 is the Thursday, September 3rd session for the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee. We'll be doing work today on S237, which came to us from the Senate. We've been taking testimony on it over the last couple of weeks. It's primarily a zoning bill, and we're hearing testimony on the elements of the bill that are the core of the bill. And so today we'll be hearing from Kate McCarthy to VNRC, Alex Wyandana from the Planners Association and Kate and Kathy Byer from Evermorth. So with that, Kate, if you could just, because we rarely have you in our committee, if you could just introduce yourself and introduce VNRC's interests in this bill, I know it has, because it's zoning, VNRC has a deep interest in it, but it also is zoning in conjunction with everything else that VNRC does. So the microphone is yours. And basically the way we'll work is you'll testify, and then if we have Q&A throughout the way, we'll find a place to ask questions. And we only have three witnesses today. So Susanna Davis was not able to make it today, but she did submit testimony that is on our website. So with that, Kate, take it away. I will, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here wherever we are. It's nice to see many of you again, and I think to be also meeting many of you for the first time. So my name is Kate McCarthy. I'm the Sustainable Communities Program Director at the Vermont Natural Resources Council. And I think it is worth explaining a little why I'm sitting before you here in a housing oriented committee. We are in a statewide environmental organization. We've been doing our work for over 55 years across Vermont. And we do a lot of red and butter environmental work. We have an energy and climate action program. We have a forest and wildlife program and a water program. And then my program, Sustainable Communities, because since our founding, we've really recognized that you can't just work on the environment without also thinking very, being very thoughtful about where humans live and have jobs and interact with each other. So that's kind of my section of the NRC having to do with promoting downtown and village development, our smart growth locations and working against sprawl into those natural resource areas that we rely on for our well-being as well as our food and our fuel. So in working on smart growth, land use planning is a huge part of that process of making decisions about what happens where and in what ways. And my understanding is that many of you have served on your local planning commissions or development review boards or ZBAs. So you've probably all dipped toes into this in different ways. So you understand some of those tools. But as we go through, if you have questions about any of the tools from the zoning world and from the land use planning statute, please don't hesitate to ask. I'd be glad to shed some light however I can. So the NRC is interested in this bill because we want to see more housing choices in our downtowns and our villages. That has a climate benefit as well because when you can live close to where you work, where kids go to school, where you need to get your groceries, you have more ways to get around other than just your car. We think that's important. And as I alluded to earlier, if we can promote housing in our smart growth areas in addition to building community, we can take some development pressure off the outlying areas. That is important to us. As an organization, we also want to support any action that at least begins to help address the ways that zoning has been used to limit housing types and to exclude people over the years. I assume that you have had some discussion on this and you know that it is a structural problem, a very knotted, tangled problem that is not going to be solved by a single bill, but that through the discussion of this bill, we can start to pull apart some of those threads and think about ways to diversify our housing stock so that whoever wants to live here has some choices about how they get included in our communities. So that's where I'm coming from as someone from an environmental organization. We have choices about where we live and how and how that affects the environment and how that affects our wellbeing as people. And we care very much about those choices. So I'd like to give you an overview of what I'll discuss and then I'll jump in. From the testimony you've received so far, it's my understanding that you've heard the arguments for why more housing is needed. In fact, that's your whole reason for being as a committee. I believe you've also heard about why changes to zoning can be part of that puzzle. We agree that housing is a serious need in our state and we support what this bill is trying to do in that regard. And like you, we also understand that housing creation, housing production is an incredibly complex problem. So we see these changes to the zoning enabling law as really just one step. So even as we offer our support for all of this, we won't pretend that this is the end of the conversation, that there's anything resembling a silver bullet. And I will put out there, perhaps unsurprisingly, that we don't believe that regulations are the only barrier to housing production in our state. We think that there are ways for regulations to be done better so we can get more of what we want. But we think that there are just a variety of things that we need to acknowledge and address, bit by bit as best we can in order to produce housing. So with that as a frame for how I'm thinking about this proposal, what I want to do today is summarize what we support in this bill. I want to provide our take on section two and how it might be improved. And then as the chair indicated throughout, I'd be very happy to answer any questions that arise for you about how my understanding of how the mechanics of this work and potential impacts on communities. So would that approach be useful to you as a committee? Very good, thank you. So let's accentuate the positive. Here's what we support. Starting with section one on page one, we are in support of improved utility and facility mapping because it supports good planning. That's the level on which we are engaging with that. Knowing where your infrastructure is allows you to use it more wisely. Our view is that simple. I understand you have received a proposal to limit the mapping to known areas and that could work. One thing I would like to point out as you contemplate that change is that the purpose of this section of the municipal plan is to help you know what you've got but also where you wanna go. And so utilities and facilities map can include and probably should include prospective infrastructure improvements. So if you add the word known, I just wanna make sure that doesn't prevent you from or prevent local planning commissions from mapping, planning ahead with mapping future infrastructure. Can I just interrupt you for a second there on that issue? One of the things that struck me is that I'm really working hard to imagine what it's like in the rest of Vermont on this particular issue. Why wouldn't people know where their water system is in this day and age? I mean, if you're providing water, municipal water to customers and you're accepting fees to run that system and to maintain that system, why would anybody not know where their water system is? That's one thing that has struck me as an odd thing to say that because some of these water systems have existed since the Civil War and I've seen locally, I've seen the difficulties here in Waterbury when that happens, but Waterbury did the work and invested in finding it out but I don't wanna say that that's an impossible standard to make. So why is it so, what's the problem here? And we'll take testimony tomorrow from the Water Association to find perhaps that, but what in your opinion is, why wouldn't we know where the water systems are today? This is something I don't have a lot of direct experience with so I'm going to try and make an educated response, educated guess as my response. I think that if a water system or a wastewater system is billing an address, they're going to have a pretty good idea that there's a pipe going to that address. But if there is a lot in between two houses, you may not know