Call the order this Monday, March 13th meeting of the Popular Planning Commission. First, we have to approve the agenda and I'll take a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Okay. Motion by John. Give me a second. You can do it. I'll second. Second from Brian. Okay. Those in favor of approving the agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Genda approved. Comments from the chair. So, yeah, so Zach Watson, who's putting together the project on Northfield Street for Habitat for Humanity, had reached out to Gabe and I this past week talking about his interest in doing a neighborhood development area, apparently to get funding. And I'm going to explain in a second. To get funding though, this is the thing that really stands out about these things. Developers sometimes need, especially like a Habitat type project where they're looking for grants. They need to be in some kind of development area type thing to qualify or just really helps their applications. So what these are is like, John just told me these existed for a few years. Before that, I was under the impression that it had been around shorter than that. But the city or developer can apply to have an area outside of a growth center be called a neighborhood development area. And this is through the state and the benefits of that are cheaper Act 250 applications. I think some exemptions to land gains tax, just like general stuff that the state offers for saving money. But for a really big project that's in the multi millions, these fees can be in the millions. And so like these neighborhood development areas can actually save a ton of money. And like I said before, they can help people get access to funding. Mobiliar does not have one. I'm going to read Mike's mind and say that we were probably going to cover this when we got to the chapter on the land use plan or on land use for our city plan. But the reason I'm bringing it up is since an application process takes a while, we might want to get the ball rolling on an application process for identifying some neighborhood development areas. And maybe, and, and, you know, a lot of the technical sides, you know, Mike, you tell us like how you want to handle it. I'm assuming that one of the first things we'll to do is like as a city identify where we would like to put that one place would be around the development that habitats proposing have to have humanities proposing around North Field Street. That's a walkable place. We changed this owning so that so that development could happen there. And but there's probably going to be a couple other places I would think too. So yeah, so I thought I'd bring that up and then I'll hand it over to everybody else, Mike and everyone. Yeah, I think John just sent us a link. You can you can easily pull up some background info on these things. Another thing I was going to ask everybody is should we have someone come in and talk about about this. My understanding is Josh that works with you, Mike has some background on this. So maybe it could be a person. He's done one. It's it's it's not complicated. I what I looked at the reason why I looked at it this last week was because I wanted to make sure that because we were assembling a new revision to our, you know, another zoning amendment. So we'll talk about it later in the meeting. But I looked it up because I wanted to make sure that we identified any little details if there was something that was going to be required in an application for an NDA. If we needed that in the zoning, we should make sure as we're working on the zoning that we've got that ready to go. So okay. So I was just trying to look ahead for that piece. And what I realized is we're pretty we've got all the pieces we need to get approved for a number of these areas. The issue that comes up is really what we want to apply it to. Because as John mentioned, it is it does apply to the growth center. And that is one of the districts we want to amend with country club roads. So savings pastures in our growth center. But the country club is not, we would not be able to put the country club road parcel into the NDA. There are two ways of having an NDA. One is within a half a mile of the existing designated downtown. And the other one is it's got to be part of a growth center. And it can be both. Our property out there is too far away to get from the designated downtown to be included in option A. So it would have to be part of option B. And if we want to use any of those NDA special rules, maybe it doesn't make a difference for the country club road property. But if it does, then we'll probably have to do the NDA after we've amended our growth center boundary. But do we know if like let's say we do three NDAs, one of them involves the country club. Would that be all in the same application or we do multiple applications? I think we'd probably want to try to do it with one. We could do it with more than one. I'd have to talk to somebody at the state probably to go through and find out what they would recommend. I haven't talked to anyone at the RPC and I haven't talked to anyone at the state specifically about what might be the recommended path. I would think it'd probably be under one application, but maybe they'll tell me it doesn't matter. I do think there's language in it that does allow you to extend it beyond the half mile if it's consistent with the goals of 4302 and that there are natural constraints limiting development around and it's a logical extension of our settlement pattern and that it's adjacent to existing development. So may or may not be enough there for us to justify. Wait for the country club. Yeah, okay. So what you're saying is extending the growth center first is probably the best option for that. Yeah, and we'll have to see. So we're waiting. The country club road master plan process is going on right now and they're hoping to get a decision in April. So my plan all along for doing an NDA application was to be looking this summer to putting together an application because then depending on the results, if the council and the public decides not to have a lot of housing at country club road for whatever reason, then it wouldn't make sense to make it an NDA and we don't have to worry about the growth center and we can just move forward. My expectation is it's probably going to have a lot and then the question is, is there value to it? I would think there is even though it's a city owned property, it is we aren't doing the development so we're going to be selling those lots. So the housing that gets developed isn't going to be developed by the city of Montpelier. It's going to be developed by either for-profit housing in some cases. It may be non-profit housing in some cases, but it's going to be properties that we're going to be selling those parcels off and those Act 250 exemptions and cost savings would probably be something that those entities would be appreciative of us getting that done. So my sense is the timing of this is going to probably be get the master plan done, do a growth center amendment and then move into a NDA application, which I don't think will take long. I think they're fairly quick applications once you've got all of your pieces together. So that would be my sense on the timing of that and I know that doesn't entirely work with Zach's schedule, but my understanding is that they're not going to get that project going until next year. So maybe if we do get our things done without too much delay that maybe it would work for habitat. Like if they need us to have it done by next year, that seems possible that maybe we get our application in the fall. Does that sound reasonable to you Mike? Yeah, that would be my expectation. I mean I think especially with Country Club Road we're trying to, we want to be trying to break ground by next spring. So if we're going to be doing that, we've got to get, as I mentioned in the past, I break things into three pieces. We've got planning, preparation, and then implementation, plan, prepare, implement. And we're in the planning part and we're going to very quickly at the end of hopefully May, sometime in May that the council make the final decision. May, June we'll have a final decision on what the plan is. What are we going to do? And then we're going to move into the preparation pieces, which is going to be all of these. Are we doing TIFF? Is project TIFF an option? We'd love to see project TIFF or a new TIFF district an option. The growth center, NDAs, zoning changes because that's all zone rural. We're going to have to rezone that and we're going to, the zoning changes I'll be talking about later are really, we'll have a conversation and then when we have the information from the master plan, we're going to add that on. We're not going to have our public hearing on the zoning amendment until we've got those Country Club Road changes. And then again that's another set of things and then do we need to act 250 permits? Do we need local permits? That's all in the preparation piece. So hopefully by next spring we've got everything lined up. We're ready for any bond votes that we may need next town meeting day. So in 2024 we can move into construction and that's our plan. So yeah, if he's waiting till next year, we should have all those changes done because it's going to be front loaded with the Country Club Road project. Okay. Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds really great. I think staying on schedule obviously is the key there. Do you need anything from us about the NDAs? Like do you think that it would make sense for the planning commission to take a stab at having some recommendations for city council in some areas to target with that? Or, I don't know. I think when we do the, and you mentioned it a couple minutes ago, the land use plan for the city plan, this is where these conversations come right up. And we should have the conversations of what designations make sense in what area based on what our goals are. So the NDA is really about developing new neighborhoods, even though they call it neighborhood, you know, it tends to have rules that could really overlay over existing neighborhoods. For the most part, it's about new neighborhoods. So these areas like Northfield Street, like Country Club Road, like Saban's Pasture, like Crestview, which is over by Terrace Street. These are all very logical places that I would expect to have an NDA overlay. Okay. That sounds good then. We'll put our two cents on when it comes to the land use plan and get the ball rolling like you said. Okay. Does anybody else have any more questions about the NDA issue? That's an unfortunate acronym. Good Maria. Question about the, because I was looking at the website that somebody sent us and the whole idea is to promote growth within like a walkable distance of the downtown. And it seems like the Country Club, I mean, especially if you're talking about like not eagle, eagles flying distance, like actual getting to and from the downtown, it's actually quite far. I mean, it might be like three miles right to get from downtown Montpelier on a road up to the Country Club. So, yeah. And it is part of, so that's one piece of it. The other one is the growth centers areas that you expect to have a lot of growth. So I think it'll make more sense if the development, and we'll see where the master plan goes, if the master plan talks about a lot of housing, then we're going to need a second access. And this is going to lead to a discussion of, you know, building in a, taking an official map and making an official map to show roads that are going to go all the way through Saban's pasture and back down or