good evening everyone thank you for coming tonight i apologize for the delay in getting started as from port forum and other venues have discussed we're a little short staffed and we technically don't have a forum for our planning commission meeting but we can talk about this and just a general open conversation and hopefully lock who's traveling from out of state will be back in time for conversations later basically what we wanna do is there are some information brochures on the back there's a summary survey that we ask everybody to fill out if you could and hand in at the end of the meeting kathleen is gonna go through a brief presentation of these three changes we're considering implementing and then we'll open it up to a general conversation preferably about just these three sections that are out here for the time being and then once the conversation has moved through this and we've answered the questions that have come up we can open up to a more broader discussion of zoning and planning commission goals in the long run so i think on that note i'd like to turn it over to kathleen okay thanks mark so as mark said i'm gonna just briefly talk about the sections that the planning commission's been working on and has prepared some changes to so those sections include the flood hazard overlaid district section sixty eight section three hundred and fifty five which is the village commercial zoning district parking in the upper bridge street area section fifty seven which is the sign section directory signs specifically for a railroad street angelina court and then there are a few changes in definitions so why are we making these changes now the planning commission believes that these changes do help residents and businesses in a number of ways for section sixty eight helping streamline the process and clarify the process for development in the special flood hazard area section three hundred and fifty five helps commercial property owners in the upper bridge street block expand or change uses by eliminating the requirement for parking spaces and section fifty seven improves visibility of businesses who are located down a railroad street and juliana court by allowing directory signs at the bridge street intersections so the background for these changes last fall as you probably all know voters defeated the proposed zoning and subdivision regulations oh great welcome those proposed bylaws represented a major set of changes within a unified bylaw and there was general support for certain elements in the proposed bylaws and specifically for these three sections that the planning commission has been working on the last several months therefore the planning commission is poised to move forward but first wants to hear from folks in town about whether you agree that these are changes that should move forward right now so i wanna talk just briefly about the fema flood insurance program this is a part and parcel and important element that richmond has to follow for properties in the floodplain and the flood insurance national flood insurance program provides insurance that isn't covered through standard homeowners insurance this began in one thousand nine hundred and sixty eight by congress and richmond does participate in the national flood insurance program we agree to adopt and enforce the ordinances that meet or exceed the fema requirements to reduce the risk of flooding and richmond has participated since one thousand nine hundred and eighty two in the national flood insurance program when we adopted the flood hazard area development standards and we have adopted the minimum mfip requirements into our zoning regulations richmond has gone beyond the minimum requirements we'll talk about that a little bit more this evening until tropical storm irene we were not aware as were many municipalities that fema requires property owners to apply for local permits for any development which fema includes minor repairs and that's at least what we were told by folks that we worked with at fema and so richmond's regulations were modified to help people through that process we hope to make it less cumbersome fema ultimately reviews and decide whether to approve our proposed bylaw changes and we have to have fema approval for the bylaws to remain in the fema national flood insurance program right now we're in good standing and fema approved our last set of changes which were done in two thousand and nine so just wanna talk about a summary of the major changes for section sixty eight it has it overlay district it does allow for streamline zoning permit process for many repairs whereas the owner needs only to get a zoning permit and expands exemptions from getting a zoning permits at all for low cost repairs lawn and gardens and repairs below five hundred in our proposed bylaws last fall we did use the threshold of one thousand fema instructed us to reduce that to five hundred that's something we can continue to talk about but that was what fema indicated to us our bylaws proposed bylaw changes also eliminate the current requirement that when an area of land development is within one hundred feet of the outside edge of the fema special flood hazard area then the owners have to demonstrate through a jurisdictional determination that the land is not inside the flood plain a lot of people have found that requirement to be onerous and they should be sets of changes would eliminate that requirement and the reason that was enacted in our bylaws was because the current maps that we're using which are the one thousand nine hundred and eighty two maps from fema includes a fair amount of error and so in a real effort to be cautious the planning commission wanted to ensure that properties that even if they were outside the flood plain they were still possibly going to be at risk for flooding that they would fall under the jurisdiction of section sixty eight so we are poised to receive new maps soon we hope from the fema will approve our appeal for new flooding insurance rate maps and as soon as that process has concluded we won't have to use the one thousand nine hundred and eighty two maps anymore so for making repairs in the fema special flood hazard area now there's some new exemptions added so any building contents lawns and gardens mailboxes and newspaper delivery boxes repairs we talked about up to a five hundred in costs any reroofing where the roof line itself isn't being altered and any maintenance of outside areas would all be exempt you wouldn't have to get a zoning permit at all so we have expanded the items that would be allowed through a zoning permit by the administrative officer right now these have had to go through the development review board and this will simplify that process substantially so repairs for any items over five hundred in costs any residential scale playground structures for a single family house or a duplex and any improvements outside of the floodway that don't qualify a substantial improvement and that's fifty of the value and that covers substantial damage as well over a threeyear period so again these are an quite a few changes that would help expedite permitting for folks in a flood plain cause they would only have to get permits from the zoning administrative officer so there are still activities that do have to get approved by the development review board and these are just some new items playground structures for multifamily or non residential uses moved decks porches detached garages and nonconforming structures and uses and within the floodway there are no changes to the items that have to go to drb so we've already talked about how a number of items now will be shifted to the zoning administrative officer the development standards are reduced for those applications and rather than having to provide or meet the development owners that you would for a project that goes to the drb it's a much smaller list of items which are in the bylaws we can talk about those when we finish now one change that was made with the proposed bylaws was that accessory dwellings could be allowed in the flood plain but they would have to be attached to an existing principal structure that is you couldn't add a principal dwelling in an accessory structure and so that change is also included in this set of changes that the planning commission is considering another change that i think will expedite the process as well is that only certain applications will have to be sent to the state agency of natural resources and that will be for new construction substantial improvement or any development in the floodplain right now our bylaws say that any development within or under the jurisdiction of section sixty eight has to go to the agency of natural resources so that's an extra fifteen days to any application so this will help quite a bit the planning commission talked at length about some of the key provisions that are in our current bylaws and that they would like to keep in our bylaws richmond does not allow new residential or non residential principal structures in the flood plain and the planning commission believes this is an important provision and important policy by the town and is important to saving taxpayers and owners a lot of dollars later because inappropriately we've allowed structures to go in the flood plain and then based on our experience with irene the planning commission has convinced that we should continue this policy richmond could certainly simply model or adopt the fema minimum standards and there are a couple of reasons why as we move forward we may wanna keep our standards that are above the fema minimum and that is we're looking at participating in the community rating system which is a fema program whereby by having standards that are beyond the fee fema minimum and by agreeing to do community education and other activities we can have a lower set of insurance rates for residents of richmond so that's something that the town's looking at doing in the near future and then vermont act one hundred and thirty eight is a law pretty sweeping law that was passed a couple of years ago now that relates to improving water quality around the state and there are many incentives within that act to have bylaws that are above the fema minimum so just want people to be aware of that and there've been a shift to talk about the other elements of the proposed changes so as i mentioned in the village commercial zoning district for owners in the upper block and we actually have a list here of the properties that would be affected these parcels would be exempt from providing parking spaces for new land development right now the drb can waive parking requirements but this is a better approach that makes it very clear to those business owners if they want to go to a more intense use on their parcels they wouldn't have to provide parking spaces and so it will certainly help going through the drb process because parking is a problem for businesses in that area so briefly just wanna talk about the signs again the bylaws would allow for directory signs on railroad street angelina court that would abut bridge street