Call to order the regular meeting of the City of Santa Rosa Design Review Board for January 3rd, 2019. Let's see if I can get all this right. Can we get a roll call? Let the record reflect that all board members are present except for board members Brier and Hedgepeth. Item two, approval of minutes from the December 20th, 2018 meeting. Any corrections to those minutes or additions? Seeing none, we will move to item three, board business. We have an added feature to board business tonight as there will be a transfer of the chairmanship of this committee from myself to Scott Kincaid. Is there a formal, do we hit the gavel three times? Do we knock on? There we go. So I will be relinquishing the chairmanship and handing the meeting over to Scott to chair and lead and thank you Scott. And I will take this time to thank Michael for his service as chair. He's done a fabulous job and I made a joke on his way in that this isn't Game of Thrones so it wasn't a coup to take over the chairmanship. But as Michael had mentioned in our last meeting, he is not going to seek reappointment to the board with the transition of his appointee leaving as mayor and a new council member coming in that will be appointing somebody else when she has that person named. So thank you very much. It's been great. Your chairmanship has been very clean and you've run very nice meetings and it's a big loss to the city to not have you on the board. At this time I'll allow Kevin and Eric and Drew to make a couple comments. Start with Kevin. Thank you, Chairman Birch. You did a great job. You kept us on task and efficient and we're very cordial and welcoming meeting so I appreciate that and I'm sure that Scott will follow. I've seen him lead meetings before and he does a great job so thank you. I'll echo everyone's sentiments. It was a pleasure having you as chair of the design board particularly being new I guess two years ago now. Wow that's terrifying. So thank you very much for your service and I'm going to echo Scott's comments. I think the city is at a great loss with you leaving the board. Thank you all. It's been a pleasure serving and who knows the way things I know there are several other board members who have bounced back years later so maybe this is not this one so we'll see. Thank you. And Michael will continue to serve on the board until his replacement has been named and so we're gracious of that and also wanted to say that we're going to take you out for drinks or the city will take you out for appetizers and we'll collectively take you out for drinks so we'll have that date picked out here in the near future. Great thank you. I love that tradition. I do as well. All right and moving further into board business this is where I now get to read the statement of purpose through the zoning code chapter 2052-030F project review. The review authority shall consider the location, design, site plan configuration and overall effect of the proposed project upon surrounding properties and the city in general. Reveals shall be conducted by comparing the proposed project to the general plan in the applicable specific plan applicable zoning code standards and requirements consistency of the project with the city's design guidelines architectural criteria for special areas and other applicable city requirements. With that I move on to item number four public comment would open the floor to anybody in the public that would like to comment on something that is not on today's agenda. Seeing none I will close the public comment and we will move on to item number five abstentions by board members. Any abstentions on tonight's item? Seeing none we will move on to the scheduled item 6.1 a public hearing for preliminary and final design review. Pioneer Road assisted living residence design review major 1980 Pioneer Road file number prj18-054 and we will look to Susie for a staff report. And before I start my staff report I would like to congratulate the new chair and thank the former chair. I won't call you the old chair but and I also agree it has been a pleasure working with you and I am so grateful for the respect that you treat your fellow board members of the public, staff and applicants with. So thank you. So the project before you tonight is the Pioneer Road assisted living residence. It's a design review to operate us or to construct and operate actually a 69 500 square foot two-story 92 unit senior living facility. The project requires the design review and a minor conditional use permit to operate a community care facility in that zoning district. The project site is located on the southwest corner of well just about the southwest corner of the Pioneer Marlowe Road intersection that's one parcel over to the west. And here's an aerial view of that parcel. There are actually two undeveloped parcels there. There's residential development being being constructed actually to the south of the site and the there's actually a lot of residential development to the south of the site and to the west, west of the additional vacant parcel. There's commercial development the Walgreens to the east and yogurt time center and some unidentified uses at this point and that newer construction right on the corner and then there's multifamily housing to the north of the site. So the project has some good history. There was a pre-application meeting held with staff, which I'm going to talk about a little bit later, but that was held back in July. They followed that with a neighborhood meeting. After the applications were submitted we came before the board with a concept design review and this morning we had a meeting with the Zoning Administrator at which point the minor conditional use permit was approved and that's kind of a key feature because that allows the board to grant both preliminary and final design review if the board chooses to do so. So the site is located in an area that's designated as retail and business services and medium density residential on the land use diagram. It's also one of several contiguous parcels that's identified as a community shopping center and the community shopping center the intent of those land use designations is that they include housing as well as commercial services and meeting the needs really of nearby residents as well as Santa Rosa residents as a whole. The project is proposed meets several general plan goals and policies which were outlined in your staff report but I think the the primary focus is really that it provides residential a residential use a diverse type of housing and one much needed it also will provide jobs to Santa Rosa residents. The general or I'm sorry the zoning district is general commercial which complies or is consistent with the general plan land use again the in that general commercial zoning district it's applied to areas appropriate for a range of retail and service land uses. Here is a rendering of the front of the building and I'm going to defer to the applicant to talk about the changes and the plans that between the concept design review and how they addressed board comments but I wanted to make sure that this rendering was before you because the Portica share was a large part of the discussion at the concept review meeting. So here's the site plan and it's a little bit north is off to the right and south is off to the left sorry about that it I didn't notice that and really till today it's difficult to read so Pioneer Avenue off to the right as you can see this the site plan that takes access the project will take access from Pioneer. The circulation plan goes around and kind of a half or a moon shape around the property underneath the Portica share the bulk of the parking is on the eastern property line adjacent to the commercial uses and then there is another secondary or utility driveway down and the and enters or unloads onto into the Walgreens parking lot where there are plenty of access easements in place to accommodate that. There are 37 parking stalls and then what you also see here is adjacent to the residential development there's a little bit of wetlands area and I'll I'm going to address that when I get to the environmental section of my presentation but just keep that location in mind. I hear our elevations the top one is what you'll see looking at the the facility from Pioneer Road and the the lower one from the south is what residences to the south of the residential properties to the south we'll be looking at. There's also the diagram on the the left there the lower left hand corner which shows you the roof plan with kind of a a parapet that rises above the actual roof plan which you know HVAC electrical equipment will be mounted behind the parapet which will provide visuals screening as well as sound screening and then here are elevations from the east and west the east on the top and the west on the bottom. Here is a copy of the site grading plan I was commenting earlier today to one of my co-workers that it's one of the cleanest grading plans I've ever seen because there's not a whole lot of grading that will be occurring out there it's a relatively flat site. So some of the the landscape but well the copy of the preliminary landscape plan was included in your attachments and I took a snippet out of there to to put on this this slide the lighting fixtures the proposed lighting fixtures are shown on the top and proposed fencing is off to the right or I'm sorry in the center so I want to say that the fencing this is another topic that the applicant will talk about but I want to point out that the split rail fencing is proposed around that wetlands area and this is kind of a one of a couple kind of traditional types of fencing that you see protecting those wetland areas whether it's in a setting like this or on a walking path and then on the bottom are elevations of the trash enclosure which has been designed to complement the the structure. I also want to point out that the trash enclosure the location of that trash enclosure was moved I think I'm going to go back up to this site plan the trash enclosure was moved so it's adjacent to if you're looking at this the right side or the north side of the secondary access point at the suggestion of the design review board. So getting to environmental review the project has been found in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act first by through a categorical exemption is infill development and which has several requirements and that is it's consistent with the general plan and zoning it's got to be within city limits and less on a parcel or an area less than five acres has no habitat