if that lot was ever hooked up or given away, like given a pipe off of the main to hook up to, you may not know the extent to which the system goes once you've reached the edge of a more settled area. You may not know the exact depth of the pipe or you may not know where one type of pipe material ends and another pipe material begins. Those are some of my guesses as to what the unknowns might be in the system. Sorry, we'll get more details tomorrow. Great, thanks. You're welcome. So the next section we support is in section two is on page two and there's a provision there saying that if multi-unit housing is allowed, four or fewer units must be allowed and you can't condition approval based on character of the area. You may have already heard this but conditional use approval is a type of zoning approval that can be granted by a development review board. And it basically says that, yeah, most of the time these uses are gonna be appropriate in this zoning district based on what we want to accomplish in this zoning district. But there might be tweaks here and there that would make it fit better. Those tweaks are what end up as conditions on your zoning permit. So what this is, there are a whole bunch of things that conditional use review can look at. One of them is character of the area. And as you have heard, that can sometimes be used as kind of a very vague way to say we don't like this here and we're gonna say it doesn't fit the character. Good intentions behind that, sometimes discriminatory outcomes. And so this proposal says that you can't review four or fewer units based on character of the area. But what you can still do is you can still use conditional use approval to address potential impacts like lighting, site circulation, parking and fire safety, which are all important as you intensify the use on a given parcel. And it still allows review of five or more units. And it doesn't mean that one or two family dwellings instantly have to change into three or four unit dwellings. It is an option, it remains an option. So we support that. Page three talks about accessory dwelling units affectionately known as ADUs. We support those changes, would like to see more of them. Then on page more of the ADUs, not more of the changes. And then on page five at the bottom, there's a provision that tries to make duplexes about equivalent to single family dwelling units in terms of the type of review they merit. So it says if a single family home is allowed in a district where there's sewer or water, it can't be conditional use approval unless you're also running that single family home through the conditional use approval process. And we support this because as far as the function of the neighborhood, a duplex is not significantly different from a single family home. I was sort of thinking of how to describe this. And I thought, if you've got a single family home with a family of four or, and four bedrooms, you could also have two duplexes with two bedrooms each and two people living in each duplex. You've still got four bedrooms and four people. Chances are you could have a similar number of vehicles even. I live in a single family home sitting in it right now. Across the street is a duplex that has a slightly larger square footage in the seven years that we've lived here. They've had two cars in the driveway and no more than five people in that property the entire time. So it's an example of how it doesn't matter quite as much what's happening in the building so much as how the building contributes to the neighborhood. Winooski is aware of this with its form-based code which operates on that principle. So we support that. Skipping right over section two and I will come back to that but moving to section 12, which is on pages 11 through 14, I wanna say we very much support the expansion of the downtown and village center programs, tax credits to have a new kind of tax credit. And that is a tax credit for flood-proofing. So that gives us a new type of tax credit, a new tool in the toolbox for promoting our historic areas and it expands the eligibility into neighborhood development areas. The designations you may have heard of are downtowns and villages. The neighborhood development areas are like rings around the downtowns and villages where residential development is promoted. And so that ring would now be eligible for these tax credits, which we think is important. I know that you've received comments from the LaMoyle County Planning Commission in support of this and it summarizes the issue really well in terms of how the state-based tax credits can actually provide a more usable tool for flood-proofing than some of the FEMA tools which are harder for our smaller towns to access. So I'm grateful for your support of that. I hope you will continue to support that. It's our opinion that the historic preservation tax credits have been a real asset to our downtowns and villages as long as they've been in place. It's an incredibly important program. This is an expansion of that program. And so while we support that expansion, I also just want to note that ultimately we would like to see more money put into the tax credit so that we don't have the same amount of dollars going to more spaces that could dilute their effect. So we know this isn't the year for it and we're grateful for Ways and Means openness to the 3 million in tax credits they're providing now. We hope that you'll keep this in mind and advocate with your colleagues in the future to really meaningfully increase the tax credits now that the geography is being expanded. Other things we support on remaining issues like the age-specific housing study and short-term rentals, the mobile home park infrastructure investments were supportive, but I would defer to others about what the technical needs and approaches should be. So there is a lot in this bill that we support. We see these as important, relatively small changes that can help diversify our housing stock. So next, I'd like to move on to some suggestions for improvement, kind of getting at the meat of what many of you have been, what you've been discussing with many of your witnesses. So- And Kate, before you get into section two, because that is gonna be the bulk of the conversation, I think, are there any other questions that we have for Kate on the section so far? I mean, in terms of funding for the tax credits, that's still being negotiated. It's obviously a bizarre budget year, but between our Appropriations Committee and the Senate Economic Development and Senate Appropriations, I know there's conversations happening, but we don't know where they're gonna end up, but I think that there is a desire to see the increased tax credits for the reasons you stated. There's also a desire to see money put in for planning that would help these communities figure this out, which is a conventional system that we have between our state planning and our local planners. So there's, I know there's a move in the Senate to try to see if we can increase it there. The question I had for you, just to be clear about accessory dwelling units, I wanna make sure that we all are on the same page when we talk about accessory dwelling units. They are right now a certain size. This is promoting, this is to say that they can be a different size, a more flexible size. These are conventionally called other law departments, but they're also essentially units that are attached to existing residential homes that are not, they're given special, well, there's some like Burlington has limitations on how big it can be certainly, but there's, and maybe it's in Chittenden County as a whole, but these are units that people try to attach to their home or property. And this is just making these rules. If I'm not mistaken, it's making these rules more flexible. Is it, am I getting that right with this change? It's making them clearer, especially when it comes to the size requirements. So the idea behind the language and statute now is that municipalities are required to allow at least a certain size of ADUs and they can be more permissive, but there's a baseline level of allowability that every town needs to provide. So you can't have the effect of prohibiting these accessory dwelling units. And what the, I'm looking at