okay good evening good evening and thank you all for coming out in the snowy weather to this public hearing on gateway rezoning before we begin if you haven't just found these they're over by the table and you should have the proposed changes discussion which is the actual language of what will be on the ballot if this goes forward and then also kind of a question and an answer section so if we wanna go there first we would like to open the meeting just by turning to the second page and discussing what's on this and why we're doing what we're doing the gateway zonings questions and answers right what the community wanted to be said i can give a little i can give a little history on why we're doing this perfect and then we're gonna add in with the different expertise on the select board so the primary reason for some of the amendments that were proposed really had to do with the water extension and really the combination of the two at the same time as many of you know those in town their water rates have increased there was a creamery site and the system used to have a creamery that used to use the water which balanced off the rates and kept them lower and for the last twenty years has been closed and there's some big adjustments had to be made and we're kind of at a point now we have an opportunity maybe to increase the water line out to route two in order to do so though we also need users to come onto that line so there's a combination of wanting to work with the town people and those on the water to really look at how we can make it more affordable not just now but in the future and in doing so how do we also ensure that we can have more water users and in doing so also there was a lot of time that was taken by the planning commission to look at the current zoning laws look at the town plan and be very thoughtful over the last six months about how they can make some changes to encourage some business that still fits with the character of our town but also would bring some economic development in a zone that's zoned the gateway zone and there's definitions of it in here is zoned for economic development in certain areas so they did talk to some different people that were interested in developing and there's only a few areas that can be developed and some of the suggestions that they gathered from that and other people really helped them inform them on the changes that we're gonna be talking about today so this was a twopronged approach it's really looking at the burden of water costs on people in town and how can we look towards our future how can we increase the water line in an area where we know we have an opportunity for some economic growth in a very thoughtful way i wanna be clear that it says in the zoning that any development needs to fit within the character of our town so that leaves a lot of leeway for the review board development review board to ensure that whatever does go out there does fit with the character of our town so there's a lot of thoughtful a thoughtful process that it did occur there were public hearings but we understand there's a lot of people here that we need to listen to some more of what people in town have to say about the proposed changes and there's also some misinformation out there as well so we're hoping tonight we can inform people more about what the changes are what they might mean and have a real fruitful discussion about where we go because what's great about our town is people are concerned and they're so involved so that's really why we moved along this path i think and maybe jeff you can talk more to the water and the reasoning behind the two kind of going along the same path and wanting to do them along the same time because it makes sense financially if we're gonna expand the water to also do some of the rezoning at a parallel track so that's kind of why we're at where we're at and we realize too and i have to tell you i learned a lot about the gateway in this whole process and i know even starting from where is it what is it has it been zoned for commercial right now it can be used for commercial and residential currently a lot of the things that we've heard that people are nervous about could already go in right now so we wanna have provide information and have a discussion about some of those very specific changes that were suggested so if you go through the q and a number two we kind of skipped forward to number two and it really talks about the primary purpose of the amendments is to increase the potential for commercial development within the mixed use zone and that's allowing for some increased flexibility and location of new buildings and we're not the planning commission is not proposing changes to the overall boundaries so the gateway isn't expanding in any way it's just within the gateway there's some expansion do we wanna talk a little bit more about it can you you might just point to the map and okay a reminder that that's the gateway so we put up some maps up here and we had hoped to pass them all out but at least they're up here so you can see where it is and can someone describe it goes all the way over to the mobile home parks on one hundred and seventeen or well not really it goes out to the park and ride essentially the park and ride so it's between the old meter machine and up to the park and ride essentially okay and just along with that when we talk about water and those two are together in this we're proposing that would go along the extension of the water line would go along that too all the way up to the mobile home park which i mentioned that's one hundred and seventeen yeah it is important to note that it's only that green area so if you're coming into richmond it's on your left if you're leaving richmond it's on your right none of these changes affect any property that would be those fields or about three acres where the chiropractic office is right now so are there any questions just about what area we're talking about okay and then if we just move onto number three these are the specific changes that are being recommended by the planning commission so the maximum building size and right now the square footage maximum size was ten thousand square feet and it's increased to seventeen thousand square feet if the setback requirements are met and there's quite a few setback requirements i don't know if they have the setback requirements right in here but i think they have some people from the planning commission but for the seventeen thousand square foot building if someone should build something like that i believe it's two hundred two hundred feet two hundred feet that it needs to be setback from route two so just to clarify and i want yes footprint i thought with the entire building okay that's perfect yeah thank you and please if i misrepresent something please raise your hand and add in so can you clarify that yeah so the footprint would be the size of the building on the ground you would have the possibility of building to thirty five feet so you could have seventeen thousand square foot on one floor and then seventeen thousand on another floor the two stories two stories correct the two stories is the limit so reminder that height limit is partly based on fire protection in the absence of a man or a truck in the town of richmond correct yeah we sometimes forget that is one of the limiting factors is there can you tell us only seventeen thousand square feet is we will why don't we just walk through these and then we'll come up to those pictures over there with a and i just wanna clarify there's currently only two locations that could likely have a building of that size so we'll talk about that as well and then there's removing of the five thousand square foot maximum requirement for light manufacturing business and professional offices and research laboratory and then the five thousand maximum is retained for retail and restaurant uses and there's a statement in there which remains a statement of prohibiting of big box stores i think that's a big concern for all of us and that remains in the zoning that that's not allowed so when you increase the square footage i think there was concern but we still maintain that no big box stores if you go onto the next page we talk about the roof pitch and i just wanna add a little and i have been learning as i go as well that in talking to some developers if you do have a seven a building over ten thousand square feet or a pitched roof is really not i don't know economically good idea or you know so as you get bigger to have a pitched roof is not something really that's reasonable for a developer that maybe wanna build here but there are setback requirements and if you have a building closer to the road you still have to have a pitch roof so you have to follow the setback so anything that's up closer to the road has to have a pitched roof and i think it's five thousand feet and less has to have a pitched roof ten thousand feet or ten thousand sorry ten thousand feet or less so if you're over ten thousand the pitched roof requirement is you do not have to have it but ten thousand and under remains pitched roof the exterior building it was required wood or brick and now it's the appearance of wood or brick and i just wanna use the richmond market as an example that is not wood or brick so in trying to make sure we don't get certain things sometimes we may hinder development we still have the character of the town and we can still include the appearance of wood and brick but that came up as there are some other materials out there that look nice but they're not wood or brick or less maintenance and such commercial development lastly the new development must have at least forty of the gross floor area in commercial use residential development it only is no longer allowable and there's been this kind of falls in line with the commercial development for this area in the town plan so it more aligns with the town plan but i do also know when you do residential roads and you don't have any commercial to balance it sometimes that can cause a problem with just providing the regular services you need to provide to new residents and families and not having the additional income to do so so there was some consideration i believe to ensure that there would be some commercial in that area so there's additional conditional uses business yards food processing establishments repair garage private club and tavern have been added to the list within the district do we wanna open it up for any comment or like those other comments from the select board yeah let me just go to the select board first chris did you want to i'd like to say a couple of quick comments i think that and please i wanna hear from people who may have been involved in issues with the gateway in the past probably for about the last ten years the reason that the gateway looks the way it does and there's been relatively little change there is probably primarily due to three things one is the poor state of the economy at least after two thousand and seven the current zoning and the lack of a connection to the town water and sewage meant that anything that went in there had to have a septic system and that was a limited size so one of these factors is changing now we see the change in the economy there's renewed interest and the reaps purchase of the willis farm property and they're bringing this issue to the water and sewer commission the select board is a really welcome sign that the economy is picking up okay but probably the most profound thing is if we extend water and sewer out there it's gonna make it possible to put all kinds of buildings there that just haven't been feasible in the past so if we do that it is probably important to change the zoning so that we don't end up with things that people don't wanna see there and i know that this has been a topic in the past but just to sort of put that in context i see this as a very positive discussion for the town it is one of the last areas in the town where we can add significant development that has the potential not just to have the benefits that ellen described for the water and sewer system which honestly we need but also they add to the tax base of the town as well i guess my caution is that we need to be realistic about the market as the economy picks up and whether we like it or not i think the real estate industry sees richmond as bedroom community and demands what developers wanna build in richmond is more housing and it's not clear to me that there is that there are that there's a clear advantage to commercial development over residential developed additional residential development of the town remember we have declining population in our schools which has tended to make them oversized and has been a contributing factor to the cost trends there so it's not a black or white situation to me but obviously it would be