and would allow businesses or organizations on those streets to be advertised and we have the prototype right here actually this would meet the standards of that new bylaws section and this came to be due to a court case and through the court case it was determined what the sign would look like in terms of the height and the width and how many panels could be on the sign and it's working well and we think a similar sign would work well on angelina court so that's what's in the bylaws and then they're just a number of new definitions that support the changes that were made that's it for the formal summary of the bylaws so the planning commission the scorn review comments that you make tonight and consider whatever revisions they want before setting a public hearing date and send your comments to me and we'll keep trying to let folks know through front porch forum and other avenues but there is no date for the public hearing and the select board will also have to have a public hearing for any zoning changes in there there's no date set for that hopefully by june that would happen there might be as you know in the fall there was a public vote townwide vote and in talking with the select board on monday night that's something that the select board would certainly be thinking about whether they would like to have a townwide vote for these sets of changes as well so that that discussion will continue with the select board and so with that i think we're ready to open it up open it up folks so i guess we'll start with questions and try to work it through maybe we'll start with the flood hazard and try to address the questions as they come up in the order that kathleen presented the summaries are there any questions or comments about what we're thinking about doing with the flood hazard over district i'm just curious in november when the ability to only have to pay one thousand royalty was it the trigger for replacement or repairs was one thousand i could see the regulation that suggests that it's that you have a scanner that says you can reduce that amount of five hundred to me that's increasing the regulations increasing the cost and the trigger amount for putting a new door on my house or water heater in the basement so that's for more i agree we received letter from mid swanberg with the state is the gentlemen who represents fema for the state in opposition to go through if it's a regulation though shouldn't there be something that says this is the amount there's no regulation if you have a communication that's different than something that is in the regulation they do not have regulations that say this is the dollar amount to trigger it that is a good point if you have it i'd love to see it and perhaps i would love to see it too but the point is that he told us that we would be in violation if we went to one thousand only five hundred would be acceptable to fema by its very nature the flood insurance my experience is it's a big fat scam and it really isn't a lack of matter my family has had flood insurance since one thousand nine hundred and eighty two and every year when they pay the checks payable to the outfit that gets the money the money had to be there we refinanced our house the year before the flood the flood insurance rate went from four hundred a year to two thousand five hundred the next year before they get paid a nickel it was two thousand six hundred and seventy one and now with the condemn property i still have to have flood insurance and this year my bill was three thousand and one and they have not completed anything the flood insurance you have to have it or they foreclose on your mortgage so this is just a big joke we have the need to set of standards and when i sent in the check for it has to be paid a year in advance it's not like something that you can pay on installment i think there's other people in here that pay flood insurance so they're aware of it when kathleen said we participate in the community rating the insurance rates are gonna go down to what it's just like a piece of paper that somebody sends you and said oh no we don't want that number you have to have this number it is an organized program that talks about reducing the rates for nfip that is a program that they have and there's ways that we're looking into participating in that and being an active member and trying to get the lowest rate possible which you clearly higher brought up the example that they're getting astronomical so anything we can do to bring the rates down for you and everybody else is a good thing and if that means that we have to have tighter standards than what the bare minimum fema regulations are and that would put us into this program which would reduce your flood insurance that sounds like the right path to follow which is why we're following it with the guidelines from pretty much the only people that we have experience with which is the folks at the state who represented fema who had given us direct feedback and said this is what's acceptable this is what's not acceptable five hundred is as high as we're going to approve you for so i'll give the floor back to whoever wants it next but that can't be applied right now what can't be the community standard the community standard to lower the rates it can't be applied we don't know enough about it it certainly is an important focus of what we wanna do we have to apply we have certain elements that we would decide it's a point based system we would decide what types of activities we would like to pursue in order to qualify for the community rating system and then we apply to fema and when that chamber law happens and those rates come down and there is another situation that presents itself is the planning commission or the select board going to say look these people comply they did what they were supposed to do pay up cause now i have two lawyers i think it's horrible what you've had to deal with with the flood damage that you've suffered and a lot of other folks have suffered in this room and in this town it's tragic i'm not sure how much here tonight we can do about that or even going forward i think participating in lowering i can't control what the insurance company somebody here has to have teeth the is ineffective they can do absolutely nothing and they've told me that on repeated times banking insurance has no authority over a federal program thank you i certainly sympathize i hope you don't take offense at my chuckling it was sort of an ironic chuckle to the trouble that you had to suffer through yes i wanna follow up on my understanding of what i just heard you've adopted these floodplain regulation since two thousand and nine they are part of our zoning regulations at this time the program that you're talking about point based community point based system has been around for how long why are we just talking about entering into it now and even if we prove these new regulations changes we already eligible to participate in this program with the current regulations which will be more restricted why aren't we in it after i don't know don't have an answer it's a very good question we certainly something we wanna move forward can i answer the question yeah please if you have caroline bounty we've known about this program since we known about the problem with the floodplain maps that were provided to our community in two thousand and nine in two thousand and nine we had documented the regulations that stood for flood planning regulations because we were going proactive rather than reactive we needed to update our regulations when these new maps are going to be put in effect if i'm saying something incorrectly here i hope planning commission members who were in their seats in two thousand and nine could correct me but in two thousand and nine we pushed to have stronger regulations than the known requirements of fema it would make us eligible for this program and we've been told about for years we've never pursued that pursuing it means applying it it's simple as that we had to review the floodplain maps and we were supposed to do that as a community but we were misinformed and we were told that we were only allowed to correct titles on the maps rather than truly look at the base flood elevations and analyze how it affected each property as property owners were you affected or not the planning commission then at that time when adopting these new regulations put in that extra one hundred feet beyond the bfe that was established by fema we're gonna put it out there an extra one hundred feet because we think the maps are wrong in two thousand and nine they thought the one thousand nine hundred and eighty two maps were wrong and they are right and they thought that two thousand and nine maps were wrong so they put this buffer in with put the onus on the practically on her to prove not just the federal government's flood playing bfe for the town of richmond's additional one hundred feet so this program is out there that we could participate in in the last we're now in two thousand and thirteen last i checked so it's not just been a couple of years out it's been many years out that we could participate in this program but have never chosen to do so so to put that carrot in front of us let's have stricter regulations so we can participate in this program we should just be participating now rather than dangling the carrot i'd like to address a couple of issues in the regulations i'm not arguing for new development in the floodplain i have participated in numerous planning commission's hearings i've participated in select board meetings i've gone to work sessions and been told we're not taking comments from the public i've met personally with the chair of the select board gary dresser and kathleen jenn to try and work on these the planning commission sorry kathleen jenn and gary dresser i went to the federal government i got the regulations i understood the regulations and i helped make some of these recommendations that the planning commission did adopt and putting these regulations but they're not listening to everything so my comment is going with these regulations is illusion of making things better for folks who are in the floodplain it's an illusion because you still have regulations in here that i think can be tweaked more and an example is the federal government does not require you to track three years worth of permitting on every single structure in the floodplain meaning if somebody decides to replace three windows in their house that's gonna cost over five hundred they have to get a permit for it and within that year if they keep doing minor repairs to the structure they found that find a rotten porch that they need to fix something things like that the town of richmond having been through numerous zoning administrators has decided that they're gonna attempt to track permits on structures in the flood plan and estimate costs of repairs the federal government does not require that they look at it at a year by year basis where you substantially damage or are you doing substantial improvement to have that fifty threshold that is an excellent