Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. The hour of 6.30 p.m. having arrived, I will call to order this regular meeting of the Joint Planning Board and Planning Licenses and Development Committee. Anyone wishing to view a copy of the agenda and supporting materials will find it on the city website. If you are in our audience tonight, you may access the agenda from any mobile device. Copies of the printed agenda are available in the wall pockets just as you entered the meeting room. To receive electronic copies of future agenda packets, please go to the homepage and subscribe to the city meetings email list. The public and other board members will be recognized to ask questions and make comments on the agenda item under discussion. After being recognized, all remarks are to be made through the chair. Anyone who wishes to address the community is asked to go to one of the microphones in the room and identify themselves by name and address prior to speaking. Will staff please conduct the roll?

For the planning board, Harold Farrington.

Here.

Roberta Master Giovanni. Mayor Jay Kahn. All right. Councilor Molly Ellis. Here. David Bergeron.

Here.

Michael Hafer.

Here.

Ken Kost.

Here.

Andrew Madison.

Here.

And for the alternate, Stefan Mayu.

Here.

Tammy Adams. And Joey Kosivera.

Here.

And Mr. Chair, I believe there's one available spot if you'd like to appoint an alternate.

Sure. Mr. Mayhew, would you like to be a voting member for tonight's meeting? Thank you.

Thank you.

And for the PLD committee, Randy Filio.

Here.

Phil Jones.

Present.

Bobby Williams.

Here.

Ed Haas. Present. And Laura E. Ruttle-Miller.

Thank you, Ms. Brenner. Ms. Brenner, I'd like to understand that the mayor was joining remotely. That's not on the cards anymore.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe the mayor is intending to join remotely. I don't know if he's on yet. Hold on. Because if he has we'll have to do roll call voting Yeah at this moment the only the minute taker is in the meeting so the there's no remote attendees and

Okay, great, thank you. So we'll proceed. All right, next item on the agenda is the approval of the meeting minutes from the March 9th, 2026 meeting. I will entertain a motion for approval of the minutes.

So moved. Second.

Thank you, Councillor Jones. I won't say these minutes were from a long time ago, but when I looked at the tape, my hair was still brown. Any any questions or clarifications on the minutes? Seeing none, let's call the vote. So we'll we'll proceed with a regular voice vote. Or regular hand vote, so all those in favor. Any opposed? Minutes are approved. Okay, we have a public workshop tonight. It's Ordinance O-2026-09 relating to short-term rental uses. Petitioner, the City of Keene Community Development Department proposes to establish a use definition and use standards for short-term rental in Article 8 of the Land Development Code and permit this use by right with limitations in the following zoning districts. Rural, residential preservation, low density, low density one, medium density, high density, high density one, downtown transition, commerce, neighborhood business, business growth and reuse, office and agriculture. So at this time, I would like to invite the petitioner to present.

Thank You mr. chair Mary Brenner senior planner so this ordinance is coming from staff really as a way to maintain the status quo previously the city of Keene has never had a definition for short-term rentals and we never directly address short-term rentals in our code However, our previous definition of family basically allowed four or fewer unrelated individuals to occupy a dwelling unit for any length of time. And so under that definition, most short-term rentals qualified as a family and therefore as an allowed use in a residential district. as you all may remember the state law changed and we were no longer allowed to utilize our old definition of family and had to change it the new definition focuses on transiency and so any use that's transient of 30 days or less would no longer qualify as a family and so for that reason we're proposing to create a new definition for short-term rentals so that all of the rentals out there that exist today can continue to operate. To date, staff are not aware of any major issues related to short-term rentals. We had a study done in 2023 where they looked at the share of short-term rentals compared to the overall housing supply, and they found that at that time it was a very small percentage. And to our knowledge that data hasn't really changed. We do not have a paid subscription to one of the data platforms that would give us exact numbers, however, doing more of an informal search on Airbnb and VRBO and some of the other online platforms. It appears that the number of short-term rentals hasn't really increased that much since 2023. So we also spoke to code enforcement staff, police and fire department staff, And through those conversations, it became apparent that there aren't really many complaints or issues being generated by the short-term rental properties that we currently have, especially when you can compare them to regular long-term rentals. They're actually less than long-term rentals, anecdotally. We also, because we didn't have concrete data to rely on, we also did a short term rental survey. Through the flash vote platform and those results are summarized in the staff report in your packet And there's a pretty wide range of views that have been expressed throughout that survey. I think the main concern that people expressed was the the fear that Short-term rentals if they were to proliferate could take away long-term housing and so Where staff are coming from with this ordinance is to create a definition for short-term rentals That maintains the status quo makes it so that they're allowed we are proposing to use standards and One use standard is specifically related to the residential appearance of the dwelling unit. So if you're operating a short-term rental in a residential district, it would have to maintain the look and appearance of a residential structure. then the other use standard is for a short-term rental that is not what we're calling hosted they would have to post within the dwelling unit somewhere the contact information for the owner or if the owner is not within an hour's drive of a property manager who is within an hour's drive who can respond to complaints and issues for the guests With that, I'll just go over our proposed definition. So the definition states a dwelling or any portion thereof that the owner or the lessee of the dwelling offers for occupancy for a fee for fewer than 30 consecutive days. Short-term rentals can be hosted where the dwelling is the primary residence of the owner or lessee or non-hosted where the dwelling is not the primary residence of the owner or lessee. And I do want to point out that this distinction between hosted and non-hosted is a little bit different from what some other communities use to define hosted and non-hosted. But in talking with code enforcement staff, much easier to determine if a residence is a primary residence or not from an enforcement perspective than it is to determine whether or not somebody was living in the unit at the time that it was being rented out, which is the other way that hosted can sometimes be defined. So I just wanted to point that out. And finally, in terms of choosing where this use would be allowed we proposed to allow this in all of the residential districts as well as all of the districts where bed and breakfast is currently allowed and the reason why we chose that is because the definition for bed and breakfast is very similar really the main difference is that with a bed and breakfast meals have to be served to the guests so i know that it's you know a fraught issue and i know that people have a lot of a lot of fears but our approach with this is really to try and treat short-term rentals so that they can continue operating the way that they have been continue to address any nuisances or complaints that come in through our standard process and then if in the future we do end up getting more short-term rentals coming in or I don't know, we start seeing a concentration of them in a certain area and it's causing problems. We could come back to this issue and address it then. Um, but for right now, we don't want to try and fix a problem that doesn't exist. Um, so with that, I'll, I'll take questions.

Thank you, Ms. Brenner. Uh, I'll open it up for questions. Councillor Williams.

Thank you. What mechanism, whether in here or elsewhere, exists to ensure that short-term rentals are paying meals and rooms tax?

So that would be up to the state to collect that tax. There really isn't a mechanism for the city to monitor whether or not the short-term rentals are paying those taxes unless we were to do something like a license, which would be maybe not worth the effort for what it would take to do, if that makes sense. But technically, they should all be paying meals in rooms tax.

Did you want to follow up there, Councilor Williams?

I might later. What you said about licenses was interesting. I had something more in mind of maybe a short-term rental registry, but this is an idea that can be developed as we go along.

Councilor Haas, I saw your hand next.

Thank you, Chair. To follow on the question about the short-term meals and rooms tax, in reading the submittal, it seemed like there are exceptions to when they wouldn't be paying that tax. Do you know what those exceptions are and what the difference might be when they do or don't? Or are they all supposed to do it?

I knew the answer to that question like three months ago. I can't remember now, but there's a certain number of days that you have to rent out to be subject to the Meals in Rooms Tax. 185 is in my head for some reason, but I don't want to, I would have to look it up to give you a.

All right, thank you. I have several other questions, but I'll wait for the themes to come around.

Okay, as you wish. Mr. Madison.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So kind of like a two part question. So a bed and breakfast has to serve meals, correct?

Yes, and it has to be owner-occupied as well.

Okay. Does a hotel have to serve meals?

I don't believe so.

Okay. What is the dividing line? Let's say I buy an apartment building that has five or six units. All of those units I put on Airbnb. What is the dividing line between what I'm doing and what a hotel is?

Yeah, so that's a great question.

With an Airbnb, if you're renting out... To clarify, I'm asking that question because there is a property that exists that's doing precisely that.

Okay, great to know. So I think I should first say the bed and breakfast definition, it has to be a residential structure to begin with. And that is being used as a bed and breakfast with a maximum of nine rooms. It has to be owner-occupied. They have to serve meals. With a short-term rental, it's the same idea where it's a residential structure. So an apartment building would count as that. And you're renting it out for 30 or fewer consecutive days for a fee. There's no requirement to serve meals, most likely posted on a platform. A hotel is a commercial use that has to go through, like... Right now under the building code and we have our building division manager somewhere here. Hi, Mike, who could talk to this more. But a hotel has very specific fire code and building code and all the stuff that they have to meet. The apartment units would be treated as residential dwelling units based on how many are in the building and all of that. So it comes down to what the structure was originally built for and how it's being rented out, essentially. Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You may have kind of alluded to the answer to my question in one of your previous answers, but I was looking to see what other areas in New Hampshire have done about short-term rentals, and I saw that several have some kind of application process where the applicant has to provide envelopes for abutters and they send out notice and they might be restricted in some areas unless they're owner occupied or things like that. And I was curious why you weren't or you and staff in general were not taking that approach and maybe it was because you were saying you don't feel that it's worth the effort but I guess I was kind of wondering if even if it's not necessarily a problem now it would be helpful to just know how many short-term rentals there are so that we could kind of keep track before it becomes a problem I guess I think kind of thinking like maybe it makes sense to begin as you mean to go but yeah I just wondered if you had thoughts about that

Yes, thank you. So we looked at a number of different communities that have regulations. The vast majority that have regulations have them because they had a problem with short-term rentals. They're either a tourist destination, a college town with a really big population of students, places where there's a really high demand for short-term rentals. And in their situation, especially areas that were close to a specific attraction, they were seeing really high concentrations. And so the most common thing that I've seen, in New Hampshire at least, is where they require a license. requires like another staff person and that's a big hit to the budget and so given the fact that we don't have a very large number and seemingly don't have a lot of issues being generated by these properties we didn't feel like it made sense to approach it that way at this time sort of a step down from that could be to do a registry but again that does take resources we'd have to there'd be an enforcement component to that that would add to the workload and we are currently struggling to keep up with the code enforcement volume of complaints as it is. Um, I think it's the way to say that director and just kind of correct me if I'm wrong, but we basically we didn't want to generate a lot more work when there isn't necessarily a big problem to be solved.

Council House

thank you chair all right i heard some themes now i'll dive into the rest of my questions and see if anybody has other ideas um let me just start with two basic thoughts about short-term rentals that one they don't build neighborhoods they inevitably you have people living there that are transient and you don't know who they are they come and go i used to live next to a house that got rented out and I'd see people milling around. I had no idea who they were. And they were renting, but the owners never came and told us what was happening there. We just saw strangers in our neighborhood that we were curious about. Second, they do take housing off the market. If somebody, as Mr. Madison said, buys a building and intends to rent out some of it and B&B some of it, that's housing that's missing from the neighborhoods. So those are kind of the premises I'm making. You can disagree with them or have different views of them. That's how I see short-term rentals. We're a long ways from when Airbnb started that it was the idea of, oh, you have a spare bedroom, you know, you can rent it out and make some money on the side. That was a great initial concept for what the intent was. So I think it's good that we try to get a handle on this, get some definitions in place so we can regulate it and maybe we need to go a little more aggressively. I've got maybe three, two specific questions. I notice that none of the downtown zones, building zones are included in this area. We're only in the residential, high, medium, and low. rural and so on. If anything, I'd want to not do this in the medium and low density residential neighborhoods and more concentrated into the higher density or the unused areas of the city for industrial or commercial areas. if you look at where airbnbs are present now they tend to be in the medium to high density areas uh i didn't see anything out in in west keen so we know where they're migrating and that's a good thing we like it downtown but i think we should push it more towards downtown um ask a question at this point uh did you discount the downtown areas from this for a specific reason

Yes, so the reason why we didn't propose allowing them in the downtown, although we're open to doing that, the downtown is really envisioned for more high intensity uses like hotels and then multifamily. If we were to allow it in the downtown, I think you could potentially see a lot of apartment units being converted, but that's kind of an assumption. But what we really tried to stick to was keeping this in residential areas as a way for residents to, going back to the housing study, we have a really high percentage of people in Keene who live alone. And so we were looking at this as a way for residents to be able to make money and stay in their home and We also included all the areas where Ben and breakfast is currently allowed. So We were kind of we were trying to keep it in a residential area And keep the downtown from our higher intensity uses, but I think we are definitely open to discussions about where they're allowed but I think that from staff's perspective, this is really meant to be a residential structure that is used, like, converted to this use. One thing that you could look at is hosted versus non-hosted. But...

Yeah, I don't see much difference between a hotel and a short-term rental other than the building and the kind of things it delivers. I think Mr. Madison also raised the point about B&B is defined as providing a meal. What kind of meal is provided? They go down to McDonald's and buy a bag of Egg McMuffins and that's the breakfast. I'm uncomfortable with that definition of a meal. That might be a whole other topic to take on and change the codes there so that things match up as to when you're required to have a meal or when you're not. It's too vague for me. Here's an interesting thought that You can't answer here because we don't have the right people in the room, but could we differentially assess short-term rental properties? Because their value probably is not reflected just in the property assessment alone. the property tax assessment. They'd be assessed just like their neighboring residential. So you got a house here, two family maybe, it's assessed that way. Then the short-term rental building is an income-producing property, but it's assessed the same way as the people next door. So we can't answer that here. I'll save that for some other time and some other venue. it would be an interesting way to justify the existence of essentially this disruption in the neighborhood, which is pretty much what they can be. You commented on not permitting non-hosted short-term rentals. I think that's a great idea. As I said, the original idea was to use spare bedrooms and make it lived in and earn some income that way. But it quickly transitioned into investors buying a house. And I know I've stayed in them, right? And buying a house and turning it into a full income stream without having to follow the requirements of a hotel or something. I'll finish for now. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mary.

