joint meeting with city council housing commission planning commission thank you very much here i'll kick this off so that's one of the updates that i want to provide you on this past monday the city council there was a joint meeting meeting really it was a chance for the housing commission to provide an update to council on where they are with some of the directives of or some of their initiatives with either inclusionary housing housing trust fund and a   place in the units the housing commission voted to prioritise in a replacement or not says there is their first item and i believe i forwarded around there the memo from the housing commission that outlined all that all of you think yes ok so that kind of elements where the different parts and pieces that the housing commission felt should be included in the replacement ordinance so council to summon up an all house i'll let so given the fact that we have a very very aggressive schedule on the master plan update finding time to have the planning commission specifically involved is going to be a challenge but i think what we're going to do really we've briefly just talked about this a stock level of just he's been out of out of the office all week on vacation so we're going to have more discussion with her when she comes back about how to kind of strategize with this but i think what we're going to try to do is have myself work with the housing commission on developing the draft regulations and getting their concerns incorporated before we bring it forward to the planning commission that we can continue to focus on the master plan update and we're so we're not just letting that sit adopted other types of ordinances with similar goals and learn more about the issue and i still have a number of questions but i did find some interesting material and i actually printed out major impact on the way our city evolves and i know we're really busy so my concern was whether we can really devote the i we have a housing commission a think about it which is good but i do want  and i would just hate for it to get kind of pushed aside because of everything else the are going on because i think that this is absolutely critical work so i can summarize just a little really quickly what you thought was important about it development we've been seeing the proposal as it currently stands creates the required war and new housing it so any time any unit is i percent area of median income or less and the replacement units must have according to this draft or the manse the seed number of bedrooms as the units being demolished if the in the ordinance there is proposed out for a developer in the sense that they could instead contribute some city to support other affordable housing initiatives in lieu of building and your placement units and you know i was really wondering whether this kind of policy even one of if these kind of policies have been a factor in the other communities or not and also was wondering whether the side like whether it would put the new burden on smaller projects rather than bigger projects and really thinking about this and that's why i want do reading it and i found this article series called inclusionary zoning the most promising or county counterproductive of all housing policies and i think when the city council is using the term inclusionary zoning they were referring to why we have in our zoning that we redid a couple of years ago which was an incentivized program where developers could build additional density optionally if they developers and this article explores how different structures produce different results in different kinds of communities and i think in our whole is to create before ability in our community we really need to look at conversation i want to ask more about was you know with the housing commission and what other did they talked a little bit of help to lean ten i mean a similar policy but the kind of conclusion was that it wasn't in effect their policy you were in berlin to and yet it seemed a little bit into what types of policies have been most effective for affordable housing or if we were just looking at burlington's approach and then adapting it so that there's there's several pieces to this and it's it's there's there's the replacement housing there's inclusionary housing and then there are just call them other affordable housing options and what will the housing commission did was prioritize the replacement housing as need as the ordinance that they felt was most important moving forward as opposed to be inclusionary ordinance so the the document that i sent around from the housing commission was more of a it was a i'll call it a structured outline for what they felt should or should not be clued into so they talked they didn't get into any specific language or policy direction but there was there was i think thirteen questions there were things like should we a should we have a limit on the number of units that would do would we need to be impacted before this ordinance would take place and it was yes they thought maybe three would be a good number so big issue general well it can come in many forms but in general inclusionary zoning is whenever you're developing you'd be required to incorporate a certain percentage of the project as a humans yet the replacement ordinance would be if you're impacting a certain number of already affordable units you would have to replace those you know when i was reading that or replacement or not and it didn't seem to have stipulation that it had to be replacing all the affordable units it seemed to say  and so he can his right he can't find a place that cheap anymore so i think the guy in most cases that is probably envious of you would be a situation that may not really be designated the unit may not already have a designation as an affordable unit yeah but if policy and i don't think it's necessarily pertinent to have a detail discussion of that it's time to get your blood actually read the policy to the ordinance by a great and i think that's that's a really good point really again what the housing commission provided was a framework for what their ideas were going forward the details and all those specifics will come out as we as we develop the language and review that why i was curious because i didn't look at the terminology replacement or minutes after that conversation and i didn't find the right academic articles were