great to have a mix if we can get it but i think flexibility and being able to respond to the developer community and to be a good partner so that we end up with development and businesses in the gateway that people are proud to drive by as they come coming in out of town and really contribute to the town would be a very positive outcome and possible outcome of this process thank you chris anything do you have anything no okay so before we move onto i'd like to take us step by step through the changes and invite questions and comments but before we do that claire if you would do your thing you have some pictures here you have some pictures here for us and if you could just kind of talk about the process the planning commission took and tell us what you have and for people who don't know this is clair rock the town planner yeah thank you so i guess really i'll start over here and just talk a little bit about some of the information that the planning commission would have and has provided at the public hearing had a clear conversation is the planning commission and a development for this evening is that the zoning changes that are being put forth have to conform with the town plan and so the statement from our town plan includes basically then this paragraph which references the gateway area which kind of sets the vision for the gateway area and that's where it includes information about including commercial and residential development the size and the shape of the buildings will reflect those down in the village urban and suburban strip development of big box stores will be prohibited so that's some of the guiding information that is being used to guide the zoning and when the planning commission draws up the changes they have to ensure that it conforms with the town plan so that gives some parameters to what we have to stay within because that's our kind of guiding document the town plan language was written back in two thousand and seven and the town plan was readopted in two thousand and twelve just as a side note we will be updating our town plan starting next year and we've received municipal planning grant funding to do so we intend to do a big public outreach process of we're actually looking for volunteers to serve on the steering committee so if any of you are at all interested in helping guide the new town plan and ensuring that we get a lot of participation please contact me cause we are looking for volunteers so that the map here is the gateway district as i mentioned the gateway district is from the mobile station down to basically the last property there is the multifamily unit building that's undergone a renovation recently so that's the last property in the gateway based on the analysis we did we found that there's about twenty six acres of developable land that's in the gateway so that's about the amount of land that could be developed and predominantly that land is within this within this area the mobile sits within the flood plain so they have restrictions on any new development they can do there and then there was a gonna be conserved by the land trust as a sledding hill so that would be this property here will be conserved and then as you move down you have the two cemeteries and then a couple of smaller parcels so the land i think the prime focus of where our future development could go predominantly looking in here there was the mention of the two hundred foot setback that if you are two hundred feet back from the road you could have a larger seventeen thousand square foot building so this dashed dark line represents that two hundred feet and that'll give you some sense of back distance that i'm speaking of there was a question about how large the building was and this this rectangle here represents seventeen thousand square feet it's to scale with the map so that'll give you a sense of how big of a footprint would be able to go out along on these properties this one here is about ten thousand square feet so it's just reference i'm gonna jump over here these pictures the ten thousand square feet is approximately the size of the market that's here in the village and we did look at some other buildings i think harrington's is actually over twenty thousand square feet so there are other large larger buildings and so i'll just step over here but these were some associations of building sizes not necessarily building style and when we were looking at well what does big box store mean and that can be some guiding information that you've used to kind of judge are we staying within the vision of the town plan based on this diagram here a big box store would be considered this size which is the size of the home depot and then the forty thousand square feet is this red box and then thirteen thousand square feet is this smaller box so i think for the purpose of the gateway a little bit bigger than this blue box is the size that we're looking at compared to what's generally considered a big big box so that there are some labels here looking at general sizes this is a seventeen thousand square foot two floor building this is a four thousand five hundred square foot building and it's a picture of the village market as the example and then we did some modeling where we were looking at this is the reap property in the front and like a bit is called the little the cottage the thompson thomas cottage and this this represents a fifteen thousand square foot building and kind of giving a sense of if you were kind of on the road what that size would look like in compared to the farmhouse in the front so that's some of the information that the planning commission has used as they went through their process can i ask a question related to the pictures yup okay thank you i just wondering if it would be helpful for me by the way my name is marshall parson it would be helpful for me in terms of putting pictures and boxes and squares and rectangles in context to just test what's the footprint of the bar that's on a property now you know that six hundred square footprint so the is six thousand correct yeah but what's being proposed is this the footprint of the bar is potential did you have a question about pictures yes okay so if you showed us that big square in the upper corner that is the home depot size mmhmm and you said that the red one is forty thousand but you didn't give us an example oh okay so an example of so yes i have mentioned that this teal box is the size of a home depot this forty thousand one is a large supermarket and then when you come down to the teal one that's with thirteen thousand square feet that's your average size of a chain drug store how big is the building i believe that was over ten thousand but not greatly over ten thousand other questions about the pictures we're talking about sizes and just before you state your question if you could just state your name please john mollard is that structure two stories which which one being the one that was using the model yes it is that was modeled well thirty feet so that would be two stories so that's the national size of that teal model thirty five that's two stories out of ten thousand well we don't define number of stories we just say the building cannot exceed thirty five feet so generally speaking that equates to crosstalk drowns out speaker three thousand four hundred and twenty seven height two stories yeah in this picture yeah these are three stories into that height restriction thanks sure any questions about the pictures i'm jason camp just to get a better sense do you know how big this building is that we're in right now yes that was and i think we looked at that and it was just over ten i believe right this footprint is roughly ten thousand square feet so that's the turquoise or the right we're more of a rectangle that yeah so when you're looking up there it leads into here yeah yeah thank you any other questions about those thank you all right so next what we'd like to do is go to your changes so that's the one with the cross outs it says gateway commercial district on them and we thought what we'd do is we'd go step by step through them discussing the changes and requesting your comments and questions before you make a comment please state your name so it is on the record and tonight we'll keep it for the two minutes and then once everyone's gone we'll come back and let you go again oh taylor do we set a time for when we're gonna how late we're gonna run tonight we have not set a time how late we're gonna run should we would you like to just in the interest of public safety and avoiding exhaustion and everything i would propose that we plan to run for ninety minutes total and if we're still if everybody still wants to go and we're hot and heavy we can reconsider but shall we try and keep it to that so that gives us approximately no ninety minutes from the beginning at one thousand nine hundred so try to go to two thousand and thirty is that yeah yes okay it's good all right so there are no changes in the first section we're looking at three hundred and forty one so that's allowable uses on issuance of a zoning permit the big change there are changes in conditional uses so that would be uses that must appear before the development review board for approval and those were already listed for you they include addition of business yard food processing establishment garage and repair private club and if you flip the page tavern provided is associated with an onsite distillery brewery or winery and just to speak to a couple of those reasons behind them business yard i believe in the planning commission or claire you can stop me if i'm wrong but this is what i or you can stop me if there's another opinion on it but business yard is used often by construction workers construction companies other companies that may have large pieces of equipment and at the time there was a discussion about having the state use the property for their equipment so that is something that would need to be included in the area food processing was one of those water sewer uses that could use a lot of water sewer of water mainly that was added garage and repair was kind of the same thing as automobile service station when you look at the definitions in our zoning bylaws and then the tavern the tavern was added and i skipped one private club i can't speak to private club private club is like a tavern but for private people so that would be like an elks club so that elks club the vfw the vfw hall the eagles the eagles the moose the elks the difference there sometimes you think of that as a restaurant but this the private club would not have the same restrictions on size as a restaurant would in this in these zoning proposals so restaurants currently at five thousand a private club might be bigger and then the last one was tavern and the planning commission actually took a second look at that and added a sentence provided is associated with the onsite distillery brewery or winery that was actually a very good addition and really would hopefully be in the character of the town and provide that kind of more of a destination versus just parking a bar out on the gateway so i do invite any select board members who want to chime in on those and then we'll go to the public anything from us questions and comments about the proposed changes or anything in the allowable uses yes sir glen lester the addition of the business yard yes i have a concern there because there is nothing when you talk about setback screening like that but there's nothing for the business yard the business yard was you don't know if you got building a business yard can change from one day to the next and it can get very messy so i'm not saying it's not conducive i'm saying there's nothing in here that i see that requires any kind of setback or screening correct yeah i mean the screen that would be included would be with the normal screening so there is a fifty foot if we go to the next page that would be a fifty foot lot frontage correct me if i'm wrong claire so is there a buffer there is a buffer for a yard or just parking no i'm just saying that the only buffer would be the buffer required in the parking so there's a fifty foot requirement from the there's a fifty foot setback requirement that includes a landscaping requirement but that would you're right would only would be the only buffer for that for that business here these are all uses that would have to go before the development review board and meet the conditional use criteria so within the conditional use criteria one of those does include screening and landscaping so there are additional standards that all projects that go for conditional use regardless of their district would have to meet so that would be something the drb would look at it's not necessarily specifically stated or doesn't have its own specific standard with that within that district claire maybe if