I'm going to call this meeting to order for the Development Review Board for the City of Montpelier. Our meeting for Monday, September 17th, 2018. My name is Daniel Richardson. I'm the chair of the Development Review Board and the other members from my right are Rob Goodwin, Meredith Crandall staff, Kate McCarthy, Ryan Cain. Okay. First item of business is the approval of the agenda. Do I have, I want to make a clarification. It's printed under other business, but the last item of business that we'll be taking up today is the informal review of 100 State Street, the Nukes Garage proposal that's being proposed, I think, jointly by the city and Bechara. And that's not a actual formal sketch plan. It is an informal review. So it's just under other business as opposed to an actual item of business that we're going to take action on because that's not the intent tonight. But other than that, is there a motion to either approve the agenda or to amend the agenda? The agenda as printed. Okay. Motion by Kate. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Rob. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. We have an agenda. There are no other comments from the chair tonight. The approval of the minutes of September 4th that we'll have to put off to next meeting because we lack a form on that. And that brings us to our first application of the evening, 9 Pearl Street. Is the applicant for 9 Pearl Street. Please, sir, if you'll come forward. Phil, could you turn off that air conditioning unit right there? Please. We usually get in trouble with that one. That one gets turned off and on all the time. Power button in the middle. Thank you for sound. So if you'll state your name for the record, please. John Brutal. Mr. Brutal, just so you know, normally we are composed of seven members this evening due to absences and conflicts. We're down to the bare minimum quorum.  Or it's your right to ask to have this postponed to be heard by the full board. So that's a decision that you're welcome to make. Well, I have to ask your advice because I've never been to these before. So I would need you to advise me whether it's in my interest to come back or whether it's in my interest to stay and look into some advice here. Sure. Well, we can't necessarily give that advice, which is the problem. But what I can say is that the way in which the board works and the reason why we offer that is that out of seven members, if you want your permit approved, four have to vote in the affirmative. Notwithstanding the fact that there's only four of us tonight, it means all four of us would have to vote in the affirmative because that number remains the same. And so... I'm just saying that if there's seven of you, I got a better chance. Well, it's mathematically speaking, but it's also in the nature of your approval, which is to say, if you were going for a permit that had no controversy, was very straightforward, it may not matter whether there were seven of us or four of us. If there is some controversy and there's a likely split of the vote, obviously you're playing against the odds in that respect. Okay, bearing that in mind, I will come back because I noticed that Meredith has written a report that I'm looking for your discretion to approve. So if there's more of you, I guess there's more of you to have more discretion. That's perfectly acceptable, and what we'll do is we'll simply table this application until our next regularly scheduled meeting, which would be the first Monday in October, and the calendar is not helping me out October 1st. I see that it's on the bottom. Okay. Oh, no, sorry.  It's just on the agenda. All right, I will do that and come back and see when hopefully you have more people. We do have to make that motion in the affirmative. I'll make a move that we continue the application for 9 Pearl Street until October 1st, 2018 meeting. Okay, motion by Ryan. Do I have a second? Second that? Okay, second by Rob. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of tabling the application until the October 1st meeting, please raise your right hand. All right, Mr. Ruer. Well, good luck. And we'll see if the odds are in your favor next time. I'll see you later. Take care. It's bound to happen. It's a good application. The next applicant is 156 Elm Street. And that is Joe and Lucy Ferrata. If you'll introduce yourself. I'm Joe Ferrata. I'm the owner of 156 Elm Street. And Mr. Ferrata, you heard what I told Mr. Boodle, which is the same that goes for you. You're welcome to go forward tonight with four members or you're welcome to ask for us to table it. I think I want to move forward. However, if it so happens, the decision is none of my favor. Can I sort of ask for the item to be on the agenda at this subsequent meeting? Yeah, I don't think we have a sort of formal motion to reconsider, but I'll tell you what we can do, which I think may make just as much sense, is if you have a weather report from the board, that seems to indicate that there's some difficulty. You may wish to say, you know, I'd like to table it. So anything short of a vote. I think once we cast the vote, we cast the vote. And there are formal motions to reconsider, although they're not necessarily adopted into our procedure. But I think it would be the wiser course to simply ask for a weather report at a certain point. And I think you'll tell from the tone. Okay, sounds good. We can indicate it's looking troubled. We can continue the hearing so that he can provide more information, if need be, at another meeting. Does that make more sense to you, Kate? If that makes sense for this applicant, I wonder if that's what they're asking. I think that made sense for Mr. Boodle having written my staff report. Thank you. And it was not requested by the previous applicant, as it has been. Thank you. If not asked, not received. So, Mr. Farada, I ask you raise your right hand and I'll put you under oath. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give for the matter under consideration shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury. Yes. Please, let us give us a description of what you're proposing. So, basically, it's a landscaping plan. And so what we're doing, the matter issue is a landscaping plan. What we're doing is we're converting, it's a four-unit building. It's on Elm Street 156, as I said. And one of the units is currently in office and we're bringing it back to a residential unit. And it's a permitted use, right? And so it, you know, the zoning administrator has reviewed it and it's sort of a minor plan request so forth. And so the issue at hand is around the landscaping where right now there is less landscaping than required. But so I'm asking for a waiver. Of the landscaping requirements and to be specific. I think that's the issue at hand. That's at least the issue, a controversy. But before we dive into the landscaping, I think it makes sense to just get simply on the record the nature of the application, the non-controversial aspects according to the staff comment. You're proposing, this is on the fourth floor, is that? It's actually. So number four unit, I'm sorry. Right. So it's the unit in the front of the building. There's two units in the front of the building. That's where the access is. And it's second and third floor, basically. And Meredith, as a result of this change, is there a parking increase or decrease? Or no change? Neither really. I mean, at most you'd have a decrease in the amount of parking required. That somebody might want. There's really no change needed to the parking plan whatsoever. They probably don't need as many parking spaces, but they're not going to make any changes to the layout. Right. This is just strictly an internal change. And then they've made some changes to the landscaping plan at my suggestion, because that was the only thing that did not meet the requirements really. It was the only reason that this was not just approved administratively. Sure. And I'm going through just the general standards that were not changing the lighting. The principal building remains the same. We're within the residential densities. The lot size is in accord with the district. The street frontage is not changing. The setbacks are not changing. The building is not changing. It's nothing that's implicating erosion, steep slopes, wetlands, riparian areas, stormwater management, access and circulation. And that was my question really about the parking, was to make sure that we're not changing the number of parking spaces. So whatever this business had allocated before, it has the same number of parking spaces. And that will be sufficient for the residential use. One note is there is no indication about bicycle storage. And where do, more than anything, what we want to understand is just people who are using bicycles that are living at the apartment, is there a place for them to be stored either in the apartment or on the grounds? Yes. Okay. And where would that be? So a couple of the units have a storage in the back and it's attached to the main building. So that takes care of them. And then there's a shed that also could be used, utilized as a storage unit. And have you made that available to tenants for bicycle storage? Absolutely. Any other questions about any of the other issues before we dive into the world of landscaping? So my understanding from the application is that you currently have, believe, two hydrangea in the front and three lilac shrubs in the back. And you're proposing, what is your proposal? Let's see. So let me go to page eight. And so we're proposing a couple more hydrangeas and up to, say, three trees. And so the issue with this particular location is the lack of landscaping and the fact that if there's a little bit of grass that whatever you plant there is going to get ruined by the snow plow in the wintertime. So either side of the house there's really no place to plant anything and have a chance to survive. And then the issues around the back is kind of like where you're going to be pushing snow onto shrubs or trees that you've just planted. So there's limited places for pushing. So if you look at some of the pictures all the way back, so behind the garage there's a green area and so there's some shrubs there. And so potentially we could plant, say, up to three trees there, excuse me. And we could plant a couple of shrubs in the front but it's limited in terms of what we can do with both sides. And just so I understand, on either side of the house, I'm looking at the pictures that you've submitted, are those driveways on either side? Yes. So say if we're looking at the house from the street on the left-hand side it's the driveway that belongs to the property. And that driveway sometimes gets accessed by the neighbors on the left-hand side as well. So there's quite a bit of traffic but there's a limited amount of space to plant anything in. On the right-hand side, if you're looking at the house from the street you can see that there's a parking lot there where the cars are parking on a diagonal and the cars park maybe a couple of feet from the actual porch of the house on the right-hand side. So again, not much space. And so between that and the fact that Snow is getting to get pushed I don't think anything has a chance of surviving