good evening welcome to the january twenty meeting of the richmond select board before we begin the agenda is there any public comment ok and for those of you wanting to discuss gateway that is the first thing we're going to jump into changes to select board held a public hearing on december eleventh on december fifteenth the select were decided that they were prepared to move that forward to a vote at town meeting and decided they would take that up again in the new year so the current planning commission recommended changes documented still active for roughly another sixty days and were free to consider that amend that you could totally scrap it come up with your own list of changes any significant changes you make would have to get a consistency review from the planning commission you'd have to hold another public hearing and after that you could adopt or not as you see fit i know the select board today received several documents of comments and suggested changes for members of the public those people are here in the audience t happening and i believe there's quite a few people who also would like to speak about some other changes so that's a lot of changes to consider in a shorter period of time i personally get the feeling from talking to you individually that you're probably prepared to make fewer changes but more thoughtful changes and if you do want to move gratefully you're not going to put anything on for town meeting at this point but you may be able to to adopt a document that could accomplish the goals you so thank you so much the border wants to go first if anyone wants as a thing to say i'd love to open up to the people and the application meet with the economic development committee today and what really came up through the initial process of the planning commission was they had a life hearing and it was until the end product came out that there were planning the new visioning that's going to happen over the course of the next year or two can we really look at the polls opening and have public input because i think what we've found is the process to include everyone really needs to take a lot longer than the six months that it took so could we consider some some of the recommendations that were made and then go into maybe a longer process when we do the whole town planning and look at the zoning more in depth and get more of the public opinion on so that's one know he said it is an interesting kind of it is an interesting question and someone from the at the beginning of this process said to me the problem is with the town plan you know and i don't know that it is one hundred percent true but there is this kind of issue i think where zoning right now doesn't match with the town plan and the opportunity we have for us and so if we could see hawks single out those bigger issues which i think we've kind of come to that point now in this process perhaps we can open that now and capitalize on the opportunity we have ahead of us without missing a timeline that in in certain parts isn't necessarily such that set by the opportunity and the people involved with owning and living in owning property and living on their property or having the opportunity to change their property in that district so with that said  we could do that discuss what what occurred practices and then set a timeline for if we're going to adopt these the timeline could be at the end of february believe we could have our  a public hearing so that would give us kind of four meetings to really work on or three meetings to really work on these bigger issues with with the changes identifying a few key items that perhaps we could have done but not forgetting about the idea that we figure out of a better process to continue with the larger vision for resuming so our focus tonight is to look at items that have been recommended talk about what we might consider adopting because we have a sixty day window kindly left with and that's purview you do have a lot of latitude to him and that was ok but even if you didn't you could come up with your own separate so i understand there's that sense of urgency to deal with what the planning commission is built just as a point of information you could come up with something entirely different based on that can move that forward also so i don't feel comfortable coming up at the site for with something entirely different when the planning commission spent six months really researching it i mean i i think i have an understanding of the current record that recommendations they made and i appreciate all the work they did i'd like to consider some of the items they recommended now and then go back to a process where we could come up with other changes that we thought would fit the larger vision i don't know if anyone's just depends on the goal i think they go in making changes to the current proposal from the planning commission which would be to find a compromise that will work or for what is currently being planned out there but not allow an opportunity for something you know those types of things that people are worried about which is script development so i think that you know thinking about what is being planned out there and what could happen we could easily i think that we could easily conservatively pare down the proposal of removing certain allowable uses maybe going and looking at the party with apartments that type of thing and we've had some discussions about what what we and i'm talking about big we would all like to see happen in the in the in the gateway district but what we haven't done sort of ended up with a short list of conversations i've had to certainly a representative sample of the voters but it strikes me it's been sort of the goldilocks principle how do we hit the right sweet spot of commercial development and there are folks is i've heard everything from well i don't really want any commercial development to i want a mcdonald's and a car wash so if those are maybe the two ex and i have heard both of those but the town plan guides us towards commercial development it is i think one of the rational places in town to support responsible commercial development so for me what we think responsible commercial development looks like and if there's a tension risk if we think of the town plan articulating the gateway as a responsible place for commercial