All right, let's call the order. Okay, so, another meeting of the Popular Planning Commission. First thing in our agenda is to call the order. The second thing is the approval of the agenda. Does anyone have anything for the agenda? Okay. All right, looks good. So, do we need to vote on that? I've done this a million times and I haven't even paid attention. All right, so moving on from approval of the agenda then. Proved by consensus. Proved by consensus. Comments from Kirby, the vice chair. We have a full agenda tonight because we plan to get through a section by section review of the design review overlay district regulations, including and mostly involving historic preservation, get those suggestions along the way back to the historic preservation committee. So that's going to be almost all of tonight. And then before that we do have to get through the election of new officers because we didn't have a quorum last meeting and we didn't get that done. So with that I'm good and we can move to general business comments from the public. There's no one from the public here so we can move on. And then to the election of new officers. So what are people's thoughts about that? That hit. I'm fine with holding down the fort until January as the chair. It would be helpful to have a vice chair if anyone's interested. Stephanie's not here. Yeah, I know. I don't know what happens if we do is kind of what I was getting at. What are the thoughts? No. So yeah, the expectation would be, you know, you would get to take a look at the agenda each week when Mike sends it around. And then I would let you know if I can't make it to a meeting and you could fill in doing this stuff. So I'll move to nominate Kirby as chair. Do we do both at once? Sure. Take Kirby as Aaron. You're running together here. And Aaron is vice chair. Okay, take a vote. Is there a discussion over that motion? Thank you for volunteering. All in favor? All in favor? Congratulations. Moving on with that out of the way. There is the matter of the Regional Planning Commission representation. We have until the September meeting, the second Tuesday of September to do anything about that. But I would like to pass it on to someone. I'll keep throwing it out until we have a volunteer. Stephanie was interested. Wouldn't you mention that last time? I guess it didn't register as a commitment to me. That's why it's still in my head as something to try to pawn off. Okay. I'll follow up with her. I think we tabled discussion of the Planning Commission representative. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just throwing that out there. Okay, so let's get into the explanation of the regs. That's why Meredith is here so kindly to walk us through because she was the staff member who helped the historic preservation committee with this. The way that we put it down in the agenda to get through this kind of most hopefully the most efficiently is to just start with a general explanation from Meredith and Mike about the process that goes into the decisions involving these regulations so that we can go into the substantive side of it kind of knowing how it's a little bit more about how it will be applied. And reading through these myself, I think that also means that we could probably start on page four of the regs because the first few pages are the policy, you know, description, which is not something that I imagine that we're going to weigh in on. And also the process sections themselves are those like pages two and three. So with that, I'll hand it off to Meredith to talk about. Yeah, just for just because of the way it's described on the agenda, are you looking for so for this is live stream, right? Yeah. So for the public, Meredith Crandall planning and zoning administrator for the City of Montpelier. Are you looking more right now for the process that has occurred or the process going forward from here? Yeah, I just see what we were going for there and I didn't notice the way it was written there. The second part of that versus how the rules will be implemented, that's the gist of what we're looking for. I think we have a pretty good idea after the presentation before about what went into it. I was hoping so. Yeah. But sometimes when we've discussed this, though, we've been fuzzy on how was this going to go down in the real world. So I think starting there and then moving to the substance of it is a good way. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think if we're going to start bare bones, somebody comes in with a project. If this is an interrupt me if I'm going off on a tangent that you aren't actually interested in. So somebody comes into the planning department with a project. They usually talk to either Audra, the assistant zoning administrator or myself. They describe the project to us. We look up the address. It flags as design review district. So we know design review rules apply in addition to anything else that applies. Then we get as much detail as them from them as possible on what that project entails. We look up to check if the applicant doesn't know whether or not that any of the structures on the property are registered on the national or the state register of historic properties. And that all flows into which regulations apply. You know, we try and do as deep of a dive and get as much detail as possible from the applicant. That all goes into the section 2201G submittal requirements. These are things that we currently have to parse out, explain to everybody what they have to submit. There isn't, you know, the current application has this little teeny tiny blurb of what somebody who's applying for design review needs to submit, but it doesn't give this much detail. So this will help applicants to be able to just pull that section out and give it to them or some people actually look at the rules before they come in. So that's one reason we put that in there. And then, you know, we'll do some level of review of those application materials when it comes to design review process. And we have a sense of what the design review committee is looking for. But right now, a lot of times it's we can give a little guidance based on just experience and what we know the committee has looked for in the past, but there's nothing for us to really point to. You know, it's not like we have this really nice, lovely database of decisions. It's, oh wait, I remember X decision, you know, that's why it's great that we have Audra and Mike because they've been in the position a long time, but we don't have, like I said, a database that's really clear as to what every decision is. So anyway, so then if it's an application that just needs design review, it'll then go to the design review committee. They review the application materials, have a hearing, discuss, you know, ask the applicant a bunch of questions. Usually it just takes one hearing to go over everything. There's a lot of back and forth, a lot of questions about, oh, you know, can you do this or recommendations about, you know, the most recent hearing or meeting, there was a hearing on an applicant with a historic building that was replacing 29 windows on the historic section, the most historic section of the house. And so one of the things that the design review committee really wanted to make sure was that the windows being put in were these Marvin integrity windows. They're new modern windows, you know, it allows the applicant to remove the exterior storm windows off the building, which is great because these are new modern windows that are insulated, but they were really, they wanted to know exactly what kind of window was being put in to make sure that the look was going to be the same when it came to the number of panes, the style of the look, but, you know, there wasn't any, so they had to have that detail and question the applicant about it, but there wasn't any pushback on the upgrades to the windows as long as they looked the same. But that was definitely a discussion point on just really the look of it. All right, so they will only go to design? Right, so I was going to, sorry, I interjected a story to then keep going. So because this is just that particular application, because it just needed design review, there was nothing else that triggered review for that replacement of windows. The design review committee looked at it, they approved it, and I don't think they even gave any recommendations on that. Their recommendation form comes back to our office, the zoning administrator's office, because it's an administrative permit with the recommendation from the design review committee as an advisory committee, and then it comes back and then our office issues. Does that go to the applicant also? That form? The form, they sign the form at the hearing, and then it comes back into our office, and then when the permit gets issued, they get a copy of it. Okay. So that's just an administrative permit. That form has sort of a checklist, it seems like. Right, so there's two different recommendation forms. One recommendation form is specifically for signs in the design review district, because there are specific criteria that apply just to signs in the current regulations, and then the other form is for anything else in the design review district, and the criteria that are in the current regulations are what are listed there. And so with these new regulations, we would have to come up with various new recommendation forms. There would be more than two sets of recommendation forms with these new regulations. So that would be an administrative development that would need to occur before we could actually make these effective. But our current recommendation forms are a little out of date and don't have the current regulation references on them. The language is all the same, but we never updated the section references because we knew there was going to be changes. So that is the process for administrative design review applications. Sometimes in those administrative permits, it'll go through design review and then come back, maybe some other layers that either Audra or myself have to review, and we try to do that before the design review committee hearing happens, sometimes because there's only a week in between the deadline and the hearing for design review committee. It takes a little bit longer, but usually if it's administrative design review, it just takes a day or two after the hearing for that permit to be issued. If it's a more complicated project like demolition of a historic structure and a rebuild within the design review overlay district, then you'll have your design review committee hearing and then that advisory recommendation sheet actually goes to the development review board at the next hearing either. Sometimes it's that same day, that same night, sometimes it's two weeks later. It kind of depends on when applications come in and how it all works out for timing purposes and public notice. And then the DRB is the one who makes the ultimate decision, not the zoning administrator, but it's a similar process. It's just that the DRB may look at a much larger scope of regulations at that point, in addition to the design review. And they usually, in most cases, both for administrative permits and development review permits, we, at least in my experience over the last year, we just accept the design review committee recommendations. Mike, I think you've had some experiences where the development review board has overridden or rejected a design review recommendation in your history here, I think. Yeah, it doesn't happen very often, but there were a couple of cases where people went to the development review board and had something overturned. There was an application, I know, on Main Street where somebody was putting in a new chimney out the back, so it was going to have, I don't know if it was for wood fire or something, but it was going to have a seamless steel chimney, and so the DRC said they wanted it painted black, so it wouldn't be shiny, but that would void the warranties of the product. So they went to the DRB and the applicant went to the DRB and said, we agree to everything, but not the painting, because the painting would void our warranties and therefore we want to move forward with the project, ignoring that recommendation and the DRB agreed and allowed it to go in without the flat black