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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - Open Space IZ Committee - 03/05/2019South Burlington Open Space Interim Zoning Commiee March 5, 2019 The Open Space IZ Commiee held a regular meeng on Tuesday March 5, at 7:00 pm, in the upstairs Conference Room,City Hall, 575 Dorset Street . Members present: Vince Bolduc, Bernie Gagnon, Amanda Holland, Bey Milizia, Duncan Murdoch, Allan Strong, SamSwanson. Public aendees: Michael Miag 1. Direcons on emergency evacuaon procedures from conference room: Allan called the meeng to order and provided instrucons on emergency evacuaon of the building. 2. Addions, deleons or changes in order of agenda items: No changes were made. 3. Comments from the public not related to the agenda: No issues were raised. 4. Discussion: (New) Framework for priorizing open space conservaon: Allan gave a brief introducon to the new framework. The framework has three ers: er 1 is whether or not theparcel falls within a South Burlington “conservaon network,” er 2 addresses the protecon of natural resources,and er 3 addresses social concerns. In a nutshell, scoring is essenally all or none at each er, ensuring that it will bedifficult for parcels that are (for example) ranked high in er 2 to be given high priority if they do not score in er 1. We spent most of the meeng discussing the three-ed framework for priorizing parcels for conservaon. Theprimary inial issue is what goes “above” er 1. There was consensus that we do not want to rank parcels forconservaon that are already “conserved” in one form or another. But, we do want to emphasize that we want toensure that development policies and processes follow current levels of land protecon moving forward. This willpresumably be addressed in some sort of “preamble” to our recommendaon for parcels to conserve. We spent some me discussing the issue of “paral conservaon,” i.e., how do we rank parcels that are perhaps 50%in NRP zoning and 50% eligible for development. This connued to be a queson and we will address this in moredetail at the next meeng. Other er 1 issues that were addressed: There was a queson as to whether or not Agriculture (currently er 2)should belong in er 1. We also discussed the issue of the 4 acre cutoff for minimum parcel size. Allan will follow upwith Paul to get an idea about how many 2 or 3 acre parcels (with < 10% impervious) are found in SB. We also had abroad conversaon about how some of our work might be viewed by the public. Although our charge is not to changeLDRs, seeing one’s property highlighted on a map for conservaon might alarm landowners. It was also noted thatthis also might invite conversaons about conservaon. Regarding er 2, we had some general concerns about the lack of specificity in some of the terminology. E.g., do wehave accurate data layers to delineate “large habitat block?” Based on Vince’s suggeson, we changed “wildlife roadcrossing” to “properes on either side of the road where wildlife cross.” We had some similar quesons about er 3 with respect to specificity. For the recreaon quesons, we changed“trails” to “passive” and “ball fields” to “formal.” Bey noted that dog parks might fall within the formal recreaoncategory. Sam and Vince quesoned how we might address “support of the City’s comprehensive plan” especiallynong that the plan is broad and in some cases, contradictory to our commiee’s charge. We may move toward morespecific menon of the maps in the plan, in parcular maps 7 and 8 (primary and secondary conservaon areas). Wealso quesoned “vulnerability to development” nong that the more vulnerable parcels might actually be the mostdesirable for development with respect to clustering development and the parcels that are less vulnerable might bemore suitable for conservaon. The issue was put in the bike rack. We also quesoned whether affordability wasunder our purview, or that we should make our recommendaons and that decision would fall to the City Council.Sam also brought up the issue of renewable energy sing, which highlights some of the challenges in how we mightoperaonalize er 3. 5. Tesng the framework using the CCRPC map We did not have a lot of me to test the framework. We spent most of the discussion addressing two primary issues.First, what is the proper base map to use to assess whether a parcel falls within a conservaon network? Wediscussed two possibilies. One is that pdf file that Allan distributed prior to the meeng (LargeBlocks_Dra.pdf)and the second was the map layer on the CCRPC map from the 2002 Open Space report. The second was how toaddress parcels that are not fully enclosed (either of) these networks. This second concern is also applicable toparcels that are parally conserved as a result of NRP zoning boundaries. Allan will pick a couple parcels and run through some possible scoring scenarios based on these decision points. We recommended that the commiee take a look at the maps and try to use the framework on a parcel of yourchoosing. 6. Discussion: Next steps for engaging SB residents in open space conservaon priories Carried over into next meeng unl we have tested our criteria. 7. Review and approval of Meeng Minutes of February 20, 2019: Bernie moved to approve the minutes, Sam seconded. They were approved 7-0. 8. Adjourn: The meeng adjourned at 9:07 pm. The next meeng is on Wednesday, March 20 at 7pm, in City Hall.