Regional Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Order 7 o'clock December 2nd Colchester Planning Commission agenda considerations reserved for changes to agenda. No changes? Uh no, just that maybe other un under other business. Uh we could have a continued conversation about scheduling that will come out of other parts. Okay, sounds good. That's okay.

Yep. Comments, questions for the public. We're good there. Commission discussion potential items for future updates to the land development regulation supplement 49. Okay. Ah so this I think is the first time we are looking at everything together. The whole shebang. I didn't add anything. I mean, I added something, but it was the rest of the language that you were waiting on for something that was already on the list, but there's no new items. And if you guys hurry, I won't add anything else. [laughter] So, let's go.

All right. So, so I put everything together. So, at the last meeting, I did take out the stuff that you'd already sort of worked through, but I did want you to have everything together. So, that's why this is really long. So everything is in here with the hopes of working towards warning a public hearing in the next few meetings depending on what your comfort level is or how many edits you want me to continue to make on this or how much more discussion you want to have. So um we'll go through it. If I'm going too fast, slow me down. If I'm going too slow, throw something at me and we'll go faster. Um sound good? Yes.

Okay. Um, a lot of things have not changed. Um, so that's why some of these I'm going to go pretty fast. So, um, real quick, definition of medical office. There are no changes to this since the last time you talked about it. Um, so um, I did change the, um, memo a little bit just to get rid of some of the backgrounds, you know, trim it down, make it a little bit more efficient in the memo part. Um, but your actual language in here, sorry it gets a little fuzzy. The only way I can actually copy the red line is I I have to paste it as a picture. Doesn't let me copy and paste it. It loses the red line part of it. Um, but hopefully you guys can see that. Okay. Um, I think the very last change was something about uh chiropractic services. Maybe was something that we talked about. Um, if I recall, um, as an example, I think that was the last thing that Rebecca, if I recall, asked me to add. Um, so that is where we left. I'm going to leave that up there for a minute because I do want you guys to feel comfortable about this before we move on. um and sort of give it a tentive check. Does he read it?

Do I have to go through? Yes. No, go ahead. That's up to Rich. [laughter] Can I just ask? Yeah, go right ahead. So, again, typically the word typically

I'm just wondering I'm I'm wondering if we can just leave that out. Um that's one question. And the other question is, you know, I know this is home movement for community schools for providing services kind of within a school building or and you know, sometimes therapists will use a room in the school to meet with students, you know, just because it's easier for them to access their clients. And I I just was wondering if that needs to be clarified or I'm assuming that's fine. you're totally fine and it's, you know, well accepted as something that's sort of incidental. Much like a cafeteria in a school is not a restaurant. Yeah.

Um much like anything else that happens in a school or or or something like that is not its own use. They're known to be totally incidental within that school. You know, the principal's office is not an office. Yeah. It's all part and parcel of being an educational facility. Okay. um you know typically the word typically is included here I think because there are some exceptions um in the latter part of that sentence um unless you were talking about the typically in the last part of the sentence um in the last sentence in the last part of the last sentence

it says twice use does not typically include it's like if I was wanting to have a massage service I would say Well, what do you mean typically?

Yeah. So, so what we would say and again these are these are sort of like the best guidelines that we can offer if somebody is coming in and and providing to allow us to be as consistent as possible as staff as we are regulating these. But we do recognize that, you know, a massage that you'd go to at a spa, a massage that you'd go to um in a standalone facility that's offering this is not a medical use. However, there are some very specialized medical massage services. There are ones that do very specialized cranial sacral massages that are meant for specific conditions that are performed with very specific medical intentions in mind. um that they could make a case to us in the permitting office that that is a me that they are medical professionals performing a medical service. Um and so we would call that a medical office

even though it's a massage. It's not your typical massage surface. So you feel comfortable if you thought someone was just trying to just do like set up a massage studio, you would feel okay if they that would be fine. Yeah, I think if it was just to, you know, treat a patient, if a doctor or whoever said it was needed, um, that would be okay, which is fine with me. I mean, it just would have to be under the oposes that it's, you know, directed at medical, a medical situation. Mhm. Okay.

Just just adding a small amount. Um just check the table of uses. It seems to me that if a massage use a massage service use didn't fall under medical office, it's likely falling under personal service, it's allowed in very similar districts. [snorts] So, I think this sort of just allows for I think um maybe someone in a medical office building to maybe have an an easier peritting route than having a different use, for example.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, you know, as I've shared before, more often than not, people don't want to be considered medical office because there's, you know, potential there's a potential for higher wastewater needs or higher um traffic demands. Um if there's an argument that's made, it's usually that they don't want to be considered medical office more often than that that they want to be. Um, this is, you know, the whole goal of this is just to provide as much consistency as possible across staff who are interpreting this so that we're fair. Okay. Not trying to play gotcha for anyone. Definitely not.

So, we got a thumbs up for this one.

No changes. Okay. I'm going to mark it as like good to go. um temporary fencing. Um I don't believe we made any changes to this the last time we talked about it or we did it but it was in person. No changes have been made outside of this room. Um and I think we left it where you had a unanimous support of it. Um, and actually I think the very last time we talked about it, uh, we didn't make any changes to it, it was two meetings ago. Um, but I'll leave this up for you to give it another look. Um, you have any thoughts, just let me know. This is almost not necessary. We've talked about it, but it's just one more thing to in case there's that weird case again, but it's it's almost never going to be used. This is not a a big item for sure. Feeling good.

Okay.

All right. Food trucks. Uh this one, uh we did work through a lot last time together. I shouldn't say a lot. Um, but we talked about it a lot. Um, one thing I did get to do. Pretty sure I did what you asked. I spent so much time trying to This had so many colors. If you remember, it looked like the rainbow because Zach and I were working on it. So, I actually spent a lot of time just trying to get it all red again. Um, so that's one thing that I worked on. Um, I think the last thing that you guys talked about and hopefully I did it. It was towards the end. Did I do it? You wanted the it to allow um, portable toilets. Let's go make sure I did that. Yes, that was here. That was in this B prohibited list. So, that's been updated. Um, oh, ah, we do have one more thing that has to get fixed. So, this is really just I think you agreed that this should be a building and zoning permit. So, this is just something that we have to just I need to put in better language than building and zoning permit. Just needs to be more technical language, but that's an easy update. U policywise, I think we're meeting your your goal. I just need to have better words. Um,

so what you just totally took out the the whole um porty thing. It was uh in this and B, I believe. Yeah. So it it had said portable toilets are prohibited. Okay. And you guys had discussed it at length. Yes. Yes. And ultimately said we're fine with them as long as they are at the expense of Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I removed them from the prohibited list. Okay. You guys changing your mind? No. Okay.

I just have a question about when you say wastewater in number three and then portable toilets. I think of wastewater is septic. Am I not is that not the definition we're using for wastewater? I'm sorry. You think of it as what? Septic. Oh, um as opposed to portable water. Think of waste water is, you know, a septic system. It can be. Um so this would say that there has to be some provision that meets whatever the guideline is for the state of Vermont. Mhm.

So basically what we would say to an applicant is go talk to the state and bring us something that says the state is okay with what you are proposing. Um so it'll be really on them and the state may say hey we don't need anything. state may say, "Yeah, you're going to be there all summer long and you've got this planned and you've got 16 seats and you've got you need to and you need to tell me what you're going to do with all of this. I really don't know what the state will say." Um, and the good thing is I don't need to, but an applicant will have to figure it out. I did go online. I learned a few things. Did [laughter] you?

Yeah. Water and wastewater. This is Department of Health. I did look at the Department of Health one. I spent some time with that. Yeah, but it kind of connects with the environment commission, but it's saying all mobile units are required to have 30 gallons of fresh water and 35 gallons of wastewater capacity.

So, yeah, see that. So, I thought that was interesting. Um, and sewage disposal. It says gray water must be disposed of in a public sewage treatment plant or in an individual system operated according to local and/or state law. And it also says connecting to an existing water or wastewater system may require permit from the Department of Environmental Conservation, which is ANR. M so it brings up the question whether or not if they don't hook up to an existing system they may not require a permit

they may have to go through the department of health say this is how we're disposing of the water waste water the gray water so I think we're still accurate here but maybe we need to add more so we do say let's take a look at this closely adequate provision ision in accordance with the state of Vermont wastewater system portable water supply shall be provided. We could add to this in accordance with the the document that you're referencing Vermont Department of Health Department of Health because that's an important one to check.

And then I think that the second sentence is still true. The applicant must obtain a state of Vermont wastewater system and portable water supply permit for any on or off- premise wastewater disposal. No, that just says that's that's tricky part comes.

So it seems like there's three definitions. this waste water which I I wonder if that's like just water that's been used in in the you know making of the food and that needs to be disposed of and another there's there's another uh category um which is septic and I'm just getting confused with septic and waste water. It sounds like there's three different types of water. You know, drinking water, waste water is what you would get if you are washing dishes and saving that water in a container that you need to get rid of. And then there's the portable toilets, you know. So, that's where I'm getting a little confused just to

the portable toilets are self-contained, right? They get picked up and dumped. They all so that doesn't have pre-permitted in order to even lease one. Okay. So waste water must mean the water that you throw up as opposed right when you're washing dishes, right? That's what's called gray water. Gray water, right? Okay. I wonder if it's okay.

Thank you. So I keep using that. Let's see. Bear with me here for a minute. So let's take a look at this. So that is 1016. So I'm going to go directly to our language. does kind of make sense that that the natural resources would weigh in on it

and that the um department of health would because they want you to have clean water and so you would want to like mention both of those I would say that blue sometimes the department of health more restrictive [laughter] for sure because I know that the department of health [clears throat] goes like to the to the fair to make sure that there's water or hand washing down. So, they're two very different too fast. Maybe can't handle it. I don't know enough about food trucks, but I would assume nobody opens without the Department of Health. I should think

just like a restaurant snack bar. I would think you can't open without, right? And they probably asked about san, you know, sanitary conditions. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So, it was just my confusion about wastewater because like when I think I have a wastewater system, that's my septic system. All right, Rebecca, here's what I'm thinking. So, do you see my cursor here? Do you need me to make it bigger? Yeah, cuz I don't see a cursor. Let me add it. You'll see me as I start to type. So, here I am in three.

Three. Okay. So I'm going to so adequate provision for the disposal of waste water in accordance with state of Vermont wastewater system and portable water supply rules and the state of Vermont Department of Health. Yeah.

Shall be provided. Now let's take a look at that next sentence. The applicant must obtain a state of Vermont wastewater system and portable supply water supply permit. Um, why don't we say we're indicated the applicant must obtain a state of Vermont wastewater system and portable water supply system?

No. Well, I I know that the ANR only deals with, you know, actual waste water systems. We're indicated per water systems, I guess, where they're getting the water. Vermont Department of Health guidelines muscle. Now you're mixing it all up. Well, a wastewater water permit comes from the Agency of Natural Resources. Yes.

The health guidelines. Uh but that tells you when you have to get the permit, doesn't it? Yeah. This pretty much outlines what they need to get the license. Doesn't that give you the trigger on there?

