 Good afternoon. Welcome to the House Environment and Energy Committee. This afternoon we're going to take up H687 and our first witness is Charlie Baker. Good afternoon, Chair Sheldon and members of the committee. Thank you for allowing me to testify this afternoon. I did a few pages of comments. So we're trying to get more specific and try to instruct these in specific sections of the bill. I lost. I can't remember how many comments we specifically have, but generally we just also want to say thank you for your work on addressing the housing crisis, environmental protection and strength. The process is a better support implementation of plants, municipally and regional. Specific comments if you're ready and I can pause however you want to run it under chair if you want to pause after each one. But just starting off section 2 page 2. Give us 1 second to pull up. It's hard to read. Okay. Can I blow this up a little bit? Well, we have it here so we are well. Yeah. Yes, is there related to draft 2? Yes. So I was looking at the draft from last week. Apologies. I don't know if there's anyone. Okay. All right. So page 2 section 2, we regularly striking the capability and development by language. There. Page of each channel. So he's got written testimony without section 2 page. Section 5 on page 9. Is it easy if I start off with a number 1st? And also, if you can just say, why? Because at least from our view, we see the regional planning process, the regional plans replacing. The hope for capability and development plan that's never been effectuated, right? And then representative civilian is the question. So, should we maybe just correct that? Are we correct in reproposing changes to kind of identify that regional plans are that. Yeah, in other sections as we go further down. Yeah. There was just kind of a reference to this capability and development plan in this 1st section. So just going straight through the draft bill. Section 5 on page 9. This is there's a sentence in there about doing rules, rulemaking for regional plans. And this is just our position at the moment is that we're hoping to avoid that and just rely on guidance from the RB. And then there's more language section 6. Around this. Yeah. Yeah. One of the issues that I'm really concerned about is consistency. Yes. And so I do wonder about why with this. And I think it's the same thing we have been saying that we'd like to see more specific language and statute rather than. Waiting for rulemaking. So I think that's and that's really. And maybe that's just the way that we're used to functioning. All of our regional plans are just come from statute. That's the right direction about what we're supposed to do. And that's how we're used to carrying things out. Just where our minds are at the moment. So, having said that, sorry. Yeah, I'm really thinking about this. We can kind of keep walking through it because there's a lot of pieces here. If I could. That's good. I mean, I think what you're saying is they're related to further suggestions. Yeah, we're system that works. And this is kind of the broad stroke thing that came out of the 3 studies as they work together, right? There's regional planning. We're doing planning. There's designations providing some financial incentives for these smart growth areas. And then we have the regulatory system. At with active 50, both increasing jurisdiction in. Rural resource areas and decreasing jurisdiction in areas we want to see growth, right? So we're trying to tie all that together with this. And that's really in this next section here, page 13 section 6. We're trying to get really. Specific about we see the ERB having 3 specific roles. Related to what I just mentioned 1 is reviewing applications for the designated plan growth area. So that's that full exemption area. And producing guidelines for municipalities seeking that designation. Some of that language is already there. I think this is just a modification there. And then 2 things that are not in the current. Draft 1 is reviewing requests from RPCs for approval of regional plans, pursuant to the criteria that's in 24, 48, 43, 48 a that's the elements of a regional plan section. Again, produce the board can produce guidelines for RPCs for that. And then. And then this is kind of the key concept here. And I think this is a point where we've been struggling with clarity. Is that in addition to just approving our regional plan, we're kind of envisioning a 2nd layer of approval of really specifically looking at the places that we designate on our maps. And that would be where the downtown, the center planning area, the neighborhood area and that rural conservation area, what you've been calling the critical resource area that those get specific review. And maybe there's some direction and statute about what the board is reviewing against. We're reviewing that as a separate decision. And again, we have a reference. This is going back to the designation section of this. Now, I'm concerned. Do you have all the designation language? And because I'm realizing that some of this, I was also looking at S 308. Sorry, this has been quite challenging on our side to be reviewing 3 bills at the same time. It wasn't intended to happen that way. Yes. We have it. And we are going to, I think have it in our next. So this may be referring to a section that's in S 308, which is the designation. And again, we're trying to make that linkage that the world conservation area is really defined by how you define critical resource area in section 6001 of title 10. And again, that there may be guidance. And it's a lesson says it's going to be done concurrently with the regional plan review, but there is a separate decision point there. And we'll talk later on, we think that's important because that's where people like the jurisdictional decisions getting made, right, either brought into active 50 or not. I mean, that's also where we're likely to see appeals on that active 50 jurisdictional position. I'm sorry, I'm planting some more thoughts here that, but yeah, we've in the, this is on guard. Sorry. Why would you do it as a two step why wouldn't, when you submit the future and use map, why wouldn't you have to invest of your ability, but these through identified them and had it all be one process. We are seeing is one process, but we're trying to be clear that we think there's 2 decisions going on. Because there's some specific criteria around these jurisdictional decisions. What's in tier 1 and tier 3 to use that Lux account. But there's also, there's a lot of language in the regional planning part of statute. That has a lot more topics and things that we're supposed to address that are not necessarily related to active 50 jurisdiction. Exactly related. So there's kind of a, are we complying with the regional plan section of statute. And are we, are we complying with what's required in this jurisdictional decision making about tier 1 and tier 3. What would happen, not many of us in time to beat the source. Yeah, yeah. What would happen if the 1st level of your plan was approved and then they said, no, you haven't done a good job with the critical resource areas. But the rest of it go forward and what would then be the impetus to get that part done. Yeah, that's a good question. You probably need some clarity on that, you know, was some savings provisions or something. Yeah. So, that is definitely something to look at. Thank you. I'm not sure if I was going to add more. Was there a more question about that? And I think I know I was going to just give you an analogy. We've talked about the energy planning process that we've gone through here before. This is analogous to when we review municipal plans, if they asked for if a town comes to the regional planning commission asked for approval of their town plan. We're now getting this 2 decisions. They're asking for approval of the town plan. But then they're, they're also, they can ask for a determination of energy compliance for their energy plan. So if the municipality doesn't enhance energy plan. So we've been kind of experiencing this kind of like dual decisions where we're dealing with municipal plans right now. That's kind of where this concept kind of came from of, and also it would be a little cleaner because we think there may not be real reasons to appeal the regional plan, but there are reasons to appeal these jurisdictional maps. So, just want to kind of be clear on that. Representative civilian. I would just note that I find that to be kind of a curious concept. Which. That the plan and the maps are not connected. They are absolutely connected. That the plan could move forward, even though the maps were not. Correct. I think in the case that representative bangers. It brought up, like, if, if there was some. The ERB said, oh, you didn't, you didn't do the map. You didn't follow the direction from the legislature of the ERB properly. You know, go back and redo it and bring it back for approval. They do stay connected. It's just the decision points at the ERB is being really specific about the, I think there are 2 decisions there. And there's 2 sections of statute that we're talking about compliance with. There's kind of this. Act to 50 section of statute for jurisdictional purposes. And there's a regional planning section of statute that has 12 elements of what we're supposed to include in our regional plans. No, I just, I mean, I have so many questions. Okay. And related to the, I think the 1st comment, there's. This is just a little cleanup from our view as we're kind of looking at the statutory section. There's multiple sections about the capability and development plan. Starting at 1060 42. So we're suggesting making it clear that the poor review and approve regional plans rather than the capability and development plan. And all the purposes for doing that remain the same. There was there was process set up around those capability and development plan that doesn't seem wouldn't if we move to this new model wouldn't seem necessary. So that's a suggestion there. Number 5 section 23. This is where we get into the language about active 50 jurisdiction, particularly what's on the. Two major things here. One is the road rule. We support some version of the 2000 foot road rules recommended in the NRB report. And then this is not a new comment necessarily, but just we're a little bit concerned as we follow up from our last testimony last week about the amount of land that might be jurisdictional based on at least what was in the draft last week of the critical resource area. I asked members offline, but on their ecology hat. For the weekend and think about what are the resources critical to Vermont's future and adaptation to climate change and resilience. Separate from jurisdiction. Just scientifically. What does that mean. So if we were to separate them. But make it more of a criteria. I guess I put that out