and or all the way across to VCFA. So there's a space where the parking is that we could connect a road across to, we would have to go through a planning process and have a process to build a road through. And then Country Club Road is not as far away as as it is now, because now you've got to go all the way down to River Street and all the way up to the roundabout. So it gets a little bit shorter. But even still, I mean, if there is a road through Saban's pasture to the Country Club, like what is that distance? It seems like it's still over a mile from the downtown. It would probably be a mile, but it would be within the growth center. So, and if you were to add the amount of development that is potential in, so we've got in Montpelier right now in the entire city, we have about 4000 housing units. It's been estimated we could put 1000 housing units between, you know, Saban's pasture and Country Club Road. It could be anywhere from a couple hundred up to a thousand at the most. So it really is a major extension of the downtown and the community if we were to build out a couple hundred units on the lower Saban's pasture and then a couple hundred more out at the other end at the Country Club Road and then a certain number of units that are going to be spread in between, you know, between those 300 acres or 200 acres that are out there, you know, there's going to be a lot of conserved lands and a lot of other lands out there, but though there'll be some housing potential, but that's up to what City Council and the public come up with. It isn't direct and we'll see what the downtown board says. We're going to be applying if the downtown board says no, it's not proximate to and it's not a continuation of our downtown. Then we move forward, we go through and say, okay, that that would have been a benefit and would have made our project easier and would have made it more likely that we could make affordable housing. It just means we're going to build housing that the owners of those housing units are going to be having to absorb the costs of those developments and that's, you know, that's just costs that get passed along to the buyer and it may make project more unaffordable. Right. I mean, what do other people think? To me, I think the beautiful thing about Montpelier is it's centralized business district. You know, if we're talking about expanding the city by 25%. And we don't expect that over the shorter. That's a long term. That could take 15, 20 years to add that many units to a decentralized city, you know, having that many units so far from the city core. But what do other people think? I'm just curious of what everyone's kind of viewpoint and on that like all housing is good. I think smart growth is also good. I think we already have some housing development that's that's like that. Up Bailey Street and then the neighborhoods are out that way. I think those were built in the 60s or 70s when sprawl was happening. And that's a big chunk of our housing already, which is not exactly walkable, but still, you know, in the city and the neighborhood. There's other ones across the river that are kind of like that. I see what you're saying. Yeah, it's not something I probably would have planned for. But I think as Mike was saying too, there's no guarantee that they're actually going to take the housing route with the country club that maybe that they'll it'll be other amenities for the city. It looks like it's like it's maybe a mile from the co-op like a three quarters of a mile from the from the edge of our center. I mean, there is no there's probably no perfect place to put housing in my pillar. I don't know. I feel like if there's a housing crunch, we need more housing. Or I think that's why everyone wants to on that's part of our plans to have affordable housing, have housing, have it be affordable. I mean, I'm not saying put it anywhere, but there's only a few places we could put new housing from what I'm learning from you guys from this from this board, this commission. So I mean, I'm I don't know. I'm not saying we build it no matter what I'm just saying I think I'd be willing to put it a little farther out if it's more units. Yeah. I mean, to me, it's better to put housing at the Alps clubs than to put more housing in Callas or East Montpelier, you know, like all the people who come to Montpelier for services. But I think of it that way. Yeah. As someone who lives a mile from downtown and can live without a car, no problem. I feel like my attitude has changed from when I lived in cities and considered like a quarter mile, you know, was the gold standard. And and and yeah, maybe people can walk half a mile, but they look a mile's not not a huge deal. I think AOT is is going to be, I think, releasing a study fairly soon looking at mode and and vehicle trips across Vermont using some interesting mobility data and the I think the the like media and walking trip for people traveling to work is about a mile in the state. So it doesn't seem all the places where we can put housing, it seems like it seems reasonable. I might not have always wouldn't have always thought that, especially I guess the question mark being like, you know, savings pasture, if it was like a logical extension of like some gridded neighborhoods that you had some some nice like walkable ways to get into town that would be seems like that would be a no brainer, but you do have this this large undeveloped piece. So yeah, I don't know. Just thinking out loud here. Well, yeah, this is this is all interesting. And I guess the country club stuff's going to just like be changing and we're going to see I don't even know how much wool we're going to have in it. But we should move on with the agenda. So we do have some stuff we want to get done. The next thing on the agenda was general business and I think we have a member of the public on zoom with us. So now's the time for anyone to comment on anything that's not on the agenda. And we have visitor the name on zoom is Daniel Costin. So Daniel if you have anything you'd like to bring up. This is your chance. I assume no one's there if you might in the room. Yeah, so thank you. I just wanted to check in on what you're doing. I live in the area close by where the habitat for humanity property is going to go and I'm just kind of keeping track of you know what the status of that project is. So I don't have any other comment but thank you for giving me the opportunity. Okay. Yeah we're not doing anything directly. I mean you know we did the zoning changes and we were just discussing how that area would make sense for a new for a neighborhood development area which is something that we would do through the state to allow development to be cheaper. Other than that we're not doing a lot but we you know I think as a planning commission we see that area as an opportunity for housing growth because it's like we were just talking about it's a walkable neighborhood to the downtown which is what we want to see where we want to see housing happen. Yes and I would agree and yeah the part that's unclear to some in the neighborhood is you know where the access to that property would be coming from. I don't know. We were told like how it might happen at the time but we you know we didn't make that change based on a single project so we didn't learn a lot about it. Mike do you even have an application about any changes to roads or anything? No there's some conversation going on now that's why there was supposed to be a public hearing tonight that habitat was hosting that was why I kept having people coming in that I had to keep checking on but the meeting got postponed because they're they're addressing a couple issues with with DPW before they can write their final report and one of them is the the steepness of the access road to the site and the second is the intersection with Northfield Street so those were two areas that needed to get some questions answered from DPW as to whether they were viable options or if they would need to go through and do some additional engineering to to either move or adjust or come up with different intersection alignments or roads or whatever so but we don't have any of those answers. Okay and that's not been rescheduled for a fixed date as of yet? Nope not yet. Okay all right well thank you very much. Sure sure thanks for coming in. Mike do we have any idea like where the road is going to come in because it doesn't front on Northfield Street right? It does front on Northfield Street it there's um it's actually it's part of a larger it's it's a it's a large parcel and it does actually connect down to Northfield Street but I think the access is coming down if you know where Dan Jones lives on Northfield Street it's actually coming down partly on down the side of his property to intersect with Northfield Street they were going to they were going to need to purchase an easement if I understood it correctly to to build an access down the using some of Dan Jones land. So it's right near the inf or was it Derby Drive? It's near the Derby Drive intersection and that's been one of the issues is that it's near it but it doesn't square with the intersection and so the question for DPW is could we approve that if it's not squared um and that's where and that's where we we think there's an issue that the DPW does need to comment on and they would either have to move up and purchase more of Dan Jones land to square up the intersection to make a four-way intersection which could then be if it needed to it could be managed with a light or whatever otherwise it would have to move farther downhill to maybe square up with something else farther down the hill to put enough space between the two intersections that we don't end up with a state street east state street type alignment that are really difficult in our high hazard locations so we'll see we'll see what the outcome is I haven't been following the details of the Northfield project very specifically because it's mostly just in a planning step Josh Jerome in my office has been managing the the community development funds in that process so it's still a planning in the planning phase thank you all righty so moving on to the the the big big stuff for the tonight we're going to continue our discussion of the CNU recommendations there's notes that I encourage folks to pull up on the google drive from last time a quick recap is that we seem to be in agreement to recommend to remove the density caps in the design review district which was which is a direct response to the number one suggestion from CNU we decided to not adopt design standards for additional residential units in other words not amend our design review regulations because they did not seem to need those changes because mike pointed out the you know there were some factual misunderstandings in that section and then further suggestion three which is to clarify the process for incrementally adding residential units we came up with our own way to incrementally add new units which is to outside the design review district allow four units on each conforming building lot in the city so those two big changes would work hand in hand where we're allowing more housing inside and outside the design review district in different ways and I and I kept notes for the rationale I assume that you know when we go to suggest this mike always does a memo up for a city council mike at this point maybe you could just use our notes to do your thing one question for the planning commission could be that we we could write our own policy if it might normally does like a technical type explanation we could do a policy one to supplement that which