for or decamp doesn't provide any habitat for listed species plants animals reptiles but and this property does have that wetlands area but the project has been designed to avoid the wetland area so that area will be protected through the construction process as well as through the once the facility is up and running so because of that we were able to make the finding that it meets that requirement it will not result in any significant impacts relating to traffic noise air quality or water quality and it can be served by all required uses or utilities and services we have emergency services in that area we've got water we've got sewer etc and then it also qualified under a streamlining measure because it's consistent with the general plan and zoning so the issue side you know we like to bring up you know whatever issues or struggles that staff had going through the review of this project and I want to I want to land here for a minute because I want to give the applicant some kudos we after the pre-application meeting they had some very significant changes that they had to make to their their site design including eliminating a driveway relocating both the driveways that they have I'm just they you know working with the wetlands area there were significant changes and the applicant took those all those recommendations to heart went back to the drawing board came in and when they submitted their application and we referred that application out to to city staff and outside agencies there were no issues identified and it was fantastic to be able to take it right to conditioning and bring before this board a housing project or a living facility in four months so I'm I'm super happy and I will credit a credit the applicant for that so let's see public comments and DRB questions I did our board questions I received an email this afternoon requesting some additional information so I'm going to start at the bottom of this list and the site lighting we have those we know the the type of fixtures that they're proposing the project has been conditioned to provide a a clear lighting plan with the submittal of their building permits we look at those lighting plans all the time we make sure that the lights not going to be spilling off into other properties especially not residential properties but other neighboring sites and what have you there's some pretty strict lighting requirements that they have to meet the grading plan my apology I've I've added the grading plan to the list of documents you should have had a hard copy on your desk and if there's any questions raised I've included it in the presentation so that we can talk about that if necessary I've also asked staff engineering engineer Larry Lackey to attend in case you have any questions about the grading plan and then I'm going to go back up to the top so we already talked about parking and the project provides more than the minimum parking requirement unfortunately too I mean I think we we all know that these types of uses often don't get as many visitors as other types of uses so oftentimes we see vacant parking lots traffic impacts there was a traffic study or a trip generation done for the project and no traffic or no traffic no more traffic analysis was required it just doesn't produce enough to be concerned about noise the project was reviewed for noise from two perspectives what it will produce in terms of its HVAC and electrical equipment mounted outside the building and no concerns were raised by the building department and then also in terms of traffic and what residents of that facility would be subject to and building code addresses that adequately through the use of the the windows the window requirements so we did receive well let's say no I we'd got nice I received an email which again was provided a copy of the email and my response was provided to you late correspondence today my apologies that came in in December but with the holidays and staffing levels I did not get that out to you sooner so crime was that this will um there this could result in the higher crime incidents um I'm not I applied uh some judgment this is a senior housing I don't anticipate there will be a lot of crime there um it will be staffed 24-7 so property values is not something that we analyze we this is a use that's permitted in that zoning districts it's adjacent to residential and that hasn't changed in many years I know at least not since the general plan plan update back in 2009 emergency evacuation both the building department and the fire department reviewed these plans in fact the their you know with the original site plan there was some some not I wouldn't say it had to do necessarily with the emergency evacuation but certainly site circulation which would affect evacuation procedures and they address those before the application was submitted so let's see with that I will conclude my presentation and say that it's recommended by the planning and economic development department that the design review board grant preliminary and final design review for the piner road assisted living residents located assessors parcel number 036-011-053 because no official address has been assigned to the site as of yet and I'm available for questions and I know that the applicant would like to address the changes that were made in the plans um based on your feedback excellent thank you for a thorough presentation uh so we'll start with questions for staff drew so uh Susie I was the one who emailed you um so with the the lighting plan typically I think what I'm used to seeing is a full lighting plan with you know lumen calculations and all that so you're saying that was that part of their conditional use permit that they're required to include that as part of their building permit or no it was it's a condition of approval on the resolution that's before before you and I think uh I I want to say it's either 13 or 27 there's a lot of conditions on there but I can find that condition and it just basically says that they have to provide that with the uh plans submitted for building permits no it's on nine but that's that's fine I was close here's close yeah um okay and then the grading plan it does look fairly simple do we have a hard copy that we I think a hard copy should have been placed in next to you I just didn't read the things in front of me there's there's also a copy of the correspondence that was received so yeah I saw that course I figured it was all that um and then I guess my final question is so there's a number of other uh biological assessments air quality trip generation we're not making a sequa determination today are we because that's that those are typical things with but they're categorically exempt so this just back up documentation so technically the project has been found categorically exempt from sequa based on the action that the zoning administrator took this morning we didn't know that that was going to occur for sure this morning so we had to add the same findings on to your resolution which we would probably do anyway so um yes you are making one of the the findings that you're making is that this project has been found in compliance with the environmental quality act it'll be the second time that occurs but but that's pretty standard operating procedure yeah I just wanted to double check because it again with the zoning administrator you're making the determination that yeah I just wanted to clear up my own procedural process thank you that finding was cut and pasted from your resolution to the zoning administrator's resolution Michael no questions Kevin Eric um the only question and it kind of relates to what drew is bringing up is um with the zoning administrator approval for the use permit this morning was the site plan itself locked in in that approval yes the conditional use permit is uh locks in the site plan which is the primary reason or one of the primary reasons that we bring it to the board for concept review and and this also may be a question for the applicant but I'll ask you and you can defer to the applicant uh on the uh I guess it's the west side of the property west side of the property yeah um to the north the fence appears to continue all the way down it's the concrete with the wrought iron fencing to meet up with the neighborhood and so my question is in the future when the parcel to the west gets developed is that potentially going to be a access pathway there like because you were talking about having to be reconfigured with ingress egress to the shopping center from the original site plan so going forward you raise a really good question and I completely forgot to mention on the I'm going to take this site plan so I'm going to refer to up down right and left just so it's easier to follow if that's okay so on the the top um which is also the the west um that fence that that fence that you saw will be along that property line um the split rail fence that you saw or an alternative with a rope will be uh protecting that wetland on the left side there'll be a landscape berm and garden or an uh planted area that separate uh from the wall greens and yogurt time and then there'll be additional landscaping on the front of the property along piner um the other thing so as far as a walking path I would say we will find out when we know what's being developed on the other parcel that other parcel just a little bit of history has been real challenging to develop because it's got a lot more wetlands on it so um you know we'll see we've had projects come in and go away but we'll see what happens there um but this project has not been conditioned to provide access direct access to that this project has been has included and it's condition it's required to um include the second leg of a walking path the first one uh was in the first part of that walking path um starts at bay village avenue and runs along the east side of the residential development that is being constructed I can get back up there um right below the the yellow square so if you start over at bay meadow and count over 12 parcels there's a small walking path that starts along those parcels and that walking path will be continued onto this project and over to wall greens and it'll give a pedestrian and bicycle pathway um or provide the pathway uh for all those residential uses that are south of the project site up to uh and public transportation along marlowe and piner as well as uh those those commercial uses at that corner so without having to get on to a major arterial street which is um a big success I think great thank you very much I have no