there and I like folks to think about that. As a different way of looking at them. Because I think there's been a disconnect around. The conversations of. Like, what do they mean, you know, what, what does it mean and we're going to have a conversation this week about what is the critical resource area. And is it really just those very small areas of. Irreplaceable natural communities or. Which maybe already protected. Or is it a resilient landscape that's functional. To the best of the abilities of our landscape. To assisting for monitors in the dressing climate change. So that's a big picture question we're going to have to work out. But I do ask folks think about it in both ways. Think about it. You know, separate from how we then use the information. That is tough challenge here. Number six. This was just. This is getting into. Adding a sentence to what you had as a definition of critical resource area. And again, we're starting from this assumption that that is the tier 3 jurisdictional. Definition. So, and you'll note that we didn't get into exactly what's in there, but just trying to be clear that this definition is what we'll use. By the RPCs to define that world conservation future land use. So. I noted last week, like. There was some language that may have come from. I can't remember where it came from that we had in. In our definitions in the regional planning section. That was different the way you had in title 10. And so we're just trying to say, whatever you put in title 10. But we'll use in our regional plans. So we're just trying to, again, link up and make consist. Thank you. Number 7. This is a minor change in striking a couple of words or replacing a couple of words, but we just think it's important to be clear that it designated a planned growth area is more than just the core of the municipality. I think we were a little bit concerned that it would get confused with the center designation. And we've been talking this entire time about also the residential areas outside of those designated centers. And so. So, and also that. There's another significant idea for your consideration here, which is that. We are hoping that the tier 1B. Areas get kind of automatically approved once those maps are approved by the NRB, sorry, ERB. So that. That approval there kind of gets that that first layer of designation for the 1B areas. And tier 3 happen at that map approvals stage. Whereas for 1A, that highest level of exemption, a municipality would come back to the ERB with a separate application to get that level of exemption. And in Bondar. So, but 1B. We want to make it easy. Yeah, exactly. We're trying to be as inclusive. Yeah. But we also are looking at requirements that those towns have. Yes. And we're looking at some things in place. Yeah, come back to that. And so. It's the way I've been thinking about this, which is just me. Is that with both 1. A and 1B, you would designate the areas that are eligible for consideration. And then they would. Based on checking proxies then apply. And the idea isn't to make it hard. It's just going to put up those parts because there are a lot of areas. Let's just take 1B. If you look across a regional and map of my guess is we will find that this is the term circles around those towns. Maybe, maybe a lot of them, but only half of them. Would have what it takes to become a 1D town. And so what you're saying is good for automatic jurisdiction on all of those. If they meet those standards. So you're saying. So they would have a different kind of circle if they, if they, if it would, because some of those towns will be striving for instance to get there to become a 1D town. So that sort of would be a different color or something. Those towns that don't. This might make sense here. But right. So those are just some of those things we're going to have to really get specific about. Yeah, so got other language later on here, trying to tie that together. Our thought is that that those, those standards for 1B. Maybe basic enough that we can determine that with the municipalities when we're putting our maps together. And that shouldn't, it doesn't, at this point, anyway, what we've seen of the standards that have been discussed doesn't seem complicated enough to make it a separate application process. And by the way, the way it was again, I'm thinking about it is that the ones with Chris Cochran sitting in that chair talking about that those that would be automatically controlled on kind of all of the, let's say 1B. Yeah, that's, and this is, so this is different. This is just the regulatory. Because no, that's not true. You have to parse it. This is so that's the 1B area. That's where like, that's that neighborhood designation area that has been talked about in the designations study would be the 1B area. They automatically starts qualifying for some basic level benefits. They probably have different requirements because I think it's, if Chris is sitting there, he'd be thinking that almost all of those circles would automatically be eligible for the benefits that his shop would confer. And we're thinking about the regulatory before portions, we have to think. Yeah, and we're trying to think about it all together. Okay. You're absolutely right. Yeah, I just want to note that I have a good grasp on where we are or the conversation that's taking place right now. So just want to note that. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, you're right. I'm wearing a lot of stuff on and maybe with some assumptions. So let me know if I do need to back up or maybe we're having a conversation that isn't fully accessible to everyone but and so we had a chair trust your judgment should I back up a little bit just to talk about kind of the base concept. Would that be helpful. It would be helpful to have the vice chair and others. Sure. Okay. So I'm going to do my best to summarize this concept in a couple of minutes. So as we talk about our towns. And I'm going to go kind of maybe from rural to urban. And I'm going to try to mash together what I understand is kind of the recommendation come out they came out all three of these studies, if you put them together and how they work together. Tier three. Critical resource area is new jurisdiction for act 250. Right. Tier two studies, I think was largely mostly leave alone, maybe some road rule. Maybe some other jurisdictional threshold that you talked about here. Tier two was largely talked about leave it. That's the we're not talking about a lot of policy change there. Then we go into the tier one B. And this is this is the area outside the village centers. Let me talk about a village small town. They got a village. They have a little center designation in the middle, but they have some neighborhood around it. That's, and they meet some basic standards, which I'm not talking about. I forgot what they are, but we'll get into that but the tier one be they they have done some level of planning zoning and they have some bit of infrastructure that would qualify them both for. There's been two parts to represent Bogart's point earlier that have been talked about in terms of benefits. They start qualifying for the neighborhood benefits under the designation program. And they might get some limited act 250 relief so that we're encouraging housing in towns all across the state. And so I've been kind of referring to this. That was kind of the, the idea to be as inclusive as possible. It's a low barrier, but provide towns all across the state, the ability to at least achieve that one be in where they want to grow. And that's consistent with their plans bylaws. So that's one be but representative Bogart, you're right. There's kind of two things going on there. It's a little changing in jurisdiction for activity. And there's some other benefits that Chris Cochran has probably talked more in detail. And then, and that we see those, those map layers could be done and the criteria. We're hoping that the RPCs understand clearly enough from statute and or rulemaking that follows that we can map those areas and bring them to the ERB or open the downtown. You'll see further on here that the downtown board weighs in and has comments that they provide to the ERB so that all three parties are connected in those decisions. And then the final level is the tier one a that full exemption for my 250 with the highest amount of requirements for a municipality to meet. And those are, you know, our towns with the largest capacity and the most ability are going to be able to get to tier one a. So that's the basic concept. Does that help represent a severe. Okay. Thank you for doing that. That's, that's for. All right, nobody left me out of the room. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. Great. This is now we're getting into the criteria of the requirements for tier one a. And we're just particularly in the urban form requirement are suggesting some more flexibility. I have a little bit of concern with the historic preservation and wildlife habitat by law requirements. And we'd like to kind of hear from municipalities a little bit more about that. And in particular, on those two requirements, we'd like to think about whether new bylaws are required or maybe there's an option for municipality to demonstrate some other method of protecting those resources. So, I know that's not a fully baked thought, but just flag at the moment. And the urban form. I think this is mostly a concern about whether they can really. How limited this would be if we require six stories. And so we're suggesting three stories in a portion of the area. And I'm recognizing, you know, it's not going to be flat. You know, wherever the tier one a would be when they wouldn't have the same zoning throughout that entire area. So, you know, you guess oriented us to how the three different pieces of this puzzle are kind of currently moving towards fitting together. And this language, I think in in your eight comment, all of it, but not the wildlife, but the other two. Maybe the wildlife and it comes from the downtown designation process. And I guess what I'm wondering about is there, if we just kind of being aware of how, like, what is our expectation in the growth areas around historic preservation and urban forum bylaws and do they need to be linked. Or do they stay part of more of the downtown boards area of interest and if so how. Right, like, I'm not sure how they're linked now, but I think I know that I think that the store is surely part of the downtown. Yes. And I'm going to surmise that the urban forum bylaws are part of that as well. So check in. Yeah, true. And I guess I'm not seeing that the stuff this is about tier one a as opposed to the downtown. I know. So, right. Yeah, we think those from downtown designation is my point. Yeah, but we also think that downtown criteria is likely to stay there. So we were not trying to take this out of the downtown