Mr. Cost?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I do want to follow up on the whole, and you opened up the conversation, I think, about hosted and non-hosted. And I see that as really very different things. And kind of in terms of the master plan, the idea of the hosted type of a, short-term rental makes a lot of sense because it allows people to stay in the house, they could get some income, they could invest in it. I think as people have to keep investing in these large houses, that becomes a problem and then they have to move or they can't find a place to move. So this allows people to stay in place and to maybe even invest in their homes and keep them up. And it would be a little bit disruptive to a neighborhood, but probably not much because the owner's right there. It does take possibly a regular leased rental unit off the market. But again, I think it has a lot of value. But the idea of the non-hosted opens up a lot of issues which councilor Haas just pointed out that people can start to invest in buy up houses and take them totally out of the housing market and that's the piece that and you pointed it out in your write up that does not fit with the master plan and I think you were describing or the report was describing that it's not really a problem because we don't have too many of them here and we're not really a big resort place that's attracting all these people but It does open that up where people can invest in houses or blocks of houses and just use them as short-term rentals. And then the idea of, well, if it becomes a problem later, we could change it. But, you know, if I bought three or four houses and that was my income stream and I invested in them and put a lot of money in and then I had If the city wanted to change that and say, I can't do it anymore, I think it would be a big issue for the investors. So I'd like to, as we go through this, the idea of hosted and non-hosted. I did do some reading, and there seem to be some cities or towns that have actually looked at allowing hosted and being much more limited on non-hosted type development. So I see them as two totally different things with two totally different impacts. Right now they're just mushed together as one thing, but I think they're very different. So thank you.

And may I, Mr. Chair, may I respond to that comment? That's okay.

Oh, yeah, please do.

Okay. I just wanted to say to your question about, you know, what if someone were to invest in multiple properties and then the city changes the rules on them and that situation, especially for zoning changes, they would be protected from those changes. They would be able to keep their legally nonconforming. And yes, we did talk to, well I talked to one community in particular that regulates hosted and non-hosted differently. they ended up hiring a full-time person to run their program because once you start having different requirements for this type of short-term rental versus this type of short-term rental, now you need somebody, you basically need to hire a company to help you track and manage all of that in order to really implement it fairly. And then if you're asking for things like inspections properties or you're adding other requirements onto it, it can just, I was a little bit surprised at how much of a resource drain it was, even for simple things like creating a registry or creating a license program. And so that's where we were like, okay, what's the cost benefit analysis or equation of implementing that versus the amount of resources it would take? And so that's something for this group to just consider.

Yeah, I'd also like to note that the Mayor Kahn has joined remotely. Mr. Mayor? Did you have a question?

Greetings, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for recognizing me. Sorry for signing on remotely, but... I am at my daughter's residence in Massachusetts and there is no one else in the room with me. So thanks for recognizing me. I think I'll just join the chorus of I think non-hosted is something that I hope staff continues to explore. I think and one thing that resonates for me is where we've got contact information for a short-term rental use on the inside of the house I think for a non-hosted what would be satisfactory for me is having the owner being posting to the outside of the building information so that owners take some risk in allowing their residents to be occupied for short-term rental while they're not present. All right, I'm just throwing out the same spaghetti everyone else has been. But I think, staff, you're getting the idea that there is concern about non-hosted. My second toss to the staff is think some registry with the city I guess I wouldn't want to just toss it out with the bathwater I think there's some particularly again for the non hosted an owner describing the use of their property however low intensive that idea could be implemented. I think it's worth exploration. But finally, I want to ask a question about the definition of short-term rental. To me, there are a couple of them. And I'm wondering if there's a shorter-than-short-term rental definition, if that's been applied, meaning I think there's a difference between an approximately 30-day rental or something just short of that, like four weeks, or... and and something that is more uh one week kind of rental and i was wondering how flexible the state statutes are given that there is no definition in state statute that is anything less than 30 days can municipalities have the option of defining a shorter term rental that would be 10 days or less.

Thank you for that question. So this is something that the city can define for ourselves. We came up with the 30 days to kind of complement the definition of family that went into effect where basically to be considered a family, you would be a household or an individual or a group of individuals living together as a single housekeeping unit and occupying a dwelling unit for 30 days or more. or for a term of 30 days or more, I think. Sorry, I'm doing that from memory. And so kind of we were First of all, 30 days seems to be very standard in terms of a definition across the board, looking at other communities and also some model ordinances from the National League of Cities. But then it also fits in very nicely as a complement to the family definition. So it's clear if something's less than 30 days, it falls into this category. If it's more than 30 days, it falls into this category. Once we start doing hosted versus non-hosted and very short-term rentals and short-term rentals, it just adds more complexity. And at the end of the day, I think we would have, we would struggle to track and enforce that, the difference between those things. But the short answer is we have the ability to define this however we would like.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, may I follow with just one observation for that? And it's that I think the apprehension is a, let's take any kind of festival that takes place in Keene or someplace else in Keene, but something that might attract people for a weekend, for a short stay, where And I guess to the staff's observation of what constitutes a family unit, I think the word in that definition that resonates for me is transience. And so it's more trying to focus on that aspect of the definition than what really is transient. And I hate to think that we're cutting off people who are here for a few weeks stay, perhaps doing a consultancy for a company, a machine implementation. who knows the kind of employment opportunities to bring people to our city and for short-term rental needs and that kind of occupancy versus the more transient that's more weekend or you know one week kind of oriented I think that's where, if there's going to be abuse, I think that's where it would likely exist. So again, I'm tossing this back to the staff. I don't want to engineer this through the public hearing, but would be interested in hearing more from staff as we proceed with this.

Mayor Mrakas, Mr hayford Thank you, Mr chair i'm wondering if folks with a little bit more experience with state law can help me with this little research during the course of discussion, there is a. Mayor Mrakas, Allegedly, a lot from 2016 this is anybody who's operating a short term rental needs to register with the state and to advertise on any online platform or. any other things needs to show that license number and collect meals and rooms tax. So if that law is in effect, it seems like some of the concerns being shared here may be moot, I'm not sure. So is that indeed still the law? Is there a way for us to get that list from, you know, does the state of New Hampshire have to share that? You know, I would think, you know, they would say anybody who's registered for this in the city of Keene, we should be able to get that list from them. So I don't know if that's helpful or not, but it seems like it was originally House Bill 1590 from... Chapter 323, Laws of 2016, signed by Governor Hassan. If that's in effect, it seems like the registry is sort of in effect already. So that would be, if that's helpful for the conversation. Generally speaking, while I have the floor, I tend to agree with staff that we should be careful not to, I tend to favor a simpler solution here versus being concerned about a problem that may never come to be based on our where we are in the world. Even as close as Ludlow, Vermont, with a major ski area owned by Epic Ski Areas, I certainly understand pressure on local housing that a major tourist destination has on people, and I'm sympathetic to the pressures that puts on workforce and other housing regular old year-round resident housing in cities and towns like that I'm not sure we're in the same situation mr. cost may I reply to the question just asked okay just yes that

That law is from 2016. It's still there, but it's more for tax purposes. It has a different definition. I think it has a different threshold. I think Andrew could tell me it's like 160 days or something like that. Yeah, so they're they're using a definite a different definition and it's for taxing purposes for the rooms and meals tax So it won't it won't align with this. But yes, it does it is out there Thank You mr. Coste

Thank you. I had a question about who makes the definition. So bed and breakfast has to be owner-occupied, has to serve breakfast. Is that a state?

No.

That's us.

That's us, yes.

So we could do that. So we could apply... if we wanted to, a definition that says a short-term rental has to be owner-occupied if we wanted to do that. I'm not saying we do, but we have that control. We don't have to allow a non-hosted if we want to say that short-term rentals have to be hosted.

Yes, that is within your purview. Well, I should say city council's purview to decide that. I would say staff's recommendation, if that's the direction that you want to go, would be to focus more on whether or not it's a primary residence, just because in conversations with code enforcement staff, it's pretty clear what that means and how it could be enforced, mostly because the DMV has put out really clear guidelines about what documentation you can use to prove primary residence. which is helpful. And so if that's the direction that you're going, I would recommend focusing more on that rather than whether or not the owner is physically present while the unit's being rented out.

Councillor Williams.

One other thought I had, you know, with the With respect to the concern about, you know, somebody buying a building and turning it into a hotel with five units or more, could we put a cap on the number of units, maybe two, maybe three per residence, and maybe that would be an effective way of meeting that challenge?

Councilor Jones, do you have one?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, my question is, let me make sure I have this right this is going to be a use under commercial uses is that that's correct the way I'm reading it yes yep because this is considered a commercial use because the rooms are rented for a fee but are we confusing the public because it's a commercial use but it's going to be used in a residential zone could it be called a residential use

I wouldn't call it that no and most commonly this is considered to be a commercial use that's allowed in a residential zone and then Different communities have different ways of treating that use and allowing it in a residential zone And my next question is

Because we're treading on new water here that we haven't gone on before, and this is new around the state, can we call it a conditional use? Make it a conditional use because I think that would give people an opportunity and more clarity, more transparency when people do make the applications. And will there be a point when we can talk about the application process, or should we be talking about that now?

think now is the appropriate time to talk about the application process so the way that we've proposed it right now is it's called permitted with limitations and so what that means is it's permitted by right however there are a couple of use standards that they have to meet which was the residential appearance and the Having for non hosted to post the contact information of somebody within an hour's drive those use standards We talked internally about having treating this similar to like a home occupation, which is another type commercial use that we allow in residential areas Where if somebody comes in and says that they want to do a home occupation, it's allowed by right with limitations There's all these standards they have to be what we do is we just have them simply sign an affidavit that has all of the youth standards that they comply with and it basically it's them signing a sheet of paper saying We understand that these are the use standards. We agree to follow them. And this is us certifying that we meet them. And then we file that with a property file. And then what that does is it gives staff a record. So when we go to that property, if somebody submits a complaint, we can go to the property file and say, oh, they do have a home occupation and they're not allowed to have signage. And so we got a complaint saying that they have signage. So we can then go out and say, hey, you need to correct this. So we're proposing if it were to be allowed as permitted with limitations to use a similar process where we would have an affidavit for short-term rental property owners to sign acknowledging that they've read and understand those use limitations. And then it would be basically a complaint driven process. So if they do violate one of those, it would be something that comes into our department as a complaint, and then we would go out and investigate and go from there. If you were to do it as a conditional use permit, that would require them to come before the planning board for a public hearing, and it would require them to post a notice in the paper and send out a butter letters to everyone within 200 feet of the property and you know, it adds a lot of time and And cost so again, it's kind of a judgment call there another option could be to allow it with a special exception where they would go to the zoning board of adjustment and That's sort of like a set of criteria that's the same for everyone that they would have to meet. The conditional use permit gives you the flexibility to come up with standards that are specifically tailored to short-term rentals. Given the fact that short-term rentals have existed in Keene for quite a while without any major issues, I think my recommendation would be to start with allowing it with limitations, and you can add additional use standards if you'd like. And then... Again, we can always come back to this. We could, after this is adopted, come back in a year and do a review of how it's been working and what's been going on. I'm a little bit worried about trying to create a very big involved process for something that people have been able to do by right without any hoops to jump through before and where there hasn't been any issues and then to all of a sudden create a very involved process for them. Yeah, I'm a little bit worried about that. But if that's what you want, we can do it. It would involve creating a conditional use permit section within the zoning ordinance, creating conditional use permit criteria specifically for this use. And then everybody who wants to do that use would have to come through to the planning board.

councilor jones and just you know i still not sure that's not a bad thing doing it that way but since we can talk about the application process because it's happening in residential zones can we be made let it be made aware in the application process or maybe they have to post somewhere there are other items issues that can come up that aren't within the purview of zoning such as no parking on the front lawn, dog leash laws, overnight parking laws that their guests are going to have to adhere to. And is there a way to communicate that to the applicants?

Yeah, so some communities do require, I think they call it like a good neighbor handbook. But basically, and I've done this before where I've gone to a short-term rental and you get a little book that has information about who to contact if there's an emergency uh the non-emergency number for the police the you know all of the relevant contact information and then the rules that you have to follow uh that's often something that communities will require for short-term rentals that's a good answer thank you counselor ellis

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was looking at the part of your write-up where it says that right now short-term rentals are only a really small percentage of the total housing stock. And staff doesn't believe that it's really that it would really move the needle to not have those. And I'm wondering how would we know if that does become a problem, like if we're not really assessing? So maybe that has to do with how you were saying we could come back to this in a year, but I was just wondering what would be the tipping point that we would say, okay, short-term rentals are becoming a problem now.