probably from importances is this something that is commonly used in other communities or is it something that's pretty specific to a small handful  ordinances are becoming more common inclusionary was always kind of that was the big push initially was we need to find a way to get these to get affordable housing units incorporated into every development or any so that's kind of where i got the flat yeah there are a few that i've come across and i will just say generally even in plain worlds very seldom does and we'll get reinvented ordinances are regularly the housing replacement slash retention every want to call it ordinance and even that report there's a lot in it and there's a lot of great aeration i wouldn't characterize it as saying it's unsuccessful in any way shape or form and there certainly are many things that could be done to tweak it and there's an inclusionary zoning working group that's made recommendations to i don't know if it's technically not the city council but there's a workin probably not their intention policy i couldn't begin to tell you how many people have protection housing replacement policy by any stretch but it certainly is not a new concept it can be bit different i started an approach to this way and the city of portland maine i think it was their other main policy th that if you want to know the stuff so stepping back further off i want to say that i left but i've only heard good things about the way you handled the meeting the other because i think there's a lot of different opinions i just hope that the housing commission doesn't get too far down the road before we see it and get warrant because i think the worst thing that could happen is have the housing commission come with a recommendation to get blown up by the planning commission who then brings it to the city council blows up that thing so yeah all three groups need to be on the same page i think as we go through this sort on how a couple of bombs blowing up and yet so i think it's worth you know we go a lot of work on our pla i think it's worth either understanding that that housing commission housing policy where it was called needs to be pushed back a little bit or if that's not possible there needs to be some joint meeting to make sure that all of the concerns are addressed up front so that it's not a surprise when it comes to either individually but directly but not after a level of detail from the master plan perspective i think it's also important to to to keep in mind that excuse me while it's important that we do forward with some of these housing seemed to be fairly successful i can try to find it was on here and now sometime this afternoon i think around two o'clock so i can try to find that and share that with people are interested it was just a short little five or ten minute just a few comments in the email form from public works for us to think about so that's the only thing i want to add in with that i'm going to turn it over regina vitality section we did get some comments on what they were we discussed those at the last meeting and knew they were pretty minor so but then we will send you all will send the whole thing around it to everybody all those city departments after you've got the whole raft to get  excuse for that is just timing wise it's been super fast and i've actually had some vacations so i should try to get these to try to get you the out and get proper feedback from city staff before you get it like in an ideal world we would picture things that we talked about last time is that this sort of general feel of the chapter didn't feel quite right to folks particularly in terms of sort of the kind of biking and walking kind of pieces and the parking piece of it so i try to rework that so i don't know if that feels better for folks particularly in the introduction of this or if it's still kind of missing the so in brief from city staff in the version that probably eric just just passed out from their side of things the four things that they're really moving forward on is improving parking garage access service but i'm not positive that this is what i read that to say is that potentially following the same system that really just got for parking i don't know if that really is what that means but that's my assumption but we can get that clarified and try to work work and one of the inputs to phosphorous in the lake are the wastewater treatment plants so you've got great amount of capacity and you wastewater treatment plant but over time you are going to have to reduce the amount of stress that comes out  that plant some of that herman except is still sort of on the table and getting worked out but there will likely need to be some improvements at the plant just for that component of it even though it's a three percent right  phosphorus before than you can now so what's happening with the new permits is you have to reduce you have to produce much last phosphorus than you did before so the thirty three percent is kind of it's not really relevant towards the new  so there's other yellow highlights in there something that is just a reminder to me to make sure we kind of get get all this going ok so on the second page their energy just super quick brief page twenty three is where energies thank you ok so over the last few years the state has adopted very aggressive energy goals essentially ninety percent of our energy produce the energy that we use should be produce from ninety percent renewable sources by twenty fifty there's a number of other goals too but essentially the way they've tried to start implementing them those goals is for the regional planning commissions to do energy plans we have done that and then the municipalities can do enhanced their called enhanced energy plans essentially municipal plans have required energy component for a number of years this is not a brand new topic by any means but this new enhanced energy plan is really the benefit to a municipality is to have greater w a public utility application process so the public utility commission approves all utility kind of projects in the state that's solar projects  wind projects electric utility lines all kinds of different things so grand scheme of things when you ski it's not likely to see a lot of these applications that you would necessarily want to weigh in to the is present so i'm not sure that it's necessary that you go through an enhanced energy planning