that. The front, you know, we could definitely plant a couple more shrubs and we could plant a couple of, you know, crab apple trees in the front as well. That would work and that's probably a place where it would have the most impact. And sort of in the area that I mentioned before which is behind the garage, that sort of green area where there's a green, there's grass there obviously and then there's shrubs and a couple of trees alongside the buildings. So it's kind of limited that way. So at least in the front yard, you know, if there were additional trees, how much space, well, let me strike that. Let me step back. How much space between the front, your front porch and the sidewalk is there? The most 10 feet maybe. Yeah, the most. So there's a walkway in the middle. Is this the number we would be looking at on the diagram with the post? Yeah, roughly. This is kind of an old diagram, but just, yeah. 14 and a half of all part? Yeah, it doesn't seem that way. And we were looking at it to put a tree in each one of the sections. So the sort of the grass section in the front of the house is divided by the walkway to the house, to the steps. And so if you plant a tree right in the middle there, it might work. That's how limited it is. But it wouldn't, you can really put two trees that then turn into, say, 15 feet high and maybe 10 feet across. There's just not that much. Okay. One of the purposes of this section, putting aside the numbers, one of the purposes of this section is to create visual interest, you know, to kind of the benefit of all assembled, to sort of screen buildings, even if they're nice looking buildings, and things like that. So with that in mind, did you at all contemplate something up toward the sidewalk, either side of the walkway and perpendicular to the walkway? I know other properties have little, a lily right near you, have little lilies right near their walkway, so just some visual, something or other, to, oh, sorry, over here, to break up that slope. My concern with that, if you look at the properties next to it, both to the right and the left, there's really nothing there. And my concern is with the plowing, the walkway plow that comes around, that if you put it too close to that, the chances of survival again are, I guess, they're going to be minimal. And there's some setbacks as well that we have to adhere to, right? The plants can go up to the setback. Up to the setback.  I mean, that's one of my questions for you, Kate, is in, you know, a lot of the landscaping is about trees and shrubs, not necessarily annuals or perennials. Yeah, good point. And as soon as I started asking about that, I actually corrected myself, but Lilies won't do the trick, even though there are in fact some next door. I mean, Lilies would survive the plow, but we're talking trees and shrubs, and those, yeah. I mean, I think it's worthwhile to just, like, run through what the actual stated purpose for this requirement are. It says provide direction to and enhance building entrances, enhance and shade walkways, provide visual breaks along blank, building facades, intercept and filter stormwater runoff, and it says plant materials should be planted in groupings and distributed around the areas of site visible from public vantage points. And I guess I'd just like to hear a little bit about how you think the proposal that you put forward accomplishes those goals or doesn't accomplish those goals. Yeah, and my sense is, you know, where the shrubs are planted right now, there's a couple right next to the porch that if we planted some more there, there would have sort of a visual impact, and so that would be a benefit. If perhaps we planted a tree in each one of the grass sections, both to the left and right, that would eventually sort of grow to have an impact. So, and we're not talking about conceivably, we could plant something that won't take that long because it's not a tiny tree, so to speak. So, those are the things that we're thinking about, maybe a couple of trees and additional shrubs that had standard chances of survival. In the fall, we see an apple tree next to the right driveway. Is that still there? Yes. Is that on your property or is that? No, that's on the property next door. Okay. It's quite an old tree as well. Okay. I'm just pulling up my phone so that I can see what you're seeing. It looked like it's in photograph. I think it was one that was numbered one. And actually the street, the Google street view shows it. Yeah, I can see it. So are you now proposing in addition to an additional hydrangea on either side of the existing hydrangea, splitting one tree in each side of the front? Yeah, I think we could do that and that would work well and so eventually it might look like that tree that you have the next door. I guess just to take some testimony on it, do you think planting 40 shrubs, and six additional trees would serve the purposes that I described earlier as far as the landscaping requirements? In theory, if you have the right conditions, yes. Let me know on your property. No. You look at it and you go, well, this doesn't make sense here. It won't have the individual impact that you're wanting for it to have and there's just no room on either side of the house and that's where the length is right. So most impact I think would be in the front of the house. Two hydrangeas in the trees as you described would? Yeah, I would think so. That would be definitely a visual improvement. Right. And I would envision that at least the trees in the front yard, you'd want them as ornamental rather than say like a large tree that's going to fall into your house or grow into your house. Right. Just because of the limited space that you have between the front yard wherever you have to plant them and your house. Right. Any further questions? I guess just to confirm you are proposing as here a crab apple or cherry or cherry tree in the front yard. Two of them. Yeah. Yeah. In addition to the three that you're still proposing and adding in the back? We could. I don't think they have as much impact but they certainly add to the greenery. We could do that. What's the pleasure of the board? Any further questions? Yeah. I think we have examined this to the highest degree. What's the pleasure of the board? Do you wish to take this under deliberation or do you know ready to make a motion? Sure. Yeah. I'll make a motion that we approve the minor site plan application at... Give me half a second. I'll make a motion to approve the application for minor site plan approval and to grant an exception to the section 3203 landscaping minimum requirements as presented in the application with the addition of two additional crabapple or cherry trees in the front of the house as described by the applicant and with the additional condition that the landscaping will be maintained in a healthy condition and that dead or dying plants be replaced within one growing season with a comparable plant. Okay. Motion by Ryan. Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion please raise your right hand. All right. Your permit is granted. There will be a written decision issued shortly through the zoning office and but have a good evening. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Okay. The next item of business falls under other business as I said at the beginning. We are going to hear from the city. I'm not going to put anyone under oath and just as a guideline to what's going to be discussed and what's going to be reviewed, my understanding is that this is an informal review. Nothing that's being discussed counts as either testimony towards the application. It's just an opportunity for us to review the project. Here some details ask questions. Here comments from the public which will be given an opportunity. If you are a member of the public and do wish to make a comment, I will ask that you go to the microphone that's right there and please state your name just so we have a record of that and also state your address. If you're not a resident of Montpelier then you don't have to state your address. Just simply say you're not a resident but wish to speak. I hope anyone from out of town speaking. If possible, if you do speak, also sign in on the sign-in sheet. Please. I was going to actually give a sort of a procedural overview that's in some ways more for the board members but also for members of the public before Greg gives his presentation if that's okay. It is getting recorded too. Okay. So in this instance, as most of now all of you are aware the city has taken over the parking garage project that had been approved previously for the Hilton and Capital Plaza project under permit number Z 2017 145. The garage proposal now has a larger footprint with 128 more parking spaces and one section of that approximately in between 50 and 40 feet depending on how where you measure of the building is now going to be on the city at least teeny lot. So just logistically speaking there are three big steps that are going to be happening that are going to be going through the development review board. We're going to need to amend the prior hotel site plan approval to change it to off-site parking, at least a portion of the parking. That application and approval is going to be under the old 2006 as amended through 2011 regulations. Then the hotel has also applied for a subdivision of its lot so that a portion of the lot will then be granted to the city and that will be a subdivision under the new regulations. And then the city has to apply for site plan approval of the modified garage plan. Even though it's a modified plan the entire plan needs to go through the full site plan review process that also includes design review. Is that because it's under new ownership? It's a new applicant, new ownership, new design everything gets triggered. Just so you know as with the old garage this is in the river hazard area but you won't really need to worry about that. There will be notations on some of the plans that have to do with river hazard so that we're, because that's going to be reviewed independently but concurrently by the flood plan manager. So just another warning amidst all these applications I will be appending in legal opinions that we should, we're anticipating getting because there's going to need to be a parking agreement between the city and the hotel for that offsite parking. We're going to need an opinion regarding the construction of a city owned building that crosses onto leased versus owned land and how we deal with that. And then there will need to be a right of way or easement agreement dealing with the frontage or creation of a city owned road.  