Yeah, that's a good question. So there are data platforms out there that will sort of like scrub data from the various different sites and give you a really good clear picture of how many short-term rentals are out there. there is a cost to them i talked to a community that uses a company called decker and i think they said it was around 10 000 a year and then i was just earlier today talking to mike hagan our building division manager yes okay about that and and he's talked to some other communities in New Hampshire that he couldn't remember the name of it but it was also around $10,000 a year so it's a fairly significant cost but not crazy so that's something that we could look into as a way to track the numbers that would probably be more manageable than trying to Run a license program or a registry program internally and it would probably be more accurate honestly Counselor house

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Following on Councilor Jones' points, the challenge is the enforcement after the fact. We can make all the rules we want and then they're not followed for a weekend or for a week when a place is rented out and it trashes the neighborhood or tears up the lawns and then it's gone. We've not been able to solve any problems. By the time we get around to enforcing anything, it's passed and the neighborhood has just had to swallow it and take it that way. So I'm certainly not adverse to the idea of making it a drag, making it difficult, CUP or getting variants of some sort to put these things in place. It comes back, I slide back into what the idea of Airbnbs were, small a, originally was that you'd rent out a bedroom, a spare bedroom or something. You wouldn't be renting out whole residential units or whole apartments. I don't know if there's a way to slice that somehow, to squeeze the definition so it gets back to what the idea was that's harmless. Anybody would accept that. The host is there. I guess that's more like a B&B where they greet you in the morning, which is quite annoying sometimes. You can't just come and go. But they manage your presence there rather than just renting out a place and then the host comes later. So we certainly should move in the direction of not permitting non-hosted occupancies of these sorts. I would be tending in that way. But the enforcement thing is the real challenge about how we do that after the fact. I've often toyed, and I'm sure I need state action on anything like this. The idea, as you mentioned, they sign an affidavit saying they agree to all these conditions. Well, it'd be great if they posted a bond, too, that we'd have recourse to afterwards. i can't imagine that's anywhere within our our rights here so i'll be talking to my state reps about that um so yeah it's some way we could slice it that there's a difference between renting out a bedroom in a hosted building versus renting out an entire floor or an entire house at times certainly the non-hosted ones we should avoid uh mr chair may i follow up with a question

Please, ma'am. Okay. One use case that we've seen in Keene is where somebody lives in a single-family home and has a detached ADU that they rent out as a short-term rental. Is that something that would fall within the realm of this acceptability?

Yep. That's certainly not just renting out a spare bedroom.

Yeah, that's more than renting out a spare bedroom, but it's renting out an accessory unit on your property while its owner occupied.

Arguably, so I guess I'm trying to figure out where you're drawing that line I yield to your expertise always but yeah, that's that's the debate.

We're all having okay, mr. Clements Another thing that when staff was coming up with this definition that is maybe a little less known we have a collection of what is essentially long-term rented dwelling units that operate under a more short-term lease. And the landlords choose to do that for a number of different reasons. It does make it easier to remove tenants when they need to. for example some of these units are maybe rented week to week but the actual tenancy of the unit by the individual may go on for many months and maybe years even one of the additional challenges that we've been trying that we've been struggling with is how do we thread the needle to allow a landlord to have that flexibility while also providing what is essentially a long-term dwelling unit with a shorter-term lease. So how do we differentiate, especially for a building where the owner might not reside? So if we are careless in crafting a definition, we may unintentionally be taking effectively long-term units off the rolls as well. So that's one of the challenges that we have as staff to kind of differentiate that sort of situation.

And just to add on to that, I think the key thing in that situation is what the intent is. So if somebody is renting out a unit and they only intend to stay there for the weekend, that's clearly a short-term rental. If somebody is renting week to week, but they're intending for this to be their primary residence, that wouldn't fall under the definition of short-term rental. Yeah, this is, this does get a little bit nuanced. Um, there's lots of things to consider. Uh, but I think that's why we're proposing to go with something that's a little bit simpler and kind of maintains the status quo. Um, and then revisit this in the future after we see how things go. But I do, um, appreciate all the comments around the hosted versus non-hosted. I think that's a good discussion to have. Mary I have a question for you if we don't pass something Will all of these short-term rentals become Non-conforming or legally non-conforming So they would become non-conforming because our previous code didn't define them and didn't allow that use outright basically, they were they were just falling under an old definition of family that's no longer in effect and I think, yeah, it would be very hard to enforce if we all of a sudden made all short-term rentals illegal. Yeah, so that's not what we're recommending.

Well, by doing nothing, we're in effect making them illegal?

Yes. Okay, thank you. Okay.

I think we've had our say. May I just see a show of hands for folks in the audience who would like to comment on this issue? Okay, great. Since there are a few of you, I would like to ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. Perhaps Mr. Clements can help me with that as a timekeeper. Thank you. I do want to remind people that this is a public hearing, not a public hearing. It's a public workshop, but we do want to hear your input. So I'll just remind you as you come up, just state your name and address for the minute taker and have your say. So we could start in the back or start in the front. So, sir, with the cap, if you'd like to come up.

Sure.

Thank you.

My name is Brian Harmon, 27 Center Street, here in Keene. Hearing some things about Airbnbs to AirDNA, is a good resource for towns. My wife and I, we use Airbnb all over the country. Hosts and guests are vetted thoroughly through the platforms that are listed. Which I would love to Airbnb. our place, I really would. I don't want any limitations, really. We pay a great amount of taxes, so everything's going to be funded, but showing people that come into the town, see the downtown, can walk the downtown, even if it's in the residential area, down at Marlboro Street, going to a hockey game, the other side of town, going to a baseball game, seeing swamp bats somewhere, you know, whatever it is, if people want a reason to come here, um, provide an opportunity for them to, you know, rest their heads instead of going to a, you know, an eight story hotel with, uh, just, it's just uneasy everything. And it's, and especially with, um, bed and breakfast, I don't need to be served anything. I would like to have my own kitchen. I would love to be able to make a meal. My wife says I can cook. So that's what I want to do. I want to do and being in a place that somebody else has built for me, outside a cookie-cutter hotel room, I desire that, really. But bills are being paid, yes, but we need to pay the taxes. So, you know, expensive taxes, good location, it's a pretty town, whether you're hiking, coming to ski, eat, whatever it is. So that's my piece. Thanks.

Thank you.

Is it this one, the green light? All right, back to back. I'm Hannah Maynard, AD Roxbury Street. And I am a host. And I just wanted to say a few things, but also open it up to see if you guys have any questions of me, since it seems like none of you are hosts. And I think I could give you some insight as to actually who's coming here, what they're doing, things like that. I've been a host for three years, I wanna say, and we've had hundreds of people come to our Airbnb. We have the transient, super transient people who come for the weekend, they come to visit their college student kids, they go to all the amazing activities that we have downtown, the festivals, and a lot of them are recurrent guests. We have visiting doctors, visiting nurses, executives and consultants who work for and with companies in Keene we also have families local families that are temporarily displaced from their homes because of you know fires or situations like that we've had you know, families that are in the first stages of divorce and wanna stay close to their kids and things like that. So it's not, I feel like there's always this situation where it's, you tend to think about the parties and the, you know, the nightmare stories of people's lawns getting torn up. We've experienced none of that. Everything has been I mean, I feel good about them coming here. They feel good about coming here. I don't see any issue in the foreseeable future with oversaturating the market. I mean, to that point, the market corrects itself. So if there are too many Airbnbs in Keene, hosts won't make money, and they won't be hosting anymore. It costs a lot of money. To get it up and running, it's a big investment with furniture and linens and all that. And if they're not making money, they're not going to do it. So I feel like the self-regulation there, to your point, is not worth over-regulating through the city. To your point, people are vetted through the platforms. I am able to make sure that there's a license on file for the people that come through. We also have our taxes, our rooms and meals taxes, they're automatically deducted through the platform. So that's not something that you guys would have to think about regulating. I'm talking specifically with Airbnb. I'm not sure about VRBO. And I'm trying to think if there were any other. Yeah, I just wanted to also let you know that the additional income that I'm making from renting out an Airbnb allows me to actually subsidize the long-term rental apartments in my building so that I don't have to raise them. I think I raised the long-term rental 2% to 3% a year on average because of the subsidy of the Airbnb income. So that's a positive.

I hate to interrupt, but if you could just add your final thought.

That's pretty much all I had to say, but if there were any other questions, I'm happy to answer.

You guys can figure out who comes up.

So I'm Dee Robbins, and I live on 11 Hancock Street, which is right off Water Street in Eastside Keene. And I'm not sure that I was following all of the questions, but it occurred to me, being someone who lives next to a duplex rental that had drug dealing happen, um very close to me and on a neighborhood that's a dead-end street and it's and i lo i love my neighbors we know each other we help each other out i don't want to lose that but the question i sure i didn't get answered was vetting um very important to me to think that airbnb definitely has a wonderful review system both of those who are renting and those who are providing housing And would something like that be in place, whether it's through a property management agency or not, or is it catch as catch can? As someone who might have that happen next door to me, I'd want to know that the people that come are vetted in some way. So that's all.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Strombern on Bergeron Ave in Keene. And we have a little different scenario than those two that sounded not too bad. But on our street, a small house across from us was bought, used as an Airbnb. Fine, no problems. Then the house next to that, which is across from us, was bought. And all of a sudden, we don't know who's living there. There's people coming in and out. The grass is growing. I have pictures of a once very manicured lawn. It was beautiful. It's now full of junk. It's not mowed. And this is the front right on Route 10. Very unsightly. They don't seem to care how it looks. And I guess it's their business. But are my property values going to go down because of this? And there's four bedrooms in this one house. They're all rented out, one bathroom. Like I said, we don't know who's there. And there's cars in and out. They're parking on the lawn. They mow. the part where they want to walk and where they want to park. But everything else is growing. And then the house next to that house was foreclosed upon in these same people. Now they own two buildings. Now they own three buildings. And we're told they plan to do 15 or more people in that house. I don't think these people are vetted. We don't know who they are. walking up and down the street we don't know who belongs there who doesn't belong there all hours of the day and night and i just wondered does the city even know who's living here who's coming in and out does it matter i mean it matters to me and with all of this junk on the on their property, everything. I mean, it looks like a fire hazard and they're out having a fire at night in their fire pit. And I'm thinking, what if something goes up? It's right across the street from us. We don't know. And the only, I knew there was a fire because I could smell it. And then you saw, and I'll leave these pictures for you, but it's just, there's three girls. the lawn there was a basketball hoop that the neighborhood kids always played with it was yes it was on the corner of their property but they just tipped it over put an American flag in one of the grills there's even more stuff out there now after I took this picture and it's just unnerving I don't want to live there anymore I want to move out of Keene I'm so frustrated And all I'm told is there's nothing we can do. They can have as many people live there as they want, and they can do whatever they want. And I'm just not happy. I love my home. We've done a lot of work to it. We keep it nice. I don't want to move, but I feel if this continues, we're going to have to.

Thank you for sharing.

Laura Tobin, Center Street. I'm sure that there are good hosts and I'm sure that there are hosts that are not great. One of my concerns is really just the housing inventory because we've been working hard to open up more opportunities for developers to build housing for people who need homes here. And it feels like just about every one of those conversations The question has come up, well, how do we regulate short-term rentals? And the answer is always, well, we'll get around to that. We have to do that separately. But that is a concern that I think we hear at just about every housing conversation. I do think there's a difference between, what was it, the term property, primary residence, and non-primary residence. If the goal is to talk about helping people stay in their homes and adding supplemental income, that makes sense, but it seems like a different thing when it's a separate building and all that it does is short-term rentals. That just seems different. As far as where to start, I can appreciate the perspective of wanting to make things as simple as possible. That said, I think we've also seen a lot of times when we make things simple and we don't regulate certain things and then we kind of come to this place where we are. Well, since we've allowed it for so long now, we just have to keep allowing it and we feel kind of stuck. So I think it would be fair to say that If it is primary residence, maybe there isn't some type of registration or license, but maybe it is conditional use if it is not primary residence. And then they would need to go through the process of getting approval. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Counselor Cat Workman, Colorado Street. I'll be brief. I really just want to thank you guys for having the conversation that you guys had, the discussion. I think people raised some really great points. I just want to speak from a renter's standpoint. I'm one of the few handful of counselors that rent. So I very much am cognizant of how many short-term rentals are in our neighborhoods and I want to just kindly disagree with city staff that I do think since our report in 2023, there has been an increase in rentals, short-term rentals. I just did a quick search tonight and tonight there's 20 that you can rent tonight right now from as a flexible standpoint. And those are homes, not rooms. So I made sure to filter my search for that. I want to just endorse, I really liked the idea of coming up with a different assessing revenue and formula for some of those short-term revenues based off of their income producing revenue. I also really appreciate the conversation about rentals with property owners on site versus not i think that like um ken cost pointed out that makes a really big change in the discussion that you're having and the decisions that are being made Um, and I also support a registry. I think we need to be data driven and that our decisions need to be proactive and not reactive. And we can't do that with proper without having proper information. So I think it is imperative that we know how many units we have operating and keen at any given time. um and that our legislation and our ordinances need to be proactive we shouldn't be waiting and saying this isn't a problem now so why should we legislate it we need to be proactive so those are just my few thoughts and i appreciate the discussion like i said you guys had some really good points and i support them thank you

Hi, I'm Armanda Henderson at 16 Bergeron Avenue. Can you turn on your microphone, please? Am I on? Hi, this is Armanda Henderson from 16 Bergeron Avenue. I've lived on the street since 1975 when we built the house. Just recently, and I just want you to know that this doesn't affect you unless it's in your neighborhood. We found out that the house at the end of the street was being rented to four individual men. We had no idea where they came from, whether they had a criminal background or not. I found out through one of my neighbors that one of the men was walking down the street, standing by a bush, and just zeroing in on my house. He did that twice before he was confronted by one of my neighbors, saying, why are you looking at my neighbor's house? He said, well, I'm an architect. Come to find out, he's a recovering drug addict. We don't know who's in those houses. Now they've bought the house next to it. They said that they're going to put as many people in there as they can. And we all want to move. I mean, we were so comfortable. We had a perfect neighborhood. We knew our neighbors. We could depend on our neighbors. Now, just because of one person that bought these properties, they're changing the whole dynamics of our livelihood. It's crazy. And Keene's allowing it. When I called, I was told, well, there's nothing we can do about it. They can rent to as many people as they want. That was the answer that I received from my Keene supporters the ones that are supposed to be watching out for us you know so please take it into consideration that if it's not in your backyard it's not because it's not out there thank you

