Get rolling. So I'm going to call the meeting to order. First thing you have to do is approve the agenda. So. Take a motion to approve the agenda. Everyone's ready. I'll move the approval of the agenda. Okay. Motion from our young. We have a second. I saw Maria's hand. So we'll take those. Second. And so those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Looks like Aaron stuck at work. Makes me sad. I mean, so does Mike, but that's every time it's just as comfortable as my basement. So, yeah. All right. Okay. So. Gender approved. Comments from the chair. I do have a few things. First off. I'm going to miss our next meeting. I'm going to be on vacation. So hopefully gave you'll be available to. Leave things for us. Sure. I'll be here. Great. So I think one related question with that is. Does anyone else expect to be out? It's going to be gone too. I realize. Yeah, it's, it's the local schools. Vacation week. So. Anybody else. Okay. So should we send a poll around just in case we have an issue with a quorum? Well, it seems like. It seems like, so we're down to that leaves us with five. So Brian, welcome to the meeting. We're going to agree. Sorry. Do you, will you be available for the next meeting? I'll send a poll around this. Since we don't have John's answer. The moment. And.  For us? Yeah, I will be away. So does that march that's March 7th, right? Or March 14th. Okay. So. Anybody else. If there's like one more person, then we may as well call it. But. I'll send a poll around then, since we don't have John's answer. The moment.  For us to cancel the meeting. When we're not. You can cancel in advance. If you don't think you're going to have a quorum, you could just go and cancel the 27th meeting. And we can, we can do that outside of this meeting. Yeah. Yeah, that can happen at this meeting or. Any time up to the meeting. So. I think maybe, maybe. I'll just let you make that call. You know. We can always, you can always have a meeting without a quorum if. If it seems like there's, there's stuff to do, but. I'll sleep it up to you gave you can. Follow up with Aaron, Brian and John and see if. They're sure to make it. Okay. Well, we'll see what work we have to do to Mike and fill us in a little bit too. So. Yeah, I think that is some missing info. I don't have either is like, you know, what parts of the city plan might be available to review and so forth. Okay. So, so that's the update. It's looking like the next meeting is questionable. One. One thing I also wanted to bring up was that. Maria had the idea of having a guest speaker. And force. So what's important for me, I think if we have a guest speaker. Is someone who's going to really take a deep dive for us. I think that the surface level one on one stuff's not as beneficial. But there's definitely some opportunities for some deep dive type. People to come in. Which I think you can kind of expand our conversation. So the things that come to mind would be having someone from seeing you come. And having someone from from a housing conservation board since that's where we're going to focus on. Housing all the time. So those are the two that we thought of so far that would be probably good candidates. So for my housing conservation board, we can probably figure out some time in the future and make some contacts there. But for the CNU contact mic, I was wondering if. You could either reach out or just share with me the contacts that were made before when, when the letter was being discussed. But in either case, just an extended invitation for someone to drop in on their meetings about that from CNU. Work at the housing conservation board. Are you looking for. I'm just curious what you're looking for from. From a guest speaker from the HCD. So I'm not remembering the name. I've personally heard. One of the people. There who focuses on on housing. Maybe you'll help me remember the name. He's given he's given presentations to state agencies and other groups. I could dig it up. Is it Gus our executive director. This wasn't the executive director, but it was maybe like a deputy, maybe of housing. I'm struggling to think of a man who works. He is not going to be frank. And then, and then, well, Maria made a contact with someone named Richard there. Who I was at my. Richard was at the Vermont Vermont housing and community development agency. Okay. Okay. So I cross. Okay. I'm going to ask you about the housing community development. Yes. And since. Maria's. Or since Ariane's confused, maybe my guy is also. Housing conservation board. In my defense, I mean. They're pretty similar. Oh, I would beg to differ though. I don't know. I meant, I meant the acronyms are similar. There's an H there's C. D. These. Okay. So, so now that we have that clear up more, but are you on now that you now that I accidentally said VHCB when that's probably not as relevant that there might be room there too. But yeah, housing community. Yeah. I think that's, I think the community development. Areas they focus a lot more in planning, I think, than VHCB generally does. So if you want someone to talk about housing for VHCB. Yeah. Great, but I wasn't sure. That's partly why I was a little bit confused because we're, I don't think we're quite as planning focused as the. The state. I've probably missed said VHCB 50 times then when I met. Community development. So. Good thing is this isn't recorded in TV or anything. Right. So, all right. I think it is. What. TV. So John's here. That's how I learned that John's here. I just embarrassed myself and John appears like a, like a wizard. So, John, we're going to go back to something we said before, we were trying to figure out if people will be here for, and available for the next meeting. So. Are you going to be missing because of the school break or anything like that? Cause right now you would be the fourth person. It looks like who would possibly be able to make the next meeting. That's on the 27th. Yeah. Unfortunately, I will be in Pittsburgh. Well, there you go. I think, I think that's enough. Kirby. Alrighty. Yeah. It's leaving to be Gabe's call. That sounds like he made the call. So no meeting. No meeting next time. And for speakers, we had got some ideas. So keep that in mind. Let's try to reach out to Congress and your urbanism. Let's definitely not reach out to the ACB. And. The other thing I had was. Just to. Remind everyone to encourage everyone to read that review as an email or like a little earlier a couple hours ago. Which is, that's, that's the guide that. ACCD and Congress, your urbanism and a few other entities worked on. And I think it's a fabulous document. I'm really glad that that was published. So we should definitely check that out. And that's kind of the. Like. Deep dive and also kind of the. Progressive planning is the right way to put it. But there's still like. Where planning is these days. Kind of approach. You know, in that document. So I think that's a really, that's a really, that's a really good one. It's really good. And it's really good for us to spread and make aware and more peculiar. That. Very traditional, you know, zoning is not. Where things really are right now. As far as like, you know, with the. In the scholarly area anyway. So. So everybody check that out. It's a great resource to know about. That's, that's all I've got for comments. Does anybody else have. Any of those. Let's dive in. Last time. We started to explore. The idea of. Looking at the design review district. As a possible. Boundary for. A test area to. I don't know if test area is the right way to put it. But, but as, as maybe the boundary for maybe resume, removing density caps. In our neighborhoods. I think we also talked about. Possibly maybe. Being less strict with the density caps in the neighborhoods. There may be touching that design district. So that's, that's what I'm recalling about where we were. Does, does anybody else have. Important. Things they remember from the discussion. Okay. So let's just open up the floor. This is what this meeting is going to be all about. Is, is we're going to tackle the density thing, then we'll, then we'll try to move on to the other. Questions and knock those out. And I'm going to try to keep. A written record of where we are with the ideas for this meeting. So with that handed off to others to. Let's, let's talk about density first. What do you think of that idea? What other elements we need to keep in mind? So I'll, I'll just say, you know, I mean, it's just been over a little over a year since I joined. The, the board here. And the first zoning for those who are newer than that, right? The first zoning. Changes that I was involved with. We, we, we had, we had, we had, we had, we had, we had several. A couple of things to do. We had some very marketing changes that I was involved with. We, we got a few of the things through it. A couple, not through, right? We got the solar issue and a couple other things. But one we, we had recommended this. Change in. Lifting the density requirements. And Mike was. And his comments was not supportive. knew that in in our deliberations here but in the comments the reason was that you know they had cited in this AARP new urbanism report a need for some better design review process and if we had had that that you know he could support it but that we you know we didn't have it. So since then a couple months ago and I think maybe everyone but Maria was here for that they there were now I know there are guidelines and it's not necessarily like the rules but we we have some really really well done design review guidance. So I think you know my going in position knowing that a lot of the opposition was about some of the other areas is where we have design review can we go back to what we originally recommended and what I remember from our conversation two weeks ago is that Mike actually was okay with that at this point. Then there was a separate conversation so I think we need to talk about that first Kirby and see if we're all in agreement with that and then you had talked about well do we need to walk back around it but maybe we can talk about that afterwards and see is there consensus that okay so we had this recommendation we all moved forward with it there was some issues with it but now we're in a different place than we were can we all you know support that in conjunction with the recommendations that we had and in discussion you know with with you know amongst this group and with our our planning administrator that we're all on the same page without. Yeah that's good so yeah and Mike did respond to that a little bit last week I think but Mike do you want to respond? No I I'm good with it's a lot easier to be able to assure public and and counsel about things within the design review district I don't think that's going to be a big issue and I'm not I'm not sure that we don't have good enough rules but the issue as I said was just coming you know when pushed you know do I think anything that was discussed as the worst-case scenario would happen no I don't but if somebody did want to push the worst-case scenario is there anything we could do about it I'm not sure you know and that was that was where my concern was was just being able to follow up on that that maybe we needed to make sure and unfortunately we had tried to expand the design review district and that wasn't successful in previous iterations so certainly within the design review district I don't think there's an issue some other things that the historic preservation commission is working on this would only apply to historic buildings but demolition they they've got some draft demolition rules that they want to roll out when we do our update because we're talking about getting a zoning update ready to go