further questions at this time uh like the applicant to make their presentation and if you want to come on down to uh the table and let us know who you are in your relationship to the project we'd appreciate it he's going to be sharing my um slides I think so good afternoon good evening my name is hilton Williams I'm the architect and uh representing the developers uh mr steven ring and david ford and uh appreciate the opportunity to review with you uh the redevelopment of the concept and uh in in doing that we took uh to heart your comments from our last meeting thought they were very constructive and uh in so doing I think uh if I could summarize basically the significance of the comments and that was the uh quieting of the facade and the facade details which included materials and colors proportion if you will and uh thus uh brought this back before you um with what we think our responses to your concerns and uh that included the report to share which changed uh in proportion changed in design uh lowered it substantially opened it up uh to the uh interior uh from below it uh complies with the fire department requirement of providing a minimum of uh 14 13 6 actually we have 14 feet clear hopefully uh that complies with all the both uh fire department emergency vehicles and uh other vehicles that will be servicing the facility one of the um I think important elements that we redesigned were the windows and the window fenestration uh softening them creating a commonality of that uh rectangular element and integrating into that element the heating and cooling elements for each of the unit which you see just below the window there but it becomes part of that window fenestration the material pallets we have the uh stone lap siding uh plasterer stucco if you will the composition roof but again uh integrated the pallets to uh ultimately result in a softening of the overall feel of the building the site details the fencing these were all part of your comments and we have addressed those including the protection of the wetlands in summarizing I would like to then open up this presentation to your comments and discussions and uh your thoughts about what we did in fact present represent to you excellent thank you very much um at this point in time we'll take questions for the applicant good oh thank you see I'm a chair in training it's my training chair um so at this time I would like to open up questions from the public on this item on this specific item okay seeing no people from the public other than the applicant team uh I will close that item and now we will move on to questions um for the applicant drew on the split rail cedar fence um I noticed that it's the same height as the rest of the property fences and I guess my question was um more why uh just because I mean the the the privacy wall fence with the kind of wrought iron makes sense to be at six feet high whereas I think when you in the concept review that wetland protection fence was much kind of more diminutive in nature um so I was wondering what the the reason for the change I guess does that make sense that that's my first question part of it is the uh impacts of construction on the wetlands itself the split rail fence uh is very easily constructed and uh it also its height was uh more to suggest to those to keep out I think if we lowered it it may encourage then the encroachment into the wetlands and so uh this was our gesture okay cool thank you and then um I lost my other oh here it is um so you've got a couple of notes on the landscape plan here for permeable paving and then you're referencing permeable granite creek paving uh in a photo next to it um is there a specific color um you have in mind or just kind of the base granite creek color the that's kind of like what we have at the square as an example or is there a does that make sense yeah and uh Jesse markman with jet landscape architecture our landscape architect on the project um so your question is really about the color of the permeable granite creek um I think we the color here is suggestive that it's a kind of beige it's a warmish tone but we have not selected the exact color I think we'd match it to have it be something similar to the building um or either contrast with that so the granite creek comes in someone of a limited color there's a beige a gray a red yeah there's like five colors but I was just curious if there was a specific color that you had identified yeah um okay and then I think my last question because I couldn't find it and then we find I apologize I can't remember where I wrote the architectural elevations I guess the east side there's a roll-up door is that that's for a garage or a trash room right the it is for the receiving yeah receiving and we thought this was probably the cleanest and simplest um method of addressing the access without uh I was just asking more about the colors it's going to match the stucco is it going to be the accent color work of white is it going to be stone lake cam 5780 I was just curious probably integrated integrated with the just one of those yeah yeah okay cool that's it thank you Michael no questions Kevin the first question was uh staff mentioned a berm between the property and the Walgreens yogurt time but I didn't notice that not landscape plan yet I didn't say yeah I I was correct that yeah there there's no berm there we definitely have a heavy landscaped section there and in fact the area between the drive and the Walgreens we will be doing some storm water treatment there so there'll be some areas that are actually dropped for those biotreatment planters but you can see we have a nice real a real nice um arrangement of trees and things yeah it's fine um if you throw the north elevation up on the screen or I don't know just control that do you have control this presentation the slide with the north elevation yeah that one um this is the only elevation that drew my eye to a little bit of a discontinuity on the sort of the right hand side where there's the large window and doesn't quite align with the with the stucco pop out above that and I was just wondering what was driving that which one could you point to your on the north elevation which so there's one two three large windows in the lower floor yes the one farther to the right the stucco pop out above it doesn't really align with either edge of it and I was wondering if there's a floor plan or a other reason architecturally why it was like that there is the that's recessed where we have the parking the handicap parking uh-huh so you park underneath it yes okay the site plan does or the floor plan either one of them provides you with that kind of information and and where do the trellises happen on the project primarily on the interior okay courts yeah and those are what type of wood I don't think the wood has been specifically selected okay we would be looking at probably you know the type of wood that has the longevity and for the least amount of maintenance yeah that's what I'm looking for thank you that's it thank you Kevin Eric just one question did we lose parking spaces when we when you we reconfigured the parking area on the on the south side over by the wetlands because I thought there were some more parking spots over there no or was it 30 well before I can ask the code to ask the question a different way where there's 37 spaces before and there's still 37 and we still have 37 it was just a juggling before we actually okay that was it thank you and I have no questions for the applicant the chair fincaid oh I have a tack on question to the question from drew go ahead I'm seeing it now I think I could better better describe what I think Kevin is referring to on the north elevation and I think I understand what's going on so it looks to me on the north elevation that Kevin was pointing out that there's a bay of four storefront windows there's two of them and it's where you're under under handicap parking is those two bays of those four kind of storefronts those are I think where that activity room is yes there's a yeah there's an activity room and then an accounting assistant and a manager's office all right there and I think what Kevin is kind of referring to is those storefront windows aren't really balanced well with the stucco pop out that's happening above from the rooms the bedrooms on the second floor and so there's there's there's some there's a nice amount of balance kind of architecturally everywhere except that one location that's kind of that's kind of asymmetrical at that location and so I think what he's asking is is there a way to adjust those windows on the ground floor such that they are more balanced within that frame of that stucco bump out does that make sense you know we were we were wrestling with that continuity between the second floor and the first floor and what we kept coming back to was the importance of trying to bring in daylight natural light open that space up and provide as much glazing there to achieve that goal the function upstairs is certainly different so consequently we would end up possibly having challenges and accommodating the living space so it was we were conscious of it but at the same time because it is tucked back in there we thought that the consideration for more natural light and daylight was more important thank you and thank you for your presentation i'll now call it back to the board and i would entertain a motion if somebody's got one on the table and if i could just in closing thank the board for their comments and their input i think we have a better project great thank you very much i'll take a stab at a motion as a non-chair i'd like to move for the approval of preliminary design review per the resolution and further assign final design review to staff second okay now we'll bring it back for discussion drew i think i know why michael's doing this but i'm gonna say i think the window thing is kind of a it's a bugaboo for me now that i'm seeing it and and i it's i think it's a comp it's actually a comp it's a slightly complex architectural problem because you're splitting your storefront on the wall of the two offices and then you're splitting it between the activity room and the the tv room or whatever that's to the south or well sheet south so east and so in order to properly balance it within that space something loses right the activity room gets smaller the tv room gets smaller right to in order to get those windows to be properly balanced underneath that that kind of bit if you shift the one that's in the activity room and the movie room kind of to the east to balance it then