Hi, Jake Pipp, 11 Bergeron Avenue. I'm going to follow up on what a couple of my neighbors said. And I agree that it doesn't really, you don't realize the effects until it's happening next door or down the street from you. And as Councilor Haas had said earlier, Like these don't build neighborhoods, and I would go farther to say they kind of tear them up because three of my neighbors who have been living there, each of them for decades, are now considering moving based on what's happening one or two houses away from them. And it does seem like both a safety issue but also a quality of life issue and a property value issue for us. Somebody else was mentioning how Airbnb vets their guests. This property, it's one-month leases. Each bedroom has been kind of created its own lease. There's a lot of transients. Everybody's on a month-to-month. lease and they've been throwing up walls and considering other ways to make more bedrooms out of that property. It used to be a three bedroom single family home with a couple living there. It's now four random individuals who didn't know each other ahead of time. They're talking about a fifth and a sixth bedroom. There's plenty of room in the yard for ADUs, accessory dwelling units. it could become like a little village of ADUs back there with how much space there is. And they don't vet there. Like Airbnb, they're not vetting people. I know that some of the neighbors are concerned about safety issues and their own, as well as the house directly across the street from this property has several children living there. And without vetting them, And the city only knows the owner's name. They don't have a clue who's renting it. And Airbnb is not involved to vet these people. And we don't know if there's a sex offender living next door to four or five children now. It'd be something we'd like to be aware of. It feels like a very big safety issue. And yeah, just not knowing who lives next to you, it does kind of tear the neighborhood apart in a way. Like you get used to, you look out for each other, you know each other, you build rapport. And with the transience, you lose that aspect. It is showing itself to be able to take a single family home of three bedrooms or the one next door that they now have of five bedrooms and you can make it three into six bedrooms, you can make the five into 10 bedrooms, charge over $1,000 a month per bedroom. And you're creating a wealth building situation for some people like mentioned in this memorandum. you're not preserving the residential character of the neighborhood and you're not protecting the quality of life for abutting residences. And as just somebody else mentioned from the street, there's parking on the lawns. 90 of it has not been mowed once brush piles and junk piles building up so it just becomes a bit of an eyesore too when you don't have people who you know um yeah if you could just give us your last thoughts please sure yeah and just um you know the fact that like uh somebody else mentioned you know being proactive rather than creating this vacuum where then the situation can be grandfathered in and there can be nothing done about it I think needs to be taken into account as well. And just, you know, letting you know, again, like several people who have been living there for decades are feeling like they're being pushed out of their homes out of discomfort and safety issues. And knowing that it's going to be, somebody else mentioned, I think, having multiple properties in a row, somebody over here earlier, and now it's three properties in a row, and it could continue.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Just want to comment on that because I did receive the emails from the neighbors from lower Winchester Street, Bridge, Ron Ave area. I did go down and park and walk your neighborhood. If you saw somebody strange walking through the yard, it was probably me. Your issue, the ordinance we have tonight, I don't think really affects the issues that you're going through right now. You're facing what I call the new crappy neighbor problem. I'm dealing with five or six neighborhoods right now going through the same thing. It's frustrating. It's all hell. I did meet actually with the fire marshal today speaking about your situation down there the fire marshals aware of it I think you're running to more of a code enforcement issue and like I said just a crappy neighbor issue more so than an ordinance issue But with that said I'm like I said, I received your emails. I respond your emails. I did walk your neighborhood I did talk to the fire marshal. I will talk to code enforcement. They're here and We do listen. Sometimes it's frustrating for us because we're handcuffed sometimes. But as you know, I will respond to your emails. And if you want me to walk your neighborhood with you again tomorrow, I will. And I will speak to the fire marshal gun and code enforcement. And I'll go over all the issues one for one with them. that I can possibly handle from a city council level. I don't know if this ordinance particularly will hinder or help. I don't think it'll really have much of an effect. Like I said, what the new owners are doing, and unfortunately people are selling because they can make a good profit and you don't know who's buying it. And unfortunately, in your case, and like some of the other neighborhoods that I've seen, there's people that are buying it that aren't really interested in being a good neighbor. They're just interested in turning a profit by putting as many tenants in there as they possibly can. But once again, they'll fall under code enforcement and the fire marshal. But that's what I want to say to that. But like I said, if you want to talk to me tonight after this meeting, I'd be more than happy to. And if you want to send me more emails, as you know, I respond to all my emails every morning, and I will respond to them again. And thank you, and I do hear you, and I do care. Thank you.

Thanks. I'm going to ask other people to come up before you get a second chance to speak.

Nathan Grove, 3 Bergeron Avenue. Those are my neighbors back there. I've lived in the house for quite a few years now. We've really enjoyed it. It's a quaint neighborhood. Love my neighbors. I'm the one with a lot of kids. We have five kids in our house. know I just really don't know what to say about it I just I don't like the idea of not knowing my neighbors I don't like the idea of all these strangers I don't like the idea of my kids looking at our windows and seeing people drinking and smoking around the bonfire that's not the values that I'm trying to raise my kids with and have them ask me questions about it. I don't feel comfortable letting them go up and down the street anymore, which was one of the huge big perks of where we live. We have that nice long call and a cul de sac at the end so they can ride bikes and do whatever they want. We don't really feel comfortable with it anymore. And so that was, that's all I really want to say, but also want to point out that as far as the vetting is concerned, There's more than a dozen apps that people can use to get into these places. And a lot of them don't have the same Airbnb quality vetting process. So you're not really getting vetted as well as Airbnb with all these places. That's all I have to say.

Thank you. Anyone else? Otherwise, you can come back up.

I just had Jake Pitt from 11 Bergeron Avenue. Just a quick follow-up to Councillor Filio's comment that it does kind of verge on... Yeah, different situation. But it is like the month-to-month leases, which I think week-to-week were mentioned earlier as a situation where you don't really know how long it's going to last. And I think 30 days was the number that's been consistently used here tonight. So monthly leases, month-to-month, we're like right on, just right on the cusp there. So it's challenging to see which side it falls on. But I feel like it might come into consideration because of that.

Okay, thank you from 80 Roxbury. Um, I just wanted to touch on the host versus non hosting. Because that would affect me greatly. Um, and I just kind of wanted. to address what you were saying about Airbnb's original purpose being to rent out your room, get a little extra income. There's a reason it's not like that anymore. It's because people don't want that. And it also disallows you from hosting families in a lot of cases, which is a huge demand for Airbnbs. I think as long as you have responsible hosts, everything is good. And to ensure that you have responsible hosts, I think you should have limitations and you should have restrictions and you should, I'm even open to registration, licensing, things like that. I think if you have responsible people running these things, you have no problems at all. That was it.

Yeah. Councilor Haas. Could I ask a question? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. This is not just Keene that's dealing with this problem. This is a national problem. Yeah. A concern of how the neighborhoods change due to irresponsible hosts and irresponsible landlords. Is there any discussion going on inside of Airbnb or Vrbo, inside the platforms that you know of that they could educate us on how we could deal with this problem better?

I don't really get into the chats much on there. I don't have the time. It's just endless. No, I can't say that I know of any situation like that where I think it's just so different to a lot of people's points. A lot of the issues come in resort towns, large cities that are already struggling with over building and things like this. So it's so individual. I mean, Being in Austin, Texas, and being in Dublin, New Hampshire, totally different beast. So it's just a matter of what's needed on an individual basis. But I think a city the size of Keene, to a lot of other people's points, you want to get out ahead of it and not have to, like I said, it's a huge investment for hosts to get these things up and running. So to have that then taken away from them is...

you know that's their livelihood all right I think it'd be great if and we might do that research ourselves to find out what the industry is promoting this because this is affecting them everywhere so the band in some cities throwing them out completely and if they don't get ahead of this they're gonna run into more cities and no air B&Bs here thank you

You have a question for the, okay.

just said real quick are are you um maybe you said it but i didn't get it um in your airbnb is or your yeah airbnb is it your primary residence or are you um no a separate building that you i own a multi-family and it's a unit in the multi-family and i have a private residence in swansea okay yeah So you're in that building or you're somewhere else?

I have an office in that building, so I'm occupying it as a business, but not as a primary residence.

Hold on. You have a question for someone?

Yes, thank you. No, a question on process. So normally we might push this forward to call for a public hearing.

Let me just finish the public workshop piece, and then we can talk. Okay, I'm going to, seeing no more hands, I'm going to close the public workshop portion. and now we can proceed to deliberation. I'm just going to take my prerogative and weigh in here. I think there are a lot of things raised that suggest maybe we need a little more time and thought to go into this, specifically I listed five things in our discussions. One is really a gap in the meal and room taxes, if that's being handled or not handled. And then internally for our deliberations, hosted versus non-hosted, do we treat them the same or treat them differently? Shorter than short if I could paraphrase the mayor Should we have different rules for a 10-day versus 30-day? And then in terms of the process, is it by right with limitations, or do we make this a conditional use permit or a variance process? And then finally, again, I don't know if it's within our bailiwick, but is there some sort of delta for the tax assessment on these properties? So I heard those things brought up by... members of these boards. And then the comments from the audience, vetting of renters and the number of renters, and I think Councilor Filio sort of hit on a lot of that, and that's really more enforcement and fire code than necessarily what we're going to put in an ordinance. But anyway, with all that being said, my personal preference would be to continue, but I'm open to other people's opinion.

I'll second what the chair is saying tonight. The good news is we're discussing this and we're going to bring something forward. But as all things in government, you know, especially this, we want to make sure we get it right. And kudos, Mary, to your department. I know you put a lot of time into this. And so you're well informed on it. But unfortunately for everybody here, you hear it for the first time and everybody's head starts to explode. And then you get a few questions and you're like, A lot of times it's like, well, we don't know. So I think the Chair's right tonight that this is something that we don't need to rush. We don't want to jam it out there and come back and say we screwed up. We have to do it over again, which I've seen on ordinances in the past. So I agree that it's not going to hurt to delay this for a month or so and get a little bit more homework done. And as far as the neighbors, it's separate issues, but it all entwines. And so I will work with the neighbors, and I hope some of the other counselors will also get in touch with the neighbors down in the Bergeron Ave area, because there's a concern when our neighborhoods start to... you know take a downturn it's a concern and i think we all need to involve and i i know they've sent out emails to most of the council and i hope we'll respond to them also so um yeah i think one more month is definitely not going to hurt yeah and i was i was remiss and not uh expressing my appreciation to staff it's really good work and i'm glad you're bringing it to us mr madison

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have to agree. I think it definitely needs more time to make this sausage. But, you know, I've brought this up at council back during my time on council, and a lot of that was because I live in the north central neighborhood, so basically from the pinnacle of the square, just go north. And Molly used to be my neighbor. That area during COVID got hit pretty hard by Airbnbs. I think at one point I counted 30. One of them was a multi-unit apartment building that were all Airbnbs. Another was was effectively a cottage court that had been turned into a semi resort. where you had these four different small houses that were all Airbnbs and an abandoned five-building apartment that I believe is still abandoned. It went from hosting families to abandonment. And I did hear from one family that experienced homelessness after they were removed by the buyer. We had one property which, as a counselor, I was receiving almost weekly complaints about. It was a property that was on Union Street. It was owned by folks from Massachusetts who owned, I think, five other properties. um it was a party house people were throwing beer cans into adjoining yards people were parking in other people's properties when one neighbor confronted someone about parking on their in their driveway they got mouthy with them it was it was turning into a nightmare i did try to use tried to work with airbnb and they the company had very little to no interest in actually addressing the problem there was definitely a financial incentive for them to allow this to continue. I know Airbnb does vetting of hosts and guests, but they also have a financial incentive to not do that, to allow anyone to host an Airbnb and allow anyone to go in there and rent it and do whatever they want, as long as the money's flowing, all is good. So I don't put a lot of faith in them doing their due diligence. So I think it is incumbent on the city to do our due diligence to make sure we're protecting our residents from this activity. And the only other thing I'll add is that I believe it's just a handful of bad actors who are causing the problems. We saw in the survey in our packet the bulk of people say they either didn't know there was an Airbnb or a short-term rental or they didn't experience any issues with it. And I think that's because most owners are pretty responsible. A lot of them live locally or live at the property, but there's a handful who live in other states, some who live across the country who are not responsible, who this is just a money mill for them. So they don't really care what it does to the community. And those are the people who we need to take action to protect the community from what they're doing. So, yeah, I think we should make some more sausage over the next month or so.

Thank you. Councillor Jones.

thank you mr mayor i agree with both the chairman and the vice chair uh for continuation um there's a lot of things that were uh that were asked um i think we should talk a little bit more about conditional use uh i think we should counselor house mentioned uh splitting is splitting it into uh different definitions because there there is a wide variety of what falls under here I think the possibility of licensing should be there. I think we need to control this. We've heard about the issues. We've heard that places such as Airbnb and Vrbo are somewhat regulating, but there's nothing that stops you from putting it on Craigslist and not regulating it at all. I think these are all items that need to be addressed, and I agree with the continuation.

Mr. Cost?

Thank you. So I know we're not making the sausage right now, but since we'll be thinking about it, I do want to underscore one thing to keep in mind, and this is from the planning board side. My understanding is that we're supposed to look at things in terms of do they support the master plan or are they part of the master plan? I'm actually kind of surprised that we're talking about wanting to codify that people can take houses that they don't live in or buy houses that they invest in and turn them into short-term rentals because it just absolutely goes against the livable housing pillar that we have spent so much time, and I heard some of the counselors speaking about the same thing, that we spend so much time encouraging housing, how do we get more housing for people who are going to live in Keene, and particularly the non-hosted type situation really goes against the master plan. regards of all the problems and what people do or good people bad people uh... we are taking properties would be family housing or housing for people who are going to live here in keen and invest in keen and the keen residents and we are Sort of supporting the idea that, no, they could be short-term rentals. And it just goes against my whole thinking of what the master plan does. And I think we should always be looking back at the master plan. We paid a lot of money for it. It's a great master plan. We should use it. We should refer to it. And right now, I don't think we are. So thank you.