point that is something where richmond has gone beyond the standards the thought behind that was that first of all the definition for substantial development is it's substantial damage or substantial improvements all right it is fifty of the net value of the home correct the net value of the structure okay so if you were doing something in the course of three years of investing fifty of the worth of your building your home in upgrading the planning commission thought then that you should put the efforts into floodproofing that home too which is the whole concept behind substantial development can you explain what flood proofing of structure would be and can i give you an example this is how the planning commission didn't think through the process as far as its zoning minister first of all you have to make sure all the zoning administrator before you have practiced properly second of all you have a property that's in the floodplain that's owned by one owner that might just do repairs to windows and door that then sells the property to another property owner the third year out it's actually a totally different property owner then decides that they want to repair their furnace that just got in in year three you're going to make them flood proof their home potentially you bring up a good point i mean that can happen for six months may i finish in year three you're going to require them to flood proof their home and if i asked you right now as a planning commission member i'll bet money on this table that you don't know what that means for them to have the flood proof their home is a considerable investment i know no what does it mean cause the community needs to know that by you tracking their activities for three years on the third year they might not be able to repair their furnace without floodproofing their home and that's a lot of money that could need elevating their structure their first floor of their structure to be one foot above a bfe that's pretty significant for anybody in the floodplain and i want everybody in this room to know and everybody on the videos that i do not own my primary residence is not in the flood plain i am here speaking on behalf of any flood victim or future flood victim or future floodplain individual that does not comprehend eighteen page section that just refers to them and they've gotta help the latest zoning administrator comprehends that eighteen page section as well so there's a couple more tweaks that need to be done to this floodplain section before it should be put back out to vote because it's not good enough yet i'm not saying it's not i appreciate that and you brought up the certain point that three year window is an acceptable the last question i have for your emergency repairs is there anywhere in the floodplain regulations that discusses emergency repairs because you had to adopt from zoning for when a natural disaster actually occurred you had to hurry to the select board to get into zoning adopted emergency repairs could address emergency repairs that's another excellent point thank you for that that's a great idea there's something that could easily be slipped into it didn't come up before i wish somebody had brought it up when we were working on this i think we would all agree that i have i'm sorry i didn't hear it cara i'm not speaking now i've heard it i think we have all heard it it's an excellent idea it seems like i requested kathleen asked that i put things in writing i have put things in writing before there've been notes from happening to the planning commission about numerous areas of this section that could be tweaked i asked her to pull that back up and provide it back to you so that prior to this going to a vote those areas are addressed emergency repairs tracking and there's multiple other things along with i would like to see the one thousand repair you can't get anything done for five hundred you cannot i really truly believe that at the state level somebody spoke to somebody at the fema level and this five hundred number got passed out there there are towns that don't make the property owners get a permit for repairs and there's not a town in the whole nation that fema has gone after or has revoked their mfip status for not requiring repair permits being issued if you can find that out if the federal government has gone for one town and broke their mfip status i would eat my words are you suggesting we ignore the fema standards there is no fema standard waiver of repair fees there's no fees for permits there's no documentation that fema says that they require a permit correct they require permit for repairs kathleen just said that require permits for anything so how would we even put in the five hundred i think it's a number that somebody said we're not gonna fight you with can put in five hundred or less but i really think in today's day and age one thousand is a realistic number for somebody to be able to do some kind of repairs or proxy and then in the city of berry was allowed by fema for use the five hundred threshold and that's what fema has indicated to us that we should use but it's up to but there is no federal government regulation with the dollar amount on it that's just somebody saying let's just pick a number so i said richmond pick one thousand i pick one thousand why not take so you wanna waive repairs completely waiver perfect apartment for repairs to your store i'm not saying that i'm asking the question i'm not sure but i'm asking the question and how do we determine that we determine that by what we hear from the fema representatives with is the folks at the state who review our plans on behalf of fema and approve them we approve them by town these are town bylaws these are town bylaws but whether or not we're in compliance with fema standards is not determined by us it is determined by folks at the state so my question to you guys to find out is have they ever involved mfip status for a town that did not issue permits for repairs because that's all we're talking i just think people would have a house need to be able to do repairs to their structure i'm not talking substantial improvement and i'm not talking substantial damage i'm talking everyday repairs everyday repairs is permitless could you reiterate the three points that you make sure i have them in terms of here's the five hundred repair there's the longitudinal tracking and the third emergency repairs separate apart from the five hundred correct your furnace blows in the middle of the winter do you just call the repair guy to have him come and bring you a new one or do you have to go get a permit town office and wait now roofs are totally separate and i'm glad richmond builtin the federal government regulations and the federal government is who says you don't need to get a permit to repair or replace your existing roof that's one of the things that the planning commission did listen to me on there's a couple of other things and we brought the word that word snapped and i was able to prove it to the planning commission so they built it in so thank you i appreciate some of the changes and thank you name's robert allen i live with we went through the flood two things we're talking about the town putting more regulations in place for the floodplain i would just say that because of the community rating system i would think that you would like to focus on their points for any of those substantial changes those are what they call above and beyond changes because that's the thing that's gonna benefit us i have read the community rating system book sort of but there's specific points that they rate you on so if you're going to do things beyond what you have to do make sure they're for that i don't know about the threeyear thing that's news to me that that i didn't read that regulation but i would just encourage you to think about the one thing that's gonna benefit people in the floodplain is reducing the flood insurance that program's supposed to be able to reduce flood insurance up to fifty the way i read the other thing is none of this stuff is cast in stone if you pass what you have right now and people go well five hundred isn't a reasonable amount that doesn't mean it can't be changed but what i will tell you to save this let's not argue about it for three years i have things i have to do to my house get something that's better than what we have because what we have is as restrictive as can be we're talking about kind of minor changes to it and really some good points that they give it's not the community rating system to be three years out on this why do it that's not beneficial to anybody but if it does then you consider it but what i wouldn't wanna see here is let's drag this out for three or four more years this would be a really good thing because i'm one of the people that has to deal with it thank you jennifer van town manager suggest that in terms of the substantial improvement threshold that there could be mitigated by some sorts of discretion at the board level for the drb where instead of the regulations just automatically triggers it maybe there's a waiver process where somebody could take a look at it and say well this home had twenty windows custom made maybe they shouldn't have to flood proof just for that although if somebody was adding on a third story or expanding certain amount that somebody could say well this was what we had in mind good point and you'd be on previous years well it would essentially be within that threeyear window you're looking at dollar figures only there could be at the board's discretion where they can take a look at it and say whether they felt the improvements really a substantial alteration or whether they were just expensive improvements on a low cost house jeff can you describe a variance process i mean is there any precedent for that that you know of and improve on i do have i think he talked about it in the waiver as opposed to a statutory defined variance we could call it a waiver from that position a section of a essentially homeowner could say what i did in my house doesn't trigger a flood proofing that's an interesting point i'm not devil's advocate but how would that work i mean this scenario of some new buyer in year three and in the first two years that they're tracking the other previous owner has done some repairs and it triggers this substantial improvement dollar amount and then the development review board has to go back and analyze what exactly the nature of the improvements were and whether or not it was something that triggers oh well this was just a flake this was just an expensive granite countertop do you understand what i'm saying how would the developer or your board actually split those hairs to say well no this dollar amount of these dollars actually triggered that you have to do these flood maybe they probably you're looking at whatever was having to happen in year three and by then didn't deem whether that's significant or critical and then just wave whatever happened before i mean that it seems kind of a little loosey goosey potentially and that then you're left having to come up with