you're possibly moving that wall right i'm saying yeah so it's it's kind of problematic in a way but i think it's problematic design wise i know it's a fussy little thing to be fussy about but yeah um it looks to me though let me look at the elevation again it looks to me like you could move it one bay of window and be okay and still keep your walls in the same place so i think a condition if kevin it's it's probably consider you think kevin or shall i think it's shall i think you know i think it should be a shall and it's shall balance fenestrations on north elevation and you figure out how to do that i think that would be the condition that's my only it's really my only comment i mean i think the stucco color could maybe be a little punchier but if it's kind of beige it's beige that's up to you guys i like the stone i like the anodized storefront the bronze i i think warren and i both were very adamant about that porco chair kind of coming down in scale and i really like what you guys have done particularly at the base where you've kind of beefed it up and given it that stone in case somebody drives into it because they're going to so it makes a little bit easier to to take that brunt but other than that thank you for a great package and you know you're missing a kind of halfway there in a lighting plan and then the grading plan i'm okay with the grading plan being paper that was the piece that was missing for me so thank you very much michael great thank you i think this was a really strong package to start with and i know that you were getting getting to us in four months i think there were probably a lot of moving parts as you rolled in for the concept design review really appreciate an applicant who takes time to do the concept design review and and it makes this important meeting the the the public hearing really much simpler everything that you guys did to respond to the comments from the first meeting the the quieting of the elevations and and just it really pulled this together and i think that this building will really complement and improve the neighborhood over there and it's really wonderful to see that corner slowly get built out and come around to match up with a lot of the single-family residential and some of the multifamily that's over there and this building is going to be a really outstanding highlight right at the major intersection there i really really love what you've done with the pork share i think that it is really i think it's still ceremonial and sense of entry but it's just a but it's but it's not over the top so i think mom and dad are going to love being dropped off here plenty of height for trucks it just it fits real well and it's a nice feature on the corner just to just if we're going to keep score on an issue i don't have a beef with the windows under the under the pull in the tuck in 88 parking you know i we all live in elevation land a lot and i know it especially drives architects bananas it's it's right but it's what happens to you when you get through you know architecture school you come out and it's elevations okay well thank you hilton but the bottom line is i think when you get that much of it when you get that much of a plane change on the i think it i think it disappears and frankly i love i love i love the expanses of glass for all of those activities the offices the conference room the staff lounge especially at the other end and i think that anybody's ability to line up line this up it would be pretty amazing to to catch it so i'm not so concerned about it i love the new color scheme so thank you again and let's you know get this thing done and get it built would be my uh and i support my own motion i guess would be my comment thank you thank you michael kevin thanks um see uh starting with the port to share i think it looks really great very important for the project good job with that um i think are we short orchard style parking on trees per space i think we might be yeah that might need to be a condition um i really appreciate the respect to the wetlands and i think the the uh rural fence is appropriate and would definitely support the use of durable wood pieces for that and the trellises complement the applicant on the completeness of the package and as my colleague said about getting this through so quickly and something that that our community needs um i thought the articulation of the building and the materials were really appropriate and coming back that way really makes it easy to approve this project i do uh i do think that that north elevation needs some adjustment uh and the alignment of that that window and leave it up to you to figure that out thank you kevin eric and if you could make sure and comment on your thoughts on the elevation so that we can maybe get consensus of shall or consider or where we end with that um thank you again for being so expeditious and bringing the package back to us we certainly need this halazine here in san oriza and i appreciate uh greatly and i know staff most importantly appreciates getting that complete package getting it all cleared and easy to move through and move forward so um i don't have an issue with the elevation uh with the windows i appreciate you moving the trash around and my my inclination is the let's move it forward let's get it built let's get some housing here so i appreciate it very much and my comments as chair is that uh i was not in attendance at the concept designer 15 meetings so i apologize for that i do agree with my fellow colleagues that in taking a look at what was presented and the architect for that matter and taking a look at what was presented in concept design review i do believe this is a better project um having just seen the um imbalance on an elevation level when it was brought up now i kind of find it neither here nor there and again i think to michael's point and to the architect's point um maybe function uh takes precedence over form in this um regard um because it is a two-story building then you do want to get as much light as possible on that first floor and when you've already got an overhang um it impedes the light's ability to find its way in so the more glazing the better um and so we'll circle back and see if that's a shell or a consider um and then i didn't look closely at orchard style parking but if it's not there we might as well condition it um to provide orchard style parking susie want to address that real quick i do um some with the uh placing of larger trees in the parking lot the board um and other board zoning administrator have approved uh not one tree per every five spaces but rather a larger uh part planting area to allow a larger tree for shade so they are they do have um extra parking spaces so they could do that this i guess gets back to the question of whether the site plan itself was locked in this morning and whether we can even change fingers etc etc to allow for orchard style parking you can address it orchard parking yes thank you all right so i'll circle back uh one more time i've got at this point in time um a shall reconfigure fenestration at north elevation that manager office a county assistant office and activity area location and i shall provide orchard style parking as two potential conditions uh for a friendly amendment but uh we can certainly have further discussion on those items drew where do you want to sit with uh reconfiguration of the fenestration um um i sit pretty firmly on it and then i think regarding the orchard style i feel like i don't know i'm looking for it and i can't find it i feel like it says five to seven in the design guidelines and we're at eight ish so i'm not terribly opposed to just kind of leaving the parking the way it is yeah the i think the design guideline is is one space at a ratio of one per every five um and if you look at the the parking or the trees that they have planted throughout the the site even though they don't have those landscape fingers they still have those but the larger landscape finger allows for a larger tree to grow so yeah it says typically a minimum of one i just found it typically a minimum of one tree should be planted for every five parking spaces so every five but i'm i'm kind of okay with it the way it is because there are some larger trees um i guess my question to the applicant would be the of the tree varietals or species that are planted um along there i guess what's referenced as big leaf maple london plain tree and coast live oak um neither of them are actually specified for those orchard areas which one is your preference and how big is it yeah we would put the london we'd put the london plain in those larger planters which i think would get quite quite broad um and i think to the point that people are kind of discussing back and forth typically you know those fingers get narrowed when you're trying to shove them in there and we've provided essentially a full parking stall width and so that tree is going to have lots of soil volume going to be quite healthy and be able to really spread out and shade the the parking lot so i'm firm on the shawl for the elevation and i think we could let the other condition just go completely i feel like i know where you sit but go ahead i um yeah i i'm ambivalent on the the um condition for the glazing i have i do have a concern that um adding a landscape finger may screw up the the c up and i'm really not that concerned about it uh based on the planting plan and the parking lot and um frankly i think that this is an interest it's interesting because the the east the east side of this parcel and its um enhancement of the commercial property next to it i'm not really i'm not really that excited about adding more trees when i think this is going to be the feature that people that i would like people to sort of see so um to not have a tree every five spaces is fine with me kevin last thoughts on the fenestration at the north elevation and trees i think it's important and the tree thing i think if you specify that the bigger tree broader tree in those locations i think that covers it eric no change for me all right well uh let's consider a friendly amendment then so you rub everything i move i propose a friendly amendment to uh the motion that we include a as read shall revise shall reconfigure fenestration at north elevation at manager office county system office and activity area is that firm enough to or do you do balanced with the second floor to uh to to balance to balance with second floor bump out and then do we want to specify a larger the larger variety of tree be planted in the no i mean i think