the bill as we speak, I have read it before, but just to review it, they specify that these need to be on an owner occupied lot and that a bylaw, the ADU can only be subject to the same review, level of review, the same amount of scrutiny as the single family home that's sitting next to it. So you wouldn't wanna have a checklist for review for the single family unit that's this big, but a checklist that's this big for the ADU, trying to create some parity so that we get more of these units. The other thing in order to make sure you don't just end up with accessory dwelling units that aren't really accessory, the unit has to be 30% of the total floor area of the single family dwelling or 900 feet, whichever is greater. And so that 900 feet creates a cap on the size in case the house is more than 3,000 square feet. And so the 900 foot cap is a way to make sure that the accessory dwelling unit is not oversized within the neighborhood. And then that way you can end up with a really compatible, I know aesthetics is always a concern and you can really end up with something that looks very compatible in the neighborhood. I've talked with other planners about the idea of like a carriage house design. We have a lot of those in Montpelier and there are a lot of smaller communities where that would be a perfect place to put an ADU and this would allow that. And also it makes it plural. I mean, if there's space, does this allow for ADUs? I believe it does not. Okay, no. All right, and go ahead. The other piece is that it clarifies that a municipality may regulate short-term rentals distinctly from residential rental units. So that if someone is building an ADU, but in fact, it is a short-term rental, it can be regulated as such because a short-term rental built in your backyard has a different purpose and contributes something different to the community than a place where you're an aging parent or somebody, a college student can live. And isn't this allowance almost predicated on that? But there has to be or that the municipality can create these bylaws. Is that how it's read? It's the way it's written is that a municipality may create bylaws for ADUs that are more permissive than the baseline in statute. But then it also says, and this is new, that the town can also have a separate bylaw that regulates short-term rentals like Airbnb. Right, that's new. Yeah, that's the new part. Okay, represent a triumph, I'll have a question. Yeah, so I'm just curious in the statute, does this, do these mother-in-law apartments require kitchen and bathroom? Is there anything to address that? That's a good question. Yes, the statute as it exists today says that the unit must be clearly subordinate to the single-family dwelling and have facilities and provisions for independent living, including sleeping, food preparation, and sanitation. I thought that might be the case, thank you. You're welcome. All right, so let's go to section two. Very good, very good. So we support what this is trying to do, which is creating a greater variety of housing and I think it's been talked about less, but another thing this does is it tries to encourage more efficient utilization of the pipes that are already in the ground. That keeps user fees down for people over time and makes it more sustainable to have a water and wastewater system. So at VNRC, I've worked on this primarily and I have heard and talked with other groups about their concerns. So in light of those conversations, I'd like to support a number of changes that we think could make it work better, make section two work better while upholding those goals of creating more housing and using infrastructure more efficiently. So many of these do come from the Vermont Planners Association who I've had a lot of conversation with. So please consider these just a preview of what you're going to hear from Alex Weinhagen later. And in the event that I misrepresent something, I hope that he will be very willing to clarify VPA's position that I'm going to represent. And you serve on their board, is that right? I do not anymore. I was on the executive committee until a few years ago, but I serve on VPA's legislative committee. Okay, great. So you interact with them on a regular basis? I do. And the legislative committee is an advisory committee. Ultimately it's the executive committee, which is elected by the membership that votes on policy positions. Great, thank you. So jumping right in, first, you've heard concerns that allowing towns to require, requiring towns to allow certain lot sizes wherever there's sewer and water could lead to dense development in areas where it's not wanted. And we share this concern because in our view, we don't want residential sprawl in areas that may be small lots, but in car dependent locations. That runs counter to some of the goals that we are trying to achieve. So one proposed fix that I agree with is to instead of saying anywhere there's water and sewer or water, you've got to have these minimum lot sizes, instead use the state's designated areas such as the downtowns and the village centers, plus a quarter mile or a half mile buffer around them and say that those are the areas within which these inclusive housing provisions should apply. Then what you're doing is you're identifying existing smart growth areas, like and if they have infrastructure, they need to meet this standard for a lot size or density in that area. So a real pro of this is it targets smart growth locations because the linear, those linear water and sewer areas that would not be included. So for example, the example of Stowe and Mountain Road and Stowe has come up frequently and this would preclude requiring those densities all along the linear area. So, and I guess we'll save a more specific question for Alex on that issue on the interplay of different zoning districts that might exist within an eight mile stretch of water and sewer. So with respect to a buffer zone around an existing village center designated downtown, you mentioned that the neighborhood areas are already a buffer around these existing areas and would this be a further buffer? If we were to look at a map, would this be a further buffer around that or would this be the area that you're talking about? It would be the area that I'm talking about. So to back up a little, the downtowns and village centers are eligible to have the neighborhood development area, that extra ring. That ring is a quarter mile radius around a village and a half mile radius around a downtown. And we call that the neighborhood planning area. It's a area where you plan the neighborhoods could be. If you go through a certain process, it becomes a neighborhood development area with benefits and such, but a neighborhood planning area is just kind of, it's a geography within which you plan. And so we are modeling this proposal on that, that the downtown plus or village, plus its neighborhood planning area would be the area within which these apply. And so what if those neighborhood planning areas, and again, the idea of zoning and all the different kinds of zoning. Again, I'm just gonna keep using water barrier as an example. I know that a quarter mile or a half mile outside of our downtown designated area is light industrial with some residential, old residential in it. What happens when there's an overlay like that, that, I mean, I guess in that area, it's bad. It's not a good example in this case because water and sewer doesn't go out there. Water might, but sewer doesn't. So what happens when there's an overlay with a district like that? Does it just get cut out of the circle? Or is it, or do the local people and the water and sewer permits that have to be issued are all those part of a normal process? Yeah, so the way that it's written right now in S237 is that the, I'm looking at the language, is that it requires the creation of those certain size residential lots within any regulatory district allowing residential uses served by and able to connect to a water system. So if you've got an industrially zoned area, chances are that is not a regulatory district that allows residential uses, therefore it would not be required to have those densities there. All right, thank you. Thank you, that's a good question because I know the interaction