a whole list of other things that are the only time the drb grants a waiver it's a little loosey goosey there's no doubt about that but we have to have some faith in the judgment of the drb they grant a lot of waivers i think you're gonna start playing with the definition of substantial improvement or substantial damage and that is truly information that's more defined by the federal government than a local governments and i even recommend in your definition area where you talk about substantial damage whereas talk about fifty of fair market value and then later on in section six thousand eight hundred and sixteen you actually talked about that it could be fair market value by an independent appraiser or tax assessed value that tax assessed value needs to be part of your definition for substantial damage could you repeat that again you know how we we just want to send an email it sounds like a very clear no it's not it's very basic right i know in your definitions how you calculate substantial damage where substantial improvement is what your zoning administrator is gonna determine whether it triggers going to a drb or not yes okay in your definitions that has to be clearly defined how to do that calculation so any new zoning administrator and the recommendation you're having to change what is defined now you can only have it defined as fair market value when it's fair market value or tax assessed value because nobody wants us to have to spend four hundred to have their house appraised to know that they're spending twenty thousand per repair that's only a certain percentage of their post structural value and that comes into play your tracking and jeff's idea of waiving certain improvements that would be a whole nightmare for you because you'd have to list what improvements are that exempt from this calculation and it would become very looseygoosey the better avenue to take is stop tracking three years federal government doesn't require you to track three years it saves the property owner a lot of nightmare it saves the zoning administrator a lot of nightmare and it stops having you having to worry about a waiver of what's substantial improvement i don't get it can i ask angela and carrie so what you're saying is as opposed to having the drb with some latitude you'd prefer to have it in the regulations clarified in the regulations the drb doesn't have latitude but which i assume that jeff was saying is with the waivers there would be some latitude we're arguing that we don't have latitude on waiving a five hundred repair when it comes anywhere near substantial damage or substantial improvement that is truly federal government regulations and the drp will not have the ability to waive that calculation i think that might be imposed by fema far before five hundred because they really care about substantial damage when a flood has occurred that you have to repair to protect yourself from flood so carrie you're articulating that the waiver route is unacceptable i don't think it's gonna be realistic thank you i agree by the way thank you june hesting i will have probably a follow up question but will you talk a little bit about your process of determining the three years for the fifty of substantial damage that's funny i was about to say that before i called on you but our process for going to three years for that and i will tell you that i was in favor of it was that development in the flood plain is an expensive proposition for our community and for people in general the less intensive development in the flood plain the less added costs are gonna be the next natural disaster that happens so if it's a little bit harder to continue to massively invest in properties in the flood plain i'm not saying not maintaining i'm not saying not improving i'm talking about adding extra rooms and third floors and all these other things that are going to add costs the next time irene hits and we end up having to pay i know they say the national flood insurance program covers those costs but in reality they don't the federal government has to pitch in money in emergency funding to deal with the costs that are associated with heavy flooding and that is a real societal cost and that's why we went to three years can i explain one thing the properties in the floodplain and i'm gonna speak as a richmond lister right now in the sense of property values property values for the town of richmond located in the flood plain are not high end property values the neighborhoods are not high end value neighborhoods so repair work in those neighborhoods tends to get closer to a substantial damage number than say your higher end neighborhoods and i'll use south gray stone as examples those property values have structured themselves they're at a higher level so if you had to do a major repair or major improvements to those structures you wouldn't hit your fifty number but you take a one hundred thousand structure that has had flood damage in year one and just wants to then reside in year three and that's a good point but i'm personally kind of glad to hear that buildings in the flood plain aren't on the higher end market value and i think we'd like to keep em that way correct and i don't believe based on our historical pattern that you are going to have because we we'd like to encourage less we're not having any new development in the flood plain we're not encouraging any new development in the flood plain so all of our flood plain regulations aside from development need to be very careful in realizing the impact you have on those property owners just to let you know as far as bio spill in the state of vermont only three of them had closings only three have occurred i participated in one of them and there is still extra funding available for more properties to be bought out so if anybody in this community would consider being bought out and would like to be because they've had more than two flood events or more think about it because i'm just putting it out there that's great news that i know you wanna stop development in the flood plain i really think that you are going to encourage less people to maintain their properties by overregulating them and overregulating by threeyear tracking thank you i'm marcy harnett and i would just like to thank the chair for his comments about the public policy considerations regarding a threeyear period and just generally improving properties in the flood zone i agree with you that i think from a public policy perspective and cost to the public we should be cautious about regulations that would be relaxed for improvements significant improvements whatever you wanna call them to properties in the flood zone thank you and i think jeff's addition of the concept of availability of a waiver for previous if the immediate expense is something more urgent is a great concept that we can incorporate that helps create that balance i would like to second marcy's appreciation for the efforts that you put in and your transparency to the thought process i like hearing any time excuse me you're trying to stop this development in the flood plain and reduce it but the one thing i find notable and carol i'm sorry i forgot your name cara cara pointed out that basically the people historically that have been living near the flood plain don't really do this go drive around out by the river it's easy you don't have to look far you don't have to go very far you don't find any really great homes there i challenge you to find them come to think of it i'm sure you will so you're curing a problem that probably doesn't exist show me where it exists doesn't happen just thought i'd point that out i was thinking about it then it doesn't have any harm in being in place can i ask you one question mark this threeyear tracking exists now can i ask you if all the permits issued for the iou flood damage has a dollar value attached to it and you would be able to identify each permits dollar amount right now you see the permits more than i do as a lister for each actually we do have that information in every zoning permit file and for irene they're also in the notebook so they're in multiple places so in the zoning files right now for all the permits that were issued for irene we would know the contractors estimated price and actual price of repair i don't believe that's a correct statement because i've gone through those zoning files you might be right you gotta think it's a good faith effort i mean that was a pretty crazy no it's a requirement by your current regulations that i'd like you to remove because you don't even go by it maybe we should work harder at going by it well that's what fema fema requires us to track that information it's your regulations that requires you to do it for three years and if you pulled your files right now they don't even have what happened in irene in them but for each permit that's the goal of tracking information we do require estimates and if there were volunteer activities provided and the zoning administrator tried to do the best possible with irene there but the goal has been to get estimates for every permit that was granted stephanie douglas hughes i live next door to and my house was flooded and i just wanna say of course we need to be cautious and we need to think ahead we do need to prepared if this ever happened again but it was ninety years ago it happened and my house has been there a long time and i do intend to give it a lot of care over the years that i live there which hopefully are many and i just wanna have you think about that and put it in some perspective that i'm imagining that when you live in a flood plain that has never destroyed homes that has not been an issue before not for a long time and i just want you to think about that too any other marcy i'd like to come back to this community rating issue and say that my recollection is that in two thousand and nine when the planning commission adopted the last set of regulations i was on the planning commission at the time we were very definitely aware of the community rating program and we looked at it some and felt that at least at that time and this of course was preirene that it would take a lot of work to be part of the community rating system maybe the system has changed since two thousand and nine i don't know maybe others lou or gary who were on the planning commission may have some recollection of that but i'd love it if somebody jeff or kathleen and mark could kind of articulate some of the requirements of being part of that program because my sense was it's not just an application you've gotta do work you've gotta do you have to take steps to try to minimize future damage to properties in the flood zone by enacting stricter regulations or whatever i don't know community outreach education there's all sorts of different and we looked at it briefly too although certainly it wasn't our intention when we were writing these regs to apply at the same time for this bypass but it was certainly a picture that we discussed and it has a whole series of different things and maybe that would be a great opportunity for a kind of a