they wanted to bring in some new demolition rules for how to regulate the demolition of historic structures so most of the time when people are talking about those worst-case scenarios they're talking about are already built out already historic neighborhoods and people are going to come in and buy up two historic buildings they're going to tear them down they're going to merge the lots and they're going to build a giant four-story building with flat roofs and all sorts of awful things and this would at least knock that down to go through and say well you can't you can't not you can't demolish historic buildings so that would be that would be one place to kind of have more more input on or there there would be more control over so but yeah when it comes to design I'm pretty I'm I'm comfortable I just think the public and the council is going to want a little bit more control to make sure that these things don't go haywire and so I think part of our response to the worst-case scenario is in most cases that worst-case scenario that's dreamed up is not actually it's it's often not possible designing we do have because we do have those additional restrictions and then and then there's the financial element which we need to remember to bring up this time around too because a lot of these these worst-case scenarios are they're going to tear down this like wonderful building and they're going to put up something ugly and that makes no financial sense you know but but that kind of didn't go opposed enough last time I don't think and city council maybe thought it might be true good job I was just going to say you know design is bad design isn't uh isn't limited to to um mixed use and multifamily housing like I'm sure we've seen some of the worst designs out there are big single-family homes in which we have zero design standards for whatsoever and they're subject to the same um same sort of constraints as as the other types of development in terms of their size and massing so basically what we're saying is if you're building single-family home like go nuts like you know build it as as as big and ugly as you want but but we're not comfortable if it's like a duplexer or multifamily we have like different standards for those that's a good point I put that I put that on the notes and on a similar note Mike can you tell us the ways in which the the design review helps stop you know undesirable development aesthetically undesirable development which I think is what the the worst case scenario is all about the aesthetics yeah the we have an entire section for folks who aren't aware um it's an overlay so design review district is an overlay district and it has so it covers mostly the downtown historic district and then it kind of extends over to a couple of other areas some of which are not historic including um you know the areas near the high school and out to national life so those are all areas that are also in design review um and so the design view has two sets of rules one set of rules that are for the historic buildings and another set of rules that are for the not historic buildings and then a set of rules that apply to both and so um if you're in that district and you want to make an exterior change to your building you have to go to the design review committee they make recommendations that are then enforced by either the zoning administrator when she issues the permit or the drb if it's a project that's going to the drb then they add it as conditions um so they they are recommendations to meet the requirements um and then the drb can always is generally accepts them but usually these are very cordial meetings and conversations there are very few times where the design committee is recommending something that the property owner absolutely doesn't want to do or can't do it does happen occasionally but those can always be resolved at the at the drb or at with the zoning administrator so um so the rules have been worked on and revised in 2020 or 2021 we went through a major update of them we have had design review since 1976 and so for the first 45 years it pretty much had the same six standards it was just six lines with no no guidance just six lines um and so it was a pretty you know pretty much the opinion of the drc and now it's a much more has much more detail in it so it's a little less arbitrary which was one of the complaints of the old one was people would complain that it was an arbitrary set of rules because you could go to the drc one year and you'd get one decision and go to a drc two years later and get a different decision simply because some people had left so the new rules are a little bit more refined but they're they're doing a very they seem to be doing a very good job and I think it's evidenced by looking at the downtown and I just did a review of the historic register and some of these things and the number of historic buildings and the number of buildings that have changed significantly in our downtown is pretty it's pretty minimal most of the changes have supported the historic preservation they're good buildings good recommendations so I think in general if you were to look over the the lifetime of the design review district it's been pretty successful in accomplishing what it wants to do which is out of town out of state developers haven't come in bought up buildings bulldozed them and put in you know put in a right aid or put in a kinnies or something that you just don't see that in our downtown which you will in other communities so I guess I have well I mean first of all I just have to acknowledge that I think I have a different view than probably most other commissioners and that aesthetics and historic preservation is not my not my top priority and especially I always think about working in housing the operational costs of historic buildings can be really really difficult um but my question is so if we would expand um to have more density outside of the design review district I mean we do have I'm not clear on what I guess protections you're I mean I'm not maybe as worried about them but if other people are like what are the protections or for historic buildings or what I mean they're still design standards right they're just not design in the design review district so there aren't design standards so if you were um let's let's say you're up part way up on east state so you're in the national register historic district you have a um um you have a historic house you're not in design review you could go out and uh you know take the windows out and board up all the windows and put on vinyl siding over the whole thing you there's no design requirements at all on an existing house that's outside that if you want to build a brand new building we do have some architectural standards you have to meet um but if you don't with whatever you're doing it's just working with an existing building then there are no protections or requirements that go with that house or that property those standards only apply within the design review district and anywhere in the town if you're building a new building um other than single and two family so single and two family do not have to go through any architectural standards because it's the architectural rules are embedded in site plan and so site plan requirements only apply to not single and two family so if you're going to build a brand new triplex or quadplex um you bought a vacant piece of land you're going to have some architectural requirements that you need to meet okay but you could still put i mean you could put vinyl siding on those buildings today right you just couldn't make them more dense uh on a historic building outside of the historic district yeah outside of the design review district yeah outside of design review district you could remove the clavards and put on vinyl siding if you want if you're in the historic district and it's a historic building you would not be allowed to remove wood clavards and put on vinyl siding you could you have to replace with like material yeah but i guess what i'm getting at is i don't quite see the the connection between density and you know the putting vinyl siding on a house i guess that's yeah the the concern is i mean those those are some of the small things that design review looks at but design review also looks at big things and and and the demolition you're really difficult to demolish a historic building in the historic district it's it's a very difficult process to do through design review and through drb it's an easier process outside of design review um but it's that and what the concern was that was that were raised by the public and you know when we get 25 30 people in here talking about how no density is going to destroy our neighborhood the argument that is always brought out is either demolishing one house or buying two houses that are next to each other bulldozing the houses and putting in you know the 22 units in a square box with a flat roof and parking in the backyard and there's you know and that's you know out of character with all of the neighborhood can we have a design competition to see who could come up with the worst design and if any bank would finance it i mean it's usually the economics that we just can't get i mean if you if you buy two buildings on lumus or liberty street you're talking about spending more than like 1.5 million dollars to buy two houses nowadays and if you're going to demolish those buildings you're spending another you know you're two million dollars and you haven't even put in a foundation so um you know the reality of you being able to make any money on a building afterwards would be pretty slim your best bet is to keep the building as it is and renovate it and maximize your profit within the existing you know maybe maybe renovate or put in an accessory or a carriage house or something like that that would generate a little bit more income but you're usually not going to demolish the house but the argument that's always made is someone can demolish the the buildings i have a question about the effects of eliminating the density requirements in the downtown when did that happen do you guys know i i can't say exactly when i would have to do a little bit of work homework on it but i think that i don't think there's been density in the downtown for a very long time you know it might five or six years i know like what's like 20 years oh i at least it was in it was at least more than 20 years okay um how far back i don't know i mean we've the the city of montpelier stupid hit trivia fact we had zoning since 1947 so we've had zoning for a very long time how long density has been in effect in the downtown i don't i don't know for sure whether it was in the 47 zoning there was a major revision in 73 and then another major revision in about 86 87 so um at some point that went into effect okay i'm just i'm wondering if you know eliminating the density limit requirement um would it even have the effect that i think most of us would want you know of creating more housing or are there other requirements and hurdles that people need to jump through that would eliminate that additional housing in its place you know it's not like downtown it hasn't had a density this density limit hasn't been there in 30 years yet we still have open lots and um i don't know i'm just wondering if the density is really the one thing that we should be focusing on curbie shaking your head i mean then there is there is no silver bullet there's no one yeah this is this is tearing down one of several barriers right i think it's also like it just it seems like it's a very controversial barrier you know i wonder if there are other ways to accomplish what we want yeah i think we had we had this exact discussion