maybe is not a bad idea in this case since we're expecting there might be some public pushback so that's kind of where I'm thinking right now but with that I'm just going to hand it over like do is there anything more on this the c and u letter that folks want to get at or any more ideas out there that you want to kick around I had a question um somebody just happened to mention to me this weekend that the last one about the four units on any buildable lot is that part of the housing omnibus bill so if that passes that would be state uh standard anyway or am I getting confused about that do you know mike this curious I think it depends on the language of the bill one is to make up the four units permitted uses which we already do but you wouldn't be able to put in four units unless you have the correct amount of density and I think we had a conversation in hours that maybe you'd be allowed to have four units regardless of what your density is was one of our conversations I don't know how it's worded in ours so it would be slightly different than I think I think what the state is saying is just tournament permitted uses you can't have quad plexus as conditionally uses they would have to be permitted uses but you'd still have to meet the density in the parking requirement so if you don't have enough parking or you don't have enough density then you can't do it oh okay all right that's helpful Mike can you can you tell us a little bit about the the parking so inside that design review district you know just going back through the notes it talks about you know if I mean we've updated some of that and they misread some of it right so there's some confusion about what they're talking about but that if we had good design review over parking as an example right that that would allow us to regulate in a different way I know that most of the downtown we've eliminated parking requirements does that cover all of that design review district or is there part of that that there's still parking requirements there's quite a lot of it that still has parking requirements the design review district extends out through most of what would be western gateway goes up through national life so national life is in design review and they have parking requirements does our design review address um any standards for for parking I mean it's just the straight standards of whatever goes with the zoning area yeah whatever goes with the the zoning I mean is it is possible that's I mean I don't know what the appetite is for that or are we just you know kicking over like a can of worms to talk about parking it just seems like if we're going to say you know all these other things right in terms of lifting density and everything else that parking would be a key component of that yeah I don't know off the top of my head how many projects have been limited by the amount of parking I have you know from time to time known of projects that can't go forward because they don't have enough density I don't know very many projects that get stopped because of parking at least not parking as a result of the zoning there may be projects where for you know financing reasons they're you know they're kind of limited that their banks won't loan to them because they don't have enough parking some big larger multifamily you know I'll think about like the transit center that's why all the parking in the transit center there are 36 parking spaces and there are 36 units actually I think there might be 40 parking spaces and 36 units and that was because they're financing required them to have one parking space for every dwelling unit even though they're literally over a transit center in the downtown but that was the requirement of financing not the requirement that we at the city imposed on them I just wonder if it allows people to think more creatively about what we might we may not have seen it in the future right but we're expanding this area I mean am I the only one who thinks that this is worth talking about or we've actually had these debates two three years ago I think we had some debates was a totally different composition on the planning commission but I think there was like a majority of us that were in favor of changing the parking requirements but we had two or three people who were not quite sold on at the time so we I don't think we ended up acting on it but yeah we we've had these debates about about not having the parking requirements residential units and and we also made some changes some years ago to ease up on it a bit right my click oh ease them up a lot over the the pre 2018 zoning had you know a much more typical set of rules for for parking and with the new 2018 rules when they came in they drastically cut them down and and allowed a lot of other things like under the old zoning every individual parking space had to have its own access out so you couldn't block in any parking so there's a lot of rules like that now we say you know you've got to have parking if you've got a 60 foot driveway you have three parking spaces sure the front two people can't get out without somebody moving but we still count that as three parking spaces so if you've got a 60 foot driveway and you've got a triplex you're good and how that gets managed is up to the landlord and the people who live there and I'm sure they can sort it out just as I did when I lived in Burlington lived in downtown Burlington we piled the cars into the driveway and just stack stack them in depending on who had to get up earliest and get out first in the morning so so Gabe to answer your question I mean for me the only misgiving I would have is that it's not a direct response to the congress for new urbanism letter but as a policy thing that we should do outside of that well they they mentioned it a few times they mentioned it as something that could be regulated by by you know design review and I don't apparently our design review doesn't say anything about parking so that that wouldn't be applicable I don't know I'm just I'm just thinking like again we think of some of these larger buildings that will be included inside of this you know if this were to pass you know the city council right now all of a sudden we've got some buildings that maybe can have you know a forplex or five or whatever because there's no density requirements but they can't because they don't have the parking but they're you know on Bailey or they're you know they're like right they're walking distance to everything right but we're going to tie them all up because they only have a driveway where two cars could be parked you know I just I just wonder about some of that if we're going to lift this other stuff doesn't it make sense that if we're saying if the argument is hey we're not going to follow all of their recommendations because we feel like we like our design review process but we can we do feel comfortable that it's good enough to lift density does parking come up in that conversation but anyway I'll I'll stop talking about it because it doesn't look like anybody else is that interested so I think I think there's something there it makes sense or um especially if we're thinking of it from like a design perspective like are there things that we can include around um like CNU just doesn't want us to start paving everyone's front yard to put parking you know everywhere and I don't think anyone wants that right so yeah getting rid of you know I've been advocating to get rid of our parking requirements for almost a decade now I think like or the number one question I ask anytime we do anything is what um like what public good or like what is the reason we're doing this what is like the how is this in the public good and I don't understand how forcing somebody to create a a space or a home for a large vehicle which they may or may not have is in the public interest we're we want to be like a net zero community we're trying to design like walkable downtowns we've been talking about you know transportation as a service transportation like the future of transportation is going to change yet yet we require anyone who wants to build anything to have a home for a car in addition to the home for the person when like we know at least but 10 to 15 percent of households in the city don't have a car it's really bizarre um I will get off my my soapbox now and and and just say like yes I guess I am interested and there probably is maybe a complimentary design approach to that could could address some of the CNU comments I think now that Gabe mentioned the word parking I searched the document parking is mentioned in the dark document kind of indirectly but there might be enough of a hope there where I could feel honest about saying that a parking change is a response to what CNU saying so what do other folks think and what would be a hypothetical parking change that we would want to do I say I am all in on this conversation too Gabe I think you're just doing a good job of saying it I didn't need to weigh in you know I completely agree that if someone's building a building downtown requiring them to use part of that to house cars is not creating the kind of community that is attractive or that even is historically accurate with the rest of downtown um yes I think I also agree about the parking requirements so I will add there is one when we get to the outlining of the zoning changes this this came up completely separately so within our waiver provisions if you've got a commercial use you can get a waiver for the some of your parking requirements if you provide bicycle facilities but that only extends to commercial development and so there was a request that said you know why shouldn't we I mean it's a waiver you're not automatically getting it but at least you should be allowed to ask if you provide bicycle facilities couldn't you get a waiver for residential developments as well so that's one of the recommendations that's that is in there just to give some additional flexibility to the DRB to be able to go and say yeah you don't need all the parking requirements because you're located near transit you're located near the bike path you're providing bicycle facilities you don't need to I mean could we do the same thing as that I know we're talking about a broader application later but just inside the design review district could we say you can apply for a waiver right if you have adequate you know and then it's case by case right oh you live you know a block from the capital yes you can have a waiver right so this this proposal would be for any anywhere and I also wanted to point out we do have design requirements for parking and for parking lots it's just not in the design review standards it's in the parking standards so you can't park parking lots in front you can't put parking in front of the front face of the building there's a number of rules that you do have to meet for parking lots and parking it's just not into the design review and the same with this waiver it would not be in the design review district anyone could apply for the waiver it just may not make sense if somebody's you know way out in you know out at the end of terrace street at the edge of you know middle sex if they wanted to get a waiver for parking you might be like okay I mean you can apply but you're gonna have a little bit tougher argument because there's no transit out there there's no bike paths out there you know maybe they award it maybe they don't based on what what the requirement is but still there's only one parking space required for each car for each dwelling unit does does the the parking like location and stuff does that only kick in with site plan or conditional use