my name is andy montrose i'm the chair of the planning commission and ten thousand is actually it's a family meeting of the planning commission even though we're doing a very different way than we normally do and the main the main focus of finite is obviously plan b t v and we're going to be going through a number of steps on a plan b t v is essentially the city's plans for development and for planning over the next number of years under state law the city required to have a municipal development plan and in the past we've done it every five years and it's been of silly boring document that is pretty tedious to read through and this year for this time around we're trying to do it differently we're trying to do it in a way that's much more engaging and really sets out the vision and the goals for the city in a much more or again a much more open way in a much more readable way that we hope will really bring a much better focus to what the goals are of the city so i'm going to open up planning commission meeting and our agenda as i said is the focus on plan b t v we're going to be having some open discussion about it and megan tuttle's going to introduce it and after we do that we're going to have open up a formal public hearing well at the beginning i'm going to open all of this up as a public hearing on plan b t v that way all of the comments that come in during this part of the process can be incorporated into a public hearing as well so you don't if you don't want to you don't have to speak later on during the more feminine part of the process we have been planning commissioners here i think we have three if i could  municipal development plan for the city so we're going to spend a little bit of time here at the beginning talking about what plan b t v is talking about what's in the plan and how we've been working to update this plan and then we're going  to give you a lot of time to have discussion with each other and with the planning commissioners because we know that that's a really important aspect of making sure that what's in this plan is reflecting what you see as being important so we're glad you're all here tonight to be part of this process with a little bit of an experiment from how we gen things in the past so to jump right in what's in plan b t v and before i start talking about what's in a plan b t v i would like to ask the question how many of you saw the draft plan before you came here tonight a couple of a couple of had a chance to peek at it but maybe not read it thoroughly great so we'll talk a little bit about it and for those of you that have had a chance to look at it hopefully will be kind of a helpful reminder so plan b t v is like a road map for the city it is a really high level plan for what is going to happen in the next ten to twenty years in burlington but ultimately it helps provide policy direction for the projects and programs and initiatives that the city and even many of our partners will actually use in the next you know five ten fifteen years and beyond to guide the work that we do as a community so it's a really important roadmap for us as a community to determine our future many of you have probably heard of plan b t v over and over and over and over again in the last few years and that's because plan b t v is actually part of a collection of plans that we have as a city tonight we're here to talk about plan b t v our comprehensive plan which is essentially an umbrella plan for all of the planning work that we do as a city but we do have more specific plans like plan b t v southend which is something that we've also been working on in the recent years which look specifically at how we take in and interpret these ideas that we have for our city in a specific area of the city or plan b t v walk bike which look specifically at how we take these principles and interpret them in our transportation system for the city ultimately this plan that we're here to talk about tonight provides that framework for all of those other plans and efforts this plan is about how burlington continues to be a dynamic city at the heart of our region we're right in the middle of chipping county and in the middle of what's happening in vermont in a lot of ways and this plan also talks about how we evolve over time that as we evolve that we will  will preserve the things that make us a distinct and unique community and will leverage those identities to promote greater inclusion and more chronic to vittie as a city plan b t v addresses a really wide range of issues that we need to think about for the future of our city you can see here that there are a number of topics like transportation or housing or the natural environment that are all included in this plan and the reason that we show them this way as a series of gears is because they're all connected and you can understand this way that as we start to turn those gears or make decisions and implement projects and ideas that pertain to one of these issues  it has an effect on how all of these other parts of our city function and ultimately work in the past if you're familiar with i mean a spool development plan and we've had individual chapters related to each of these topics which  allowed us to really expand upon each of these issues and talk about why they're important and what we're going to do about them but what we've been trying to achieve with this update to plan b t v is to reframe how these ideas are addressed to demonstrate the interrelated nature of all of these issues to one another so our updated plan instead of having ten sort of distinctive chapters about each topic has two major elements the first one is our plan for action this is what our plan instructs us to do over the next ten to twenty years it presents a number of goals and the potential tools that we can use to actually implement those goals as a city and these goals and actions are organized around four characteristics that we heard from you are really important when we are having conversations and that is those those things that i mentioned at the beginning about as a distinctive city as a dynamic city an inclusive city and a connected city the other major part of this plan is our plan for land use and what this part of the plan talks about is kind of where and how we will actually take these