criteria. So there's, there's still that. And that's in a different section of statute right where the designation section statute. So we're not, we're not suggesting taking away from the downtown section. You know, so this may be concentrated a little bit. Yeah, because sorry, I guess I didn't finish my introduction because there are still the center designations that we anticipate both for Village Center and downtown still remaining. You know, the downtown is definitely have a higher bar. Yeah, not just historic preservation, but they have to have a main street program. That's a lot of other things that the downtown has to do to get those that highest level of downtown destination. So, yeah, we were not trying to undermine that part. This is more about the active 50 jurisdiction in in tier one. And he can say it himself, but I raised the same issue with Chris Cobb, frankly, and he suggested and I just make sense to me that we could say urban form bylaws or design review or historic preservation by less. So that's not not required urban for violence. They're a tool. They're one of many towns can choose what they want. So this, I've made that note to myself but that's something you might want to think about it just as long as you're doing one of those. Yeah, and as you think about that, I just, I think this distinction between tier one a and the downtown. We need to think through that a little bit more because in our those real downtown areas. I think urban design standards make more sense. I don't know if they should apply to the entire one a area. You know, when we get into the residential neighborhoods surrounding right. So that's just something I need to think through a little bit more. Yeah, good point. They need to be. I think it's a tool. I think we have 24s or comment nine. I'm sorry. Urban form bylaws are. I think in the discussion. There's some different flavors. There's sometimes they have a, there's a downtown design standards. I'm just losing the words. I haven't thought about this in a little while. But there's some, some a lot of our, well, all the times that have downtowns have some sort of design review in their downtowns. But then there's been more recently there's been form based codes where they're kind of articulating the form they want, rather than just a use zoning. I'm sorry. I'm really going into planner speak and you guys need to stop quickly, but so there's just some different forms of bylaws that municipalities are using to guide the design to develop it, particularly in the most urban downtowns. Also be a form for us to make it easier to get. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, in terms of the form based code. Absolutely right. Just, I would just say generally, so for me anyway, when thinking about if we were to pass this type of historic legislation. My need to be able to explain it to my neighbors. And I'm not a land use planner. I'm a waitress. Who's focused on telecommunications and energy policy, the legislature. So I really need it at the 6th grade level. We are working on something to try to produce a summary document on the side to so totally understand that. I mean, you can see me struggling is getting complicated by graphic. I appreciate things like that. I appreciate you. Your explanations are helpful. So I'd like more of them less presumption knowledge. Okay. Yeah, thanks. So this is in section 24. This is just, I think, just trying to note that that it's not just and again, we're trying to make this distinguishing this to the regional plan and the plan growth area. This maybe should say tier three. Also, I can't remember the context of this language. And again, the leading the tier one B, which we're hoping doesn't have to happen with process. 24. I think this is getting into municipality coming forward with their tier one application. The pre application meeting should be not just with the RPC staff, but with the municipality. We think section C3 could just as easily be incorporated into a recommendation letter from the RPC without a lot of extra process. For this C3. What is it now? This is about the RPC establishing a procedure for an application by the municipality that involves comments from all the parties. And yeah, I think not, not the concept is right. Like we need to be all on the same page. It's just whether we need all we need that extra paperwork. It's really all we're asking. Nine above where you strike the number two. Are you putting those requirements back in somewhere else? No, this was consistent with our notion that we wouldn't need a separate application process for tier one B. No, but they have to show those a I J K those are things they have to have like they have to have bylaws they have to have. Yes, we do have them in another section. Thank you. And yeah, and then in that last paragraph, they were just saying the regional planning commission may not need to be really involved in that last section that the RPC can issue the note or sorry, the municipality can issue the notice on their own. And on common 11 page 55 section 27. And this is this is not statutory language, but we're thinking that there needs to be some reference to 6032. And again, the tier one plan growth areas in the designation section statute and apologies. I don't know 5805 and 58 or six. Those are coming from S 308 again. So I don't know if that made it into this version or not. It's not in 2.2. Thanks. Well, check out the office of legislative council 50 to create the new designation program 308 establishes a new chapter entitled 24. And that's where the 58. That's right. So that's what these cross-referencing. So if you bring that language into your next draft, those numbers will be there. Thank you. Sorry. So rewriting the designation chapter to reflect the designation reports would involve a new chapter of statute in the 50 hundreds. Right. Okay. Comment 12. Chase, I need to look at this. I was trying to be short in my comments, but I lost some contacts here. Page 57. There's a, you know, this pair of the paragraph at the end here, the bottom of page 57 subsection H. Where it was kind of. It was a little interesting to read. We're not sure if it's trying to stand alone or if it's modifying all the stuff that happens in G. We're just kind of just trying to get some clarity there. And particularly around, this is about previous active 50 permits. And so G kind of had a lot about how to handle it and then age. I wasn't sure if I was trying to say something completely different or how it relates to age or G. So suggesting that maybe it says as maybe modified in accordance with the previous section. That makes sense. She is long. Page 63. Right now I'm going to start going through the bill. Section 30. And this is about section 30. Oh, this is we proposed. So this is, this is us not being. We proposed language that actually gets picked up multiple times without later in this draft. About that maybe with the absence of active 50 maybe RPCs would want to have similar direct role in the municipal permit process if. The permit triggered the RPCs definition of significant regional impact. And we're now not sure that we want that we need to do that. And so I guess this is our way of saying, you know, we could go either way on that. If, if this doesn't seem important, we're fine losing it. If it does seem important, it can stay to, but this is this notion about RPCs having party status and municipal permits is mentioned multiple times you get into those transportation related sections. I think you looked at last week. You know, when we contemplate these exemptions stack to 50, we certainly hear from folks who think that's important. The large some, some level of definition of what is a project of regional significance and. You know, that, that they, in many instances, appreciate some additional review on those projects. And then I will skip over those subsequent comments where I follow up on this. Yeah, I mean, I just, I think it was, I noticed when you put it in there, I thought that was the. That's a piece for the committee to talk about. Yeah, yeah. Section 32. Okay, now we're getting into the sections of statute around the regional planning process. And we had language. And we suggested, and I think this is following up on some conversation in this committee. And a new sentence to say that did public APHM efforts to follow guidance developed to provide meaningful participation and address environmental justice. I think I saw some question in the community like what's the connection to environmental justice here. A couple of years ago, you passed the environmental justice law. A big focus of that was how state agencies engage with the public and in particular underrepresented communities. So we've been kind of watching that and waiting for that, but we also figured one of the requirements was for I think was for an art to come out with some guidance about how to do. Public engagement that involves all of the community. So this was our note to say, hey, we probably should be following that guidance that comes out of that process. The next one. I'm going to skip over because that's the substantial regional impact comment again. All right, here's this is a bigger new idea. On number 16. And this is some of them having some conversation with others about, you know, how, how do we address appeals? Where, where do these maps get appealed? How do they get appealed? We need some sort of process. We're suggesting that if a party has participated in the regional planning process. So we want them to participate in our process. We're required by statute to have 2 public hearings on our regional plan, like participate in that process. And, but if they're not satisfied with how, particularly the maps, I think the really we're talking about maps turned out. And we're suggesting that that, that appeal be brought to the ERB at the same time that the ERB is reviewing a regional plan so they can kind of hear. Here's what the RPC did and there's an agreed party that isn't satisfied with that result. The ERB can kind of consider that at the same same time and try to resolve that dispute at that level. So we were kind of thinking of this as more appeal to regional plan to the ERB. If you're not happy with where the regional planning commission ended up. You know, the alternative is getting talked about is just bring it to the ERB, ERB makes a decision and then it goes to the Supreme Court or some other higher court. So this is just our way of trying to encourage people to participate in the regional planning process. You don't, don't stand back. Like, don't tell us you haven't, don't have an issue. And then tell us that the ERB have an issue. You got a lot of stuff at the regional planning stage, but also just your timing and resources of trying to use the layers of appeal process. But so this is an idea for your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Can