last time and it's a it's a very good good point we were wondering like well what what are we there are plenty of places where you can develop now we've had places of that that density and i think where we landed was like it may help a few like edge cases where maybe they've been prevented from adding one or two units it would likely be a handful of housing units and that was like worth it for us if we can get a few more homes great but given the the amount of you know political capital or the amount of like up or i guess it is questionable or debatable if this is like wow if we're if we're gonna you know exhaust ourselves and and spend a lot of time and and effort and it's going to be we're going to end up with a handful of other units when maybe there's there's something else we could do that would be more beneficial than maybe that our time and resources would be better so that i just don't know what it is and it does feel like we need it needs from my perspective it needs to be like everything we need to like try to remove as many of these barriers as possible you know i think some of the other um suggestions that was that were in that report like all together so this is not the silver bullet right it's just one piece but you know i hope we had a chance to talk about you know they they ask why can't we do conversion of three and four units the same way we do duplexes right i mean i think that's a very good question so if if you've removed the density requirement and then we make it easier to convert to three to four bedrooms and say look that's a very acceptable use and that can be done just through zoning for example right there's just there's multiple things that they recommend and that's this is just one of them so i agree it's not the only thing but i think in tandem with some of these other things it could be important i yeah there's a couple there's a couple of i think interesting points though respond maria um one is i i think that the density thing is a foundational thing that it's hard to make much improvement in other areas if we're continuing to have like basing everything around density which is it's just not the right way to go about it's just like fundamentally flawed way and so getting off of that i think is important for a academic person purpose other than just how many houses can we get that's one part of it another part of it is um anecdotally i think in our hearings people really zero in and focus on density and respond badly when we have other ideas like that aren't even necessarily density focused like when we redid the zoning people really just honed in on for every neighborhood what's the density instead of looking at the other aspects of the zoning and so i think it's getting in the way of helpful conversations as well so there's a lot of these like side fringe benefits and then another thing that occurs to me is that um shoot i knew i was going to loss it lose it um the um i'll i'll see the floor for a second i don't come back to me well you know i um and i emailed i think mike is you and and curbie about this but you were talking at one point like what you were saying gave about you know turning a big house that has maybe one apartment into it into three or four apartments like a big house you were saying uh mike you had mentioned the big houses on bailey for example like you know i don't know if that's the worst case scenario that one of those big houses becomes three units right um but what are the barriers like i was like well what's i know every projects has its own particularities but i mean i would and i've called the the town about some stuff on my property but i mean and there's always these challenges like oh well this specific project would need this and need that but i mean what are the barriers to changing one of the big houses on bailey from either a single family home or one with a you know an attic apartment to have three units right now what would those barriers be like an example because it's it's a i mean i'm i'm not i'm not dumb but like it gets complicated pretty quick when you start talking about the different like lot coverage versus this versus that and if you were to call like any given time i'm not saying you know the staff is going to tell you there's going to be particular levels of review based on whatever impacts you're going to have on your right from your project so some of it may be just administrative some of it might go to the drb i realize that's all gets complicated but i guess i was just looking for kind of an example of what the barriers are right now um so the the first barrier you might find is we would look at your property and you're in res 6000 yes so that means you need to have 6000 square foot lot to have a conforming lot and you can have one unit for every 6000 square feet that's the density requirement we're talking about but uh you can regardless of density you can have a duplex so let's say just for example you have an 11 000 square foot lot so it's uh quite a bit bigger than the minimum and not but not quite enough to be double um so you have 11 000 square feet you can still have a duplex so you come in and say boy you know i'd like to have an extra i'd like to have a third unit you just can't do it that's where that's where there's a barrier and that's you know getting to maria's question you know and john's comment that you know it's kind of these ones that are certain certain ones that are on the edge uh we changed the zoning on harrison was it over over um by main street there and we went from res 6000 to res 3000 so that way it would match liberty in in lumis in those and one of the reasons we made that change was because there was somebody who had a house and he had already had an accessory apartment in his uh second floor and he had a garage and he wanted to convert that garage into another accessory apartment and we said well you can't have two accessory apartments and you don't have the density to support that um because your lot isn't big enough so by changing it from res 6000 to res 3000 he would have enough density in order to support the two units he already has plus adding in a third one so it was just enough to kind of add a little bit and it got a lot of support from the public uh in in that neighborhood they were like oh that's okay because we're already finding you know most of our neighborhoods are kind of similar to those and so that change went through really without much opposition but there are a lot of people that do end up having some issues um some neighborhoods do have issues and we had we had to we've had some of these very contentious meetings about making a zoning change but that's usually where it is it's just enough to make a small change um and then the other things for brian you know once you get past that density maybe you do have enough um and actually you know even you know taking your res 6000 example let's say you had a 17 000 square foot lot you still couldn't go to the triplex because you need 18 000 in your in your lot so you've got a 6000 square foot minimum you have a 17 000 square foot lot but you're not allowed to put another apartment in over the garage um and that's really those are the examples that come up from time to time we don't get a lot of these that we have to turn down um giving a little bit of history back before our change in 2018 we had a lot of non-conforming lots and there was no duplex requirements so you you pretty much had very little infill potential in the city it was a big change to get us to those what we called the 90 percent rule so we made 90 percent of all the lots 90 percent of all the uses conforming um which helped to give some infill potential but there's still a lot of buildings that are that are maxed out um and the density is that requirement most of the other requirements are more dimensional and they talk about building new things height setbacks building footprints so that's um those usually don't end up stopping a project uh they they can in certain cases if you have a really small lot with a lot of pavement a lot of roofs you might already be over and if you needed to make any additions you you might be in trouble trying to fit something in but for the most part if there's something that's blocking it it's probably the density requirement uh it's probably because you already have a duplex and your lot isn't three times the size right um that would be the big one we also had this silly shadow rule right you guys mentioned that before yeah oh the shading we're gonna yeah we're we're gonna get to the uh job after we've finished the seeing new stuff by the way it's not it's not forgotten uh the thing the thing that i uh forgot earlier was um the political capital point and that's that um a lot of the folks who are going to be opposing this i don't think it's a matter of political capital because if it's not density it's they'll be opposing something else you know i mean um it's not like a path of least resistance there's going to be like a decent amount of resistance um for any changes to try to open up the city for housing so um that was that was the thing um okay i've heard a lot of good stuff here um about the this particular uh project uh or this you know that's at hand for us here um are there other aspects of it that we want to include in a recommendation um for instance um the question will come up should we do any amendments to the design review regulations in light of this so that's something we should probably at least consider because it's going to come up um and also the idea that there's going to be a density cliff that's you know with the neighborhoods that are right outside um the design review district do we do anything with those densities so those those are two things i'm going to put on the table um we can handle the first one first like mike um i think you've you've addressed this in a way earlier but um what are your thoughts about the need to go back and consider making any changes to the design review regulations if there are any changes to the regulations we're just going to be talking about increasing the the where it applies to i would think i mean the the dent the rules themselves the design review rules themselves are good um okay the the only other thing we could look at would be the um the architectural standards that are embedded in the um major site plan rules but i mean that will certainly help with a number of projects um certainly if somebody were to figure out how to tear down and build new and wanted to build something really ugly you know how much you know how good are those rules you know that that's that's an open question we really haven't had a lot of projects that had to go through design review for for um or to have new projects outside of design review that had to use the architectural standards um we had a couple we've had a couple but not not a lot of them and the projects have generally been good so i don't think it's a don't think it's an issue but we also haven't had people who tried to abuse the system and you know i've lived in communities where people have you know wanted to fit it in you know do do whatever they wanted to and kind of make it make it meet the rules but it's really not meeting the spirit of the rules so that would be but i think within within the design review those rules are fine those rules are fine um and unless we want to entertain expanding the the district um i would point out just you know we want to talk about politics and public perception um the VCFA and if anybody's been following the press and anyone's been following anything VCFA is looking at trying to put in a campus PUD and it's been getting um a lot of public input public comment VCFA is also in the design review