you could expand just a little bit on conditional use and what that means claire can you sit at that table with that mic there sure so the conditional use is a specific approval that has to be sought by the development review board and that requires an applicant to submit a conditional use and site plan application to the development review board it has to be publicly warned all the neighbors have to receive notice of the application as a public hearing so any application that would come under one of these conditional uses would be reviewed by the board in a public hearing where neighbors could come and voice concerns or support for a project and then following a conditional use approval the drb would issue their decision and from there the applicant would have up to two years to then seek a specific zoning and building permit from the zoning administrator to actually physically do what they received the approval from the development review board to do so there is a another layer of criteria and public hearings and review that goes along with any application that would come for review for a conditional use thank you yes sir so mike walleden to my meaning though that fifty foot buffer is for structures so that there is a question i don't see that they're given an answer about any screening or setback is there one i question to me is that fill it up up to the road it's not a structure it doesn't have the minimum screening and setback is that true in which case even though it goes before the drb it's still not complying with all the other structured uses of the job so that the business yard would have to go before drb it would have to meet the building setbacks right it would have to meet those setbacks but the yard part that's what she said so the yard part would also have to meet the building setbacks it does that yes that's considered a structure it's considered one of the conditional uses that has to comply with the other rules of the others i don't see a five the entire setup structure limitations for structures with receiver limitation survive three hundred and forty three i don't see that it has doesn't have setback screening yeah i think it comes through in the parking lot requirements that are in the parking section of those zoning regulations which in that section it does state that all parking areas do need to meet the district setbacks so if an application was to come to the development review board and there was a business yard which would essentially the basis of that would be a parking lot then it would be required to meet those standards which have to meet the setback requirements i just have a question if you were to make a minor change would it be considered minor to add just clarify that to say that the limits of the construction yard would follow the parking i think certainly the intention was that the setback requirement would apply but it's a good point okay i mean i would consider the uses in thirty four two to all be subject to the other the other requirements in the document and just because it's a yard doesn't necessarily just because it looks like a yard doesn't necessarily exclude it from these other setback requirements nah i mean i think it's a good point if there's ambiguity about it but if you go down to three hundred and forty four that's where we're talking that's where we're getting to the setbacks right and i think you'll find that across the entire zoning document so you could clarify it in the gateway but that ambiguity would still remain in all the other districts and that would be an allowable use so okay but it's a good point yeah okay thank you yes i have a question what is a business yard definition define i understand what a if you are a business you have a yard but if you're a contractor you have a chance for a clean operation you have a couple of trailers and it's a clean operation but versus you have some backhoes you have manholes you have sulfite is there a clear definition of what a business yard is versus what would prevent someone from putting a bunch of backhoes and we'll say caterpillar moved over there and then j prescott put some pipe there and what would prevent that so are you do you have the zoning on your yeah i was looking for it yeah it's in the definitions right and i can go and get mine if that'll be helpful as also but within the definition section of the zoning regulations it provides definitions for the uses so the business yard does have a defined use so we have something to look to to say that's what it is okay so by backhoes could i that claire do you wanna read so i'll read it out loud for you okay so this which operates out of the yard which may include structures indoor and outdoor storage of materials equipment or vehicles customary accessory uses for the business are small office space and vehicle or equipment repair a majority of the business activity shall take place off site no assembly is involved or allowed so then to answer your question is yes you can store backhoes you could store pipe you could store other construction equipment i'm a contractor i think i don't want a store there i don't think the reaps intend to do it but i think having that in there as an allowable use might not be something you wanna consider with the drb moving across with the character of our town are there some other mechanisms in place that might prevent certain things again i think it goes back to if all the conditional uses do have to adhere to the conditional use criteria which is a different section and then that conditional use criteria screening is one of the conditional use criteria that an applicant would have to demonstrate appropriate screening so they would look at that when an application is before them are there any other questions on that section on any of the other uses can i ask yes you can go ahead mike holler can i ask why that was inserted that's the first new edition instead of speaker drowned out by background noise an insert and what was the intention and besides the intention what are your odds so this came from somewhere and i think we ought to allow what we wanna allow if we want it but this is not clear so why does that happen mark do you wanna speak to that i may be able to answer that and one of the things that came up there was two properties or two development options that had come up in discussion about the gateway one of them was a laboratory for the state of vermont dc which would've been nice but the zoning wasn't in place to allow it previously before that there was inquiry's i dunno if it was before or after the reaps purchase property but a development of the state police barracks there which required a business yard second so those two options i thought were both good assets to the town that we thought were reasonable assets to the town considered them a possibility mark is it fair to say that in the zoning commission's deliberations that on one hand having a commercial component requirement on one hand there was an attempt to balance that by giving flexibility to the types of commercial businesses that could be cited there again given that the propensity of developers is gonna wanna be put residences on that and what you wanna do is make it as open to different kinds of businesses as falls within the guidelines of the town plan that's certainly part of the discussion thank you mark any questions yes please state your name gary so i think it's a double j so it's not community owned inaugurated institution facility that allows for us can someone explain to me why the state for a definition under that section i think it was the building size well it wasn't for you i mean that stuff to you right well specifically with a state lab that state facilities can go in there and they could be defined as a state facility but then looking at well what about private lab and being able to allow for that also other questions on these uses yes sir yeah i'm still on the business yard i'm listening to mark he said that one of the reasons that came into being was the possibility of the state police going in there well i state police i mean they usually have a parking lot when i think of a business yard i generally think of construction and as this gentleman here mentioned to be all kinds of equipment there but also there can be a collection over time of broken down equipment that worked the other day and it didn't work today i mean okay six months from now it still isn't working and it's still there or materials that are coming off site from somewhere else being temporarily stored there and without any kind of setback and i don't think fifty feet for something like that is adequate for screening if there was screening there i really wouldn't have a problem with it but from what i'm hearing here the reasons for this are a lot narrower than witnesses allowing thank you yes sir my names john i'm not necessarily so thrilled with the idea of the business yard is sort of open so open as that but in section three hundred and forty five the second last line of that section subsection f item three it says there must be landscaping between the floating and route two of fifty feet so there is a landscaping piece there so here's some there's a statement there about screening i don't know if that means that two foot high hedging s that look really dumb right but if it's filterable if there is some lining that could be improved thank you any other comments or questions on this yes yeah marie thomas and i've gone to a number of meetings with the planning commission and stuff and i've been watching this and i've been actively thinking about it as i drive up and down route two every day and if you look at it especially with that two hundred foot line there this what twenty six acres overall when you take up does that include the area that's been given the conserved area no no claire no that certainly doesn't include the conserved area but what you're talking about basically are there's three parcels and there if you look as you drive up and down there are a number of places the little wetlands and things in there so there's really a very very limited area that we're talking about we're really talking about two major landowners there and then there's three small parcels that currently have single family homes on them that are very at the very narrowest part there so i think everybody's got concerns and that's appropriate that people have concerns if people pay attention but we're really talking about a really small area there and i find when i'm driving in from the interstate your eye is not looking at that side of the road at all and i bet you if you canvas everybody in here you couldn't even describe what all the buildings look like there because there is a lot of landscaping that's one of the things that's preventing not driving right to there and when you're driving out once you get past the cemetery you see the willis house which is fifty feet off the road okay that's about fifty feet off the road the willis house you can barely see the thompson cottage you can't see the towing place cause it's way up and back and then you really you might see one of the other houses there so to me it's not none of us want us to have this place to come every place usa we don't wanna get off the highway and have a mcdonald's or a burger king if you're keep thinking off getting off of littleton and new hampshire and you go and it's like it's mcdonald's it's burger king it's dunkin donuts it's three there's three dunkin donuts there's three stores what do you call them drug stores i mean we don't want that up and it's very clear that we don't want that but i think we'd be hard pressed even if somebody did try to put that in there doing that there and since the biggest parcels owned by people who have a lot of investment in this community mm and who are known entities i don't think that there's a lot of risk so that's just my perspective all these people have lived here for awhile they've proven that they have all the the main landowners are here they've proven that they in the community so i don't i'm not all that nervous i would be nervous if we had some big out of town developer coming in and just wanting to push through i mean we all saw what happened in willesden i don't know if anybody was here in the 70s they built willesden days and everybody tried to fight it back then that used to be beautiful farmland there we certainly don't want to be willesden i don't really think that that's that could happen here we've got the flood plain zone can't handle there remember years ago there was a proposed truck wash there and that can't happen you know in reality the local station shouldn't be there but that was done years ago so i'm not all that nervous and i think it's important for us to keep it in perspective as to what really could happen there so that's just my it's a small place we don't have very