Could you repeat what the first legal opinion will be regarding? Well it's not necessarily a legal opinion but a parking agreement. There needs to be an offsite parking agreement and that's part of the hotel amended site plan approval. Thank you. Yep. So after tonight the next hearing will hopefully be the October 1st sketch plan review for the subdivision for the hotel. That application is in so that looks to be set to go. That's the next hearing here. And then assuming that everything gets in on time for the October 15th Development Review Board meeting you will see altogether the site plan amendment because that really has to happen first. We have to have approval for that offsite parking for the hotel for any of this to happen. Then the final subdivision review and then site plan for the new city garage. And one reason we're trying to put it all together is because otherwise there's going to be a lot of explaining if there are members who are there for say the site plan amendment or subdivision but aren't there for the final site plan. It's all interrelated. Now with design review take place simultaneously with this. Design review is going to be happening as long as application deadlines are met on October 1st. This is the tentative proposed schedule assuming all goes as planned. Right. Do you have any questions for me? I understand there's concurrent public outreach process being undertaken by City Council. Could you tell how that process fits in and whether it will constitute testimony before us or if it's just a separate conversation that helps create the application we'll see. That's not going to be testimony before the development review board. That's potentially testimony before City Council. There is a hearing on Wednesday, special City Council hearing at 6.30 on Wednesday and it's a separate layer of the decision making process. That's more about the town working on its proposal with public input. That's my understanding and I'm sure Sue or Bill could talk more to that later. Okay. We're curious how all the moving parts fit together. That's the City making its own decisions about design and then that design still has to be approved through zoning and the development review board. Thank you. So, Greg, please introduce yourself and let us hear your proposal. Thank you for your time this evening. My name's Greg Rabbidow from Rabbidow Architects and we're pleased to be here presenting the latest version of this project. We started this process back in fall of 2017 and 2016 and went through 2016. The end result was the existing proposal would remain. There would be a new 84-unit Hampton Inn & Suites and a 220-space parking garage. As time went on the city and the applicant had lots of conversations about how there's a greater need for parking than just what this project requires and so now before you to present a new thinking on this which is to take what we've done and build on that to increase total parking in 148 spaces and to there'll be some other things as we talk. When I first brought up I handed you this and if anybody in the audience would like to copy I have extra copies here, but this was just graphically cleaned up to make the plan a little easier to read. And just to be clear, we're talking about sheet number at SMP-1. Yes, it's a sketch subdivision plan with a revision date of actually I put the 20th on there because I needed a separate date from the earlier versions. The purpose of this document is to just try to help you understand the configuration of the lots, the big blocks that we're working with here. So as I look at the plan, you see up in here the capital plaza portion of this currently extends back to the high-empressed church all the way to the Haney lot. You'll see right down there in the corner where next to the new hotel is a proposed lot number 2. This is the parcel of land that will be calved off the original capital plaza lot and gifted to the city as a part of this exchange of values to underwrite the construction of the garage. So the original one lot will become lots and of roughly 2.19 and about a half an acre .54 acres. Then the third piece that I need to direct your attention to is a sort of shaded area that runs through lot number one and it's listed as a proposed right-of-way or easement. We're waiting for guidance from the city on what precise form it's meant to take, but the idea is that this is the deed of access to the garage would not have direct frontage on State Street. So the purpose of this was just to illustrate those three components. As it happens, I was fortunate enough to get an actual survey from Civil Engineering Associates earlier today and so I have also incorporated actual surveyed values for the shape of the Haney lot and the buildings around it to help facilitate discussion with the board and with the public as far as how this thing fits into the fabric of downtown. The city managers have been undertaking public outreach to hear some concerns. One of the concerns that was raised by a citizen was that it was this thought that we should look at the possibility of future re-use of this is something other than a garage at some point. So the second small package I handed you tonight is an alternative version of the plan that I'd like to talk to you about. So we're going to be talking about the garage itself and the fact that it can be configured in more than one way to do the job. I think the concern raised by the citizen was that maybe people won't be driving cars at some point if the city owns this building what are they going to do with it. So we undertook an investigation of whether or not flat floor plates with steeper ramps could be employed in this location the small package I gave you is the result of that exploration. We're going to present both options and keep both options alive until the city council declares a clear preference. And so if there's a document that you I'll seek for clarification. It's sort of intimidating to lean over someone's shoulder. Just so we understand what packet you're talking about is it the A102 series of maps? It's on the title block of Simon's Engineering who is our parking lot consultant and it starts with A101 and goes through essentially I only have A102 A103 A104 A105 and 203. That's the whole of it. So the two options are the original concept which would be a helical designer or sort of internal ramping that's been part of this design since the approval. So you would drive in on level landings and the parking bays themselves would ramp up there'd be level landings that at each end of the building to turn and go again the we're being contemplated under the new regulations allows for a different configuration of parking bays so one significant difference in the original concept or the approved concept over what we're proposing now is that we've eliminated angled parking and this is good because given the volume of parking we have without the angled parking it was solving a problem that the regulations have now solved for us and we can eliminate that angled parking so these would be 90 degree parking stalls 18 foot parking stalls 20 foot drive lanes and 18 so on and on. This advantages of this particular approach it's probably the most efficient of garage designs the slopes that it would take to get from one landing to the other are 3.5% so they're less than the ramping you would normally need for accessibility which means in general it's a more universally friendly design because you can park at various places and still it's still accessible to get to the elevators and this is a design that lends itself to the use of precast concrete construction which is desirable in this case because it's more durable in the city the city cares about durability obviously in the alternative scheme the parking levels are flat and at each end there's something called a speed ramp which goes up a half level or 5 feet one obvious benefit of this is that then you have flat floor plates which could have some adaptive reuse in the future but I'll have to talk to you about why that may be limited one thing about that is those ramps are pretty steep they're like 15% and that's fine for parking garages you've probably all used parking garages that are like that at some point or another I know that the one that springs to mind is the one at the airport up in Montreal but there are other ones closer by this is a also a good scheme the levels would be split length wise so that the if everybody has that last page that 8203 it shows in section form how that looks so you have you have the flat floor yeah be careful sorry there's two of them sorry so interestingly enough when I posited this challenge to our consultants they said we can make the geometry work but in order to be able to convert this to some other use in the future we would have to increase the structural strength of the building because cars don't weigh as much as office space believe it or not it really shocked me too with the live loading is like 25 pounds versus 40 to 50 for office space or you know and on up so the city has a decision to make we can make either one work we took this request seriously but this would this would end up if you were to if you were going to design it such that it could be converted to office space in the future it's our it's our professional opinion that the you would increase the cost of the structure possibly by as much as about 30 percent so that's going to translate into serious budget problem I think I think the consensus among us with the city manager's office and city staff is that the budget is not so fat that we could absorb that but I want the public to understand that we have looked at this issue seriously and this can remain a live issue but the problem will not be around geometry it will be around $100 if that makes sense just to be clear Greg this is more informational I presume this isn't necessarily one of our zoning bylaws that's going to be triggered by one or the other design no this is us listening to the public and I'm sharing it with you because we're going to until until there's a final determination made by the city itself and we're here to support you in this effort we'll keep both we'll keep the options alive keep the discussion going because I just want to be careful because you know when you describe something like that I may have personal opinions about it but that this isn't really necessarily going to be the ultimate form to decide that that sounds like something and that sounds like something that the city has to consider probably through their public process with the city council exactly so and I just want to there's city as regulator we're here to do that tonight but there's also city as owner and represented as the general population so I feel it's about I thought it was important to sort of give you a little of that history because at some point we're going to come back here in October with more complete designs and you could see either one of these our strong recommendation is to stick with the original design because it's efficiency and and it's it's a more user friendly kind of configuration but we will support the city in either direction and work question about the cost piece building on what Dan just said it's not one of our criteria the ultimate approval it's this curiosity when you're talking about cost you're talking about straight up construction cost or is there any sort of life cycle analysis that has been done taking into account possible future reuse tax revenue or things like that well this is strictly a bricks and mortar kind of proposition because to go from 25 pounds of live load to 40 pounds of live load a square foot is it's an increment but it's a significant increment and so the columns and beams and everything would have to be just a little bit more beefy to handle that problem residential and office are the same as far as the load required residential is