paint. Well, and that actually, I just remembered another, recently we had a situation where the design review committee was reviewing a project that falls under the 24VSA 4413 community facilities exception, so that really narrows what the design review committee can, or what zoning can apply as conditions on a permit. So the design review committee oftentimes starts talking about a whole bunch of different issues, but some of the things that they might put down as a recommendation, we just can't enforce a zoning. So it's on the recommendation form, but we don't specifically list it as a condition on the permit, but that doesn't mean that the applicant can't do it, because they've agreed, they've said in the hearing, oh, we might be able to do that, we just don't list it as a condition. And then, of course, any of these, if the applicant doesn't agree, they can appeal. If it's a zoning administrative decision, they can appeal to the development review board. If it's a DRB decision or permit, then they can appeal it to the environmental court. Are there other process questions that I may have? I'm just curious about how many projects go through the design review board a year, roughly? Oh, I don't know that number off the top. I mean, we have anywhere from, I mean, there's two meetings a month. We can have average, I don't even know what the average is. I mean, we can have one application on the agenda, but that's pretty rare. Usually, there's between, like, three and five applications, I would guess, on each DRC agenda, and we've maybe canceled three or four DRC meetings because of no... My guess was going to be between 30 and 45, depending on the year. Yeah, it might be more than... Are you thinking signs as well, though? Can you characterize them, maybe, in terms of how many... Most everything is a sign, honestly. A huge percentage of the applications are signs, because the design... Think about how many signs there are in downtown. Almost all of those signs are supposed to go through the design review committee. So a lot of what I've dealt with is signs. And then technically, they're supposed to come in if they're doing a new paint color. You also have situations like the parking garage had like four DRC, three or four DRC hearings, continued hearings. There have been maybe three demolitions or so. I know a lot of windows, a lot of window replacements. And pretty much everybody who comes in to do a window replacement at this point knows that if, historically, it's a two over two window, they need to ask to put a two over two window back in, even if they're updating it. Those are the biggies. I mean, there hasn't been lots of new construction in the design review district other than the parking garage, because... One Taylor Street, the parking garage. Yeah, and I wasn't here for One Taylor Street. Yeah, because Caledonia Spirits is out, Timber Homes is out. There have been some remodels and renovations. It's on the other side, I believe it's the other side of the street. What were those demolitions? Sheds. A lot of times it's a shed or a much more modern but run down addition on the back of a historic building. That's been a lot of what we had. So there was the demolition. The back of Elm Street. There was a carriage at the back of the... Yeah, back of Elm Street. There was School Street with the stairway. There was the one we just did behind the state house. I can't remember the street address. But that's usually what it has been so far. When you're talking demolition of... Almost all of it has been demolition of historic structures. The part being demolished is not contributing to a historic structure but it's attached to a historic structure. And so they get really careful about that. Is there a fee for design review? There is. It's $25 and then your decision recording fee. So if all you're doing is design review, it's $45 right now. That's it. So if it's just design review, we don't do a staff report, anything like that for the design review committee. We try and keep the administrative time on those fairly small if they don't also go to the development review board or need some larger administrative approval. Then you need your zoning permit after. Right, which can just be a paperwork function if it's just a designer, if you matter. So that's the... You get your recommendation form and that gets folded into the zoning permit. And is there... So you can get your zoning permit after you get your... Do you have to wait until the appeals period for the DRB to expire before your zoning permit is issued or can you have the... We run it concurrently, we'll issue the permits. So the 15 days or whatever it is now can run concurrently? Yeah, some cities and towns wait until the decision period. That section has ended and then they issue the permit. I think Mike and I have discussed this as a function of in part just how many decisions and permits there are that keeping track of that would be very difficult administratively. And so, yeah. Okay, so to move along, how about we dive in. I'm going to actually just kind of go over real quickly the first few pages and what my thoughts are just to get us rolling through. The purpose section is the first page and a third. And my thoughts there are that, you know, the city council should decide whether they agree with the purpose section and that we don't really need to put our two cents in on that. So unless someone has something, I think we could just skip that and leave it to the city council to decide if they agree with that. I mean, I've read it and I think it's fine. So if there's nobody has anything on that, we'll keep going. The next section or just there's, you know, there's this basic statutory references and things like that and the boundary and of course the boundary is something we have to decide later ourselves. I'll comment real quick. So B, the enabling legislation. So the Historic Preservation Commission made a distinct decision. We've always kind of, we've always called it a design control district. Under the statutes, there are provisions for being a design review district and a local historic district and landmark. So one is usually referred to a design control. One's usually design review. They have expressly in the enabling said we're doing design review. Versus the historic. Versus the historic design review. So just to be clear that they've intentionally selected the broader set of enabling legislation. So there are two choices we could go under before. The old rules don't really say which one we're under. So it's not as clear. So this is a good addition to help specifically state which are the rules we're following. We're either following the E rules or following the F rules under that section. What you're saying is it's clarifying it's not a substantive change. It's an important distinction and if somebody had a particular push that they thought we should be a historic, we should only be regulating historic design review and people thought that's all we should be looking at then we should probably be F. But what they want is us not to be just looking at historic but look at historic and new development and therefore we should be E. And that is how this is written. So unless we decide to totally break off on that. Yeah, I just wanted to point out there are other ways that they could have selected something which is this one which I think is the right one to go with just so you're aware. Just another just language choice. They specifically wanted to get away from the language of design review control. They don't want that control language in here anymore. They think that that just has negative connotations. I know that's a minor point, but I think when it comes to presenting to the public it's kind of an important point. Sure. So we have the overlay zoning references, the boundary like I mentioned, we're going to be deciding that. And then the applicability, there's a list of exemptions here, exempt development. I don't know if we need to get into what those are. But do we want to start getting in there? I just had a question about change in paint color because you mentioned paint color. So is that something that's needed? Right now it falls within the group of things that get reviewed. The historic preservation thinks if all you're doing is changing the paint color, they don't think you should be having to go to design review. They think that that's just outside of the purview. Pick your own paint color. Could you mention some more of the exemptions in here that are new then? Give me a second to get my old draft because I didn't go through and highlight because if I did that the whole thing would be yellow. So right now there's only six exemptions in the current regulations. In a couple of days we might be able to remove anyways, but I wasn't going to get... Because they're duplicative of the general exemptions. I think part of it was that they wanted to make sure that people just looked at the design review regulations and didn't go at the beginning of the zoning regulations. They would still see what was exempt. It was more of a public knowledge issue to make sure that they were listed here in the exemptions as well as in the very beginning of the zoning regulations. So changes in paint color... I mean that the old exemptions had a very general repair or replacement of architectural features using materials of identical composition type and appearance. They have elaborated and just clarified on that with your now exempt development item B. But making clear in here that it's not just that you can't keep identical... You don't have to keep identical appearance that you can change paint color and other things. So... Sorry. You can change the sighting, but you can't change the sighting material. Right. So you can't go from wood to vinyl without going through design review. But you can go from one kind of wood sighting to another kind, you know, another piece of wood sighting that's a different color. But yeah, that's the way this... Consistent materials. Consistent materials. So one of the things that got added in here was repair the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems on the rear elevations. So that's a new exemptions. They've just decided, look, if you're putting in an AC unit in the rear of your building, we don't care. We don't need to see that, because that was stuff that was coming in and it really made no sense to go to design review. The rear of building is clear. Yep, it literally says on the rear building elevation. And then if you go, I believe in the definitions, they have a much more detailed definitions section now. We tried to make sure that definitions that weren't already in the plumbing regulations got added in at the end of this section. So what is that clear with exemption L than what you're talking about? Exempt or exterior placement of meters, et cetera, et cetera, coping tanks, HVAC equipment, that doesn't necessarily see... So all of these must be located in the rear yard or out of your elevation. So give me one second. So... I think this is one of the things... I tried to hash out the difference with HBC, and honestly, I think they were a little exhausted. So how to figure out the differences between D and L is a little funky. So you have your rear building elevation in D versus... Right, so D and L might be able to be combined because the first sentence of L is about on rear elevations, whereas the second sentence of L is about things in the rear yard or on the rear building elevation. So some of these things, you're not gonna... You have an option of it being in the rear yard itself. You're not gonna put the propane tank on the building. You're gonna put it behind the building. But then there are some things that are actually gonna be on the building. So how to hash that out? You can send it back to HBC to say, look, we need clarity on D and L, or you can try and finagle it yourselves. Well, I think if we have the intent, we can work out how to do the phrasing and the wording. Yeah, and I think D is clearly, it says on the rear building elevation. They're both about things specifically in the rear or on the rear of the building.  