district so if we had a conversation that said we're going to remove density in the design review district it would be removing also removing density from VCFA which we will certainly um you you making the recommendation would just have to be aware that there's going to be um certainly public comment on that from that area but but mike isn't a planned unit that would be a planned unit development right so isn't that just proactively an overlay and you could control the uses within that that the issue right now is not well i'm not telling you you know all this but i mean i'm just saying like isn't the issue that people don't want to proactively i use the word proactively they don't want to give them permission on the front end on the variety of uses they want to have it they being people around there want to have it throughout the process they don't like a PUD just helps you tee up the uses and then everyone has an idea right of what can go in there within reason and there's still site plan review but they don't want to give neighbors don't want to give up any of that right they don't want so it you could you could have a different density requirement it doesn't have to be no density within a PUD right you could say if if the if the develop or whoever agreed to it you could have a different density requirement within a PUD right yes except that um if if the proposal that were you know that Kirby's kind of put on the table here it's like all right what happens if we decided we wanted to propose no density within the design review district now some of it already is that way the urban center one two and three already don't have density requirements and so nothing changes with that but there are a couple of places where it would make an impact and i think you know we pointed out um you know national life over near redstone um to start a terrace street uh and VCFA and so VCFA will also be a beneficiary of that of that change let's let's go to Kirby's question before and just speak specifically to that how does the current design review process protect the character of the neighborhood up around the college so i it is all mostly historic so i trying to avoid getting too much into the because you know i have both sides all sides work work for me uh not just commenting generally on the rules and some of the application pieces i'm not i'm not in depth on what the applications are i know generally what what the details are um so the the change of the density again we're talking about dwelling units the number of dwelling units it could allow more or less some of what the application is looking at is changing some of the uses so in the PUD rules it says you can take some conditional uses and make them permitted uses and so they want pre-approval for a couple of uses they have a list of uses um one of which is to make multifamily development not a conditional use but a permitted use um and so the design review rules means they can't make any changes to the exterior of the buildings but what happens on the interior of the buildings um what you know how many units could you fit into one of those you know let's say you take one of the old dormitory buildings you could put in a number of 20 units you know of two bedroom apartments three bedroom apartments or you could put studios um or single room occupancies um you could do SROs and end up with a lot that's where the density is going to come in because we're counting the number of dwelling units not the number of bedrooms um and so they could be restricted i don't know it's a pretty high density and they've got pretty big acreage but if they were to sell some of these parcels off when you sell the parcels off the parcels end up smaller so what you might look at is oh the VCFA campus is pretty big they've got a lot of potential development but once you subdivide you might find that that dormitory is sitting on a small piece of land and therefore couldn't be fully but the density again it just so so lifting the density if i understand what you just said right the the design review doesn't have anything to do with uses right it's got nothing it just has to do with what the the character of the neighborhood is and and basically it does what we're hoping to do which is to increase the amount of housing that we could have is that what i just heard yeah so i i don't think personally there would be an issue the issue is that political capital or that that public capital that's going to come in because just because because it's including VCFA there's going to be a lot of pushback simply because it's VCFA and the folks are going to want to have as much control and not seed control that's been the general sentiment of the public opinion so far so just telegraphing and maybe i'm you know maybe i'm wrong but uh just trying to look down the road it's kind of like when when you see savings pasture project you can kind of go through and say you know well we're going to change the zoning in savings pasture you're going to automatically guarantee you're going to get public comment we're not at this time looking to change that so if anyone is looking online or watching this on television we are not looking at changing the savings pasture zoning but the that's the general you know sense that i just wanted everybody to be aware of that it is in design review it's been a hotly contested PUD application so far coming in in two months to go through and say hey we're going to take the the density out of that area you're probably gonna you should you should just be aware of that before that right i think my initial response to that is i mean maybe maybe what we're trying to do here could be really helpful because we'll answer some of those contentious questions and i also think that this could be a really good example for us to show why density is not helpful because if the controversies around the worst case scenario of one of the buildings on the VCF they campus being turned into apartments that house a lot of people tell me the downside to that um you know yeah that is my neighborhood and i would say bring it i miss i miss having the students around i kind of want that area to be lived in and enjoyed it's kind of sad that it's sitting empty right just not to get too far afield here but like the idea of a like some kind of overlay district that that doesn't exist necessarily in the zoning for for example you you you know a developer would come in and say i'm gonna pass a zoning overlay district just for this area and we're gonna all negotiate what uses between the town between the city and the applicant there would be a public discussion about what uses would be included in there but then once it's together it'd be memorialized as its own little you know what i mean well you know what i mean your your plan you know it's that is that is one way to do it and that's a little bit of what we have right now and i think we're all we all should have a conversation and i think gabe was thinking about this before when when he had emailed me on a previous piece um within our PUDs we have those rules that allow the changing of the the zoning and we should sit down and have a conversation of whether we want to continue to allow that as an option and you know that maybe it's a good thing maybe maybe it's not the initial reason why this all came about was again you know 2018 pre 2018 the zoning that was in effect the college campus was hdr high density residential and uh as hdr everything that the college did was non-conforming offices um being a school uh you know all all the uses you know the the accessory retail the cafeterias everything was all non-conforming so they had what was called an AI PUD and it was they had to do a master plan that was all stuff that was in there that let them kind of work their way back in when we were doing the zoning update we were negotiating with the college to try to come up with some good new rules because that that system really wasn't working well and what we came up with actually we ended up doing both things and they both passed so one was to rezone that area to MUR mixed use residential which made most of their uses either permitted and conditional and then we also had the campus PUD which would allow them to have additional flexibility on top of that the question is because they ended up with both because we weren't sure at the end you're kind of doing two things at two different times and at the end when everything was passed they ended up with two ways to do it they could just operate their college without any campus PUD but they also had rules for a campus PUD so um and there is benefits to having that but one of the questions is should we have allowed that much flexibility in the uses and that's a conversation we can have down the road we can prepare a little bit of a presentation on that but for the here and now when we're talking about density that's some of the question that we've really kind of got to tackle is all right we can adjust adjust some things but so in terms of what the pushback like political we're talking about political will or you know what is what's possible whether it makes sense or not what's what's actually possible the thing people care about right the people that are freaked out about density are the worst case scenario you bulldoze it you build an ugly multifamily building some people are freaked out because you're adding another unit to your 6000 square foot lot right you can add a third unit let's say uh tack it on so and then there's the idea that there could be particular areas of town like the campus or off terrace or other places where it could be I mean either that's a good thing or a bad thing it's all just concentrated in those areas so I mean I was thinking of in terms of if there's only marginal not marginal but you guys are saying outlier benefit like maybe you get a handful we'll take all we can get in terms of extra units to get rid of density but the idea of identifying specific areas of town that are designated for more intense housing units housing uses that's not probably any more politically palatable than getting rid of density certainly not for the people that live near there right yeah probably yeah and I think some of it's just balancing the the historic character of so many of the neighborhoods um yeah and I think that's that's a lot of it you know do you know how much of a density requirement do we need for you know country club and you know some of these areas that aren't built out and don't have a historic character you know if you want to build on river street out on route 302 you know how much density should we have out there you know yeah I don't know if we really care I mean you know is it going to offend tractor supply to have you know the three-story 40 unit building out there I don't think so you know assuming you've got enough parking for the 40 parking spaces I don't think anyone would care out there but I'd have to think that that would that's in my view as somebody who's working transportation that is such a a poor use of resources to have a 30 unit building next to tractor supply we want our downtowns to house people I mean we want the that's where we want our density I would think I think that's what makes Montpelier a vibrant city is having a dense downtown if we are going to insist on having zoning rules that incur that instead of encouraging building within the city limits it would encourage developers otherwise to go to you know out to tractor supply and build a 30 unit condo that's just I would think that's not what we want you know that's not the kind of development that we want to see I don't know is everyone else agree with me I just kind of like I would I would think that'd be bad for the environment