typically 40 in the units and 80 in the corridors you know we'd have to somehow figure that out but it's funny you take a 2,000 pound car and you put it in a 200 square foot parking lot you know it's not that much weight even though it all rests on the tires I was very surprised so there's the issue of the functional relationships of the inside of the garage which is something that we're going to come back and say this is how we're going to deal with the issue of the exterior appearance of the building has been raised a number of times our approach was hammered out over many many meetings with a design advisory committee and the previous membership of the development review board some overlap I understand but and it included a combination of masonry stone and a fairly significant amount of something called green wall or a living wall which brings to show best I think there is a there's a rendering in your packages there was I have a version of it here but I don't think we have that okay well you know I can bring this up and just kind of let you get a look at it but this was what this is so it's a same so I think the board to sort of understand our proposal this was our proposal it evolved to be this way for several reasons first of all in order to avoid mechanical ventilation of the garage we do have to have 50% of that facade open to the air somehow and this is a kind of clever way to allow that to happen while still giving some sense of enclosure it also came about after several lengthy discussions with the members of Christ Church Episcopal who have plans to develop the real portion of their lot at some point in the near future and they didn't want to be looking out at a blank wall or a you know a hardscape so the proposed solution that we offered at the time was to explore using this living wall material as a way to so when if they put a housing project on their project on their property they'd be looking out at green growy stuff and not necessarily and also we felt that given the footprint of the benefit of everything it would be desirable to break the facade up with more than one treatment so it's doing several things and perhaps since not everybody was on the board and when this came through our landscape architects Wagner Hodgson have done this in numerous locations they're proposing a wide variety of plant materials Boston ivy, Virginia creeper trumpet vines trumpet vines in particular they grow everywhere in Vermont very hardy if you have a wood lot I live out in the woods you're familiar with trumpet vines and they we picked out five things for initial fast growth but also long term durability these are all urban kind of friendly plants and the estimated initial growing is pretty quick it was estimated during the previous permit rounds that within three years you would have substantial vegetation on that on this matrix we still are advocating this solution and yet we are taking public input on the exterior design as well which is separate from most of the permitting issues I expect when we come back to see in October we'll have a definitive answer on this but we're advocating for this right now and then hope to hope to try to incorporate questions and interest coming from the public to try to enhance this design it's happened pretty quickly I know just taking the thing and stretching it out may not necessarily in the end be the best result so we're going to take the idea of stretching it out and try to refine it so that it's better composed proportional all those good things in this in both of these schemes it's hard to sort of define floor level but essentially the flat scheme would have it's because it's a split level one level would stick up about five stories in this ramp scheme the original scheme we kind of come up to sort of four and a half levels total height on the scheme as proposed is like 45 feet to the parapet with a section where the elevator and the stairs are that sticks up a little bit more than that and that is a district that allows six-story construction at 45 feet it would still be substantially shorter than the recently approved Hampton Inn some technical things will be going into this application dealing with flood plain the garage will in fact have some flood storage capacity in its footprint it's designed to sort of minimize the importation of fill into the area by sort of leaving it hollow inside I'll have to explain this in more detail after you've had a chance to look at it but stormwater in a flood event could flow into the lowest level and through the lowest level and back out without impacting the structure negatively and that's that's kind of a wet flood proofing I guess is what they call it but we've been working very closely with Audra and also with the state to define the best practices for doing this but for now I think it suffices to say that it's very much a part of what we're doing and we're we're taking that we're working that issue hard if you look at my plan SP1 again you'll see at the easterly end of the parking garage there's a sort of shaded area and that is there simply to indicate how much longer this garage is versus the one that was previously approved that's something I want you to sort of understand you know when we say how far over the line does it go obviously now you can see with all the sort of triangular geometry that there's no one number for that but I did to the extent that I had that information I labeled it on the plan unfortunately at Audra by 17 it's probably a little hard to read but it is I think it's like 40 feet on average more one other feature that I think I would point out to you just because it's important to know is that there is we are still maintaining a green buffer on the northerly side of the garage basically at the southerly portion of what will be the city's lot has an accommodation to the folks at Christchurch in their future project given the changes in the numbers and geometry you know because of the new regs that is shown right now just a little under 8 feet it's at 7 feet 9 but we are preserving that feature even though it's a little bit smaller I think the essential function of that is I think in keeping with our commitment to Christchurch and I'm bringing that up for their benefit more than yours but just to let you know that we are also going to when we come in to amend the Hampton Insight Plan we really have some vertical control changes the basic layout will remain as it has been but you may see some changes in the grading plan as we finalize our understanding of the stormwater regs but the essential plan as presented is what we want to go with no proposed changes to the hotel structure itself in terms of the number of rooms the height or any of that the changes would really be the imposition of the easements a lot and whatever technical changes we have to make to make the utilities work in this kind of new configuration so that's I think that's everything I'm sure you have questions so just a couple of questions you have the width of the proposed right-of-ways that are going behind the plaza in front of the Hampton Inn that are going to be granted to the city for access it's currently shown at 22 feet we've had an ongoing dialogue with public works the most important thing to them is not sort of the horizontal geometry but the cross-section of that road but they want to make sure that it's the underlayment, the pavement and the stone sub-base are built to city street standards to support heavier traffic which we anticipated anyhow because we expect there's still a lot of truck deliveries that come through here there's buses that will come through there so that's something we have agreed to but right now it's shown at 22 feet and if you know once we have guidance from the city as to what form this needs to take if it needs to be 24 or something other it could be and just in comparison say like Taylor street how the paved area on Taylor street is going to be I've never measured that personally but I think it's going to be very similar I mean I've driven across that bridge a million times and I know that's not 20 feet wide but I don't think the pavements are really that much wider you know our car is six foot six wide you know a typical travel lane is really 18 feet or is that really 8 feet but two 10 foot travel lanes with no parking on either side or if there was parking it would be outside the right away is more than adequate and are you anticipating submitting a traffic study where you are a traffic study was undertaken under the original design which swept up the existing uses the new hotel and in a 220 car parking garage distributing trips to both Taylor street and to state street resource system groups is currently feverishly working to update that report to reflect the increased volumes we're on our side of the table are not entirely clear yet from the city as regulator whether or not they would like to see a more expanded traffic study you know it's a tough call because everyone is well aware that at the wrong time of day state street can get pretty bottled up and that the intersection at street 14 main street can be problematic at certain times of the day but you know what the initial approved plan that we went through in the end we found the traffic was acceptable so what we have to evaluate is that additional 128 spaces is it significantly generating traffic or is it capturing traffic that's already here which is I think the hope of the downtown business association but we'll have to evaluate whether or not that additional 128 spaces generates significantly more traffic that would impact that in some way sure I mean you're free to make the argument that it does or doesn't but I think it will be helpful you know in part at least my concern I'm just one member is that before we were talking about a parking garage I think in a limited scope which is that it was always meant to serve the private property so it was intended for the Hampton Inn and its guests and possibly the capital plaza and possibly an arrangement with one of the some of the tenants now we're talking about an expanded garage that's going to be likely serving a more general public and I don't know how the city is allocating those additional spaces whether they're going to be rented out to people or to the general public but it would be good to understand those traffic impacts and if the argument at the end of the day is those additional 128 cars don't amount to a hill of beans in an already busy state street that I think I would be curious to see that data in support of that next time I see we'll have something from resource system group on that level you know I think what we're still discussing and we need to get to a bottom up pretty quickly is you know how far away from the project entrances to we go to look at the impacts of this traffic as it's distributed out into the city you know I can't say much more about traffic it's not my expertise but we do have one in process and it will come in in October when we come to see it I just think that that's likely to be an issue and so feedback to your team and to RSG they will want to have something at least I'll be looking for something there's a strong desire on the part of the design team and our city clients to try to make as much of