subcommunity that the planning commission and the select board or somebody could put together and investigate it further with folks who are very knowledgeable about the flood plain regulations i think that could be a very interesting thing to find out just the bare minimum what is we need to satisfy this improved rating system and i still would argue in some cases for things like the threeyear window just for the general good sense of the threeyear window but also then look for targeted ways at what accomplishments we need to achieve to actually qualify for this program and it would be quite an undertaking i don't know if it's something that this the planning commission intends to do immediately in and of ourselves but it certainly would be exciting if we could get a group of people who could delve into it further any other questions about flood plain yes i have one it's in regards to what you just said you put some guidelines for what you want from people do you have a way to tell people i thought about this doing some of this i have no idea how to do it i've read the thing this whole point system if you do this you get this you do that you get that so you really wanna pick and choose what you've done already or done so i don't know what you people would have in mind from a committee well rather than doing it in the select board and planning commission's blocks of time perhaps together with the select board we can nominate a group of people who are welleducated who are informed about these regulations and plans and then build towards them i think that would be very exciting and after we begin and then we could come back and revisit this i mean first of all i think what our main goal here is tonight is to take some very good points that have come up and consider them in the brief time that we have before we actually move this on to the select board for approval but what we have right now is really really bad as you've already stated and just because we change it doesn't mean that whatever we change it into is going to be locked down that's not the way it's gonna be if we change it and make things immediately better in the next two months where people are putting in swing sets in their backyards then that's great and then this committee gets together and makes some more points learn some more stuff takes more valuable input from everybody and then we can maybe make some additional tweaks to this i don't think that what we have here proposed is contradictory to where we're headed we may not be where we're headed but it's a step in the right direction in a lot of ways and more importantly is away from what we have now which is our goal i think we can look at the issue of the community rating system again we did we have a couple of times and i think as mark said we determined there was not an insignificant substantial amount of work that we'd like to work toward but given everything else we were working on it wasn't something we could so we could discuss it again and figure out an easier way to do it with perhaps public involvement or subcommitte that kind of thing any other questions about the flood plain thoughts yes jane just one comment to hesting i hear what you're saying care about the fifty over three years but whether you live in a flood plain or you live in south view fifty is fifty it's relative to whatever you can afford to buy so if you have a one hundred and fifty thousand house you're gonna do seventy five thousand of repairs in three years even if you live in south view that's a lot of money so we're talking about such a small percentage of homeowners that would even be able to do that spend twenty five thousand a year in upgrades or improvements over a threeyear period that i think we need to keep that in perspective right but my comment wasn't about my comment is that third year they've already done that amount of money worth of improvements and then by the way you might've done them all wrong or should have changed them all the planning should have happened in year one not year three for flood proofing if you're gonna elevate a structure if you're gonna put a new foundation under it if you're gonna relocate where the utilities are they were in the basement and now they're coming up to the first floor all of that planning should have occurred in year one not in year three so year three when they just need to replace the furnace you are going to tell em no not until they elevate their structure and not until they relocate their utilities so my point is this backwards planning and we're talking about versus no planning which is one year and you start all over again so at least we're trying to go somewhere well do the one year in that one year and then go back to forty improvements every year and potentially massive development or improvement of structures in the flood plain which is what i was saying i was opposed to and going to the whole thing of it's this whole thing about the fema funding and homes that are getting damaged in the flood plain that's only coming out of their own flood insurance that they've paid for just to let you know and fip flood insurance program the funding for that comes from people who are in the flood plain who are paying for that insurance and so when those repairs when those flood damage claims go through they're taking it out of that insurance pool that they've been paying into that's where that money comes from is folks who aren't playing with flood insurance who are outside the flood plain who when they get flooded and fema cuts them checks from that insurance pool which happened within five days of irene irene people who were not part of the nfip program were cut checks for thirty thousand two hundred and people who were yes had insurance didn't get checks for up to six months later i'm sorry i can't fix the nfip payment program yes but you're requiring people in the flood plain to go beyond nfip regulations and harming them in possibly year three they can do repairs they can't do in year three that's my point well i think jeff brought up an excellent and around if those repairs were actually required in year three that there would be a we could incorporate something that wouldn't be in violation of fema and allow a waiver that would allow repairs in year three not to trigger this program if the repairs in year three are critical as interpreted and deemed by the drb if they're in violation of fema they're in violation of richmond regulations yes i know that marcy i think it's up to landowners to understand the flood plain regulations here and to understand the risk that they're taking if they make substantial if they make large dollar amounts of improvements in one year and then again in the next year that maybe in the third year if something happens that they may have an issue and i really think at some point you have to hold land owners responsible for understanding if they live in the flood zone there are risks and they need to be willing to accept harlan stockwell i do live in the flood plain i did lose my basement and my neighbor lost hers when i went to get the paperwork done i told them how much i spent on my basement they did not like the amount i told them they wanted to know how much labor i spent when i did it myself with my brother's help they wanted to know how much it would have cost to have it done or how much labor i put and they wanted me to put a dollar value on my labor so if you're tracking for three years i'm screwed because they made me do some stuff that i didn't pay for labor i got materials at a decent price cause my brother could get em and they just didn't like the answers i gave em i gave em the honest the value that i paid for the blocking and the cement and we were also told i live on the street and my neighbor's next to me we couldn't raise our houses any higher than the original basement and my neighbor had to put four walls on there and we were told we could only go as high as what our original basement was and we wanted to put it higher you mean you wanted to flood proof your home and she wanted to raise it up a little bit higher and someone told you you couldn't we were told we had to go the same height the basement was when the flood hit was that the nfip insurance or was that something else cause that sounds crazy the town told us this i went through hell with the town right from day one with this mess i was told i couldn't even put a basement wall back under my basement until i had a permit well we certainly don't want that and you know when in emergency and i think the points brought up about some sort of but they wanted prices that weren't fair what i paid even the prices i paid they did not like that well i can see that as an issue just because there are certain costs associated with something if you can do it for a lot cheaper i mean that's great but it's still a fundamental value cost that you're adding to the property and i have to imagine that that's what that interpretation was based on is that even though it only cost you ten thousand you did fifty thousand worth of work which is good for you because you're a capable and handy guy who can do it on the low but you're still adding fifty thousand worth of value or repairs to your home so it came out economically good for you but those values are still those values you're not adding to that i didn't add any value i fixed my basement wall so my house wouldn't fall that's right and so it went on the permit as part of the permit process where everybody's trying their best to report the cost which is cara you were concerned that that wasn't happening it sounds like whoever was processing that was trying to get an actual cost reported that reflected the actual yeah so now if i wanna put a refrigerator and a stove in my house i'm screwed not under the new regs cause they're furniture and you can do that if you go ahead and approve these regs if you don't fight them and push them through i'm not saying they're perfect but they're better than what we have cause right now you do have to get a permit i think right now no okay good you need no permit for contents under current regulations under future regulations under any regulations you need no permit for contents you do not need to get a permit to bring a new bed to your mom awesome and it's the bylaws that specify that you're supposed to get an estimate from an outside contractor which is probably why the zoning administrator you are upset because of the value and we did clearly i know we clearly defined the contents to make sure that that type of thing was and you'll see that's one of the definitions we're having so forgive me if i misspoke by saying otherwise but the reason why we put that to help define what was exempt property anne june i'd like to address your added value to a property there are certain things that add value to a property and there's other maintenance repair work that does not add value if you replace your roof on your home it doesn't add a value as far as you're tax value because as soon as you have a roof anyhow unless you go from a shingled roof to a standing seam roof so adding value to a property