with local planning and zoning has been a great topic of conversation. Can you represent a trial? Yes, we heard, my understanding, we heard from Karen Horne who told us that water and sewer and stow, for instance, had run all the way up to Trap Family Lodge. So that goes through all their commercial zone. It runs all the way through the commercial zone. And it runs up to a rather large facility that houses many people at one time. And I suspect pays probably more property taxes than any other, well, I couldn't say any other. There's some pretty outlandish homes and stow, but a substantial amount of property taxes. So does that all fit together in the way that happened and how does it play into these proposals? Oh, does the amount of property tax that a dwelling or a facility pays have an impact on this? When it comes to zoning or granting permits, of course, the value of the project and the tax that it would yield are not taken into consideration, which I'm sure you're aware of. In this case, the original proposal in S237 could have allowed houses all along the waterline all the way up to Trap Family Lodge, which maybe could affect the value of their property. The proposal that I'm making to restrict the area where the densities are required would mean that that whole area between stow village and traps would not be subject to these requirements. I'm worried maybe I'm not answering your question. No, I understand what you're saying. Yes, it's still somewhat of a question in my mind, but that definitely has clarified what my thoughts were on that. Thank you. Thank you. Stow would still be able to turn around and say, well, wait, I want we as a community want multi-unit housing, they can already say that and it can already be hooked up. They can make the connection zone happen, but there's still, I mean, if there's not a public transportation system four miles up the mountain road, then this is still going to be considered sprawl. I think it is what I'm hearing from you, is that without the density of infrastructure, which could just mean places to go shop, places to walk to, places that are carless that you don't need it, that a multi-unit zoning in four miles up the mountain road may not be permitted that way anyway, or may not be preferred. It may not be preferred. And that's an example of when you have really efficient land use that you have four units on one acre, but pretty inefficient location. And so you kind of, you want both a good location in terms of what people living in a place can be connected to from a smart growth perspective, and you want an efficient land use. The flip side of that is, if you had one home on two acres in a village, it wouldn't be a village. You would kind of have the right location, but you'd have the wrong site use or site design. So all those things play together. Location matters, site design matters. Putting the location and site design together well is what gets us communities that feel good and function well and use infrastructure effectively. So this suggestion by utilizing existing state sanctioned designated areas, what I'm hearing you say as a representative of VNRC is that it's preferable to try to limit these, these requirements to those areas. Now, what Act 250 benefits do you already get from being a downtown designated downtown or village? And what are there not lot provision sizes that are already in place that allow you to be exempted from some Act 250 provisions? Nothing having to do with lot sizes in designated areas affects whether a property is subject to Act 250. The way the law is written now, you are subject to Act 250 in a downtown if you are building commercial on more than 10 acres in a town with subdivision and zoning or commercial on more than one acre in a town without subdivision and zoning, or if you build a certain number of housing units. There are no flat out exemptions from Act 250 in our downtowns or villages today. The one exemption that is kind of a very specific situation is called the priority housing project, which is that if you build a certain amount of affordable housing or mixed use housing, then you can be exempt from Act 250. The Act 250 bill being contemplated right now in the Senate that's already passed out of the house proposes to exempt downtowns and neighborhood development areas and enhanced village centers from Act 250, but that is not in play yet. So if we limit these requirements to this, I mean, what happens if that bill passes? Does that move what we're contemplating? No, no, they work independently of one another, yeah. Chip, is this a new hand raise? Yes, I'm just back to Stowe. So if you travel up the mountain road, it is full of short-term rentals. And it has a trolley that runs from downtown up to the mountain. So you've got access to transportation and you already have dozens of short-term rentals. And I guess I'm just kind of stuck on this as to how that, again, how that plays. I mean, there are overlaps in what we're talking about here and what the situation is there. And I guess I'm just curious as to whether or not homes could tap into that line or not. That's a good question. I don't have the answer to it. It would depend on what Stowe's plan is and what their rules are for who can connect in what locations and that would ideally and most likely in practice depends on their zoning as well as their sewer and water capacity. But I think a valid question to ask is, would you have that situation that you described today and maybe there's some pieces of it that kind of work because of the trolley and such. Do you want, would it serve statewide goals as well as local goals to have more of that type of development? Well, certainly affordable housing is somewhat absent in that town. So, again, it just kind of circles, I just kind of circle around to think, oh, everybody who works there has to live in Walcott. Just in terms of affordable housing, I'm sorry, Tom. No, no, no, I'm sorry for, I just, I do want to make clear as I'm reading through this bill and whatnot, it's too easy to say that this bill is about affordable housing only. This bill is about allowing more housing to be created, which we know that when there is a surplus of housing that rents do not go up as quickly as they may when it's a seller's market, I suppose. So I just want to be clear about that. I mean, I know that we've been packaging this as pro-affordable housing with the thinking that multi-units, I mean, the letter from Stowe points out that in Stowe, you may not get multi-units that are for the service workers who live in Stowe, it may well be luxury units that fit into that category of what they're talking about. And so I just want to, this bill is trying to find the balance to create more housing with the idea that if there's more housing, more affordable housing will become available because what we're seeing with short-term rentals, especially, and I mean, if this begins the process of allowing municipalities to regulate short-term rentals, then we're going to start seeing how many short-term rentals in Stowe are taken off the market because of or Waterbury or Middlebury or any place else that are Burlington where there's plenty of short-term rentals. So I just want to keep that in mind as we move forward. This isn't solely about HUD-oriented affordable housing. This is about making all, hopefully making more housing affordable simply because there's more capacity. Representative Zott. Thank you, Chair. You make a great point. And I think that's part of what our witnesses point is, is that this bill, it does more than seek to create affordable housing. It also tries to create housing development patterns that are environmentally friendly, which is another reason that, you know, there's a reason to advocate for it. I did have a question, a clarifying question, though with regard to, I feel like maybe you're using it loosely or maybe I'm not understanding it. You keep referring to densities, but the bill specifies lot size. There's a correlation between the two, but they're not synonymous. The bill, and as we've heard testimony before, I thought we heard testimony that perhaps the bill should be restructured to specify density rather than lot size in these situations. So my first question is, is there a distinction? Am