many places to go i feel really bad i don't live in town i don't have to pay those high water rates but i feel really bad for everybody who does and i don't think that the cheese plant is gonna get redeveloped anytime in the near future and it's not definitely not gonna take up the kind of water that it used to and we need to do something and we have some businesses there that could generate some jobs then there'll be people to eat in all these wonderful restaurants that we're gonna have here now and we have a wonderful downtown we have what other places don't have we have a wonderful downtown jericho doesn't have that round hill doesn't have that the waterbear is close to having it we have a nice little walk over downtown here we've got some great places and great businesses and i don't think i think this can only enhance it i don't think it's gonna detract from it and there has to be some development somewhere and frankly i'd rather see jobs come in out there than see a whole bunch of houses built thank you further dissecting our farmland out there so that's just my few words thank you marie quickly do we have any other discussion on three hundred and forty two yes on principle i tried never to disagree with marie thomas and i'm not going to i mean i think that you i'm just gonna speak for myself here and the rest of the select board can do that but i think part of this is that the select board would like to encourage some kinds of commercial development in the gateway that's one of that's why we're having this meeting well that would be and consistent with the town plan and that would be consistent with the town plan i'm going to move us along just because when the lights go out we don't have a lot of time before there are literally no lights left and we can't exit safely so if we move onto section three hundred and forty three which is dimensional requirements applicable to lots in the gateway district there were no changes to this section from what currently existed is there any comment or question on that section okay in section three hundred and forty four dimensional limitations for structures on lots in the gateway district this is where there were two changes the first is the ten thousand square foot building and the seventeen thousand square foot building so i'll read that out loud no building shall have a footprint exceeding ten thousand square with the exception of buildings that are setback more than two hundred feet from the edge of route two right of way and thirty feet from the edge of all other right of ways building setback more than two hundred feet from the edge of the route two right of way and thirty feet from the edge of all other right of ways shall not have a footprint exceeding seventeen thousand square feet and then the second change was the next one which is the residential mixed use requirement in the gateway commercial district at least forty of the gross floor area of new development must be in commercial use so just for point of history that new item f is a new item but also it was modified from fifty to forty correct within the last month questions and comments on those on that section yes sir the general open questionnaire cause i'm not sure it's real specific to that perfect so i'll hold that perfect and focus on okay other questions on that yes sir yeah brad do you have any bit of sense of how many people could be employed in say the footprint seventeen thousand foot story i'm assuming it could go three cause there's a peaked roof and it's leaning to that size so but it can hold too cause it's only thirty five feet high can't you get three stories on the 35s three times no no it's just highly unlikely so if you do have a question about you just shot your hand up well at the time when the agricultural laboratory was moving towards the space and with a seventeen thousand square foot footprint two story building they were saying that they would have fifty employees fifteen fifty oh fifty you staying out of it crosstalk drowns out speaker shifts there yeah yeah i'm thinking cubicles i don't know right guys trying to get a sense about the traffic impact right with people going in marie's made the point about commercial being as better than residential but all of a sudden with ten thousand people working out there which i know is a ridiculous number but if there's a bunch of people out there that is gonna put more pressure on housing stock we could only the one acre zoning in town that's very easy to you know a lot of people that move in and the cost of town services will go up and taxes are great so so that they call it also a topic as such there is a new where if an applicant is seeking to either put in a curb cut or i think this would also apply to modifying an existing curb cut so you're switching a curb cut from residential use to a commercial use they have to go to the agency of transportation because this curb cut was on a state highway and so there's a new requirement which states before the local board would review it they have to go to the state and get a state preliminary approval on that curb cut and that access point before the issue of the local approval and i think that's just to make sure that the state is overseeing traffic flows on their own highway system so that would be a form of a checks and balances for any major development on the gateway they would have to get the blessing of agency of transportation to ensure that there wasn't gonna create any traffic severe traffic impacts yeah mark i just wanted to make another comment i had to the concerns about traffic and the location where that property is if you think about the jobs that would be created there and the traffic impact from that i didn't have the strong sense that that would be great i didn't run a study or anything but that that traffic would be traveling in the opposite direction the current flow of traffic now to richmond richmond's already there the community demands on development for housing are already there and those aren't going to be radically changed by a building going in off of route two but the traffic the flow of employees going to that building would be coming off of the interstate and going towards town but not all the way into the four corners intersection that is such a mess traffic for residents in town or in bolton et cetera are already gonna be moving out towards the interstate anyway so those increases wouldn't necessarily be impacted by construction or commercial development off of route two and construction or commercial development in town might actually promote residents and people living in the town to take alternative they wouldn't necessarily be compelled to take a vehicle if they could bike to their job on route two a mile away on route two and so now there is studies and route two is in the midst of we did a study on there was a study performed on improving traffic flow and alternative transportation along route two out to the parking lot it didn't really come up with a practical alternative however the state is intending to do significant work on route two and i think it would be in the town's interest to encourage the state in lieu of a formal alternative path but to widen route two as much as possible and promote if not formal bike lanes because those aren't legally wide enough on stretches of route two but there could be significant improvements to bike travel along route two that the town should be pushing besides above and beyond what we're talking about here with this development i just wanna add i think is there a new park and ride going in at willesden or is there another a two hundred and fifteen there is yeah i'm just thinking the adjustment here has to do with maybe some of those people would lose the willesden one it's just another additional decrease okay thank you pardon marshall paulson just curious about it maybe it's a developmental procedural question looking at three hundred and forty to the last item there there isn't mixed piece requirement just out of curiosity it says that there's a forty at least forty gross area development must be in commercial usage the gateway is a whole series of parcels how's that done procedurally if say someone comes in and says i want to develop and do one hundred commercial the next persons come online have a skewed for their development proposals or a skewed to maintain this national forty figure how's does that work chris chris will talk about this we've had a very sturdy conversation about this good question it is a great question so the way that this has been interpreted is that any individual development in the gateway must meet this requirement so and we tend to think of it now as the existing parcels but suppose a developer comes in and buys up a number of those parcels and consolidates them well then that would and what if it's a zoned i mean a phased development over time there are issues with actual enforcement here and we were getting into thinking about tradable development permits where you know and all kinds of things that basically i have no idea how we would actually administer so i think what this is gonna come down to is that when a developer brings something to the drb this will be something that gets put it's leverage it's basically leverage for the town to get a commercial component to any specific development that goes in there does prohibit a single family residential owner selling their property to someone who also wants to build a single family residence on a single parcel it does now right so you could so that this go further no but it wouldn't preclude you from selling your single family house to a new owner so that selling of a single family house to a new owner can still happen and you can still make modifications to a single family house where you couldn't build a new single family house out there without adding a business it's forty even if you use the same code you couldn't do a tear down and build a single family house without adding a business well in that case i think you could you could because you have a there's a provision in the bylaws that says like say if your house burns down you have the right to rebuild it on the same foot oh i stand corrected so you could take a three acre lot and split it into three separate one acre lots and build two additional homes right i think in keeping with the town they were trying to keep some of that area commercial given the limitations on commercial and our town and that not having a bunch of new residential developments when there's other areas you could do that with and there was some discussion if i'm just even given where it's at it might not really be prone to big residential communities because of two and then eighty nine really cutting it in that little triangle so those there was some thought into why the encouragement for commercial was important there rather than somewhere else where maybe residential would be better suited so but mark some of the other people can i just ask one follow up and then i'll have that confirmed follow up one follow up yeah so just to play this out the fifty thousand square foot building potential that's all commercial what does that do to the rest of the property what seventeen thousand well our seventeen thousand seventeen thousand give or take so okay all right fair enough just seeing if you're awake so so how just getting that out that does or does not negatively affect other potential developers along the parcel with their opportunities for being next to commercial i guess it could from the competition the point standpoint of competition right so the first person to build good commercial space might lock up that commercial space that market but that as far as as far as the whole gateway is concerned that doesn't but that doesn't no that doesn't preclude another owner from also developing that type of building it says that police marshall yes but to be clear we're talking about maybe two parcels that have the potential to do so but i think it's a good point thank you yeah yes krista kemp i'm wondering where the seventeen thousand number came from if it was based on the agricultural lab or just a random number you chose or sure mark yes i could attend to that yeah it did come pretty much from the yeah the agricultural laboratory their requirements were for fifteen thousand and fifty or something obscure like that it's on the planning commission decided to put a little bit of elbow room into that fifteen thousand plots and that is the seventeen it's certainly wasn't a hard scientific number just something that would satisfy what the ddc lab would want and it seemed reasonable one of the another one of those kinds of flexible numbers where between ten thousand and seventeen thousand feet we felt that was something adequate to build good commercial space or put some sort of use that we're allowing into it but still restricted from