Well, okay. I didn't read the whole thing. Okay. So, this is telling you it's requirement for mobile units and push carts. So, if you prepare and sell food from a push cart or a mobile unit like a food truck or trailer, you are required to have a commercial caterer license from the health department. This guide is a summary of those general requirements. Um, so when it gets to on the back here it says water and wastewater. It mentions the Department of Environmental Conservation, which covers the wastewater water systems. That's only if you're connecting to an existing water or wastewater system because that's what they cover. But if it's gray water that's disposed of like in a public sewage treatment plant or in an individual system that the Department of Health approves, you can go to another a restaurant that meets all the Department of Health requirements and dump your gray water. If you have that agreement,

then I would argue that the sentence is accurate. Okay. Do you What do you think? Okay, just to clarify, I think that the Vermont Department of Health and ANR are sort of they're regulating different aspects. Yes. And yes, for example, the Vermont wastewater system and political water supply rules regulate actually more than just wastewater systems. For example, if you move a parcel boundary line, you might need a waste water, which is kind of funny because you're not actually putting a wastewater system in the ground. It just might affect you might have more people on the property.

Yeah. [laughter] You start getting those permits for things that aren't related to actual wastewater systems. They do have a lengthy list of exemptions. Um, and I think exemptions relate to things like, for example, if you're dumping wastewater into a sewage treatment plant, that's likely exempt from meeting a wastewater permit um, under ANR's regulations. Right. So, I think that the reference here, and you know, just to clarify, Serena, I think a a septic system is one way that wastewater can be treated. Um it's one method.

Um but there are other methods that might be available. It could be an on-site system, could be a system somewhere else, could be a public wastewater system. Um so I think this language here, while it is a little lengthy, um I think the gist when I kind of put more in there was just to say check with ANR. If you need a permit, get one. If you don't, you don't. um just because I think adding the nuance there um you know those regulations might change and and we don't want to contradict them.

No, but so yeah, I I agree with what you're saying and now that you have that at least they need to check with the Vermont Department of Health, I think that kind of covers us. So even if for example they're exempt from the wastewater rules, it seems like adding in the Vermont Department of Health means that Department happy with [laughter] what they're doing.

All right. Um any other questions on mobile food units? This one. So, it it says that um that it doesn't need lighting and it closes at 9:00. And I'm just wondering like um for safety issues. I'm just wondering around between 8 and 9 or 7:30 and 9 if it would if they would need lighting. I can't you know I think in the summer you're okay. I don't think it gets dark until 9ish. is that it says that it's prohibited, you know, to have lighting, outdoor lighting, but I just thought of with all these barrels and barriers and [cough] cars and stuff like that, if it does get dark, maybe just between 8 and 9, but that's just I I I wanted to hear from other people what they thought about that.

Do you guys want to discuss outdoor lighting, but uh I think you quickly talked about outdoor lighting. Now that I'm looking at it, the truck itself will have lighting and they all have lighting. Well, I think we should be specific. So, um, if you want to allow that, I think the idea So, this is this is in here not because I have a personal thought on it. Um, it's in here just because I was trying to represent the most common things that I found across other ordinances. Um, but this is very much your call as a as a policy decision. Um, but I just wanted something to start from for you guys.

Yeah. Um, I think the idea the reason that it makes a lot of ordinances is just because, you know, people want food trucks to be as unobtrusive as possible and potentially adding lighting can start to add to that. But maybe you don't feel that way and that's okay. And some lighting is okay. And you could you could say limited lighting or lighting that doesn't extend more than x feet away from the truck or you know there I think there's opportunity here for you if you want to have something. Um

maybe after dark or something or when it's getting dark you know just for safety lighting would be permitted. like flood lighting, lighting that like attracts people in. I was thinking like little Christmas lights, you know, just around the Because if you're not specific Oh, then any lighting would be allowed. And if you're fine with that, that's okay, too. I just want I'm just trying to tailor your thoughts. I can see how flood lighting would bother neighbors, and that makes a lot of sense to me. But I'm just, you know, it sounds like they have to close at 9. I'm wondering I'm thinking that probably you can see. It's not dangerous, you know, with cars and headlights and stuff like that. I But you do allow them to be open until

9. November. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to get dark a lot earlier than 9 in November, right? So, so the outdoor lighting, there's no doubt the truck's going to have outdoor lighting. I think that they'll have to have outdoor lighting. you're going to wherever you would say then you're going to have lighting to light up your area. You want to remove this and then you want to be more specific about how much lighting you want to allow. Right? So now you're talking permanent lighting for the dining area maybe or something to that effect. So let me go ahead and remove that cuz as written none would be allowed. Right. So would the way that's written you wouldn't even be allowed to put like a little flashlight lantern on tables? I think that would [laughter] be

well I mean that's a solution. If if it's not if that's not considered outdoor lighting, it's I mean, in all reality, if it's after 4:30, we would have no idea unless we get a complaint from a neighbor. Yeah. To me, an outdoor lighting would be something more permanent. Yeah. One one note, I think as discussed, you've talked about these being allowed not necessarily on just a property with nothing else on it. Maybe that's the case. Sometimes a lot of developed parking lots already do have permitted outdoor lighting. I was trying to think what Brigantes did. I think they had a pole that already had a light on it.

Yeah. And that kind of meant lit the whole area. I drove up by the I was thinking of you guys. I drove up by the uh Oh, the the one in South Hero. South Hero. The rest stop. The rest stop. And obviously it's closed for the season, but I was I I wish that we had just stopped, but we were trying to make the ferry. Um, [laughter] but I just saw how much like stuff was left behind and like like the permanency of it and um and like it was stuff. It's not like it was it wasn't like it was a very clean orderly area, but like it was like it was a more permanent space. like it's it's it's clearly it's a sight.

It is a site meant for the space as opposed to a truck that comes and could be gone and you never knew it was there. So, it's like those are two different things in my mind. There's one on North Willist Road if you go the truck wasn't there, but all of the the picnic tables, the trash like bins, like I'm sure they were empty, but they were like heavy duty commercial. They were all there. um like the drive aisle like cuz it's like a packed y like packed um gravel. Yeah, gravel or something. Uh the truck was not there but um but you could you knew what it was. There was a sign. I think there was even like an electrical pole like a post like you like have a camper like one of those.

Yeah. Kind of like an RV. Yeah, like an RV sort of like hookup. And for all we know that Well, they actually had portaotties. I was going to say maybe they had their own septic system, but I think they had portaotties there. They the truck was gone. The truck was gone. Coolest in that's uh uh trailer. It's like a 1950s renovated. It's really cool, but it's got the skirting around it. It sits here year round, I believe. I think even open up to Christmas. But he's got his tables outside. He's got the umbrella. Little portaotty out to the side. This one up there Willist Road. North Willist Road when you get off of River. Oh. Oh. Near the river. Yeah. Right by the river. And there's a farm market there and Yeah. Yeah. You know, a meat market. Is he open you around? He's trying to. I don't think he's got to be in a flood plane. I doubt he's

I doubt it, too. [laughter] That is That has got to be a flood plane right there. But I see that and I'm like, he has to have a little lighting there. The thing doesn't move. So, he has to have a way to pump out. But for us, that thing's got to be gone. Yeah. Just like this one. I think that's what I've I've heard from you guys when we started this conversation. Yeah. Which is fine. That's what we're looking at. Yeah. Like you don't want like the rest stop type or maybe you do but it's a different regulation than this. Yeah. Yes. I think that property was developed differently. I think it was developed specifically for the rest stop. The people owned that property cuz they what you didn't see was down towards the lake. If you went down the hill a little bit,

there's a deck out there, a little bar out there. So this was really And it's not that you couldn't do that. To be clear, it's not that you [clears throat] couldn't do that in Colchester. It's just a different process. Yes. You could go through the site plan process. Yeah. And and and have a restaurant and [clears throat] do that in places where it's allowed. It's just a different process. You're not falling under this quick. This is the express route. Yeah.

Um you wouldn't get the express route for something like that. Yeah, I just think with LED lights now, it's just so easy to just throw, you know, some lantern, LED lanterns up and just provide some lighting so people, especially with kids, you know, just can get, you know, make their way back to their car without tripping over something. All right, talk to me about lighting. Lighting shall not wet. [laughter] Maybe any lighting should be like uh meet the state local code. You know what I mean? Must be choice has to be downcast. Got to be something. It has to be because a lot of them are DIY put together projects and you start putting

extension cords and everything else. And I mean that becomes a whole other if you permit it becomes a whole other issue, right? Good point. You know, because you got, you know, surge protector and you got too many extension cords plugged into it. So the guy doesn't know how electricity works. So if you're, you know, allowing it, there's a lot of issues that can arise from it from fire, electrical standpoint, you know. Yep.

So right now I'm going to put it here, but if we start to talk more about lighting, I'll move it to a different section because right now I've got it in the restriction section, but if we want to get into what it can be and can't be, I'll move it up. Um, okay. Let me ask you some questions to respond to. Um, start with an easy one. Can it go beyond the property line? No. For the flood of light, huh? The the the light the light beam itself. Um, no. Yeah. No. Yeah.

I would say parking, you know, just access to parking to get back to parking. Um, can it must it be downcast? Sure. Okay. Okay. So, this is good. We're making some [laughter] um I mean, we do have existing lighting standards. We could build off of that. Zach can probably even recite them. I can't, but [laughter] believe it or not, not putting on this. I mean, it doesn't have to be a lot of light. It can be a lowle light. You could say, for example, lighting should not extend more than 20 feet from the truck. That gives enough space for a line. And

yeah, and that keeps it pretty simple. And after sunset, I mean, I mean, people aren't going to have lighting on during the daylight hours, right? I'm actually going to move this up here. Just kidding. Didn't like that one. Yeah, it's funny the way it's formatted. There we go. It's going here.

You should say outdoor lighting because there are regulations in the for the inside the truck, but two different things. Yes. I just don't want to say that. I just Did you say like lighting for safety purposes only or something like to narrow the purpose of the lighting? All right, let's see. So, I like where you're going with putting this in here, but I will just note that under 102 outdoor illumination, it's called outdoor illumination, not lighting.

Okay. Uh 102B has general requirements that require DRB approval for any outdoor lighting that's not on like a a single residential unit. Okay. So, similar to the portable toilets discussion, whatever language goes in here might have to be copied into there. So, just Okay. Well, we could say lighting shall be exempt from section 10.

Wait, wait, wait. [laughter] If you exempt the lighting from 1002, then you're then clarify that it's needs to be downcast, shielded, and I said properties. Yeah. Well, I'm getting there. Okay, [laughter] it's 10:02. 10:02. This is the last one. Sure. Except that No worries. It must be Good call. And we'll double check this because we're it's going to need more than tonight's eyes because we extended the time

heavily. Except that it shall be downcast shielded. Um, and the what's the word we're looking for? What's the uh the the spillover?

Usually, for some reason, the language that sticks out to me in my mind that I can't see in front of me is um shall not emit beyond property boundaries. Oh, sorry. It's do not cast direct light beyond the boundaries of the property.

I think that's what we were trying to say. I mean we don't have to say like you know again the word safety somehow I feel like that protects the town too you know I mean in terms of to provide safety for egress or whatever you say to get back and forth you know to your car that that's kind of what you know to know that it's a safety issue it's not what was that what first line Oh, sorry. I talked a little faster than Perfect, perfect. So, I don't know exactly everything that's in

10.02, but you're saying it's exempt. Does 100.02 cover the uh brightness of the light? I mean, how how much? Because if it's exempt from any kind of restrictions of the light levels, you could get flood lights that would meet this requirement and you're going to go, "No, that's not what we mean." I think downcast and shielded should cover that could still be bright.