goals and potential strategies and implement them within our city this plan has been shaped by a number of kind of  back since then so this is our kind of regular check in time this is our chance to look at what's in the plan and evaluate what was done since the last time we adopted this plan what have we been successful at what have we not been successful at what are things that are in our plan that are still important priorities for us to continue to work on in the future and then combined with that we've been talking with you many of you i see in this room i know have been at either an n p a meeting or a workshop or even at the farmers market or somewhere else and talk to us about this plan earlier this year but taking that information that you've shared with us about what's important for the future burlington maybe what's missing in our plan that we need to make sure is reflected in this update and combining all of that information into the draft that we're here to talk about tonight so i'll talk through kind of what all of these elements are and a little bit about what they say before we get into a conversation the first as i mentioned our plan for action is really talks about four important characteristics of the city and what we're going to do to ensure that the city embodies those characteristics the first of those is burlington as a distinctive city and as it implies this is about all of the ways that burlington is unique and as a special place this part of our plan talks about everything from the natural setting and natural resources that make our physical location very special and important to the kinds of things that we've built in our community our historic an architectural legacy as a city and how that contributes to the essence of what our city is as well as things like our personalities and our preferences and how we engage in conversation and politics and community in burlington the types of businesses and services that are located in burlington and what they offer to our residents and what they offer as the economic economic identity of our city so each of these characteristics has a number of goals that go along with them in terms of how we will ensure that we continue to for example be a distinctive city in the future these goals are really about how we preserv enhance those things that we just talked about as important parts of our identity improving him protecting the quality of our natural resources is a very important one that we talk about a lot as a community the lake and our other land based natural resources how we ensure that we have continue to have a number of strong and diverse residential neighborhoods that are nearby areas of services and jobs and other opportunities within the community how we're balancing parts of our city where both of those things can happen protecting those historic an architectural resources in a way that allows them to continue to be using continue to be vital in our city going forward and hansing our role as an arts and cultural center for our region and then finally leveraging those unique characteristics that we have as a city and using them to help us strengthen our economy going forward for each of these goals the draft plan does have a number of potential action items that we could use to actually advance these goals that's a ton of information for us to get into tonight so we hope you'll take a look at the plan but this this level this goal these ideas of goals are something we're going to discuss a lot more in our groups the next characteristic is about burlington as a dynamic city we as a community are a small city but we also play a major and important role within our region in terms of jobs and services and how we relate to the region as a whole this theme is all about how we balance those identities going forward and embracing our role as a city and responding to both current and future challenges that we experience as a city we know that there are things that we've experienced as chronic challenges over many years that we still need to continue to be creative in nimble about how we address but this also acknowledges that there are a lot of changes that are coming that we may not have experienced yet or that we're just starting to experience like climate change or changes in technology or transportation or other systems in our city so the goals that we have here about burlington being a dynamic city are about ensuring that we are bracing and participating in conversations programs and policies that recognize and are responsive to our role within our region what is our share of issues like housing in transportation and economic development ensuring that we are thinking about our policies and programs in the context of change and how things are changing specifically how our demographics are changing how climate is changing how technology is changing making sure that as we identify those opportunities for addressing our needs as a community were aligning our resources our public infrastructure resources to be able to support those solutions and then the last two goals are really related to climate change the first being how we ensure that we as a city are doing being really bold and ambitious about reducing our impact on climate change reducing greenhouse gas emissions and becoming a net zero energy community  but as a complement to that ensuring that we are identifying ways that we can become more resilient as a community to those hazards of climate change and other hazards that our community might experience the next characteristic is about burlington as an inclusive city and this is really about making sure that everyone in our community has opportunity that we are actively trying to seek ways to reduce barriers to equity and inclusion  obviously when we talk about these issues a lot of times we're talking about issues of housing and economic opportunity job opportunity making sure everyone has a place to live but this is also about making sure that our community is accessible to people of all abilities and sensitivities making sure that our public spaces are welcoming for everyone that we have resources and opportunities for people to participate in their neighborhoods that are appropriate to their needs as well as like the experience experiment that you know