you scroll up so I can see what you were thinking of. You're posing that this, it's an interesting age 69. Yeah, sorry. It's an interesting, I mean, I can imagine the benefit of having, you know, the ERB say, okay, this is the plan and here's an appeal to that. I mean, there are certain situations in which like that timing doesn't quite align and just the need to make sure that everyone knows, you know, to what the vice chair has been mentioning about public outreach. Like everyone knows what the conversations are and what people are talking about. Yeah, it's an interesting idea. And just to be clear, there is no approval process right now for regional plants. Right. So this is, you know, and we are certainly supporting, you know, that new level of accountability and consistency in this process. And it's really, yeah, appeals need to get addressed somehow. This was just one alternative idea from just doing the straight court shot from the ERP. Representative Sebelia. Yeah, and I just plant a flag here. I do appreciate seeing this language to think about about plant a flag here on the other issue that I continue to be concerned about, which is ability to appeal in terms of resources. Well, and that's the thing I think was, thanks for saying that actually because that was kind of unspoken in our heads here. Maybe we should have written it down is, is, you know, is ERB a friendlier place to go to get that grievance aired than going to the Supreme Court. You know, maybe that's something that's part of the considerations. Help me understand the timing of this though. I'm like, so the ERB would also be approving these plans. So it's like, I guess, within 15 days of plan adoption. Yeah. RBC adopts the plan, but hasn't taken it to the ERB. And this person wants to appeal it or when does that happen? You said, but it says plans here. Yeah. So we are talking. Right. So in paragraph 3 here, we're talking about appeal. It's limited to the question of whether the regional plan is consistent with the elements of the enhanced energy. That is a good verification. Thank you. That needs some more work. And are regional plans in your experience, have they ever been appealed to the Supreme Court or to the environmental court? I guess is where we go now. There is no reason to do that. My knowledge. No, there's no formal process beyond the board itself beyond the regional planning commission itself approving it. So I'm not aware that anything like that is. So, Charlie, I'm just contemplating thinking about the amount of time that you and others are putting into thinking about this and who you report to and where the funding is coming for that. But then also, and feeling some gratitude for your time here. But also, where is the consensus happening amongst the RPCs for this language to be brought in front of us. Have they all seen it? Have they all signed off on it? This is a new concept I've reviewed it with Catherine and Peter. We have not shopped it around. And frankly, I will. This is an area of, you know, not all the RPC boards certainly want the RPC, the regional plan. You know, necessarily to have a state level approval or appeal process. Yeah. So, I mean, if I can name names, I think if you ask the LaMoyle County Planning Commission, or maybe even the central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, I don't think they are supportive of this much state involvement on the regional plan. The DA. Excuse me. NVDA. I haven't had that specific conversation with David. So I don't know the answer to that. So those are the two RPCs. So, because I'm trying to share your probation and get feedback, those are the two that I've heard that from, that specifically said their boards had some concerns. Can I mention a bit of this whole thing? Because this is interesting. It's almost, instead of an appeal, it's almost like an objection or trying to become a party. Because an appeal is after a decision has been made. And I guess a decision will have been made because the RPC has decided to adopt. And so, I guess the question is at what point does someone like object to the decision being made? Is that happening at the public hearing? Is the meeting, or is the hearing where the plan is adopted? Is that a public hearing? Yeah, there's two public hearings. So, presumably like there's like an, like an introductory sort of one, and then one where the plan is adopted, or is that like a third? It's typically, I think the second, after the second public hearing, more typically the regional planning commission will say, okay, we'll close the hearing. Now we'll vote, assuming there's no other issue that came up, right? Okay. Or they could delay and do that another hearing. So they will have had to raise their objection in one of those two public hearings. That was the idea. Okay. And then, so yeah, so there's a couple of different points there that are sort of interesting. I think he won't hit on that, but I was trying to, or sit out. So, so yeah, so then going to the ERB would be an appeal. And that person could be a party to the decision of the ERD for meeting on whether to approve the regional plan or not. Yeah, okay. Thank you for listening to that idea. Thank you for your help. And that was kind of a new idea, definitely. And in the regional plan section of statue, by the way, right? Like, and I don't know, again, it may need to be also a duty of the ERB if that was to happen. So there's probably some more things that would have to happen in title 10. Page 69. Section 32 of the bill. There's a clarification about minor amendments. This is just a kind of future land use areas was just a designated area. Page is 73 and 75. Oh, this is in the elements of the regional plan. We've noticed that they're kind of caught. Maybe a little late, but there were a couple of sections that also had to do with natural resources that we're standing alone. It's just proposing to bring them into the natural resource element that we're proposing. Page 73, I think. Page 76. And here we're getting into some of the specific requirements for tier one. B. First, we're kind of noting not all village centers have water sewer like not, there's been a lot of, we have 247 designated village centers. I think now. Not all of them have water sewer or, or plans or bylaws. Most of them have plans and bylaws, but now I'll have the infrastructure. So just adding a sense of the definition of village center. I'll clarify that. Then plan growth area. This was in the description, but not in the kind of meet these requirements. So just clarifying that they need to have municipal sewer and water is to find in 4303 where there's a lot of definition there. Okay, and then the village areas. And this is kind of following up on some conversation. And this is more about the tier one be specifically. Yeah, we had kind of like, they could have water or sewer or bylaws. This adding a clarifying sense of no sewers available that must. They must have soils that are adequate for wastewater disposal. I think that came out of your conversation here. So, suggesting that. And then the 2. The requirements that we're talking about for 1B and represent bond guards is getting back to our earlier conversation. Like, what are the requirements for 1B? How are they articulated? And this is what we've understood the conversation to be to have a plan. And bylaws that have been approved. So the, the planning process is confirmed with 43 50. That's when the town brings their plan to the RPC to approve the plan and the planning process. And they have bylaws in accordance with those sections. And then this is the 2nd requirements about kind of a flood hazard river corridor situation. And I think we pull some language here that I think I don't think it's in this title. Maybe it's entitled 10. That or or this area excludes those areas. From the designation area. So, you know, I think we're kind of envisioning smaller towns. They probably all have blood bylaws. I think every, every community in Vermont that has flood plain has adopted flood bylaws at this point. The river core is much less adoption. Right. I don't know how many towns have actually adopted. I think maybe there's 10 to 20. So it's a really low rate of adoption. But we want to kind of give a had want to give a little bit of room like. They either adopt the bylaws or they're, or we stay out of that area. Somehow. So those are the 2 major criteria we're thinking about for the 1B area. And I think that was consistent with earlier conversations also representative severe. I think we're going to ask for a re explanation of that just 1 more time. Of that what what you're proposing for 1B. So if you don't have. Yeah, that's that's a good place to start. So if we look at and actually kitty Gallagher from VNRC presented a good map in Senate economic development last week. But, and I was encouraged to see how many towns have planning have plans and bylaws. So most of the state and the vast majority say I'm going to say 90% of the towns have plans and bylaws. So we didn't think the 1st hurdle was too significant. Most towns can meet that. And then, and then the 2nd layer was kind of keeping people out of harm's way. You know, how do we make sure that they've done the work or we're not approving an area. Trying to encourage growth in a place where it shouldn't happen. So that was kind of the 2 basic criteria. Is that helpful to answer your question? So you're not proposing to do anything. Yeah, that's something. Yeah, I do think this is probably going to lead to river corridor bylaws here. Well, if they have that, that would qualify them. We're just trying to give an option. That maybe they could just exclude that area. So we're not encouraging development of that area. If they don't, would they be pin jab? No, actually, that's a thanks for asking that. I think one of the other concepts that underlie these three studies was the idea of, and we've had a lot of encouragement that has gone on over the years with municipality, we've been encouraging them to do plans, we've been encouraging them to do zoning. We've been encouraging them to do river quarter bylaws. And I think a lot of this, all these studies kind of, and this whole process is is part of the foundation of it is that a community can move up. There's some encouragement to move up the scale and you'll see that even more in the designation part of what Chris has been talking about for the destinations together. But I think we've been thinking about the same way, like, you know, there may be a small village. Take a step and you can get the next layer of benefits, if you will, from taking it the next step, whether it's getting a town plan or bylaws down or by the way, the tier one a, you know, doing all that work to get there. So it's been a really about encouraging what the state is asking for. So, how do we identify flood hazards and fluvial erosion areas outside of