development the risks are either we will get most of development we don't want at the other end we could end up with entire rest entirely residential development if we front with certain power and then we don't get the sweet spot we want and so i sort of put it out there that the term plan or the people that think we should or should not have commercial development i take it as a given that we should under the plan every sponsible commercial development in that part of the gately but that's just of the principle that's where i can see the thing is i think we have to work on time plan and the process is a long process and there's no way we're going to today or even in our little meetings capture input from the whole town so i think we have to work with what we have and economic development is one of the areas in the town plan on the gateway that is supported and we have now someone that's interested in developing a piece of property there in their system barriers and we've talked about resigning are there some things we could do to support that and then do our larger planning process because there's really no way to capture the input from everyone in town without capturing the input from everyone down so we have to work with what we have we have to work with the opportunity in front of us we have someone that wants a valuable property and they're very thoughtful and they've come to us with a few things we might be able to help them with but in this process we've uncovered that there's a lot of other things that people think need to change in zoning and be discussed and i think that what's great about this is we can now do that we're not going to let that go but i think today we need to look at other some of the recommendations of the planning commission to six months researching and holding public hearings on that we could consider today and district in town but i think there is consensus that you know i think surprisingly better there is because us in town about what we do like and one thing that we did that i would guess that everyone in this room and most people in town on and one thing that concerns me about this whole discussion about the gateway district is the discussion about commercials if it's all said and it's not you know retail is completely different  development but you know specifically and this is not coming ok you know it's the half the town state i'm have this commercial development is going out towards an interstate exchange and for good reason ever i think the planning document that came up with those most of the changes seen the lady says there's some things said that i think it makes sense to take a second look at what would be the it seems like there's a few here areas we could look at down discuss based on all the input and it still sounds like there what i'm hearing is that there's more zoning work to be done while we're considering today or some minor changes to support something that's ready to go in right now knowing that we have some time with the water to really give some of the other changes and there's been some great recommendations and some really good discussions that need to happen beyond this today so that the small type of chain restaurants etc not good that many people most people like the idea of a bigger office space between jobs and kind have been i don't think it's been articulated well enough that we really want to open up these types of office space the way back to the research facilities these things that are not going to create that shape or strip mall feel  hour because i think some people that i'm very sensitive to this i guess because of what i do but i think people are very happy with having the mobile home community out on the outskirts and out of sight and i think that they have every right to be part of this community to have easy access to that kids could ride their bikes safely into town and take advantage of the library and other things and i think that development along the gateway part of it should include improved access extended sidewalks or putting a had a word with the state to put in a bike lane or some way that we could get out there safely but there's and then the whole discussion about whether or not we're going to pull out well to get on to the water and sewer this is a slight bit of prejudice in there that this kind of stays with me and i think we need to watch our language and  be a little bit more considerate because i understand they're thinking of expanding into what the senior community which would also be a wonderful opportunity for the town but the mobile home community is one of our neighborhoods that is fully part of the town and they have every right to have access and opportunities there for everything else and i don't need to lead people but i just sort of hear this undercurrents and and i've heard them in numerous meetings over the last twenty years i'm back behind the camera  rations also participating in that and everybody sort of agrees that we'd like that to be a nice entranceway well i think we've been talking about fifteen years i think it's time to be needing to get out in front of  or we end up trying to put a dam in ventura the ends going to burst so i think we need to you know i think the town plan actually has a really nice vision a statement of what we want there we want something that's compatible with the village and i think having a good compromise in terms of ensuring that we're really moving this towards the office research manufacturing area we might even consider shrinking goes from the proposal to match case you have restaurant that would that would kind of keep out you know the larger chain restaurants that are going to do five thousand square feet in the smaller ones that are just you know kind of places in the town of that happening in the past and certainly can happen we have to remember we're creating a framework that that developers will come and fit into we don't get to pick and choose once the framework  sense therefore to make it more restrictive now if we're saying that this is not the end of the process right because it reduces the risk of getting something wrong so that's kind of yeah that is where i'm going with this is that maybe makes sense to say look let's just take food service off the table in the short term  may or may not want to pass today and then do