but it's more housing it's more housing and it'd probably be cheaper than the stuff you buy in Montpelier down near downtown so it is a tricky it is a little bit so yeah sorry I think I interrupted you I think I think that location is the tricky one you know on one hand it is more housing the hand it's maybe like on the fringe of what is you know walkable on the other hand maybe you have access to public transit it's also it's also a corridor where we want you know limited access and it is not one where we want high trip generation and to add congestion of all the of all the streets in Montpelier you know that is one where we want we want to prioritize sort of mobility over place making you know so anyway I think that one's like a good complicated or trickier trickier example I think Maria is hitting on what our experience has been on the planning commission the last few years I mean I mean the the gist of what she's saying is kind of what we're always dealing with someone else was going to say something well I was going to ask Mike so I think you know I just going through the report again a couple other things that popped out to me so if we're looking in this area where we have design review and it's you know it's more walkable right and maybe we don't need vehicles and parking and things like that there are a couple other suggestions in there and I don't know Mike that I think we talked about it like the first time we brought this back up maybe a month and a half or two months ago but I don't know that I really understand we're out there they have some recommendations in here about basically making a up to a foreplex like very easy maybe not even if I'm reading this right not even requiring a permit right just as a matter of right that you can you can carve up you know these buildings so I don't know that I don't know that I heard your opinion on that that particular I think you said something but I guess I don't understand it so could we talk about that for a second because I think you know if we're looking at again the Bailey street or any of these other very large homes you know that's part of the issue is you know 4,000 square feet I mean there's there's a lot of people that could benefit and as you've said 60 to 70 percent of the demand is for efficiency one bedroom type units right so so my one of my concerns about that recommendation was the not not wanting you know basically have it a by right you don't even need to come in and get a permit and the reason why I have issues with that is because we have a lot of requirements and for the most part you know we can require a minimal permit for folks and it'll cost them 35 or $50 and they can get a permit in two to three days and that's not a oversized burden to make sure that they meet the requirements that are in zoning because otherwise people can do whatever if you say you don't need a permit then they don't have to meet setbacks and you don't have to meet height requirements they don't have to meet anything and if you say well you don't have to get a permit provided you meet all the zoning requirements then I can tell you for a fact that most people are overwhelmingly most people are not going to be able to read the zoning and understand whether or not they've met all the zoning requirements which means I'm going to end up going out and enforcing the zoning administering the zoning through the enforcement wing by issuing notices of violation because you built it without it so the recommendation to say no permits is what we should be doing I think is just a bad way to go we now all right so that was can't make it easier or to go through and say they're all permitted uses which they are in every zoning district in the city it is a permitted use you never have to go to the drb for a conditional use approval for up to four units we could make the same recommendation we did for duplexes and go through and say everything up to four units as long as you have a conforming lot you can do up to four units right now we're saying up to a duplex up to two units you could say three units or you could say four units so regardless of density you can do up to a quadplex you still have to get a permit and we can make sure that you meet all of the requirements of the permit it's just it's just a change so that that's what my concerns were with that recommendation is they seem to be making the permit process the bad guy in this one and the fact that it could be appealed well if we don't have permits then people can't neighbors can't appeal it well either we're not going to have zoning at all in which case great you people can do whatever the heck they want and you know that probably won't work out for the best or they have to meet the zoning but they don't need to get a permit in which case we're doing the enforcement or their neighbors are still going to have the right to appeal so it's well so there were there were two recommendations right one was what you said at the end which was basically make it you get it you apply for a permit then they went further and said why even do that right so okay so it sounds like there you know as a professional zoning administrator you feel like you know that our planner right that there's value to having a permit process but we could potentially go to up to four units with permit yeah and it's definitely um you know people generally up front think they won't like the fact that they have to get a permit but it actually works out in your favor because we we've done all the review when we issue you a permit you know you you know you meet all the rules and you don't have to worry about something down the line as opposed to you know as you said just tell let people do what they want with this adopt the zoning and if you break the rules then we'll then we'll go and talk to you and you can go back and retrofit it well that can be difficult if your building doesn't meet setbacks because that would be really expensive to try to move the building or tear it down so it would seem like if you were building a four unit if you're adding four units having a piece of paper that says you're good to go would be a nice thing right and if it's we can make it so that it's like free and you get it within two days so like it's shouldn't be too too onerous but yeah if it's in design review it'll take a couple of weeks if there's going to be an exterior change that could take up to you know we DRB meets every other week so it could take as much as 15 to maybe 20 days at the most but usually if you're building a project that big you probably are you know not looking at just deciding on a whim to start building tomorrow you're usually going to have some time so but we are very prompt about issuing permits we've got a very quick efficient process here in the city so that's my own education I'm just how do you appeal if there's no permit there wouldn't technically be a you appeal your decision not to issue a notice of violation yes that is it we are we are we are required under law to enforce all violations and therefore if somebody makes a violation and usually what'll happen is the neighbor is going to be the one who comes in and says that was built you know seven feet from the property line the requirement was 10 and then if we don't do it then they can appeal it to court to force us to but if they don't violate any of the other rules they could still appeal and have that process but it wouldn't necessarily go anywhere I'm just here again just trying to yeah okay because we and that doesn't change things right now we we get appeals right now from people we'll make decisions and people will appeal them because they'll find some obscure thing to obscure to appeal it and you know it's it's constitutionally people's right to redress you know government decisions and you know the the permit I issue to the neighbor is something you legally constitutionally have a right to appeal and if they're gonna if they're gonna do it they're gonna beat you up anyway so if they don't do it that way they'll just file a civil suit um so so the couple of things that we've thought about in our office so we talked about this whole density piece so one option we could do again we keep you know cutting cutting halves into things would be to put a proposal in for either some or a number of districts we could double the density so we've already talked about the fact that if you own a single family lot um you know um Brian has a house in res 6000 he can get a duplex on that 6000 even if he doesn't have 12 000 square feet um we could double the density which would go through and say even though it's res 6000 which is the lot size um density is calculated at one unit per 3000 which is basically what we're already doing for single family and duplexes anyways and what that would do is kind of expand that window um so uh you know Brian has for example maybe an 11 000 square foot lot he could have a triplex because now we're multiplying times three so if you're res 6000 the density is 3000 if you're you know res 3000 then your res you know your density is one unit per 1500 so it's not removing the density altogether but we basically doubled the a number of infill potential lots that we could get um it won't give everybody something but it will give everybody a little bit and if we're talking about the existing built out areas most of the time that's what we're talking about with our infill lots is you know maybe somebody has a duplex and they've got that carriage shed that they want to put another unit in um those types of things so doubling the density would be one place as a compromise that we could look at um instead of removing density altogether another this is completely different uh recommendation is although one two three and four unit are permitted all the way throughout the city conditional use is not um uh the multifamily is not multifamily five or more units is a conditional use in a number of districts and so you know a little bit by way of education conditional use really looks at three items traffic um whether it'll have an impact on municipal facilities which in Montpelier it never does and character of the area so one suggestion we've been considering you know and we'll have you guys start to think about is maybe for conditional use because it really could be anything from five units to 45 units maybe we put a cutoff in there at about maybe 15 units and I'll give you a little bit of thought on why I'm thinking about 15 units so you'd have small multifamily which might be permitted large multifamily 15 or more that would need conditional use approval and the reason why at 15 units is that we currently the number one thing that's going to make an impact in there is um traffic and so we require a traffic study at 75 vehicles a day so not getting into too much of the the stuff Maria would probably know some of some of the average daily traffic stuff um well a dwelling unit usually is about five I from what I understand so that would be you know if we're if you're only generating 50 new car trips a day you don't need to do a traffic study in our current zoning it's not tripped till about 75 which is about 15 units so we could and maybe it's not for all districts but we could have more districts that have multifamily as a permitted use um up to 15 units or up to 10 units whatever number you guys would think um and it's just another suggestion that would help maybe get some projects out of conditional use review and into the permitted uses which might make you know again we're talking about a couple of projects here and there and it's um it's just you know like we said it's just another it's really trying to get out of the character of the area piece um at what point is it really