Does anybody have any suggestions for changes here? For D and L? Yeah. One of these other things that's new is G. G exempts a lot of window and door repair and maintenance, including installation of storm windows and doors that don't alter the window or door openings and where you have the related... The storms don't conflict with the way the window is dealt with on the inside. So that's a new exemption. You said that there's like six exemptions currently. Can you just list with those six exemptions currently? Yeah, that's fine. Mike, did you print out the current ranks? No. So A is the subdivision of land. B, changes in use that do not cause any exterior changes in appearance of the building or lot. C, the repair or replacement of architectural features using materials of identical composition type and appearance. I guess I need to read it for the record, but then you can also just copy. Non-substantial alterations, as determined in writing by the administrative officer. I can tell you right now I hate that one. What is that? It does not... There is no clarification on what that is. The removal of signs, so long as no evidence of signs installation remains, and interior renovations, but the alteration to doors or windows located on exterior walls is not an exempt activity, is a clarifier. That's all. So, alterations to windows or doors and exterior walls is not exempt. It's a clarification on what interior renovations is. Is it correct that all of those things are included in the proposed exemptions plus others? Um... Yes. Sir, can you say that again? I was just clarifying that all of the existing exemptions are in these proposed ones, plus new additional ones. Well, except for maybe the non... I think what we did... Yeah, except for the non-substantial. You know, we dealt with that whole issue with the administrative approval options, and by being really specific in what the exemptions cover. Great. So, yes, I was going to try to get to the administrative approval part so we can skip to there. So, there's... just to catch everyone up, there's a section here, a subsection that states that certain state-exempt buildings are still going to be subject to this, like that's the intent. That was the bottom of page three. Just as a clarifier for the public. That's a lot broader than just... oh, you mean, statutorily exempt buildings. Yes. Under state law. Yeah, so the limitations was there. I mean, it doesn't seem to be a widely applicable thing. Well, it could be actually pretty applicable, but at least it's specifically stated in the regs now, whereas before it was actually regulated, but it was not specifically stated. There's room to debate. Well, there have been zoning administrators who don't pay attention to that or who pay over attention to it and just don't put those buildings through design review at all, even though technically they're supposed to go through design review because there might be aspects of the project that come up that can be regulated by zoning. It's not supposed to be a blanket exemption. That's why we're doing this in here so that future zoning... we can have consistency. And then the next section on top of page four is about the application process, which we've gone through most of in Meredith's intro, except this also has the administrative review process step, right? Do you want to go through that one? Yeah, I mean, this has part of it. The section H on page five has more of that. And I figure we can just do... well, okay, do you want to wait? We can wait until we age. So in that case there's some middle requirements, which are all the things you're supposed to submit with the application, which I don't think we need to necessarily go into, except for my first question about this has to do with the additional materials. And so in the case of windows, replacement windows, these are asking for a lot of additional information and be interested to know what's going on there. So there are some members of the Historic Preservation Commission who really feel like if you're going to replace historic windows, there should be a higher sort of burden of proof that you need to replace them. It puts me in kind of a weird position since I also staffed the Design Review Committee. I don't see that being something that the Design Review Committee feels a need for. They have certain types of windows that they like to see used because they know they're really energy efficient. They know they work well. They know they look like the older wooden windows, but they just perform a lot better and are easier to use. But Historic Preservation Commission members, at least not enough of them to keep this in here, really felt like there's a level of value to retaining those old wood windows and that you shouldn't just replace them if there's... You look at the... People talk about that they're replacing them because of efficiency issues, but then some members have looked at it and gone, okay, great, but you still have your manufacturing issues. The ultimate carbon cost difference isn't necessarily any better. I don't know where that argument all lays about at this point. What do you guys think? They're just asking for... There's not no specialist who has to be consulted. No specialist has to be consulted. They just want photographs of existing conditions. For the additional materials, they are asking for additional materials from the applicant. I'm not sure that what they've written in here has enough musts to have that change what the decisions of the Design Review Committee level are going to be. And I think part of the reason that they want this additional level for replacement windows is especially in relation to truly historic buildings, buildings that are on the National Register. I think that's one reason that's in there. Unfortunately, it is something that is in relation to replacing windows on anything, not just historic buildings. It seems like this is probably the biggest issue in here. If we can figure out windows, we're like 80% of the way there. Siding in windows. Yeah, siding in windows are the big ones where people are going to get worked up about. And I don't know if I have an answer or anything, but being thoughtful or maybe even laying out options of what's possible. Well, maybe it's just while we're on the topic, jumping to the Design Review Standards for windows might be one of the things since we're on this topic anyway. So that is, let's see, we've got the specific design standards for alterations in additions to building. So this is section 2201K1. We're on page eight. Very at the bottom. Yeah, it's seven, but it's on page eight, way at the bottom on subromanumeral eight, Windows and Doors, where it says, yep, window pattern sizes, proportions and original features, such as trim, sash and molding, can be preserved to the extent possible. Well, but the thing is, there's not... That's pretty... There's a lot of wiggle room in there. You could give it a little more wiggle room and really the pattern sizes, proportions of original features a lot of times, maybe not the sash, but they keep that trim and the moldings. They pop those out, they take the interior window out and put a new window in and put the old, not sash, but molding back on. A lot of times they replaced those from the inside. We had a discussion about that on the historic building where they replaced 29 windows recently. So they're not saying you have to keep the windows wood here, necessarily. The material has to say the same. I think a little bit where the inconsistency that I found came in was the... So what appeared on page five for the additional materials application requirement, that's an application requirement. That's not a standard. So we're going to ask you to provide information that we're not going to use because we have no regulations later on that will actually use any of that information that you just provided. We couldn't approve or deny it because there's nothing in here that goes and says windows... And you should not insert. This is just a good rule. You should never insert rules into your process questions. Because we're going to be reviewing this under the review. You don't want to go and say, well, in the application requirement, it says that you need to maintain the windows. If we keep that, that needs to be inserted into page eight. That's what I was thinking when I brought it up before. It already says in that sub two on page five, DRC may require additional information. That's what that section is about. So give them that and if they want the extra on windows, they can use it. Yeah. Yeah, and it may also be... This is a May, so it would be one of those... It goes to the DRC. The DRC is saying, hey, this is a historic building. We need more information to come back next time. It's not saying... This is just saying the DRC may require it. I'm not going to require that at the beginning. That's for the DRC to decide if they need it. But it's also a heads up for the applicant. If they don't want to come back, then maybe they'll provide the additional information. So then I guess it becomes... Does that actually match up with anything? And Mike has a point that it really doesn't. Yeah. I think where that first sentence ends understanding of a proposal period, I think that's fine. I think it's everything. If replacement of windows is being proposed, I think that needs to... If that stays there, I would make that a subset and it says regarding windows, it's this, but then whatever application requirements you're asking for need to then line up very directly with a requirement later on that says we should review the information that was submitted in number two to make this decision as to whether or not the window can or can't be replaced. Yeah. I mean, I think... I mean, we have had instances where people say, we're replacing these windows because they're damaged. Not because we want... They want a better window. They're just saying these are damaged and we cannot repair them. We need to replace them. I think that's where this is coming from. But then the question is... Yeah, because you have that first sentence. But under eight, the requirement is not that the materials, it is only that the patterns, sizes, proportions, and features shall be preserved to the extent possible. I mean, it's not even saying that the window itself needs to be preserved. It's the pattern, the look. That's what has to be preserved. And therefore, all this application requirement up front is... Yeah, they do say that door materials... Door materials... ...need to be preserved on primary facades. But it doesn't say anything about windows. Whereas this additional materials extra is all about windows. Could. I mean, there are a lot of different parts here. And when you just look at where that's talking about architectural features, not limited to windows, if they're distinctive, shall be preserved. The distinctive materials, features, and construction techniques that characterize a property shall be preserved. Yeah. So that seems like that's probably an instance, maybe, where you've got a building with a certain type of window that the DRC may want more detail. I don't know. Yeah. Right, and they can ask for it. Yeah. Well, and that's without having to put all of this information in there. Yeah. Five talks about materials, historic building materials. Well, I just... I think, like, you're very good point. Subtool on page five, the different materials pieces, the question really becomes... I mean, I think, as I'm going to get more and more, the subsection does a number of different things. It doesn't do one specific thing. It does a couple. And so, if you want to... And I agree with you that if replacement of windows is being proposed, the applicant must provide. I think that that is just begging for trouble, especially if you don't line it up with the requirements that are on sub-K. So I would say just cutting it out altogether, because I think the first sentence grants the committee's sufficient discretion to ask for whatever it wants to for whatever reason it wants to, which I think is appropriate. My only suggestion is, if you do want to keep that second kind of clause, I guess I'll call it, it should be separated out. It made a separate subsection, just to make it clear that it's kind of a separate piece from the broader discretionary grant. So... What about in the second clause on number two? Additional materials. If replacement of windows is being proposed. So do you have a motion? So the thought