Councillor Ellis.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I also agree with continuing this issue. As Andrew said, I used to be his direct neighbor and still very close by. I want to say that I'm definitely not anti-short-term rental. Roommate started doing Airbnb after she Was having was gonna struggle keeping her home during a divorce, and I I moved in and slept in the other room But then whenever she rented out my bedroom on Airbnb I would just go sleep with her so and then she became very successful as a Airbnb host and you know it helped her keep keep her house and pay her mortgage, so I'm totally you know in favor of people being able to Use this as a way to build their their income and keep their homes or be able to afford a home but I agree that we we need to look at this in light of the master plan like Ken said and I think we need to focus on that and Like the the one lady that spoke who was an Airbnb host She said she has a multi-unit and she rents out one as an Airbnb. I think maybe that's a great a great solution, you know, there's It's a way to just limit the short-term rentals and make them still possible and part of the whole makeup of housing in Keene, but a limited part. So I hope that we will continue to look at solutions that help both homeowners wanting to use this as an income stream and people who need housing. So I agree with continuing. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, I think Councilor Jones.

I just want to add to the discussion on the master plan. There's also a pillar on the master plan which discusses preserving the character of the neighborhoods. So I think that would also fit into the conversation along with the other issues mentioned.

Mr. Skeens.

Mr. Chair, just with this continuance, I think I would just want to comment that a lot of the discussion we've had as staff, as you've heard, has surrounded this compliance and enforcement piece. And a lot of the gray areas that are overlapping in terms of how we deal with properties, rental properties. and property maintenance in general. So I think as part of the continuing conversation, I think we would probably want to bring, based on the input and the comments and the suggestions that we're talking about, I think we would want to have a good overview of what those challenges are going to be from a realistic standpoint. I think a lot of the information that we get In terms of what's happening out in the community are coming from our code enforcement folks and there's there's a lot of nuances to that but I think that's what we would want to include if that's Okay to bring some of that information back as well when we're talking about this Thank you.

I Apologize for what I was thinking about I was thinking about the all-star game Mr. Andrews Oh, he does. Mayor Kahn? I can't see it that well.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. A thought that if people never visit, they're never going to reside here. And that's just one of those basic principles that I think relates to our housing and our workforce issues, these two issues go hand in glove. And, you know, we can't just cut off our nose to spite our face, so to speak. So I think this is a nuanced question. I think the unhoused question that kept coming back up, I'm sorry, the unhosted residences they kept coming back. There are a variety of issues and I think hearing from, as Mr. Anders just said, hearing how to sort those out so that there are multiple ways for the city to be addressing them, not just through ordinances, but also through enforcement. Those are good takeaways from the public input tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right, I think we're ready for a motion. Councillor Jones?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would move for the continuance of Ordinance O-2026-09. Second.

Thank you, Councillor Haas. Any further discussion? Ms. Burner?

Mr. Chair, thank you. So at this point in time, I did reach out to the PLD committee to see if we would have a quorum for the August meeting. So far, I don't have a quorum for that meeting yet for PLD. And also, given the number of issues and topics you want us to look into, staff would recommend that you continue this to the September. To September? Yes. Yep. I believe it's September 14th. OK. Someone could check that date.

That's right.

Thank you for that. Okay. Councilor Jones.

If I can ask staff, are we leaving them in limbo because we changed the definition of family just to work it into this ordinance, and it also affects our lodging house ordinance, which has been in the process for many years now. Are we leaving them in limbo by doing this?

Ms. Bronner?

Sure. Yeah, so right now, the new definition of family went into effect last month, and we are kind of, because this ordinance is in process, we're holding off on taking any sort of enforcement action against short-term rentals. And then we're also working in the background on a separate ordinance that deals with the congregate living and social service uses, which is where Lodging House, I believe, falls. But going back to your question about leaving staff in limbo i think you've given us some guidance and so what we'll probably do at the next meeting is bring a couple versions for you to to consider if that makes sense council house

Thank you, Mr. Chair. By putting it off to September 14th or 19th, that doesn't affect the health and safety enforcement issues around Bergeron Avenue, which will continue through community development. Thank you.

Thank you for pointing that out. All right, so we have a motion, yeah, September 14th is the correct date. We have a motion and a second. Motion for continuance of Ordinance 0-2020-609. All those in favor?

It's going to have to be a roll call.

Oh, that's correct. Sorry about that. Thank you. We're going to have to do a roll call.

For the Planning Board, Harold Farrington?

Yes.

Mayor Jay Kahn?

Yes.

Councillor Molly Ellis?

Yes.

David Bergeron?

Yes.

Mike Hafer?

Yes.

Kenneth Kost?

Yes.

Andrew Madison?

Yes.

And Stephan Mayhew?

Yes.

For PLD, Randy Filio? Yes. Bill Jones? Yes. Bobby Williams? Yes. Ed Haas?

Yes. Okay. Okay. workshop is continued to September 14. Thanks everyone, appreciate the input. I guess I'll give people a second to clear out. Okay, why don't we do that? Good idea. We're going to do a five minute break. We will resume at 825.

I can hear him. I can hear him right here. He's buzzing. I don't think you can hear him. Oh, yeah, yeah. Got him in. Got him in. Smart man. Smart man.

You're playing a personal battle.

Do you want to do something? We're going to put a bond up there. We're going to put a bond up there. Maybe visit and tear it down. We're working. We're working.

Thank you.

And I could kind of like sit here and just like come up. Yeah.

That's interesting, two hours. Yeah. You know, it's... Well, they're here, though. Okay, next on our agenda is a presentation from the Community Development Department on the implementation of housing strategies in the 2025 Comprehensive Master Plan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We've all huddled up here, and we can see how fast we can get this done today, considering the conditions in the room. So we're just here. Our team from Community Development is here to give you all an update on housing little bit of background and update on where things are going with respect to implementing the master plan around housing which is you know there's a lot there's a bundle of issues and initiatives here that we'll be talking about and to just get some feedback if you have it on where we are heading this next year two years three years actually So that's what we're going to do. We're going to do where we've been, what we've accomplished, and where we're headed. And also, I should actually introduce a citizen. Med is here. How soon we forget. I was practicing, and then I just blew it. But he is here with his background and a lot of the things that he has researched over the years with respect to housing programs, but has since moved on to his citizen status. But we've invited him here to bring along some of the information that he's collected. So moving forward, these are our master plan pillars. Those of you who have been involved with, were involved with this process are aware of that. But we're really talking about housing in all aspects of it. Diversity, affordability, the impact on neighborhoods, the walkable aspects of how we do smart planning and development. workforce, our aging population, and what we're going to do with the sustainability in the future and what we choose to pursue. So just breaking down the housing pillar in terms of what the different elements that we're talking about, one of the the prime things that local government can do with respect to supporting housing and growth and redevelopment is through our regulations it's through our zoning and it's through our processes and you'll hear a couple of you'll hear how we've been working on that but you know zoning flexible development standards we're looking at what we can do to to foster missing middle housing through our internal processes faster reviews just customer service in general using our technology and um and then through that we look at increasing our housing supply and maintaining the quality of the existing housing supply so with that I'm going to hand this over to Mary because we are going to tag team a little bit of this can you see that okay

Yes, and I think we also have Evan Clements here who's our planner and zoning administrator who's been involved with a lot of these accomplishments. So different ordinances that have been adopted over time. Yeah.

Good evening, everybody. Evan Clements, Planner Zoning Administrator. So as you all well know, staff has brought a lot of zoning change recommendations before you to go through the process. Some of these are based on legislative changes affected at the state level, as well as innovative changes that... We've been kind of initializing on our own, like what makes sense, what works well in Keene. And so it's actually been kind of funny. I sit on the New Hampshire Planning Association legislative subcommittee, and a lot of these recent changes that have come down from the state legislature, I've been able to say with great pride as we talk about them in the subcommittee, oh, yeah, we already did that in Keene, and it works great. So it's not necessarily something to be afraid of. It works for our community. It may work for other communities around the state. So things like updating and modernizing our ADU regulations, allowing detached or attached anywhere you've got a single family residence. We've since seen state changes that have been moving the needle in that direction for everybody else, but we got there first. Probably the most impactful change that you're all aware of is going to be that Cottage Court ordinance. I know the planning board is very familiar with it at this point. While we call it Cottage Court, it's not what it just does. It is at its very base nature an infill ordinance that allows for right-sized densification without unnecessary sort of intensity. It provides controls to mitigate intensive uses to maintain neighborhood character. It provides allowances, for example, for front setbacks so that some of the existing building stock that may have been around for over 100 years, as we all know, is much closer to the road than current front yard setbacks would require, right? So the Cottage Court actually acknowledges the existing built form and allows new development to match that form so that it maintains the streetscape. And it also provides flexibility for some of these lots that were likewise subdivided a long time ago where the current zoning dimensional requirements have since changed. The one other thing that I will mention is going to be the parking standards. So a year or so ago, we had a parking study done and we basically, we said, do you really need two parking spaces for every single dwelling unit within the city? And the answer to that question was no. So we reduced it from two to one. It's just a minimum. If the market demands more parking and the lot can support it, a property owner can certainly provide additional parking. They are not beholden to the zoning minimum. We've even gone so far in certain downtown districts to reduce that number to less than one. for efficiency units, studios, workforce housing, housing that is restricted for 55 and older residents, things of that nature. So it's a way that we can kind of target various different housing needs all in one sort of foul swoop. So we hope to continue to be providing innovative suggestions to keep keen moving forward on achieving our housing goals. Thank you.

So just one thing on that list that I want to mention, because some of you may have not been around when we did this project, but the land development code was a multi-year project that was a very large effort to get all of our land use regulations, any regulations having to deal with development of property into one document. so that sounds simple but having been here before the land development code it was a huge improvement so and we continue to build on it and tweak it and improve it but I just want to put that out there as well because that was five years ago now, so some people may not remember that, but that was a big positive change. As far as redevelopment, the city of Keene was an early adopter of the 79E tax incentive program, and we recently updated that to include the residential property revitalization zone. which the way the city has chosen to implement it it's really being used as a housing program to make sure that either units aren't being lost or that new units are being created you want to go into the process improvements sure so

One of the things that we, it was kind of low hanging fruit, but we were able to take the public hearing requirements and the process by which the public hearing was set out of the joint committee, was it not? We were able to look at the city regulations and we found a way I would say Mary found a way to change the process so that about six weeks time between when an application was being heard it was reduced to that degree that's about right six weeks is what we determined so that's Those are the types of process improvements that we're going to continue to look at. And it's just a simple procedural thing that was there to improve that. The site plan thresholds, Mary, why don't you talk about that?

Sure. So the planning board recently looked at its site plan thresholds and increased some of the thresholds for going to major site plan review, sort of broadened the range of projects that could go to a minor site plan review. And so that was another effort at trying to make the process work a little bit better for some of our applicants, especially for the smaller scale projects that would have fewer impacts on neighboring properties, providing them with an avenue that's a little bit simpler and easier to go through. So yeah, that's that.

And I just think on this slide, the last thing that I wanted to keep in here was the Housing Champions Program, which had been passed. It was the number one application for designation for that when it came out. And then hasn't really been funded. And there was some discussion about maybe just ending the program, which hasn't happened. And so we're going to continue to monitor that program depending on what the state wants to do for it. And the time, the opportunity to go to pursue resources under that program, should it come about, we'll be able to do that.

And so this slide, you don't have to read it. But what we wanted to do is we did our best using the data that we have to try and assess what the impact of some of these changes has been. And so I started with the housing needs assessment that was done in 2023, which really provided us with a solid foundation of data to work off of for future changes. We reduced the minimum lot size in the rural district from five to two acres. And so that has resulted between when it was adopted to now we've had a total of seven new lots created that are less than five acres in the rural district. Again, that's not a huge change, but it's something. We expanded where ADUs are allowed and made it easier to build them in June of 2023. That resulted in three new units. I think the main barrier there is the cost to build. So that's kind of another challenge. The item that has been the most successful is the Cottage Court Ordinance. That was adopted in May of 2024. So far the Planning Board has approved 107 units, although 38 of those units were either revoked or expired. And so we are looking at a net total of 69 new units through the Cottage Court process. Other things that we weren't really able to assess we increased the, we created like a height incentive for multifamily housing in the Commerce District. So not only is multifamily housing allowed in the Commerce District, we allow it to go up to six stories. And while we've had some conversations with some property owners that are interested in that, no one's actually taken advantage of it yet. We removed the density factor for residential units in medium density, high density in the downtown transition districts, but based on our ability to filter and run reports in our data system. We weren't able to figure out how many new units that might have allowed for. So that impact is unknown. Same thing with the reduced on-site parking requirements. We increased the threshold for projects to qualify for major site plan review. That was a relatively recent action, so I don't know that we have much data to look at for that. Um, and then with the 79 e residential property revitalization zone option, which again is a relatively new thing. Um, so far we've only seen one application for the creation of two units.

So costs continue to be the major barrier to some of the realization of some of these things, but these things are in place and waiting for someone to be able to use them as tools. I would also say that on the 79E program, we believe there's been an update at the state level on the housing opportunity zone, yet another aspect of 79E that we already have done the basic work for a program that we just paused on last year because of the income requirement and the tracking of that that was going to create some difficulties in implementing the program. So we think that if they've made some proper tweaks to it that we would want to pursue that as another tool moving forward. Mike?

All right, I'm excited to be here.