flood hazard or hazard mitigation funds. Those are the NFIP maps. And the river quarters have been mapped by an arm. So the municipality will held to the federal and state standard regardless as to whether or not they adopt their these bylaws. Yes. Yeah, hazard maps is that my knowledge every town with floodplain has adopted the flood hazard bylaws. The river corridor. Yeah, I think that's kind of the area under debate in large extent. It's like, how do we not encourage more people to build in that location, right? Where we know there's going to be a good chance of floods happening in the future. And, you know, frankly, I'm having a little bit of deja vu because this is the same conversation we had in 2012 after Irene. And we ended up with this voluntary river corridor program. No, I'm not sure has accomplished as much as we hoped. So what is the point of the bylaws then in this recommendation? Why would anybody do bylaws? What would be the point to keep people from building in places that are likely to be flooded. If they're going to be held to the state river corridor maps. Anyway, why would they do the bylaws. So I'm trying to understand what the recommendation that is not the state of the law. Right now, they're not held to river corridor maps right now, unless a project's going through act 250. That's what we're proposing. Potentially we're proposing that the municipality either take some responsibility or just stay out of that or like map it out of their area where they're trying to encourage growth. So, will the municipalities. Will the municipalities be able to override the state determinations of the river corridor. You should probably talk to DC and more detail. I think there is, you know, as a have been working with municipalities where they have done river cores. They've been negotiating what works in that village. So they've been kind of like, oh, this is built. You know, you're already kind of armored here. We're not going to exclude that. So there's negotiation that's happens with those river scientists. And folks that they could tell you more detail about that's my basic understanding of it. So that. So I'm hearing that the bylaws, the purpose then of spending time on doing the bylaws, maybe. Yeah, town has made choices about where we're going to defend and where we're going to retreat. That's a fair point. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. I'm, I think I'm near the end here. This is sorry, this is tying back the loop that I brought up much earlier in title 10 about the critical resource area. Being the definition for our world conservation area in our plans. This is just saying the same thing in the regional planning section that the rural conservation area is defined by the critical resource area entitled 10. So this is me just man. So this is just trying to equivalence between existing rural conservation areas and proposed tier 3. Not existing. This is all perspective. So the future, the maps that are prepared after whatever laws passed would follow this definition as you put it here. Okay. Sorry. Comment 23 is again about that significant regional impact. And then the last comment is really about the designation part of. Drafting that has gone on that we think you have to fully understand you need to see that section or that part of statute or proposed. That was a statutory changes as well. That that is it. Sorry for going over time. Thank you for all of your know that was a lot for you. Thank you for your patience. Yeah. So in the language that came from you in the regional plan of the whole process, there is reference to a city and state. And I was confused about how those two were also interacting with the ERP. Yeah. And my recollection without looking at the language is that there was a two stage process suggested. So there's kind of a preliminary. Like. Pre application review almost like, like, kind of, hey, before we finish. Before we're heading to public hearing as a regional planning commission, we'd like to make sure that we're in a good place. So could you guys could those agencies take a look. So that's what that was about. And then I think there's a later more formal, like, please give us some formal comments. Or if you have any issues, let us know. During the public hearing process. Okay. So their feedback. For the ERP review. Oh yeah, before, before we even go to public hearing. So we wanted to make sure we're trying to make sure we're complying with the law. So we're trying to get some input at that stage. Thank you. Thank you. And your continued work on it. Very helpful. Members, let's take five minutes and then we'll reconvene with our next set of witnesses. I'm going to reconvene the hearing and say that we're going to continue our testimony on 687 and representative Clifford has. I would like to request that we get a fiscal note on 687. I think it might help us to have some good information as we. As we go on. That's a good point. I think we're going to hear from the trans some on that. So we might have a better sense of what we would ask for in that fiscal note. But yes, I appreciate that. Thank you. Great. Except we have Mike Miller. Welcome. Yes. Thank you for having me. My name is Mike Miller. I'm the director of planning and community development for the city of Montpelier. I've been in my position for about 10 years and I've been a planner in Vermont for about 24. So I don't. I haven't been directly following this bit. So I kind of digest as much as I could last night on it and get myself as much up to speed of working very hard and trying to get some budget adjustment with our residents. So my plugin for them. But I wish I'd seen more of Charlie's presentation would I think it would have been helpful to kind of get some of where the regional planning commission's perspective is. I'll just give a couple of big picture items. I have some notes and thoughts I had depending on how things go that I'll probably put together and something writing to get back to you. But really I'll leave a lot of this open to see what questions you have. I have a lot of experience in municipal planning. Whether it's been very city Montpelier as a regional planning person working with a lot of smaller towns. I've worked with everyone from Belvedere to Burlington. So I have a lot of experience working at the municipal level. Big picture for Montpelier. We're kind of been we've been looking at a lot of these issues. Two big barriers to development. One being active 50 with our downtown. So we were very happy to see the different proposals that kind of came out through the through the reports this December and the various tears because we would really like to see exemptions for our downtowns because our downtowns are where the compact settlement that protects the rural countryside. And when we have processes and procedures that make it harder to develop or impossible to develop. It just pushes that pressure to develop the countryside out more and now people familiar with Montpelier know we have country club road site the city has bought a old golf course that we're going to try to redevelop. As we did our due diligence on that project. Much of the area in the lower part is actually prime ag soils. And it's not legal for us to mitigate. We literally could put 250 housing units on sewer and water in that area. And we can't. So we're really invested in this idea of if we get this area and it should be be applying to expand our growth center the growth center stops at the edge of this property we would be including one more property in our growth center. And our hope and expectation would be that we could then be exempt from act 250 and not have to leave that area empty because it's prime ag soil. But the impact of not developing 250 housing units there. If that get pushed to the countryside that's 500 because you need you don't have sewer and water in places like East Montpelier. So to put 250 housing units in a rural countryside you're talking about many many times larger of an area of impact. So not protecting a small area of prime ag soils in our sewer service area. Really it's a disservice to not only getting the housing built. But it puts pressure back on the countryside where we frankly don't want to be putting that pressure on. So at the act 250 exemption is a big piece for Montpelier we we think we do a very good job of regulating most projects don't have to go through act 250 in Montpelier and projects. And by and large have been very good projects. So that's our first big picture. Can you can I question I'm why can't you mitigate for those acts. Something about those particular soils that when we had our we had VHB and Whitenberg do their review of it and they said that's going to be our issue is that we either have to avoid act 250. But if we end up in act 250 that because these are prime soil not statewide soils statewide soils I guess you can pay a mitigation fee for the prime ag soils you can't. And so we're kind of caught in a pickle where we can't we would be willing to cut a check and say here's the check because we're going to put 50 million dollars worth of housing in there so we're OK writing a check but we can't even write a check to get out of it. So I never heard that before. And is it flood plain. No country club road is up on a hill. Yes. Mike I'm looking at the map. What are you calling the lower sections that down next to the river. No no so if you were if you know where the John Deere dealership is on country club road. You're going up so you got to go up the hill to get to there and then you get up to the top and there is a clubhouse. Yeah. So right around that clubhouse is where the prime ag soils are. So yeah. So that's our first our first concern is just we. We the review of activity out being a little energy behind you that people are not necessarily agreeing with this interpretation and we don't have to go down that rabbit hole but. Okay. I'm curious about your the advice you were given. And I can certainly follow up with that on the reviews. Does our legislative council or the council for the executive director for the NRB want to speak to this. I'm happy to briefly Pete Gill executive director of the natural resources board. I'll say two things that one I think there are there is flexibility and mitigation standards within the law. Now I'm happy to talk with the city and I'm here and address address that or talk to their concerns offline here too. Thank you. Yeah, because we like I said we can we can address those but it is it is certainly an issue that we've been we are definitely looking at. And as as a planner. We generally look at a lot of these projects. We're trying to get streamlined I usually talk to councils and select boards about. You'll make things easy for what you want make things hard for people for things you don't want. And right now we've got it easy to do a small project and if you want to do a