impacting the character of the area if it meets the if it meets the the build the bulk and massing requirements remember there you may be talking about 12 units but you still have to meet the building footprint requirement you still have to meet the height requirement you still have to meet the setback requirements still have to have the parking so if you meet all that why would we say no um we really don't need the extra review until we start generating enough traffic and that would be um at that next level so that was so that's those are a couple of our thoughts we had doubling the density um splitting and making small small multifamily large multifamily and making more of the small multifamily as permitted uses so those were a couple of the ideas that we had that we thought might be things you'd think about for additional changes to increase the potential of housing so we don't want traffic but we're going to require you to have a space for your car and then if you don't you can't build here so you'll go build elsewhere and then drive into mountain here well the economics usually is especially if you're building larger things is the banks aren't going to finance without one parking space per unit anyways so that's just generally even if we didn't require the parking it would end up having to have that parking anyways like were there specific districts that you were thinking of for doubling the density for or did you guys not yeah when you went through this did you identify which areas you thought that would be appropriate for and would there be pushback on that I'm sure there would be some pushback um my best argument I could give in support of it is just the fact that we already really did it for the smallest pieces everyone who's got a single family home on a conforming lot can have a duplex even if you don't have even if you don't meet the density requirement by basically adopting that as a density requirement um you're just allowing the the units to add up a little bit faster so um I was thinking for most of the it wouldn't adjust for rural lands because really you have to be on sewer and water to be able to do that rural lands is the part that doesn't have sewer and water um so it probably wouldn't apply there isn't but aren't the arguments and sorry my interrupting but I was like aren't the people in the arguments against that isn't it going to be the same thing whether we get rid of it or whether we double it or even a marginal increase you know people would vilify vilify us and treat us like we're destroying the city and it didn't really matter like what that number was it was like any increase whatsoever you know I think the the other piece of this is that we we do have you know input from congress and new urbanism and AARP and so if we if we could at least in the initial I think those are all great ideas Mike I like all those but at least in our initial sort of feedback if we stuck within the the lines of what they the recommendations they made I feel like we've got a little bit more support right because not this isn't just you know we're not the only one saying this we've got people that advise communities all over the country that feel like we could do it's not we're not quite form-based zoning but we're moving more in that direction right uh well I mean we're really not moving towards form-based zoning that's going to be one of the issues to move towards form-based zoning would be a big shift um and and I'm not sure we can do that within the same box that we have for our historic because of our historic rules it starts it starts to become much more muddled um and I and I think you know my thought on why doubling the density I mean AARP is saying remove the density and certainly we could go in and say look they want us to remove the density we recognize there's not the political will to remove the density but we could certainly go through and double the density and the reason I think a little bit getting to John's comment I think that might be a little bit more palatable is just because we can point to the fact that we've we allow the duplexes in every conforming lot and 90 percent of the lots are conforming and the sky didn't fall um yes those same opponents are going to be coming in and saying the sky is going to fall but we already made a big change like this and the sky didn't fall so adding just a little bit more to allow maybe a few more triplexes and maybe a few more quadplexes because again there's still density limited so you know in the in the brian example so he's got a you know 11 000 square foot lot now he can have three units okay I mean that's probably not that you know gonna have that big of an impact on on the neighborhood to go even if he went from single family to to triplex and if he's got four or five times the the property size we're talking about the recommendations of the AARP here this isn't some kind of like radical organization um actually I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in just to do some you know facilitating stuff over our conversation I didn't want to interrupt because that was all wonderful um we talked about density which is a big part of their first recommendation they made three recommendations it would be beneficial for us to leave this meeting having some sort of framework for all three of their things about what we want to do and I'll tell you right now what I'm thinking about what we should do is I'm putting this document together the sort of a living document thing based on this discussion I would say over the next it you know it's going to be a month before we meet again so for the next month I would invite everybody to get into that document and leave notes and comments about where to go and the different things that I have highlighted definitely not going to have captured everything from this discussion and after we kind of have that get ready to vote a month from now on some recommendations that we want for our response for the AARP and CNU and then from there we'll move on and to shading and some other things that we want to include in the same bundle of recommendations for city council so for now though let's make sure the way that we've addressed all of the things from the letter which just now we spent a lot of time talking about the third item a lot I just want to just take us through and say that I think I can get us through the second one pretty quickly the second suggestion from CNU and AARP was adopt design standards for additional residential units based on this discussion I think that we're feeling like we don't need to expand design standards right now that was part of our discussion about the density thing at the beginning of this conversation I just want to stop and pause there and say is there anything about that second suggestion from CNU that we do want to elaborate more on other than what I have now is only question is whether we should expand the district for us and I also added a note that it may be preferable for us to monitor how these changes go before considering expanding is there anything else for the from that suggestion that that people want to bring up before we move on from that okay and then the third suggestion was clarify processes for incrementally adding residential units that a lot of our conversation just now is about that section so I want to open that one up and say look what what are we thinking right now about what we want to do in response to that suggestion do we want to do we want propose any change about I gave I feel like I feel like you had some ideas well I think you know I think the you know if we're good I mean it we you know Mike seems okay with going you know the same way we went from one to two like going from one to four with a permit I mean you know we're not going to go all the way to where they say we're not going to have a permit but you know going from one to four with a permit that seems like pretty reasonable and Mike what are our permit fees like if you wanted to get a permit for a four unit building I mean I have to look them up specifically it depends also on whether you're just doing constructing or just doing renovations at the zoning just the zoning permit probably isn't too isn't too expensive the the fees add up as you start going into DRC DRC would add I think $100 to the permit application and DRB adds another 100 or $150 I can't remember we just changed the the rules so I don't know them off the top of my head but is there yeah I don't have I'm trying to think if I've got the fee chart right in front of me but it might be there might be in there $100 per unit or something like that or a $200 per unit I don't know if Gabe you remember but there's but the fees overall the fees are not going to be a huge impediment so can I bring up another area and some of this Mike maybe there's just you need to discuss this a little bit we had a conversation you know about a month ago about the ADUs so they had this suggestion in there which just really is can't be applied because they took issue with the state law the state laws that you know that the ADU has to be distinct from Maria asked a question I will just say this this kind of led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole because she's lived in an ADU where you know like Mike you described the distinct from meaning there were separate entrances you know there's I couldn't find anywhere where that's defined the law is pretty new it's like 2020 maybe it hasn't been a court yet I don't see why an ADU distinct from I mean I don't see why you know that certainly one unit's gonna have a separate entrance but I don't know that they couldn't walk through a common area to get to that other entrance I don't see that legally defined anywhere yeah they could go through a common area you could go through a common area but you you have to have your own in general if it's going to be rented out it's got to be a got to have its own door in and out yeah so it kind of got me into this other other sort of thinking and I was trying to understand well what about you know like this discussion of these old dormitories you know could you have something where there's some kind of you know collaborative housing I mean we have all over the city we've got three or four people that are not related they're going to rent out a room they're going to split rent well technically that's something that we call uh what do we call it there's congregate congregate living is what we call it congregate living and so congregate living the idea is that it's not a family group right that people are coming in well there are there are commercial companies that do this all across the country I didn't know that until like Maria asked the question I start trying to figure out what this is about and and there could there is a model for saying hey you can rent rooms you could rent we could take we don't even have to carve up the house on Bailey Street we can just rent six bedrooms right and they can all share a space but the current you know rule for that is it's limited by floor area ratio and parking and I think as we look at this we should also look at those requirements and say is that really relevant do we really care if they're renting you know five bedrooms and uh in on a house on Bailey street right do we care about that they have access to parking if they're riding a bike and that's what they want and that's good for them like we should be great with that I would think right so I don't know those are just some things Maria you kind of got me stirred up trying to figure this thing out and I went down a rabbit hole but it just seems like well that's another space where we could make a difference not necessarily about changing the ad use but related to