being the size of home depot yes guy heards i have just a question about not necessarily the corner space where the routes are but the spaces further up assuming that at some point those did get joined together at some point the restrictions here talk about forty of the area being used for building structures pavement et cetera would it not there's nothing here that restricts numbers of buildings necessarily so you can almost see somebody stacking two or three buildings immediately adjacent to each other sidewalk include on some of those sites up to there is there no thought to try and restrict the building density more than just by saying forty so the building densities were also governed by the setbacks at three foot in the next section but other than that you're right there could be you mean like more five thousand foot buildings correct yeah when i look at that and you look at the topography over there yeah i think that restricts that also restricts it so so if you go past the thompson house to where blackfork towing is the topography there very much restricts the type of building and the places you could place other buildings in addition you come up to the highway there so that moves buildings forward and you end up with a fairly narrow area to build and the need for parking there and the need for parking yeah that's a good point are there excavation restrictions sorry are there excavation restrictions in terms of could the walk side yeah could you just all of a sudden i had a development behind me that couldn't have been there had there right there's no specific excavation requirements or limitations limitations rather requirements so you're right there's the potential to fill in say to find things out but again the topography out there if you walk back there we're talking about rock and we're talking about some pretty narrow areas to combine lots and stuff like that would work for building for squeezing a lot of things together and i dunno if there's a lot of residential that would maybe be impacted by it someone but as opposed to but it could impact those that are currently there so it's a good point but yeah i don't think you're wrong in longterm that is an option under these rules anything else other questions or comments on that great i was just wondering is anybody here specifically not know the committee is that yes what kinds of businesses have expressed interest coming to a community that far so talking to seeing it get interest from businesses so there was an evening where they had a tech night where they had some tech people come mmhmm and that was more entrepreneurial type business we do have the greensea in town we did get feedback that that their experience when they first tried to open up in town was could have been better so we're trying to be in some ways more welcoming when someone is interested in doing a little economic development within our town as far as the creamery sites concerned there were some conversations with the developer and some interest and that was really being spearheaded by a nonprofit the senior center nonprofit and at this point installed so i don't have any updates our next meeting i'm hopeful is on the 17th that we will have some we have some really nice businesses in town like the goodwin baker building we've got the rainforest alliance the hmc bluehouse group and with greensea here we've got some really nice small businesses and i would think that that would attract even more of that kind of business i think we can be smart about who we do approach and attract and there is some benefit to the economic development committee and the select board supporting it that we do attract what we want and i think that's possible can i just give you a list of people who have approached us yes for property okay there is a ski boot manufacturer a brewery a preschool a cabinet maker nice an office use that wanted ten thousand square feet of space i mean these are the people that have been talking to us and one of the first reasons that we came to the planning commission asking them to change first thing we asked for was get rid of the five thousand square foot business limitation so i mean there's interest that's good and i think that every year i think it's nice to have people that know the character of our town also being approached by certain things that might fit so i do think we can zone out a lot of things we can think of everything we don't want and we could have really big zoning regulations but we may miss some opportunities for some things we do want so it's trying to get that balance and then hopefully that's what we'll get yeah john mr chair just as a point of process are we still going through the changes because we are literally out of time for the meeting and i think there's a couple members people that wanna offer some ideas sure so we need to get to that sure are there any other questions on this section we're in which is three hundred and forty four three hundred and forty five coming up so the next section is three hundred and forty five and this has to do with parking so changes are on a where parking located to the must be located aside or rear of the building with the exception of buildings that are setback more than one hundred and fifty feet from the edge of route two in which case parking can be in the front of the building and then the next change is down to f number two the roof pitch requirement may be waived for buildings with footprints that exceed ten thousand square feet and also striking structures shall be built up or have the appearance of wood or brick i just wanna make a comment that one of the change to that i the first subsection of f oh yes sorry a single principle structure must have an entrance or windows facing route two so before the change was there must be both an entrance and windows facing route two and now it's one or the other questions and comments on those the town plan says that the building shall be in character of what's found in the village mmhmm i don't have a problem with seventeen thousand twenty thousand twenty five because i think there's a sufficient amount of land there that could fit but i do have a problem with flat roof if you look at the underwear factory that's sloped even harrington's has sloped roof in the front so i would like the planning commission and the select board to consider adding a requirement that it be a mansard roof or something i just think if you're driving by in the state you're gonna see rooftop units you're gonna see it's not the character and the only flat roof building is probably on main street and it's the main block but all the other commercial even the grocery store is sloped and to me a roof is a big thing and so that's my comment and i'd like to thank you guys for all the work and especially mark i haven't attended all the meetings but i appreciate all the work i think getting business in town is great and i appreciate what the reaps are doing but roof and i'm a little concerned about taking wood or brick i'm fine if you people like the grocery store i think is great but i'd hate to see a nin tin right now there's nothing that would prevent a tin building with a one and a half on twelve roof there's nothing in here that i would see that would be preventative why couldn't i put a caterpillar building down here and think that would be wrong thank you thank you other comments or questions in this section i just have a question about where that part about the doors and the windows came from what that's all about yeah so from me in discussions with the planning commission and mark you can jump in is that with parking requirements mostly on the side of the building anyway that it was cumbersome and burdensome to have to add a door and windows to the front side of the building where in my opinion windows look kind of the same as if you have a door in there so i think the original in my opinion the original intent was to kind of preserve that character of an actual building and not a huge monstrosity and i think that it can be done with windows or with doors or one or the other not necessarily requiring to be there if it's not going to be used why do you need to put the door over there no i that's kind of the way they've done what is in why it's usually driven out i believe john john park i guess there's three answers here i'm serving up first the free parking moving the parking from where it had to be at the rear to up front and think what sort of gives an area strip development feel more than anything else is the sea of parking lots at the front of a building it sets up it sets the framework for the whole development in a bad light and i would much prefer to see parking in back i think that's a critical change that should be or that this change should not be adopted i'd also say that it'd be completely waiving the materials that would be developed and used for development is that warren said whether it's the roof and additional materials alone will have a big effect of what you put there yes there could be some other good materials to build with beyond so they should be added not to breech the rules cause we could all visualize other materials would be good but we could also think of that fact that cheap stuff to building and we have development there that will quickly lose value and set a bad precedent for the entry of our town thank you thank you john the same question yes correctly just to clarify so the dotted line on the map is the two hundred the two hundred foot limit so this would be for buildings that are to the left right well yeah so you do the parking in the front to the on the road side so the parking setback to that allows that allows parking the building setback yeah sorry the building setback that allows parking in front is one hundred and fifty feet so it's stretched out crosstalk drowns out speaker it's smaller right it's closer to the road and then the parking lot would be between that and the red red line down the road correct so parking presumably could be would be within that one hundred and it would be closer to the road one hundred and forty feet yes yeah and we have examples currently there with parking and complexes that have them there already already there yeah it's they get clearance permits from right out of the front yeah so there are examples i think the stand though is pretty different though i mean the parkings really there are a few cars there all the time there's a building that is seventy or fifty markers mark you want to provide any insight from the conversations that you folks had on this topic about parking oh well i think the planning commission's perspective on that and they're gonna consider it to be a that at one hundred and fifty feet off of the road as it is then there is a bit of a setback there's not as many buildings that would go that far back in the first place the fifty foot buffer of landscaping i think with the intent of hiding parking goes a long way in eliminating that strip mall development that folks would be concerned about that's the very specific language about shielding parking so that wasn't as big a concern and we wanted to allow some flexibility to develop so i do understand that a lot of the things that people are concerned about aren't necessarily changing but once again the line is drawn in that this is a big change i don't think that's a reason not to be concerned about it just because it's already there until now with not much has happened there because of water and sewer not because of planning limitations so when water and sewer goes down there everything's gonna change willesden was a town much like richmond until water and sewer got pushed around the streets so i think it's great to hear some nice cabinet shop wants to go in and stuff uses that we would all love to see there but really what's gonna happen is that the deep pockets at mcdonald's are gonna buy those lots on the end we know that when the sewer goes out there the water and sewer the hookup fees for those families is gonna drive some of those families out of there so who's gonna be there with the deep pockets to buy up those lots and combine them it's not gonna be some little richmond business that wants to be out there so i think overall what i see here is a huge missed opportunity to stand back and look at this as a piece of land twenty six acres it's gonna undergo huge changes not the changes i think that the reaps are gonna do i have less concerns those lots they're farther out they're more appealing to franchise restaurants more appealing to the same hotels we see at thousands of inter changes as we drive around the country and i just feel like we're being terribly naive about what's gonna happen there i don't know if the planning commission could talk because about the limitations on square footage to prevent certain things that we don't want there it did come up before cause