versus just maintain a property is what's key and i think it's very important fixing your foundation it's only adding a postvalue it's not adding a value because you originally had a foundation and harlan speaks clearly to my biggest concern with any regulations that they be clear and precise and not have a bunch of wavery options because what's good for one neighbor should be good for the next neighbor and that concerns me that different zoning administrators could interpret the language differently so that's why i want tax assessed value put in there as opposed fair market value that was an excellent point thank you for that any other questions about flood plain we've got a couple more and then i did wanna leave time to open it up to other roles that the planning commission may wanna focus on yes the other sections any questions going going gone to village parking requirements any thoughts or questions about what we're proposing in waiving the parking requirements for businesses just on the upper block heidi i'm the chair of the economic development committee i just wanna emphasize we are the ones that actually brought this before the planning commission and that's why you're seeing this on this document the thing that we noticed in the planning and zoning bylaws is that you are required to have certain amount of parking spaces on bridge street and when reviewing bridge street there are only sixteen parking spots one being a handicapped and reviewing the document that you need on six hundred and twelve see the requirement numbers of off road and highway parking spaces shall be the following the eating and drinking establishment you need twenty parking spaces per a one thousand square feet of gross floor area we do not have that so in order to actually be in compliance we really are not able to do it so that's why we're asking for the waivers on bridge street to enhance businesses being able to potentially come in ones that are here they can either expand if they choose to and this doesn't hold them back so that was one of the main reasons why we did ask for this to be these waivers to be lifted on bridge street so thank you chair thank you and we all sat down on that great any thoughts or comments about the signed section that we're proposing which basically just legitimizing what's already there yes sure one question we do have and maybe you can explain to us first proposal from the economic development committee was from the railroad to the stop light and i'm wondering if you would be able to explain why the dentist office nofa and td bank north were left out of that decision i was one of the folks who thought that they should to be left out of that and my thoughts on that were that this was kind of a novel concept the idea of waiving parking requirements altogether on businesses where generally you require parking for a certain any type of business that's in there it's kind of a crowded area as it is and to waive these parking requirements like we suggested could cause all sorts of havoc that i don't know any of us can foresee and so i suggested i think and came to consensus that we limit it to the buildings of the businesses that are most severely impacted also coupled with the purchase of the parking lot or the approval of going ahead with developing the parking lot should also significantly reduce parking constraints for any other businesses in the area and so those two hand in hand i think are gonna go a long way in allowing businesses to develop in the upper block without and hopefully it won't significantly impact traffic and parking issues on residential areas that kind of thing yes cara my understanding on the intent behind not waiving parking requirements for those structures were because they actually own land with the structures versus the businesses along bridge street having to use public parking because there wasn't land that went with the structure like td bank north has its own parking lot because the land goes with the structure nofa has its own parking because it has land to go to the structure and the same with the dentist office they have land and parking that goes with the structure and that's why that certainly was another argument absolutely so in case those structures wanted to expand in size and rather than use they take and use their own parking spaces and put structure there instead and then force the parking to go their own business parking to go to public parking thus not having as many spaces right in downtown absolutely that's what i was told it's a perfectly good reason too absolutely i think they go hand in hand both of those explanations as to why we left it where we are but who knows maybe this is gonna work out great and we'll be able to expand this and it will be able to benefit other businesses in town but let's take a slow approach to it and see where it leads us okay heidi so the one thing that i really wanna emphasize i am so appreciative of the outreach that came in the mail so thank you the second thing is burlington is actually doing waivers also on the waterfront according to saturday's news so this is happening in burlington waivers or zoning modifications waivers to parking so that's the drp so we're ahead of their town that's scary just a curiosity what's your projected outcome you project six more businesses moved in with x amount of traffic nope nothing like that there were no formal studies or anything done that way which is why we i was in favor of it as much as possible yeah so does that new regulation allows zoning for signs and say resident parking only for everybody that lives around it i mean isn't that what's gonna happen when you don't have enough parking spots well that is going to be that is gonna be a very interesting perspective i am considerably more at ease with the expansion of the parking lot which hopefully will negate that but yeah there is the potential for that it's a very real potential which is why zoning has parking requirements there's a reason for it it's a good one this is a little bold but that is a very unusual situation in richmond and we thought that if it could help businesses it would be worth experimenting and really that is very much what it is it's an experiment robert my position was with the depot parking lot was very integral to the discussion with a number of business owners in that upper block and from my standpoint i felt that the infrastructure that the community could provide with the passage of the depot lot may in fact release development activities in the upper block that had been restricted as a result of the fact that many of those buildings did not have any opportunity to provide additional parking onsite just to comment on the parking and the possibility of no parking signs going up for resident parking only that's okay though the reason people are putting up signs that say resident parking only is because they've experienced to somebody i'll just use the market for example because the market is pretty well attended and i'm so glad for that but if folks along reverend street are experiencing folks from the market parking in their driveways they should put up residential just like when i have my land posted i shouldn't go out on my land and find anybody other than my family so if they own property or if they're paying rent there they should be able to park there and if folks need to be reminded that it's resident apartment only it is private property and they certainly can put the signs up maybe the new parking lot will alleviate some of that okay any other comments on science okay great sorry my name's marshall paulson and i could you just speak briefly on any sort of requirements regulations or oversight having to do with the sizes of the signs and any lighting especially lighting at night on signs for these projected signs that we're talking about okay well first of all they're not at all projected they are actually there in it's the one on railroad street and all we're doing is allowing a identical sign on jalina court which would help enable whoever's looking to develop the cranberry parcel one of those limitations they're looking at is okay i don't have street front exposure how's anyone gonna know i'm here i'm not gonna buy this property and develop it by us allowing a sign similar to one which i think has gone through considerable debate and has been approved on on the other side is a reasonable allowance well i think so too but to address my the lighting questions specific questions lighting on signs we didn't touch lighting lighting is defined in the current regs and we didn't touch lighting at all the proposed regs that were defeated there's a whole lot on lighting we did not incorporate any of that into the proposed regs it is exactly as it is now for better or worse are there any other thoughts anybody would just like to share with the planning commission for goals and objectives that we should be focusing on i have another question besides that what's the proposed timeline for this this proposal depending on what we've heard here we're gonna go back and talk about it and maybe tweak it a little bit and then we have to go to a public hearing we have to warn that public hearing so if we go to the first meeting in may and we come out of our first planning commission meeting and say yeah we made the tweaks they're nice let's go with what it is and let's warn a public hearing fifteen days later we have our normallyscheduled twoweek planning commission meeting so then the question is do we have a special one do we postpone it to get the hearing and now the hearing is a formal hearing where it has to be warned it's broad it's put in the free press it probably not gonna pay for another flyer the flyer that went out today or for this meeting was put out there so that people would know about our discussions and be able to give great feedback and input on things before it was kind of locked down because once we go to hearing we're not really allowed to change it we can tweak it just tiny bits but we can't make major changes so then it's just a way of letting everybody know what we're thinking and then we give it to the select board now the select board of course can tweak it and they have that right to do that with anything that we give them but then after they're done tweaking it they go to a formal hearing and that's where they basically offer the printed document and say okay this is it this is what we're giving they can get some feedback and do very minor tweaking jeff correct me if i'm wrong but they can do minor tweaking and then they can either decide to put it to a public vote or certainly in this case we are hoping that they just go ahead and approve these changes because they truly are the least controversial and the most beneficial to those involved so our goal is to get a finished document to the select board at the end of may if we're willing to make special planning arrangements to get a hearing in and to the select board for their review in june and from there i'm not sure how long they'll take to review and have a hearing for it but i would be hopeful that we have these