the further because i think we can sit here in each item anythings and i'm concerned because i don't know enough about the contract on each item for an hour but just what they've done for six months but it could be look at some of the items that have been kind of what we're talking about what this is because they are trying to say if this is one step towards ensuring that we don't miss an opportunity right now to create two to ensure that what is built out there now some is going to get built up there and you don't want to miss an opportunity to open that up to make sure that the way it is used for its greatest potential and if this is just the first step then we should only passed changes that allowed those very much consensus ideas that we've heard in the last six months which really have only been office space plane manufacturing and perhaps a better conversation would come back to should there be a restaurant what they decide should be how but you know i'm going to stick with the board for now because if we're going to do this we need to get t commission whatever people's feelings which are better spent months on this i'm somewhat reluctant to go into diving into new sections for new traders at this point ok so like  ok all right so then the next you know seeing the consensus on changes to those uses that the next big idea was up for discussion where there were architecture so there planning commission deleted that structure shall be built and or have appearance of woodwork brick and they also removed requirements of having an entrance and windows facing root to support those changes will there be a compromise to say that the wing should have the appearance of those currently in the village or because if again we have to if we're going to do this you need to reach a compromise based on the comments you've heard the last few weeks the one overriding thing i've heard is that people don't want the big five for building your you know their ten bill and to appearance of water bridges seems like a reasonable compromise this is another one where people were split so the proposal to allow a flat roof to buildings toward a building with footprints ten thousand square feet or great so for example all the principal structures must have a steeply pitched roof with the exception of a portion of the least visible side from roof to which may be flat to accommodate quick meant  etc or compromise would simply be to right there and or something like rooftop equipment shall be shielded from view and i you know that would leave it up to the architect and the developer and i think we're going down the right path with that what i hear is people who want to plant move with you know the cheapest possible commercial construction with the you know ten foot compressor brand sticking out the front range so i think language like that equipment must be shielded from view shield it from here to be rude to you right ok ok other big items that we need to talk about would be got to go back to parking one more time which we discussed at length including a requirements but baby one of the biggest concerns i've heard of is parking in front i have not really talked to very many people there are people out there who think it's fine but for the most part the correspondence i've received is that parking needs to remain on the side of our in the rear  buildings i think that might limit the ability of people to develop out there but i think it could be a compromise we could reach one of the one of the suggestions i've heard is if it's on route to parking cannot be in front but if it's a i think the way it was worded any building had to have to have a purpose once if you had a whole area that you developed multiple buildings behind would have the parking in front which may not make sense right so i think what we're what they were trying to do with the zoning was to ensure that we didn't have a bunch of so i know the landscaping him of i think landscaping is important to have and i don't know to what extent but i mean i think the landscaping has been in the zoning i don't know if that was updated at all so i  the definition of landscaping i think we should keep some kind of i think you talked as before about the landscaping approvals a separate process well it's address specifically in conditional use approval correct so  the road and fifty feet so fifty feet fifty feet of landscaping between the road and the first building and then that is further described in that conditional use approval it's you know i think that some people are looking for more clarity and my opinion is that it comes with the project ok what else would people like to talk about right now in terms of what changes we could make i think we should not we should investigate when it forty percent of  you know hearing people's opinion sure you know this is what been one of the toughest ones and i think might be might be a hang up in terms of if we can find a good compromise here i think my biggest fear is sending water sewer out there and i know people say no one wants to live there but they people will build housing and people will pay to live there because it shouldn't county vermont i wouldn't say that the richmond rental market  saturated so that to me was kind of a protection for the town planning ensuring that future development out there doesn't lose the mixed use that is required of the town  e my power the percent might be high but you know maybe you're right maybe there is more research needs to be done i think that the original the original was one hundred percent from the planning commission went down to fifty came to us this fifteen that went down to forty is a little bit of a compromise so chris and i think with the i've gone back and forth a lot and  flexibility about what buildings to put where you know and so there there will be residential build out that but that but that will be the commercial with it if we want that to happen i don't know of any other mechanism that we can really use to do that my only concern is i heard and i'm not going to exactly relate as correctly that when the way to do if someone did commercial on one piece of property with a plan to build something lay around or buy something later on i need you to  across parts of you know just want to get a treatable development program something like that i don't know