i know we were concerned as well when you talk about a big hotel and things of that nature can they really fit the seventeen thousand square foot right too big a hotel obviously wouldn't be able to fit beyond that two hundred foot buffer but certainly in some of our where those are very real concerns here it has and then it's just something that that are not easily tritely addressed in any zoning regulation but what we did want to do is encourage the type of development of business offices and those kinds of things and facilitate that type of development to make it preferable to some of the other possible developments that could come in there there is no current zoning in richmond that bans franchises those types of things those are zoning changes that are fundamental to the core of the town that maybe could be addressed in a rework and revisit of the town plan which we will be doing and are certainly hoping for a lot of community participation there but isn't something that the planning commission was ready to go full barrel down the path of doing that we spent a lot of time discussing that and the zoning regulations that were discussed and we had some that were eventually defeated and we had some town based guidelines for that but to try and piecemeal that together into a specific zoning regulation we thought was beyond the bounds of the scope of what we were trying to do with this district in the short term if we had ten years before we had to decide maybe would be a great thing to fully revisit the town plan structure all of that and then only change zoning regulations on the revision of the town plan but i don't think that current circumstances allow that kind of window of time we just don't have it we don't have the opportunity as much as we reached out to the community for feedback and guideline in the six months that we were focused on this district we didn't go that far because we didn't have the impetus but the directive from the town to take it that end level so we did try to maintain a lot of the zoning that was there now and make moderate changes that we hoped wouldn't be too controversial and still held to a lot of the vision of what the town plan is and what the current zoning regulations are that's well first of all i think we should do a time check just to yes do you wanna see whether we should continue or yeah i mean folks we stay and talk absolutely yes okay yeah okay all right the point that i and gary raises an important point without going through the whole history of how we got to where we are today the planning commission was given a charge by the select board several months ago in order to meet a schedule which they did and many thanks to them but at i was at our last meeting where we discussed this i pointed out that due to changing circumstances in fact the urgency about at least in my opinion the urgency about putting a vote on the proposed zoning changes before the voters on at the march town meeting is no longer there for a variety of reasons as i said at the beginning of the meeting i believe that if we do extend water and sewer service out to the gateway area we probably definitely do wanna revise the zoning because the current zoning if left the way it is opens the door to all the kinds of things that everybody's said that they don't wanna have but that's not gonna happen overnight folks i mean it's gonna take two years to build water and sewer out to that area if in fact though the water and sewer commission moves forward on that which i think there's a good chance that they will and that gives time for the process that gary described to take place and that was then still i would have to say my preference however the you also have to and i do respect that politics is messy and that a lot of people spend a lot of time working on this already and it's never gonna be perfect and another way to look at it is we could do this now and then improve it over the next two years too so it's not it's not an either or situation i guess and what we could do is see this as the beginning of a discussion where a lot of these issues get brought out but then we continue to work on moving forward with that and without throwing the baby out with the bath water and just saying that we're going back to the square one and we're not gonna do anything until we get the town plan done i think doing the town redoing the town plan is important and that would give us the opportunity when that's done to make further revisions in the future well of course i've felt similar to you that this might be the beginning of changes and this has actually been a great discussion to bring so many people out to hear some of the things that weren't even addressed in this that once we do the town kind of revisioning that could then go back to the planning commission and if this is a first step to some of those other things we've got a great start to that so that's how i'm looking at it yes okay while we're talking about the sewer being extended out we live adjacent to the mobile home park and i was wondering whether that could potentially change their expansion or not based on their own sewer capabilities now i don't know if that's a limitation on them or whether you guys could maybe address that yeah just a point not to get too far into it but essentially what the water and sewer commission looked at is a number of different scenarios and the one that makes economic sense is to build water and sewer out in the mobile home park so that it can expand if they don't expand it sort of borderline and probably still makes economic sense if they do expand it has potential lower rates for everybody on the system because of the extra flow and the hookup charges so that would be that's one of the so greg are you saying that they would expand sizewise yes well they could so the economic tipping point on the extension of the water and sewer lines cause they're kind of separate but if you extended both the economics really balances when you get as far as the existing mobile home park because you get a large number of users in one location once just the conversation we already had once you build a line and you have excess capacity anyone along the line can ask to hook up for additional use up to our eighty maximum capacity so there will be excess capacity to be used somewhere whether it's in town in the gateway or on the other i guess my question was more is the limitation on what the mobile home park is it purely sewerage and water or is it something else no no so no no so they run their own plant and i don't wanna get back to this but they run their own water sewerage system now they could expand that water sewer system and add units now i don't know that that's actually that's accurate that's one hundred accurate that they could add they could add units now so that's kind of where we're at with that extension do or not do pay us or do it yourself kind of thing that's where i'm at and yeah so it's related but yeah right got it back to zoning anyway yes carey i think everyone here tonight is concerned about how the big wave looks and probably the approach the original looks and we've spent a lot of time talking about ten thousand square foot buildings seventy thousand i think the big deciding factor was whether the water goes out there or not and they don't put water up there none of this really matters there isn't any kind of pressure there's no i mean look what's happened in the last eight years nothing's been built out there of this size but if we put the water out there then richmond exchanges are very desirable location to build and that's when we determine the look of richmond much more than these rules about building sites so the question is and i know the select board wants and the town plan states we wanna encourage commercial development in that area and i guess i'd like to hear from maybe cause it's your area maybe why buildings like richmond would want to extend our commercial area to increase the size will it decrease the tax property taxes for people in the village will it i've heard from the planning commission that the water line would not pay for itself and it wouldn't reduce the water bills for the richmond residents are we looking for more services for the people in town to have or so why does the town why would a town want to get bigger and deal with the growing pains that that brings with it i feel like so there's several issues and i'll address i'll ask jeff to also add in as well as far as the tax space is concerned but whenever you have residential you always need to balance it with some economic development for your tax space as far as just town services are concerned i think when you have more children going to the school and things of that nature the taxes tend to increase on the property value taxes i dunno if i can you put so the idea was there's very few areas and the economic development committee doesn't necessarily want to increase the areas of development they would like to just find the right kind of development in the areas that are zoned for economic growth that haven't been developed and may bring help support the town the future of the town increase the tax rate so maybe we could reduce some of the sidewalks and really have some additional funding to make our town look the way we want in the character that we want it in so there isn't some rush to really grow the town it's really about what have we been doing with the areas that are zoned for economic development and we haven't been able to develop those so we're charged as with the economic development committee to really see if we can attract those businesses that would support our town and also maybe even bring in more business into town so some of the people on the economic development committee have businesses in town so are there things that could be out there that may attract more business into town during the day so if you did have i think the vermont state police the thinking was they'll come get their haircut they'll come to the restaurants and then they'll leave but it's how do we do things in a way that meets the character of our town but also in those zoned areas for economic development that we'd actually developed something so that was kind of our thinking as the economic development committee and can we do a better job that the economic development committee just started up again two years ago it has a history of existing and not existing but how do we work with our town plan and do something where we do take the input of the whole town and we do honor the character and develop it in the way that we want it to i mean if you look at the richmond market if you look at some of the restaurants here i'm very proud of what we have here and i don't think anyone wants the strip mall the mcdonald's and all of those other things but we also have heard from some business developers that sometimes it's very difficult to develop in our town and it and for multiple reasons and can we balance that in a way where we get what we want and we're reasonable about it so one other comment about there was a question buried in your question was a fair a question about the water sewer extension not paying for itself oh that's not ac well you can go ahead yeah so that's where i'm going yeah okay that we've had several scenarios about it gets really into the weight so i'll try to skip over pretty quickly a phase one phase two and phase three development extension absolutely if we extended phase three all the way to the mobile home park it reduces rates on current users as well as future users and that's largely because we have excess capacity in both sewage and water so you have to have enough users when you get out there to more than pay for itself a clear majority of the water sewer commission will not approve extension of the lines if it raises rates for current users so the only reason to extend it is to from the water sewer commission perspective is to reduce rates in the near term yes so there's not a lot of talk about that we're concerned about the look of the town and we wanna develop it the way we want it to be but gary's point really kind of raised a lot of red flags for me and do we really does the planning commission the drb whatever really have the control they can't really pick and choose can they if mcdonald's franchises or whatever hear that in richmond yes the water and sewer line is going to be extended can they just go in and start making very attractive offers to land owners and go ahead and buy property before the line is even laid yet but what's to prevent that in cabinet town committees say if they meet all these different criteria can the town say yes you meet all those but no that's not what we're doing here i think that's an excellent question that we actually haven't gone through it that pardon me if claire could walk us through let's play that out yeah let's