I think our brightness does it talk about stuff only beyond the property line. I guess it talks about an average, right? But we're trying to not have people do like lighting plans. I mean, the site, the lighting standards really require like a a lighting expert because they talk about average foot candles. Yeah, I know. That's why you're trying to make it as simple as possible, but I sure don't want a flood light where they just put a can over it.

So, we could just say, how about this? Cuz I hear that. It's a tough one. It's a very tough one because I can think of other scenarios where it it kind of worked because it's out in the middle of nowhere. [laughter] But it's downcast. So even if it was flood lighting, I mean flood Yeah. flood lighting, it would be downcast. It shouldn't be getting into anybody's windows in the neighborhood or whatever,

right? Is that safe to assume? Yeah. I know. I get it though because like I I you know put one of those when I moved in. I had like one of those lights on my garage that the people before me had had and that thing was bright and it was shining right in my neighbors and the first thing I did was like take it down because I was like my neighbors are going to hate me and I didn't even put it up. Um, I hate that when light is shining in my house. Yeah. And so we replaced it with a different one that was

not casting quite as far and was more downcast. Um, that thing was bright. Um, and I wouldn't have called that a flood light either, which is what's funny. Yeah. Which is really bright. It can be very bright. Yeah. Um, but I think this should take care of most of it. It may not be perfect. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, you'll have another crack at this and we'll take a look at it again, too. We'll take a crack at it when the first person puts a food truck somewhere and has all this light. [laughter]

It'll be more of like a light show. The place you can get a hot [laughter] dog. It could be blue lights, red lights. one of those big inflatable things. That was [laughter] just go back in. No wonder they didn't say no lighting. [laughter] That's why they didn't want to write standards for it.

Yep. Okay. All right. Uh, anything else on this? We don't want somebody complaining. Okay. Anything? Just Just one more question. I thought at farms farms were going to be allowed to have food trucks because if they have events like a wedding or something that's different though. Yeah. So that's already sort of understood anybody cuz in agriculture I was looking at so it's not just farms anybody who's having like an event. Mhm. Um you know so food trucks or or anything that's temporary. Um, actually I think I saw you had something in here in the health regulations too which I thought was kind of

maybe I'm just in because I saw under agriculture there wasn't a conditional or permitted thing. So maybe agriculture is not considered like farms unless there's some new statute I'm not familiar with that exempts that. But basically anybody who's just having a special event where the truck is not there permanently, we're going to treat them like a peddler. um if they're just there for a day or um if they're there less than 10 days. I was misinterpreting the table. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Um so we're going to treat them as as somebody who's mobile. Gotcha.

And they would do a peddler's permit and they could have that for the whole year. They just can't be any place for more than 10 days. And a place can't host trucks for more than 10 days. Um, soon as you cross that threshold, you're starting to have something more permanent. That's what's considered permanent in Colchester. Um,

thank you. I'm I'm done. I think that's I might I think I'm done. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily happening right now. is still something we need to work on because need to do some education and training. Some trucks are really good about getting their permits for everything they do and some get none ever. Um, so we're working with them and hopefully the process is easy. They'll just get the permits because it's super simple. Uh, and they're not very expensive. Um, so, okay. So, we're going to add language here. This won't change anything from a policy perspective. It'll just be text. Okay.

Mhm. Anything else? Okay. I need to go back to my memo. Zach, did you have anything to add on that? No.

Nope. Okay. Um, oh, ah, we're not done on food trucks. Just kidding. Um, mobile food units are currently in the use table. So, we haven't talked about this yet. Um, in your packet, I also gave you a zoning map. Um, so right now, these exist. Um, 8.4, four. That's that bottom line in this chart for those of you who have my eyes. Um, that's here. Um, no matter what you do, I recommend you fixing this because conditional use is not a zoning permit.

Conditional use means you have to go to the DRB. Um, I did not make any changes though because you have some options here. Um, you could change conditional to permitted. Okay. You could change the districts in which they're allowed in. You could remove it from the table of uses altogether because you do in the standard say these are allowed on non-residential lots unless in your mind somewhere there are parts of the town that even on a non-residential lot you think are not appropriate. So um I think I would start with that question to you. Are there parts of town where even on a non-residential lot where you think having a food truck is inappropriate? So, let's let's start by thinking about that. Um, a lot of it's driven by the market. For instance, I don't see a food truck going to a storage facility and setting up because nobody's going to go there.

I think it's going to go where the people are. I don't have any issue taking it off cuz you said we have it covered that it's not in residential area, but I can see people being creative where wherever the the event or people are going to be the most And you do have non-residential zoning sort of scattered throughout the town. That's why I gave you the zoning map. Um, you know, so even up at exit 17, there's a small mixed commercial zoning district. um like Jasper mine Jasper mine road mostly um that's mixed right that allows residential as well

it's a mix of GD4 and GD1 out there um there are although actually that raises a thought to me what's AMU cuz I can't what district is an AMU agricultural mixed use. Mixed use. Okay, that's actually sitting next to one of the uh [clears throat] an owner of a lot in the AMU district. [laughter] You're in the Well, you don't live in the AM. He doesn't But you own a lot in the AMU property. Yes, I am. Um

so we could have a food truck that's permitted already. That's right. It's permitted already. I'm good to go. [laughter] That actually does make I'm going to go back to the food truck language. because nonresidential in use so we don't address mixed use

I think the thought was this excluded those zoning districts in article three. You mean from the chart? Um, or from this statement here?

Well, that this statement sort of because each res each zoning district, just so you know, articles 3 through six outline each zoning district and the purpose statement. Some of them are bundled into article three residential districts. Very clearly those are the residential um zoning districts are 1 through 10 and lakes shore three and four which we had a long conversation about last year or so if you recall which lots are residential and which are not. Flashbacks anyone? Oh yeah, I know. Painful. Um, but there are some districts that are mixed.

Did they get categorized? Well, they're in uh article four, general development districts. Okay. GD 1 through 4 and then LS1 and two. LS1 is in that one. Yes. Well, that's interesting. That's the one along the shoreline. Y, but we do see a food truck pretty consistently at one of the marinas. Y um that's true. So, we could clarify. I'm going to go back to this actually while I'm thinking about it.

Um So we could very specifically say

something like not art not not those listed in article 3. Whatever. Oh well actually didn't [laughter] we amend it somewhere else? Okay. So whereify it. A wrinkle. No wrinkle. getting specific could cause some issues with article six which includes other districts begins with agricultural district and I get the sense that depending on what's on the lot in the agricultural district maybe a mobile food unit might be acceptable mobile home park district that one could very easily be interpreted as a residential zoning district

then there's the flood plane district. I don't think we could permit one in there, but starts getting a little murky. So, we should keep the c the table. Definitely would be simpler with the conditional uses in our table. Then we're consist or permitting or permitting or yeah, whichever one we want. [clears throat] That'd be simpler. We and we do that throughout. If they have through the DRV through the DRV, I guess for clarity on what's the difference between condition zoning? So permitted district, you can go no matter what. Okay.

So you're all set up. Okay. So you don't need a permit. Allow. You still need a permit, but it's permitted. So you still got to do everything you're supposed to do. Conditional DRB is going to look at it. Sure you follow zoning district allowance is per table it's not permitted the difference is in agriculture is that she said it's already permitted for events but why isn't that here good question that part that part you can ask that one I [laughter] guess okay because I saw the same thing okay

she said under it That's why I was confused about the C's and the P's. I was like, "Wait a second." Cuz it's a different animal. That's why. Oh, okay. So, now we're talking food trucks versus in-n-out event truck. So, you're talking about peddlers, a caterer versus a food truck is more like a mini restaurant. All right. Let's see. It's crazy. We have a lot of rules. Yeah. This is 8.4, right? [laughter]

All right. easier in the end. So, I think we'll keep it. Right there. There we go. Okay. So, R3, no. No. R2, no. R1, no. R5, no. R10, no. GD1, yes. Yeah. I wish I GD1C. Yeah, I was trying to get to the zoning map. So, I'm just remind myself where these things are. Yeah, sorry. The uh actually the zoning map is really hard to see these ones with the C on the end. I don't think the overlays are even on there.

Yeah. Um but we can tell you where they are. GD1C GD1C is the one that is that the one that's on Prim Road is stretch on Prim Road in the GD1 district. Okay. which we're hoping to maybe extend [laughter] at some point, but that's the overlay that's on prim. Uh GD4C [clears throat] is the one up at 17, right? Yes. Is it anywhere else? No. Okay.

Where where is GD4C? That's the one that like Jasper Mine Road um like some of the um commercial businesses up off of um Route 7 um up off some of it some of it's undeveloped land. Yeah. Yeah. And some of it's some like legacy businesses. Um, it sort of surrounds the interchanges, the the inner interstate interchange. Um, GD2 is where? Fort Ethan Allen.

Ah, and Route 15. I assume that's a P. Yeah. Yeah. G4. I can't show you both at the same time. So, um I should have printed some zoning maps for you, but GD4, uh yeah, I think GD4, GD4C is the same general area. Do you mean I'll plug in my computer? I've got this map. I can fly around and point at things. Yeah, I suppose that makes some sense. Um you just want this thing. Yeah. Sorry people at home. Whoa.

All right. Which zone? We were on GD4. GD4. Here's GD4. Uh I will provide some background because this is not the most intuitive thing to look at. No. Uh well actually it can be all the same. the table there is. Okay. So, you've got Interstate 89, uh, Route 2 and 7, GD4 is basically this area and it also extends down um, Route 2 and Jasper Rine Road.

It's good practice for the town plan. So where is that like exactly? That's is that chimney corner? Yes, it is. Yes, chimney corner. Okay, gotcha. It's sort of this uh brick symbology. Um, one of my dreams is to have a zoning map where we can turn on individual layers. But you can't you can just eliminate all the but you can't for the individual zoning layers. Yeah, I can turn off the overlays. Just the overlays, which I will do. That cleans up a little bit. I dream of being able to turn on just the GD2. Yeah. So it really pops out.

Well, I just need money and Yeah. So the GD4 district ends just at the corner of Rain Road. Yeah. Um, okay. LS1, you guys all know where LS1 is. Yep. But you were just saying that there's some places on LS1 that makes sense. Yeah. Mhm. The marinas. Mhm. You think there was like an I think it was like Elgato was the food truck that was there most of the summer. Oh, really? Um, I saw a sign for it. I never stopped there. They didn't have a permit. The shopping center. Someone could, I guess.

Yeah. I think the marina I don't know who who their audience was. I don't know if it was drivebys or if it was like people coming in off of boats. I'm not really sure. But uh which which marina? I think it was at um Saba, right? Bay Harbor. Bay Harbor, I think. Bay Harbor. No, which Bay Harbor is the one way down? Yeah. No, no, this was this was the one. There's two of them right side by side. The nice one. The really nice building. Not that the others aren't the newest. Yeah, I think it's the Sabra. Mark Sabay. I think they call it Bay Harbor. Is that what it's called? It's Bay Harbor. Yeah, they do call it that. Nobody calls it with the aderond building. Yeah, that one. Yeah, with the big parking lot.