this parking available to as many people as possible we're looking at various kind of parking management equipment that will allow us to advertise available spaces the one long term agreement for parking that I can definitely speak about is the one that will be given to the capital plaza that is in exchange for them giving land and doing all that but they'll be participants in the garage still in the earlier approval process I think identified 174 spaces required by your regulations to serve that completed project you know we still have something like 51 surface spaces that will primarily serve the existing capital plaza and their commercial tenants on the ground floor but I think Christchurch will probably participate in this garage if their housing project goes through and I know we want to have some of this available for downtown businesses it's very important so can we speak to a little bit of this discussion so first thing to note is that under the zoning regulations even though maybe the board could ask for more traffic study information there's nothing in the regulations for this particular project that is triggering a more in-depth traffic study the department of public works at this point is driving to what degree the traffic study is is adding information at this point and then some information I have for the breakdown of traffic of parking spots right now and people who are here from is that we're talking about 200 passes for the hotels 30 passes eventually that would go to the Christchurch housing project if that were to, assuming that that happens in the meantime those would potentially be just part of an hourly parking another 38 so a total of 68 that would be hourly parking and then they're looking to try and find other people to rent up to 80 monthly parking passes so it brings us to 348 spots with 104 flex spaces so that's the current breakdown that the city is playing with there's a question about the traffic study you may have just told us they've told us everything you know but I'll do it and try anyway as we think about the scenarios to test in the traffic study it would be interesting to test a scenario that assumes those 80 spaces for a rent are contracted to the state for example for a replacement of the car lot parking because I think that 80 spaces that are coming and going at state office would be a different impact on the area than if those 40 spaces were for that or if 80 spaces were for downtown businesses and so I think that would be useful to know if possible I'll talk to our traffic consultants some uses are going to be less problematic in terms of the worst hour of the day which I think is right around 4-35 o'clock at both ends of state street and maybe to a lesser degree at sometime between 8-7 and 9 in the morning but I think the PM peak hour is definitely the design hour here and this check-in is at 3 check-outs at 11 they tend to be off peak and so other uses like that I think if the church had a housing project there they'd be sort of off peak or at least counter-flow they'd be more likely leaving town than coming to town during the work hours but yeah I'll put that into mix so next question at least I had beyond the traffic I'm looking at the SP1 design and it looks like the new parking garage jets out into the Mary Heaney Trust lot and that's the portion that the project's going to be leasing from the Heaney Trust is that correct? No, the city leases the Heaney lot now they have a long term lease on that lot the legal question is they're going to be building on that that lot that's not for me to settle to a certain extent we don't have to evaluate the legal documents we just simply have to understand that such are in place but at the same time I'm trying to understand the way this building is situater at least the way it looks the the building fills up the back of the lot and it looks like there's about prints a little small but at the front it looks like something like 24 feet from the edge of the building to the boundary line and then it narrows in the back to about 10 feet is that what are the is there any plans for either that area or access to the area behind it is that presumed to be for a different use one concern obviously that we have is when we create these type of or give permanent approval to creation of these type of lots are we cutting off other uses in that and is that I mean it looks like it's a significant portion of the back lot couple of things common to the railroad tracks the city of Montpelier already has an easement through this property for their bike path their expanded bike path program so on the south side of the garage there's going to be the bike path and there's also going to be some site development previously approved sort of park like environment with bike tools and different little granite blocks emerging out of the ground different elevations for seating and a lot of landscaping that we've always envisioned the sort of south side of the garage sort of facing Memorial Drive as being as having quite a bit of plant material growing on the building but also you know next to the building so that you know to sort of rebuild the river's edge which normally has trees and stuff growing along it and also to shade the bike path between the building a little bit access to that there's an accessible route that goes from State Street down past the side of the Capital Plaza and the Northfield Savings Bank between the hotel and the garage and then there's a direct sidewalk connection to the bike path there so the public access was meant to go down through there on the east end of the garage where you're talking about there is a Jason property and I'm thinking it's Overlook Park LLC and that small little barn like building sure the old garage the old garage and so down through there I've maintained a driveway access to they have a small parking lot behind that garage so there's a there is a surface there would still be a driving surface going around to get to that rear parking lot okay but then beyond that where you know it significantly narrows yes I mean would that be maintained as a pavement or drivable area and then behind and then to the south of the garage but to the north of the proposed bike path is that I think if we can successfully preserve the rights of the folks at Overlook Park anything beyond that driveway connection in my mind ought to be planted there's no practical way to get parking back there and you know it seems there's an opportunity there the north branch of the Winooski River is right there there's a new bike path bridge that parallels the the bowstring trust bridge that goes over the river now so there's a lot of stuff already going on in there but you know I just think I understand it's not strictly within the sort of four corners of the specific permit of the garage but it's it seems to me it's also logically implicated by this and so I don't intend to push you to design on the fly if there's there haven't been thoughts and obviously there have been I you know Wagner-Hodgson is preparing an updated landscape plan for the green rail system to work you know we have to have a certain amount of soil at the bottom of the wall for those plants to take root in they don't need much believe it or not but they do need something and so you know at least to immediately adjacent to the building we're going to have landscaping but in my mind anything south of that south wall of the garage really ought to be parkland we may in fact have some depressions or things we may do some earth forming as part of our flood management scheme but it would all be greened up I look forward to seeing what you come up with but I think it's going to have to we're going to have to take a look at that any questions from any other board members just a question regarding that Overlook Park LLC section there the CEA survey cover the entire lease lot shall we say or was it just the exterior of the lot that's being somebody so was the line between the lease lot and Overlook Park survey shown part of the CEA survey or is that everything east of our original property boundary and the easterly property boundary of Christ Church is everything from here over is surveyed is from CEA based on a lot of intense deed research so no I think that's what we're excited to present this new plan to you tonight because it fills a lot of gray areas to have that there but yeah that's pretty accurate it is accurate okay any other questions so I don't know if members of the either the public for other interested parties wish to make a statement or ask questions I'll facilitate be helpful given that you know we're going to be reviewing this it would be helpful to direct any questions you might have to the board for us to consider as opposed to this really is an opportunity for cross examination of witnesses so for us open if anyone has any questions or comments I want to just call your attention to please that I'm hearing that work in the diligence around the process of severing and reapplying and which regulations we're going to go under that's good work the traffic study I believe is also very key I have been asking for but not been able to get hold of the prior traffic study I guess done by research systems resource systems I will continue to follow up on that there's a lot of good work in here but fundamentally it's my informed opinion that this is just the wrong place for a garage especially a bigger one because it's going to further encroach on the river there's a confluence park that was ironically approved on the same night that the city promoted to proceed and it's going to basically be isolated through these more sorry urban canyons to even get to that part the impact on the farmers market this is going to chop off it's the first good scale drawing that I've had I've been trying to model it hypothetically it's going to basically eliminate about half of the area currently used by our farmers market I would ask you to take a very close look at the idea of just using an easement through a canyon of two hotels parking lot in the interest of public safety because if there's any emergency ambulance fire incident having to go on no one's going to be able to get out of that garage through either of these driveways there had been talk of creating a full street but that would eliminate all the perpendicular parking that's on either side of that 20 something foot right away we increased I imagine this in the zoning regulates the increased load of salt and sediment and debris falling off of automobiles with the increased surface area of the garage must be considered as potential pollutants I did not see plans sufficient enough to show whether those were being captured and treated before they were released into the river under the prior plan the view shed analysis of this 4 45 story is the first night we've heard that number 45 foot parapet plus elevator and stairs it's impact on view I walked this whole circuit that whole block it took photos and it's for many angles it's going to totally eliminate the view of our numerous church steeples some angles of the state house and those are huge pieces of our town capital city character so I think I've just raised some red flags for you to I will be providing you know further information as