say mcdonald's decides they want a site in richmond what would happen currently the way our zoning is written and the way the laws are written is that we cannot deny a permit to somebody just because of their franchise name and if they're meeting all the other requirements in our zoning regulations we that's what the drb is required to base their decision on so if they're meeting all the requirements and if it's mcdonald's versus joe's diner we can't pick or choose one or the other that permit if we did deny them purely because we don't want a mcdonald's would be appealed and it would go to the courts and they would win and we would get the mcdonald's anyway well in my understanding this is how we got cumberland farms and this is the point i was making about what you said earlier our use it's gotta be something that's consistent yeah because we don't have the ability to pick and choose but so if it was a mcdonald's it could be in a small house with a pitched roof and they wouldn't i mean and they won't do that because they have a certain corporate look that they insist upon mcdonald's has but i don't know if we generate the kind of i mean there's certain areas and communities that get one that looks like that but but it has to be in keeping with the town plan it talks about the character of the village and mcdonald's is not in character with the rest of the village yeah they would have to yes make it and the only place i know they've ever altered their design is stove yeah but let me just let me just add something quickly before we so we've uncovered there's a lot that we are concerned about about our zoning that has existed a long time so what we've done is some amendments to what currently exists and what was brought up as these amendments may not be the biggest concern we're hearing right now so the amendments now are what we're talking about but we're hearing and which is great because we're gonna be doing our town planning if we want other changes we can do that that's not what we can do right now we can't we're not right now that'll take another process of and i think we're at the beginning of maybe starting that process are we okay with these amendments and are we now identifying some other things that you'd like to bring back to the plan the zoning planning sorry commission and that we need to start a new process to look at some other things before some of these other things can happen and i think that's what's coming out now but it's not so much ten thousand square feet or seventeen thousand square feet because those those franchises could have come in prior to this so this is not this is i think a good process and good points brought up john did you wanna yes i'm so if we can say we don't want big box stores how come we can't say we don't want franchises how come we don't do that well i think there are franchi there are many franchises out there that are franchises that we would probably like because like the i'm not sure if technically the market is a franchise but they have other stores in other towns and there is a local pharmacy in a town that i live in and you love your local pharmacy but they actually own stores in other towns and so there's also so it's one of those things where franchises i think can take on many different faces and some of them may be things we don't like but there are probably franchises that are owned by local people then and they're a great local business so that's not something we could say no franchises so what you're saying so because personally for me i'd give up some of those other things if we could just keep out mcdonald's and chicken wing because i don't really want that in richmond i think gary is right i think that this could happen now the sewer line goes out there and it's gonna happen fast and we may not have the luxury of going through this whole process to make it better and so what could we not do that well with the statement of the prohibition of big box store that is a you can make a regulation where you say we're not gonna allow buildings over a certain size and so big box store tends to have it's that's the base on a building square footprint and we have the ability to regulate building square footprint but that's not what's in there in that sentence we don't want big box stores in the regulations right right and so the way that we don't have big box stores is because we have limited the square footage of the size of a building right and that's regardless of what type of store it is so that's like a defensible zoning regulation you can do if you're just saying square footage so we can have the seventeen thousand square foot home depot if that is a workable business model for them gary you got it gary can't say enough so we're gonna go to gary so there's a proposal i mean from a couple of years ago and that would be the planning commission tried to deal with this issue by not allowing franchisees to come in but it could be if you change the name come in for example parkside and kitchen table you could say it's a franchise it's two businesses by the same owners but it has a different name and we thought that would keep out dunkin donuts they're not gonna change their name to come to richmond right mmhmm okay i said no drivethru that would i think there's a lot more we can think about yes i'm christi winters was there any consideration given to eliminating the conditional uses of restaurant and retail business it sounds like those are two uses that would be promoting like the panera that claire has as an example is five thousand squarefoot restaurant for a retail business that's gonna add a lot of traffic along route two and pull away from our downtown do we really want restaurants and retail business out there we're really looking at businesses and was there any consideration for that cause it sounds like that would address a lot of that strip mall franchisee development so mark we can go to you if you wanna talk about it for me the discussion was do we do we eliminate the malling or do we continue to restrict the size so a lot of the five thousand square foot sizes were removed for other things and i thought personally i thought that it was appropriate to leave the restrictions and size in there it's also my belief that there's not the market for certain franchise like panera bread in that area so that's where i would stand with that yes i've got a procedure question yup it's my understanding or i thought i heard a rumor that the select board could approve these zoning changes but not go to the voters so that's number one and is that and can the select board make changes and just make minor changes and just go ahead and review it we should lay out for everybody exactly where we are in that process sure jeff do you wanna jump in so the schedule from two years ago when we did the big zoning rewrite we wanted to put those in front of the voters and we had a specific deadline we were under the impression at the time to have an australian ballot we had to have a special meeting to make it australian ballot there's an additional deadline for that for the gateway zoning this year i went along the same path and we were on a deadline to warrant a meeting for considering questions as australian ballot on january 14th and that would have made the deadline to make any change to approve the ordinance december 15th now after going through the location change for this meeting and talking to the attorney this afternoon he's pointed out a section in the law that basically says a bylaw or an amendment or a repeal shall be adopted by a majority of the members of the legislative body at a meeting that is held after the final public hearing and shall be effective twenty one days after adoption unless by action of a legislative body the bylaws are worn for adoption by the municipality by australian ballot at a special irregular meeting of the municipality and the attorney says what that means is that the select board could approve it automatically for a vote of the municipality by australian ballot so there's no longer that interim meeting step so we actually have a few more weeks to be able to make changes warn another public hearing and move the measure by to town meeting to be voted on by australian ballot so we could potentially do that in early january or if you don't want to make any changes you could move it forward now or if you don't like the measure at all you could wait a longer period of time or not enact it right so you basically have one hundred and twenty days from november 17th to be able to make that decision so chris that's the legal analysis and the political one is that after the defeat of the omnibus zoning proposal two years ago i certainly made a commitment to richmond voters that if we were gonna consider significant changes to zoning and significant i know is open to it's in the eye of the beholder but that it go to popular vote and we have the the select board has made has voted to make some specific changes mostly about the flood plain which i think was appropriate but something like this as numerous people have talked about raises all kinds of questions about the town plan and the revision thereof and definitely to me seems like something that's appropriate for australian ballot and the question is how to me in the role that we have is to bring it forward in such a way that it is that there's clear support from the town in australian ballot i think something like this you don't want it to be close you don't want it to be contentious you want it to reflect the will of the town and the worst thing that could happen is for this for everybody involved the reaps the other developers is for this to go up too soon and be defeated because if it's defeated then doing the right thing becomes almost impossible in the timeframe that we're talking about so that's it all on the table from me and that i think we're headed in the right direction but our do we have time to get to where we need to be politically for there to be the kind of support that i think the town needs to have for these kinds of changes so i just want to add to that before oh i was under the impression that it still impacts potentially the water onto in some of the development that would make really support those water users and decrease help decrease their rates so i guess i wanna hear from jeff or if anyone can tell me if that's no longer the case that those are kind of a parallel track and then my other question is the last time the zoning was defeated wasn't there a really long process to public hearings prior to the zoning am i wrong was that i guess i there are two different questions but first of all what's the impact if the zoning amendments do not are not brought forward at this time right yeah so sorry you're correct in our original plan was these were on a parallel track that if we were gonna extend water and sewer it made sense to be able to allow the potential users to take advantage of that through additional development partially to offset the costs as that idea has developed we've discovered alter what's in the gateway so yeah if these zoning methods aren't really considered at this point will it impact current development opportunities to current of that development well potentially it could and we've talked to the names and they have to have a plan for private homes for public water and sewer they're really the only ones that have any play that's different though what you're saying and i would like to invite the reaps to comment on this too is that the reaps need a decision about whether water and sewer is being extended out there the question about whether zoning gets changed in that is different it obviously affects your planning as well but it's not that immediate one about investing in water or how you invest in water and sewer so i agree with that mostly if they don't have the ability to have more development on their lot the public water and sewer becomes less attractive to them so even if it ran by their property it may not be financially feasible if they don't have the sort of commercial density to be able to take advantage of it because it's expensive and i think the value of that public water and sewer goes down if you're not allowed to take advantage of that because i would say it's single family homes i have said this before i don't think there's any value for them to put on right now if all of a sudden it's gonna be as a single family home so we decided to write a letter to the select board rather than to see about every position that you've all brought up but i clearly would like everyone to know that we didn't ask for all of these changes there were many changes that were added and we never asked for them so it's not all about our property it wasn't us we've had people literally stop our employees in the airport and say oh the route's gonna turn into willesden this isn't about us we