I misunderstanding the distinction? And then the second question I have is a slightly more philosophical one, which is, as I understand it, the neighborhood development areas, the designated downtowns and the village center programs are all voluntary. They're all programs that towns decide to participate in. So I'm interested in this notion of confining those development patterns mandated in the bill to areas where towns have are decided to participate. But so could you just clarify if that's also true that those are all voluntary programs? And I guess, yeah, those are the two for now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for those questions. And I'll take your last one first and your first one last. That's all right. You are correct that the designation programs we're talking about are voluntary programs. And I'll be frank that they were started as economic development and revitalization programs. So they're fairly limited in geography and the downtowns and villages especially focus primarily on the commercial core. They are voluntary. They're incentive based. And so this proposal, and this is a potential drawback of the proposal I'm making is that you're taking a voluntary program and you're adding an obligation to it. And so it's a valid question to ask whether that would discourage participation in this program. On the other hand, as you also said, the fact that towns are stepping up to participate in these designation programs may mean that they're already kind of thinking in this direction anyway. And that means that this program can boost it or this requirement will nudge that along further. It may also mean, I think you heard from the town of Brattleboro that they've already done a lot of this work in order to make smaller lot sizes available and haven't seen a lot of growth. So you may, given that many of these communities have done some of this work, you may see not as much of a net change in the number of units as if this were more broadly applied. I've been trying to think, as I said earlier, and as you all know, there's no silver bullet. And so I've kind of wondered, what does it mean to, what does success look like from this change in statute? If each community that is subject to these inclusive housing requirements adds three houses over the next two years that they wouldn't have otherwise, is that success? I think it could be. Housing development does not happen quickly in Vermont, but more units and a greater variety bit by bit, I think all adds up and can be useful. So that's how I would answer the philosophical question. And part of that is me acknowledging that there are limitations to using these designations for this. And then if I can move on to the density versus lot size question. Yeah, and if I could just ask, I'm sorry, I'm asking a lot of questions too, but I just wanna be conscious of time and our other witnesses. So I just wanna point that out and I know that I've been responsible for taking us on tangents as well. And I get excited when I'm talking about planning. So I appreciate that reminder. The distinction between density and lot size question actually brings me to my next point, which is there is a proposal that you will hear more about from VPA that proposes to use minimum densities instead of lot sizes. And that can allow for more flexibility in what form these different housing types take. And I think that you're right that I was using the term somewhat interchangeably and that was a bit sloppy of me, but it was in anticipation of this proposal, which is instead of saying you've gotta do quarter acre lots or eighth of an acre lots, say that you've gotta do four dwelling units an acre on average or eight dwelling units an acre on average. What this will not accomplish is a really uniform mix of housing types across all neighborhoods. And that's a disadvantage in my opinion, but it could lead to more housing production, which is a goal. So the third thing that I wanna highlight that VPA has also flagged is that in our zoning statute, there is a way to, if zoning is found to be discriminatory, there's a way to appeal that and to call that out and get it fixed. Just kind of a technical item is that if this bill is to pass, you would wanna make sure that this is part of that overall scheme of part of the pieces of zoning that can be scrutinized if they're found to be discriminatory by not happening. I wanna get through this more efficiently than I have been. So I'll just carry on. VPA recommends and I agree that the substantial municipal constraint report should have a little more guidance as to what needs to go in it so that it's pretty straightforward for communities to do. And that's department housing, community development is supposed to provide that guidance. And I think that can help solve that problem. I would also hope that the reports can be used constructively for data collection purposes as well as to help towns who are wanting to take these steps but need a little more resources, need some support to do it. I think that that would be a really good outcome from these reports and I think could take away from the perception that they're a punishment. I think they need to be used constructively. I'll make two more points. I wanna highlight a good point that was made in the Lemuel County Planning Commission's testimony, a substantial municipal constraint as we've been talking about it, we've been talking about water capacity or sewer capacity. It's entirely possible that a community is gonna have a wetland adjacent to their village. That would be a municipal constraint and should be acknowledged as such. So you will see in their memos and suggested language about natural resources and how those should be constrained. So we would feel very silly if we were forcing housing to be built in places we've been trying to protect for a long time. And I wanna agree with the chair's earlier point wholeheartedly that if we are asking communities to step out and make these changes and make our communities better, create more housing types, we really need to back that up with support. Municipal planning grants, regional planning commissions and the tax credits. I think that I can stop there and that you've heard the things that I support and the things that I'm open to see that ways that other things can be changed to improve the bill. So thank you for listening and for your very good questions. I'm happy to answer others. Thank you, Kate. I'm gonna pop over to Kathy Byer if she's there. Great. And then we'll get to Alex after that. Thanks, thanks, Rivers and Deepins. And I really apologize, my video is sporadic. So we'll try, see if I can keep it on. And I wanna say I'm really glad I followed Kate McCarthy because I learned a lot listening to her and I have to confess, I don't know the S237 nearly in as detailed a format as Kate does. So I'm glad I got a chance to listen. Good afternoon, I haven't met many of you but some of you I've met. I am Kathy Byer, I'm the vice president for real estate development and as Representative Stevens pointed out, our new company is named Evernorth. Housing Vermont merged with a similar organization based out of Portland, Maine and we now cover the three Northern New England states. And it's actually a very exciting time and it's been, we have a lot of similarities between Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, particularly among housing. So we are excited about this new opportunity but just reflecting back on our past 30 years, we were a nonprofit real estate developer, that's what we do. We've built over or renovated, built new construction or renovated over 6,000 homes across the state and we have worked in every corner of the state. And my job as a real estate developer is often to go find land that can be developed for multifamily housing. And I have to tell you, it's extremely challenging. Finding land with the appropriate zoning that is on town water and sewer is a much more, it's even as long as I've been doing this, it surprises me. For example, in the town of Brattleboro, I don't know if anybody's familiar with the senior building we built called Red Clover Two in Brattleboro. I'm sorry, Red Clover One and a lovely building and we needed to build phase two. We were trying to