process but having said that we've basically at the regional planning commission have created sort of all of the data and the maps that you would be needed to get that enhance energy planning criteria in your plan so that's essentially what i'm recommending here is we can sort of include it just like an appendix like we couldn't other things there is lots of information information in there some of it's interesting some it's very confusing but it's it's a lot and so we can certainly talk more about that down the road would ultimately the way it works is the chicken and county regional planning commission would actually plan as we do normally and then we would also kind of review it for this extra level of criteria so it's really that decision doesn't need to be made for quite some time but we think for the most part we can get what we need to have  in your plan just know that it's not likely as big of an issue for the city as it is for some other places in what was the reasoning in the case so some municipalities have a lot of property have a lot of land open land in their town that could easily be used for large solar arrays or wind those can not in all places but they can be controversial so this would maybe want more of a say at the table there's just not a lot of open mean when you see where you're likely to see a big project that will be controversial it's it's going to be specific for when you ski and you can that's actually a live link so you could click on that right now and see all the data there when you see it we're going to we're going to redo it a little bit because right now all you see is data there's not really any text that helps explain what's what so we will improve that for you but as an example each of the municipalities in the county have a target have a low and a high target for energy generation that's potentially another component of why it's not necessarily all that difficult or challenging to include it in the plan because it's not necessarily holding you to something that is reasonable the state goals yeah i think the economic development plan essentially just had it in there as a point of reference particularly because it can be potentially competitive market right versus here right across the border comparison to what you can get healthy person urban forest so there's just it's just a point there and just decide where that ultimately will go which i think they're also looking at it as trees provide strong water treatment then to buy utilit you look at it from a different i thought it was interesting when i first moved into my house the neighbor asked me we could cut down my big silver maple so that they could put solar panels on the roof or just for interest in the different ideas of my you know trying to be sustainable in certain ways  able to get one back from staff in my office earlier today so i'll just pass this around it's super drafty but you folks had mentioned at the last meeting about the goal of having a sidewalk on at least one side of every street in the city so this map more so than the map that you saw in the current draft helps explain what streets don't have currently have a sidewalk that's in that sort of magenta and the other thing that's on this map that i think is important to include in the blue and there's actually two other pieces that are missing from this map that will add but there high priority pedestrian sidewalk improvements from your municipal transportation plan which got lots and lots of public engagement and feedback on so i think we don't want we certainly don't want to lose sight of those high priority projects from the transportation plan and there are two more that aren't identified on here one is kind of your concept a little bit of a what i was like north south east west west side of the city down by the river and kind of going out i think it sort of shows that eventually going out through the waste water treatment plant or something over over the river but and then area and tires they know it sort of like but what makes it so great is because it's walkable and bike up all and people want to park and walk around but then some people avoid it because it's not your polo park in front of the store type s but i think for some reason there's a perception that we lock parking when we actually don't and so maybe getting out the way finding and ways of really trying to point out where that parking ends is a point it's a red dress something that  the highest places i think that are in disrepair kind of floated but the transportation plan does include a number of unlisted sidewalk areas that are in disrepair to the point that they should be brought up to standard lot of public input and prioritization went into what the city can actually fix so it would be my recommendation to stick with that that information from  em i'm just looking at this i mean this is one type of utility sidewalks these are going to be any kind of plan for like sewer water like those type of things to yeah it's a good engagement to really help prioritize what what can be done so we i don't believe there's a we don't benefit today that same kind of thing happening for all the other utilities but what we've got from public works i would i would just suggest that we do a summary of the cia if you got a good plan just just talk about what's in it what the intent of it is things like that and then just reference it so that we're not identifying specific projects that i would suggest we say that we would like to have  whatever making decisions they can decide if they want to you know prioritize  mean i personally don't see that it hurts being in there but i'm one of those so would there be a situation where some of the vehicular connectivity would be enhanced such as connections in the cold point and i believe the statement came from the good works commission as it is minus transit that read me as i stuck it in there and that's it i think palaces makes a great point i think that's because that's a huge infrastructure needed for the city that needs attention ok and then i have the answer i guess what you are what we originally came down here for so we came to talk about transit reliability about this one is there's two commissions that are feeding into this is the public safety commission and it's the community services commission and became yes and they provided input challenging to figure out what actually drives this