here is that we would just, as a commission, send our suggestions as a group back. I don't think we need, like, motions or... You don't think so? Well... Maybe not on each individual item. Maybe at the end. Yeah, I mean... All right, fair enough. I think there would be a motion at this point, it would be... Yeah. I guess the... Yeah. A report of some kind. I guess that's actually a good question. I missed the last meeting. I'm a little unclear about... So, yeah, well last meeting we didn't have a forum, so we just did a working group. We just, Stephanie and Arianne and I just discussed some, and Mike discussed just some various things and just kind of planning. I just don't pay attention to the meeting before that. Yeah. So, yeah, for tonight, the idea is to get through these and have all of our suggestions that we send back to historic preservation. Okay. And then for process purposes, historic preservation would then basically say, yes, we agree with this, no, we don't agree with this. Right. Give it back to you and then it's your job to get the next tier draft, whether you make final tweaks or not, to move up to City Council. This is ours to move up to City Council. Yeah, it's not historic preservation commissions. Yeah. But I'm a little bit confused about the, I'm sorry if this was explained before, but the historic preservation commission gives input, but they don't actually make the design review decisions. Correct. That's okay. Correct. But there is, right now, the chair of the historic preservation commission is also the vice chair of the design review committee. And there's other, there's at least one other historic preservation person on design review committee. So there's, there has been, over the last, I don't know how many years Eric has been on both, some overlap, but historic preservation commission was also fairly defunct for a number of years. And then the whole rule rewrite, regulations rewrite process sort of woke it all up and got new membership. And another, like while we're talking about that, Aaron, another thing that's coming up is probably next week we'll be talking about the overlay district and its boundaries, which is going to be something that's entirely on us for now before we make our suggestion to the city council. And that's going to be something that we'll probably also need to get, or we will definitely be getting public input on after we've decided what we think would be a good place to start. Yeah. So that, those boundaries are, again, where this, what this is going to apply to. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. So, so our first suggestion is to delete everything after the word proposal and sub two on page five. Got it. Under additional materials. Is there anywhere else where they are asking under some middles asking to provide photographs? Yeah. Current color photographs showing the site and affected structures, all sides, neighboring structures and relevant details. So that's G sub one sub D. Right. And then. Yeah. So that, if they're looking to say, yes, these windows match, what's there? They need to at least see what's there. Yeah. And you also have an F annotated photographs of the existing structure, including architectural details such as trim and molding. There's, there's multiple places where they spell out, we really, we need details. So then did you want to move onto the administrative review section? Yeah. Okay. So this is really broken down into two different parts because when the administrative, the zoning administrator or administrative officer takes care of the primary approval and there's just a specific list of items, including, you know, individual accessory structures. There's like, right now, if somebody wants to put a shed on a parcel that, that's in the design review overlay district, design review committee. At this point, HVC suggests, as long as it's just your first accessory structure, just accept it if it's in the side of rear yard. There's just no, it's silly to have that go through design review committee. Additional things like awnings. And this is one place where there's kind of a interesting, so in the exemption list that we looked at, you had the whole discussion about replacements of meters, vents, et cetera, and fuel, fuel propane tanks, right, that were in the rear yard, those are completely exempt. If they're on the side elevation of the building or in the side yard, depending on which item you're talking about, those could now be approved administratively. So they don't need to go to the design review committee, but they still need some level of approval. And part of that is so that there can be confirmation that there's some screening involved or, you know, putting a neon green vent on the side of your building that faces your neighbor. So the administrative officer would be able to say, hey, you need to make it the same color as the side of your siding. So there's a whole long list of items including ADA features, gutters. Right now the addition of gutters is supposed to go through design review and removal of signs. Those things are all specifically exempt. You know, just administrative approval required, meaning. And then the other category of items is if there is a minor change to a previously approved project. So, you know, I had to make my own discretionary call on a design review permit recently that was they've gotten approval for a sign. They came back and said, oh, the material isn't going to be metal. It's going to be vinyl. It's not going to change the appearance. It's not going to change the color. It's not going to change, you know, the level of reflective surface. None of these things are changing. It's just the underlying material. Luckily, there's another provision in the regulations, zoning regulations that gives the zoning administrator the opportunity to amend previously issued permits. But having this further clause that matches back to that to say yes, even design review approvals can get amended, I think is helpful. And it it echoes the language using the material change, but then throws in this other clarifier that the amendment does not affect any character defining features on the parcel. And character defining features is something that is designed in this section, proposed section of the regulations. Are signs there enough clarity where you would feel comfortable that signs all together could be administratively approved? Trying to think if that's like half the applications be saving everyone a lot of time. I don't think that would be a great idea. They have so much knowledge they see a lot of well and and a lot of well, but it's also a lot of these people are landlord or developers or contractors. So they can look at a sign and be like you don't want that color combination. There's not enough difference between the two colors you have here to make the sign pop in low light or wait, where are your lights placed? Are you using a glossy paint on your sign or are you using a matte paint? If you use a glossy paint and these lights you're glare at nighttime means nobody's going to be able to read your sign. I mean those are things that especially somebody brand new who doesn't have that background as a zoning administrator they're going to have no idea how to give that guidance. Design review committee since I've been here is very much in my mind a resource and not just a yes or no base. And like when we've had some nonprofit groups come in to get things approved because of the level of resources and contacts that the committee has there have been instances where they have been able to point a nonprofit towards a resource to be able to cut their costs on their project so that they can do their entire project in the next and then they go okay let's just give you approval for the whole thing even though you're coming to us for part of it and trying to do it in phases we can get you we can point you to where to go so that you can get your whole project done that kind of I wouldn't I wouldn't want signs as a whole to just go to the zoning administrator I think that means that people are going to miss out on feedback that would really help them that's worth it I mean I hear what you're saying but I also kind of hear what John said which is you can achieve some administrative efficiencies easier I'm wondering if there's just like a bit opt into if it's like a bypassing view because it might just feel hey look I just want to put a barber well don't go to the barber pole example because that has specific licensing don't go there for like a required consultation with them but it's not it's but that's already the timing of the permits I mean I think we've gotten the average design review application was issued in eight days from time of applications time of application to approval was averaged I mean it can be as long as 15 days if you missed the deadline but it is it's pretty it's pretty if all you need is design review approval you can submit your application on Friday sometimes depending on how heavy the load is maybe a Monday and you're in a hearing the next Monday and then your application is issued the next Tuesday or Wednesday I no no and they meet twice a month our goals for and this was with city council our goals for administrative permits are to issue within our goals within 24 hours so if we've got a permit that doesn't need within 24 hours it doesn't always work out because we've had a much heavier workload lately but DRC the goals issue the permit within 15 days and a DRB hearing should be issued within 45 days and that's from the time you submit an application usually it will take longer we've actually averaged 30 days for DRB but usually when it takes longer it's not because of staff because the applicant isn't giving the information that the DRB needs and the DRB is tabling their hearing because the application isn't applicant isn't getting all the information so those are the targets we shoot for is to not have the exceptions are what everybody hears about in five months of permitting but those are those are the exceptions most of our average permits and we submit I have to submit annual reports to the council on the amount of time it takes us to issue permits and a lot of the zoning changes we made before were to help to adjust some of those times like short circuiting used to be all DRC applications had to go to the DRB which added another two weeks and then DRB hearings have a 30-day appeal period so it was adding six days back to us to be issued the next day with a 15-day appeal period so it was really it made a big difference in the timing on that one so we do try to keep the amount of time down there the issue is usually getting the information from people that's usually what takes the longest is we can approve this really quick if you get us the information that as long as the lighting the shape of the sign the size of a sign isn't changing that it doesn't go to DRC because technically we're not allowed to review content but I think that I think that there is a value in having that feedback it makes sense and signs make a big difference yeah I mean what you have for signs in downtown are going to make a big difference and even if we can't necessarily tell you you have to change your color to have that be an option and get them that feedback is helpful so for the sake of trying to get this done by 7.30 I'm going to move this along so the next big section 22.1.i is about the design review standards and my understanding here is this is not just historic preservation but this is the general design review standards and I actually do have something in my own on this one this came up during the presentation from the committees the second paragraph under design review standards has some outside materials that can be added to the city the various groups looking at this except it could be read in a limiting way I think that's what we talked about when it came up so I would just suggest that before the first colon that it says you know it's the second paragraph down under 22.1.i on page 6 to facilitate review the applications the administrative officer development review board and design review including the following colon including but not limited to in my experience interpreting Vermont law including always means including but not yes yep nope I agree with you sometimes people lay