build about 20 additional senior units. So not a huge building. I looked for two years to find land in Brattleboro and it simply could not find land that could support a 20-unit senior building with the right zoning, with water and sewer. So, and I would say this is around the state, you see this around the state and I heard that question about like, why don't people know where their water sewer capacity is? And I actually think that's a useful tool in the proposed bill to get a better understanding of where a water and sewer capacity is. But what I would say that this legislation is trying to address is that there actually is a scarcity of land on town water and sewer and we don't see it, right? You drive through these communities and you see these single family neighborhoods and you think, what's the problem? Well, actually it's a very finite resource that is connected to water and sewer capacity. And I know that water and sewer capacity itself is another issue, right? We need to invest more in that infrastructure but we wanna make sure where we have that capacity that we might be looking at the use of that land that is connected to that capacity. And I think S37 does try to do that with minimum lot sizes, the ADUs, which really doesn't affect my work but the idea of expanding the potential for multifamily housing is something that I think is needed. And I guess I would just go back to how challenging it is to actually find that resource in our communities. And I'll just give you one last story. Over the last year and a half, my company, I'm still struggling with saying Evernorth, but I'll try Evernorth. We mostly focus on multifamily rental housing and there's such a need, as you know, in the single family for sale market, particularly for a home that's priced $140,000, which is very hard to find. So we set out on an effort to buy, to purchase and renovate four homes in the central Vermont area, mostly Berry City and Berrytown and in Wyndham County. And I had two staff people scouring the MLS going to look at homes. And it was, and you know this now, after post COVID, it's even worse, but this is pre COVID, there's very little inventory out there. And I agree that S237 is really an affordable housing bill, but if it's gonna increase the quantity of our housing, I think that is something that is really needed. So, again, I'm not an expert on the details of the bill, but I wanted to give you the perspective of someone who does real estate development in Vermont. Thank you, Kathy. I've got a question from Representative Kalaki. Thank you, Chair. Kathy, could you, first thanks for your great work. Thank you. And how will this make your work easier? How will this make our work easier? Yeah, if this bill passes, and there's only issues we're talking about. What probably would be the best language in the bill involves character of the neighborhood. That is, unfortunately, we have been, we've had project appealed. I would say often we've had a very epic battle in Woodstock, but we finally prevailed after nine years and built 28 beautiful homes. But character of the neighborhood is the most frequently used reason for an appeal. So that language is attractive. Okay, thank you very much. All right, thank you, Kathy, for testifying. If you need to go, please do. If you can stay and if we have questions towards the end of today's session, that would be great. Thanks so much. Thank you, and congratulations on the merger. I know it's, you know, it's probably weird just looking at the new letterhead. Yeah. All right, thank you. Alex Weinhagen, am I pronouncing that correctly? You've got it right. All right, thank you for coming. Thank you for your, thank you for your previous correspondence. I think you're the VPA, I think the correspondence that you emailed to email to us really encapsulated and condensed a lot of the concerns that we've heard from quite a few of the other zoning from the towns. You know, as I was reviewing your letter, it seemed to really just take into account. So I'm going to utilize it as a basis for our review as we're moving forward, because it seemed to take in most people's concerns. But I wanted to have you in, testify. So please feel free to introduce yourself. Tell us where you're calling from. It's a beautiful view behind you and let us know what you're thinking. Right, thanks very much for having me. So I'm Alex Weinhagen. I am the legislative liaison for the Vermont Planners Association. We are a nonprofit advocacy and educational organization been around for a long time. We have over 150, actually closer to 200 members around the state at this point. We're a section of the Northern New England chapter of the American Planning Association. And our membership is diverse. We do have a lot of municipal planners. I am one of those for my day job. I work for the town of Heinsberg as the director of planning and zoning. The pretty picture you see behind me is not live, but it is Heinsberg. But our membership also includes regional planning commission staff, private planning consultants, state planning professionals. And we try to work collaboratively with the state's other planning agencies both at the agency of commerce and community development, but also the regional planning commission's group, BAPTA. So we try to collaborate as much as possible and represent views from a wide variety of community planners. As I said, I also work for the town of Heinsberg. I'm not here representing the town of Heinsberg today, but I have worked there for 18 years as the director of planning and zoning. Prior to that worked in the town of Westford, which is in the Northeast Kingdom of Jitman County. So I have some municipal experience, especially in small to mid-sized communities. BPA's testimony, hopefully you had a chance to read it, tries to hone in on areas that we feel that the bill, where the bill could be improved. I won't go through the long list of provisions that we support. We start with that in our written testimony because overall planners around the state as well as the Vermont Planner Association are very much in support of S237. We feel like, as Kate said, there are no silver bullets, but this is a step in the right direction on a variety of fronts. And so our written testimony on page one gives you a bullet list of the items that we're really 100% behind and support. With that said, as you've heard testimony previously, we are concerned about section two of the bill and feel like that is the most problematic section that could use some improving. I'll be honest with you, we provided testimony on the Senate side when the bill was somewhat in between committees and we provided testimony in the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, suggesting that it was premature section two, particularly the inclusive housing provision section two B and recommended that that be removed so that more collaboration could be done and we could potentially come back to the legislature in the following year with something that would have more support and be a tighter solution. Since then it passed the Senate. And so we recognize the bill has momentum and there's a desire to see this bill acted on this session. So if it is going to move and section two is going to remain in some form, we thought we should offer ways that perhaps it could be improved as a compromise. So as Kate mentioned, and as you'll see in our written testimony, we have a couple of areas where we think improvement could happen. I'll just highlight the first two. You can read the others, but the first two talk about this geographic area where this inclusive housing provision would apply. And as Kate indicated, we feel like a compromised position would be to sync it up with those designation areas rather than all areas served by water and sewer. And so as we indicate, there are approximately 48 village centers, for example, that have water and sewer. And if we were to combine those two requirements that it be within a designation area or that buffer around it and served by water and sewer, we would be sure that these changes would actually apply to places that both the state and local and regional planning commissions have designated for growth. These are the appropriate places for the denser development that this