to stop all new housing in the SEQ which I agree with councillor Barrett's comments in the end there's going to be some new housing in the southeast quadrant or at least I think there should be because there are places where it makes sense to put it there as stated in our comprehensive plan we have a commitment to be an affordable community in areas driving up prices and our landowners have rights to employ their land in line with the best uses available based on current land development regulations which I think have been thoughtfully crafted over the decades but in full disclosure my uncle Bob served on the Planning Commission and the RPC for many years so it's partly a family thing alright the jokes aren't going over well it is unclear to me oh it's your fault your family's fault I can buy that it is unclear to me what the cost of zoning would be we have to hire consultants and the last time it cost us $368,000 was a figure I've heard I don't see that in the budget and I'm just not seeing I'm not convinced interim zoning is a necessary tool to engage in these address these concerns in another way so we'd have to spend it on both hired consultants and additional staff time I just don't see a pressing need for this action especially with such a relatively short period of time as proposed by the Planning Commission and I talked to the committee that was at the Planning Commission meeting and I was told that Ted Realy, Art Clugo as well as Bernie Gagnon were all pretty adamant on the six month thing so I don't think it was just one person from what I'm hearing so I think the six months was okay but we can go on back and forth on that the current procedures and processes in place I believe are suitably designed to continue our efforts in tandem to any new development without the awkward mechanism of having the council review development projects I've spoken with informed people on how the last time we used it and I just don't see the need now nor the value of revisiting that experience I am concerned that the motivations of this resolution might negate the rights of property owners in South Burlington especially for those who own four acres or more again full disclosure I'm one of them and I'm related to a couple others three others I lost my place so I am one of those landowners and I'm related to a few others from the previous wording of this resolution as I've heard on this topic I can't support the trajectory of this resolution because it just appears to me to be somewhat insensitive of their interests but maybe that would be fleshed out I also take a couple issues with the sentences the purpose statement we could hash it out in the purpose statement more specifically I, traffic congestion this is a quote from the statement traffic congestion is not only a hassle at rush hour the energy used to power our cars and our homes also contributes to excess level of CO2 and other pollutants in our atmosphere this sentence speaks to indirect macro level societal concerns and is far detached from the practical tasks called for and the be it resolves I have the same concern with some other lofty statements in the purpose statement and I just want to state again climate change is a real and pressing threat to our species but I'm just not convinced that pushing development further from our population centers out to St. Albans or Hinesburg I think that might be counterproductive to that concern as would decreasing density in our housing stock making infrastructure including public transit more and efficient another sentence I have an issue with is a quote for the past three years these SB department managers have raised the concern that our resources are being strained to an unsustainable tipping point I've been here for the past four years past few years and I wouldn't characterize their statements that way at all in our last meeting the sewer water utilization graph directly contradicted that statement and supports my impression that we have adequately plan for the wastewater needs of our current community and future needs on the horizon I have gotten the same impression from our fire police and public services directors I think they've used tipping points as a possibility but not as something that is pressing on our concerns the last comment I will make is that interim zoning will unnecessarily consume this council's attention distracting us from other pressing matters before the city because all the possible development as Dan attested to last time would go through both the DRB and to this council I believe we as a council need to spend more time on the condition of our city roads the potholes the traffic lights the pedestrian crossings and the line striping demand our attention I believe we also need to spend time looking at the condition of our two fire stations when was the last time they were updated do they have the space they need does the school district need the city hall building more than our station one does I think we need to calibrate our focus and city council lens on our essential services and I'm concerned that interim zoning is going to consume a great deal of our time pulling us away from those important priorities I'm also concerned about I believe we need to spend time discussing recruitment strategies I was excited to hear about some new hires with the police force but we still have had open positions for far too long I think this council could talk about recruiting strategies to get more officers to serve our community understaffing our police as a strain on all of our current officers I just want to say again open space is important and I fully support reinstating full funding open space penny through budgetary mechanisms this