i'll be a part of tonight making sure that we're being responsive to the ways that people would like to be able to engage in conversations about the community and then specific needs that they might have things like engaging youth  in conversations or developing language access plans to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to participate so what are the goals around this element around this idea the first is about addressing those gaps that we know exist in our housing picture in the city making sure that we have housing opportunities for everyone regardless of their income and housing needs related to that is making sure that we have safe and accessible housing for  everyone that's not just about the physical kind of quality and condition of buildings but things like making sure that there are homes that are accessible to individuals as they age so that they can remain in their neighborhood and in their home as they get older  in hansing our built environment to make sure that our public spaces our streets our sidewalks are safe and accessible for everyone ensuring that all residents have access to meaningful employment opportunities this is not only about job opportunities and workforce development but also about the support of infrastructure that will help people participate in the workforce like reliable transportation and child care and then finally as we said before  opportunities for engagement and what are the specific actions that we can take to promote that as a goal for the city and then finally the last characteristic is about burlington as a connected city and this is really about all of the issues that i was talking about at the beginning of this presentation that we're considering the holistic nature of the decisions that we make and how individual actions affect one another this is about things like how do our economy and our natural environment relate to one another how do we relate to the place where we live some of the very specific and kind of tangible connections like making sure we have robust transportation choices as a city that serve everyone's needs making sure we have the services and amenities that we need on a daily basis close to where we live and where we can access them as well as continuing to keep sight of the long term kind of big picture impacts of the decisions we make prioritizing those over short term decision making as a city cele see here again another important goal and we think about being a connected community our natural environment comes back here really thinking not only about protecting the quality of our natural resources but about the integrity and con activity of those resources and making sure that we have the appropriate tools in place to ensure that those continue to be a valuable part of our community protecting them from inappropriate effects of development for example coordinating our decision making around housing and the economy and transportation to ensure that we really develop that robust multi modal system within the city guiding important amenities and resources into neighborhood activity centers this isn't just about kind of the things that we think about like a grocery store or other sort of typical services but how our neighborhoods can be places where there are opportunities for us to come together recreation community amenities all near where we live in can use them this is also about our public infrastructure making sure that we're coordinating the care and enhanced manner of our public infrastructure so that it continues to serve us well as a community meet all of our needs without burdening us from a tax base perspective  looking at consistency in coordination and our decision making especially among the many different decision making bodies that there are in the community and then finally making sure that we think about the impacts of our decisions in terms of our relationship to our municipal neighbors and our larger region burlington is much as we might like to think that what happens in burlington stays in burlington that's not the case that the decisions we make are affected by an effect the decisions that  people municipalities and residents of the region experience so as i mentioned the next part major part of the plan then talks about where and how do we implement these ideas about burlington's characteristics on the ground throughout our city this is an element of the plan that has been really strong for a very long time our land use framework has guided a lot of the work that we've done as a city for many many years and it's been based around three major principles for development  the first being that there are areas in our community that we will conserve these are areas of our community that are our plan has always directed us to ensure that we are protecting like our natural and cultural resources these are places that the plan talks about in the future taking great care to protecting conserve them largely as they are today and making sure that over time as we implement this plan we're kind of checking in with ourselves evaluating  are there ways that we need to manage these resources differently as you know for example climate change impacts these resources how are we doing in terms of balancing the use of these spaces for their natural function w also meeting the needs of recreation and access to nature that our residents value these are the areas that the plan talks about them as the areas that we're planning to conserve the next sort of major principle of our land use plan going back many years has been about strengthening and enhancing our residential neighborhoods as i said earlier we have a lot of really diverse neighborhoods in burlington where a small city but we have neighborhoods that are very different in terms of what type of housing and when where they built what characteristics of the structures even the people that live in them and this part of the plan talks about our residential neighborhoods of the city as an area that we want to strengthen and really enhance going forward that but this plan recognizes that each of these neighborhoods has unique opportunities and challenges whether that aging or whether that's cost of housing or proximity to the institutions they all have unique influences that they experience in