that what about congregate living yeah and we and we can take a more of a look at the congregate living so for everyone who's who's trying to figure out the the difference so an ad you or for a dwelling unit there are five requirements for a dwelling unit you know you've got you have to have a kitchen you got to have a bathroom you got to have living and there's two others so you got to have these five requirements if you share any of those five requirements then you're congregate living so if you it you know you might have exclusive right to your bedroom um and your bedroom may have a private bathroom um and you'll see some of these with you know senior housing units um you know a certain level of senior housing you might have your own living space which might have its own um bathroom but you've got a cafeteria for the kitchen well that's a congregate living situation because you're sharing one of the requirements one of the the the five requirements are being shared among all the members that's that's the main difference between having congregate living and having a dwelling unit and it's just when it comes to the ad use you're talking about having a dwelling unit where it has all the five requirements and then um you know it can connect to the other house but it has to have if it's going to be an ad you it has to have its own exit or have its own distinct entrance um so that way you're not in any way you have freedom of movement basically um and so if you had to walk through somebody else's kitchen and dining room to get to the exit every day you probably don't have freedom of movement to always walk in and out and through the house um and your your property is not considered safe or at least certainly one of the units is not considered safe because somebody has the right to access that unit so usually you want to have usually you have to have a distinct entrance for an ad you now if your ad is being rented by your mother-in-law your father-in-law and it's a true old old-fashioned accessory dwelling unit for a sick parent um then yeah you're obviously going to have a door that connects through to yours and they have their own space to live but it connects through but uh if it's going to be rented it's got to have its own entrance to the outside so you've got freedom of movement like are there any requirements for congregate living settings uh it's based on so because density can't apply it is based on floor area ratio so what is floor area ratio that's usually what's used for commercial so if you were to look at the density charts in the zoning um i've got the zoning here so this is residential 9 000 the residential density is one dwelling unit for 9 000 non-residential is a 0.5 far so 9 000 square foot lot you're at 0.5 you'd multiply 0.5 times the size of your lot let's say it's the minimum lot of 9 000 square feet you could have 4 500 square feet of congregate living space that you can then split up into however many number of units you want now that that's not the footprint of the building because it could have multiple stories um but that's you're measuring based on the amount of square footage of of um of the of the building as opposed to counting the number of individual dwelling units and so that would be really the the bigger difference um so really it's it's kind of almost a truer density requirement i mean if you actually went we went to all far we would not have to worry about counting the number of dwelling units which is exactly what we want to do so actually applying it to residential development wouldn't would almost accomplish the same thing i guess i didn't understand that when i was reading it so you're saying so it's limiting the amount of living space on site of that inside of that 9 000 square foot unit but how many if they had you know it doesn't matter how many bedrooms they had inside of there as long as they've got the definition of congregate living obviously it's gotta you know they got to have bathrooms and kitchens and stuff like that but yeah it still has to have all five units you still have to have shower showers and and bathrooms and kitchens and everything but at least one of those is going to be shared and it may be as you said a dormitory is a perfect example of a congregate living you've got a key to get into your own room uh you go down the hall you've got shared bathrooms shared shower facilities and you got a cafeteria um that's that's a classic congregate living situation but you also have rooming and boarding homes and rooming and boarding houses that um show up from time to time where somebody may rent a room um there was co-housing was a popular thing you know it's still still around now but you know where you might have everybody has their own little house but there's you know shared um shared maybe shared kitchen facilities um so it's it's just a different option that gives people a bit more flexibility but yeah i mean a shift to far wouldn't actually be a bad thing if we could get out of the density requirement and just the density is far then you could say this neighborhood so for example the residential nine thousand where's resident we've been talking about residential six thousand let me just flip the page far is the same it's point five so um we've been talking a lot about the that the neighborhood brian's neighborhood there read six thousand we could just do a point five far and look at how big his house is and you know or how big the property is and if he's got uh you know a ten thousand square foot property he would have five thousand square feet worth of living space that he could subdivide into however many number of residential units he wants and the limit is the the far the floor area ratio it's usually used in commercial zoning most commercial so what about the parking requirements is that something that we could lift you know particularly in certain zoning districts like in the downtown area or does that not apply anyway because it's commercial yeah that's that's john's favorite one he's he's pushed for for a long time um and we've tried so we don't have parking requirements in urban center one two and three so again our urban downtown doesn't have residential densities it doesn't have parking requirements and the world has not ended um we also have managed to expand no parking requirements to res 1500 so st paul street uh you know kind of over there by school street there's a little section in there there are a couple of other places but there are no uh parking requirements in that district as well um but as you go out when we did the zoning change in 2018 the big thing we did was to really make those numbers very very low so we went all the way down to one dwelling just one one dwelling unit one parking space per dwelling unit and then we also made the rules more flexible so you can have blocked-in parking so if you have a driveway that's 60 feet long that's three parking spaces you just stack the cars and whoever has to get out first better be the person who's parked at the end or you've got to work with your you know if it's a triplex you'd have to just work with your other people in your building to make sure people are parked in the correct order that's that's the problem of the landlord that's the problem of the tenants that's not the problem of the city because we can count parking spaces really easily so we have really made it very easy to meet that requirement by by making the requirement really low and then making it maximizing the opportunity to meet it so especially if you've got a garage in the back then you might have two car garage that's two parking spaces plus the two in front plus two more you could fit six parking spaces really easy um the person parked in the garage is going to have a hard time getting out but that's not my problem but you met the parking requirement the parking space doesn't need to belong or be used by the person living in the unit that would be my goal in the future i mean it would be nice to have parking as a separate accommodation because you know as as john is well aware it's a very famous um there's a very famous book on parking that talks about that even if you ride a bike when you rent your apartment you're still paying for the parking space and if we could decouple renting parking spaces from the rent of the dwelling unit then you know you would go in and maybe pay a thousand dollars a month to rent your apartment and if you want a parking space then it's an extra 200 bucks and it's an extra 200 bucks for every parking space um then if you're riding a bike you're not you're not paying the 1200 bucks you know you're not paying the extra 200 for the parking space you're not using because you are paying for that parking space whether you use it or not and that's what the the theory is trying to get communities to get to it's really hard to get there um but that that's the vision in the end is if you can decouple them then there will be a market for parking spaces and then we just have to be able to allow people to sell parking spaces as a parking lot um and I have a friend in my family who is complaining this is a car and parking space in his unit is rented to someone else and so why don't you you rent the parking space or get in and he says well it's so much cheaper not to do that and I can just keep my car I don't really need my car until the weekend and I just keep it friends place and it's like it's like this is exactly what we want or it's like this is like the market this is how people figure things out so yeah definitely in the state the state is looking at trying to limit parking I mean the state um what the state is proposing right now in their draft housing bill is to get every community to one parking space per dwelling unit and that you can't go more than that whether that past is whether I think that's a good idea for every community I don't know I'll leave that up to the legislature but basically the state is trying to get to where we are so we're already doing a good job with our numbers um would it be good to get less than what we've got or get to get to no parking requirement that would certainly be a good place to start looking to get to but again it's kind of like removing the density requirement it takes a lot of political capital to convince people they don't want that requirement and like I think Maria's pointed about the density like is it gonna create how big of a difference is it gonna make probably not a huge one but maybe a few might get like a few units out of it that's right I keep going back to well the AARP the purpose of their letter was that they want more accessible housing in Montpelier that's like their goal um and as we go through these bullet points it seems like Mike you're saying like a lot of this is already in place and so well then how do we create more housing like how do we help manifest more housing in the accessible parts of Montpelier you know if these things aren't what's going to do it because it's maybe already in place and it was done even 20 years ago like what what what can we do you know um and I guess doubling the density like you said I think would have that effect you know I don't know how politically feasible it will be but if these suggestions are kind of off the mark what can we do that would have that the effect that AARP and I think a lot of people in Montpelier Montpelier are looking for so I think the the hard the the hard part is it's you know people don't want the character of our area to change we are pretty built out so a lot of it is trying to work with what's there there are a couple of vacant lots that are here there are a couple of vacant buildings that could be either demolished or rehabbed um so we don't have a lot of potential to