Why don't aren't there more peas under Ellis one? Oh, Sarita. What? That's can of worms. Huh? That is a very good question, but not one we're going to answer tonight. Okay. No. Um, I don't have an answer for you. That's an answer. You guys will have to answer that. Um, but at some point if you ever want to explore LS1 and go through P's and C's and blanks, um, do it when I'm sick. [laughter] Yeah, you can make it your first. I'm on vacation now. It's a lot. You can you can make it your first order of business after the um people. Yeah. Be part of that. Oh,

no. You'll just have a lot of interested folks, which is fine. I think, you know, participation is great. So, what you're saying is someone has already had a food truck in LS1. [snorts] Yes. Yeah. I think um so you're okay. There is some residential in LS1. So, there is but they wouldn't be allowed to their neighbor could. And we could put a I mean I don't think it needs it, but we could put a little asterisk or footnote, but it's not necessarily permitted. It's still all right. LS2. So if LS1's a P, then LS2 is a P. Yeah, for sure. LS3. No.

Why is that italics over there? LS3. LS3 doesn't have any way to put LS3 is a no. LS4 on that road. Yeah, that's Well, the LS4 is an interesting one. Yeah, cuz there's that one commercial property on the corner of Williams Road, the old um and then where the What was that? And where the old food truck used to be? Yeah. Is that in LS4? Is that ins?

Okay. So, that one's already covered. So, yeah. I can only think of that one property. Yeah. The the bottom of Williams. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be nice to have a coffee shop or some little restaurant there. People could walk to stuff. You don't have to worry about going in. Yeah. And just to clarify, I think that lot is um condo lot. So technically on a residential property. Yeah. So, but didn't it used to be? Yep, it did. Used to be a chicken place, right? And then it was a hardware store. It was a convenience store.

Isn't there another place up the road that sells like monuments or something too? That's He's on He right on Bay Road. Just as you're Oh, before that, isn't there another one with like something on like the first floor? The one with the American flag on it. The on the roof. Gone over the corner. No, I'm before the corner because I know the Pepin one on the on the LS4 side. No, there's not another one. On the LS4 side commercial. There's a there's a large like pavilion style building over there where they have like a bunch of like chairs around the fire and stuff.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Still much further up where it's more dense. Um, that's a fascinating property. Yeah. Isn't it kind of familyowned? Yeah. Yeah. School. So if someone where that chicken place used to be aware that you know where they're storing equipment now, if someone wanted to put a food food truck on that lot, could they? So as written here, it has to be residential zoning and residential use. And you haven't non-residential zone or non-residential. Sorry. That's the only one. And you didn't give me a P for LS4. Oh, no. I was going to say that's the only piece of property in LS4. I would say

there's if you go up further which uses a parking lot. That's the only open two open spaces I know of. Just an open parking lot. It has nothing. Oh, yeah. Camp across the street. It's currently not peritted at all. Richards and all those things. Yeah. But there was a store there at some point, right? Yep. At some point there was a commercial property there I guess. Y you guys tell me. Absolutely. Yeah, there was a convenience store there forever. Oh, what? A convenience store. It was convenience store. It was a site word number for a long time. How long did it close? Four, five years. You got out a long time. A long time ago. But could that be a restaurant?

I mean, could that be permitted as a restaurant at some point in the future? Uh, I'd say if it was pre-existing non-conforming and it hasn't been used that way, then no. You lose your non-conforming status after a year. Gotcha. And if it's been 25, probably not. Unless they can make some case that they're still operating. Yeah. Yeah. There really isn't a safe place to put this. No, I was thinking traffic for a food truck. I don't think it's desirable in that area. Yeah. So, leave that blank. Yeah. Four is a Nope. I have a coffee shop. That would be nice.

I could ride my bike on the bike path and go to the coffee shop. All right. Commercial district. Yeah. No, just [laughter] wish I could walk one to one, too. Zach will show you commercial district. That's down by 16. It's actually not entirely down by 16. There are some dispersed commercial areas around town.

Oh. But generally it's the um inner core of Water Tower Circle, Mountain View Drive, extend extends up a portion of South Oak Circle um and I believe it also dips down onto Lower Mountain View Drive. Um and ends at Costco, also on the other side of the highway as well on South Park Drive. Um it does appear in a few other areas around town. um property on Main Street that you might know of as the spanked puppy. [snorts] Um you got Bayro property. It's commercial.

Yep. And also property on Main Street, kind of a legacy contractor's yard. So there's some dispersed commercial property, commercially zoned properties around town. P. All right. Industrial P industrial. Are you saying P or C? P. Oh, [laughter]

I would encourage you no C's. Either yes or no is basically what we're saying. Conditional use would require it to go to the board. And the whole idea of this is to not go to the board. I'd say yeah. Yeah. I don't know where all the industrial is. It's places like that. The portion of Hazlet uh Wickham's quarry um properties along uh the railroad um between Main Street and Sandro Road off road. Those are also zoned industrial. Uh BD, which is what? Business

business district sort of periphery of the commercial district. um Ratty's Meyers um couple properties past Costco um I believe there's some other ones but yeah those are mainly them um agricultural not to be confused with agricultural mixed use say yeah let's take a look at all the agricultural properties so generally agricultural properties are kind this white with a little like tree on it. I think um it's a whole lot of the quiet parts of

East Road, Middle Road, Roosevelt High, Well, not Middle Road, sorry, portion of Mil Road, Roosevelt Highway, Mil Pond, Port Farm. Now, as written, this does say commercial use and commercial zoning. So if Wendy owns a house on East Road and she's in the agricultural district, that doesn't still doesn't give her a food truck. But if Colchester Paintball, are they on their own property? Is there house there? Paintball? Yeah, there's no house on Paintball. There's no house there.

No. So theoretically, assuming Colchester paintball is legally permitted, um [laughter] worse maybe. Sorry. What about Colchester Pond? Uh not a non-residential use.

Is there anywhere around code that they would be permitted? Isn't it at the Wooki Park District that owns the property around it? Yep. They would have a fit. Do they? Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought I thought Colchester did. Yeah. Just thinking where there's a lot of people, you know, that would buy food and have to pay local option tax again. So theoretically, I think there's very few properties in the agricultural district that would even qualify under this. Um, Mil Pond Road would not be welcomed,

I'm sure. Oh, Milond [clears throat] Road. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it'd be welcome either. They don't want They don't want the kind of traffic. No. So, no. No. You originally said yes. What if a farmer wanted to have like, you know, just have weddings once in a while? Do we are we permitting that? That would be public though, wouldn't it? You wouldn't need a permit for that. What are we talking Are we Well, it says agriculture. That's why I'm confused. If if a farm wanted to kind of have a side business or another business in terms of a wedding venue, you're on a whole different topic

where we are. Okay. So, and just have a food truck, you know, have a food have like four food trucks pull up for the for the wedding. Yeah. Again, so I think I've repeated this a few times probably. Thank you. Yeah. If you have like an event Yeah. Yeah. and you have a drop come. Now, again, if you even if you're a farm, um, unless I mean there's some new exemptions in statute that are sort of wishy-washy, half accepted. um to become you can host less than 10 weddings a year and not change your use. Okay.

Um you know, if Rich wanted to turn Shadow Cross into a wedding venue, um come on. It'd be very unique. I guess I just don't understand why doesn't have something like conditioner or something on there because it looks like No, that I I might be not reading this right. That's what I'm wondering because I think I'm going to guess I mean I didn't write this because the egg lands are pretty extensive throughout Colchester. I mean and they're not like keep in mind that places like Samz's farm.

Um those are in the AMU districts so they're different. Um, and those I think we're trying to recognize that it's sort of a a plus district. And I think that that sort of came ahead of a lot of this newer state legislation about or giving more to enterprise a um which I think we're going to see even more of in the next few years. Mhm. Um it's something that seems to come up every year. Um on this map though it shows everything is just agricultural though for like classes and all that stuff

really. Yeah. Should be in the same district as like rich as they're next door to each other. That one is but Oh yeah. Yeah, it looks like here it is identified in a slightly different symbology is the but not in the one I sent you that's a problem.

H All right, I'll look at that cuz that's that's been what a good eight or nine or I mean what's that since the AMU district 10 years? Yeah. Over a decade. Yeah. Yeah. About 10 years. It's one of the first Not a new district. I mean, it's not a forever no old district. About just about 10, I would say.

10. Okay. But you guys can see it there now. That's the um So, can you see like the See it? No. So I I know where Rich's property is. That's there. Yeah. So if you go and below that, that's Mazes. Yep. Okay. That's the store and the green houses. That makes sense. Okay. Yep. And the corn field is all And then on the other side where Huh. That's the berry farm, right? Yep. That's the berries. Yep. But that's still Mazes, right? They left it as agriculture.

Yeah. I think it's more like deed land, right? It's undevelopable land. No, that could be developed if we change the zoning on it. Okay. That's why it's left. They don't know what the future will be. Oh, okay. I thought So, it's the other one that can't really be developed then. There's something about Yeah, there's property. My guess is they're in current use, but you can pull things out of current use at a cost. I don't I don't know if it is. Some of some of their land is, but I don't know what that is. Yeah, I don't know. I saw a list once upon a time of what's in current use. Yeah.

Um, so right now you be you've been [clears throat] permitting food trucks on one side of Maza's property, but not on the other. Not in the Berry Farm. No. Yeah. Or further up on Port Farm Road. So just a question. In case you wouldn't want to stick food trucks is on Port Farm Road. Yeah. seems like you have some concerns about um food trucks on some of these roads. Um I never went to the food truck where Sunderland Farms, you know, development now is. Yeah. Um, Brianis, I think you've

Yeah. Um, that being on Severance Road, was there anything was that a favorable memory that you had? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was the summer place to go. Yeah. So, [laughter] you had your fields and then you had big old parking lot and then you've got their food stand and they had canopy on the side of it. It was permanent. It it went in and it did not move. Well, it it did for the season. For the season. Yeah. They would remove their trailer. Yeah. It was well done. I remember it, but I've never stopped there. Oh, yeah. Classic. Yeah. It was the summer. Great French. Yeah. [laughter] Perfect. I don't know why I never stopped.

You went there at least once a week. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. But I do remember it vlog up there. And if you lived in Colchester for any given time, you knew the priant. Oh, yeah. [laughter] Best corn. Yep, for sure. That was Coke. He wasn't the farmer. Yeah, not Coke. Uh Frank Frank wasn't the farmer. Frank and D. Coke. And those were the farmers and they own the back piece. Yeah. Yeah. But you were the main drag. Yeah. So it wasn't really like agriculture. It was like setting them down for farm road. Yeah. And now that's the growth center. Yeah. Yeah, that's a grow center just like that. A whole different world now.

Yeah. Um but I think you got to keep in mind that this is probably, if I had to guess, our biggest zoning district by land area. Yeah. Um and so you would be opening up potentially that to a lot of properties. So doesn't feel to me anyways that most of the agriculture is set up for that sort of activity. Yeah. Yeah. I think the majority majority of it is not right. There might be portions of it. Can we keep that one conditional? Well, you can still get a pedaller's permit.