terms of what residents see as the quality of life in their neighborhood and that we need to in the future as we're planning to sustain these neighborhoods think about what specific tools and strategies we can use to address those quality of life issues that are important in each of these neighborhoods and then finally the last principle of long standing principle of our land use policies is about looking at the most dense parts of our community that are already developed today and identifying opportunities for infill and redevelopment to continue to support our needs for housing or jobs or other amenities that we have as a city so the last part of the plan then talks about areas that we're planning to grow and much like our residential neighborhoods there are a number of types of areas that the  about when we think about areas where we're planning to grow this includes places like neighborhood centers which i've mentioned before places that are really geared toward serving the needs of the immediately surrounding neighborhood in places that are are multimodal corridors you can think of these as our major street corridors in burlington like north avenue or main street where we these are the streets that connect all of the parts of our city to one another and serve a very important role not only from the community services that might be along them but also the transportation connections that they offer these also include areas like our downtown which the plan talks about as really being a regional center this is the what we anticipate in the future to continue to be the most you know urban part of our city it serves not only the needs of residents of burlington but also provides jobs and and many other opportunities for residents of our region there are also a number of special areas that have been identified in this plan things like our institutions and how do we target specific growth around the needs of those institutions within certain areas of our city our own public schools how do we use the land in the city that our public schools are on to better meet the needs of our public schools going forward as well as the areas of the city that we call our enterprise areas probably the most obvious example of this is the south and and how do we continue to facilitate the south and as an important part of our economy in terms of the different industries that it is home to today and in the future so as i mentioned before there are a ton of extra details that are in the plan but it's a lot of information to kind of throw at you tonight so i want to let you know a little bit about kind of where we are and where we're going so that you know kind of how we can continue to engage in a conversation around this plan so where are we in the process of updating this plan we have been working on this update with the planning commission since the beginning of the year we spent some time earlier this year doing that analysis as i mentioned before of kind of where are we with our current plan having conversations with residents and stakeholders in burlington about what the important issues are that we need to make sure we're addressing in our update and then ultimately working to to rewrite this plan and to get it ready for you all to look at as we're doing here tonight so tonight is really our first kind of opportunity for conversation and to hear your input on this draft plan we're taking using this as an opportunity to have a discussion with you about what the goals of the plan are and in the next several months in the new year we're going to continue this conversation dig further into the details about what are the specific actions that we can use to actually move these goals forward that we have in the plan and where and how might we do this in certain parts of the city we want to have some some opportunity for us to really dig into those details so we'll be continuing this conversation we'll have a number of workshops in january for us to continue to kind of have a format like this to learn more about the plan and discuss certain elements of the plan and we'll also be sharing this and having conversations about this with council so you can look forward to a number of presentations if you'd like to come in here more presentations at the council level as well as public hearings that they will have at the council level so with that i'm going to kind of wrap sharing information outward to you and start to move us into a discussion about the plan and hear from you  what you think about each of these characteristics that the plan has specifically recognized as being important to burlington and what you think about the importance of some of these goals and why they might be important to the future of the city  so because we are at a public hearing because this is a formal planning commission meeting i'm going to ask andy if he could come and open the public hearing and then we'll get into the details about our exercise all right well thank you megan this is a very formal very quick process so i was make an asked i want to friendly open the public hearing for a plan b t v and this means that all the comments that are made during these breakout sessions and then following when we get more formal comments if you'd like are going to be part of the record that we can then use to incorporate in the plan as you know or as appropriate or to make adjustments to it as appropriate so this i'm going to just quickly explain what we're going to do at our tables tonight and then we'll wrap up after our group conversations with just an open time for any comments or questions or feedback that you might have that you're not able to specifically cover in your group conversations so your table we have a number of materials and these posters around the room there are spaces for us to talk about each of the characteristics that plan b t v is organized around and the goals that support that characteristic and we really want to use this as an opportunity for you to be able to talk with the planning commissioners and with each other about those really to dive deeper into what they mean so we've got a couple of ways that you're going to be able to do that the first of which is that we hope that you'll take a few minutes talking with everyone at your table first about what the