Thanks for having me. It's not often we get to talk about our department, so when they said, would you mind coming in, talk about the department, I was absolutely, I'm down with it. We have some great things that we've been trying to implement over the last year. One of them is OpenGov. You heard a bunch tonight. They're kind of short selling it. It's a great new technology that most of the departments are adopting as part of the process for not only for building permits, but also for licensing. The clerks is looking at it, Public Works is looking at it. It's been put in place for zoning, for planning board applications. So we're utilizing technology, but it's also helping us collect the data that you guys were looking for tonight on some of that information. This technology allows us to do that. So that's one really great part. The other part of that technology, it allows applicants to see where they're at in the process. So you don't get that phone call, like, you know, it's been in there for five days now. Where is it at? Like, who's looking at it at this point? The other thing is it allows us to get it quicker to different departments for sign-offs. Like a permit application, we're going to make sure that zoning is signed off. We're going to make sure that Public Works is signed off for a hookup. We want to make sure that the fire department's looked at it. So it's really helped with advancing permits quicker and knowing where other departments are so we can give a full answer to an applicant. And we don't even need to have the answer because they can see it right on the screen. They know who's... or where it's at in the process. So really excited about that, that transparency, real-time status tracking, simultaneous plan reviews, so it doesn't have to wait for this department to go to the next department. So I'm really talking it up. It's a good program. I think as we start collecting data, we've only had it in place for four months. I think it's going to help us advance our processes and our policies that we put forward when we can have that information. and we hope to do that. Another big part of it is self-scheduling inspections, quicker response time. They can go in, they can see the inspector's calendar, be able to pick a time that works for them, which is really great for us, versus them calling in on a phone line, we have to listen to it the next morning, then we're scheduling it on the system. It's just a good opportunity to move. Technology is advancing so quickly. One of the other things that we didn't put on here, but we're looking at even more technology with the plan review. We're looking at digital plan review tables through potentially a grant process. That's a big deal. It will allow us to be able to mark up plans right on the table and they can immediately get those plans back to them right after the markup. The other good part about this is it increases accessibility and access to people that can't make it to City Hall on time or during their work hours. They can apply for a permit in the middle of the night. and potentially have an answer back by mid-morning, and they can start a project, depending upon what it is. So that kind of brings me to my next one, is the solar permitting. This was a piece of legislation that went in front of the Senate, and they were, no, it was the House, and it was to allow, for instance, solar permitting through Solar App Plus. There are other states that have adopted this or are implementing it to be adopted. is now required to use the Solar App Plus system by next year. It has to be implemented into the system. The great thing is we've already, I volunteered to City of Keene to be the leader in being the first community to have instant solar permitting. It's a great application that allows, they have to opt into the program, it is an additional fee to the applicants, but they'll be able to put in their information, they'll get an approval number, they put that approval number into our system, and they get an instant permit. We still do all the construction. We still do all the inspections. We'll go out whenever they schedule it and get it. But what they were saying or what they were testifying to is people, who's been to Home Depot? Everybody's been to Home Depot, right? The people sell you on a solar system, right? And then it takes this long, long process. So they were, as you go through Home Depot and you just bought a solar system, then you just found that new toilet you wanted and that new bathtub that you wanted and everything else. They kind of forget about it. Well, if you could get instant permitting, you know, it's a real thing. You're not five, six months out from a process with that. So I'm excited to have this. This also puts us at our platinum level, soul smart. well we hope that that will help us get to the highest level in the soul smart process the other thing automated oil and gas permits this one has already started that process if there's nothing if if all the guard rails are met it's an instant approval process so you submit the application for your oil burner your change out literally at three in the morning and you have your permit at 3 0 5 in the morning and your guys can get started the next day. So this has really allowed us to put in the guard rails. There may be additional questions, maybe it's in the floodplain or something like that that may delay the process. But if it meets all the minimum guard rails to have a safe installation and then an inspection, we put it in place and it's great for this community. So, I think that's our last thing, but I just wanna, so really the overall of this, we've improved transparency, we've made it more consistent, and better communication. The other thing, again, not on the slide, but I wanna put it out, we're doing a great job of education. If you can educate somebody on the regulations, it's gonna reduce the fear of regulation. So really, getting out in front of changes, getting out in front of the, the permitting process and understanding it. Everybody knows YouTube University. We're all experts. When we get in there, we've watched the video one time and we try it. Well, we're trying to provide that education and understanding because it relieves that stress in a regulatory process. We've been working really hard with that. Part of why I'm wearing this suit jacket, we had a meeting over at Heberton Hall today. We had 40 builders come and learn about the 2024 updates in the codes and the amendments. So we're really proud of that to host it in Keene. We hope to have more of those. That's all I got on mine.

Thanks, Mike.

Thank you.

This is just quick. This is the overall concept of what we're trying to do through all of these improvements is reducing friction. When a project comes in at any stage, all of the things that we've been describing here are to reduce the friction of of each aspect of the process. Obviously money is still, you still need money to get a project going, but if we can come in and make our processes clearer and smoother and provide some regulatory support for what it is that you're envisioning, that's what we're doing with this. So this is just what's ahead. I'm gonna hand it over to Matt, I think it's your turn now.

So to Paul's comment, I've been a civilian for 12 days now, and I'm really pushing the envelope here. I'm at a night meeting. I really want to speak a little bit beyond what the city itself is doing, although it reflects some of the evidence that the city has been following. And to Evan's comment about being around the state or even being around the region and talking about what Keene is doing and has done, You really have been setting the standard quite a bit from the standpoint of zoning changes and things like that. There's a lot of discussion that takes place right now on housing and affordability and changes. You just had the Accelerating Home Building Act pass. It came into effect today. That's the one that President Trump refused to sign. You have a lot of efforts that are taking place. You'll undoubtedly see a lot of things that the legislature is going to continue to do in trying to change processes and codes and things like that. The key issue really is cost. When you get down to what the prime issue is, it's the cost of construction, the sticks and stones and bones that goes into a house. A lot of these other issues are peripheral. But anything that takes time adds to cost. Anything that you can speed up clears costs. Anything that you can make regular makes it easier to get through a process, makes things run better. So one of the things that's being discussed quite a bit is something called portfolio homes. And it's talked about in the master plan right now from the standpoint of having pre-approved plans and having them available for people to utilize. And the national state of that right now is there's only two states that have done anything with it. And one is Oregon and the other is Vermont. Oregon's program is pretty small right now because they're just starting out. Whereas Vermont, believe it or not, is pretty well along. They've got a pretty good program going on right now. They took it upon themselves to realize, and we did also in some of our goals, past goals through the city manager's office, in recognizing that it's in our interest to help people become small developers. You're not gonna have Pulte Homes or Lennar Homes come into Keene and build 500 houses. It's just not gonna happen. It's gonna be onesies, twosies, fives, tens, things like that. So the more that we can educate people to be effective in that regard, the more to our goal it is. So Vermont actually has a complete program in that where they train people, they have goals. But what they also have is their homes catalog. Now their homes catalog right now, has 10 house plans out for comment. And what they will be doing very soon is they'll be releasing those for people to utilize. If you think about that, if you have a plan that's already pre-approved, it shortens the permit process, although in Vermont there is no permit process for one and two family. They have no building code for one and two family. When you shrink that process down to something that's very, very simple to follow, you save money on the cost. You don't have to hire an architect. An architect can be anywhere from 10% to 12% of a house cost. It could be more. If you're in a place where you have to get a permit, it reduces the time frame, some of the things that Michael's been talking about. So it really is a program that we're looking at quite a bit along the lines. Really what I wanted to point out with this particular slide is the type of structures that we're talking about. Back when I was a younger person a long time ago, starter homes really were 40% of the market, right? These are 1,400 square foot houses or less. We're beginning to reestablish starter homes in a way. We're calling them cottage courthouses. We're calling them ADUs, things like that. But it's really kind of the same thing. But yet, you're about 7% of the market today on starter homes. And that's because of the reality of who our demographics are. Right? 80% of US homes are not nuclear families. They're not mom, dad, three kids watching Ozzie and Harriet with an Oldsmobile parked in the driveway. And that's just not the case. 72% of US housing units cater to traditional nuclear families. That's the market. So we've got a mismatch between what's real and what's the market. OK? He wants me to get out of here as quick as I can. But I do want to talk a little bit about some of the future discussions that are taking place. So we have a committee. I've been on a committee for a couple of years. It's out of the New Hampshire Council on Housing Stability. It's the RLNC committee. And our basic goals right now are really looking at manufactured housing, factory-built housing, and pre-approved plans, things like that, and trying to get those facilitated and get those in hand. But it also does other things. The Housing Champions Program that Paul was talking about originated actually in that committee. So it does have some effect. You just have a legislature that doesn't like to pay for anything except rich people's houses apparently, but that's okay. We really have to work on the future. I'm glad Michael's thinking about the future and what the future is going to hold. Besides things like pre-approved housing, it's going to hold, hopefully, more cooperation between various states. Every state has a different building code. Every state has a different process for approving building plans, things like that. Every state is different. But yet, underlying it, what's the difference in construction between Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, really? There's really not that much difference in construction. So why have these differences that are out there? So this group that we originally started having conversations about portfolio houses has now expanded this discussion quite a bit to talk about a more regional approach to some of these issues. Not only just portfolio homes, but also codes and standards in general, contracting, things like that that we could make these work. And leading into that conversation now, we've had the Pew Charitable Trust is involved in that conversation, wanting to strengthen that. and perhaps take that conversation more to a New England approach, which has now attracted the Urban Land Institute that's interested in discussion as well. So you can see how this thing begins to process. Now, here's some reality. What I am seeing, besides this general drift towards deregulating and trying to bring down the cost of construction, as Michael has said, is the use of technology. You really have to take a look at the use of technology. There are AI programs out there right now that in some places are becoming state law that you have to accept them, right? That will review your plans and tell you that they in fact meet code or tell you what you need to do to fix it to meet code. There are programs out there right now, Tampa, Florida, Naples, Florida, both are using them. which are front-facing, where you as an applicant can put your plans in, and it will tell you all of the things you need to do, not only just for building code, but also for zoning and planning board and, you know, if you have site development regulations or appearance regulations, anything like that along those lines. So the future is really coming down to a technology run, and I'm glad to see that the city actually followed, you know, some of its own directions with regard to using technology and beginning to bring people on board in a different way of handling them. It's going to have to stretch some more in the next year or two as these things come online. And no doubt you'll see legislation that actually says you have to do it anyway. So you might as well do it. So I will answer any questions if you want. Hopefully I've shortened it well enough so that it's not too disassociated. But I did have more to say, but I'll leave it alone.

We've got one more slide.

Oh, yes, of course. Ta-da. But this is not mine.

Yeah, this is for Mary. And then we can take any questions that you have after this.

So I can just breeze through this really. Um, we just wanted to give you an idea of what you will most likely hopefully see coming towards you in the next few years. Um, so with the land development code that I mentioned earlier, that was really a massive effort to update and modernize our regulations and put them all into one document. That's easier to use and understand, um, and puts everything in one place. And I, I think that project was very successful. One of the things that we didn't address at that time was the zoning map. So the last comprehensive update to the zoning map was done in 1977. And speaking with our GIS guru, Will Shoffman, the official zoning map is still a paper map from 1977, plus any changes that have been made to it since then that have all been digitized in GIS. With that as the backdrop, we're proposing a series of updates to the zoning map and we're proposing to do it in three phases. Phase one would start in 2027 and would be focused on housing and neighborhoods. So think those, in the master plan process we talked about those neighborhood activity nodes that would be something that we would work on through this looking at opportunities for missing middle housing are there other things that we can do are there areas where we can expand where missing middle housing is allowed we want to have those conversations and that would be a pretty this this first year i think would be pretty intensive when it comes to public engagement and outreach where we would really want to go to different neighborhoods where we're thinking about maybe we should include a node here. Well, we want to talk to the people that live there to make sure that's what they want and also make sure that we're being very thoughtful in how it's crafted. So some more to come on that. We have to get through short-term rentals and congregate living and social service uses first, but then I'm... I'm more excited to work on this than that. Let's just put it that way. The second year would be focused on employment districts. So the commerce zone and some of the industrial zones that have been created over time and worked really well at the time for what they were intended for, but could really be updated and modernized and probably consolidated. We have a very large number of zoning districts in Keene. And so I think some consolidation might be helpful. And so for that year, we're looking at really doing a lot of deep engagement with the business community. So doing a more in-depth business survey, more focus groups, and reaching out to the larger employers and the smaller employers in the Keene community. and being very thoughtful in that discussion about how we can help support them through our zoning and land use regulations. And then the phase three would be what I'm calling a map cleanup. So there's a lot of leftover, what I think of as like hanging districts. So for example, we had previously an office district that had a larger presence. And then after the downtown districts were created, we now only have, I think, like five parcels left in that district. We also have a district HD one where there's only three parcels. So taking a look at areas that could be consolidated, clean up any areas that could be spot zoning. We also have some overlays that have been left over. One of them is the seed overlay that hasn't, that incentive hasn't been utilized in a very long time and there's only a small portion of it left. So is that necessary? Those are the types of questions we wanna work through in that final year. And then the end product at the end of phase three would be a brand new zoning map that, and we would most likely have to hire outside help for this for the GIS work, but a brand new zoning map that is the official zoning map of Keene that's digital and in GIS. So that would be kind of the overall goal for the outcome. as well as hopefully spurring more housing developments and improving our economic base and all of that. Other items that we would hopefully be working on in the meantime, so we want to explore adopting the 79E Housing Opportunity Zone that Paul mentioned earlier. We want to get a master plan dashboard up and running so that we can keep that document sort of front and center and living in the public's eye and show progress on our goals. I just want to mention here that there's a lot in the master plan where the implementation will actually be led or done by partners and not the city itself. So one of the things that I would like to do is sort of highlight the work being done by other partner organizations. Like one organization that was on an earlier slide but I didn't actually speak to is the Monadnock Housing Collaborative. which is doing a lot of work around housing. So amplify and sort of promote existing community efforts. And then the last thing is to amplify our existing energy and sustainability efforts. We are in the process of trying to hire a assistant sustainability planner, which 50% of their work will be focused on energy and sustainability and tracking progress on those goals, working with community partners to help amplify their efforts. So we're really excited about that.