people sometimes read that and believe that it means just those things right so you got that okay so if everybody's so that sounds fine with everyone yep and so then we can go on into the standards themselves and if it helps move things along I would ask Meredith what's changed here from what's regulations everything okay everything even when it comes to these general standards so I can't point out to you which specific things are the same okay because because the the current the current regulations have eight criteria that's it it's a list of eight criteria unless you are talking specifically about Western Gateway District Riverfront District or um signs so we've taken those the HPC has taken those eight criteria and basically said okay great these are all reflected in part or in some way in the you know Secretary of Interior standards for rehabilitation instead let's go back to the source which is one of the things we're supposed to use as a CLG community and then take those and elaborate on them or add to them as we think is required to be able to use them for Montpelier and use them for both um you know changes to a current building and apply them to new brand new development um and so that's how they've broken this all up so that you have your Section J which is your general design standards that apply to everything then you have your specific design standards that apply to so that you know you've got in here you have your old categories like signage which we had before it's just been adapted a little bit but then you also have specific standards for alterations and additions to buildings things that apply specifically to just new buildings or new additions I realize I misstated something these general design centers are historic that they were broken off but apparently these are my recommendation was to break them into because one through five are referring to historic six seven and eight I think you're looking at yeah J is supposed to sort of apply generally but it is written so that you have some historic some new it's a little messy they were really trying to have these these general design standards are your overarching sort of your overarching not not goals sort of your aspirations if you're talking master plan whereas all of your specific design standards are specifics of how you can achieve these general design standards you just have to match them up depending on whether you're not you're talking about a historic or a new building but it is a little messy I think part of it was trying to figure out the flow for them and also trying to figure out how you would do a worksheet you know because you might have you know number six new additions exterior alterations or new construction shall not distort historic materials and the new work shall be differentiated from the old apply both to potentially your alterations and additions well I guess it's now I guess that one only all applies to alterations and additions to buildings trying to see here yeah seven applies to both eight kind of applies to both you know if you're talking about you're putting a new building on a parcel that also has a historic structure I mean there might be ways to minimize it I think I might I might suggest a question I hope when I did K was do we need to have general and specific could we just tie these two together because it seemed like a number of the ones that were in the general could easily just be you know like I said one through five are specifically talking about historic so why not just remove those from the general and insert them into K one A except if they're not applying in multiple instances so would it be instead having basically alterations and additions to buildings and then you have under a you have additions and exterior alterations to historic buildings and then sub Roman numeral one is instead of height general requirements and then you list the things here because these don't necessarily talk about or proportion or rhythm specifically I think some of these things about the specific we're supposed to help give you just more detail in some places examples as best they could without doing the full illustrated guideline giving enough detail to actually be able to implement it in a consistent way yeah I think we could work on if that was a desire to see if that just gets pulled forward in a way to make that work if that's what the planning commission wants to do away with this section and integrate it with the others there may be some that are general design but certain like number nine I can't see why number nine on the top of page seven couldn't be moved to point K number six which talks about which is back on landscaping screen and say landscaping and whole section on landscaping screening and site furnishings which apply to all districts in all settings and here we've got a general one up here that maybe that just can get moved there and save us a spot it does feel like from the general public or who we've heard from around design review during the process that I suspect some of the criticisms of this might be its length and redundancy and just that it's not necessarily written to be very user-friendly and anything that we can do to help address that will probably help its likelihood adoption but I think maybe you as someone who's going to be administering this probably be and a good position maybe to identify where a lot of those things are and where some things are just there and are going to be very useful so now I think this makes sense I I think this makes sense because I mean when I was thinking about it just administratively initially I was thinking almost having your recommendation form be mostly J with some subsets so you know which ones you're pulling for when you're talking about specifically say you know windows and doors or something that fall under I think yeah and even if there's some a little bit of repetition when you're talking about when you apply some of these put some of them in I think for the sake of time I would be comfortable with us relying on Meredith and Mike working together to identify a more user friendly way to present the standards in J and K yeah and passing those along this sort of preservation for their look before it comes back to us talks about integrate universal design principles but it's not defined to them yeah it's not capitalized either so we don't know it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a concrete form of art I'm honest we're going to let you know is because I don't have a have a deep and there was there was there was debate is is is just not is necessarily going to, you know, throw up a red flag if you say you either need to clarify this or get rid of it. Yeah. Because also the universal, you know, I think trying to implement that is something that would be really difficult. I mean a lot of the design principles are listed elsewhere in the specific points of proportion, rhythm, and all of that. Well and I think that's also one reason this was here is to sort of, because this is supposed to be generally applicable, and then you look down the specifics to see where it feeds in, but they didn't specify. So I think, yeah, well except that you don't then reference that proportion and rhythm are part of the universal design principles below. So I think, I think you can probably get rid of it since it's already incorporated in specifics. Okay. Are there universal design principles? Do you have a universal design principles? I mean I see, I have no idea. There are design principles. I don't know that. There are universal design principles and that is intended for accessibility. So ADA accessibility, it's, it is a more inclusive ADA. So the universal, well I'm not sure that that's what they were referring to. Universal design principles, especially in shall be pedestrian oriented, oriented, and integrate universal design principles. Universal design principles means accessibility by anybody, and that's what the universal design principle is. There is, but it's, so maybe, maybe as we make sure that that's a defined term instead. It would have to be a defined term and it would have to, we would also have to know to what extent that's going to put in for requirements. Are they the seven principles of universal design? Developed by architects, equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and intuitive use? I think that's, I think that's what they were referring to. If it's not, then there's definitely Google confusion. Yeah, because I would have assumed universal design, because when we talk about housing, universal design and housing is to be accessible. But in that case, is it, is it capitalized because it's very specific? I thought it was. Yeah. So if it was capitalized. Capitalized. And that's, I'm saying from my discussion, I don't think that they meant the ADA ones. Yeah, and there are, no, 13 can be another one that can, can have some vagueness to it, can have some vagueness. A lot of vagueness to it. New lane development shall incorporate sustainable design and construction materials and material compatibility with historic materials and styles. I think the fact that the word integrate there is, that gives a lot of flexibility. It's not a very strict word. Yeah. Well, then the next sentence on that is where Mike had problems before integrating any energy conservation measures to enhance the sustainability of a historic building, the existing energy efficient characteristics of the building shall be identified and preserved. And that's a shall. That's so confusing. That one. Let's just get rid of that. I don't know. I don't understand what it's saying. Well, they're trying to say, because the first sentence is all about new development. Really what they're trying to get at is, because they're talking about sustainability. They're saying, Mike thinks that they're really trying to get at, you can't just change out your windows. Yeah, there's this undertone of that argument. You're going to replace your windows. If they're already efficient, whatever that means, then you have to keep them. Well, if replacing an old leaky window will save so many BTUs, but replacing that window with a new window, we first have to factor in how much energy it took to pump the oil out of the ground, ship it to make that vinyl window that's going to go into replace that window. There's actually more carbon that's being emitted to build that window than it would be to fix the old window. Even though the old window doesn't work. And that detail of the discussion has to go through and make a decision as to whether or not somebody has provided us the information and whether that information is accurate and whether that's going to be... Yeah, so personally, as zoning administrator, I'm fine getting rid of that sentence. I am not sure that this analysis is what all the members of HPC is not the way they perched it out for it to mean. That wasn't my first reading. My first reading was if you already have tight windows or if you already have some insulation, then keep it. Be careful when you add insulation to a historic building because of what you do to damage the building. Or if it's naturally insulated already, don't get rid of that.  