regs adopted by midsummer july end of june end of july i think that would be great i think it would help a lot more people and hurt very few for these three issues for these three issues yeah that's all i'm addressing at this point yes hi i'm anna o'brien and i'm here with a group from the richmond senior center board and interested parties in richmond senior center development and it's late now so we won't take a lot of time but we did come before the planning commission a few months ago to ask for the change in the zoning to village mixed use for the creamery parcel because there's been many conversations at many levels with many developers about the creamery parcel and we were disappointed that our for changing that to village mix use was not included in this document and so we are here and we have a letter that kind of explains our position but we're here basically to ask you to please reconsider that again for this round of zoning improvements so that we hadn't moved forward on the development of the senior center planning you wanna just present them the letter or should it be ready why'd you get up hi i'm mary o'neil and i have the honorable position with the aging of richmond being chairman of the senior center board this is a letter to the richmond planning commission from the richmond community senior center board and it's in response to the april 5th flyer sent to richmond residents which describes the revised proposal and changes we appreciate the challenging work that you're doing on revisions but we do have some concerns as a board who is committed to the development of a senior center in our town we are very disappointed that the creamery parcel zoning changed to fbmu is not included in the list of proposed changes the primary parcel has been zoned commercial since the cheese plant left years ago it has not been developed it is a hazardous area which needs to be cleaned up and it's an eyesore in town developing the area with mixed use housing commercial business and a senior center would benefit the entire village by adding to the water and sewer use it would generate property tax income and increase property values we would ask if you'd please consider allowing the cranberry parcel change to go into mixed use so that we can move forward on the evaluation and planning for the possibility of locating the richmond community senior center on that side as a 501cs rate we serve seniors in our communities including richmond bolton and huntington we have some of our members in that at various times since we've been doing this for seven years now with a town planner town administrator who's was now the town manager and we've had ones with the planning commission we were under the impression following our meeting with the planning commission several weeks ago that there was support for senior center planning to move forward the cranberry site plan by david rafiel and for property owner craig castle which includes mixed use of commercial housing and the senior center is the vision we have been working towards just briefly the benefits of having a community senior center in richmond include building community and socialization for individuals who live independently at home and there are many in richmond and huntington and bolton providing programs for seniors for entertainment wellness and lifelong learning providing meals to supplement senior nutrition and finally bringing the seniors who don't live in the village into town to shop and use services there are other richmond organizations who are supporters of the richmond senior center the beacon the richmond historical society and richmond terrace senior housing are all very much interested in developing this the development of the senior center so we ask for your support and consideration for the change in zoning for the cranberry site to village thank you very much this is signed also by the vice chair catherine and neil o'brien secretary thank you i'm glad you had the opportunity to say that for the camera and for richmond on a larger scale than sometimes the opportunities you have with just the planning commission because i think it's very important to have community participation and action towards this to give an answer as best we can as to why we don't have the village mix incorporated now is there were several factors that came up over the course of this winter that made it impractical for us to get the village mix pushed through along with these one is the controversial nature of changing the commercial district as it is now to something that satisfies the particular developer who owns that property now because the planning commission historically has been under the impression that the only way to develop this property is to allow the changes as guided as worked through with the developer so we made these changes in our zoning or village mix i wouldn't say we made em changes but the village mix was already very compatible and the proposed regulations with what he wanted to do we worked with him back and forth on changing a couple of things allowing slightly higher residential density that would make it viable for him to develop the property because we were under the impression that is the only way this property could ever be developed in any way there's several things that have come up recently that have got the planning commission convinced that that's not the case that this property could be developed without the village mix so we had that factor going on coupled with the fact that the village mix is very involved process because what we tried to do is take what we had spent in a unified buyer off and spent three years crafting so that it interconnected with all of these different components of zoning and pull it out of where it was which was nestled amongst and connected with everything and take it and cut it and paste it into what we have now for current zoning regulations and there were an awful lot of nuances and connections with that that would take quite a bit of time to work through obviously we all know about the changeover in the planning commission and how there's been a lot of new people loss of a lot of great people and the concept of where the planning commission envisions this property going hasn't been as uniform and we've certainly heard from not just not just the planning commission itself or from outside sources that say hey there's things that can happen here that don't have to involve implementing the village mix so we were here we had all these great rules about the flooding the signage the parking they're clean they're extremely i would think if supported there may be things that could be tweaked and improved on but i don't think there's too many people out there of anyone who's gonna say that what we're proposing is worse than what we have it maybe could be better but there's no way it could be worse than what we have so this could move forward i think very cleanly and the planning commission believed that it could go forward very cleanly by itself so we spent a couple of sessions time flies when you only have two sessions a month and we put these together put all the finishing touches on them we're presenting it here we like it now the question is what is our next step what is the planning commission's goal going to be certainly go ahead heidi so i'm very much appreciating the whole process here and how much work it is and the fact that there is a huge process some of us were disappointed in the vote because we would have been moving right along with the senior center had the original zoning changes change that to village mix use and the developer being able to we could have clipped along and done the application for the grant for planning so it kind of put a stop point in the senior center board's process and we feel like now we're just sort of in limbo so our appeal is to keep moving with it and we wanna keep moving with it right now it's just in limbo and we can't keep moving with our own grant applications because of this question so with all due respect to your process we're just really like how much more waiting and seeing and how's it gonna go can we do and if there is a way to work together toward meeting the goal i would just say from our perspective and we've done a lot of talking about this as a board that site has been zoned commercial and sitting there a long time and i have met with and we have met with several developers who have looked at it and contemplated it and walked away it's really a very challenging site and the mixed use offers an opportunity that i think some of us at least believe is a really good opportunity to improve the village center and to make that site really awesome and so we would just urge you to reconsider moving that quicker so that we can be moving i would just add that by not including the village mixed use in this package my perspective a statement or a lack of endorsement or you're not appreciating all the work that the senior center has done i think we've all agreed as we looked at the various plans and it's a great idea to a patient or like i can just speak for myself i think the commission in general they were like that was a great plan the current zoning does allow for a combination of commercial and residential use so it does allow for a certain amount of mixed use and question is whether or not the village mixed use as we proposed it would would be a significant would offer a significant additional options for use of like the senior center but ultimately it's up to the owner of the property whether it's the current owner or any future owner and that's been i think discussed whether or not there may be a transfer of ownership at some point but it's up to them to decide what mixture is gonna work for them so i think we're sensitive to that specific use and would like to do what we can to facilitate it but there may be options i guess my point is under the current zoning or some modification of the current district rather than going to a completely new district which we were discussing this mark said it's a much larger proposition in terms of creating that new zone that's what's integrated with all the other zones that were being proposed so maybe there's a sort of middle ground that could be developed where the existing village commercial district could be amended and if there are specific changes to the existing zone that maybe could facilitate the location the senior center that's something which we might hear from you as well cara question cause i'm not familiar with the whole senior center wanting to be in a area what's the square footage that the senior center would take up in whatever might be constructed over there the current model that we are looking at is the shallot senior center model and it's about six thousand square feet and what would be the total square footage of the whole property so the project see we're just one element of other planning so we aren't really involved in the whole thing but the owner and developer people that we've recently been talking to say the math really works to have this mixed use and have the recent housing some