I should say on that one we had over 50 applicants for that position, so it's just a couple of weeks, so a lot of interest in that field. And I would just add this timeline that we have here is predicated on a lot of internal staff time, GIS work and all of that, and we have talked a little bit about the next CIP session maybe looking at coming in for an ask for outside help you know we understand that there's there's a consultant fatigue sometimes from folks but in this case the some of these processes are going to be very intensive and I think if we want to be able to do these accomplish some of these things a little bit earlier we want to be able to contemplate perhaps finding getting some resources to get some outside help to allow us to do that So that's the end of our presentation Thank you questions

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know the time is late. I'm glad to hear you thinking about consolidating the number of districts just pre-meeting today. I was asking Ken about that. The agenda today for the short-term rentals just highlighted how many we have. I think 24, if that's all of them. It seems like there could be some simplification there, so I'm happy to see that as a potential outcome of all the hard work. To Med's point, simplification decreases cost, and we have a very complicated system here.

Mr. Cost?

I kind of hate to ask a question in this heat, but I'm looking at the, it was part of the package, the livable housing implementation matrix, 6.1 from the master plan. It wasn't a slide, but, and I just had a question on one thing. It's the goal one, boost infill development and redevelopment. And 1.1, the very top one, is use GIS to create a map that shows existing development regulations. And I guess my question on that is that in progress, and if it is or when it will be, does it include private land as well? Like I'm thinking, I don't know, a shopping center out on West Street. Will it show the development regulations on that private land as well as just public land?

So to answer the first part of your question, not to my knowledge, no, we're not in the process of doing that right now. My understanding of that goal or that action item was that we would have basically a map like our parcel map that we currently have online, but you could click on a parcel and it would have another basically layer of information to it like Right now, when you click on a parcel, it gives you some basic information, and then you can click on a link, and it will take you to the property card, the online property card that our assessing department maintains. And so my understanding is that there'd be another layer where you could then click on another link, and it would say, okay, here's all the regulations that apply to this property. You're in this zoning district. Here's the setbacks. And I think that's an awesome project. I don't know that we have the capacity to do it in-house. So that would be another, I think, project where we would go out and seek a consultant to help with that expense. But I think it's a great idea.

I could add the state is working on along those lines, the Project Atlas. They're also, in addition to infrastructure mapping, they're also doing some regulatory mapping. I don't know how granular they'll get with that.

Yeah, the Zoning Atlas, which is a really great resource.

Just so in case people aren't aware we have one GIS coordinator in the city and we did have a growing one previously who left us to go find her way in the world so that's what we're looking to at least have some look at our candidates for this position to help grow that GIS capability again it's just one of those

one of those roles that it's going to underscore it's going to be the layer of everything we do frankly along these lines for the next foreseeable future councilman thank you for this presentation has been very helpful at like you know knowing that you've got the master plan in your sights and that you're working working towards it I liked one of the things you mentioned was a dashboard, a master plan dashboard, and that's a great idea to keep us updated. One thing I'd like to see on that is if it's possible, I'd like to know Basically a running total of how many housing units we have in this city and and where they're coming from a few years ago 2023 was it We did a housing study and that was I think one of the most informative things I've seen About where we are and where we need to be And I would like to know you know are we are we meeting those goals are we you know there's a line of you know it's supposed to be going up is is it going up because i know um yeah it's it's great that we've got you know 69 new units from the um cottage court But, you know, how does that compare to, you know, the number of units we've lost to fire over a similar time? Because, you know, as units come, units also expire, shall we say. So I would love to see that kind of data, and especially, you know, multifamily, single family. You mentioned that there were three ADUs, and that number seems shockingly low to me, but I believe you, Paul, you explained at one point that some of those ADUs are coming in requesting an ADU and just end up being, you know, turning into a duplex or something like that. So is that the case, or?

We do have some situations where somebody wants to build a second unit, and if one of the units were owner-occupied, it would be considered an ADU. But because we have the owner occupancy requirement, they can't build it as an ADU, so instead they either do it as a duplex or if a duplex isn't allowed in the base zoning district, they go through the cottage court process. So most recently, I think we had that at 135 George Street. It's a single family home. They had a detached garage that was in poor condition. They tore down the detached garage and created a second single family home on the property. But because they were both being rented out and they were in the low density district, it couldn't be considered an ADU if they're both rented out. So they had to go through cottage court.

Okay, so essentially you're telling me that Cottage Court is in many ways a substitute for ADU in cases where there is that ownership requirement, which I think can create a barrier to these things, but it sounds like they're using Cottage Court to work around that?

I wouldn't say work around because the cottage court has an extra review process built into it. So whereas an ADU you can do by right, the cottage court you have to go to the planning board for a CUP. So I think it's creating more infill options. So we've seen a number of internal conversions where, for example, we had a house in the north central neighborhood where there were two units. And one of the units had five bedrooms in it. And they were having a hard time finding someone to rent out a five bedroom apartment. And they were able to go through the cottage court process to create a third unit. We had another situation or I think we've had two situations where a detached garage was converted to a unit and another situation where a detached garage was converted to two units. So, so people are using it as a, as a way to do, um, really small projects all the way up to the larger, you know, 18 single detached single family homes or 14 town homes or yeah, larger ones.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Councilor Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to offer a big thank you for this presentation. Starting with Med and Michael Hagan, I've known you both for over 20 years. And if you remember years back, it was always said that Keene was the hardest town to work with. in cheshire county that was only because we were proactive instead of being reactive that's how that came about but now with the new streamlines you're talking about we're going to be the best and i really appreciate all the effort that's going into it i think it's really good and i want to also say to paul and mary and you too mr chairman because you were involved in it uh as part of the I was on the master plan steering committee, and if you know, the one word I kept using over and over was implementation. And you proved that tonight. Just this presentation shows that we're implementing the master plan. Yes, I know there's hope for a dashboard somewhere in the future, but without a dashboard, you've just done what I've been asking for all along. We're checking the boxes, and I just want to give a big thank you.

OK, thanks very much. So next next up we have referrals from City Council. So I'm. Yeah, Mary will have to help me a little bit. We're gonna have the writer of the letter present.

Yes, I think I included copies of the letters in your packet.

No, we have the letters. Just in terms of process.

Yes, yeah, I think it would probably be best coming from one or more of the authors of the letter.

Okay, great. Thank you. So the first letter is from counselors Williams, Ruttle, Miller, and Tobin regarding implementation of the 2025 Comprehensive Master Plan. Oh, I don't know if you'd like to.

Well, first, Councillor Workman is actually approaching the bench. It wasn't Councillor Tobin who signed the letter. It was Councillor Workman. And I will let Councillor Workman give her own piece. But for my part, the reason we wrote this letter is really not to let go of the master plan as our driving document in terms of how we're doing this and making sure that everything we do in terms of housing and later in terms of some of these other goals lines up with what we had this longstanding community conversation and process to come up with. And I really appreciate the presentation we just saw that really answered, addressed a lot of the questions I had. One of the specific things I wanted to hear about was portfolio homes, discussed and it sounds like you know it would be great to have a catalog of pre-approved designs and that's that's one of one of the goals in our livable housing implementation matrix from the master plan and you know he kind of he brought it to earth and kind of said well this is what the the scope is you know they are doing it in Vermont they are doing it in Maine and I really think you know Keynes Keynes just a small place but if if we can look at what these larger jurisdictions are doing and you know copy their homework you know see what they're see what they're doing you know if if if Vermont publishes you know ten ten different plans you know those those Vermont plans aren't going to be so different from from what we need here so you know that's just one example of how I appreciate that our city staff, or former staff in this case, is looking at what we've agreed to do and pursuing it. would also you know like to hear from City Council members as far as you know what are what are their priorities in terms of livable housing I do I think we've we've really gotten a lot out of the cottage court and I think we need to you know continue continue doing that and apparently you know given what I just heard about ADUs it's it's even more of a effective tool than I thought although again you know one thing I'm looking for in the long term is being able to keep track of what we're doing and are we doing it right and you know what I want to know is are we are we getting you know, the number of houses that we want and our rents stabilizing or going down. And I don't think rents are stabilizing and going down yet. So I think we got to keep working until that starts to happen.

Just wait just a sec let them finish their presentation and then we can chime in Councillor Workman was also an author of the letter

So I'll just second a lot of what Councillor Williams said and a lot of the presentation and the discussion kind of went to our communication earlier today so I won't belabor that point it's been a long meeting already and it's it's very warm in here but I just want to reiterate that you know we spent a lot of time on this master plan um as the presentation noted there's some of things that haven't even been implemented or utilized yet so i think the staff is doing a great job at keeping the master plan up front and using it as a directive i just want to encourage this committee both the planning board and the pld Committee members to also continue to do the same I think a lot of the changes that we've seen recently have In my opinion, they've increased our housing stock, but I'm still not seeing the type of housing that I would like to see in our community. And the community of development did a lovely job at highlighting why some of that is the case. But I just want to encourage ways to make sure that we are ensuring that the folks who have grown up in Keene, who live here now, who are graduating from keene state like those are the people we we should be creating housing for um you know not and making sure that that housing that we're enticing those folks and making sure that the housing is affordable for those populations rather than out of state retirees coming with you know um out of state money and whatnot so

just keeping that in the forefront and as a priority I appreciate it so thank you Thank you I just wanted to talk a little about portfolio homes again if you go to 802 homes for all which is the the Vermont website The draft plans for the models that they're using are there and it's perfectly appropriate, I think, to look at them and see how they look. They've tried to make sure that the plans fit into the more common scenarios you'd see in a New England town, if that makes any sense. They're not odd in that regard. When those plans have been fully formed, I did fully intend to have them looked at by our superior staff members. to be sure that they meet our building code should somebody happen to borrow them and want to build a house or something like that. The problem is that Vermont doesn't have a building code for one and two family, so I'm not quite sure to what level of detail they're going to have in those plans themselves. I know that, speaking out of school a little bit, I know that Mary has had a discussion with Noah Hodges, who's one of my teammates in this committee that we're working on, about the potential of finding some funding to actually have plans drawn up for the city of Keene. So we're looking at it, we're trying to figure that out. There are a couple of things you have to think about as we go down the road with this, and that is when you have a set of plans that is designed to a code and the code changes, you have to figure out how you're gonna adjust those plans. You have to figure out who owns the plans If you hire an architect, are you basically funneling the person to the architect to get the plans for whatever fee they're charging, or do you buy them outright and own them? And you also have to contemplate how you accept changes or how you deal with changes. A couple of years ago when these subjects first came out, I had a long conversation with Los Angeles County, California, which probably has the largest portfolio of these plans that you can find. And what they told me is they're relatively well used, but they're not really happy about them because almost everybody who takes a plan out wants to change it. So they said, whatever you do, figure out how you're going to handle changes, whether you're flipping a bathroom or you're flipping a kitchen or you're laying it out differently, whatever the case may be. Are you going to be completely static and say, that's it? That's all you can do? Or are you going to have some mechanism to accept some minor changes? These are some thoughts that we'll have to think about as we go down the road. Me as a civilian, staff as your staff, and you as the elected and appointed bodies.

Thank you. There's no action required here, right?

So this was referred to you from city council, so I suppose you could accept it as informational and recommend that the city council accept it as informational. That would be my suggestion. I think typically things go back to council that have been referred out to committee. Okay.

Hold on. Ms. Tobin, you want to?

Thank you. Um, I'll be quick. I, I really appreciate this letter being brought forward. Um, I keep expecting to see rents stabilized. Um, because honestly, like I, I am in that situation again where I may have to move and be paying another, my rent maybe going up, I guess like four to $500. Um, so keep seeing prices go up and I think I just want to make sure that in terms of measuring the impact that we are looking at the actual impact on why we made this decision in the first place so the goal was to build more units so that prices would stabilize and it would be the units for the people who are living here who want to live here so ideally people like the need would be going down. So I think that would be an important thing. And then I also know that through a lot of these conversations in opening up doorways, people do have concerns. And I think that it is important to also kind of track the unintended consequences and the impact that it's having and just be open to reevaluating not rolling back but reevaluating decisions about um maybe this needs to be tweaked and just having those conversations thank you thank you council house move to recommend that the presentation and the letter be accepted by our committee as informational and recommend to city council likewise second thank you any discussion

All right, let's call a vote. All those in favor? It'll be a roll call because the mayor is still remote. Yeah, it's easy.

Got me again.

Yeah, sorry, Mary. Roll call again.

All right, for the planning board, Harold Farrington? Yes. Mayor Jay Kahn?

Yes.

Councillor Malley-Ellis yes David Bergeron yes Michael Hafer yep Kenneth Kost yes Andrew Madison yes Stephan Mayu yes for PLD Randy Filio yes Phil Jones yes Bobby Williams yes Ed Haas yes great okay next we have a letter from Mayor Kahn

regarding potential expansion of permitted uses. This is in your packet. Yeah, we must be muted.

Yeah, sorry, Mr. Chairman. If you'll allow me to present from here, I'll be glad to do so.

Please.