yours i think it's no i think it's clear enough i think it's clear okay i think it's clear on the landscape plan right um that the larger tree has been indicated i'm comfortable with that if staff is comfortable with that i think that's it's been it's been a practice with the design review board for previous projects to use the larger planting or the larger tree fingers so i've got a friendly amendment with one shall reconfigure how does the as long as it's the larger tree specified in the thing in the finger though that's the only thing you want the larger tree yeah okay all right we'll just put it in there hit yeah i i revoke my friendly amendment and i'm going to do a new one uh so i friendly amend the motion that we provide the shall revise the elevation as written and read and shall provide the london plane tree as indicated on sheet l1 in the landscape fingers in the orchard parking that's not about right okay so there's two items that have been read out um would you accept the friendly amendment you're a very clever chair in that you've uh stayed out of the of fenestration argument completely why be a tiebreaker should we uh i'd be comfortable with the straw poll on the fenestration question okay uh straw poll on the fenestration question there's uh two that are adamant that it stay in and there's three that i believe are considered yeah you're you're you want it in as a condition you don't want it in as a condition so there you go and i would accept a friendly amendment that had considered the fenestration change so revised consider fenestration and then shall with the tree friendly amendment as read and discussed all right so the condition in the friendly amendment is consider reconfiguring fenestration at north elevation at manager office counting assistant office and activity area location to balance with the second floor bump out and specify london plane tree in the parking finger areas i'll accept the friendly amendment uh the second except as you can see as an applicant we're down to like two like very minor items so well done on the package again if i may turn yes uh just to clarification as part of the initial motion that did include delegation final to staff just as a clarification that was part of the motion and and do we feel that that continues to be necessary yes i guess we do probably if we were going to consider reconfiguring uh well i as far as the uh assigning the final design review to staff i think it's in the motion so when we vote we vote uh then at this time i will ask patty for a roll call board members zuko aye gold slot aye weigel aye birch aye kinkade aye congratulations was that it's uh five oh thank you it's there's more to do yeah okay um moving on to item number seven board member reports do we have any board member reports seeing no one come forward with board member reports we will move on to department reports claire any department reports well i think from a department report perspective just looking forward to the board's next meeting which is a joint meeting um january 17th with the cultural heritage board it's a kickoff meeting for our downtown plan update project um and uh it will be a fast paced project so it's important to uh get you out there at the site and start um talking about what that plan update should include where the opportunities are the constraints and and there's nothing like going out in the field to actually get started right away in that in the in that manner so that's going to be great we uh we took the planning commission the city council out on the same walking tour and uh it's very very beneficial they're looking forward to discussing the scope of the project now uh and then uh just i also want to um thank michael birch for his leadership you know honestly um i've been with the city for a long time 19 years and michael you've you were um exhibited excellent leadership you know great communication um you took charge as chair during a very transformative time for particularly our department but for the city as well uh there was big cultural change and how we approach development and uh i just really want to thank you for your positive and your your clarity in leading us through the last couple of years it's been quite a journey and thank you so much thank you very much thank you claire any other reports from staff okay okay so um we are at item number nine and that would be my first meeting in total adjourned


Northwest Technical College in Bemidji helped more than 70 kids in our community today by participating in a national campaign. Reporter Cheryl Moore tells us why a seat in the dentist's chair, making parents and kids smile. Yearly dentist checkups can be a pain for parents, not only in their kids' mouth, but also in the wallet. It's really nice to be able to take kids to a free event to get them used to going to the dentist every year, getting their teeth checked, because sometimes the first check doesn't go that well and they don't want to sit very nice. The advocate of smile is a national event put on by the American Dental Association. Northwest Technical College has participated for 15 years total. They took a break in 2017, but came back this year to offer even more services to the public. I got to get my teeth scrubbed and I got to get it brushed. Cleaning, exams, x-rays, our dentists are determining if they need sealants, they're getting fluoride treatments and we are for the first time this year doing operative so they can have restorations done. Houston hygienists from Park Rapids, Boston, Blackduck and of course Bemidji helped out today. Many of them were NTC alum. They were assisted by students in the NTC Dental Program. Without the help of our community volunteers, we would not be able to do this service. So they're taking time out of their work schedules, time out of their day or maybe their day off and they're coming and volunteering their times. Now sitting in the big blue chair and staring at the ceiling can be a bit nerve-wrecking for these kids, but the dentists here make it way easier. Plus you walk away with a few goodies and some home care tips. It was fun because I could hear the doctors talking about teeth and then the dentists or the assistant kind of kept chatting. Well I filled out the paperwork, she actually entertained the kids and showed them how to brush their teeth on the big model over there so that was really nice. The area that's in northern Minnesota is a very demanding population because of access to care. We talk about real populations that reach into the excess of 60 to 100 miles. And if you're curious, more than a few kids walked away with brighter smiles. We just feel very good about doing this and helping anyone in need out. I'm not the big brusher, but now I just kind of want a brush. Porting of Imidji, Shaw Moor, Lakeland News. NTC estimates they provided more than $4,000 worth of free dental care today. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Is that you playing keys on Black Sabbaths, about the 47th? Yeah, I did that, yeah. How'd that come about? Well, we were great friends. I mean, Ozzie and Tony and I have been mates since the late 60s. And we was one stage where Black Sabbath and yes, we're the same management office. We supported Sabbath on towards 71, I think it was 72. They're great friends. And we were recording in one studio in 1973. And they were recording over the road in another studio. And this studio had a bar that was over 24 hours a day. So it was quite busy. And Ozzie said to me, I've got a couple of things that really need to be done on a keyboard on the album, which was very unusual for a metal album back then to have any keys at all. I mean, it's not common as much now. But he said, would you come and do them for us? I said, yeah, I'll come and do it for you. No problem at all. So we picked the time to come on. We planned to do it just after midnight after the S sessions had finished. So I go over the road and go in. And there had been a copious amount of alcohol down. And I went into the studio. And they were all unconscious in a pile. I wasn't far off it. The only person who was less sober was the tape operator, a young lad who was terrified. And he said, I've set it up. They've set it up where they want you to play. And Ozzie said, you know what to play? I said, I've got a clue. So they put it on, listened to it kind of times, worked out things to do, and did that and go, well, hopefully that'll work. And if it doesn't, I'm sure they'll let me know and I'll come and do it again. And at that moment, Ozzie opened his eyes, came forward a bit, and I'll change the adjective. He just went, bloom in brilliant. Then we're unconscious again. And I wasn't far off, but much better. Go forward many years later, in fact, about 20, 21, 22 years ago, and my son, Adam, my second oldest son, called me up, said, I've just joined Ozzie. The band. And I'm like, oh, great, he said, and Ozzie wants to do a couple of tracks from Saveth's Bloody Sabbath that you played. Can you tell me what you played? I said, what's that? I said, everybody was cobitose. He said, yeah, that's what Ozzie said, you know? I said, look, work it out, and when you do, let me know, because you don't know. Now, completely opposite, I did his Osmosis album, which I love that album. I think that's one of the best albums ever, Osmosis. It's like a prog metal album, it's brilliant. And that was a totally different Ozzie. I mean, he produced that and was so on the case. I mean, Ozzie's really clever. He knows how to behave wherever he is. And he can be a complete caricature of what people think is. He's a very bright guy. He's very clever musically, as we were. And we're still great friends, still great mates. And the only thing I hasn't helped is Adam has been with him in our 20-odd years. And he sits down and tells Adam stories about the things that he and I did together. Oh! And I keep mentioning, maybe you shouldn't do that, not a really great idea. And Adam's only response is, well, I hope I'm mentioning your will, Dad. LAUGHTER