bill is seeking to make more possible. So we'd like to see the geographic area focused in that way. I think you've received testimony from a variety of folks both on the municipal water and sewer side, as well as the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, about why it would be problematic to have it applied to all of the water and sewer areas in the state. I'll just give you my own specific example. For my community in Heinsberg, we expanded our water system in the 90s to serve all three of our mobile home parks, which were outside of our village in areas that had low water yields. And so there was a public health issue that drove the decision as well as state dollars through the community development program to build capacity to serve that part of town. It was never the town's intention to encourage more development in that area. It was simply expanding service to deal with a public health issue. Similarly, our sewer line, which doesn't go that far in that part of town, does reach out and touch one of our historic industrial properties, which is air quality manufacturing, if any of you have purchased trucks with truck bodies that have been modified, you've probably gotten them through Iroquois. And again, that sewer line, which is extended outside of our village area, is there to help provide some capacity for that industry. And so to have this bill apply and anticipate denser residential development along these water and sewer corridors that were never designed to accommodate that is poor planning. It runs counter to local and regional plans that have been developed. And it also maybe more importantly, drains limited water and sewer resources, as Kathy mentioned, away from our vibrant village centers and downtowns into these outlying areas. Hinesburg, again, is a good example in that case. As I provided in the testimony, we've been on the forefront for a small to mid-sized community in adjusting our zoning to allow for more housing. And we've seen the benefits of that with some very substantial development proposals since we came out of the Great Recession in 2009, 2010. Those projects are able to move forward in Hinesburg because we have water and sewer capacity. However, if this bill were to go into effect as drafted, some of that capacity could be drained away to the outlying areas and not be able to continue to see the much more densely settled patterns in our village that we've been planning for and that developers are looking to make possible. So, enough said on that front, we think the geographic area of this inclusive housing provision should be focused. And then as also as Kate said, we feel that the minimum lot size provision is just, we understand the idea, but it's the wrong way of doing it. And for those of us that actually work with developers on a day-to-day basis, that the way that you provide housing in this state is not just through single-family homelots. And the way it's currently drafted, it very much reads that way. When in fact, the projects that Kathy, for example, works on, one of which was in Hinesburg, our first affordable housing project for rental and for families, a Green Street project. Most of those projects are actually multi-family structures. They're not one unit per eighth-acre lot. They are in buildings that might have four, 10, 20, 35 units in a single building. And again, as we point out, it's density that matters. How many units per acre you can develop, not how many very small lots you can create. So that's a fairly easy fix to make in the regulation in the proposed legislation. And we provided some draft language that legislative council could potentially harvest. And those are essentially the two major points that I wanted to highlight. We make some suggestions about some other provisions. I think Kathy's point that she made about this character, the area problem is really valid. And as planners who are advocates for housing, we also see that in our communities where people react to housing of a different type that makes them nervous. And while there are legitimate reasons to review those kinds of projects, whether it be parking or fire protection, I agree 100% with Kathy that this character, the area test ought not to apply. And VPA provide you some language where we could achieve that without removing the conditional use option entirely. I think that LaMoyle County Regional Planning Commission actually provided you language that would go even further and not be restricted to just three and four unit multifamily dwellings, but would also apply taking this character, the area issue away from the review of much larger multifamily units of the type that Kathy's organization has a greater role in developing. So that would be worth considering as well. With that, I'm happy to take questions about what our testimony was or questions you have more generally about how local development review works. Happy to help out as best we can. So we have a couple of questions lined up, but before we get to them, Alex, just one question. I don't know if you will know this, but some of this language, especially when it comes to the lot sizes, does not apply to municipalities that have a fire district or a utility district that runs their water sewer system. I mean, that they're exempted from that. How many of the towns that you're talking about, the 48 towns, I mean, how many folks are running on fire districts rather than municipal, rather than municipal? I mean, because I've had a question, like who is this applying to? Like in the end, how many towns that should we be focusing on? It's not universal, but how many fire districts are there that in the towns that you're talking about? So that's an excellent question. I wish I had the answer, Tom. I don't. I don't know of those areas served by water and sewer within the designation areas, what the breakdown is between municipal and fire districts. I will tell you that VPAs feels that the intent of this legislation is such that it really should apply, it should consider fire districts a municipal service and so that the bill should apply to them, but not to purely private water and sewer systems like you might see at the Bolton Valley Resort. Okay, thank you. Representative Hango then Kalaki. Thank you. I have a question about geographic areas with existing designation areas. If a town already has a voluntary designation, then in your suggestion, this geographic area would expand on that and that is all well and good. What if a town does not have one and seeks to, how do I put this? And seeks to get incentives such as what are mentioned in this bill, doesn't have a geographic development area, downtown designation, could they potentially be denied? We've heard before that they won't be prioritized. So I'm not really sure if this is the right approach for all of our towns, I'm trying to figure this out. Yeah, it's a good question. I think that the way the designation process works through the agency of commerce and community development and the language in this bill, they are exclusive of each other so that if this bill were to pass and a community didn't have a designation and wanted to achieve a village center designation or a downtown designation, the provisions in this bill wouldn't be held against them in that application process, but they certainly would be dovetailed and so the inclusive housing provisions would kick in once that designation was granted and the community of course would be aware of that and so they'd have to be figuring that out. Thank you. Representative Kalaki. Alex, thank you for your memos is terrific and your suggestions I think are well considered. I just, when you said earlier that before the bill started progressing as it has, you had hoped that there could be a planning period for section two, like what did you imagine that would look like and what would be the outcome of that? Thanks for asking that question because VPA is walking a fine line here. We wanna be constructive and be helpful but at the same time, we wanna be clear about the fact that planning in general requires collaboration and bringing multiple partners to the table to come up with solutions. The Department of Housing and Community Development was trying to engage in a project to do just that and that