larger project like country club road it's going to get continuing continuing harder. And we really want to try to go and if that project we're in a countryside obviously yes we should have active. But within my designated downtown or within my growth center. We would argue we really would like to see those types of properties exempt from Act 250 because it's going to expedite that process. And getting those those permitting those projects along. The second piece that I know you talk about in this bill are appeals. And that is our other concern in Montpelier. A lot of a lot of people think it's very hard to develop in Montpelier because of the zoning. And actually it's not we actually do a very good job we're very fast at issuing permits and we generally issue most permits that come into our office so. But where things get hung up is if you're not an attorney your wife or husband is an attorney or your relative is an attorney and everybody everybody threatens to sue. And that is a significant issue for Montpelier. There at least I can I can easily name 20 project 20 housing units that have been stopped. They never even went to environmental court because simply people knocked on the door and said your project's never going to see lighted day. And they contacted us to go through and say we're withdrawing our application it doesn't make any sense to go forward. It's a real issue in Montpelier for that to happen. Why do you think that is. Because they know it works to be honest I think they see people don't want new neighbors. Sometimes I think it's just classic NIMBY to be honest I think there's just they don't want new neighbors even if they're nice projects. I could think of on Sibley Street a 16 unit building that was going to be really nice it was it wasn't. Or the housing was actually going to be nice buildings parking underneath they were going to be looking at renting at $2,000 a month. And the neighbors basically came in and said this isn't going to see the light of day we're like. Folks this is really nice it's a really nice 16 unit building and. And that was it but because there are enough attorneys. The developer dropped the idea. And sometimes it's just to, you know, extort something out of them, you know, and if they're not willing to give that. Well, if you give me this then I won't appeal your project and they're not willing to give up whatever it was the other person wanted so we've had some of those cases. Thanks. I'm sure. So, if you know, same on player gets here when a whatever the designation is and then as exempt. Wouldn't that mean that just your office would have to deal with or bump up to the Supreme Court. I mean it. I guess. If having tier one I would mean that the project developer wouldn't necessarily have to go to before a future ERB. But it doesn't, you know, it doesn't necessarily address that NIMBY is some issues so what are your thoughts on that. So it's, I'll say for the process piece for whether it goes to the ERB. I don't know necessarily what's the best solution to appeals. I'm just saying appeals are our issue. And what we would like to see is I recognize everybody has to do process right and you need to have that ability but we also need to have the ability to. Fair it out some way or expedite these appeal processes such that we can get them done faster. We can get rid of the ones that are just frivolous simply to the fact that I'm going to appeal this. I'm going to appeal it to the Supreme Court. And I'm just going to kill this is going to take four years to get done. And then with the act 250 to get a second bite at the app being out of act 250 means they're only going to get a single bite at the apples. And we have people that have gone through the first round, get to act 250 and they get to feel the second time. And it just depends on how, how the timing goes. So the advantage of being out is from an appeal standpoint, they only get one bite at the apple. Thanks. So those are really from a big picture. Those were some of the, the thoughts that we have when we're when we're looking at these act 250 and these local municipal zoning bills. Those are kind of the two things that we're looking at to try to make sure we can kind of get these processes moving forward. I think a lot of these communities that would qualify as a one a, we do a very good job. Not our entire city is going to qualify as one a our areas that are in the designated downtown in the growth center would qualify for these exemptions. And these are areas that have very good reviews, professional staff and design review, you know, there are a lot of things we review that the act 250 would not review. It's a good process. I've, as I said, I've been doing this for for 15 years as a planning director and as a zoning administrator and, you know, when you've got the good rules in place. We can, we can both protect the environment, protect the character and promptly issue permits and let projects forward as appropriate. Representative civilian question. Miss Miller, thanks for your testimony today and I apologize for coming in late and hope that you did not cover this. I apologize if you did. So how many units of housing did you lose this summer with the flooding. This summer, we did better than Barry. So we have 375 houses in our buildings in the floodplain, probably 250 of them got damaged, some damage. We substantially damaged sent out letters to eight properties. But there are probably a handful of others that did not get substantially damaged. From a legal standpoint, because there is a historic exemption. So if you have a historic building, then even if you've got 150% damage, you're still not substantially damaged. So we have a number of buildings that were heavily damaged, but don't qualify as substantially damaged. So I would say we don't have an exact number of displaced residents, but I know some of them are we've got a number of them that are displaced. So probably looking at it less than 20 that 350 units in the flood. We have 350 buildings. So some buildings have more than one unit in it. Some of them are commercial and don't have any dwelling units in it. What does the city have? Does the city have any planning around moving housing or housing units that the flood area are protecting? Is that something that the town is thinking about? Yeah, the city's approach to the two resiliency is really to start working more aggressively on elevating buildings rather than moving buildings or moving out. We're not going to be abandoning our floodplain because that is our entire grand list. That is all of our employment. That is most of the capital complex. That is, it's a lot. So, but what we do know is since 2018, we've had rules that require two feet of what's two feet of free board. So basically you have to build two feet above base flood elevation. All the buildings, the transit center being the most obvious one that have been built to these codes didn't flood. In fact, they didn't even get water within a foot of them. They are very safe if you can build. So you just elevate the building, put them at a higher elevation and you avoid a lot of the flooding. So that's a lot of our approaches to now start working on elevating buildings. Now of those 300 buildings, I was talking about that are in the floodplain. Some of them only their basements are in the floodplain. Their first floors are above. So we have to work on how do we get things out of the basements. And we had, we have rules in place that required any damaged furnaces or utilities in the basement would have to be elevated to the first floor. And so we've had 100 or so furnaces and electric panels all moved to the first floor. So if there's a flood again, all of those things in the basement won't be there to be damaged. They might have personal belongings there that get damaged, but the utilities are out. So that that's our approach is really to start working on flood proofing buildings. And we have that's what's in the budget adjustment act is a request for $2 million to the city. So we could elevate 10 residential buildings that make up 20 housing units. And that's that's in a different bill, but budget adjustment act. We've been talking a lot about the benefits of really good proactive planning and engaging citizens up front in part to help avoid appeals. I guess I'm curious, how do you engage citizens of Montpelier and your planning processes and how, I mean, if you're, you're saying you're, you're saying you have really solid planning not questioning that, but do you have a lot of appeals. Can you speak a little bit to that. So most of our zoning is really set up to be as administrative as possible. So there's kind of two approaches to doing things. And you could talk to some planners who say. We should send a lot more projects through conditional use review because we're going to notify the neighbors and everybody gets to have their say in your project. And that makes the process take longer, but also engages more of the public. So we've taken the approach of being much more deliberate about making sure our rules accurately do what we want them to do and making as many of the permits administrative. So we are really trying to target, you know, you have to have this many parking spaces or you've got to meet this or this or that requirement. You meet those requirements, then you're going to get your permit as opposed to sending it to your neighbors to get their opinion on whether you should be allowed to have a duplex, let's say. We do have the zoning with the underlying planning that informs the zoning and how you engage citizens in that so that they're not taken aback or surprised when their neighbor. Proposes to change the use adjacent. So we do obviously as we're working on our master plans our city plans, we do engage we do a lot of engagement. We have a communications coordinator so we spend a lot of time working with her on how we can maximize our public output through front porch forum and through Facebook and through a lot of different venues to try to get as much input as we can on the planning side. Country Club Road for example we hired we spent $150,000 we hired a consulting firm to go through and handle the public input process so that way the public didn't see this as the city driving this. You know, towards our goal as the city staff, it was really going to be, let's have a consultant run the public input process and bring back to city council and to staff. This is where the public what the public would like to see up here. So we engage, especially in big projects that are city projects we bring in the public. And we bring them in early right at the start so that was the first step was before we even start working on these other pieces. Let's get the planning piece done. Let's get the public's thought would they support. Large five story buildings which is actually what they, they propose five story buildings