this unfolds but I understand this is under an accelerated timeline to get a city council vote to get it on the November ballot and I don't know how what pressure is going to be brought to bear on your process we don't have an accelerated process here it's going to go under the normal review process so for example site plan has to be divided into two parts which is part of the reason now there's no requirement that the two meetings be separated by any type of intervening meeting so you can have them as rapidly as possible but obviously you know our role and our job is to simply review and vet this but again under the very narrow confines of what we're charged with under the zoning regulations here and so for example that internal design that's the reason why I made a point about that earlier is that there may be good reasons to do it one way and there may be good reasons to do it another that doesn't necessarily come under our purview and that's to a certain extent what the city council has to do with our purview and we have to look at the very specific provisions of the bylaws as to you know it's it's functioned within the zoning regulations I understood that traffic studies were a part of that and I'm somewhat surprised or seeking clarification on that from Bill and the next few days Mr. Chair if I can just make a clarification the subdivision plan has to be in two parts right that's what I said you said site plan oh I said my apologies I meant I was thinking site subdivision I almost said site plan again so as far as the traffic goes you know there is no formal requirement for a traffic study except in conditional use that requires it however you know the applicant is required to make some showing on the impacts of traffic and given the size of this project that's my recommendation seems as if the applicant is in the process of doing that of providing that kind of data as opposed to say with some of the earlier applications this evening where we were talking about very little and we could take it simply at the testimony of the applicant that changing and one or two two room office to a two room bedroom residential use isn't going to have a traffic impact and so part of it is just proportional this is a much larger project and I think it makes sense and sounds as if the applicant wants to to meet that as well and sorry can I ask a question you said you've been asking for the traffic study that should have been part of the original hotel and garage application process and then I wasn't quite clear that that's what you were looking for at some point when you were at the office is that the case I have a pending request for traffic studies I'm getting the 1990s if you just come down to our office it may be in the application file and I'll be there tomorrow and will the traffic do you look at the traffic impact of having three simultaneously construction projects of a hotel a parking garage and a transit center all at the same time even if it's only a year long that could totally gridlock our town to a certain extent the answer to that is you're welcome to put on that type of evidence how we evaluate it is governed by the bylaws and so what we're going to be looking at is what the scope that allows us to look at I mean obviously it's zoning so our ultimate focus is on final use but if you're going to raise concerns and they're valid for temporary site construction issues that are likely to cause traffic it's kind of like the way we impose certain erosion standards during construction but a lot of that is aimed at how do we mitigate an impact that's obviously going to exist if there's a construction project you know what point of process when the chair says strike that does that mean to go back and keep it? that's just another layer of habit thank you any other individuals that wish to provide any comments, questions any other questions from the board members okay well thank you all very much for coming and we look forward to hearing this with your sketch plan review in the weeks do you have a small set of comments? okay okay okay no that's fine we'll just have an electronic yeah it's slightly different on the small version okay we do have to continue with our meeting so if there's any conversations good work by the way alright our next the only other business is our next regular meeting as we've mentioned before is scheduled from Monday October 1st 2018 7 p.m. here in city council chambers and that is all business unless anyone has any other issue that they wish to raise hearing none I'll take a motion for adjournment motion to adjourn or motion by round do I have a second? Seconded aye all those in favor to adjourn please raise your right hand we will adjourn thank you


Hello, DDS Devans here, Senior Handler at the Internet Storm Center. I wrote a blog post about analyzing malicious OneNote documents and also a diary entry on the Internet Storm Center. So here in this video I'm going to show you a bit how I proceeded. So in my blog post I do this with binary editor 010 editor. Here in this video I'm going to use my tools to do the analysis. So I was asked to take a look at the OneNote file and I was not familiar with the format for OneNote files. So I started to investigate, take a look at binary data. And with my tool, cut bytes, I can do for example an ASCII hexadecimal dump of the start of the file. So A for ASCII and here I specify which part of the file I want and here from the start to zero I want a length of 100 hexadecimal. So 256 bytes and this is the sample that I was given. This is how it looks. I don't recognize anything. Here at the start I expected to find some magic sequence to identify the file like you can have with MZ files, Windows executables. They start here with MZ, PNG files starts with 89 and then PNG, zip files starting with PK this here but I need to say no extraction. So that my tool doesn't extract the content from the zip file but that we take a look at the zip file itself and here you can see PK. So we don't have that in OneNote file at least, not something I recognize. But if you see here at the start these are binary values by that I mean non printable characters most of them and they look random. So this could be a GWT globally unique identifier, Microsoft likes to use them. Now a GWT is a sequence of 16 bytes and in the representation of Microsoft it's a mix on how it has to be interpreted. So the last 8 bytes they are just in big-endient format but the first 4 8 bytes they are in little-endient formats. So these 4 bytes then these 2 bytes and then these 2 bytes. So little-endient minuets to inverse the sequence and that is actually something you can easily do with my tool, 4-man bytes. If you don't specify anything to that tool it will just look at the first 16 bytes and give you different interpretations of those bytes. So let's do this. So first you take a look at the first byte, interpret it as an integer and so the first byte is a minus 28 integer if it is signed and it is 228 integer if it is unsigned and so on here with 2 integers and so on and here at the end you have 16 bytes interpreted as a GWT, a fully big-endient GWT interpretation as you can see here and here the representation how Microsoft likes to use it mixed and that's what you can see mixed-endient. So these here little-endient, this one here big-endient. So assuming this is GWT we're going to copy this, search for it and I'm lucky here I end up at a document that specifies a file format MS of Microsoft One Store. So this is indeed a file header, a GWT file header for .1 files. So that's the way to identify them. Next I'm looking for something inside that one node file, a malicious one node file and executor for example and that's something I can look for with my tool PE check to analyze PE files and I can say locate the PE header in any data that I give you. So here the one node file and then it indeed finds a 64-bit executable at this position and this length. So that file is inside a one node file at this position. So again with cut bytes I will take a look so 0x2AA4 and indeed this is a PE file. Here you have the MZ, here the offset to the PE header and here then the PE header. Let's see what comes in front here if we can recognize anything. Let's say 70 for example, go to 70, okay I'm here Libri, let me do a bit more because I expect that this is a Libri font. So here I have the start of my PE file MZ and let's take a look. So a lot of zeros in front of it and then again here another 16 byte sequence. This also could be a GWT if we are lucky. So that's position 20. So 60 here plus 20 makes 80, okay so let's see if this is a GWT. I cut this out now instead of an ASCII dump I do just a binary dump and then I feed that into format bytes and then here we have the GWT representation. Let's search for that and here we have an MS1 store. So when I did this search a couple of weeks ago this was the first hit but now it's the sans IC diary entry that is the first hit. So this here specifies a header for a file data store. So the GWT 16 bytes here they actually represent only 12 bytes but it's actually 16 bytes long and then the length and then unused, reserved and so on and then the actual data. So we have the GWT 16 bytes, the length 8 bytes, unused 4 bytes, reserved 8 bytes and then we have the data and then we also have a terminating GWT. So 16, 4 that's 20, 8 and 8 that is 16 so in total these are 36 bytes so 36 bytes after the start of the GWT we have the file data and that's how I quickly put together a simple program based on my template. It's called 1Dump. It will look for that GWT for the file header store in all the data, find all in the data and enumerate this and then extract the format like the length and the file data and then dump this out or if there is a select then dump the data. So let's see how that looks. One dump on the file and like my other tools it also works on the zip file and here you can see the data. So this is in my beta folder because I might still change the format here how this output is but so for every here file data store object you have an entry here and it's indexed 1, 2, 3 so we have 3 such entries here in the file. This is the position hexadecimal where the header was found. This is the first 4 bytes of the file .pngmz so the rpe file and then also another picture. This here is again the magic sequence but in hexadecimal. This is the size and this is the md5 checksum of the embedded data. These are all things that you can change. And if I compare that to my extraction with PE check in detail I have the same hash. So one dump gives you that data and then you can use it like my other tools for example say select 2 like this and you get an hexadecimal ASCII dump. You can do a binary dump and that pipe that for example in PE check to give you an overview of the sections for example to the analysis. So my tool here 1Dump is very simple it just looks for a sequence of this and this can also be tempered with time. So I can for example create a 1 node file into which I put a binary file and that binary file has also that grid somewhere inside. So this can fool my tool here into improperly decoded data. So it's quite quick and dirty here. There's absolutely no full parsing of the binary data just looking for that grid and assuming that that grid is a start of a file data star object header. There have been YARA rules developed by Florian Hott here and what Florian Hott in his rules is also search for that grid. And then here in this one rule that the text 1 node files with a suspicious embedded file so six strings that are looked for each time the same grid then here can be these are wildcards can be any byte value but 36 bytes after the start of the grid here starts the payload and here this one here checks for a PE file so this is MZ. This one here these two here search for BAT files but because BAT files don't have a magic header Florian here is looking for at echo of that's what we are seeing in malicious 1 node files that are being distributed now. Here that's for VBS files on error is zoom at the start because also there's no magic header and then LNK files have a magic header for C000000 so if one of these six strings is found and the file is less than five megabytes then rule will trigger so let's check this and here you see it triggers on two files and also on the YARA rule itself but that's another rule the YARA file I mean. And then also just as a remark and I'm going to talk about that later not in this video here if you look in my beta github and here you have one dump I have also one node rules these are Sturicata rules for detection similar to the YARA rules something I'm working on.