Yeah, but that's that's for events, but it's actually not allowed right now. It's not conditional. It's simply not allowed. Not allowed at all. So you wouldn't be changing anything at all. Okay. It's not allowed now. Yeah. It's not allowed. That wouldn't be a change. Yeah. It is permitted in the agricultural mixed use right now. Right. Yeah. That's a whole different It's already a P. It's the only P. It is the only P. It's the only P. was [laughter]

it's the only way if someone owned a farm and they really wanted a food truck on it, they'd have to change it to agricultural mixuse. We reszone it. Come to us and I just put a C in there. But right now, we don't have a Right now we don't have anything. We don't have anything. I'm okay with that. I mean, I don't see a big I just I don't

cuz most people don't want if you're not locinis was uh unique. Most of the agriculture stuff we have now, they don't want people actually going into it. They don't let new people come into their property unless they're pick your own or something like that style. Otherwise, you're not inviting more people into your property. That's the way I look at it. You mean the other Bantes? The one on me? No, like Brianis has a a farm stand, the little one uh dam. It's a little farm stand. So you drive down into it. He invites people into nearby. If you have like a corn operation like cinnacs, you don't want them to be driving off into your corn operation. So I don't see where they'd even want that.

Yeah. Just don't think there's a lot of traffic that way. I mean, I'm thinking the bike path and the lake shore. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. as I think we could, you know, collect a lot of money that way. But that's just how I'm thinking, you know, get people's taxes down. All right. Well, I'm going to keep us moving. Y I think I heard mostly nos on agriculture. Keep the P for agricultural mixed use. Yes. All right. I'm going to go back to my memo. What do you like? Oh, yeah. They can't see what [laughter] I'm doing. You can go back to the memo and watch that take the minutes.

What's that? Was MHB um mobile home park. Mobile home park. I I just assumed you were fine with no [laughter] one. No flood plane. Okay. Um Okay. Um auto sales. Yes. Um, nothing since last time. So, um, pretty simple here. [laughter] I have the same problem.

Um, I don't know. We've looked at this many times, so I have nothing to say. I'm not going to boil the ocean here. Yeah, I think it's good. We're good. Yeah. Okay. Did that first

umbrella approvals. So, there's some changes here. Um, we did the first part of this last time. Um, so I'm going to walk you through this one a little bit slower. Uh, you there's my little chatter at the beginning. I'm not going to repeat that. So um the purpose of this is what do you do when you have multiple tenants single building the change over how do we help to like trim down the paperwork trim down the delays and time um associated with it. So, this first part we talked about last time, existing approvals, multi-tenant properties, multi-tenant buildings, changes in occupants. How do we do that with just a zoning permit? Because right now, it's often more. Um, we use a cumulative use table. We use this a lot. that requires them to give us the information that we need for wastewater needs, traffic needs, parking needs, um, etc. Sometimes it's depending on what it is, how many employees do you have, how many how many square footage is devoted to each use, um, etc., etc. Um, and some properties are really good about just keeping that up and some less. So, is that accurate? [laughter]

Yep.

Less so. Um, this was sort of left undone last time. So, what about new ones? What if I'm building a multi-tenant building and I'm like, I want to sort of remain with some flexibility or I want to think ahead. How do I make this nice and easy up front? Like I'm on Water Tower Hill, for example, because that's where we see, you know, larger buildings with multiple tenants. Um, strip malls aren't really allowed anymore under Act 250. Um, so but they still pop in here and there. Um, so we could let somebody set up a cap up front and say, "Here, I'm just going to set up, you know, what's like worst, best, highest case scenario." And, uh, I'm going to plan for that. And anything that comes below that threshold, I've got approval for this for my parking, this for my um wastewater is a different animal because it's not handled in house anymore. Um and uh here's my approval up front. So here's some language that talks about this. Um, we talked about this one last time. These are the things that would be excluded from site plan review. Changes in tenants, yay, you don't need to get a site plan, even if it is administrative, it does take some time and some money. Um, so if you change to another permissible use or you change your tenant, provided that those changes um

don't increase your stipulated allocated parking wastewater water requirements. Um, don't exceed previously approved vehicle trip ends and don't otherwise propose to modify the use of the property. Like, hey, we now need six dumpsters cuz we're going to be a restaurant and make a lot of trash. Um, so as long as you're not doing any of that, easy peasy zoning permit. Um, did talk about that last time. So, here's the new stuff. I tried to highlight in blue. I forgot to put that in my memo. Blue stuff's new stuff. Um 805G is all new umbrella approvals. So I put it into 805G which had previously just been a reserve section. I loved reserve sections cuz they're like just waiting for me to fill in addition. [laughter]

You got

um because when you add new sections, you run the risk of having to cross reference stuff. Um, so the development review board may approve two or more separate uses in a single principal building or structure in conjunction with site plan. So this is not a zoning permit to be clear. This does require more work. It does require you to go to the DRB, but this is like an upfront thing that you can do ahead of time, get everything approved by the board, and then it makes it easier later. This is you setting your foundation for your later changes. um um even if those uses are not to be immediately in use. So I'm building a building. I know that I might have conceivably in this building. I know the type of building I'm water tower hill for example. I know that I'm largely going to have general office. I might have a few personal services. I might have you know I'm not really into direct rec spaces. I'm not I'm not worried about that. Um, I don't do restaurants up there or they're not allowed, but I have a few things that I know are possible up there. Um, and I think about, okay, here's my mix. If I do 50/50 or here's the worst case scenario, medical office requires more than general office. I'm going to permit the whole thing with medical, general, um, all of these as approved uses for this building, but I'm going to make sure that I'm providing enough parking, wastewater, and traffic accommodations for the highest use of those. I'm going to treat it as though it's 100% medical because that's the highest draw. and I'm going to plan for that. But the board up front is is going to tell me

you're also allowed to have all of these other things because they're less intensive. And so you've already got this cap in here. And then going forward, if 50% of my medical office building or my building is actually filled instead with a general office or personal service or something else that was approved up front by the board. I've already got my approvals. I've already planned for that scenario. And the board, because this is a board review and not a staff review, the board will ask those questions. And if there are disperate uses where they're like, "You're planning for 100% medical in a 60,000t building. Sorry, that's too much parking. We don't want to give you that upfront." They would have that ability. Um, we're not going to give you worst case scenario or highest case scenario, but they could. Um, but because they're the ones doing the review, they're able to do that. Um, but once you set that cap, that's your cap until you go back to the board to change it. And anything less than that, you're good to go. You don't have to keep doing site plan changes. So, that's your umbrella that gets you all those approvals up front. don't have to approve precisely upfront, especially if you're trying to build a building that's not quite on spec. Um, and you don't really know what your tenants are yet. You're just building the building and uh you hope you [clears throat] get a great tenant on the first floor and the third floor and but you don't know yet. Um, so you want the board to approve six uses, but you honestly don't know what that breakdown is yet. This allows you to do

that. Um, this would definitely be uh positive for the builders and growth center when the time comes. Yeah. I wonder if we'll get Well, I hope we'll get some mixeduse buildings over. Yeah. Really? [clears throat] Someday. Someday. Um hopefully someday soon. Um so restaurants aren't allowed at Tower Hill

currently. No, if I recall. Why is that? Why is that? I mean, that means everybody has to get in their car or drive somewhere to get something to eat, right? I don't know. They have a cafeteria. They do. Okay. Yes, they did. Yeah. I think as an access food trucks there. Yeah, that's right. [laughter] [gasps] See, in the winter, Zach's looking. I think I've heard that it's not. Well, but I could be wrong. It just makes it somehow it just makes sense to me to have

Yeah. Water Tower Circle is mainly in the commercial district where restaurants with outdoor seating, without outdoor seating, short order restaurants, they're all that's permissible. Yeah. Okay. I thought you said they weren't. So that surprised me. All right, we'll follow up on that later. I believe what you're seeing. I just you know the conversation I'm talking about, right? I think so. I don't you can see that be such a So you know this allows you again to do that and just simplify everything for everybody.

It makes a lot of sense to me when I read it. Um, and you know, I think, you know, this is going to be something that I think we'll have to tweak as we go. I think we're going to learn cuz it's sort of new. Um, but I hope it's a good start and we'll fix it if we need to. Y

Okay. And don't forget the other thing that we talked about as part of this update is to create a single use for those office buildings too. So maybe it's not necessary for some of the large office buildings. Um which is somewhere in this update which we'll get to. Um [sighs] [laughter] use I almost just deleted it all and I'm like no we're done. [laughter] cuz I think I've given you guys some gray hair on this one. Um, but I think I think last time we made everybody happy. Yes.

So, the last what I did when I left cuz it wasn't done. Um, was I got rid of [snorts] Bear with me. That's all existing regulations. Ignore all that. Uh, let's get down to the good stuff. That's just an update to make sure we're consistent with statute. Um because accessory uses are now in ADUs are now in two sections of statute, not one. Um this is to be consistent with statute because we had said gross area habitable floor area is from statute. Um included in here. Um almost all this we did together. I have not gotten to this to fix the colors. Oh, I don't need to fix the colors. Green is moved. Um, so it was pre-existing language, but it was relocated. Um, what we did do, um, here we go. Include basements but exclude garages. Um, so here is my new update for you. Oh, I meant to bring my book. Um, so I got rid of the finished. The definition of finished had been a draft. I got rid of that. Um, I added habitable floor area because that's in the definition. So, I figured we'll just go right to it. Inhabitable room. These come from I have a book in my office. It's It's not perfect. Actually, in some cases, it makes me want to bang my head against it, but I have a book called like the complete book of development definitions or something. It's like, have you seen this book? Well, no, I have a similar book about architectural definitions.

I wonder if it's from the same publisher. Um, there's actually two versions of it. It's kind of thick like a dictionary. Um, and it is. It's It's like a dictionary. Um, so they have definitions in there. This is not identical to their definition. I actually think their definition is somewhat garbage. Um I should have brought it so I could have read it to you, but um but I used it as the base and I worked from it cuz theirs was like habitable room was there was a real problem with it. um

because it said something like closets are not habitable and so you had to deduct all that stuff and I'm like I'm not getting into that for this for the purposes of this definition. Stairwells are not habitable.

Um so we have habitable room and habitable floor area that does come from that definition. Um so habitable floor area some of habitable rooms. Habitable room any room or enclosed floor space in a dwelling unit used or intended to be used for living, sleeping or eating purposes. Um garage and shed spaces. This was per your direction at the last meeting. Um at le unless explicitly approved for habitation. So that was to address the space above a garage or a garage that's been converted just to get rid of any confusion of like it's a garage. It looks like a garage, but we live there. Explicitly approved for habitation are not considered habitable rooms. Um atticts intended or used for storage. Crawl spaces and basements without solid flooring that came from our discussion last time are not considered habitable.

Nailed it. There you go. Good one to test out. Anytime you're trying to figure out what size an accessory dwelling unit is, it gets complicated. I think if nothing else, we'll at least achieve consistency. Yeah. Which was half the goal. Yeah.

Um so where it says attic's intended or used for storage. What if um what if the attic is being used for storage, but they change their mind and they want to remove the storage and put up an ADU? I mean, if it's intended for storage, that's one thing, but I mean, I've been in houses where I've used my attic for storage, but then turned it into like a guest bedroom.