characteristic means to you if you had to say what the future vision of burlington is as a distinctive city what would that mean to you or as an inclusive city what would that mean to you get to share with each other what that south what that looks like from your perspective and then based on that conversation you'll have some dots at your table that you can use to place next to the numbers for each of the goals and what that means is that you're helping us understand which of these  think are important which ones you think really have the most potential to help us achieve that vision for a city from your perspective and then tell us why have a little bit of a discussion with your group about why you think that's important this could also include a conversation about what's missing what isn't on the list of goals that really should be and this will help us to set up for making sure that what we've done so far  evaluating our current plan and listening to you about what's important make sure that we've heard the message correctly and make sure that we've captured everything that we should've in that draft plan so for those of you that are sitting at the middle tables this table in this table i might ask you to just kind of turn and or the two front tables since there's only a few of you maybe you could turn in and work with the middle tables so we can try to maybe condense into four  groups and then we'll let you work together with a planning commission or if you guys can each join a table and myself and noah and david and shelly are here to also support you in that conversation so we'll spend some time doing this exercise and then will all come back together in a little bit sorry i do loveline my thing to share david reminded me agger table if this exercise doesn't give you the space to share something really specific that you came here tonight to share there are some like this say share your input on the top you can feel free to rate anything you want on this paper and leave it with us before you leave today we would take it home and continue reading your thoughts on it all right so let's open it up here before everyone's got a lot of strong you know could say for example about business development we could say we know that small businesses are the engine of job growth in our community and they're one of the things that are exploiting the state is that we are nurture small what else what else we got order to ensure they have here to improve standard serve a whole community and minimize cost and disruption to taxpayers precinct consistency in coordination decision making public administration among independent departments and decision about anything that you discussed tonight earlier that you might have prepared as a statement before you came here tonight so i want to say that if you are here for that and want to be here for that we're going to do that in like two minutes i promise this group that i would let them wrap up a little bit here and then we'll get to that very quickly so if you don't feel like you want to stay for that don't feel like you need to you're welcome to leave and thank you for being here my computer died but all around the room there a little business cards that have the plan b t v logo on them and on the back there's a web link to where you can read and continue discussing this plan online and that's where we will also provide more information about future opportunities to come to events like this or to come to other presentations in public hearing so thank you for being here thank you for participating in this discussion tonight and we'll get to the formal public comments in just two m so what is there anything that  planning commission's kind of public hearing in process so we're going to be working on revising the strapped and hearing more feedback in january as well we will also start to share this and discuss this plan with the city council in january and then the city council will hold two public hearings one will be in february and one will be in march and then ultimately we're working towards  having an updated draft that can be re approved by the end of march of twenty nineteen so we're kind of at the beginning of this process of having a conversation and refining the draft plan for the next several months what do we are to you dan those were so if you saw a brawl on the screen that was stuff that had happened in the past and along the line what will be done with the stat it will be fed back to us will we see what we all said as a collective that's a great question so we can certainly when we have a summary written up to mates discussion we can share it with you if you provided your email address we're also share it with the planning commission they'll be meeting next tuesday to talk about what we heard tonight as well as other feedback that we've heard about the plan and talk about ways that we can start to incorporate that feedback into the draft and we'll continue kind of iterating that that draft over the of it's not the same as a hearing that the development review board would have but the opportunity to provide public comment and to hear any concerns you have about the plan is something that we do is required to happen so we have tonight and then we'll have two more with the city council in february and march that's a good question so we did talk with all of the institutions e b m the medical center and how much about the planet you know that we're updating and and made sure to talk to them about any kind of future plans that they have believe the all of the institutions reported to us that you know they're just coming out of a period of a lot of investment reinvestment in building new buildings or major renovations so from a kind of a major new project other than the you v m s let it facility there's not a ton of new development on the campuses that are immediately planned other than looking at kind of where they can meet more of the needs on campus so we really look to the institutions master plans to help us understand kind of what are some of the future activities that we might see and and one of those discussions that we know that will happen will be with you v m around looking at the trinity campus and having a conversation about the trinity campus so those types of things are reflected in