no it's we couch towers under general standards for that reason so that way parking does apply parking standards do apply even for single-family homes and duplexes so it seems like that's like a that in effect is a design standard that applies like across the town right yeah yep and that's what I was trying to say just not as clearly as you just put it there it's it we do have the design standards it applies to all parking everywhere it's just not in the design review per se the DRC won't review it there are no design review standards through the DRC committee that they would be reviewing I mean if we know that we're going to put it through later in the year and there'll be public debate along with all the rest of the changes do we just hold off on it knowing that we want to see this waiver process but it's going to be for the whole city yeah I mean if you're dividing this into two pieces one being this the CNU AARP recommendations which I assume whatever you come out with is eventually going to merge with my zoning changes amendment you know at some point we're going to bring these together to go through and say these are the zoning changes we're going to recommend some of them came out of CNU AARP some of them came out of our process in the the planning office or whatever else you or the public has mentioned I think I think I think it might be a good idea though to present the it can be all at the same time but I think we should present them separately you know what I mean just because the city council had asked us to come back with a response to the letter so just just just for the sake of clarity and I think it will help also get those changes through if city council easily sees oh these are the things that AARP and CNU wanted us to do so it seems like the planning commission is not entirely on her own when it comes to to that part so I think it's good to to keep it separated even even if we're doing it at the same time um do we have a parking fix well okay uh okay before I ask that yeah go ahead Maria um I mean I think so going back to requiring the parking the parking car and seeing first thing all family homes um I don't understand I guess like I live on east state street I'm thinking of terry street which he just brought up um but why why does a single family home need to have a parking spot there's on street parking up and down the streets you know like and then on each state street I purposely parked my car on the street because I think it slows cars down otherwise they're going down our street 35 miles per hour but if my car is on the street they're slowing down to get around it so I do it as a safety measure because my kids are playing in my front yard you know so I don't understand these requirements to have a parking spot off road even on terry street it seems like that's like prime on street parking up there um I don't know so I don't like maybe I still understand the purpose of these rules nobody does the rules are this is I'm this is not me advocating but but the best reasons for the rules I've ever heard were that it makes renters provide parking or else a tenant takes a place and then realizes they've got nowhere to put their car and depending on where it is it can be a place where the on street parking is competitive and and so that that renters feel like they have no you know they have they have all these parking issues in their lives which I say that but then I don't feel like that's super compelling because it's like the perfect thing for the market to take care of I mean if if having a good parking spot's important to you then you should look for that and I understand that most people aren't economist brains and thinking about that necessarily when they're looking at apartments so I get that but still it's like a market thing where if the city's not requiring it then the landlords that are offering parking that's a you know worth something perhaps um and the ones that aren't means that the place should maybe not you know have the same about the same value um it just seems like the kind of thing that would work itself out to the market and I think there's this misconception like people want you're like well people should have a place to park their car and it's like yeah that makes some sense but this doesn't create any additional parking it just stops new housing from coming in like a parking requirement does not make more parking it just makes it harder to build things and potentially just stops that so I completely agree because there's plenty of on-street parking on my street at all times you know so there is no I mean I can see like maybe on River Street you know like these kind of streets that don't have on-street parking but like most of the single family homes I think there's probably plenty of parking on the street in front of them I think we have around a hundred acres of off-street parking as well in our downtown and I mean the the one thing I'll point out is you know when I got here in 2014 the rules still were and it wasn't you know for a couple of years after that um between November 1st and April 15th there was no on-street parking so having no you would have no place to park your car between those months so that's one of the reasons you'd find a lot of these things you have to have at least a parking space for one car you know if you don't have a car great you don't have to plow your driveway but the chances are good you're gonna have most people are gonna have one car and between these months there's no on-street parking because of the snow then that didn't change till maybe 2016-17 that they wanted to try to help the renters out and they went to they went through a series of different parking options to let people stay continue to park on street a little bit like Burlington where you can stay on street till the sign comes up and then you've got to have everybody off so you can remove the snow the most recently we've got the alternate side parking so that way they can clear snow on the alternate days but it very much could go back in a couple of years to go right back to no we're going to go back to no to reinstating the parking ban but that was just that's probably you know that's a reason why you would have these rules is because there is no on-street parking for five months of the year you know I guess just circling back to the beginning of the conversation I I feel like looking at the notes that you took Kirby I think that could be the basis of a memo and knowing that maybe at the same time we're submitting this that we're also going to have some other changes right that will be that will include a waiver process for you know parking requirements and I feel I feel pretty good about that that'd be I mean that'd be pretty great if we could get that stuff through okay so so yeah I'm a little fuzzy on like but when we debated this before I want to say that we wanted to do away with parking requirements for the residential properties or residential properties of a certain size so I mean the question is like you know like that the to the fix when I'm fuzzy on this is like look what fix we want so Gabe it sounds like you like the the waiver route as opposed to just doing away with the requirement for all or a portion of I mean I support doing away with all of it but the fact is that we already have the our professional planners recommending a waiver process and then again there probably are projects like if we built massive housing out in the alks club they probably have some parking for those people just saying because I think it is a little outside of a normal walk for a lot of people yeah and I wasn't saying that we we shouldn't propose it we have in the past proposed other neighborhoods I think we had actually when residential 15 went through 1500 the parking exemption went through that was something the council had thrown in after we had I think tried to eliminate parking in riverfront I think we had picked like riverfront mixed use residential and residential 1500 and there were a bunch of there's an outcry and one of the counselors happened to live in a residential 1500 neighborhood and said he wanted to get that put in and so the other two were nixed but this one was left in so we have tried in the past to add more neighborhoods and you know I think I've said in the past as you get farther out to get in and get into places where there aren't there isn't on-street parking I don't see any reason why we need to regulate parking so I think Maria mentioned River Street no on-street parking in River Street I don't know why we need to regulate it at all if the market will regulate how how much parking to build and how much building to build depending on what that particular you know use is trying to do and they'll they will maximize their use of that land because they can't externalize those burdens onto the neighborhood other places that have on-street parking you've got a little bit more of a discussion some neighborhoods there's on-street parking but it's not an issue there's plenty of on-street parking and others like Berry Street it's a significant it's it's just pretty tight parking so adding you know a bunch more housing you know and having all that housing drop that additional parking into the on-street just makes it that much harder for those folks who are already trying to park on street I mean you just think about where some of the Boston neighborhoods and fights go on for on-street parking and and it's just a policy that's not necessarily good or bad it can be well let let everybody fight it out and let the market sort it sorted out but those people talk to counselors everyone who's got a car and is in a bad spot on Berry Street it's going to talk to their counselor and that's how it gets background to kind of killing some of the proposals okay so sounds like our plan is when we take up the other zoning changes we'll take up Mike's waiver suggestion this suggestion the right word Mike you'll be suggesting a waiver okay sounds good thanks for bringing it up Gabe I think there's a lot of supporters of easing up the parking here so it's good uh do we want to do anything else with the C and U stuff I had a question about oh I'm sorry is there anybody else we're uh Ariane and Mike were talking before about the four unit or allowing four units per site and under what we are proposing is that four units despite the density limit for that lot is that the idea yeah okay okay I started to make sure that was what we were talking about yeah and I think the way that we could talk about this is it's just um I think I'm trying to go over my brain like convincing ways to talk about this because it's inevitable we'll talk at city council and I don't want to screw that up um um if you couch it as like the biggest problem to housing in the state from from what I've learned and what I've seen is uh people who are over housed and Montpelier certainly has that problem of large house with one or two people in it and you know that that I think contributes so much more to the housing problem than out of staters or the secondary rental market or these other things that get blamed um just from like the data stuff I've seen some of this is just from the work that's been done in the tax department where I work where what I've seen um so we couched as like that's a problem for us that's a problem like what we're proposing in our response to CNU gets directly at that specific problem where we're not having our regulations require people to be over housed anymore so within the design review district we are saying there's no density requirements you can have a lot of units in a big house and it's not going to be