And with that being said, I'd like to introduce our next speaker for this evening. So she's a medical biotechnologist with a PhD in cancer research. And she'll be talking today about extending DNA analysis. So please welcome Anna Moulner. Well, thank you for being here. And for the kind of introduction. So just a quick recap. I'm a biologist by training and did my PhD in cancer research. Now I work as a PR consultant for health care as my day job. And I'm also a science communicator. And this is seen as something of science communication has nothing to do with my day job. And I wish to talk to you about DNA. You've probably heard of it. And it stores our genetic information. So it's a different kind of code than most people here are used to. It's made up of four bases, adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, which are usually abbreviated ATG and C. And as you can see in the image, the adenine always binds thymine and guanine always binds cytosine and vice versa. And so you have two negative of one positive code always. And there's coding and non-coding DNA. So the coding DNA is actually genes. So everything that shows up in your looks. And the non-coding DNA is not genes. So everything outside of your genes, both are important. And DNA you might have heard is also used as evidence in crimes. Whereas 99.9% of our DNA is the same, which is a good thing because otherwise we'd all be mutants. 0.1% is different and differs from person to person. And in 1984, Alec Jeffries discovered DNA profiling, where he saw that he could use this 0.1% to identify people. And this is possible to compare the DNA profile of one person with another person and can also be used to find relatives for paternity issues, for example. And often this is referred to as DNA fingerprints. And what this really means is checking for short tandem repeats or STRs. And these STRs are repetitive sequences outside of genes. So they have nothing to do with how we look like. And there are many STRs with different lengths, which are inherited. And the pattern of these STRs differs from person to person. And basically it just looks like this, that you have, for example, the repeat CTA five times or six times or nine times. And the number of the repeats is the thing that differs. If you look at the gene then, this could look something like this. And basically, you just count the number of the repeats. So each box here represents a repeat. Sometimes you have a similar one and the same number. And sometimes you have different numbers. What do you do to get a DNA fingerprint? Is first that you isolate the DNA from a crime scene or from a probe. You amplify these STRs. And then you can separate them by their size because the different number of repeats generates a different size of the amplified sequence. And this you do to 16 STRs. And then you get a profile that looks something like this, which you might have seen in the TV series already. And what I said was that the DNA fingerprints don't really show how you look like. However, because they are outside of genes. However, as you may remember, we have chromosomes.  And these are called X and Y. And you can identify the X chromosomes and the Y chromosomes by the gene of the enamel, of our tooth enamel. And since 2004, we can use this to identify the sex chromosomes of a person because the X chromosome gene is six bases shorter. But this is not always accurate. So this is how the DNA fingerprint then looks like for the scientists. This is an electro-paragraph, basically just the measurements of the bands that you just saw. And you can also see on the lower left the X chromosome peak. And you see there's no Y chromosome peak. So this person has two X chromosomes. And this is just a means of identification. So it does not show much about the person besides the sex chromosomes, where you can determine the sex of the person. And in 2016, there was a rape case in Freiburg, an actually rape murder, where Maria L was found raped and murdered at the Dreisarm River in Baden-Württemberg. And after a long search, they found one hair that was found in a hedge. And it was 18 centimeters long, and it was dyed blond. And on a surveillance video of Tram, they could find a person that fit this profile of this hair style, which led to an arrest. This was a 17-year-old Afghan refugee, and he confessed that he committed the crime. And afterwards, the police said that with extended DNA analysis, the murderer could have been found much sooner. But what is this extended DNA analysis? There is now a new law to come, so not already here yet, but proposed by Baden-Württemberg, which is now governed by the Green Party, and Bavaria, which is governed by the Conservative Party, CSU. And they wish to draw more conclusions from our DNA. So they want to look at the eye color, the hair color, the skin color, and the biological age. And the Conservative Party also wants to look at the biogeographical ancestry that can be determined from the DNA. And this is basically just a synonym for ethnicity, and some may even say for race. And the law for extended DNA analysis is often referred to as the DNA facial composite. And however, in science terms, it's called forensic DNA phenotyping. And this means that you look at genes which determine the looks or other characteristics of a person just from the DNA and the genes. So what you do here is that you check for single nucleotide polymorphisms, also called SNPs. And these SNPs are basically just single-base mutations that you can see here, the A and the C. They can be everywhere in the DNA. And with genome-wide association studies, or GWAS, you can associate SNPs with a phenotype. So some people who have a C here would look different than people who have an A or have a different trait. These SNPs, however, do not have to be causal. They can just be a correlation, a statistical correlation. This looks like this in our graphic here. If you have, for example, the same SNP here for each person, but a different one for each person here, or for these persons, the first two are the same, and the third one differs. But in the genes, you could maybe determine from the SNPs the blonde hair of this person, the brown hair of the second person, and the red hair of the third person, or the blue eyes of the first person, the brown eyes of the second person, and the green eyes of the third person. SNP analysis is basically just done by checking for a known sequence, and then you have labeled bases, and you can check which base binds here. This can be done by next-generation sequencing, which is a quick form of sequencing DNA and a very novel technique. And you can do multiple SNP analysis, so you can check for several SNPs at once, so it's quite fast. And it just gives you a statistical correlation of which person has which SNPs. And it looks like what? And soon maybe we could also do whole genome sequencing, and then check for the bases that are mutated. The accuracy, if you check for the biogeographic ancestry, if you just go for continental ancestry, this is about 99%. So you can determine if you're European or African or Native American, for example. But what you get sometimes from the media, 20% Spanish or 20% Turkish or something, that doesn't work. That's too complicated. However, hair color can be determined with an accuracy between 70% to 90%. So in 70% to 90%, the result will be correct. Eye color, the result for blue or brown hair will be correct in over 90% of the cases. Intermediate forms will be correct in about 70% of the cases. And skin color will be correct in about 80% to 90% of the cases. To check for this more closely, here are some examples from a paper by Kaiser et al. And you can see here that for the brown hair, this was not quite as sure. So it was something between brown and black. The dark shade of the skin, however, was determined correctly at about 80% certainty. And the brown eyes were also correct with over 90% certainty. For the brown-haired person here, you have about 66% likelihood for brown hair. And also, it could have gone even black or blonde here. The shade here was not quite as accurate. It was 50-50. And for brown hair, brown eyes, it was 72% likelihood of accuracy. And this blonde person here had about 62% accuracy of the blonde hair, 97% of accuracy for the light shade of the skin, and also 95% accuracy of the blue eyes. So this was quite accurate, this prediction. And here, the red-haired person of 92% red hair, however, for skin tone, again, this was quite undecided. So it was, again, 50-50. So it's dangerous to draw a conclusion here, just because one is higher than the other. And also, for the brown hair, the brown eyes, there was just 46% certainty here. Then you can check for the biological age, which you can do checking for the DNA methylation patterns. So our DNA is modified by methyl groups. And this can be done to so-called age-specific CPG islands. So CPG islands are just a quick repetition between C and G before a gene, so in front of a gene. And these can regulate the expression of a gene. So if a gene is later brought up in your looks, and there's some kind of looks like this that you have, for example, an older person on the top who has methylated CPG islands in front of the genes. However, a younger person in the middle who doesn't have age-specific CPG methylation and an intermediate age for a person with just this one methylation, you can analyze this during a chemical treatment of the DNA. So your DNA, which has been methylated at the cytosine, that is treated. And then you get a change of base if it was unmethylated. So you can see in the lower part it is changed to a different base called uracil. And then you can sequence the DNA and see how much it was exchanged. The accuracy here, there is a mean error about three to five years. But some results will have up to 20 years errors. And there are some diseases that confound the results, for example cancer or anemia. And also it's a problem because this is tissue-specific methylation. If you have mixed tissues, so usually this is done from blood and saliva. And if you have a mixture of other tissues, then this can be more inaccurate. So basically what's advertised, if you hear the term DNA facial composite, is this facial composite here. So this is probably the first thing that people think. However, the reality is more something like this. And maybe you have a little bit the age of these persons. And then only maybe. And I'd like now for you to look around you and see how many people fit either of these profiles. And just to determine this for you for a second. And so this is just an approximation of the phenotype. And as you might remember or know, even the DNA does not have to equal the phenotype. So people who have black hair in young years might have gray hair now. Some people are born black and are later of a different skin color. And some people may well have XY chromosomes, but are female. And other factors may also be, for example, kids who have blonde hair and grow up to be dark-haired adults. Also, hair color is always very, very easy to change. And purple is not in our genes. And also, mixed ancestry, so having ancestors from different continents of the world, is also a problem often with determining the ancestry. But there are more problems with forensic DNA phenotyping. And the first thing and most important ethical problem is the suspicion reversal. So the police usually has to prove that you're guilty.  