resulted in the publication of a document enabling better places. It's a document that came out in July they had been talking with many of us at the local and regional level in the process of working through that project and many of us had hoped that that document and the product of those conversations would then become a starting point to perhaps come up with better either legislation at the state level or template language for communities to use in their zoning regulations. What I think we were hoping to see was not legislation that tried to implement certain pieces of that prior to the conversation being concluded about what was the best way to move forward. So if section two B, the inclusive housing provision were to be put on hold and a study committee or additional work was to be called for, the way I would envision it is is that the DHCD would facilitate those conversations with both local and regional partners and that we would come back and report likely they would be required to issue a report to your committee in the next legislative session to actually have a better sense of what would work and as Representative Hango indicated not all communities are going to be well served by what the legislation, how the legislation is currently drafted and to be perfectly honest won't be necessarily well served by VPA's suggested improvements. So the effort that I'm speaking of talked about using multiple means to achieve these goals and I think that a larger conversation about that would be helpful. As Kate indicated, even if this bill were to pass it's not a silver bullet we're gonna continue to have to work on a variety of fronts to achieve the aims the two aims of providing more housing but also substantially increasing our affordable housing which unfortunately this bill has a title that refers to that but as Kathy indicated has very little to do with affordable housing as it's drafted. So that's a long winded answer but it's my way of saying there's definitely a conversation that needs to continue and we would be very happy to be a part of that as VPA with both the administration and other partners like those in the housing communities. So I get that and thank you. That was very helpful to me but the VPA on the record now is supporting the bill with these changes you're suggesting. Correct. Okay. We would like to be as constructive as we can. Right, I got it. That's where we're at. Thank you for all of that. I appreciate it. All right, any further questions for Alex? I have one more myself but if anyone else has a question, please raise your hand. Alex, when we talk about planning grants I mean, one of the things that happens in our committee because we're the housing committee is I spend a lot of time evangelizing about the use of the property transfer tax and how it's been how that fund has been used for other purposes and but a smaller portion of the property transfer tax is for municipal planning grants and for other things that affect municipalities. We're stuck in an area where those grants have been those grants when they've been increased have been one offs basically or we have to fight for them on your behalf every year. What would they be used for? I mean, if this bill passed in roughly this form but with these goals in mind how would these planning grants help the municipalities who are gonna be most directly affected? How does a planning grant system work for you when it comes to trying to integrate whether it's trying to integrate state law into your municipal plans or understanding what this means for the community? Right, so we appreciate your hard work on funds for planning and share your frustration about the lack of those funds and the fact that local municipalities have to compete. So receive state funds to actually do the planning that state statute says we are compelled to do. It's not always easy, but I won't whine about it. In any case, we would use those planning grants principally to see, well, to hire consultants. That's how typically these grants are used to bring in some outside expertise that can help a local community figure out what the issue is and how to better solve that problem. And so I would imagine many communities if this legislation were to pass would be using those funds to try to understand how they can hit those housing goals and specifically what the likely impact would be if the community were to be built out at the development densities or lot sizes that the bill was mandating and also be reflective about what infrastructure limitations would need to be addressed in order to meet those goals. So my community in Heinsberg, for example, we have municipal water and sewer. We have a lot of new development that's been proposed. We're making great strides in that regard, but we are running up against limited water supply. And so we're in the process of bringing a new well online, having it tested. And we're also in the process of upgrading our wastewater system to comply with the Lake Champlain cleanup requirements. And so having a planning grant to actually assess what the development pattern would look like in the future is one thing. A lot of professional planners can actually do that work with the help of regional planning commissions, although most Vermont communities don't have professional planners. But what many of us are not good at doing is doing the fiscal analysis to understand how we're going to pay for the infrastructure improvements to actually make this possible. I know that's been a stumbling block in my community where we sort of have a vision. We know where we're going. We know what needs to be done, but we're not clear on how that will be paid for through new development connection fees, permitting fees, property taxes and the like. We don't have a lot of economists at the local level. So I could see a lot of planning grants being used in that fashion. All right, great. Thank you. Because I think that's an element of the budgeting process. And I know that a commitment to the money was not made in the first three month quarterly bill that we did back in June, but it's still being considered for the nine months moving forward. But as with everything, go ahead. I was just going to say, as you know, because it's a competitive system, there are always more requests and I would say very legitimate worthwhile requests to do this sort of local level and regional planning work than there is money to fund them. So I'm preaching to the choir, but to be able to implement these things, more funding is needed in the municipal planning grant program and beyond for actual infrastructure because eventually what all these plans amount to is a whole lot of nothing. If there aren't funds to actually improve infrastructure to make this kind of housing possible and water and sewer being principle in that regard. Yeah. All right, well, thank you very much for your time. It's 1.53, we have a two o'clock floor session which while it should be short, we should be on time. So I wanna thank Alex and Kate and Kathy for being here today. Committee, we are going to be at work tomorrow morning at 8.30. We are going to hear about S187 which was just passed over to us yesterday and it's a bill that we're gonna consider concurring with. Hopefully the testimony tomorrow will be clear enough that we may just be able to concur with it. It's a bill that would allow rehabilitation units or transitional housing units, actually not rehabilitation, but transitional housing units an exemption from our landlord tenant law that would allow people to, if they're homeless or if they're coming out of a hospital in particular and they need to be another housing that's been developed, the specific, a specific place is Harbor Place. There's also one in Rutland that's being that we'll hear from tomorrow. It's basically allowing these units to act like nursing homes in the sense that they don't have to kick people out after 29 days in order for them to continue to receive services or else they would become tenants at will and we've dealt with that issue in a couple of different ways over the biennium. So we'll have that conversation tomorrow. Also, we will pick up more testimony on S237. So thank you very much for today and we will see you on the floor in a couple of minutes.