something that's going to stop your application all's the aesthetic regulations that we're doing we're going to keep doing and so you you know but but as far as the units and how how many people can be in a building uh we're not going to do that and then outside of it we're gonna it's the same problem we're getting at if there's a big victorian that's outside of design review district and someone wants to turn it into four units which I actually I'm a renter living in one of those right now by the way four four units in a big house in the meadows um then if you're outside design design review then that's just something we're gonna allow in the in the city and um so it gets at that's both of our suggestions get at that same problem which we're trying to identify as the biggest problem um and I think if you couch it that way it's I believe it's hard just to say no um does that answer kind of what you're thinking yeah sort of make sure the density rules wouldn't still got it but yeah I modified the document I was keeping to specify that too um because Mike had at Mike said he was a bit fuzzy on that um but I I modified the notes to say without regard for density because that was kind of the point it's we're still requiring it to be on a conforming lot which I can see as being maybe you're non conforming for some weird thing and then we're going to say you can't have four units now which when there's not going to mean possibly be a connection but I get why we would want to make sure it's conforming already because then it could prevent some worst-case scenarios too so um I don't know does anybody have thoughts about that I don't even really mean to bring it up but okay we have any more things to talk about with the CNU stuff or do we feel like we we have a plan for that yeah John you're good with where we're at with that are you on yeah okay all right so so um I haven't I haven't modified the notes anymore we're just going to keep those there um and then we'll use that to work off of when we go to do their proposal formally later um so I'm going to move on on the agenda and the next thing was to review outline of zoning changes for new amendment and that's a mic thing so tell us what that's about Mike all right so at this point we're not going to go through all these I was just going to kind of roll through them just to give an idea of what types of things we're looking at um so as we work through applications we always highlight things that come in as either things we had questions on or things where we know our mistakes and so we've just started to put together um you know like we don't have a definition for top of bank we've got a couple of riparian setbacks are measured from the top of bank but we don't have a definition so we need to add that in and um a couple of references that are wrong we have a a zoning district boundary that needs to be fixed because of a boundary line adjustment so this is what a lot of what we're doing at this point and then we'll rearrange them so they're in numerical order and some of these are just questions should we you know perhaps exempt unroofed structures such as car chargers I think that comes in uh somebody wants to put in a car charger and it doesn't you know it's not a structure but does that need a permit um you know probably not but we do kind of need to have something in the zoning that would give us the permission that says no that does not need a permit so there are a couple of these types of questions that have come up from time to time that we'll go through um uh this was one we talked about last time so the figure 215 that says that is the use chart so maybe we should split multifamily into two groups it's currently five or more as multifamily but maybe we should have one as multifamily five to 14 another one that's multifamily 15 or more and then the smaller one could be a permitted use for most or all districts while the large one can can keep the same designation so that goes to the fact that conditional use looks at only three things you know municipal services character of the area and traffic and so we already know municipal facilities is not rig is not an issue the state is trying to get communities to stop using character of the area for some of these smaller multifamily so if we did that that would get more of them to be permitted uses and not conditional uses and then the third is traffic and traffic only applies to 75 or more new trips well that's about 15 units create 75 trips so we're like well why wouldn't why would we put you know an eight unit multifamily through conditional use all that extra time all that extra money all the extra stuff we could split it up so that's just it's a proposal and these are all things we'll go through each one of these when we've got this all pulled together we'll go through each one of these individually and make a decision as to whether or not we'll keep it on the list that will eventually get warrant for public hearing and then we can add in whatever else you guys have and so you'll see the list some stuff you know it's it's a fairly decent size list at this point most of these are you know typos miss miss labels a couple of them are more significant you know this is one that's up here to talk about street typologies it's a requirement doesn't really appear in our zoning maybe we should clear up the rules to talk about the street typologies so that is that's the list right now I will I can send this out to everybody where it is where it is now these are just ideas but I did want to go and say this is kind of how we build them for folks who haven't done these zoning amendments in the past what usually happens at this point is we've got a we've got b c is going to be some recommendations or public comments and we just build these things out so we'll get public comments on these things and then we'll make decisions on them you know and we may get public comments that support them or don't support them and then eventually planning commission supports this change or planning commission amends this change or whatever so that's how it usually works we'll just keep building out these excel tables and then eventually make a strikeout copy like I said I didn't want to go into too much detail because it is just a long list and I could drone on for hours on why each one's important but really at this point it's just to go and show you we have started to pull these things together we'll get more information ultimately we're not going to warn any hearings until we get that information from country club road part of this is going to be all prepared so when country club road says we need to rezone this this part will be rezoned to mix use residential or riverfront or whatever and this part of it will be rezoned to res 6000 or res 9000 or res 3000 whatever it is the new zoning designations that would fit that would be needed to be made in order to make that rezoning possible and then we can just go through and add those on but we're we would be all ready to go because we've already done all these reviews of these typos and small changes like the one we discussed earlier does that does it make sense I assume everyone will be like yeah that just makes sense that we would allow waivers for parking if you're providing or near transit or providing these other bicycle amenities so those are the types of recommendations we have and if anybody knows of any others or wants to explore others we can certainly go through and have more conversations so so Mike you you think so we're going to wait to do zoning changes until the country club changes are known so what's the what's the timeline we I think we can start going through them I will have you know we're still working on the city plan I'm working closely with the se group we are still going to have a couple of chapters that we all need to work on to put together I don't think you guys have looked at community services so we still have that chapter and we still have land used to do but we also can start having meetings to discuss I can flesh out what was in that excel table and get that out to you and we can start having conversations about those um as you know we only meet twice a month uh if once in April and once in May we meet to talk about those you know by June we're starting to talk about what country club road you know the decisions for country club road should be coming in in June to know what the master plan is going to say and we'll want to start making those changes so I don't I don't think it's too far off to start discussing what's on on these excel tables and to really start getting ready for for June which although it seems far away doesn't take long when you're only the meeting twice a month yeah no that's soon uh that's great that's great uh so so will it be June that we have the meetings on all of the zoning changes um I think we'll be having a conversation about what the country club proposal would be or what the ideas would be for the public hearing I would bet our zoning the planning commission zoning public hearing would be either July or August okay so the zoning I just I'm just trying to understand like what what you're thinking of conceptually that public hearing would involve all of the zoning changes we've been talking about or just the country club ones all of them okay we'll have meetings to talk about these um but the official warnings that go out in the notices that go out we start promoting and trying to get a lot of public input on we could have a public meeting before have a public hearing for and just talk about things generally to go through and say hey these are the ideas we're thinking of do you want to you know have more of that but um unless we've got something coming up that's uh very specific that we want to get input on I think we would put together most of what we want to do we would then have a meeting among the planning commission to talk about here's where the city council came down with their decision on country club road here's the staff's recommendation for zoning do you guys want to have a conversation on that what do you guys think you know do you think we should zone it for more density even though you know they could build it with res 6000 but should we make it res 3000 so it's got more infill potential um that type of conversation okay that sounds good is everyone is everyone okay with that plan to basically have our zoning um the goal would be to have our our zoning hearings all overall the stuff in june yeah I I'm good with that I I don't know as much as of input as there is into the country club road project that I would feel like I wanted to monkey around with whatever came out of that process myself but in terms of all the zoning changes yeah I think we could it's probably going to take a few weeks based on what we did last time yeah it can be I mean how we get there what they'll decide how many units I mean I think the max housing proposal that is is in the conversation is 500 units on country club road um and how would we break that into different zoning districts they're they're not discussing how to break it into zoning districts that would be a piece that would kind of come down to to you guys and to staff making a recommendation and there may be various ways of doing it um john I think is the only one here we had long conversations on how to zone savings pasture um how do we you know we knew what the potential was but do we want to zone it this way and that would encourage this or do we want to zone it that way and that would encourage that and eventually the planning commission recommended zoning all of savings pasture all 100 acres at res six six