And so you will be kind of connected to the crime or to the probe without having done anything. And now you have to prove that you're innocent. And Victor Tom, a social scientist from Frankfurt, he said, suspicionless seizure of persons and then demanding proof of that person's innocence inverts our structural arrangement of power between law enforcement and the individual. So this is one of the most important things that you see here with forensic DNA phenotyping. And oftentimes, science is supposed to equal facts. And DNA is an unbiased witness because it's infallible and factual because it's based on science and it's done by scientists. However, you have only an estimation about how people could possibly look like. And therefore it has to be interpreted by a human being and therefore it's prone to bias. And one of the most important biases here is the confirmation bias. And I have to say that everyone and each of us, however aware we feel we are, we are always biased. That's how our brain works.  So if we anticipate an outcome, we are more likely to prove that this outcome is true. If we pay selective attention to items of interest and disregard the contradictory information, just unwillingly, and we will have a positivity bias. So we like to confirm what we think is true and also if we have heard something before, we think it's more true. It doesn't make sense, but it's how our brain works. But therefore DNA is not an unbiased witness. And also there's a question of privacy here. So the law's hypothesis is that openly visible features determined from the DNA are not private. And however here, the appearance does not equal the statistical correlation. And also if you have a real witness who saw your features, you have more context. And you can say, for example, the person was fleeing the scene or something. Genes on the looks and biogeographic background will always tell us more than we ask. And most important maybe is skin color. So fair skin is much more likely to get skin cancer or darker skin people have a higher risk for heart disease. And also age is a factor for many diseases. Then I'd like to come to the point of discrimination. So by definition, forensic DNA phenotyping discriminates people with different ethnicities. So if you think about it, the relevant suspect group will always be the minority of the people who actually live in this area. Because if you find the looks of the predominant population, this will be too large of a suspect group. And openly discussed forensic DNA phenotypes of a DNA trace to a crime will probably lead to more hate crimes or add to the hate crimes that are already in place here. And so if deployed, forensic DNA phenotyping needs to be confidential and needs to avoid stigmatization of whole subpopulations. And therefore the debate here is always very emotional because the forensic DNA phenotyping law was proposed after a very brutal rape case. And the first people who demanded forensic DNA phenotyping were actually right extremism groups. And the new law probably would have not helped the investigation because the perpetrator had strikingly dyed hair. And that was the reason he was identified on the surveillance video. The outlook actually for forensic DNA phenotyping it's getting more accurate. So people are trying now to determine the body height, the body stature, hair loss. So if you're a bald person, the hair structure and also the face structure and you can actually see on the image approximations of face structure based on SNP analysis. So extended DNA analysis uses the whole genome wide association studies to approximate looks, age, bio geographical ancestry and maybe soon much more. And it is not a means of identification but approximation. And by definition, it's discriminatory and it will target minorities. And since it is biased, it can always lead into the wrong direction. So what can be done here? If forensic DNA phenotyping is to come, there's only as a method of F last resort when everything else has failed. It has to be confidential. So there are no hate crimes due to this investigation and precautions have to be done to avoid confirmation bias because no one and nothing is infallible and no one is unbiased. And every wrongful investigation of a suspect leaves the real perpetrator unprosecuted. So back to the new law. So the conference of ministers of eternal affairs, the in-minister conference, supports this law inside of the security package and Herbert Royal, the interior ministers of Northern Westphalia, NRW, he said, nobody understands why forensic scientists can form a very precise facial composite from very small traces but our police cannot use them. Well, maybe now you understand. So I'd like to thank you very much for your attention. And if you'd like to know more about me, you can find me on my website. And if you want to know more about forensic DNA phenotyping and ethical issues with this, Professor Veronica and Anna Liphard are doing very great work on this at the University of Freiburg. And this is their website. And I'm now open for questions. So thank you very much for an interesting talk. If you have any questions, there are two microphones on each of the aisles. And first question from microphone number four. I wanted to ask how clean eventually the DNA sample should be to proceed with this procedure. It probably has to be very, very clean because I'm not quite sure how easy you can determine, distinguish them. I think it should be completely clean. So if you have maybe DNA from a rape which is mingled with a victim's DNA, it's difficult to get this out. However, if you can control it with comparing it with the DNA of the victim, then maybe it can be done a little bit more accurately. Question from the internet. Yep, the internet wants to know what's your opinion about using DNA fingerprint of someone as public heat to identify persons on a distributed ledger technology network? I don't know what a distributed ledger technology network is. This is the next question. Maybe you can ask this question on my blog. Just send me an email and we can discuss this. Using it as identification for something I think right now is not really feasible because to do it accurately, you need someone to do it for you in a scientific lab under specific circumstances. And if you have DNA from someone else on your fingers, maybe you transfer this DNA and suddenly your identification doesn't work anymore. So this would be what I would be thinking about this. Microphone number two. Thank you for your very good talk. My question is, there seems to be a great difference between the opinion of science, how we should use this technology and the politicians. And this kind of conflict, I guess could only be fought by the scientists against the politicians. Is there a kind of movement of scientists who say, well, what the politicians say that we should use this and it's so secure and without any bias, is there a movement who say they are talking bullshit? So this is basically what Veronica and Anna Lippert would be saying. They're not saying they are talking bullshit because they're raising awareness for the problems. And so I would never say something like that, but if there are also scientists who propose to use this as help in forensic investigations, because a lot of us scientists, we are very... Well, we don't look at the world as many people do. We think of it actually as, well, this is just data and it's just an approximation. Of course, people know this is an approximation. And so we would be thinking, so if the DNA is of a blonde-haired person, of course, there would just be paying more attention to a blonde-haired person, but if there is a brown-haired person who is very much connected to the person in question, then you might even pay attention to this, even though the DNA analysis said something else, just because scientists are aware that the DNA can be wrong. I'm not saying that there aren't people who also understand that the DNA can lead us into the wrong direction, even in the police force and everywhere, but history has taught us that people, a lot of times, tend to go where the science leads them here. And if the science has not been as accurate at that point, then maybe it won't really work in this case. Number three. Hi, thanks a lot for your talk. And I just wondered if you create a profile on the features, say, hair color, skin color, eye color, and each of the features has a probability of something like 0.7 to be correct and you multiply those probabilities up, you will end up with a much lower probability for the whole profile to be actually right, something like maybe 25 or 30% or so. And so I wonder whether there are actually any ideas on how this method should be used in practice for the police. And on the other hand, what value this kind of profile should have in court then? Well, the value in court, I think, is that it's not really of value in court because it does not identify you. It's of value during the investigation. So on the very beginning of starting to look for who is responsible for the crime. Therefore, in the end, then you would still have the DNA trace of the DNA fingerprint, and then you can still compare this to the person that you have found. And if this doesn't match, then this person could go free, hopefully. And comparing the probabilities here or multiplying them, then you just narrow down on something. You will never be able to narrow down on just two persons and then you just have to pick one or test them both for their DNA profiles. So I would be careful here to just multiply the probabilities. Any last questions? And if not, then a big round of applause for a great talk. Thank you very much.