It's like a solid wall. Let's drop 13. I wouldn't drop the whole thing. We don't know what it means. I don't understand it and I don't know what it's adding. The one thing I'd say is if you guys are going to work on integrating the general design standard, it's good. The one thing, the one comment I would make about the general design standards is that really, that's a bit different from the specifics of it. I read this stuff through the lens of whether or not these list of issues give sufficient notice to an applicant and what's expected of them. And specifically with some of these general, more general ones, I think this discussion here illustrates that guidance is lacking, that notice is lacking, so it might be just an exercise of just drilling down. What is it that I really want? What are we really talking about? Just saying. It'd be nice to get an application and I'll have to try to just go through it. I just feel like there's definitely nuts in all of these, it's sort of closed in the language that gets around. You know what I mean? I think a couple of these last ones got a little bit more into things. Even 12, I don't think technically I would support keeping either. If you read it literally, so if you alterations to building called for by public safety, accessibility and fire codes shall be designed to maintain the character of the construction. We would reverse that in our heads to go through and say if you will not be able to maintain the character of the construction materials and features then we will deny your application. I mean we turn these as administrators, we have to turn these into the negatives so we can go and say okay well if they can, okay, you have to take the molding off, you have to take the historic molding off to widen this, to put in, to make it handicapped accessible because you're going to remove the molding, you're denied. And clearly we probably... Versus that is shall then. Or not having a qualifier of to the extent reasonable or something like that or just be like, if it's public safety, accessibility and fire codes, I'm sorry, you just have to be allowed to do it and you move that to an exemption. Yeah, I mean that's the thing, something like that that really becomes, you're going to have to comply with fire codes, try to do it in a way that's helpful to us. But you're right, flipping it, doing it in a negative, it's a much clearer way of really filling down what these general standards are really asking for. And that's the thing, a lot of this stuff, especially on the back end, I just don't, if I'm an applicant on a good side... You're not proposing to take 12 out, are you? I mean I think it was just one that I think it needs to be moved somewhere else or it needs to be... Mike and I need to figure this out and then be able to go back to HPC with a suggestion on how to rework these. What we need to make sure we get from you guys some of the bigger policy where your thoughts and minds are, because we haven't jumped into... We've made recommendations to HPC and how we would tweak it, but we really haven't jumped too far into the policy stuff because we need you guys to make those policy decisions of where things go and then we can come back and massage things to go through and say, now that we've been thinking about it, we know what you want and here's a better way of saying it. So for these groupings, would it be fair for us to say that we'd like you to look at it and to clarify or eliminate where appropriate? It sounds like we're... For the general design standards and realign... You're going to fit those into the subsections, into the specific standards? I think where it makes sense. And I think one of the other... There's a big, big, big picture. Are you good with the decision to have design review both historic as well as new development? That's a huge part of this. Is everybody on board with that? Because if you're not, then it's reverting it back to HPC for a pretty big rewrite. So just... I would say so far it seems like we're under that assumption, but we haven't really fully had the discussion. Is that something the design review doesn't do now? They don't do new development? They do, but the problem is that... I mean, there is a choice to do one or the other. Design review does do both right now and covers... It's the whole... It's design review. It's not just historic review. And Historic Preservation Commission made the decision to keep that but providing way more detail and specific subsets as to what applies to which kind of development when it comes to the regulations. Because right now, you just have your one list of criteria. And the DRC has to say this is... Clearly, preservation or reconstruction of appropriate historic style does not apply to new development. Harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district, that applies to both kinds of development. And it's just making sure that Planning Commission is on board with that decision to stick with covering both... Having it be design review and not just historic review. So I just wanted to make sure that you were on board with that. May I make a broad policy recommendation when you take a look at this document? I think the more that I'm looking at this and the more we're talking about it is I'll take this with a big grain of salt because I'm sort of flushing the side of the line right now. Because I think what may be helpful is this... This document, as I read it, seems to be drafted in a way... There's a lot of competing considerations and a lot of overlays with a lot of what is trying to be a changer. The A-require and the spotlight. All these broader issues that are always present here. The document kind of is drafted in a way where all of those other competing considerations is drafted in a way where those are subservient and historic preservation rule. Does that make sense? And it might be helpful when you take a look at how to integrate this up is to prioritize what are drop-dead things that are non-negotiable. A-D-A-requirements, fire-coding lines. And I think that might be helpful if you go back and sort of tweak some of this language and try to figure out like set-aside things that you just have to acknowledge and those you have to work around those things as opposed to trying to work those things into this goal. This historic preservation. Does that make sense? We have some things that we must allow. We have some things that applicants must meet. And then I think we've got some that are somewhere in the middle. And I think if you prioritize those competing interests it can help to integrate. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. It's also having this feedback from the Planning Commission versus just staff who's supposed to be there to some degree guide but also to draft things the way the HBC is asking them to be presented as this is their wish. Having that feedback to go back. Yeah, and that's exactly how... I think that document has that tone right now which is this is how we like things to be and that's perfectly non-negotiable but it sort of varies some of the issues that I think applicants need to be aware of and just need to be recognized when they're applied. And I'm sorry. No, no, you don't have to be. You don't have to be. That makes sense. So do you feel like you have what our suggestion is for Jay and into Kay there? Yep. Okay, so to move along we're kind of still on Kay, I guess. Kay is broken into six different sections if you follow it all the way down as most of the details. Kay one's for existing structures, right? And alteration in addition to existing A, little A being historic, little B being non-historic. I have one small thing I know that's looking through this section and it's in a few different places. It's where the extent possible is kind of a phrase that's used over and over again. And I was more in favor of adding a little more flexibility to some of these things. And so I was thinking for some of these to the greatest extent, practical. For instance, we've already mentioned under windows. And maybe windows isn't the best example, but since the pattern sizes, proportions, original features such as trim, slash and molding shall be preserved to the extent possible. Possible is a very strict word. Or it could be interpreted depending on the personalities and how the DRC chooses to look at it. Then how do you define practicality? You don't, but there has to be some wiggle room. It's more of a standard than an absolute rule. That's the way I'm saying it. It's more of thinking of like what's common sense or reasonable. Whereas possible doesn't really have to take reasonableness into account. If it's possible, it's possible. That's what I'm getting at. It's possible, cost you three quarters of a million dollars, but it is possible. Practicable might be going and saying, well, that's not really practical. Another example of it is on the next side under the new structures, under sub two. It's a scale in massing. Building shall be compatible with sounding historic structures. Well, this isn't one where it says possible, but I just thought instead of shall be... Yeah, scale in massing, though... That's part of, that's one of the things I'm going to go through design review. And it's new building and it's a major site plan. Then yes, you're already looking at scale in massing. And that's a... I don't think you need to the extent practical. Looking at it again, I think the word compatible has enough squishiness built into it that's already there. So, yeah, kind of... Compatibility and design. There's so much... So many options there. It is. And it's defined in a way that I think gives a lot of... I mean, unfortunately, it's also... It's in harmony with. Yeah, but it's... And harmony is... Except the characteristics that they're going to be looking at specifically for compatibility. At one point, they actually did go so far as to try to come up with a definition of in harmony. Oh, no. It went off the rail, so we just got rid of that definition. I forgot that we got rid of that. No, I think that makes sense to switch out a lot of the possibles to practicable. I think that's something we can definitely, you know, go back to the HPC. And the other thing to remember is just because the HPC doesn't agree with the changes you are suggesting doesn't mean you can't make those changes. The only thing I'll point out with the greatest extent possible or practicable is that it becomes extremely difficult to deny an application. Because, basically, you have to meet this rule, but if you can't meet this rule, then we're going to let you have your project anyways doing X.  It kind of takes that off the table when you've got to the greatest extent possible. That's just what I was just going to suggest. You may want to go through, and if you're going to make those changes, just figure out where you want to stay for the requirements and where you want to give that level of room. Because, in my experience, on text, whenever you say something like practicable, it comes back and says, no, you can't do it. There's no, you have no recourse. There's no basis to do it. You're bankrupting. I can't do it. And I think that things like, on page nine, the roof drainage systems and signage where you have when possible and to the greatest extent possible, I would leave those. When you're talking about roof drainage systems still not high to obscure architectural character defining features and shall run adjacent to building corners when possible. I'm not going to change that one. Same with the one about signage and evidence of the science installation must be removed when the sign has been removed to the greatest extent possible. If you literally can't repaint the building to adjust for the fading, then so be it. But I think in those instances, you need that greatest extent possible to have it as firm as you can get it for those items. When it comes to something like matching the window patterning, you shouldn't say to the greatest extent possible. If it's a four over four, you got to replace it with a four over four. To the greatest extent possible. Which I think is what they have in here is it needs to match. And then there's some places. If you can't, then you're denied. That's fine. And I don't think I would adjust these either to practicable for accent. I mean, would you say, you've got to leave some wiggle room, but I wouldn't put practicable. I was just pointing out, when that does come up, be careful to read it knowing that it's limiting you as the reviewer as well. It's building in the flexibility, but we lose our ability to say no. I'm just curious. But I think that's okay, because we don't want to tell somebody you can't remove a sign when we have other regulations that say you have to remove your sign once you've left the building. Okay. G.J. Aslin and Barb. Yeah, new building standards to J. What do you mean did it get changed? We talked about it with the committee, but new construction shall incorporate historic architectural elements that reinforce or add to the character. New construction incorporating historic architectural elements is in contradiction to J.J.8. It's a little bit throughout this, this awkward dance of like, if you're building something now, make sure it's representative of now, but make sure it matches all the material and patterns and all the details of the historic building. This also goes to the compatibility, I think, and saying that when you put in a brand new building, try