in the lower part of Country Club Road. They felt it would be, it would be good there. They didn't want any single family homes. So that's what the plan is laying out. That's what we'll be going forward on no single family homes, town homes, condos, apartments and large multifamily. Thank you so much for your testimony today. Okay. So we're going to welcome Kathy and LaRose Colchester via zoom. Everybody. Welcome. You hear me okay. I will start by introducing myself. I don't think I have ever testified before. But I'll tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Kathy on the rose. I am have been a professional planner in Vermont. For the past 20 years, the first 15 or 16 of that. I was the city planner in South Barlington. And I've been in Colchester now as the director of planning for the past three years or so. I've also worked as a private consultant. I'm helping some towns with municipal plans. I worked with town of middle sex on their last town plan update. So I'm a little familiar with big towns, small towns, urban and rural areas. And now I'm newly familiar with on sewered areas. That's my new experience here in Colchester that I didn't have in South Barlington. I have read through this bill in its entirety. I have also been following along with the necessary updates to act 250 report and I participated in that public presentation. I was grateful for that. I believe I provided just very minimal written comments on that one that was solicited and have too much to say then. I don't have any written comments for you today. I haven't submitted any. But I'm happy to sort of speak to you about, you know, sort of my role as a professional planners, a municipal planner. Especially as one who has designations currently the town of Colchester. As you may know, does have a growth center designation. We're one of only six in the state. We've had that since I believe 2009. And we are actually renewing that this summer, hopefully. We also have a new town center designation. So that has, you know, I think encouraged us to follow this bill in particular a little closely. Because I'm very interested in seeing how any new designations would interact or replace. Those designations, it's not entirely clear to me the intention just yet. I'm not sure if it's clear to you yet how that would work. So maybe like many people as I read this, I end up with more questions than comments. So in my role as a planner, you know, I'll share that I've never actually completed an act 250 application, but I've certainly seen them. They've been referred from people referred from private developers and nonprofits who have done that. I've also seen the effects of sort of, you know, the same effects that you hear about from, from many people who, who talk about that. And, you know, the number one thing that stands out to me in all communities that I've seen is, is that nine lot lollipop. I thought that was a bit more unique in, you know, some larger towns, but I'm seeing it everywhere. And that's something that I continue to hope we'll find a solution to someday. I, they're very frustrating to professional planners because they are never good design nine lots. Never good. But that's that's as much of a soapbox as I'll get on there. So in reading the bill, I, I have to agree with something that Mr Miller said just a little bit earlier. An overall approach of making the things that you want to have happen be easy. And making the things that you don't want to have happen be difficult. I sort of take this approach with my children as well I think many of us probably have in a lot of our relationships and it's it's common sense and I hope that it'll prevail here as well. I hope that when, you know, the final version of whatever this is, is done that we make it very easy to have the smart planning and the growth areas that we want that we all want. I think everybody wants, but it has to be easy, or else it won't happen. And I'm not sure that we're there yet in making it easy. I do have some concerns with some of what I've read about it being easy. But I think it's, you know, hopefully we'll get there. And I think that's that's all, but hopefully I can maybe answer some questions that'll help you guys. Maybe achieve what you want out of any legislation that you can produce this year. All right, we have a question for Representative Sebelia. Thanks for your testimony. So I represent a number of smaller towns, and I'm trying to understand how they will, how they will comply and meet such historic legislation if we pass it. And so, when you think about some of the proposals that are being considered here that. Can you tell me the staff people that will be involved in Colchester in both compliance and community engagement? Yeah, I think that that's that's a very good question because Colchester is one of the largest communities in the state and we, we only have four staff members. And it's going to be challenging. We do our best, of course. And there are other departments other than just the planning department. You know, so at least in Colchester, speaking for Colchester, we have a staff of four, you know, I'm the director. We have a zoning administrator and two other assistant zoning administrators. We have a lot of day to day permitting that has to get done per statute as well every time somebody wants a deck or a shed. And so that work has to get done. We have a timeline that's associated with that. And then we manage all of development review on top of that. We have a full time development review planner who does that now. And so when we talk about anything that's in, say, our growth center areas, you know, that, that tends to be a team effort between myself as a, you know, sort of the principal planner and our, our development planner. And then, of course, we work with other departments. Everything from our department of public works, our town engineer, our emergency services to make sure that again, whatever is being built is something that is lasting and something that we can be proud of and that is a safe space for people. Once it is built. And so when you said you only have four staff that was in the planning department. Yes. Okay. Do you, so there's, there's a proposal here for creating exemptions, automatic exemptions for designated downtown designated areas permanently. So, do you think that would decrease workload for you getting that designation increase workload for you. You know, I think, and again, I don't pretend to be an expert in this, in this draft that's written, there are some things there I think that as, as drafted would increase the workload. I see things that, that I fled, you know, that require a public hearing if you hit 75 trip ends. That require us to notify more people than we would now. There are, you know, requires a town to administer existing active 50 permits. And especially towns with no staff or one staff member, that is, that's a big ask. I think it's a big ask even for a larger town to administer existing active 50 permits for criteria that they're not familiar with. I've been a planner for 20 years, I'm not familiar with all of the criterion. So those are some things that I noted. I'm out of these designations, the tier one A and one B anyway. That would I think increase the workload for local planning offices. Earlier, you mentioned that you've worked with some smaller towns. Can you speak to how, I mean, what we're envisioning here is trying to support our smaller towns better in meeting their goals. And I guess I'm curious if you had enough experience working with smaller towns to be able to speak to how planning happens in them now unstaffed smaller towns. Yeah, I think in some ways, some of the planning in small towns is some of the best planning I've seen because so many more of your community members get involved. And I worked with the folks in Middlesex, they had an incredible engagement process for their small town. They had more people come out ahead of their town plans, like actual numbers not proportions than I saw in a larger city. In some ways, it's much better because people rise to the challenge and the community is more involved. So from that aspect, I think it works really well. I can't say that I have a lot of data points, but it's impressive working with those towns. It is a lot of ask and if you have a town where you don't have those incredible volunteers, that's where you see the challenges. And many of these small towns have amazing volunteers, but they're going to tire out. I mean, they really do full time work and it does require for those volunteers, unfortunately, because there are so many hours, they tend to skew to a certain demographic. Because they're the only demographic that has those hours. And while they're still amazing, 100% of what you get tends to be people who are retired because they have the hours or their children are grown or they have a different income level. So it's definitely a challenge in the small towns. I can't say that I worked with ones that that haven't risen to it, but I'm sure they're out there. Do you have any suggestions for how we could better support them. Oh, you know, I think you just continue to support your your regional planning commissions and you continue to make sure that the small towns, you know that they know that they can rely on their regional planning commissions. The county or regional planning commission functions very differently, I think, than the than the RPCs of different parts of the state. One of my colleagues here came from the central Vermont planning regional planning commission and when I speak with him, I learn a lot about, you know, the services that he provided in that area. They do a lot of work, you know, he was on the road. Most nights of the week going from planning commission to planning commission. So, you know, it's a centralized service. But it's probably the most efficient way to support those small towns because you're you're not having to replicate that expertise over and over again. So I think just continuing to support those regional planning commissions. They're doing good work. They're starting to, I know when I first started as a professional planner, the, the regional planning commissions were sort of entry level, they still are to some extent. They didn't really have the budgets to support skilled planners. And so they were the first place you went out of college. You didn't have any expertise yet. You lasted two years, you turned over. That was a challenge, I think for a long time that I witnessed for regional planning commissions. I think from what I understand, and I'm don't represent, you know, that in any way, I understand that that's gotten better. Probably thanks to some funding. Thank you guys for that. So I think continuing to do that is probably the best way you can help those small towns. Thank you. Sorry. We're getting an echo now from your audio, Kathy. Oh, I'm