queer gibber trying to keep this high level we're trying to sort of say it was more challenging in this chapter than the other one so far on how to kind of keep that high level and what sort of stuck together didn't do a great job sticking in together but it's in there and then you'll see lots of a lot more detail from the other commissions so i  i bring that up not necessarily that we can get to a solution tonight by any means but maybe i can you guys can sort of take that with us homework a little bit and think about what you want to do in this in this chapter where you kind of want to land on the polls in terms of level so that would help narrow this down the other person i think that will help me narrow down a good amount of this is probably rain and i have a chance to reach out to him so we can kind of circle back with him and and  out from his perspective what would be the good sort of data to highlight here and also for our public safety folks as well so we can kind of you know see a better version of that next time we there is also a police and forgetting what it's called but the police put together a i'm going to say strategic plan right now that may not actually be what it's called but  vision statement and it's pretty detailed so that i think will be a good piece to consider as one of your other panda caesar like things to kind of refer to but this piece is a little it's a little bit more more around things like the public perception is that food access is very limited and the word comes to desert was brought up multiple times and this is done this is just like the way this is coming across as like everything is s i know in many cases we're trying to restrict specificity but i did find friction on the when you see school districts to be a little more cars than i expected  ski and this is our opportunity to make the state proud statement about our school system and maybe even highlight a couple of the initiatives that are school system has undertaken that are innovative i  to as a gold plate i actually was curious blake where the kids are used to be going after graduation rates and i don't i couldn't find any of that information on the let's say for the school system or anything like that i was curious as a choice so you know but she did very well as did you know most of the kids of her class and it's interesting because she went to providence college and she got down to her educational facilities in the city we do have say princess we get c c v we've got the center point you know so we have to make sure that we cooperate those in there so i guess you just said than this it doesn't make sense to have a separate well i mean i think it's an important point that seth makes it it's interesting to have a whole chapter that the city itself doesn't necessarily control all the other chapters and what you're kind of you know i think th goal at the end of the days to try to help this city determine what priorities you have to fund going forward and it's not to say that the schools aren't important at all but it's not necessarily within the purview of the city which is why that whole other teachers plan that the schools do for themselves so i think the argument the argument against that is just the klan as has been said it's a place where people may be coming to get information on the city and schools is an important part of the city even on that under other business the fact that so our schedule has a we have a little small gap in our schedule on our meetings for the twenty seventh of september we don't have any plan sections scheduled so if we needed to extend some more discussions we can and that may be an opportunity as well to get more into the discussion of that of the housing which we had at the top of the meeting could be trying to make the next meeting they're going to have this discussion and invite them and then do the housing section during that meeting at the end of september to and so that we have had that conversation before  implementation tests which is awesome but so right now i don't know what i'm putting in the housing chapter but i'm sure i'll look at everything that they have happened to together and figure it out i imagine there will be a lot in the chapter that would be much like the other sort of introduction insight the retention thing would just be like one of the goals that maybe among many goals the specific how that shakes out i mean i don't know is to me in that chapter yet so i'd like to say there might be stuff that helps inform you guys of these from a broader perspective that might be helpful before you start getting into this housing protection conversation but that's a hope because i haven't done any of it yet and i think kind of that same point i would almost think that our discussion on housing for the master plan is going to be still going to be at the conceptual broader level so as long as you're ok with the concept of some sort of replacement ordinance or inclusionary housing or things of that nature i think we can have the discussion on the housing section separate from that more detailed discussion what might be helpful is in the meantime palace gave us a report on clues we'll do our best but yeah it is possible we may need that september meeting to catch up on where you are with some of these other sections so but i will talk with with when we could potentially get a joint meeting together and what dates they've already got scheduled and things like that to see what this was really something that we need not only not be able to pull something together before  attention conversation two weeks time is it's really would be much more helpful for staff i think to be able to prepare for that so that you guys are never going to questions that he doesn't have answers to so i would just  organizations and it is a massive massive topic so to try to find you guys you know one thing that helps you understand housing retention policy it would be pretty difficult so that that's just my thought about it and i mean i  basement very limited yeah and i wonder you know so this is more of an expert than i am by any means in the reality that the majority of the time these are actually one word answers that it's probably where you're going to find it as opposed to something separate but i can certainly look and feel like i'm anything like that and i will say oh i've already done some looking because i'm starting to draft what it