to make it compatible by doing this. This is one of those things that reflects one of your general standards. So your general, where was the general standard? I think the extent, yeah, the sense is like, even when we're building the parking garage, there was a discussion of using the caps for the parking garage and some of the interior work would be granite or would be materials that look like granite. To reflect the other buildings. It reflects the other granite buildings that are next door, but it's a new building, it's just rather than having no connection to the rest of the neighborhood it had these granite caps. I get what they're trying to do, it's just really hard to legislate. It was a dance, yeah. You say it's historic, then it needs to be historic. And so new construction should incorporate historic architectural elements. Oh yeah, we discussed that where we could just, I just wanted to check to make sure that I haven't made any changes because that was, I have my notes from our previous discussion and I'm going to have our notes from this discussion and then go through and do a bigger rewrite. I wasn't going to do drafts in between. Just took the word historic out. And I think everybody agreed at that meeting that that's what we were going to do, but yeah, I just, I'm sorry Barbara. Basically now was the time for us to incorporate that. We were waiting until now, I think, to incorporate the stuff we discussed that night. So if you have more things from that night, yeah. Yeah, I was really the primary one. Yeah, that was, I think, the big... I know when Stephanie was here about two weeks ago at the meeting she commented her confusion with L and M later on which was the specific guidelines for the Western Gateway and Riverfront District and she didn't understand why they were there. Those were just up. They were randomly there and... We pulled those in because those are in the current regulations. Pages 12 and 13 and I would think we could probably strike them. I think they kept them only because they're in the existing rules. Yeah, we only kept them because they're in the existing rules. I don't have the history as to know why they were put in the existing rules. I mean were those added in the 2018 regulations? No, they go back. Okay, but you just changed the name as to what... Yeah, because before they were the Office Park and Gateway District. Okay, so... And because those districts no longer existed we simply changed the name to be the Western Gateway District and the Riverfront District. Yeah, I mean you have, in Riverfront you have your new development shall be oriented so that both River and Street Passads are primary. I mean there are specific things in here that are very specific to those districts. And maybe it's a going through and seeing which of these things are now duplicative. You know, your 2201M1 Spatial Relationships that's all covered now in our basic specifics. Yeah, I'm with Stephanie. I'm in favor of getting rid of both those. Completely? I don't know as I would get rid of it completely. There are some things in here that are very specific to look. These are gateways. These are places that people... Riverfront, I'm not sure. Riverfront, too? Even the gateway. The riverfront is in the map. Materials on the river side of the structure shall be of equal character and quality as those on the street side. That's very, very specific to the riverfront. There's a few things. These are the existing... So this only applies in the riverfront areas that are within the blue. So it really is just this area. So the question is, if you already have to meet all the other design criteria, you now have an additional set of criteria for these guys. So there's actually more regulation in riverfront than there is in State Street. Yeah. But in some cases you're seeing both sides of those buildings in the riverfront where you don't see both sides of State Street buildings. Well, you could on Taylor Street. I mean, we're building a couple buildings right now on Taylor Street that are visible from Memorial Drive. Well, maybe it's go through to have some of these things apply not necessarily to the riverfront district, but, well, buildings with riverfrontage versus riverfront district. But I don't know if that's something that people want to do. I mean, I think it's... Do you use the State House and things like that already covered elsewhere in here? Yeah, so that is, but that's different from this riverfront number two. That's a funky one. But the... Well, that's what I'm wondering if some of these things can... It's a little clunky to add it to the existing versus just have a couple. I mean, we've got mechanical equipment in the riverfront district. It's definitely a concern because we've seen it from above. Can all that stuff be dealt with in scale, massing, orientation, all that other stuff? I feel like... There's enough tools that better do what is in their toolbox. Because they're... They're... They're just grandfathered at the moment. They're not really tailored to what we're currently doing. So it's... I mean, some of these are... Some of these are duplicative and more general, such as the, you know, provide visual protection for gateways to city and view corridors. That's duplicative of just a general standard in here. But then it may be just a reanalysis. I think they didn't want to rework something that had been very clearly specifically adopted without confirmation that that was an area open to being reworked. Could we ask them to take a look at those two sections just to find if there's anything that should be incorporated specifically and to incorporate it elsewhere? Yep. I mean, that's the, you know, right now in Western Gateway, all utilities shall be placed underground. The only time right now that the DRB deals with that, about placing utilities underground, I think, is subdivision. That's the only time that that comes up. Whereas right now in Western Gateway, they're really, for a while now, I guess they've been really trying to push to make sure if you're doing new development, you have that underground. I guess that makes sense. So, yeah, it may be a reevaluation to see which of these need to be kept. Well, I think that actually talking about those sections brings us through. We kind of skipped over demolition and signage if anyone has anything to say about those. So, the demolition section... Hold on. Let me just make my notes. So, that's... So, the demolition section... I'm just double checking to make sure that the old one didn't have anything in it. Yeah, the demolition section having that specifically laid out is new. And it's a little... I'm going to be honest, it's a little messy. I'm just trying to remember... Hold on one second. I think in 3004, there's some demolition requirements for all structures, but the demolition of national... of historic ones are only... Yeah, I'm just looking... Except that the current... The current zoning regulations say that no structure may be erected, no reconstructed, substantially altered, restored, removed, or demolished without review of the design plans by the DRC. So, right now, demolition within the overlay district does go to the DRC or is supposed to. And I'm just trying to see what in here is... Yeah, this is not new. I think it's just a restatement. I'm double checking the applicability stamp clause here to see if we even need that. Applicability... And I don't think we do... Honestly, I think it's duplicative, given the reference to land development and the applicability standard. And land development includes demolition. So 2201E applicability says land development within the design review overlay district shall only be approved for review by the DRC. And... Hold on. Demolition requires DRC to... Right. Yeah, that's just... I think what this was is just to... I think this was sort of a reiteration, just to make it really, really clear for users, but I don't know if it's... Unfortunately, this is a section that's supposed to be talking about standards, but there are no standards that were given. Right, so it doesn't really make sense to have it here. Yeah, this... If you're going to have requirements that you're going to review demolition, we should have standards that say these are the instances where we would approve it and these are the instances where we wouldn't. Yeah, I think you and I talked about this as being a problem. Well, I mean, but I mean, the thing is, they don't... Unless they're just enforcing the rules that are under 3004D. Those are the general demolition standards in ways of getting approved for demolition. One is the demolition of a historic building where the resulting redevelopment of the site is going to have a substantial public benefit. And the second one is it's not cost-effective to save the structure. Well, and I think that's... I think that's one reason they had, in a way, these general design standards, which could apply to all of these things, is that your first cause here, so in addition to your 3004D standards, which are your general demolition standards, which is what this sub-3 incorporates, that you have to review under the provisions of section 3004D, because they didn't want to just rewrite them all. In addition to DRC's review under that, if the general design standards also apply to all of these scenarios specified under the specific design standards, then you run into this removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize a property shall be avoided. You start running into some of these general standards that would come into play, potentially, if we leave it organized the way it is now, versus just saying DRC reviews demolition projects, just to clarify, DRC reviews demolition projects within the overlay district under 3004D, same as the DRB does. So you have some options there. Do we just limit them to the same standards, and then they give their guidance to the DRB as to how to apply 3004D to things in the overlay district? I think it would be difficult for somebody to meet the other requirements, as well as meet the demolition. Either you're going to be allowed to demolish it or you're not going to be allowed to demolish it. I apologize, I have to run it. Sorry guys. We can still vote. So I think what's best there is to leave it to you two to come up with something to suggest to stroke preservation. Is it okay with everyone? Yeah. And so with that, we should try to wrap up real quick and get a vote on our suggestions. My definitions are to deal with those requirements. In other words, these are not defined in zoning ordinance. Right, because anything that was defined in the zoning ordinance, we tried to just incorporate those. These in general aren't used elsewhere and this specifically says these defined terms are specific to the provisions of this section. So they don't apply. No, the way this is drafted, they don't apply to the rest of the regulations. And most of them shouldn't be used in this. If there is one that you want to have used broadly, we would just take it out of this section and put it into 510. Yeah. If there's something you want used more broadly, then we can do that easily. Let me look at that, because that was not clear because it seems like the number of them could be larger. They aren't intended to right now. Elevation is defined, but it's not defined in zoning. Correct. We'll have to revisit that though because we should vote now because I know people have to read. Do we have a motion for what we want to pass on? Or I can give a shot at putting it into words. Do we have a motion to take the suggestions that we've given to Meredith and Mike tonight to have those incorporated and then pass along to the Historic Preservation Commission for their review and possible integration into the proposed regulations? Second. Okay. And who's in favor? I. Okay. Host. Okay. And it passes. Four votes were still all right. That's right. So we didn't need John's vote. And then for the agenda to wrap it up, we're going to skip the boundary discussion. That's going to be next week. We're just trying to handle all this stuff at once before getting back to the city plan. And it says that we can consider minutes, but let's actually just put that off since we ran late tonight and we'll do that next time. So with that, motion to adjourn. Non-debatable motion to adjourn. Thanks.