year to rebuild that fund for future mechanisms it makes sense to have money at the ready to buy the lands that we prioritize for conservation purposes that works respects the property owners rights while also addresses our desires so I support that and I fully support as a top priority buying we'll even go beyond pizza whatever food would get people to come to the meeting I would fully support tasking our standing committees to prioritize lands for city conservation I really want to see that priority list the use of these funds respects property owners rights and is emblematic of the responsible planning SB continues to engage in I'd also and I'll close on this remark I promise I'd also support committing the five million dollars we are about to we might be spending on a new city hall to instead be used for land acquisition across all four districts of our city so we can better steer the evolving shape of our city in the decades to come but at this time I do not support interim zoning presented with this pretext for these reasons offered well I think you make some good points and I disagree with some points that in listening to Paul and Jessica and Jessica right and talking in our break the feeling is what caused the planning commission to come to us and ask for interim zoning is they have too many things on their plate and this would enable them to push some of the things off their plate and deal with some of the very things you said like prioritize what lands we might want to conserve to continue the work on PUD's etc and finalize that if we can get just a couple of those things done and let them catch their breath so they can get that done they're coming to us and asking for that if they felt they were totally under control with what's on their plate they wouldn't have come to us and ask them asked us to give them a break and I think we have a duty to do that for the well-being of the folks of the city I asked six months do and I think Paul said six months is really four months because of all the logistics for lack of a better term is that a reasonable way to put it Paul Public hearing notifications at the back end if you were looking for when new rules would be in effect it's very quickly chops off so I think six months is taking pressure off of them in one way and putting perhaps undue pressure on but I'm not willing to leave it open-ended like I think it's in the resolution which will go two years right is that what was in there you didn't put anything so I would you know I would I'm a good compromiser I compromise it like nine months and say nine months is really seven months and let's get the job done but I don't think saying you know without interim zoning we don't take anything off their plates and that's not fair because they're saying they can't they can't handle everything that's on their plate they wouldn't have come to us if that wasn't the case last time I asked Jessica last time I said council made that decision without consulting the planning commission without the input and she said I said so it's kind of like shoving it down your throats and she readily agreed that's kind of how it was and that's not the way it is this time I see this time is the government and the planning commission are on the same page and they're asking us to get on that page and give them a hand I think we have an obligation to do that so much as I don't like to stifle development I'm not sure we're stifling development with a short duration interim zoning I think we're just giving the planning commission a chance to catch up with development and then and then we move forward and I don't honestly you know see any any harm in that but I'm not I don't think going to go along with so I don't know when we propose amendments but I'm not going to go along with open ended that would allow us to go for two years because I think that then leaves the window open and the door open to okay we can push it off a week or two weeks because we've got two years I don't want to do that but I think you know I pick nine months you know if I just it sounds dumb as hell but you know when my wife was pregnant it was nine months was a long time and it was a short time it was a long time I oh my god when's this baby come so you can do things again and then on the other hand it was a short time oh my god how are we going to get ready in time so it's nine months of good compromise the birth of the city I just made that up but I'll go with so when we can put an amendment just to make a nine month nine month interim zone I want to know when the men give birth because they have they might have a different perspective I was trying to think of something that would give equal so I went with that my thoughts are you know not unlike three other counselors I am supportive of using planning to give the planning commission a break my husband serves on the planning commission and it drives them crazy when they are part way through something and then a new project comes along and they have to drop what they're doing as important as it is to take up this new item and then that takes four or five meetings so two months goes by and then they get to go back to working on and that's why a lot of the issues take so long Tom they can't and so with and it's all well and good for us to say we'll just shove everything off but if there's another development that comes along that's really important they can't shove it off unless you have interim zoning that says you gotta hold off on that and we have a certain period of time when we get all of our committees on board working really hard working with us to really define better hopefully what our future needs to look at I mean will we get it perfectly