thousand so that's seven units an acre roughly um and then the city council threw that out and said nope we don't want that we want high density at the bottom and we'll make that riverfront that you know one unit per 1500 and the rest of it's going to be rural so they changed it they did something different so we're probably going to have a number of options to consider how would we like to zone this we might be able to do a little bit of this we might be able to do a little bit of this and then we'll have to have a discussion of you know what the recommendation is we'll go to public hearing and hear from the public and the public may disagree with where staff is or may disagree with where you guys are and we make a decision and send it to council it's so it's not always black and white based on oh we know this is the development so we know this is the zoning um there's usually some some amount of gray that goes into it one thing that could be a factor mike just to think about as in the summer people have vacations we start to maybe have quorum issues some weeks um if i remember i don't know i think august gets really blown up for us so yeah then it may it may be one that we try to have some meetings and some hearings and it may get pushed i it more than once you know and i think you've you've been here Kirby for a bunch of these zoning updates we've pushed the hearing until september um in this case because it's too it's too hard to get hearings and and hear from people or we'll we'll have it in august it goes to city council and gets blown up because everybody comes back from vacation and is mad i'm a little concerned about delaying things too much because we don't want we don't want the city plan getting like delayed we don't you know um so just just since we're on the topic do people know like is anybody is anybody going to be unavailable and for a big chunk of june that they're aware of now how about july it's possible that i won't be around the first week of july which just shouldn't be a meeting week anyway um but then august is also is going to be some unavailability for me i i'm out in august the i'd have to look at the dates but probably when we'd have a meeting same here for august yep yeah that happens pretty much annually we august gets just gone we'll sort them out and cancel meetings as as appropriate and like i said we'll fit stuff in from a zoning standpoint for country club road like we said country club road is looking to build in 2024 so as long as we're done you know by by christmas we'll be fine i wouldn't want to be having zoning hearings at city council during budget which starts in december so i would whatever we do as long as it gets to city council for october i would be i'd be happy if if if for some reason the the deliberative process with the country club project gets way delayed would you be okay mike if we just did the other zoning before that just to get it out of the way yeah if we can do that i was just trying because because it takes it's such a heavy lift i get it yeah to do the zoning updates we usually try to lump as many of them together as we can and we're expecting we're also expecting hearing well we're well we're actually hoping for hearings and what the next couple of months for the city plan right yeah so so then there'll be that whole process in parallel um okay we can always have some hearings on non mondays like if we're gonna have a bit unavailability i mean it's an exciting time for the popular planning commission if that major zoning changes major city plan overhaul but it might mean scheduling some hearings on some non planning commission nights i don't think that that could be an option to to get more stuff done okay don't lose don't lose hope what we do is very important and your time is well spent um okay what do we do you want to did you want to have anything did you want to have anything else or did you have anything else to say sorry uh mike about zoning changes nope i just wanted to let you know we were we're starting them up i might organize them and get you might get an email on them but don't feel pressured that there's any big timing issue on it it's just if i've got them and people want to start looking through them um then you'd have have what we have so far okay that i mean from what i saw that previous gave us like that seems like all it seemed almost all technical housekeeping and then i don't know i didn't see a single issue there'll be still be two or three policy ones that are in there that are kind of general okay so so yeah so even though we're going to send the cnu stuff under like separate cover with the policy reasons why shouldn't we also have the the technical language that would go into the zoning right mike shouldn't you write you guys write that yeah that would eventually end up on on that list i just showed that excel table we would have one that would say you know usually what i end up with is is the number the the next cell would have the very specific change of what is being proposed and then the next cell is kind of an explanation of what it is and some of the might go go and say c cnu aarp recommendation memo from pc um and it might refer back to that specific discussion that we we just had previously okay that sounds good um maybe as far as for next time um will we have some more chapters i i think i was trying to remember on my notes because i mentioned community services might be all we have left seventh uh so the 27th is that's march 27th yes or april 10th so when i talked with them i think they're expecting to have a bigger roll out on april 10th so it's one month they're gonna show you a whole bunch of new ones but we did want to go and have on the agenda to have a conversation on the 27th of some templates um of a couple of them that are done just so you guys can get a chance to sit down and say yeah this is this is you know exactly where we were hoping this was going to go now that they put a bunch of work into it but they've got like six or eight of them going right now and we're working on working through them but we just want to make sure we get one last time where we bring you guys a template to go through and say here's the template we've made all the changes made all the final stuff what do you guys think of because everything is going to look like this one and then and saying that they've already have like six or seven of them that are that are mostly built out okay well that's that's yeah sounds like they have been busy so so you're saying in their next meeting s e's gonna check in with us yep s e will check in on the 27th and then they'll they'll be most of the agenda on the 20th or the excuse me the 10th april 10th oh they'll be most of it on the 10th and then we'll be kind of done with as far as our suggestions for s e group um yep and then we still have a conversation on community services and land use right i think we should do community services or land use next time on the 27th in addition to s e group checking in i know i know you're varied by the country club which i get it um um yeah i think it's just for purposes of just trying to to move it along to see how long yep i'll see if i've got three quarters of community services done um there were just a couple of chapters that a couple of sections because community services is seven different things i've already done recreation i've already done parks i've already done senior center i've already done cemeteries i think what's left is the homelessness um the conflict assistance which is out of cjc and there's one more but there's there's there's smaller pieces oh childcare so those are the three those are the three pieces that are left um so if i can finish those then we've got those those are the implementation strategy i haven't written chapters so obviously as many of you know there's two both pieces uh well if you um for one thing if you don't get all of the pieces that's okay we could do the bulk of it um and then if you can get like just a like sketch of a chapter if you can get that posted in the next week or so i'll try to go over it also and then at least we can have i'll try to help you and make sure that that's ready to go um but if we can if we can do that we'll be in good shape and then so when we get done with s e group in early april late april meeting can hopefully be land chief's plan and and that's what uh planning commissioners you should be thinking about the land chief's plan maybe you know the land chief's plan is bringing the whole thing together the whole plan together so if folks could get um acquainted in the next couple months with all of the chapters that we have especially the big ones um you know we're going to be tasked with unlike most times you know we've got suggestions coming from somewhere else we got to come up with from scratch the land chief's plan chapter but i'm sure mike's going to help us a ton but um but we're not going to have some other committee bringing it to us like we normally get you know um that's a big advantage that we normally have we will have uh but the overarching big land chief's plan ideas we're going to need to develop out and so people can start thinking about that and bring those ideas um i think i mean we the things we tend to always say are probably going to be things like walkable community etc but um but yeah start thinking about that for late april we had the solar shading issue too which is which is going to be part of the zoning stuff so we'll probably whenever we have a meeting coming up that we do have some empty space on we'll revisit the solar shading because if we want to add that to zoning amendment then we'll have to have that conversation of if it's going to get added on again or not yeah yeah and i'm assuming it will be um john put in a ton of work like on that that we need to to to to revisit and i don't think the city it didn't like i sent it to the city council when he did it last time but it was like they i don't know it was after they'd already received it i don't i don't know how much attention was paid to it um anyway solar shading issue uh it's another zoning thing so we actually kind of so if like four categories of zoning things uh okay so it sounds like we have a plan um is anybody does everybody feel good did they follow that conversation about what to expect over the next couple months um if we don't have any any questions then we can move on to refuting the minutes and adjourning um go ahead maria i was just wondering if there's might be a chance to meet in person in the next two or three months it'd be nice to actually meet everybody um and i'm not sure if the commission's always been remote but it would be nice just have like before we move into like public hearings just to kind of meet fellow commissioners um that's a good idea what do other people think i think it's a good idea yeah i think it's a good idea mike looks lonely he needs needs more people there do we want to try to target a week right now March 27th April 10th April 10th might be a tricky one because we all will want to have our computers up because se group is going to be going through there all the web websites and all the changes and so if you're here you'd be looking at the screen um which isn't the end of the world but it's certainly probably a lot easier to be looking at your computer screen that night but any of the other nights i think would work it's a good point i've gotten used to doing a bunch of stuff on my computer during the meeting which i didn't use to bring a computer to meetings so i'll be less productive when i'm there in person but that's okay i'll figure something out uh do you guys want to say