commercial and a senior center as a because the one hundred commercial actually and this has been verified for us by three i wanna just understand one thing you are not looking to be residential no we're looking for a nonresidential so your use would fit with what it's zoned for right now it's just the developer wants to add more residential use than what the zone allows right now so by putting you in there with them they're convincing the town of richmond to get rid of commercial usage and bring in more residential into an area that's zoned commercial i think that's a fair summation you could characterize i just wanna say thank you for trying to preserve some commercial space in town because that would help the tax base i do support a senior center it's too bad there wasn't any other area in town that that could go i do know that that commercial property has sat in the market for a long time because what the purchase price and what the current sales price were pretty extremely different so when you're trying to make a lot of money off of an investment sometimes you sit on that investment for a while before you sell it so i just wanted to say thank you for trying to preserve some commercial space and not go completely residential because they wanna be nonresidential the problem with it really is that it is a brown field low level but it is a brown field that needs to be cleaned up and that's the key problem with the site because of the cost so the various models we don't need to take much more time here but there are many people who have modeled a few different scenarios there and when you look at the various models including residential as of onethird of it commercial residential senior center it actually the math works better about getting to the end goal so i'm not a developer but i've met with a lot of people about it and i think you could think that they're just twisting us into getting residential in there but actually if you really meet with various people who are development of all sorts they look at it and they say oh if this could have a residential component we could do this well the cleaning up of the brown stone whether as a residential component or not is still value so the goal is to get somebody to own it with them like a municipality or somebody who can get the state and federal funding for cleaning up of brown stone and that's the key to it so brown stone has always that has always existed over there and so as a whole just to make sure people on the flood plain that everybody's paying the bill for when they get flooded i don't wanna pay the bill for some commercial property to need to be cleaned up that we've known has always needed to be cleaned up it's an investment for somebody else and it's somebody else's responsibility to their argument had been that the residential would be seed money that would allow further development of a commercial that may not have pay off right away due to the lack of tenants and interests in the commercial side of the development so that's always been the take and it's something that we still need to discuss and i frankly would love to have lots of input on it when i was on the planning commission we did hear that the owner of the market here feels he's outgrown that space already and looking for a bigger place and there aren't any other places in there in the village so i feel strongly that we do protect the commercial space the types of commercial space we've had i'd hate to see our market be on the outskirts of the village further just because we've given up a perfect site for a move like that are there any other specific comments that i've got something i'd just like to sort of maybe close out with but i want to see if anybody else has any comments questions thoughts just quickly don't forget to take a survey thank you mark take your time to do that and i was gonna stand at the door but we actually hope to get it out on surveymonkey too now we're going hightech and see if we can't get out lots of participation lots of feedback from lots of people actually it's already up on surveymonkey if people want to fill it up a link to it yes we'll put a link up there someone posted so people can go straight to surveymonkey for mark if i could i'd like to applaud all of you for coming to see me i'm embarrassed to say i sit here as a result of the fact that at the very 11th hour of an extended amount of effort on the part of my colleagues here et cetera i vigorously fought the proposed zoning and i guess contributed to its defeat in some respect and found myself having to apologize to those members of a committee that i didn't engage earlier in the process and from my standpoint i have sat here wednesday night after wednesday night after wednesday night with an empty audience save my friend ellen ward and struggled with especially the flood plain because i felt and as a result of some neighbors saying to me you owe it to your neighbors to sit on this board and try to bring the community back together so to speak and so from my standpoint i would encourage you send us emails send us notes capture us in the market and talk to us because the number of evenings i sat here and had to turn to a solitary neighbor ellen ward and say ellen what do you think i don't live in the flood plain what do you think these individuals who are struggling postirene need and more often than not i came up empty handed and i said i don't know what would be in the best interest of these individuals who are suffering and at the same time the broader notion of my community and the broader notion of what's best for a community so i applaud you for coming i would encourage you to come here and put your petard in the ground and say dammit i want this i want that and that helps us informs us to make better decisions for the entire community the democracy doesn't work when the three of us sit here and have a private conversation amongst ourselves so please next week or next wednesday or two wednesdays from now at least half of you show up do a tag team sit there and say okay you going tonight no i'm gonna go next week please help us i mean now that ann at least has said what's the next issue after flood plain after the parking after the signage what is it that you want us to deal with cara quick comment thank you for stepping forward and i just want them to realize flood plain isn't just their latest it's an unnamed it's hillview it's hillview and people in your community and this community don't realize what the flood plain is so you as the planning commission please look over the appeal flood plain maps that the town's engineer cas has now redeveloped for the river but understand that the flood plain maps for the streams and brooks are estimates and aren't even actual numbers so your decisions impact people on streams and brooks that don't even know it i'll be brief mary yes of course if you folks get a chance please reply and watch the from monday night because the defeat of the zoning document which was quite a democratic process which you identified was termed by chris gray as malicious mischief and there's a big difference between the video document that you think is a problem and malicious mischief i believe malicious mischief is a chargeable criminal offense and i think democracy is not malicious mischief thank you for being on the board all thank you for stepping forward well if i could just close this out again by i think i'm sorry did you wanna no by saying thank you to all of you for coming tonight and for those who may watch this at home i really appreciate that and this may spur some of you to offer more opinions and thoughts but a quick very brief vision of what i have for the planning commission's actions are consideration of the creamery parcel certainly but i still believe that the heart of the zoning regulations that were defeated in november were good and i think there was an awful lot of good things in that document i think there was a huge fault in a lack of communication that we didn't we thought we were reaching people and explaining and getting participation and we weren't and we wanna address that but i think that the concepts the basic concepts that we're putting forward i personally think are important to the town and that is decreased density in the rural areas increased density in the village areas a unified bylaw that consolidates development and zoning regulations and potentially even ordinances et cetera into one document so that people who are trying to understand what's going on aren't flipping back and forth between contradictory documents one's telling them that the drb is looking at one document and saying you can do this and then they're looking at the other document and the zoning regs and say no you can't do that so you can put it in there and develop it but once it's there it's not compliant things like that are kind of crazy and there aren't a lot of those but there's enough that are worth fixing and if we go forward with a unified document we would be able to address those issues and there would only be one for better or worse it would be one now that one could always be changed but if you change one without changing the other then you're back to square one so as long as we stay two separate documents we're going to have these conflicts and issues as far as the number of zoning regulations or zoning districts and those kinds of things i think they were important we did this with the best intention of trying to make compatible communities and neighborhoods that were compatible at that time as they were and allow businesses and uses that were in that area legalize them in essence make them nonconforming as much as possible that was our goal in trying to resolve so many of these different districts which is why we went to so many different districts cause certain neighborhoods are particularly different and don't belong in a larger subset so that's where i hope that we go forward as a planning commission with a lot of feedback from the community on the things that they think are most important and the changes that they want to incorporate with those fundamental core changes that we talked about and the best way to go about them so i don't know if there's anything else thank you guys for staying so late tonight mark could you just reiterate again for everybody what the next steps are in other words the next steps are we need to have a public hear the next steps are a public hearing to approve these regulations after we have a session within the planning commission then we'll pass that onto the select board and the select board should approve it sometime and should they make any changes after a public hearing should adopt these without a public vote in july and the reason why is because a public vote is really really expensive which is why we tried to take out as many controversial issues as possible it's really expensive to put one on and these things could go through very quickly and i think again have a lot of support so anybody disagree please let us know please share your thoughts with the select board and actively participate thank you thank you