So I'm going to be talking about algorithms as policy today. I'm going to start with a meme. Actually, we just heard that memes are important. So we're often talking about this concept code as law by Lawrence Lessig. And as much as I actually agree with a lot of the things that he says about this, I noticed that people hear law and they think about things as very absolute and final right answer. So I've been using this term algorithms as policy. And there's a blog article, actually, I wrote with a friend of mine about this idea that we've continued to expand. But what I want to emphasize here is that when we design algorithms, the logic is essentially subjective, or at least intersubjective. We don't have absolute right answers. They're not final and correct forever. And so I'm trying to encourage people to move towards a word choice or semantics that actually evokes the essential, we can change this if it doesn't really work for us. Maybe not too fast, because we need to be able to trust in the rules, but we don't actually need them to be set and perfect, correct, or right forever. And so building on that idea, I'm going to kind of explain to you this sort of way of thinking about the world that we use, which places the policy making in the sort of middle and the kind of macro level observed outcomes, I think of as system level behavior. And we have the individual level behavior that is often in response to the rules. And I wouldn't stress about this too much. It's a drawing that I pulled out of a paper I wrote a couple of years ago with a friend named Sherman. But to just give you a kind of more technical sense of what we mean when we say that it's policy making in our algorithms. We're making measurement rules. We're making resource allocation rules. These are things that might have historically not been done by computer algorithms, but even a procedure written in sort of prose actually generally describes how you decide, how you measure, who gets what under what circumstances. And this is actually the regime of policy making. I've done some other work recently where we try to figure out how to apply concepts from other fields to the way that we design software systems, especially software systems that sort of underwrite organizations. And so we call this a constitutional archetype. We say, well, can't change too much. If it's too mutable or too easy to change, it's easy to capture. It may have the ability to respond to a stimulus if something goes wrong and maybe you need to freeze something or completely make a change in response to an issue. But bluntly speaking, once a group grows beyond a certain size, if it's too easy to change the thing, it's going to probably just get captured. On the other hand, if you make something completely immutable, then it might work great for a while. But if the circumstances change, if the context change, or the needs of the community changes, it has no way of keeping up with that. You just have to basically throw it away and replace it or just let it die. And so just thinking in basic constitutional terms, we say, well, you can change it. But the way that you change it is limited. So it sort of regulates the rate at which the rules can change. And so we call this the constitutional archetype. There's another paper with also my friend Kelsey on this subject. And with that, I'm going to go back to reality check. So that was all very theoretical. It gives you a little bit of flavor of the things that I've been researching with some of my colleagues, friends, team members. But this is the happy atubster fire. Every day I've ever been in, and even non-profits I've been involved in, I've never been in one where, from the inside, it didn't feel like a mess. Some of them are incredibly productive. They fulfill their animating purposes. They organize events, or they put on youth outreach programs, or dot, dot, dot. Whatever this thing does, it does it.  The board of mutings, there's debates and sometimes real issues and sometimes a all manner of things happen. And I think, especially now where we're trying to build computational systems into our social systems, we have to remember that that dumpster fire doesn't go away. And I'm going to argue that it shouldn't, because it means that there's actually some information processing happening within that organization. If everybody agreed all the time, there'd almost be no point in having the organization. So I like to think of this as a happy dumpster fire. And I like to imagine that in the process of all that energy, something's getting done. And so we can look at the difference between the experience of, yeah, OK, maybe it's stressful. Maybe we're disagreeing, arguing, whatever. But if the organization fulfills a function, you can actually ask whether that function is being fulfilled.  But if you're funneling that energy, that enthusiasm, that effort into the productive outcome, which is the purpose of the organization, then actually, I'd argue that that's a success. And trying to squelch the dumpster fire of all that energy is actually going to do more harm than good. So with that, I'm going to talk about a specific DAO that I have been a contributor to. This particular DAO is the Gitcoin DAO. We've heard a lot about it, actually. But it happens to have some particular elements that are good for discussing algorithmic policy making. And in particular, we're going to talk about civil detection in Gitcoin DAO. But I'm going to start with a little bit of a primer, because the thing that we're dealing with right now is the civil detection for the Gitcoin grants program.  It's a matching that gives you more match for many small donations than it would if you got a few big donations. This, however, incentivizes people to potentially pretend to be lots of individuals in order to magnify your match funding for the same amount of money. Well, the overall financial flows within this is that the match partners provide funding and they go into the match pool, and they want to fund public goods. That's what they're there for. And they've committed to provide money, but they also want that money to be allocated by the small donors. So the small donors come in and they go through the thing and they share things on Twitter and talk to each other and shield with their friends. And then they show up on the platform and they click through and they pick their donations and those people steer the funds. Except this is an open platform and pretty much anyone can log in and make an account and do it. And it's actually not that hard to make a fake account. If you're pretty naive about making a fake account, it's pretty easy to detect. But on the other hand, you could try to emulate the real accounts and maybe make a convincing fake. So in the early days of this, there was a sort of review process kind of at the end. And as time went on, it moved towards sort of a continuous review where data scientists working within the community were like actively building machine learning algorithms and trying to detect and reject the fake bots of the fake accounts. And so around the time that Gitcoin became a DAO, I made this map. It's one of many things you can find in the forums. And it was sort of an attempt to understand all the things that had to go on in order to fulfill this function. So if this is the purpose of Gitcoin grants, then this is that sort of messy collection of interrelated activities that actually have to happen in order to get it done. And one subset of that is the fraud detection and defense or the data science team that does the civil defense work. And it's already just one little tiny organ in this large system. And it's one that fulfills what I would think of as a critical infrastructure. It makes and enforces algorithmic policies. But it's kind of complicated. I mean, you've got all of this data representing all of these different identities, donating to these grants. You have a terms of service that essentially says what is allowed behavior. And you have algorithms that help determine the best estimate of whether a particular actor is compliant. And allowed to be part of the match funding. And it turns out, we don't actually know. Early on, shortly before Gitcoin became a DAO, we did some data science research and actually found that there were a couple clicks that looked like they might be symbols. They turned out to actually be new communities that hadn't been part of the Gitcoin ecosystem before. And so they came in through a kind of thin linkage. Like they learned about this one grant and a bunch of people had donated to it. So you get these little clouds. And it wasn't until some sort of ethnographic follow-ups, like literally talking to people, interviewing people and figuring out who these people were and where they came from, was it possible to discern that this fingerprint that looked like a civil ring was actually this new community, I forget which country they were in, but they had just learned about Gitcoin. And so part of the issue here is that we don't actually have a ground truth that we can know. We have something close, like we know that there may be a ground truth. Either you're a civil or not, but actually directly measuring it is sort of out of scope, at least not at scale. So this kind of program got put in place where we have to clearly define what is meant by civil behavior down to a level that could be algorithmatized or mathematicized. We have to build algorithms to detect that fingerprint. Then we actually have to have humans sort of evaluate those results and continue to evaluate those results to make sure that our algorithms don't become sort of self-referential and biased in a way that we can't unwind. And then presuming that process is still considered legitimate, the sanctions are sort of preventing people's donations from counting towards matching. And so there's an ongoing iteration of this even within a round and between rounds to continue to improve the process. But I wanna highlight again the algorithmic policy making aspect of this. Machine learning is not like a thing where there's one right answer. In fact, it's one of my favorite XKCD cartoons. It's like, what do you do? Well, you add some linear algebra and stir it around until it feels right, until it looks right. I mean, it's not quite that bad, but the point is that there's a degree of subjectivity that you can't get out of it. And in practice, it actually takes quite a bit of expertise. So we end up with this odd dilemma. We have a need for technically trained resources to do a thing that is actually most recognizable as a policy making decision. And I'm gonna kinda double click on that and say, here's a really simple parameter inside of a binary classifier.  It's like type one errors versus type two errors. There isn't really a better one or a worse one. You can pick to optimize for A, B or C, or actually anything along this spectrum. And just deciding whether you wanna error towards C or A further is a thing that, again, still no right answer. What's really interesting about this is that it's the same problem as this one. Blackstone's ratio is this concept that you better let 10 guilty people escape than one innocent person suffer. Now, if you think about it for a second, this is a statement about type one and type two errors for a binary classifier, which is a court system or a system that determines innocence or guilty, where you get punished if you're guilty. Well, that's essentially what's happening in this problem.  