be able to go in like other communities could go in and say oh we're going to put in 400 housing units well we just I mean unless we're talking about country club road Saban's pasture crest view we just don't have parcels that are big on sewer and water ready to go so a lot of our stuff is a lot of incremental stuff and so we kind of got through our first hurdle it can't happen unless until it's allowed under the zoning I think for the and in a lot of cases we have gotten over that hurdle it's now allowed there's not an economic push for some people to go through that next step I can have an accessory unit or I can have a duplex but I'm happy with my property and I don't want to deal with a landlord that's one piece and that's going to change over time as people sell their houses new people are going to come in and say you know what I've just spent a lot of money to buy this place you know it would do me a lot of good to put in an accessory apartment to help cover the the mortgage because you know the people living there bought the house you know in 1995 for 120,000 they're selling it for 650,000 the person buying it for 650,000 it's like I got a mortgage and I'm going to need a little bit of help and the accessory apartment is going to make that difference for me so that'll be that that takes time to get through that change I think the other piece now is economic and that's where we're looking at trying to build out more housing programs and that's what Josh and my office is trying to work with the housing committee on how can we help people because when we came out with a proposal that said if you want to put an extra dwelling unit in your house or in a garage or on your property we will give you up to $20,000 to help you do that and we had 55 people who came in said they wanted to put an ADU in and we had enough money for six people so the interest when we went just by saying we we would give you $20,000 some of it a grant some of it a loan it was a pilot program the interest is there to to put more units in but it costs on average and this was what we learned in the pilot program between 80 and a hundred thousand dollars to put in an ADU and a lot of people they boy they start to pause when they start seeing those types of numbers you know this is my retirement I'm going to take out equity in my house and put a hundred thousand dollars in and maybe it doesn't work out maybe my tenant doesn't pay me you know maybe what do I do now I've got to go and affect somebody who's not paying it's not worth the risk I'll just sit on sit on this and so that's where I think we're at now is trying to come up with programs that help people help them get over the financial piece because it's now not regulations that are getting in the way there's still some you know as we pointed out you know maybe somebody's got a duplex wants to go to a triplex and just can't they don't have their properties not three times the size and this will help some of them and I think I think that's where we're at and then the big projects are going to come with things like country club road and a handful of a number of larger parcels the northfield street proposal is out there there's actually two on northfield street one that's habitat for humanity in the boves project those are larger housing projects we just got to get a few of these big ones to start moving and getting over the finish line and that's where we're going to get big housing numbers but the infill unless you're going to bulldoze residential neighborhoods and that's what everybody's worried about we're not going to get big changes in numbers in in the in the neighborhoods that surround the downtown maybe we'll get some of our downtown buildings that used to be commercial office office that market softened a lot there's a lot of office space that's available and a number of property owners in there are looking at converting some of those office spaces to residential so that's another area we might see see some we need more more builders maybe if we have a maximum allowable density of attorneys and planners and replace it with a minimum density of builders in the city we'll get somewhere to all every everyone on this on this call hey as as you said before we could all become developers and I've actually considered them as all the times but hey we're running out of time so I want to bring things back a bit I'll also say Maria to get as a reading suggestion the housing chapter which we've mostly finalized is going to be it should be our best ideas for what to do about housing in the next eight years so you can check that out too for like what we hope that we can do I also would say to to respond to your question like we should constantly keep asking that and we should constantly be working on every idea we have for that because I think this is like death by a thousand cuts type situation not a like a silver bullet thing okay so uh before we run out of time I want to make sure we have concrete things down if we if we want to propose more concrete things for seeing you suggestion number three I have one response that we have for incrementally adding residential units is to um change the zoning so that we allow four units on each conforming building lot in the city first question does that capture what we discussed is that your understanding Mike I guess I would just say that that's that's an that's one of the options um I you know um if we're you know if we were putting a couple of them on the table we could have we could remove the density all together we could double the density or we could make triplexes and quad plexes um so I would look at those as three options on a spectrum and go through and say we could do one of these three I don't think we would do two two of three or three of three I think we would pick one of those three to be the thing we want to go for so effectively let's let's say we did this because I just heard like like gay was interested I heard a discussion about it that's why I put that one down let's say we went with that obviously would apply to the places outside of the design review districts where densities already gone um so it would be it would be in every place thing um okay bye john um and I don't know if gays unavailable as cameras off but I don't know are people are people interested in I just have to make some dinner sorry it's it's all right it's all right what I'm asking is because I'm trying to get us to have some concrete down concrete things down before we go um gay were you out of all the things discussed for suggestion number three from c and you allowing four units on each conforming building lot in the city is that one of the ones you've thought was the most attractive is that something that we that you think we should put down as a concrete thing yeah I I mean I I actually agree with what Mike said I mean let's put all three of those things down there and let's have a conversation about I think to go into four in terms of uh the kind of you're always going to have people that show up but that seems way more palatable and frankly it's the legis I don't think the legislators later is going that far but they're having this conversation right now right so we're it's not like we're out of step with where everybody else is out um and I just for the record I think if the state catches us on some of these things it means that we're now doing the legal bare minimum we're no longer really any kind of model or you know we're not we're not any kind of gold standards for sure so anyways so so I'm going to have that down for now what were the other things like just because a lot of stuff was floating around what else should we put down I heard Mike you said about eliminating the density camps what was the other thing you mentioned uh well I was just saying the three of those that were on the spectrum the spectrum were no eliminating density which we've talked about um and there may be other design things I have to go in with that but if we could eliminate the density we could double the density um or we could just go through and say everything up to four units are are permitted uses as well regardless of density and I think that's a one two or a three we would pick which one of those we think either politically is the most palatable will have the biggest thing for the buck or whatever we would make a decision on which which one okay I think it would be okay to to suggest more than one because again if if we say if we say removed density we're saying that in a finite area so we're not doing anything to the rest of the city to create housing and and this letter is about creating housing everywhere I mean the letter was not that restrictive um so I think that those two match together true true if you said if you said the a is just for the desert just for the design review and then one but then either b or c would be for the rest of the town then I see where you're going with that yeah um okay yeah that's okay was there anything else on that last section I mean was there 80 you do we land anywhere with do we feel like we need to to look into 80 use anymore um because yeah I kind of disagree I disagreed with most of what they were talking about number three and I think we've gone through that kind of beat those up enough I think our ad use are okay I think their complaints were off the mark so I'm just thinking alternative so it's like it's like no not that but maybe this other thing with the 80 years or yeah do we so so far out of the entire our entire response the letter then would would so far what it what it looks like we're going to recommend back is to remove the caps in this one central area of the design review overlay district and then to change um what's allowed for a building lot of permitted use up to four unis everywhere else because it would be redundant with the first thing in the first in the in the design review area is there anything else we want to put down is our response right now is that good seems like those are our big two big policy suggestions coming out of our discussion okay the share drive I created a new folder for this topic the cnu letter response so as I've seen before everyone else should get in there and just review and see how you feel about that and we'll pick that back up in a month so we're nearing the end does anybody have anything else we we might have time to squeeze in the minutes did we want to check with uh stan he's jumped on see if he had he wasn't here yeah yeah I noticed stan a while ago so uh yeah we remember the public stan brinkerhoff this uh it's your chance if there's anything you'd like to raise that's either um on the agenda or not just let us know stan if you want to say anything does no thank you thank you so much I'm a member of the city housing committee and just present okay great well welcome thank you um and yeah we're definitely welcome any communication from the housing committee uh yeah because as maria said earlier like how can we fix housing well it's like yeah a lot of things a lot of things and we're not the only ones working yeah same same question we have so it's it's interesting to hear some of your thoughts but we're just simply disjoining oh did we just lose yeah we lost Kirby so I don't know what to do and that's all right that means I'm in charge so if we have a motion to adjourn do we need to look at the minutes do we have did anybody anybody have a motion on the minutes if somebody's got a quick motion otherwise we will have four of them for the next meeting and then I'll hold your feet to the fire and put it first on the agenda or I'll take a motion to adjourn so second Ariane Ariane raise her hand that's great okay we'll see you guys in a month thanks everyone yeah see you on the 13th