So I brought this letter forward recognizing as a member of the Master Plan Committee that, yes, we have as a second pillar a thriving economy, but that some of the work, that is needed to preserve that thriving economy was acknowledged as being, these are going to need to be next steps. I don't want to lose sight of these. I actually know that we got to do a shout out for the Sentinel's coverage over the weekend. their analysis of vacancies in our city and region and the changing demographics of our economic activity in the city, it was spot on. It is, in fact, what I was hoping to call attention to in my letter. So if you go to the thriving economy, part of the master plan, and you look at page 44, I believe it is, the first priority is encourage, recruit, and retain businesses in targeted industries, and that we we develop a work plan for this just as a for instance we did not do any analysis of our vacancy rates or our utilization rates of commercial and industrial land and built environment during the master plan. So these are steps that I think are important for us to just analyze where we are. So that's the analysis phase. The action phase, I don't think we are without partners in the city. We recognize in the master plan that there are partners and certainly the Keene Chamber of Commerce, the greater Monadnock Collaborative is a key partner in business recruitment as well as employee recruitment. But the city can begin to change its profile that we are open for business and willing to accept additional opportunities for expansion of business through our current commercial and industrial zones. And I'll just give you an example. Take Douglas Cuttle Toy moving into the former Smith Industries. Smith Industries fit a great profile of what an industrial zone might be with manufacturing, clean room, warehousing, and shipping activities at one site. The demographic, though, of industries in Keene is far different today than what it may have been 40 years ago, 50 years ago, when Smith Industries or its predecessor organizations, Concord Portex, moved to Keene. So I think we need to update our land use codes for what kinds of businesses we can attract to Keene and how inviting we are going to be to those businesses. We have so many businesses that are needing to move from initial stages of say five to 10,000 square feet and have a growth path eligible to them to move to 15 to 20,000 square foot spaces. And some of those are frankly in the commercial spaces. And when we think it may not be compatible, These are businesses that rely on precision manufacturing, low-vibration environments, workforces that are technically sophisticated and don't operate over a 24-hour day period. So I think we can... I think this is an important part of the community development staff's work plan and an important part of the city needing to recognize some additional uses like warehousing, like that to require shipping and delivery and you know there's some there's some issues to come with that uh when they about neighborhoods but uh i think we can measure uh how much of that activity is actually taking place in manufacturing environments uh And calibrate that so I think I think there's a lot of work that we did not do during the master plan That needs to get done so that we we express to the Businesses that take an interest in New Hampshire and the things that New Hampshire can offer to business That That Keene is a welcoming environment and that we're willing to work with those companies that desire to grow or relocate to our community. So that's why I brought the letter forward. And I think that this, I'm not sure in the presentation that we heard on housing, which, you know, housing, no doubt. I chair the Keene Area Manufacturing Consortium with Steve Fortier. And... We have a consistent room of around 50 people in the room representing a whole variety of businesses in the community. So maybe I'm tuned into this better than others. I hope I am. And this is an important step. Yes, housing is important as well. Workforce that we attract needs to have housing that matches the wage levels that employers are offering in Keene. But we also need to sustain that workforce and good paying jobs. And that means recruitment and retention of those businesses. So, you know, I don't think one comes without the other. And I hope we can manage to make progress on both of these major pillars at the same time.

I rest my case. Yeah, you know, I certainly, during the master plan process, I completely agree with you that attracting businesses is what's needed for continued viability of Keene. Housing obviously is important as well. I'm right with you on this one, Mayor.

Thank you, Chairman.

Questions? Councilor Haas?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, certainly to open up these areas to other uses, I hope as staff goes through this, and I imagine that's our next step, to respond with some opportunities or somehow we'll discuss it. that we take a very liberal approach. I mean, why not most everything and start from that point and then back off of what we truly wouldn't fit in these zones? But we're pretty restrictive on them right now. Let's open it up and have a liberal view of it. Thank you.

And I failed to, if I might, Mr. Chairman, I failed to talk about the condominium-like spaces that I think startup companies would have an interest in. And we need to think about how we lead those companies through a progression that allows them to occupy space for research and development and experimentation and co-oping with other businesses that may have gotten permitted for one purpose and have excess space and can be used for multiple purposes.

Council Jones.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to start off agreeing with the mayor about those condominium type spaces. We do have one down on Criff Road that has both industrial and commercial uses within it. And we've seen over the years businesses that started in that area. condo area and move up and become Bigger land holding businesses within the city. I think it's a good it's just like cottage housing I think it's it's makes you start at the small small part of the system and work your way up and and I appreciate him bringing that up and I also think Looking at his full request. There are a lot of changes in industrial as we view it nowadays and From although I'm not making a motion right now until everyone has spoken, but I think we should be moving the mayor's request into the more time category I

Mr. Hafer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sort of reiterating something I mentioned earlier, it seems like this, and perhaps Mr. Jones' request around cryptocurrency and data centers, to me, all seems a little bit aligned with consolidating the number of zoning districts we have and maybe expanding the amount of permitted uses within those zoning districts. So it may align with any work that happens in that regard.

Okay. So we want to accept this as informational, but also, um, put it to more time as well. Skip.

Okay. I think a more time, uh, recommendation allows the community to continue to look at it. Okay.

Councillor Jones, would you like to take a motion?

I would move that the Joint Committee recommend that the letter from Mayor Kahn dated May 15, 2026 be placed on more time.

Second. Second.

Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yep, Mr. Clements. Staff would appreciate a little bit of guidance for what direction the more time may be leading to, just so that we can be prepared for when that conversation actually takes place.

Okay. Well, I think the mayor gave us a little indication of it in sort of two phases. One, analysis. He mentioned a couple things. I don't know how much access we have to that without hiring somebody, but vacancy rates, unused land, there may be others, but if we could come up with a few ideas for analysis and then list some actions such as modifications to the uses in the various districts. Councilor Haas?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I'd look for staff to come back with understanding of what uses might not be appropriate so we can open this up as widely as we can. But there's probably some uses I can't think of right off that, you know, we should X out right away. And that would be one great step by staff, I think. Thank you.

Yeah, I think Mr. Hafer mentioned that.

Mr. Chairman, if I might give an example. I was recently approached by an employer in another city in New Hampshire who has some connections to our region and wanting to look at some properties in Keene. And he called me for recommendations. Fortunately, I had some recommendations to offer, but I'm sure that my list was small compared to the many locations that are eligible for condominium use or expansion that are vacant currently. I think we need, and I know the problem of trying to inventory properties, it comes and goes, but I do think that this data collection is an important step to begin to identify where the vacancies are in Keene and to try to update that on some kind of basis. I'm not sure how to, and I guess I'd like the staff to give that one some thought and And maybe there are sites already, I know of one, where business properties are listed. But it requires them to be listed. And I think some of our out-of-town, some of our properties are owned by people out of town, and they're not listed in a manner that makes them readily accessible. So this is, I think the options are many. for businesses to relocate in Keene and not think of needing to do that elsewhere in the county.

Ms. Brenner, did you want to add?

Thank you Mr. Chair I just wanted to mention that if this does go on to more time as Evan Clements mentioned having clear direction is helpful but also as we presented earlier today the sort of work plan we kind of put the phasing in terms of the priorities that we got from the master plan So phase one was to really look at housing and neighborhoods. And phase two was to look at employment districts, which I think would address much of what the mayor has raised today. And so just to give you an idea of the timing for that, we're looking at starting that in 2028. So just going back to Director Andrus's earlier comments about, you know, if we want to speed up some of this, if everything is a priority, that's where we might want to start thinking about getting a project into the CIP. and trying to start allocating more resources.

All right, thanks for that alert.

Councilor Jones. Can I just address what Mary just said? Yeah, sure. She's totally correct, but I still think just to have it in the more time area means it's not going away. She's right. They do have a system in process. but we would like to like to have it there where it's there for a future use where it's going to fit and if you look at more time item right now both items the neighborhood nodes and the private roads both were both suggestions for me from over a year ago and uh i'm just waiting my time we want to keep those subjects in front of staff understand

That's a great point, OK? Any other comments? Otherwise we're going to just call the vote. All right, roll call vote. I remember this for the planning board.

Harold Farrington, yes, Mayor Jay Khan.

Yes.

Councillor Molly Ellis Yes David Bergeron Yes Michael Hafer Yes Kenneth Cost Yes Andrew Madison Yes Stephan Mayhew Yes For PLD Randy Filio Yes Phil Jones Yes Bobby Williams Yes Ed Haas Yes Okay great all right we have one more uh referral from city council and this is a letter from from Councillor Jones

So may I speak to it? Yep, absolutely. Please. Okay. I'm just, this is very simple. I'm just asking for four definitions. Right now, these are my definitions. I would like this to come back to this committee and get the committee's definition because it's not supposed to be my definition. But it is a template. Data centers and cryptocurrency. Mining facilities are the first ones. Right now, I assume they just fall under industrial. I don't know that for sure. That would be something staff can tell us. I witnessed up at the Statehouse, these were trying to be pushed onto communities throughout the state. Luckily, there was legislation that failed. And part of the reason the legislation failed was they did not have definitions. They're not using definitions up at the State House. They're just trying to push this by subject. So right now, data center and cryptocurrency mining facility could go into any of our industrial areas. I'm just asking us to change the use right now. I'm just taking baby steps and asking you to define. The next two are privately owned prisons. and privately owned immigration detention centers uh... some people have asked me what the difference is one falls under criminal court the other one falls under immigration court they can't be the same those those inmates cannot have contact with each other at all. They have to be different entities. Right now I think it falls under our institutional use within Keene and right now I think the way our uh we address institutionalists we have institutional streets where those would be allowed on uh just because that's the way we made the law uh we used to have institutional uses that could go anywhere within the city a few years back we created institutional streets where they're allowed it's mostly through our busier streets but i think we should have our own definition once again not my definition it's laying here but i would like to see this going more time come back to the committee and the committee create their definitions uh... there are things we can do later on in the uh... In the system, we might want to make them a conditional use somewhere because they are controversial. We might want to create an overlay. I'm not asking for any of that right now. I'm just asking that our code contain definitions that we create, not the ones I'm giving you now, and that they sit in our code so we can work with them in the future. And I would also ask that we put this on more time.

Okay. It sort of begs the question of do we put it in any of the districts as allowed, or we just don't do anything?

I think that's the second step. I think just defining is the first step, just like we just defined family and then later on used it for uses.

Okay. Great. Any questions for Councillor Jones? Ms. Brenner?

I just want to point out that we have a permissive zoning code so if we create a definition for a use and then we don't list it anywhere we're essentially saying it's not allowed anywhere just want to make sure that's clear I don't necessarily think that's a problem but just that you understand what the the effect of doing that would be I'm not entirely sure I haven't done a full review of our existing list of principal uses and whether or not these would fall under existing use definitions that we have but I will say for the privately owned prisons and immigration detention facilities even if they are privately owned those uses will believe always I can't think of any situation where they wouldn't be being done on behalf of a governmental entity and would still fall under the governmental use exemptions just I just want to put that out there as well so that so we wouldn't really be able to to prevent that through our land development code we wouldn't be able to prevent the use from locating somewhere but there may be other like criteria that we have as long as we're not applying criteria that's specific to those uses like we're targeting that specific use and it's general criteria that we would apply to all similar uses A very, very rough approximation of the long conversation I had with the city attorney about this, but yeah.

I think it would be useful to see where they would be slotted in our current uses. Mr. Clements?

I just wanted to point out that we do actually have a definition in the land development code for data center that is allowed in certain zoning districts. And my knee-jerk reaction to the crypto mining is that that would effectively be a data center use as well. So it may be worth using that as a starting off point for further discussion.

Thank you.

Councillor Jones Yes and I just want to address what Mary said about public use she's correct but we're still building obstacles that may that may want developers to go somewhere else instead of dealing with the obstacles in Keene by by addressing it if we if we do address it right now I'm just asking for the this committee to develop definitions Mr.

Cost

So if I understand, this would just be definitions that could just be hanging out there somewhere. They're not going to be assigned to any location, any land use code. It's just this is what a data center is. And we're not saying, or you're not saying then in the future we then want to sort of indicate places that we think they can go. I mean, and as Harry Bruner pointed out, in some cases we don't have control over that, but for the data center and the crypto, if they're private and not governmental, I imagine we do. And my other question is, I mean, there's a data center, which is probably in this building, but then there are data centers that are bigger than Keene. So there's a scale, too. So I don't know. So I guess I'm getting it's very, very complicated, and all you're asking for right now is just define what those things are, how Keene defines them.

Councilor Jones? Sure. Please respond.

Yes, and he's correct. Yes, we do need to add it eventually. But just like we just did the definition of family and then later put it into the zoning code, that's what I would expect of this committee. Okay. But we can't put it into zoning code unless we agree on a definition first. All right.

Mr. Bergeron, you're next.

Yeah, to me, the definitions of all kinds come back to the same as, like,

Can you turn on your microphone, please?

It's like having adult businesses. I mean, you can't say that you can't do that anywhere in town. You have to, and that's what we did at one point. They had to say, okay, if you want an adult business, it can be here. It has to be 1,000 feet from school or whatever. And I think the same things with a data center. You can't say that you can't put a data center in town. You can say where you can put it, but you can't say you can't put one in town.

Yeah, well, I think you're jumping to the second step already, but yes. Councillor Haas?

Yeah, thank you, Chair. Yeah, we have a definition from data center that doesn't vary much from what is proposed here. I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a cryptocurrency mining facility and a data center other than what the owners chose to name it, and they could name it appropriately that you'd never know exactly what was going on in there except a bunch of machines cranking out data. As far as the prisons are concerned, as Ms. Hemer pointed out, did I say your name right or wrong? I'm sorry. Ms. Bruner pointed out that that's out of our control. We went through that when we were talking about that previously under the immigration subjects that we can't control what use buildings are other than for health and safety codes. So I'm not sure other than just being a gesture by creating those definitions we're doing anything. We wouldn't be able to build rules around it. Thank you.

Mr. Hafer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just for clarity's sake, because reiterating what Mr. Clement said, data centers are currently permitted in eight of our 24 zoning districts.

I'll entertain a motion now. Yeah, please. Councilor Jones, sorry.

I think we have proven that there's definitely some conversation needed. And as Councilor Haas said, we might be able to join two definitions into one, but it definitely deserves conversation from this committee, and I would move to put it on more time. Second.

Thank you, Councilor Filio. Any additional deliberation?

thank you just be careful I don't think we want to instruct staff to spend any time on this until we think more about it and we can come back with better direction for staff should we find something that we can do with it thank you okay roll call vote for the planning board Harold Farrington yes mayor Jay Kahn

Yes.

Counselor Malayalis? Yes. David Bergeron?

Yes.

Michael Hafer? Yes. Kenneth Kost? Yes. Andrew Madison? Yes. Stefan Mayu? Yes. For PLD, Randy Filio? Yes. Phil Jones? Yes. Bobby Williams? Yes. Ed Haas?

Yes.

All right, great. Okay. No new business, right? No. Okay. Our next meeting is Monday, August 10th, 2026. And I will... I don't think we have time for more time tonight and without further ado we'll adjourn at 9 57. I appreciate everybody's sustained engagement