Whether we're right or wrong, we don't know for sure. And when we make that decision, you're gonna be punished or the public goods that you're expecting to support with match funding, they're not gonna get it. And the match funders who originally wanted you, the people to steer the funds are also being sort of shorted because they're not getting the benefit of all of these contributors. If the weights of some of them are being removed. So the idea here is that like, although it might be a bit of a stretch, if we really dig into it a bit, at least in the machine learning data science category, we're actually very much doing a policy-making thing when we are changing, iterating, evolving the algorithms that make these decisions. Now, I will say that the machine learning examples are easier to make this connection for, but it's also true of any other measurement apparatus that you're using to allocate rewards in other systems. It's also true of any of your smart contract logic. Ultimately, you're constructing a model of the world, you're optimizing against that model of the world and coming up with an algorithm that will work and probably work for a while because you designed it in context, but the context can drift relatively easily. The organization could scale up, the members might churn. There's a lot of ways in which the entity might evolve or grow or change that change the context and thus would change the appropriate policies. So assuming then that we have to do ongoing operations in some way in order to continue to manage these algorithms that are in a sense fulfilling a policy-making function, like how do we fund this? And I wanna pause for a second and point out that we almost always talk about funding the creative act, the initial build. There's a thing and there wasn't a thing and now there's a thing. But like most things that you really rely on, they're not done. You need to continue to care for them, maintain them, some cases operate them, in some cases governance is an active process that requires some measurement and oversight and refinement. So whenever we have a system that is not simply deployed and done, we have to ask questions about how we're going to fund the ongoing operations and maintenance of that thing. So continuing with our Gitcoin example, we have a rough overview of the financial power flows in the political economy. We've got paid contributors and volunteer contributors and largely they get funding from votes from the stewards. The stewards have voting power that's determined by the delegation of GTC to them. And there's some mixed incentives here. The fact that tokens are a proxy for all of the other stakeholder groups is not ideal. I'm not the first person to point out that token voting is definitely not the end-all be-all, but at least due to the way that Gitcoin did its airdrop at least early on, it was a decent approximation of the community stakeholders writ large. But I will point out that over time that may become less and less true. Or it may become more and more true. We'll know that maybe from doing data analysis and sort of understanding, if it got bad enough, we might want to imagine a world where Gitcoin changed its voting policy to one person, one vote. Actually they're putting a lot of effort into civil resistance and who knows? Maybe there's a point in the future where their civil resistance capabilities are strong enough that they decide that a policy change to one person, one vote delegated voting is better than token weighted voting. Not recommending that per se, just observing that the capacity to change is there. But continuing along this lines, recently the fraud detection and defense group put out their proposal for funding. And to be honest with you, it's a lot of money. In fact, I would argue that the size of this is possibly a little bit inherited from people's experiences with Fang companies. And there's a lot of extra money in those systems. And the general going rates, market rates for data scientists are quite high. And bluntly speaking, the community was like, hey, this is too expensive. But it unlocked a lot of debates about how much money is appropriate. And so the Joe, who actually put this slide together, and you can see his post if you click through that link, was basically arguing for breaking it out and looking at sort of the different levels of funding based on what would be done with that funding. And I thought actually this was a really productive way to go about discussing what should be done and how much it would cost. But in the end, the community was stuck with this. Basically, stalin or continuous improvement. Obviously it's a continuum, but especially going into a bear market, there was a real strong emphasis towards staying lean, which also left a lot of the people who had put a lot of effort into building this particular community data science team a little bit in the lurch, because they were kind of expecting to continue to do this operations and maintenance work. And the funding to continue to do that operations and maintenance work didn't materialize. And so amongst that community, there were some discussions. And this was a friend of mine, Danilo. He wrote this great post explaining basically that this is a totally foreseeable outcome that there would be a stress point between people who wanted to stay lean and people who wanted to continue to improve at civil detection. And there was even some discussion about whether the fraud detection and defense sub-dow would itself potentially want to become a dow. Is that a good idea? Actually, I'm not sure. I think there are some circumstances under which it might be a really good way for this evolution to occur, assuming it could become self-sufficient, continue to supply Gitcoin with some of this civil detection services, maybe work with other dows that need something similar. But at the end of the day, it's not exactly clear. There's a desire by the members of the sub-dow to continue to do what they were doing before. But since they didn't get their funding, there's a bunch of open governance questions about like what do we do now? Do we keep doing it even though we're not getting paid? Like what are the consequences of that? And so I'm actually very curious to see what becomes of this. I don't think it's determined at all. But I like to highlight the fact that I don't think there's a right answer either. Like the community could do anything from scrape together a minimalist team to keep it running effectively as volunteers to breaking out into their own dow and trying to maybe raise money or maybe find other payers that will literally just pay them to do the work that they developed. So the main thing that I wanted to highlight here is that we have this challenge for funding the commons or funding these, let's say human provided public goods that goes beyond the event of their creation. Even though we like to focus on that one because it's kind of sexy, it's a bit like in traditional infrastructure when the governor wants to build an awesome new bridge but maybe the engineering bureau's like, actually we should spend that money to maintain the bridges we have. Not a new problem at all. And so I'm inviting you guys to actually think about funding the commons beyond the moment of funding create the commons and to think about it as funding the ongoing operations, maintenance and governance of our sort of manmade public infrastructures. And I think we're creating a lot of manmade public infrastructures with our decentralized networks and the platforms that we build on top of them. And so if we acknowledge that this algorithmic thing is not a final end all be all answer kind of thing but a thing that is a policy making activity then we do need to provision resources to continue. And actually Evan recently pointed me to this great article and it's linked down here from coldtakes.com which points out these different governance structures and the reason I'm choosing to show it here is you can see that the governance structures for different things differ. Federal government here is complex and messy and my feeling is that we're actually moving towards more complex and messy things. I don't actually don't think that's bad. I think as long as those systems are capable of evolving rather than being treated as something like, oh, nope, here's the right governance design forever then instead we might see things like a sub-dow breaking off to become its own dow because that's the right evolutionary step. We also might see things die off because they're not really needed. We could see things change in complex and interesting ways and that if we are thinking about governance a little bit more like policy making then we can just acknowledge that that's actually not just okay it's probably desirable. And I'm gonna leave this talk off with a somewhat sobering thought which is this is a building in Miami that collapsed I think it was a year or two ago now it's hard to tell with COVID. But the thing that really stood out to me about this story is that everybody knew it was failing like they had meetings about like whether to allocate resources towards like the kind of maintenance that the building needed and it was repeatedly not ratified. So it's not just a skin in the game problem it's not just a tokens and online platforms problem it's actually really difficult to take collective action to maintain something. It just doesn't really mesh with the way that we think we want the new shiny thing we don't wanna spend money we're not gonna up our you know I don't know what it's not an HOA but we're not gonna up our dues to whatever the thing is that's actually paying for maintenance because the maintenance is decaying we apparently will just like gamble until it falls down and I really don't wanna see us doing that with our digital systems I think there's an opportunity for us to get ahead of this and actually bake into our culture not just valuing the commons or the public goods from a let's create them standpoint but to actually value those public goods those commons through a let's actually maintain them standpoint and so I will sort of end my talk there and take questions I hope that was useful.