how to hit the sweet spot on this one because it seems to me just as we described the risk is if you take it away it's all residential and once you build it it's gone and we've seen you know places that i think many people choose not to live but given development pressures and housing options i think of the buildings between east harrison and the the concern is so if we don't have the percentage to what other tool would we have to preserve the commercial intent to send the town plan vision personal things in the game believing it would be appropriate i didn't hear the only thing i heard not the only thing but one of the things i heard was that maybe that's too low in fact that's one of the bigger things i heard not that it needs to go i've heard from some people that needs to go lower but in terms of when i'm thinking about the entire gateway district and not just certain properties i'm not just the biggest couple of two or three properties then i think that should stay and and become a point of discussion for the next step of this process with four big changes and publishing that on the website minor change for these for bigger ideas that we have changed tonight and asking for maintenance and they're proposing to prohibit any new dwelling units in the floodplain that would bring a bit the development of accessory apartments or conversion of a single family we were tracking close to the improvements over three years to see if somebody would hit the stanton improvement requirement over a three year period they took that back to the female minimum requirement so we're not going to track it every three years in an application to them which is due friday and which we'll be asking them for assistance to help us of that our transportation section of our original plan is part of the original plan it's will plan update and also looking for  further technical assistance from them to help support our town plan update we do have to provide a basically a letter of commitment saying that we have we are committing to support supplying the twenty percent non federal match that cannot be provided by in kind stop time so we're basically going to form a budget based on basically having about three thousand dollars to provide in that which comes from the planning and zoning budget that we have along with some basically says we support the application and we'll commit the twenty percent match and and i think this was the side of the plan currently is that there will be a side door that goes from the round church to the cemetery corkran road and along the sections like from the mobile home park along to the lucky spot so we're kind of betting on the idea of potentially trying to get some funding to do some planning work for that but looking at our budget and what we have able to match depth they said it was sixty feet and they measured the flow rate they say to pretty the water was recognised during flow testing but it greatly diminished by the end of the test was a week but that means  is after they called the pong there was some sediment in the water there saying it went away by the end of the test they had that turd very lovely decreased a light brown before final pot testing was completed it was witnessed it was moco most likely caused by ruined reinstallation of the pulp they say their findings are in conflicts of as to whether c and type sediment is in the water they did not observe any large deposits watched they basically said that it was flowing there was some sediment in the water but they said it was for so you know depth should be given a chance to speak but  the town the highway were somehow collapsed the well i don't know that that's the case i think there is some sediment there that may have been existing issue my contention is that  we didn't use a roll or anything when we did the work on the road i don't know that we could have damaged the well it's about twenty five to thirty feet off the side of the road but this mob's here this evening she should be able to speak i think again is if there's nothing that the port is going to do on this tonight if we decide not to do anything is this a something our insurance company can also handle if mrs moss wants to pursue th that the the report from the professionals we hired doesn't show that our construction on that road has done has has caused the problem and so you know and unfortunately it sounds like one of those situations where i don't know what the problem is i'm sorry for it far from you know that you have to live with that but i don't think that there's anything the board can do in showed that it did not create the settlement issue in the well so unfortunately looks like this probably needs to go to the to the insurance company to adjudicate and determine if there's a payout of some sort that needs to be made so i would ask jeff if you could work with ms mobs to make sure that happens in a timely fashion i would be great if and that's his recommendation so what i have here is really something i got recently and i really didn't have time to share with you but the first part of it should you decide to move forward it puts the article out there shout general obligation bonds of the town richmond in an amount not to exceed two million five hundred thousand dollars object a reduction from the receipt of available state and federal grants and aid estimated to be one point one million one hundred hundred twenty five thousand issued for the purpose of financing the cost of extending municipal water and sewer lines into the gateway zoning district and westerly as far as the riverview commons mobile home park  aggregate estimated cost of all such improvements being two million five hundred thousand dollars so that's the question that council has come up with if you wish to approve it there's this form that we have to be approved a resolution certificate would be a test to why the clerk may have the form of the ballot article some certifications on how it's going in now  how it was posted now the vote he says that due to the required warnings for this today is the last day to get this done  indebtedness for the purpose of extending the disciplined water sewer lines into the gateways earning district and westerly as far as the riverview commons mobile home park although i talked to linda and she felt that the separate warning could go