next time then the 27th yeah let's do it i see groups gonna checking with us and what was the other thing we said we're gonna do we're gonna um hopefully look at the uh the facilities yep yep they'll either be community services i mean yep community services yeah yeah all right optional obviously but uh we're gonna try to see people in the flesh next time all the social pressure all of a sudden you know gotta drag Aaron out no no i'm happy to come i'll be there i'll be there um yeah i mean it's totally optional but only losers will be remote just so you know so you know no pressure uh okay so let's let's take a look at the minutes um mike sent a separate email by the way the first the first one something went wrong and it wasn't the right just grab the wrong things look at mike's newest email to review the minutes and i'll take a motion to approve when people are ready i would note for december 12th that it's peter kelman with a k okay that's a note to change it's a bit of an aside but i strongly approve the use of the verve edge beef up standards and then january 9th minutes at a legal term i think it's just professional can you unbeef them lean right stream line that's it that's a db thing so i move um approval of the december 12th january 9th january 23rd and february 13th minutes with mike's change on the december 12th that's okay so we have a motion um do we have a second i second second from gaib does anyone need more time well what is there still an agenda am i looking at the right is the 12th still an agenda or is that minutes i'm sorry maybe i'm looking at the wrong is this at 526 p.m. you sent this mike yeah the december the december one's an agenda right yeah yeah yeah good call brand oh did i still send another yeah december even it's honest mike yeah we got 213 123 and 19 minutes let me see what i've got here now i wonder if somebody saved the agendas in the minutes box and that's why i'm keep grabbing the wrong one you said the december one yeah december 12th very annoying this one all right we've tried to send that to you again i guess i could have probably just shared screen on it too people you already received it i did not get it right nope all right let me yeah just share the screen you saw the motion in the set the motion in a second by the way um left to amend the motion if we find an issue here this has become intriguing where am i there i am share that all right you're able to see that there was my peter helman actually looks like we'd have to also strike there were no members of the public in attendance so we can strike that too because peter obviously made comments arian would you like to amend your motion yes i vote do i have to say to what i'm losing the thread here sorry i i don't think it needs to be amended because it was based on my comments regarding these minutes anyway so okay i mean yeah her specific wording was to to do whatever mike said so we're gonna so so everyone so everyone understands the motion is to strike the first to strike the sentence there were no members of the public in attendance and to correct peter helman's name in the december 12 minutes um so that's our motion we need a second for gabe those in favor of approving the minutes with those changes say i hi hi hi okay we posed okay minutes done thank you and do we have a motion to adjourn slightly early brian sinking to adjourn oh okay motion marion second from john we're adjourned see you guys in two weeks in our city guys potentially


Now, so hello everyone. It's a great pleasure for me to be here today. My name is Matthias Wachs, and I'm a member of the GNUnet project I'm mainly working on the transport component of our peer-to-peer framework and Since we released our new version Some weeks ago. I want to tell you about the latest developments and our vision about How we want to enforce network neutrality and censorship resistance with our framework Slide please. So basically GNUnet is free software and is an extensible peer-to-peer framework, which You can use to easily develop your vision of a new peer-to-peer application Our idea we want to give you with GNUnet is Connectivity everywhere without the possibility to limit your traffic or to censor your traffic So if you want to exchange your information with your body, you should be able to do it Anytime anywhere and with whoever you want So what does What does GNUnet do to Realize this vision. So basically GNUnet has more than one transport protocol we can provide you so if you have an Internet service provider which Improves your internet connectivity with techniques like quality of service or traffic shaping You can just switch to a different transport plug-in That is perfectly Perhaps giving you a better performance so we provide you with that TCP UDP HTTP and HTTPS so if your connectivity is somehow limited You can just switch the plug-in if you have one of these providers who protects you in your Private network and uses techniques like network a network address translation a proxy or a filter That's also no problem with GNUnet because with GNUnet you have techniques like You can be various natural versatile techniques and we have also a client only mode where you you only use outbound connections IPv6 is now how old I don't know at least 10 years, but we have many of these Internet service providers Who still do not support IPv6? So if you have to access one of these fancy websites With IPv6 only hosting your latest government secrets you should perhaps have a look at the GNUnet VPN application the GNUnet VPN application is Giving you address tunneling and no protocol tunneling and protocol translation. So you get both both four over six and six over four and 46 and six to four address translation in a peer-to-peer based approach. So you don't two minutes So you don't need an external tunnel broker Okay, so your ISPs old-school. Okay, but what if you don't have any ISP and so with GNUnet we support Mesh Network so we have an WLAN physical layer transport plug-in and so if you have a little hacking session near the campfire It's no problem. You and your buddies can connect on Wi-Fi physical layer directly and if you use our mesh service If one of your buddies still has internet access we can route with a mesh service to the internet So I'm currently working on a new mathematical approach to Select always the best transport mechanism for you and to automatically assign the correct amount of bandwidth to to all the peers you communicate will and For this I'm trying to find a mathematical approach one minute extend time So thank you very much. It was really a huge audience and so you can find more information on our website So with it visit GNUnet org or just join us. So me and our group on Free note and the channel GNUnet or just grab be with me today in the evening after the talk and our latest Version is out now. So visit our website download it and give it a try load. Thank you. Thank you


Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting haul edition of a week in Geekdom. Gio here, and I am hoping you guys are safe and sound and ready to enjoy some haulage action. Yes, at the end of every month I like to do a haul video of all the geeky stuff that I acquired, and if you want me to review any of them, as always let me know in the comments section down below. So let's get started with anime and manga. Actually let's do manga first, because manga is cool. I've got a bunch of volumes here. Here is volume 24 of My Hero Academia, starting the villains arc, if you will. We're like three manga volumes away from catching up to Japan, if I remember correctly, right? Or maybe two volumes. But still, this is looking pretty freaking fantastic, and I love My Hero Academia, and things are just heating up, and this volume is so amazing. I cannot recommend it enough. So yeah, volume 24 of that. Here we have a demon slayer right there. Finally, if you have been following my channel, all of these books were preordered so long ago, but due to the pandemic, and then the whole media mail being delayed, and different circumstances meant that I have been waiting for these books for two months now, or something crazy like that. So I'm not even up to date with Demon Slayer. This is volume 12, accompanied by volume 13, but I don't have 14 with me, so we'll probably see that at a later time, the next haul, I guess. So yeah, pretty excited to continue my journey through Demon Slayer. And speaking of manga with the letter D, here we have Dr. Stone, volume 11, and this series is just one of my favorites, man. I love it so much. And the new stuff with them, doing something that I don't want to spoil in the last volume, it continues on into this one, and I'm so excited about it. Here we have some oversized manga, Beastars, volume 6. Really cool stuff. If you, I can't show you that because that's a spoiler, what can I show you here? This is a pretty spoiler-heavy volume. Yeah, all right, I can show you this. So Beastars is fantastic. I had my favorite book from last year. And if you've only watched the anime, and if you're wondering where to continue after finishing the series the first season, this is the volume you should get, because the anime adapts up to the halfway point of this book. So yeah, volume 6 onwards, you're gonna be treated to some amazing things. So yeah, Beastars volume 6. And I gotta give a shout out to my friend, the omnibus collector himself, Riley, for hooking me up with the Kingdom of the Gods. This is a zombie manua that inspired the Kingdom series, if I remember correctly, on Netflix, the live action stuff. But basically, this is zombies and ancient rulers and warriors and stuff. It looks pretty bloody. I mean, look at this. The art on this, it looks fantastic. And I can't wait. I'm gonna try and read this extremely fast so that I can geek out over it with you guys. The art is just really awesome in this book. I love me some good zombies, and this is right up my alley. So here is the Kingdom of the Gods. Speaking of oversized and badass, here is the fifth deluxe edition for Berserk. I've already read this because I own the whole series in the regular editions, but I've been slowly upgrading as these come along. So now we officially have the entire Golden Age arc in deluxe edition format, and that is amazing, epic, and I cannot wait to get the rest of the series in deluxe edition. Volume 6 is scheduled for November, if I remember correctly. So we'll be done in no time. Here's a cool panel from the book. I tried to pick something out that won't spoil the story, just in case you are reading Berserk for the first time. This shouldn't be a spoiler whatsoever. So yeah, I'm pretty excited to own this bad boy. And these deluxe editions, man, they're fantastic. I didn't get the Helsing one because I have the Ultimate series, and I've loved that, and I've read the story. So I don't know if I'm going to upgrade, because I already have the series, and I'm trying to avoid getting or repeating things. Like I'm already doing that with Demon Slayer and My Hair Academia, where I have the anime and I have the manga. I'd rather use that valuable shelf space for another deluxe edition manga or something further down the road or something like that. I don't know. But yeah, the Helsing one looks fantastic as well. Who knows? Maybe in the near future I'll get it. We'll see. Let's move on to collected editions, since we're talking books. Leave anime for a little bit. This is something really cool, and I gotta give a shout out to Learman Condition, because they put out a video on the Street Fighter books, and I have been wanting to get into the Street Fighter books for a very long time. You saw Volume 1 on the last haul, and I ordered the rest of the classic, which is the first volumes in the series. So here we have Volume 2 hardcover right there. I got this from Mountain Man Comics, if I remember correctly, a local shop in Georgia. So yeah, they were kind enough to hook me up with this. That is really cool, because I do believe you can still find them in stores, but online. Some people are kind of asking a little bit over cover price for this, and I didn't want to overpay for these books. They're fantastic. Don't get me wrong, but like, yeah, settle down guys. Don't flip books like that. So I got Volume 2, which looks really cool, and I got Volume 3. Unfortunately, I got stuck with a bad copy. Don't worry, this was sealed, and it's not the shop's fault, I think. I don't know. But the spine's all messed up. As you can see right there, it's all torn up. You can still read the book just fine. I will do something about it to fix it, or if you've got some suggestions, let me know in the comment section. But I'm really excited to go through this and make...  