I think the reason it's as intended is like if somebody just has this sort of like atticky like I have an atticy space in my house. It's you can't stand in it. You can't like you have to actually be careful up there or else you're going through somewhere. Oh, yeah. Um, but I don't actually have anything up there. Okay. So, I'm not using it for storage, right? But it's kind of intended for that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I I I see the rafters with the insulation in between in an attic. But if someone was just had a space that could be converted.

Yeah. I would consider if somebody brought that to us, we would probably consider that habitable space. If you could put a bedroom in there tomorrow, maybe not a bedroom, bad example, wreck room. Yeah. If you could put a wreck room in there and live in there tomorrow, that's habitable space, right? You could stand there, you could walk, you have access to free flowing air, not asbestous. And you know, converted.

If I was looking at an old house as an architect saying, "Okay, this client wasn't ADU. I'm looking at the attic. It's not finished. It's cold. It's it has no heat up there. I I would say that space is uninhabitable. It doesn't get included in your calculations for your ADU. Yeah. But if they had already have gone and fixed it up, put heating up there, finished walls, I would say that's applicable space, and that could be included. I think that's how I would interpret it in our office, too. Okay. Because I think

but I don't think that's what this is saying. That's how I would read it, but maybe that's just me because I wrote it. [laughter] Um, but you say used or intended to be used. So, you're saying the attic, even though it's unfinish, nobody's can sleep up there, it's you're saying it's intended, it could be used for it. But as a designer, I would not look at that as a habitable space. I would not include that in my calculations. for determining how big the ADU could be, right? Because it's useless storage. No, no, it says that last line.

No, I'm saying the first line, any room or enclosed floor area in a dwelling unit used or intended to be used for living, sleeping, or eating purposes. I'm saying an attic that has enough headroom but is not finished is not intended to be used for living, sleeping, or eating or intended to be used. It I from what I heard is that if it's in if it's intended to be used in the future as a habitable space, right? Let's know what I meant to say if I did. I'm sorry.

That's why that's why I'm getting confused then. Yeah, I think we were I thought Serita was saying like if she got it prepared and ready to go as a living space. I assume she meant finished at that point. Which would transition it into a space meant for living. Yeah, it can be go either way. That's this is where you're going to get people arguing that, oh, that attic can be finished, so it's intended to be used.

It's not right [clears throat] now. Anyway, it it can get tested. Can you discern like when they come and like decide if they can get a permit at that time? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what we do now. Um, and our goal is to just get closer than the definition. You know, hopefully this gets us at least a lot closer than what we have now, which is almost nothing. Um, I'm not really sure how to get us to a perfect spot. I think we've been trying for the better part of nine months. Um, I think the intent is to create more housing, to create more spaces.

Yeah. So, you know, anything that helps achieve that would be great. I mean, the good thing is, you know, I included addicts here, but I don't know that anybody's ever come to us with an attic request. I only have a sample size of four years, but no. Um, I think someone will tomorrow [laughter] knowing how things work. But thanks. I know. I shouldn't have said it out loud. I think the most common things that come in are unfinished basement, garages, um, threeseason porches.

Oh, interesting. And people have their own definitions of a threeseason porch. So, that's a whole thing you have to unpack. Addicts really don't come in. Interesting. Well, most modern houses have trusses up there. So, there's just no way. It's more the older uh houses, the inventory where there there's actual rafters, so you do have headroom up there. You're not walking through trusses. That's where it usually comes up. But it sounds like you have discretion. So,

yeah. My my goal is to sort of reduce the amount of I mean we'll always have discretion but my my goal is to reduce the amount of time we have to use that discretion because we want to be consistent. We want to be fair. We want to be predictable. If you lost or intended to be used that takes care of it.

Yeah. I mean we we'll we'll feel it out. I mean I I hope it's good enough. Um, I think the addressing the garages and and and basements is going to go a long way. Um, and I think you guys have reached the point after a lot of discussion of giving us good feedback on your intentions there. Um, so I hope at least this does that and meets what you want for garages and basements. I don't know. Maybe I'll be back in front of you in nine months saying, "Hey, [laughter] remember this?"

Let's talk about it again. Do you think it's good enough to go forward or do you want to Yeah, I think it's worth a try. What do you think? Me, too. Do you feel okay? You're comfortable with it for sure. Okay. We trust you guys. All right. Was there any discussion about limiting the the maximum size of the ADU? We can't per statute. You could there's no max. Thought you could. You have to allow up to 30%.

Wow. No max. So if you have a 10,000 ft mansion, you get 30% of that. 3,000 square foot ADU.

Now, a lot of that's going to be empty space because you do you you are allowed to it has to be accessory and it's been commonly accepted that and subordinate that a definition of accessory and subordinate means less than. Um, so if the main house has three bedrooms, you can't have your other one having five, your accessory. So if you end up with a 4,000 square foot ADU, I don't know what two bedrooms and 4,000 square ft looks like. I don't know. A lot of entertaining areas, a whole lot of bathrooms,

couple of offices. Couple of offices. What? Yeah. Okay, that's true. This probably has nothing to ed you, but if you have a large piece of property and you want to put a a family compound on there where everybody has a house and it meets their eggs, what stops them from doing that? I mean, as opposed to, you know, to me, if you could do that, it's over and beyond what an ADU would be anyway. I think um depending on where the property is, it's density. Yeah. Um and septic, right? Capacity

and septic. I mean, if it's a really large property, septic is probably easily taken care of. Interesting. Colchester has really good soils. Can the ADU get an ADU after that? [laughter] No. That's your maximum. [laughter] um little baby.

Yeah, it's just interesting. Just usually when you get a large house, it's a large piece of property as well. So, it's it's kind discussion. I mean at some point I you know I think it's worth having where we have no time for this anytime soon but at some point you know I think talking about you know if conservation subdivisions where you do allow additional density um in lower density areas but you don't allow it to consume the entire um footprint

rural property. um is I think a valuable exercise to talk about um there sort of trendy ways um that you can add new housing without impacting large swaths of undeveloped land. Um and that would allow a couple prop, you know, if you have a very large property, a couple extra units. Um, but you you don't allow them to you get these large roads, these large driveways, these and all of a sudden you're really impacting wildlife corridors or forest blocks or lands.

I mean, that's that's that's a they're probably 50% of the reason that the density is low in some areas. Some of it is also aesthetics. You know, people like to see rural lands. Yep. and uh you increase the density, you don't see that anymore and you don't have it. So, I think it's a good start. The other, you know, things that I found in ADUs that really limits what you can do piece of properties because it's usually on like a half acre, 3/4 acre lot and you're limited on your setbacks of what you can do. That's true. So,

especially if it's detached, even if it's attached, even more limited kind of confines it.

Good start. Um, okay. Parking standards. Um, so this was um so first part we talked about this. There's three parts of proposal here. Um, this first one we talked about a while ago, create a category for office buildings that's similar to shopping centers. Um, there's more text below, but number two and three have updated recently. Um, and those are two other concerns that we hear from people about for parking. That has been a concern. One, the number of parking spaces on a property shall not exceed 110%. You guys have heard me preach about this. I won't repeat the problem there. And then three, build flexibility related to differences in tenants and marketing conditions. Give some greater waiver authority to the board. And reconsider reserve parking requirements, which I'll get into in a minute. Um, so shopping center and my office park is modeled after that. You guys talked about it. you didn't make any changes to it. But basically, this says there's a limited amount of uses. If most of it is general office and you have a few other things, you can qualify for this office park definition. And bada bing, bada boom, that's what you are. As long as you maintain 50% of that in general office. I don't know if 50%'s the right number. I threw it out there, but you guys didn't tell me to change it, so it's still there. Um, [laughter] then, uh, you just have to tell us that, you know, every time you come in for a change in tenant that you are meeting this 50%, that these are your only that you're not exceeding these uses.

Um, and that's it. And otherwise, we don't care. You still have to do your wastewater permitting. That's the state's problem [clears throat] because there will be, you know, if you're changing your tenants, then there's there's a need there. But and your state building and fire safety needs are probably changing, too. But again, that's a state issue. So, you're really comfortable. you you you were both really comfortable with that because I just don't know a lot about commercial property really.

Yeah. I think the only thing and I'll let Zach share any thoughts you might have. I think the only thing you know that I continue to think about is this 50%. A is it too much? B is it hard to keep an eye on the only thing that comes to mind for me? I don't know if you had thoughts. Yeah. Um, did the and I apologize. I usually I'm quicker with my rags and flip to the right page. Um, the 3.5 spaces per 1,000 square feet. Um, is that the same as medical office? It's the same as general, I think.

General office. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I think it's one of those things where I think this might be actually used less so um upfront but maybe expanded upon in the future and I think like give an option for now. [cough] Um, and I think like Kathy, if that 50% is, you know, too high, too low, just right, we'll figure it out. That's in 10, right?

Table in 10. It's 101. I can just do it.

Hey, look, lighting standards. Sorry, not funny. Aha, here we go. Why are they not in alphabetical order, by the way? Office general three and a half. Um, so there is some incentive. Um, it does reduce parking, but that's sort of part of the goal of this anyway. Um, and it's been my experience that people who have medical office, they're going to put more in anyway. They want it. They'll do it themselves. They don't need us to tell them to.

People with medical office do not like to be underparked. But for all those other things, most of those are under that three and a half. That would be allowed. Personal services too. So that's why I chose three and a half because with the exception of medical office, um most of those other ones that would be in allowed use are under. Interesting. It's interesting. Yeah. I don't know who came up with all this crazy stuff. Yeah. Really? I was just admiring the requirement for crematorium. Me too. [laughter] Two as opposed to

I've never thought of a crematorium as having treatment stations. [laughter] Is that what it said? It's copied from the like personal service. Guess it is a personal service. It's a very personal service. Office treatment station. It's the exact same as personal or business service. So that they call it a treatment. It was kind of weird. [laughter] I guess it's it's perfect. [clears throat] But anyway, looks good to me. We're going to move on from that. Yeah, let's [laughter] go. I like the radio and TV studio. Get two spaces per employee. [laughter]

How many cars do they need? [clears throat] Uh, two. Yeah, two per. That is crazy. [laughter] Do people take two cars to work? Well, maybe they have, I don't know, visitors. Maybe they have their TV van and their personal car. They have to have both spaces to get to and from. I at some point we'll do a full overhaul of this, but not [clears throat] in daylight hours. [snorts] Half enough. Um, we could have a whole conversation about this, I'm sure. Um, okay. [clears throat] Yep.

So, moving on to new stuff. Excessive parking. So, we talked about this. So, the issue with the excessive parking is especially if you are and um I in full disclosure uh Zach was on vacation when I wrote this. He's probably looking at it now for the first time and he's going to be like, "What have you done?" Uh cuz he uses this much more than I do. Um and I put my guilty little hands in it. Um but here's my first crack at it. Um so I'll let Zach weigh in. Um, so excessive parking. So I added this new section. Um, I called it excessive parking. Um, so it had been that you no matter how many spaces you had, you couldn't have more than 110%. So as I said, especially with small numbers, this is really a problem. If you were required to have 10, you have 12, you're out of compliance. You are in violation for having two extra parking spaces. Um, so I tried to scale it. Okay.