I'd like to tell you about our activities at IHE Delft in relation to water cooperation and water diplomacy. We have three pillars. The first is education, the second is research and the third is capacity building. In the first one we have two master programmes. The first is a specialisation in water conflict management, which is taught entirely here in Delft. The second is a joint programme on water cooperation and diplomacy, which we run jointly with the University for Peace in Costa Rica and with Oregon State University in the United States. The first programme is 18 months long and the second is 17 months. Our second pillar relates to research. At IHE Delft we have many disciplines under the same roof, whether it's technical disciplines, scientific disciplines or political ones related to governance. Our research brings together these different disciplines and some of our colleagues are leading projects with a transboundary nature, whether they are projects that are looking at modelling between two countries in a sub-basin where there is a transboundary component or whether looking at wastewater treatment, so more thematic areas in international basins. We have the ability to bring all of these disciplines together and look at topics from a new and different perspective. The third area is capacity building. We appreciate that many who are working in water cooperation and diplomacy may not have the luxury of spending 17 or 18 months studying the topic and so we offer courses for professionals. Shorter courses, which can be for a basin, stakeholders from an entire basin coming together to enhance their knowledge and skills and abilities to do transboundary water cooperation and diplomacy or whether it is tailor-made trainings for specific stakeholders with a specific interest in an area related either to water diplomacy or water cooperation.


The next poem is entitled, Sign is like a tree. It's a little bit of a political poem. It's one of my earliest political poems that I wrote in ASL. And you can watch and you can see many, many signs and many ideas that relate to the deaf experience. Sign is like a tree. Once long ago there was a dry seedling inconsequential pressed into the darkness hidden in the midst of the dirt of bare fields. For years it lay germinating and then sprouts shot up and then another and then more. Branches emerged and blossomed. The tree became unique and lovely, natural, creative, expressive. And then structures began to encroach on the tree. Civilization began to surround it. New trees were sown in cultivated rows perfectly trimmed and boring. But people say these sequential trees are perfect. People say this tree is not perfect. People say this tree does not fit in with their plans. People say it's unbecoming. People say it's a good idea to let the chimp swing in that tree. People say it's a good idea to hide it away in the forest where no one can see. But I disagree. That's not the place it's best to let the little girl embrace the tree. Let it be strong and proud and tall reaching out its arms for all to see. To sign.


My name is Ryan DeSousa, I'm the curator of the Nobles Listening Art and Virtual Reality Immersive Exhibition. We're delighted to be here at the US Institute of Peace. Nobles Listening aims to use art and virtual reality to highlight the atrocities committed by ISIS against ethno-religious communities in 2014 in northern Iraq. The centerpiece of the Nobles Listening exhibition is a virtual reality experience that we filmed in Sinjar in 2019 where you get to walk around the scenes where the crimes took place whilst listening to testimony by survivors that we collected from the public domain. Ask any Yazidi what they want most and they will say to find our missing women and children. One of the most powerful paintings in the exhibition is one by Ivana Waleed. Ivana is a human rights activist and Yazidi genocide survivor. The painting we have here is A Faceless Woman which for me symbolizes the painful brutality of what the women went through in ISIS captivity but also highlights the resilience of a number of these survivors who have turned into human rights champions for their community. The exhibition is called Nobody's Listening which is a refrain that I heard from number of Yazidi and other community members over the course of the production of the exhibition. We wanted to create this tree of solidarity as a way for people to express their solidarity with the communities and to show that they are listening. There are different ribbons with different advocacy goals and different colors that people can tie on this tree and we hope by the end of this exhibition the tree will be full of color and in this is very much in keeping with the Yazidi custom and tradition of tying ribbons for good luck. We also want people to know that these types of crimes are still ongoing in different parts of the world and is incumbent on all of us as human beings to do more to help those that are being affected.


Seeing Ron on the field, a super proud moment for me. There you go, Ron. Squeeze here when you go, yep. Don't let that change. Good. Faster, come on. That's it. Four, three, two, rest. Very good. Ron and I connected through a mutual friend and athlete that I had helped go from the high school level to the college level and I remember getting the text, hey this guy Ron Maranaccio is going to come visit the gym, can you take him through the assessment, can you take him through? And you know, it clicked for him and it worked out. I think the main thing that CJ talked about is the consistency and the plan. Like overall just finding that routine. Routine's the big thing for me is once I found that routine I started to become more confident in it and it's just like stacking day by day rather than trying to race to the finish line in one day. So I've definitely seen some of the benefits from that. Because he's such a high level athlete and such an elite mover, the things he's doing here, we are obviously gearing them to transfer but then he can take and piece together with his mechanics, with the coaching staff and the development staff of the Yankees organization and transfer them over onto the field. Coming in here back in 2019 was the 90 to 92 type picture and I'll never forget the first day coming back to spring training when the pitching coach had told me that I was 95, 96 in the first spring training outing and I was kind of like whoa like just the overall work that we put in over that year and a half between this and back and forth communication with the Yankees pitching staff that year with the videos. Everybody was working really hard so I mean I was pumped to see that. To see and just remember what that first conversation was like between him and I like if you trust me if you follow this process I'm pretty sure we can do this together and to see that come to fruition and to see him live out his lifelong dream that's why I coach. It's pretty unique the way we do things here and it's just the attention to detail here everything is so detailed with you know how to do it. He's going to be on top of you for you know each rep whether you're missing a rep or not doing a rep correctly the camaraderie in here is great you know it's like you don't leave the season so much you come here and work out with a bunch of other guys in the same situation it's a great vibe you know we're all working hard and working towards the same goal. How do you feel? Good. Easy death. No pain though. Beautiful.