These are the ones that happen to arrive first. For example, I am going to make a Street Fighter Classics review, and then I'll move on to the next series and group every volume together. So it's not like an overabundant catalog of Street Fighter videos, because a lot of you don't really like watching Volume 2s on your YouTubes. You prefer a Volume 1 or a full series review, so I'm not going to bore you with that. Finally, I have with me here KaijuMax, Deluxe Edition Volume 2. This is one of my favorite series. I made a video on the first volume, if you want to check that out. My first impressions on KaijuMax. Not the Deluxe Edition, but the trade paperback. Just know that it keeps getting better and better after that. So I don't know, maybe eventually I'll do a video like a full series review on what I've read so far with KaijuMax with Volume 1 and Volume 2. I guess this is Season 2 or something like that. But yeah, this book is amazing.  I think Oz, but with Kaiju in a prison. Yeah, it's kind of like that. It's really awesome. The art is fantastic, and there's so many details and callbacks to Toho films and Super Sentai, all that fun stuff. If you like that stuff, you're right at home with this. KaijuMax is fantastic, guys. You gotta pick it up. Plus, to own a lime green book like this is pretty bitchin', I gotta say. Alright, now we're going to move on to Blu-rays. We're going to start with anime and then transition into live action stuff. So first here we have Promere on Blu-ray from G-Kids. I made a review on my channel here talking about Promere, if you want to check that out. Fantastic, wonderful film. I love everything Trigger does, and this movie was just breathtakingly badass. I wanted to get the Collector's Edition at first, but I mean, thinking it over, there's so much stuff coming out. You gotta be wise with what you're getting, and I mostly wanted that Collector's for the soundtrack, but I already have the soundtrack digitally and you can check it out on, I think it's on one of the streaming Spotify or something, but you can listen to it or just regular YouTube. So it's not a huge deal breaker. I'm like, ah, yeah, I'll get this. Plus, it was going for really cheap money on third-party websites. So yeah, Promere. Fantastic. I made a video unboxing on this. This is the first half of Demon Slayer, the Aniplex CD. Did I say CD? I'm at Blu-ray. Jesus. I was thinking about the soundtrack for Promere. A lot of you left some really awesome comments because I knew you were going to be shocked at this box with the pricing and all that stuff, and I agree 100%. I'm not angry at all. I actually did not want to make that video because of it, but I said, you know what, to hell with it, I wanted to highlight it anyway because it's a pretty looking Blu-ray set anyways. But yeah, the love affair with the love and hate relationship, I should say, with Aniplex continues. So there you go. Demon Slayer Volume 1, Volume 2 comes out in November. So that's going to be exciting. Part 2 of my appreciation for my friend, Riley Moore, and hooking me up with some cool things. This was actually a gift. He got this, he wasn't going to see it, and I already had the first part. He found out I had the first part. I'm like, oh cool, I'll send it to you. So you can complete the set. And that is a comic got killed, Volume 2. It came with the DVDs on another case and a third case for the soundtrack, but I'm just showing you this, the later half of the anime series. So now I have the full series on Blu-ray, and that is really cool. So thank you, man. Moving on to western animation, here we have a copy of Superman Red Sun. And with this video, I'm announcing that I am ending my collection of DC animated movies, unless they adapt a really cool storyline that I like from comics. There's so many of them, and they ended their movie original universe. So now they're just going to do random stories. I'm kind of done. It was awesome, and maybe I'll do a video one day summarizing the whole thing or reviewing the whole movie universe, but I don't know. Yeah, Red Sun from DC Comics, or Warner Brothers Animation, I should say. And transitioning into live action, let's keep the DC train rolling. I didn't have this when it first came out, so I picked up a 4K copy of Joker. Looks really fantastic. I really like this movie, and it was really awesome to revisit the film in 4K. And finally, I got this for Dirt Cheap, one of my favorite movies of 2019, and that was The Lighthouse. I think I got this for $9 or something crazy. And just you watch. There's no 4K release of this, and I don't think they'll do 4K anytime soon, but just you watch.  Fantastic. Finally, let's talk video games. This is kind of funny. I was really excited to show you guys the Paper Mario game for Switch. Unfortunately, I ordered that through GameStop, and they had the fantastic idea to separate what do you call it, the bonus item that you get, the freebie collectors thing. They shipped it out separately from the game, and both items fit in a regular bubble mailer, so I really don't understand the logic behind that. I'm still waiting for the game. It hasn't arrived, but I did get the bonus item, which is the Paper Mario the Origami King pin set right there. So this was exclusive to, is that even focusing? There we go. This was exclusive to GameStop if you pre-ordered the game, and that's the only thing. I don't use GameStop at all. I don't care about them. I just wanted the pins for some reason, and I'm like, alright, I'll order it through them. Now I know better, and not to order stuff from GameStop, because they ship things sporadically. I'm still waiting for the freaking game. Anyways, another, let's do more Switch games, because there's a ton here. Another game I picked up is Cathering Full Body for the Switch, and what's cool about this is that I have the original PlayStation 3 version, which I never got to play, and if you want to find out why there is a second channel that you can check out, it's called Geo's Arcade. It is my new YouTube channel dedicated to all things video game, and I started posting random videos. I'm still trying to get all the equipment setups and all the things I need to start making video game-related content on that channel. So I'm just testing the waters, posting random videos, and one of them was about my PlayStation collection. In that collection I talked about Catherine and why I could not finish all the PlayStation 3 games in my collection, because I have a better few of them. So if you're into that kind of stuff and you want to hear me talk about video games, check out Geo's Arcade here on YouTube. It's mostly going to be about retro games, and maybe do Switch reviews, and stuff like that. I don't know. It's still undecided the future for that channel, but I'm really excited to jump on that. But anyways, Catherine Full Body. This game is a lot of fun. I love a good puzzle game, and if you ordered it through, I think every single retailer, it comes with a keychain of the sheep. So that's really cool. This is one of the naughtiest Switch games, although there are a couple like the Sakura Pinball thing. Next up, something I've always wanted to play, and I never got a chance to on the previous console generations, and I finally got the game. It is Bayonetta. Although it's Bayonetta 2, it does include the code for Bayonetta 1. I found it sealed, which is rare, because everybody sells it with the code already redeemed, through just buying volume 2 or game number 2. But yeah, it was sealed, so I was able to get both games. So I'm really excited about that. Got some Bayonetta action, and even though I already own a couple Limited Run games, this was my first time ordering through their website, which was interesting because when they shipped the game, they actually messed up the address, and I was scared that it was not going to arrive, but it did. So yeah. But still, Limited Run games, even though I don't like the fans mentality when it comes to that company, I do like the idea of a Limited Run for a certain game, because you can get it digitally, but you can also do the physical release. So here is Streets of Rage 4. Fantastic beat-em-up series, and I can't wait to dive into this. And for no cost at all, they give you a soundtrack, and not to mention that the game already comes with the Limited card, if you like collecting cards, and it has an instruction booklet, which is just fantastic for the price of, what, $30 something, was it? You can't beat that.  I mean, look at freaking Nintendo with Paper Mario in GameStop. I only got this thing, and I didn't even get the freaking game. Come on. You also get one of these newspaper things, but that's more about the info on the company and stuff. Anyways, what else did I get? Oh, one more Switch game that is the wonderful 101 Remastered Edition. Really excited about this. I never played the original, so I'm excited to check out the Remastered Switch port. And finally, two more video games for you guys. I mentioned last video that I was getting into the Gears franchise with my Xbox. So yeah, I got Gears of War 4 with the code for the previous game, so I was able to download 2, 3, and judgment. So yeah, really excited about that. Gears of War 4. All I need is Gears 5, I guess. And the hot title that everybody's talking about, Ghost of Tsushima. Here is the launch edition, the basic edition. I was going to get the collectors, but it was a little bit too out of my price range. Is that a thing? I don't know. It was a little bit pricey, and all I wanted was the mask. I didn't care for any of the extras, so it'd be kind of a waste. So I got the game instead. So yeah, that is... That's the haul, guys. That was a lot of stuff. Hopefully you enjoyed that. And again, if you want me to review any of the items that I talked about, except the movies, except the live action stuff, because I don't do that on the channel, but everything else. The manga, the books, all that stuff, let me know in the comments section down below. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you for liking, commenting, subscribing, and being a part of a We Can Geekdom. It really does mean a whole lot. There's also a merch link down below for some We Can Geekdom shirts if you're interested. Check out Geo's Arcade if you want to hear me talk about video games. And that's about it. As of this video, stay tuned for more Fable Fridays. And keep watching the channel for whatever video book review comes out next after this. So thank you so much. I've got to go. I will catch all of you on our next video.