right probably not but I mean I like your idea if you give yourself six months and you see what's happening there's some other issues that bubble up that we need to address as well so I'm reticent to put a time frame on it I could be convinced to have language that suggests that we have status updates to let us know after X amount of months so where are you how much time longer will it take the planning commission or whomever to take what they have developed or learned from studies and come to consensus about to then turn it into language in our land use development regulations to make it come true and then we have the chance with LDRs or any ordinance changes to review it and have a public hearing and see if they did nail it but that to me has been what I've heard for years that you know the planning commission I mean the DRB can't change stuff even though it might seem logical because the LDRs are the rules and regulations they're the law that determines what happens on any piece of property they aren't aligned to what you want to have happen it doesn't happen and so I think many many people including everyone on this council has said man this community is really booming in terms of development it's here there it's everywhere some of it we want to have happened and we've pushed it like city center but other stuff the little active 50 carve outs or even some of the larger developments seem to be coming down the pipe very quickly and the public has or a lot of the public obviously not everybody but a lot of the public have said you know time out we really need to think about this there's other issues to consider I would disagree with you Tom I think maybe in not so many words but I think we've heard from three department heads that it's getting really tight it may not be wastewater but it certainly is plowing and sidewalks and paving of streets that's part of public works I mean maybe we have enough sewer allocation that's what it looks like although I just read something that Bartlett is getting what older and needing more more work on that and that's not a trivial expense and whenever we do do that work we certainly want to make sure that it meets the demands currently and projected whatever those are so but I have heard from police and fire and public works that things are tight and we've gone through the budgeting process where you know now we now all the firefighters have the equipment they need but they didn't before and we had put it off because or bought it in sections because you know that's how the money was so I am concerned that the way the city has sort of developed and I'm not going to cast dispersions on any former planning commissions or councils you make decisions as you see them when the time arises but you don't always know the consequences of those decisions and I think that's kind of what we're facing right now do we have the financial resources to continue the level of services that are residents deemed to be appropriate I don't think we're meeting all of those now because we certainly have concerns about roads and plowing and I don't know the concern of firefighters and EMS and police about burnout I mean we've started to address that with the mental health but that's not the total answer it's a piece of it I think but it's not the total answer it really comes down to you know enough people to carry out the duties that we think are important to make the community safe and livable and a place that is vibrant and meets the public's needs so I guess I would support this I'm okay with having some check-ins so that we don't necessarily have it's going to end in nine months but you know we'll have check-ins and see so we can give an estimate to the public of you know it looks like it's going to take three more months to get that those LDRs lined up with what we found and the public will have the chance to comment on that and see the reports that are developed and help us really manage that new date those need those new data so we can craft something that is reasonable and related to the reality the planning commission voted for six months because in chatting with Jessica the majority of them felt they wanted to be pushed on this and didn't want to be given the opportunity to get to go off on tangent so to speak and that's that's so I said let's push them so with no date certain in there Andrew if we put nine months if we were to put theoretically nine months in there what does it take to extend that if they say you know we need three more months can we just voted a meeting to go three more months and we have to go through all kinds of red tape to do that we could potentially put some sort of sunset provision in the interim bylaw and we draft it contingent upon a public hearing do you want to consider that the planning commission okay so I favor putting a time just because I think that's what the planning commission seems to want and I don't want to give the opportunity to go off on tangents even with time check-ins so I'd like to put date certain in there but if we do that and we find they're making good progress but gee we need three more months can we just vote to do that you could have that written into the written into the bylaw essentially that would say what that would say upon public hearing it may be extended for another three months if at that public hearing it's determined that it's still necessary something to that effect so as a sunset provision with a you know maybe a date certain even for the public hearing it's just the way we'd word the bylaw itself and that would give us the ability to extend and we could do it again if we wanted to if you wanted to and that would also have to be written in there's no state