didn't ask for a lot of these things and actually we don't want some of these things to happen so if you voted in they're aware of the things that we think are troublesome for our development and actually we think that in some ways the planning commission went too far and we saw that at the meeting so a lot of you weren't there for those but we just wanted everybody to know that's how this all happened it wasn't all us so yeah we tend to pick on the reaps for better or worse but this yes this is the way that things change it's because somebody takes an interest this is the way it's supposed to happen i guess mmhmm so i just was thinking what we're doing here tonight is what we're seeing is an opportunity that we that's in many ways a great opportunity for development in this area but the zoning it always goes too far and in other ways it doesn't go far enough and to source it i think we'd like to see it i think what i'm hearing in general is that there's maybe a two phase approach is appropriate where some of the restricts some of the current zoning changes are tailored a little bit more towards this project assuming that the water is sort of can go forward but then in light of the fact that with water and sewer going forward we could see an intense pressure an opportunity for additional development in the gateway that would require a lot more definition of regulations and in line with the town plan for the most part so to some extent i think there might be a lot more comfort if people knew that phase one is to basically find out what is required to develop this one piece of property that's actually an opportunity for us in many ways and if phase two is very quickly before if it turns out that water sewer is feasible that there is commitment from the trailer park et cetera to be participating in this then we instantly immediately begin another round of regulatory changes for review does that make sense i think that makes a lot of sense i mean i would like to take a look at the recommendations that are prohibited and if we do have another meeting can we are we allowed to make some of those yes we are so go ahead and then i'll speak so i was hearing chris say earlier that the worst thing is to push this through and have it get defeated and so maybe the town needs more time to talk this through and if it's gonna go to australian ballot it doesn't have to be at the march meeting right it could be in november would that be i mean there's other options it doesn't have to be decided by the march meeting correct it doesn't have to be on the time meeting date ballot i'll just observe there are some timing issues on a specific on the reap property right there are issues for them they will face forks and roads so if you're a developer you ain't gonna sit on a piece of land for three years while the town sorts it out so i guess i would observe that if the reap zone is property they're either working on the current under the current zoning and that has certain implications they operate under these revised rules those are really the two options right now in the near term i don't see another approach given our political process through the planning commission to come up with a new idea that's gonna be refined and vetted and voted on in the next few months but isn't it the case that the most important factor is whether or not water and sewerage gets extended to the property and that that's at least a year until that if it is extended until that it'll take a while yeah and the planning process for any developer probably starts before that oh of course yeah yeah yeah but can i just ask a question yeah you and correct me if i'm wrong you have the ability to make some changes hold another hearing correct and then i'm not sure how that fits with the time other timing correct so i mean basically the opinion from the attorney this afternoon is that holding another hearing in january if we made changes say on monday or the next meeting after would be an appropriate time to hold that hearing and again decide is this going to the march ballot or is this not going to march ballot so given the time and it feels like we've exhausted comments from the public right now asking the board if they would like to drop this onto our agenda on monday which is our next scheduled meeting to discuss many of the ideas that have come forward today or the other two options are to drop it all together and to bring it up after march well not after march but without the implication of still considering the march timeline so basically the question is do we talk about it on monday with the intent of considering changes and staying on the march town meeting day ballot timeline or do we decide to drop that timeline and really there's no there's no reason not to stay on the timeline if we can do it in a thoughtful way and i think that we're doing that right now okay can i ask a question sir yes a clarification though the ability to have an additional meeting in january it's essentially an additional meeting in january right in order to stay on the march timeline well it could be on our regular meeting yeah yeah but that wouldn't allow us to do what gary was talking about and sort of engage in the revision of the town plan right that's like a three year process though that can still happen that will still happen yeah i'm not sure you'd need to revise the town plan to extend some changes they would still fit the town plan the only question i have is the town meeting is when most people vote and we wanna get as many people voting on something like this so if you do a separate vote you may not get a full town in and then you'd have to probably wait another year before you present a total rezoning with somewhat more significant changes the reason i'm committed to the march timeline is that there's going to be development out there and i think that the changes many of the changes that have been proposed today are good ways to properly utilize the land that we have out there and to blow through that timeline i think would be the wrong thing to do because the changes that we have made again are the best use for that land out there and i would hate to leave old rules that don't allow us the flexibility of good and smart economic development and then have developers out there run with them so and the additional things you brought up i think can still happen when we talked about two phases whether we make some changes now that allows for some property to be developed but then continue on the path of making additional changes that can be presented again to the town it'd be an ongoing process right and in the next few days we can have that discussion are we can we narrow the focus of these changes within what has come from the planning commission to achieve that or is there another way to achieve that thank you mr chair john i agree and i support trying to work in some of those suggestions today and we would like to see that i think that this commitment to bring in a town vote is causing you more troubles than it's gonna solve i'll say i the last big zoning polls like i voted down let's say in the days and they were the planning commission held many meetings neighborhood meetings they went in person to different land owners did a lot of those things and in the few in a couple of weeks before the vote came we saw a sign saying ups going up saying vote it down less regulation when some of the proposals part of that proposal was gonna reduce the levels of regulation when you bring something complex like this to the public it's gonna be boiled down to a lot of misinformation comes up people are voting on it sed on who posts something extraordinary to the front porch forum you're not gonna be helping the public or meeting their needs by trying to cook something up and bringing it to them to vote the reason the select board is given the power to approve zoning changes is because like with the legislation we don't ask our state we don't vote on bills that our state legislature wants to approve because it's too technical it's too detailed you're the ones who have the oversight and responsibility and the opportunity for oversight cause you have the responsibility of going a little deeper the public is not gonna do that in the vote and i think you could accommodate some of the requests here we can hopefully get this thing moving quickly so that the reaps aren't held out dangling for longer you can meet some of the desires for water and sewer development if you if you go through a process with the planning commission as well and then you guys make the final let the planning commission give you a proposal you guys debate it and make a decision but the months you have to wait for a public vote is gonna cost you and the decisions can be made based on hearsay and then you end up not on the subject thank you i agree all right so we're coming up here we're gonna go one two three and then the board's gonna make a decision here yes i'm to that i would just add that i think possibly you could get consensus and you could actually avoid this innuendo here is if it's carefully presented and with all due respect to the town the planning commission from a businessman's perspective the amount of presentation of this information has been very very small where is the budget just where are the justifications where's the assumptions that have been written out for us to actually drive this i mean the last planning commission set itself up or the last planning commission hearing kind of set itself up or a firing line because there wasn't enough information for people to actually digest to actually be able to see oh here's what the intention is so i would ask you very very carefully if you do put this up for vote write out all those things those assumptions and those justifications so that we know what the subset actually is describing yes what are the appropriate forums for the two underlying issues the one that probably would have the most immediate impact is the sewers is the water gonna go out there or not what determines that what's the inquire i think that's gonna have the single biggest change on what this looks like changing from a cat plant and a parking lot to a cat plant parking lot and a bunch of other stuff we don't want so what's the forum for that and what's the plan for the general plan the gateway and do we wanna put there this someone said a different town plan is that a separate issue or who's the body that we should pay attention to and feed into regarding development depends on the select board and the planning commission i just don't know where that input should be but i think the water since this was parallel with the water i thought naturally this is where it came from and i thought that this is the exact forum or this is how we found out about the sewer line so where do those two things pass through okay so the water sewer planning the extension is still going on at the water sewer commission those meetings happen an hour before each select board meeting it's definitely appropriate to discuss them there with the select board as well since as you can tell they're very much related one goes in hand with the other at this point these zoning changes are with the select board and they're gonna stay with the select board until the end comments questions should all go through jeff and then they get if you wanted to address the entire select board send your comments to jeff he forwards them onto us please come to our meetings our next meeting is on the 15th which is on monday at one thousand seven hundred pm here can i just add that the town sure the town website does have a lot of all the postings of the meetings and there are a lot of different committees that meet and they're really looking for public comment so depending on what you wanna comment on yeah it happens most of them are right sure sure okay so if you have more information you need to send our way all our contact information is online and also go through jeff he'll get it out to all five of us okay i just say my name is i really think this needs to go to a public vote it's just too important and i don't think it's it's not like it's a fifty page document it's three pages the public can understand three pages thank you okay what does the board wanna do here i would suggest bring this to monday's meeting yeah so what does the agenda look like on monday the agenda has mostly budget items on it and a couple of group contracts all right i think we are obligated to do it and it's fine to let it season for a few days and say how are we doing like we have a couple of decisions to make okay both content and concept right i agree so no action to be taken today in that case the only matter of business is to close the public hearing is there a motion to do so is there a second second all that's in favor say aye aye the hearing is closed thank you everybody thank you