Mhm. Because we also don't want I mean I know the reason they did this [clears throat] if we don't want people having huge parking lots. We don't want the next and I'm not saying it's Shaw's fault. I know I keep picking on them. I always pick on shots because it's such a huge parking lot. It is empty. was there right before Thanksgiving busiest day of the year wasn't even 70% full crazy busy there but it's so empty so [clears throat] I'm sorry Shaws so part of it's used as a commuter parking lot you know people like officially unofficially I've used it several times where I leave my car there and I get picked up and my car is there all day they should officially make it that way and at least at least it's used go there

food trucks a food truck could go there too coffee food trucks trucks for the commuters. Yeah, that'd be ideal.

Um, but you know, so you don't want a ton of excess for a really large lot because then it gets really, really large. So, I tried to scale it. I worked out some numbers in my head. I don't know if they're perfect, but I did a lot of testing in an Excel sheet to see what it actually looks like. Um, and this is sort of where I settled. So, if you have less than 25 required parking spaces, you can have up to double of what's required without an issue. Um, so that gives you flex. This is not just about what you build off the bat. It's also as you change tenency without having a problem. So if you're required to have 15, um, you're required one day to have 25 and all of a sudden you have a less intensive use and you go down to 15. Hey, technically you're still allowed 30. You're in compliance. Um, so up to twice that. And the next bracket I did was 26 to 99 because I like nice round numbers. Um, there's really no other reason for that number. Um, and most parking spaces, most parking lots are under 100 spaces. This is going to capture the majority of our [clears throat] lots. Um, and that reduced by a lot, you know, 130%. but it's still more generous than that 110% that we were allowing before. Um, but even in the worst case scenario, we're not really excessively overp parking anywhere. Um, and thenund 100 plus um 115% of what's required. Um, I almost didn't change it at all. I don't really have strong feelings about this one at all, but Zach might know more than I do if he's ever seen issues with people with a lot that big who feel like there's

concerns. Um, but the big issue is with small lots for sure, but have you seen issues with larger lots? No, I haven't seen too many larger lots. Um Costco stands out, but they are sort of an out an outstanding parking need. Um yeah, generally when this comes up is honestly lots under 30 spaces because they don't have much parking garage. Is that a whole other thing? Parking garages. This is any parking count. So you could do park the garage. You could.

Is Costco at their 110? Do they max it out? Does that come up? That is a legacy parking lot that I don't know. Okay. Much about other than that, they have a ton of parking and they have parking across the road. So, the golden when did when did Costco get that? 30 years ago. 31 now. [clears throat] Any thoughts? Back. Yeah, that's an excellent question. [clears throat]

Seems like it will be straightforward to apply. Um, you can be honest, by the way. Yeah. I mean, I think um I'm just trying to think of the the parking lot sizes I've written in staff notes. Like the parking lot has X spaces. What's the most common number? Um for some reason like 30 something stands out to me. Um so the 25 threshold, I just wonder if that might be make that bigger. Yeah. Um, but then would you keep it at 200%? So then 30 could be 60. Yeah. Then you know maybe the calculation gets a little larger. But

maybe that's fine because 30 still does get a bump over what's allowed today.

Well, we're you you've given us a general plus. So we'll noodle on this if we have anything that we think needs changing after. Just thinking of a small lot, 25 cars, and all of a sudden now you can have 50 cars. I don't know. That seems like a lot. You were saying 10 cars, you know, two, then all of a sudden you're over if you do add another one. But 10 to 20, you're doubling it. It's a lot. Have you seen that where you had small lots where they really wanted to double it? I can see like a a two or three car parking lot, but that's unusual.

I think the bigger problem is is not in that they want to build too much. It's it's if they change their their their use or their or their tenant and then all of a sudden their number changes and the numbers are so you saw the table, they're so weird. You go from all over the place, a crematorium to to a radio studio with one employee. Um, you know, you could have two radio studio studio employees in a 4,000 foot building. They're only going to need four parking spaces.

Yeah. I can think of is the one by the high school. Oh, where I mean maybe one or two people there. Yes. But you can park at least 10 12 people there. Always. [laughter] Yeah. Yes. So, so on that they'd be, you know, in violation could be. Um, lots of flexibility. That's always good.

But I but but in new construction, yeah, that does that could present a problem because you're right. if if if they know they only need um 25 spaces and uh or 24 spaces and they want to put 48 on. It's a lot of over parking. I mean, also just for new construction that they're going to have to likely get a state storm water permit um if it's new commercial. um just based on new impervious. So they're sort of incentivized to keep their impervious down

um just based on treating that. You know, legacy projects, they're not really incentivized to do much if they're under a certain acreage right now. So um yeah, I think it's really just that balance, but also the lot coverage in these districts where commercial properties are is quite high. So that's usually not a concern. Nobody likes to spend more money than we have to. You want us to move forward for now? Yeah. I think you got it though.

If we have any changes, we'll maybe it's just another one of those things we just keep an eye on. Bring it back. Um uh reserved parking. Uh oh. So, is this what it says now or is this I fixed it? Okay, we'll bring that to you next time. It's one more thing we still have to work on. Okay. Um, I guess I didn't get to this one. Um, so is this how it reads now? This is the current text. Yeah.

I don't know why it's cut off, though. Okay. That kind of ended funny. It does end funny. I don't know why. Okay, we're we're going to reserve the reserved parking. While you noodle on that, just know that I, as the administrative officer, have never required that the reserved parking be built, but it's a lot of power that I have. [laughter] Um,

keep that in mind. You might be dying to know. Yeah. So, just reserve parking just so you know what the the issue is real quick. Um, you have to build at least twothirds of your requirement. You have to build it and you have to reserve land for the rest of it. Um, you have to show that it can be built. Um, and everybody is subject to that. I'll give you the rec center for example. Um, the rec center I believe hit exactly 2/3. They didn't build a space over. Um, of the number of their required parking spaces, but they also had to demonstrate that they can build the other full third of the number of spaces. Um so they had to reserve some land for that. Um and that is the case across the board. Um

and has that parking lot ever been full? Probably on the craft fair day. Maybe on craft fair day. Um that's unusual though. Do they can they use that reserve space for an expansion? Um let's say they building pull in at the rec center. No, they they what they they would need even more parking spaces at that point. They would need more parking and more reserved parking spaces. Interesting. But don't they have a kind of a master plan where they have a place where they're going to put a pool? I don't know if they publicly have a master plan. An approved

approved plans are for what's out there. Yeah, I don't believe that they've because during one of the walkthroughs they they kind said, you know, this area is kind of designated for a future pool. Yeah, I think that they have some ideas. They have some Okay. They've of course thought it out so that it's possible, but I don't believe there's any recorded or approved phase two or Okay. Um but yeah, which you've seen. [laughter] I that that's public. Yeah.

Um actually I haven't seen anything. Um but yeah, that would require more parking spaces, more reserved parking under today's regulations.

Um so I obviously haven't proposed a fix here yet, but um it's it's tough. Um, it's great that you don't have to build all of it and you only have to build two/3s, but you know, is the reservation of the rest of it? I don't know. We'll talk about it. Maybe you think it's a great idea. Um, I just think part the real problem is that parking is so hard to rightize. Um, you know, a retail use that's something like a very popular Trader Joe's is going to have different parking needs than a retail use for um maybe a woman's specialty boutique, the same square footage. Um, so it's really hard to write parking. Like with driverless cars, you know, cuz they have those now in California, like taxis, like if you could have a car drop you off, go back to your house, and then come pick you up. I I just wonder how transportation is going to if transportation is going to shift dramatically in the next 20, 30 years. I'm just wondering. I don't know. But

yes, but we don't know how. But we don't know how. So, I'm I'm just wondering if parking spaces, you know, if that's like a thing of the past to some degree or this ne, you know, not yet. Not yet. I've been in one of those cars, by the way, if you ever want to see my video. Oh, those driverless cars. Yeah. Did you see the one in the news? Did you see the one on the news tonight? This where this Did it crash? No. There was a a a police scene. All the cars are the police cars were flashing their lights. They had taken out uh the suspect and was throwing him on the ground and this driverless car came through here and kind of weaved itself and came very close to the person that was on the ground. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. My ride was all of like three miles, so I was fine with it. But [laughter] it was cool. Wow. That was awesome. There's a story that the guy going around the airport the driver of his car just kept going in circles and wouldn't let him off. Oh my gosh. [laughter] Right. I heard about that where that one buy a ticket and the policeman didn't know who to give it to [laughter] I didn't have to tip them just just curious just we're not there yet. All right, esco requirements. I think we're near the end. I think we're good. I'm good with Try not to keep you guys as late. Oh goodness.

Uh good. Okay, we're done. Yeah, I'm [laughter] good too now. I am. I think we talked about it last time and I don't think I've changed anything. So, good. Um, [clears throat] that's happy. We're done. How about that? 20,000. Oh, and there's the map. Um, so I'm going to actually Hard to read map. Um, so with that in mind, um, I do want to talk to you guys about some calendar things. Is that okay? Yep. Sure. Sure. So, we'll just uh skip over elms. Think skip over the end. That was like training. Okay. So, we'll skip

7:30 and you guys flew through everything. Move the minutes and then we'll get to everything. We on track. Okay. So, we need I make a motion. I need a second. All in favor? Motion. You know what I was making a motion about then? [laughter] Yeah. Nice. All right. So, now we need uh other visits. Here we go. You're on.

Okay. Um, so refining our calendar because I want to see how we did with our development ranks and talking about town plan stuff. I spent some time this week with town plan scheduling and I re sort of rethought the approach to land use stuff. Um, we were originally talked about putting some of the geography, one geography per meeting. It felt disjointed to me to do that. Um, so I wanted to propose to you guys this idea of kind of grouping them together by sort of similar types of geography. So you'll see land juice here, sort of the more urban, denser areas. land juice. Here is sort of the um these are the sort of suburban um areas. Going to get big discussions on all of these. And these are sort of the rural slash um they're called right now the lands between sort of transition areas um between them. Um so I've slotted those in. The dates aren't necessarily important um as to the specific dates and some things may move around. you know, parks and wreck may swap with transportation based on when the recreation center is available, for example. But cuz I think we should try to do that over there. Um um

so but let's focus on the beginning part of this. Uh so here we are today. I left these sort of out here because looking to try to wrap these up if we were still far off and still working on a lot of stuff. I didn't Do you want me to make this bigger, Rebecca? I can do that. Sure. I'm the only one squinning. How's that? I don't want to turn my neck. Um,

that's good. Um, I didn't want to Why is this There we go. Um, I think there's some advantage to trying to wrap this up fully as fast as we can before we get into the real meat of the town plan. Mhm.

So, there's some potential, even though I said no January meetings, there's some potential that you have like a 10-minute meeting if you're interested on the 6th just to warn a public hearing for February on these development rags. So, all you'd have to do at that meeting, if there's a change to any of the parking stuff we just talked about tonight, but there's very little you have left. um is you would do that warn a public hearing for February and that's basically your only business that night. Um you could do that at the end of January, but then I don't know when we actually talk about it. I don't know when we actually hold that public hearing because that starts to create some issues here

into this schedule. And I'm really hoping that we can have this big kickoff on February 17th. So if you do this big Let me actually move this. If you do this, [cough] um, that works out that you can have a public hearing on the 3 and you could take the 20th off and this is a 10-minute meeting. Would we all have to come to that? Three of you would have to.