into the annual report also because you have one warning it's posted there for the annual meeting we didn't see why we couldn't also include the second warning also at all clear that we own giuliani so the  case remains to be made should we do this and i'm looking at bard because we're negotiating with the mobile home park i think we have a lot of enthusiasm that we're going to be able to come to an agreement on what it might look like before town meetings so that we can state a case to the public that we believe this indebtedness authorization is warranted it would be put to good is who pays for it so we should be clear that it's the user is in another parameter is our desire all along has been to say it will not increase and should have the net effect of reducing rates for other current users so those are sort of the boundaries around this for talking points those are complex enough i don't see a way of putting it in the language but those are the talking points the concerns why would you vote against it for those kinds of reasons i don't want my rates to go up i don't want the rest of the town to pay for your water sewer line i don't want the gateway the water sewer lines to have some impact on the gateway that i'm against so it just seems to me those are the talking points i think i think we should proceed and we're trying to be as transparent as possible and you know the timing of all of these ok so we could get approval and essentially say we're not going to use it unless we have these things in place and i feel like we're not compelled to do it now you have to something right the risk being the communication fails and a good project because we were unable to communicate properly so it's going to be a big challenge for so for water sewer and just to make sure that this is being heard that fail is people look at it either rise or any rate where they look at or say we're not paying for it and so with the negotiations being finished and then going to bind it's easier to say you know you're done yet and that's where afraid the communication  thousand dollars subject to reduction from the receipt of available for state and federal federal grants any estimated to be one million one hundred twenty five thousand dollars be issued for the purpose of financing the cost of extending municipal water and sewer lines into the gateways or even district and westerly as far as the river view common's mobile home park the aggregate customary cost of all such improvements being two million five hundred thousand dollars and essentially with the idea is to the things that we that happen organically after our reamer everybody came together and the town really worked together as a town and and and did a lot to mitigate the worst immediate effects to build that in the more institutional way and frankly many times his name came up multiple times mostly by me suggesting her is a great person to be involved with this car traffic ordinance run through this quickly there's been some changes we've needed to make for a while we kind of do this every year and the big ones are we had a location and a stop sign on johnny burke in canyon road where it was moved added the eastbound and westbound traffic control signals on route two struck the b southbound and northbound traffic controls at the red bridge because they're no longer needed any point to leaving them there and then added into parking regulations the park and ride allowing the park police department to use their ticketing authority and  deepest street is one way the whole way through the loop from the entrance to the exit so those are the changes and then the other big well of the other big one but the one i did not put in there because i don't think we should do it is changing the yeah how would you know  so the thing about speed dating you know when you use it to try to justify speed with changes in it it just tells you how fast people go you know people are going songs you know forty forty five but more between thirty and forty five twenty three so i don't know of that data justifies lowering  but i think you might be able to get away with it if you want  how long do we need to advertise this fifteen days yes so the viewer seventy seven or seventy well february sixteenth that's washington's birthday we open on the president's agenda it's a holiday now to replace all of them now for thirty thousand dollars and pay it back over five years with that sixty five hundred dollars it's and been put into the  four cars five cars that's six thousand dollars apiece thirty grand and we budgeted to make that payment for one every year so if we could structure this note so we're making one payment that one purchase every year there's no reason not to replace these all which he says they're all yeah there are almost ten years over ten years old so you know since we can do it without a budget impact right now that would be the goal and i think you know if you think you can buy these  wear out all the same time right but you can buy the system so that they come and do this work for you as long as they're still under warranty which the warranty on this just makes sense as the useful life so way these cameras are are used for evidence in criminal cases they've used as evidence if somebody made a complaint against your officers there they're very valuable valuable useful and i think we'd be at a disadvantage down here and yeah right now you know now operating on hold not only all cameras but old software which i think increases in my opinion it creases the risk of something going wrong or something else and not being supported by the company but the new ones have wireless microphones so that conversations are also picked up so you could be outside of the view of the camera in the conversation would still be picked up for whatever the officers say you know  five five one seven six jericho road this is will be the road into the tower eighteen two years building yes this will be at the peak form on jericho road way up towards the highway mileage certificate this is for the state government this is for the state i mean i was doing we have no changes we have fifteen point six three miles of class two which are the typical paved while we're signing things i think i've told some people but not everybody i unfortunately am will not be here on the actual day of town me