statute that limits how many times you can do this if you can't go beyond two years well can't you ask for an extent I mean I don't think we need to do this for three years but that is a potential it is a potential yes there is potential for one additional year after the two years but up until two years we can step as we want so what I then propose an amendment to the resolution that says whatever you have said in the correct language yeah sure yeah and just to be clear I mean the I took a look at the resolution and you know in actually drafting the interim bylaw be clear about where it is that we're talking about specifically and what it is specifically that we're I mean it's essentially going to be an LDA short-term LDR and what it is that's going to is going to be allowed and what development isn't going to be allowed and as I understand is transit overlay district and no new development during the period that the bylaw is in effect and correct me if I'm wrong with the exception of the transit over with the exception of the transit over that essentially is the southeast quadrant and the belter farm for the most part stuff that goes down toward the lake yeah it's west of spear and root 7 and the UVM properties on the other side of the swift and up spear yeah so I would recommend when you pass the resolution if you're thinking about some amendment like that just in the motion that passes the resolution say as amended with that sort of sunset provision and then to direct the city attorney to draft a interim bylaw to to be published in the other paper and for the date certain that the public hearing is going to going to take place for the purposes identified in the resolution between how and then meet somebody that can be tweaked at that time right and at the public hearing if you would like it can be tweaked if you would like to have another public hearing after you tweak it on the final final it's a good question yeah I'd have to get back to you I think you do I think when we go into the public hearing we want to have our best shot have the public hearing and then make a decision they will either sway us to say but to be clear the interim bylaw is going to affect as soon as the other paper this Thursday as soon as in the other paper so we have to have the final in the paper no just the proposed and that takes effect by being announced but it could be cancelled when it's finally considered well let's find out from legal counsel there so Paul just reminded me the last time at the public hearing the guidance was that if it's going to be more restrictive then a new public hearing should be warned if it's going to be less restrictive then it wouldn't need to be warned but certainly past practice has been with this council with ordinance updates for example as if there is amendments that we do warn a new public hearing sorry go ahead Tom this council to also consider as part of the charge to the planning commission is to reach out to the identified landowners in the blue markings so that they're aware of this planning commission this posted public hearing on this topic so if we've done that in the past we did it with East Terrace we did an outreach to all of the landowners on a specific part of the city 105 of them I would love if the landowners in term zoning were contacted as well is that easily doable I think that everybody in the city is affected I mean so it should go out to everybody these particularly directly I understand how you arrive at prioritizing them but I guess I disagree with them being the sole people informed everybody else will be informed through the other paper Tom saying that they should be more specifically informed because they're the landowners want to make sure they don't miss it well I'm guessing that any landowner knows that we're talking about interim zoning and are following this they may not be here tonight but some do probably some do not I'm sure that some don't know how many are there from the map that I showed you last week which was just the from Shelburne road east and south of the interstate there were about 70 or 75 properties this that was only that area didn't include the others that were in the yellow development potential are they owned by individual owners or some of those properties owned by one person how many people are actually affected due on property that's billing records so it wouldn't take a lot from my understanding and I know your time is limited to just generate those mailing addresses and send them all a letter that this public hearing is going to be directly addressing or affecting their property that's what the legal warning is in the paper yeah I really I think it's for everybody to have because it's the whole city but we have a legal process that is well defined and we've used it for other things and haven't notified our question before you in this in what you just explained specifically in my mind it's specifically defining the PUDs and identifying a priority or a land that might be conserved you're going to include those in what you draft right that would certainly be part of the purpose statement which I think is already fairly well defined in the resolution well we also have the cost benefit analysis did you mention that well I mean that's but I think the two in my mind the two priorities are the planning commission oh okay and the priority of lands we might want to conserve that photo huh and the TDR that's the planning commission prioritizing conservation blocks is probably natural resources and parks and rec I mean we're looking to engage other committees the economic development committee could you know help focus on the cost benefit analysis or at least interpreting it and resp