We review a selection of methods for performing enhanced sampling in molecular dynamic simulations. We consider methods based on collective variable biasing and on tempering, and offer both historical and contemporary perspectives. In collective variable biasing, we first discuss methods stemming from thermodynamic integration that use mean force biasing, including the adaptive biasing force algorithm and temperature acceleration. We then turn to methods that use bias potentials, including umbrella sampling and meta-dynamics. We next consider parallel tempering and replic exchange methods. We conclude with a brief presentation of some combination methods. This article was authored by Cameron Abrams and Giovanni Bussi.


In the meantime the Independent National Electoral Commission on Tuesday opened and closed its defense in Peter Obe's petition challenging the result of February 25 presidential election. Recall that Bola Tinobu was declared the winner of the election and was sworn in as a president on May 29. Obe of the Labour Party is urging the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja to set aside Tinobu's victory on grounds that the Independent National Electoral Commission failed to comply with the electoral laws. We are not even surprised because if you look very well and if you understand exactly what is happening, the whole structure of this election and the problems with the election is based on technology. And today INEC has called their ACIS director who came to justify what INEC did by way of what they said, the glitches that occurred, how they tried to fix the glitches, how they deployed parties to fix the glitches. So apart from this issue of technological glitches, there would have been no problem with the election. The election would have been transparent, credible, would have been as Nigerians expected because I'm travelling Nigerians who voted knew what the result of the election ought to have been. So when the people now found different results on the IREF, particularly blood copies, blood images, blood pictures on the IREF and don't forget that INEC had a short Nigerian that election results would be uploaded from the polling unit in real time from the beavers to the IREF. So we were wondering what happened then. So and when the INEC ACIS director testified and provided a video. So you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hey, just to start off, because I mentioned that a lot of the subscribers to my channel probably are unfamiliar, and I know I wasn't familiar up until maybe my last year of university, what is it that an actuary does? So it's a good question. I mean, and we always have a little joke in the industry. It's like, how many mocks is this question for? Because we, I think, actually it's notorious for writing exams. We write lots and lots of exams, so we kind of are very good at answering exam questions. And I think the one mock answer is that actuaries confront risk. So normally in the financial domain, and we try and prepare for an uncertain future. What we found is that this tends to put us in the financial industries, that's kind of where we're traditionally placed. But there is a big movement in actuarial science to tap into what we call the wider fields. And this means going into all sorts of things, whether it's climate change, whether it's nonprofit organizations, even sports, anything where there's uncertainty in the future. Actuaries love to go in and play. And essentially what we say is we have this belief that the past is an indicator of the future. So we use what happened in the past, the data and all of that. And we use that as the foundation for our models to forecast. And then we say, if this is what happened in the past, this is what might happen in the future, maybe we should do some things differently now, so that we're not destroyed by the future. So some people like to refer to actuaries as risk managers. And I guess that is part of the job. We are identifying risks, we are measuring risks, we are managing them, we are monitoring them. But why I'm a little bit hesitant is because there's so many different types of actuaries, you don't want to put them in a box because another actuary might be listening and saying, hey, that's very different to what I do. For myself, or what tends to happen in actuarial science here in South Africa, and we follow very much what happens in England, the UK, because we were previously a colony of the UK. So we kind of have a very similar structure to them where there's eight technical exams, there's probably change now because sometimes they combine the exams, but there's a lot of technical subjects. And this is like statistics, mathematics, financial engineering, all these kind of things, economics, accounting, all your technical subjects, which all your actuaries do. Then there's some application subjects such as communication, model documentation, and then one that puts fear in every single actuarial student's mind. It's called CA1, but they have renamed this exam to something else, but it's called actuarial risk management. It's a monster exam because you have to learn about the pension industry, the life insurance industry, the general insurance industry, the health insurance industry, and the financial industry all in one exam. It's so big that it's written over three days.  So it's a monster exam, but once you pass that you become an associate actuary. And when you're an associate actuary, you get into the profession, you get all the perks, all that kind of stuff. You can then go and choose two subjects to specialise in. So I specialised in finance and risk management. And then depending on what you specialised in, depends on what you can write your fellowship in. So you could do your fellowship in life insurance, which is what traditional or the very first actuary did. When do people die? How much money should they set aside for their widow? There's the general insurance actuary, which is your car accidents, your pension actuary. With my two, it allowed me to either go into banking to become a banking actuary, which is very, very new. It's kind of within like the last five years that this fellow actuary has emerged, essentially just to help banks manage their credit risk and liquidity risk. So that's one of that I could have taken where instead I chose to do the financial actuary. So financial applications, investments and all that type of stuff. And what was interesting about that fellowship is that if I was to show you the curriculum for that subject, being a CFA, you would be like, hold on, this looks incredibly familiar, because it's almost like I was actually comparing before this conversation, the CFA syllabus for level three and my financial fellowship. And it's very, very close. I mean, basically everything that you guys do for level three, we're doing as well. And even when we were writing the exam, we would sometimes be put in a group with CFA level three guys, we would follow their blogs. I was reading a lot of CFA material for my exam. So there's the subject matter is very, very similar. Of course, the work wise position is slightly different.  The actuarial financial application is very much for your institutions. So your life insurers, your general insurers, your pension funds, all of these people have a lot of money that they need to invest. And as an actuary, one of the things that because we've learned all about these institutions, we understand their liability profile very well. So we will normally assist these companies develop their investment strategy, kind of help them construct their portfolio. And we will give them advice on which CFA manager to go to. So we actually almost interview CFA managers and we kind of say, okay, you know, what is your philosophy to the market? What is your timeframe? What market conditions does your thing work for? And if it aligns with our client's intentions, then we say, okay, these are, this is a good match. And then the pension fund will say, okay, let's give 100 million to the CFA manager. And then the actuary jobs not done yet, we will then be part of that monitoring team.  Or gosh, you thought you're going to have a very low tracking error, but it ended up being quite large, you know, so we would investigate, monitor. So we could be your worst nightmare, or we could be your best friend, your best friend in the sense that we can send a lot of money your way, worst nightmare in the sense that we kind of police what you guys are doing if you're investing money for these actuarial institutions. And Joe, I guess another big difference with CFA and actually is CFA is global, which is great from a branding perspective. I mean, everyone kind of knows what a CFA is, you know, you kind of see the logo when you're on Reddit and see the ads pop with actuallys, you kind of very much more local. So I guess the only difference with the syllabus would be like especially for my one, there was a big focus on South Africa's financial history, South Africa's tax laws, South Africa's regulations, because you can imagine, like if you're just learning finance, like just a very crude example, we kind of told you buy into an exchange-traded fund if you want diversification. In South Africa, that wasn't always the case because our stock market was kind of smaller. It was dominated by gold shares and mining shares specifically in the late 90s, which means buying into an ETF did not really give you sector diversification. It wasn't worth the management fees that go to an ETF because the stock market was so dominated by gold. So it's one of those things where South Africa or what you do as an actuary is you learn maybe a little bit more specific to your region. But Joe, I would say that's maybe the big differences is actuaries may be specific to institutions where CFA may be more general and actuaries are more local focus where CFA is more global.


Before we begin this ceremony, I would like to acknowledge that we are holding this ceremony at a time of great sadness for the 101st Airborne Division. On Wednesday evening, two H860 Black Hawk helicopters crashed, killing all nine aboard both aircraft. Please join me in a moment of silence and prayer for our comrades and their family members. At this time, Lieutenant General Burdila, Romanian Land Forces Command, Lieutenant General Pana, Chief of the Romanian Air Force, Brigadier General Svinu, Commander, Information and Public Affairs Director, will present the 2nd Brigade Combat Team with the Romanian emblem of honor of the Defense Staff Streamer. Today's transfer of authority ceremony between the Strike Brigade and the Bastogne Brigade signifies the completion of a successful deployment for strike as the unit will case its colors in preparation for redeployment, while Bastogne will encase the unit colors signifying the assumption of the mission. For most organizations, the challenge of being a trailblazer in a new area of operations may have proved difficult to overcome. Yet led by the superb command team of Colonel Ed Mathides, Command Sergeant Major Doug Walker and now Command Sergeant Major Gary Lynn, strike soldiers have embodied the motto of the 5-0 deuce earned when it was formed more than 80 years ago, that a strike soldier fights where they are told and wins where they fight and when they did.