this draft plan in terms of how we look at the institutions to meet more of their needs within their  boundaries rather than kind of outside of their boundaries takes i think i think it is i'm trying to get a disclaimer from the school district to say that not building is not up for sale or acquisition by you yeah else i had a question there's a lot of statistics and in the early parts of the document that don't have the citations to them in the footnotes so that's just a suggestion that the footnotes that would actually give some credibility to some of those statistics that are sort of the foundation of some of the plans of my goals i'm not sure maybe i couldn't find them but i was trying to squat a footnote cited and i can't find the citations to where those statistics come from for like the population correction projections on page seventeen there's footnote numbers and there's like the transportation projections twenty two i mean there's a bunch so that's just a comment to make those accessible i couldn't find any of those and  second thing was a question about the city's impact fee study there's something in there a couple places about updating that do you know when that was last done and what the plan will be for updating that i think that was the third that was that and one of the thing that was not talked about a little bit is the financial load on things like the city's bonding of existing bond debt and how that relates as a percentage to whatever value of using grand list or using tax receipts or something like that might be worth looking at a way to document that so that when we're looking at investments in these planned and developments in the handsomest that we sort of already know our finances and when things might cost money so i think more my most important thing that the sources of the statistics that are the foundation of the of the goals and plans are somewhere in an obvious place thank you for both of those inputs actually as david if you could respond to the question about the  impact study when it was last updated i don't think there's a specific timeline on updating it again but there is you obviously read that there is a goal in there to update it again i don't know that it has a specific timeline know i just want to make sure that we do know that we have a a plan for assessing those financial impacts whether it's to the schools or the public works water waste water and it's one is tied into one of the other items about the capital a long term capital plan but it's not the same and i think if when people are assessing some of these great projects what are the impact fees that we now have in place and how are they calculated and then clearly if it happened in the ninety's last and they haven't been updated we need to have a have that actually you know some way more than just well we're going to do it some time but we don't have a plan for that yet it did that i'm glad you mentioned the capital plan because that's a critical component of what goes into an impact piece i think what the necessary piece and one of the recommendations in the plan is that the next version of the ten year capital plan look not just at what our current capital needs are but what are we projecting the capital needs being out beyond that ten year horizon because that then is part of again critical component of the impact fee study that that those costs and then proportion the fees are based on so once that work is done then you can do in fact used to because we know that we were going to need to make this level of improvement to water plants or one of the waste water plants at some point in the future that stuff gets stuck in the to vegas build system and we could see if we can dig it up and if it's not digital already we can try to get a scan of it available  thank you anyone else any other comments or questions that you would like to offer tonight i know we've probably already got a lot of comments and questions out of  and do i need you to say my name or no ok just i do i come here as kind of a board three i think you're in war three is that right  k there i think there are very few people who come from more than three to any of these meetings and it's hard for me to get the word out to those people to all the people on board three who are going to be quite impacted by the plans by plan b t v to go up and to go dance and dancer and so you know i'm speaking as one person only you know i'm glad for economic growth i'm for that but i also want to be sure that walk ability bikeability the longs of the city are included in this place that's going to go up and get more dense and that's just one voice from ward three so and if it's hard for me to speak microphone what about all those people and we're three we're quite quiet so that's my  ok thanks for being able to give input plenty ideas and i hope that i'll be very interested to see what results see from tonight's work i it's it's kind of hard to make a plan from up above and bring it to earth and i think the plan should be made on earth and everybody as many people as possible who live in the city should be able to understand the document and it's a plan for burlington vermont it's not a hash tag plan b t v it's a plan for burlington vermont and the future and it's not going backward it always goes forward and sorry i'm an editor anyone else think everyone's left have an opportunity to speak so thank you for those of you that are still here for seeking with us all night and for coming and we hope that we'll get to talk with you again at some of our upcoming events so have a great night and i guess we need to close we have just a little bit of formal business do we close the public you're in or do we keep it open for a few we close it tonight right ok so an a m lester any other comments anyone else want to speak seen none will close the public hearing thank you to everyone who came out tonight both those who are still here and to all those who are here but already left we really appreciate the input that everyone was able to give to us and with that we could bring our planning commission meeting to a close and unless i see any objection from my three other planning commissioners we will adjourn tonight's meeting and i don't see any objection so tonight's meeting is a thank you all or down