Sounds good. So, I thought you not you weren't going to be here on the sixth. I'm not, but Zach will. Zach will Okay. And I'll be here on the seventh. And the seventh. I do. Maybe we can get out of Can we It's our first day. Just wondering. We're just going to be here for 10 minutes. If we If these three are definitely coming. Yeah, I'm good to go. Yeah, I'm good. So, the the one thing that's not in here yet is that one paragraph about the reserve parking.

Yeah. I actually might just skip it because given this time frame now that I'm looking at it, um I don't want to force you into a short conversation. Um that just might get saved for the next update. Is that okay? This doesn't come up too often, does it? [cough] It's used occasionally. Yeah. Uh there's not been a situation [snorts] that I've seen where someone can accommodate the reserved parking in some capacity. Like we won't drop it. It just might have to wait for okay

the next supplement. Um, I just think that if we put this off till the 20th [clears throat] um, I don't know where we have hold the public hearing. Um, without really pushing things back because we don't want to we can't have our kickoff. Uh, oh, I have this on the wrong date. Um, I'll I'll fix that. Town meeting day is actually the third. Yeah.

Um, I'll have to swap those. Um, we don't want our public meeting on the 3rd. We don't want our big we don't want our public hearing on the 3rd. We don't want our big kickoff on the 3. So, that would push our plan kickoff all the way to March 17th. That's a full month. Um, [snorts] [clears throat] so ideally you review and take action on the 6th to warn for February 3rd and you'd have no meeting. Can't have a meeting on the 16th. Uh, you warn the same stuff.

Um, this year [snorts] [clears throat] you could Uh, but I have to ask Zach because I'm not here for that either. Um, actually

I I don't actually know. I don't think you can [clears throat] only because to warn it, we have to have everything ready and I still need to do some work on it. 16th is too too short a turnaround for me. I have to have the report ready. Um, you know, that boring report that goes to the state. I have to have the abuters's notices for the um neighboring towns. I don't think I can have that done by the 16th. Um, but you can have it done by the sixth. Yeah, [clears throat] I've got a couple.

It gives me at least a few more working days. Okay. Um, and if at least three of you can make it, and if for some reason you can't, we could do a phone in. Oh, I I'll come back if someone can't make it. If you, you know, give me enough time as, you know, as long as it's not terrible driving. That's your first day. Is that what you said? Do you typically go late that day? [snorts] No, you just never [clears throat] know. Yeah.

Um but the idea would be to keep it to um you hopefully no changes. Um other than that, that is the highlighted thing for zoning permit required. And then if Zach brings you anything for um the the thresholds for zero the 25 0 25 but I don't anticipate anything like that but that'd be a [clears throat] few minute discussion. You could change it still warn it. Um yeah the third you'll have any public hearing boom we can close the door and it's sent to the slot work. Mhm.

Right there. [clears throat and cough] The other thing I can offer is that um in the next two days I can take a look at this and see what my turnaround time could be and we could explore the 16th, but um I think it's more likely the sixth, but let us know. I mean, I can probably be here for the sixth. I just So I come home anyways. I don't care. So but you only need three of you

be coming in January. Right around that time my first. Yeah. I'm not making any promises. [laughter] I'll come home. Can I just ask about the the categories? So I I'm not clear like when we talk about land use one, will we also be talking about Exodus 1617 and 17? Yep. So that's that's the stuff for land use one. This is the stuff for land use 2. This is the stuff for land use three.

It would make more sense to like have exit exit 16 with like economic development. And I'm wondering if there's a way of like or housing with education, you know, just some way where they intersect with each other. Yeah, I think I put education um with parks and wreck just because these are not big chapters to write. They are not chapters that historically get a lot of people out. Um I know education is going to be really big for you guys at the state house. It's not big in the town plan. Um, right. Is that their own thing?

Right. I'm just don't I I [clears throat] guess I just don't see any correlation between exit 16, exit 17, they're exes, but then seventh corner and the fourth. They just Is there any reason not to try to kind of make them more where they're related to each other in some ways? So those where they cross or there's an intersection with them. Their relationship to me is that these are more urban dense areas. So these are our more core okay areas.

So we you know we might talk about them we'll talk about them individually but these are places where we're seeing our infill our economic development our areas of growth potentially. And so they're themes that will run through all four of those areas. Okay. Um I didn't see that. That makes sense. Yeah. Um and I don't I don't think they're perfect on those other two. There's some that you could and Zach and I talked about it that could kind of go in and out of either, but um you know, people who are going to come talk about the inner bay are going to talk about the bay. Um you know, but Yep. No, that that makes sense. Now,

those are going to be long nights. We might even start them. You know, I might reach once we set the schedule,

you know, we might figure out if either of these could, you know, start a little on the earlier side because I think these will be those are going to be your longest nights. This is these are the areas where we'll get the most people without a doubt. Um there's only so many people who are going to show up and talk about economic development. Um this is a placeholder. We'll talk about this soon because I do want to get these all on your calendars. But as you can see, I envision this as an uh a daytime meeting. Um these are ripe for change. So if you guys are like, "April's absolutely terrible for me, or that's school break, I think it actually is." Um or we're still in session, move that one. Um, but I think incou in order to encourage the business community to come out, we I really want that to be a daytime meeting. We'd still meet that night. Um, and you guys don't all have to come to all of these. Um, but, you know, enough to hear from people. Um,

I'm just wondering if the morning meeting could if it could possibly be on a Monday. Just it's a morning meeting you're talking about because we would be here for that. We could split them. We could be here for that. You know, a morning meeting. Coming back for the meetings unless the driving is really ridiculous. We could do something like that. Um, but again, the idea is to just have something like, you know, we try to spread it out anyway so that people who don't like to drive at night or work second shift [snorts] have some meetings that they can attend during different hours. Yep.

Um, might even consider doing one of these land use sessions on a Saturday. Um, most people do that with town plans. Um, so at some point we'll sit and spend like this will be an agenda item for us. We will talk about we'll devote some real time to this calendar. This is just a very rough draft. So I had an idea of how many weeks we're talking, how many months we're going out. Um, and what's your um, end date? When would you like to have this finished? Earlier than it shows on here. [laughter] But I don't know how far down we're going.

Um, so we are due we we are required to have it approved fully done by March of 2027, but the [clears throat] approval process alone is really time consuming u more than development rigs I think. Um, feels that way anyway. You have to get uh planners advisory committee review. You have to have review by the RBC. You have to have select board hearings. Do you need two? I'm a little out of I haven't done one in eight years.

I thought there are two because of our population, I believe. Okay. Um so there has to be multiple select board public hearings, warned public hearings. Yeah. Um, yeah. No, it looks fine. Um, the CCRPC executive committee gets a vote on this. Um, there's just so much process. This is going to be reviewed against the regional future land use map. Yeah.

Um, and we're going to be one of the first. Um, I don't know what kind of timing that's going to add into this process because don't think we're going to be as consistent as they want us to be. Um, so my original goal had been like July 1st just because that gives us nine months of edits. um public input. Yeah, just the the the the back end of it with the hearings and the writing and the rewriting um map making it takes a lot of time.

Yeah. Um and I wanted to give us a good amount of time for that. That's not going to be possible. We're not going to be done by July 1st. Um so it is what it is. You don't like get in trouble. the lights don't go off if you're not done immediately on time, but it it does impact your ability to collect certain impact fees or to apply for grants. Um, we may be late and we'll just have to be okay with that. Better to get it right than not.

I know this is just rough draft kind of idea. Can you send that to us though? Yeah, I was just thinking about that because then you can if you have specific feedback for me to like I'm going to be changing this as it is because as you can see I've got town meeting day on the wrong one. I must have changed something in here. Um yeah, any other thoughts? You know may change like like Serita had suggested maybe economic development is the Monday for the daytime thing and the Tuesday for the evening writing workshop. Um, the other thing we'll talk about is if you want a subcommittee of editors. Some people really like to get in and words smmith. I don't think it's a good idea to have eight people word smithing. Um, it's a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

We didn't do that last time. You did it. I'm a good reader. Huh? Said I'm a good reader. You are? Sure. I can read after it's done. Do you like to [laughter] right and we did we we did kind of poke on things that didn't sound quite right and grammarly. Yeah. No. And I think it's I think it's fine for everybody to do that, but I think it's good to have a few designated people who with every chapter will like really get in there and and really really read and really edit and really like she would do that. We had a student from high school. I don't know what happened to that program, but we'd have someone there was one student. She loved to do that stuff.

He [laughter] was all about it, huh? He was all about it. Yeah. Yeah. But I, you know, the the the past plan is really well [clears throat] written. I mean, I really like the way it's written. I It just means we'd have to like I think we could use that as a foundation. I don't think people want a whole new plan. I mean, I think they want stuff built in terms of how far we've progressed and, you know, what what we're looking at the future. But it's really well written. I I think so, too. And that's the first thing I said when I I started here. Um, I read the plan and and I had so many compliments for it. I think it's a wonderful plan. It is. Um, but there is still a lot of data that needs to be updated. There's a lot of policy check-ins. Um, you know, that there's some policies in there that I don't think reflects where you still want to be.

Yeah. The land use pieces, they're they're big for a reason. Y um because I think you've been asked a lot of questions about some areas. You've noodled on some areas and we keep kicking the can for good reason. you know, what do you see as the future of exit 17? You had some questions even come up when you were talking about the regional future land use map. You know, do you want residential um housing at exit 16? Um that came up. Um that's that's turning it in. That's a town plan. I mean, it's a zoning issue, but it's a town plan discussion. Um you know, do you see that being more mixed use in the future? Um so those are big. So, even though it's a great plan,

it's been eight years. Yeah. It's time to to talk through some of those things. I think it's a good skeleton, you know. I think we definitely have to build on and some things, you know, maybe don't change at all. I mean, parks and recck chapter may still be super awesome and it's just like little tiny updates. Um, we put that there's this new center and, you know, other things are blah blah blah. Um, there's going to be folks calling for changes to the transportation chapter to focus more on sidewalks and wreck paths. We know that. Um, I don't know that we can deliver the full update that I think a few folks might want, but we got to give it some some eyes.

Um, energy chapter needs some serious data updates, um, housing has new required chapter or new required focus. It's got to do that. So, good bones, but still a lot of work. Yep. Okay. Okay. All good. So, yeah. So, you don't have a meeting in two weeks, right? Correct. Correct. But January 6 hopefully. Hold January 6th. I will email Jordan with a confirmation um [clears throat] for all the January dates. break the phone. Comes quick. [laughter]

Yeah, I know. I did. Just wanted to put that to rest. Um, and I will email this to you guys. Please send back any individual thoughts like anything at all. But we are going to make this an agenda item, too. I think it's a good start. It actually I'll probably put it on for the third after the public hearing and probably just talk through. Okay. Yes. Good. I call it. I make a motion that we adjourn our meeting tonight. Second. Motion.

All in favor? [laughter] I there motion approve 9:35. Thank you. Not really. I got a gift from uh is this from the town of Colchester? Is that what it is? Anybody opening yours? Okay, I open mine. Find out what it is. Little thank you letter.