sorry. Did that change? No, it looks like it's done. So, just a question related to the RPCs, which I agree are really important tools for our communities. Would you rather be in an RPC that has 50 towns or 15 towns? As an employee. No, as a town, depending on their services. Oh gosh, probably less, I think. Just because, you know, RPCs really function, I think as they function as staff in many ways, and having to learn, you know, all of those towns is challenging enough to add volume to that I think would be challenging. Thanks so much for joining us today and for your testimony. Thank you. We're going to invite Ted Brady to join us. And I wasn't clear. Is it you? Are you bringing folks or it's me? Are you? Welcome. Thank you for the record, Ted Brady from the remote league of cities and towns. Your chair is referencing the fact that on Friday, I was asked to try to get a couple of volunteer planning commission members to join me today. I reached out to about a half dozen to a dozen folks and not surprisingly, they didn't feel that they were ready to study up on 100 page bill and come in here and testify on just a couple of days notice. So I'm sorry if that is how the ask came across. We weren't necessarily asking them to do that. We wanted to just talk to planners and learn more about how they do their job. And so I can absolutely, I have a few people who are kind of yeses and happy to invite them at your pleasure now, hopefully with a few days and they could come on via zoom and I think excited to do so. Okay, that that's what we would need. Yeah. Yeah, just to put an even finer point on that, you know, we're like, how can we prove some of our language or add to our bell in terms of thinking about the process of wanting to really just understand. That's what they're nervous about. So I do want to, I think, I think we can get some people, it just takes us digging a little deeper to find those planning commission members who have been paying attention and are tracking this bill. The other two bills. I don't think they need to know the bill. I think. Yeah, I don't think they need to know the bill. We need to understand what they're doing. What they're doing. Great. Sorry for confusion on my part. Yeah, that's what I said. I think that the way it came out. We thought on the bill, but so it's. We're good. We want to learn from them about how we can better support them. Represent. Thank you. Do you have any towns or any planners from any communities that are opposed to this? Are there any that have read it? I think there are plenty that have concerns. I don't think anybody's opposed. That's the good news. I think we have a lot of towns that are concerned about provisions in this bill as well as other active 50 change bills that are out there and I want to be clear, right? I represent a lot of people as not a universal opinion. So I thought maybe I could start with defining where we do have agreement. And then maybe share some thoughts about the specific bill before before us and then maybe get deeper. I loved, I loved the line of question. How do we help planning commission members do their job and. Exercise the the charges that you have given them. I love that concept to that. Okay with you. So. First, let's represent Smith great queue up for me, right? We go through an elaborate process to try to come to universal consensus on issues. So the way we do that is every 2 years we convene. About 50 to 75 municipal officials elected appointed. And we have them do a summer's worth of work and put together on paper some ideas that they believe. That VLCT should be championing for in this building. They then bring that idea to my board, which is made up of municipal officials that board then brings that idea to the entire membership, which is every single city in town in the state. And every single city in town in the state has a chance to vote on that policy. And so the things I'm about to share are not my ideas. These are things that are universally. Accepted by the governance boards right by the legislative bodies of these places. So I know all of you could call anyone of your towns and find somebody that disagrees with what I'm saying. I do recognize that but all of their governing boards have agreed to what I'm about to say. And this is not specific to your bill. That's the good news. But the one like principle that relates to what we're doing here today is that they call for local discretion to pursue sustainable housing and economic development recovery and resiliency. And I think the bill before you could do that could actually get get us there I say could because there are some things in there that do the opposite. I also say could and maybe should because last year, the legislature took decisive action and told and preempted municipal decisions and told us that we have to do things differently to facilitate more housing growth. And I tried not to come in here and stand on my local control high horse and tried to say I understand what you're doing. But in addition to that, you have to address the local, the statewide land use law, or it's all for not. You won't get anything out of you that the juice ain't worth the squeeze losing pre losing the battle of preemption and telling municipalities what they have to do without telling the state to do something differently in my mind was wrong. And I really appreciate that all of you who told me don't worry we're going to get to this next year that you're getting to it this year. So thank you. The things that specifically related to activity that my membership every city in town Vermont have said one. We want municipalities who have duly adopted local zoning and subdivision regulations to be able to accept responsibility to administer active 50. I think the bill before you sort of does that sort of and that's an important piece to we want to eliminate active 50 jurisdiction over projects and designated downtowns growth centers, new town centers, designated village centers neighborhood development areas and other areas designated in municipal plans, the bill kind of does that right. So I really trying to find that you guys are on the right track here and I appreciate that an area that's a little iffy right now is we have long argued for defining regional impact and active 50 to mean a measurable effect on areas outside the borders of the city in town. This bill actually creates a new regional impact definition, which is, in our minds, the wrong standard is that 75 trips a day or something during rush hour. And it creates a new less for a less smaller or lower barrier. There we go a lower barrier to the definition of regional impact, which again going back to that local discretion to pursue things. The second you start calling more things regional. I'm of course going to have heartburn. But limiting district commissions review of projects to those with regional impact, another way of saying what I just said, and eliminating so called legacy only active 50 jurisdiction over properties that would not otherwise trigger current active 50 jurisdiction. I just want to say once again, I think your bill before you actually sort of does that right. You delegate those active 50 jurisdiction issues on existing permits to the municipal bodies, which seems like a pretty artful solution. I'm sure many of those local ampies are going to be nervous about enforcing the state's permitting requirements that they had no say over putting in place right. I just want to ask about what is your definition of regional impact. What are the, what are the things that we should be using if not trips per day which I think the RPCs brought us last week. What's a better trigger. What's another way of quantifying those regional impacts that should warrant a regional review. Sure. So let's start with the goal of, let me be direct in the answer in the question actually, I think in a tier one a place. I think it's going to be hard to find a regional impact because these are historically developed areas. And aside from building a airport or building a shopping mall, you know, a housing development of 25 or 50 units. I don't think should be defined as a regional impact and under that definition maybe it could be that 75 so I personally think there shouldn't be in a regional impact in your tier one a communities when you get to tier one be and beyond. But yeah, you're going to have a tighter threshold right for the definition of a regional impact and I don't know what that should be. I don't know what the implications of 75 trips during peak hours are like I actually don't know what the implication there would be. But it's my guess is it's pretty tight if you think about what it takes to get 75 trips. Sorry not to be more direct and give you the answer. I'm happy to go back to my lawyers at VLCT and try to come up with a better definition. All right. So, going back, so I should have told you what I was going to tell you in the beginning is then my next goal here after telling you what VLCT kind of broad policy agreements we have with the bill. I wanted to bring your attention to some things that I am actually concerned about and that's that I think H6 City 7 plan growth area designation process doesn't recognize the historic and current municipal land use policies that we have in place. It doesn't adequately give deference to those the historic development that's occurred or the really thorough planning processes that are in place land use decisions that are in place. Most of our cities and towns as you've heard their RPCs say have a really deep and thoughtful planning process that is largely in line with the state's development goals because that's what the planning process requires. Right. You have to have the town plan that mirrors your regional plan that mirrors the state plan. It's a pretty thoughtful process that process just to remind you probably heard it from a few planning commissioners. It goes through a rigorous local democratic process where a lot of people have a lot of say. Right. Your planning commissioners that are citizen appointed appointed citizens of your town. Go through a process, go through public hearings, open meetings to make a recommendation that then goes to the select board for adoption where there's another open meeting where people can object. Then it in many cases in some cases in the rural communities, right? It then also goes to the town meeting. And that, you know, it's some of these planning and zoning policies are actually voted on a town meeting around the state. That process allows for a lot of input. The tier one, a plan growth designation requirements in the bill, exempting communities from active 50 jurisdiction seem overly burdensome and out of reach of many Vermont municipalities grass, even though that process I just described happened in all those communities, right? So this, my understanding of the summer study committees that occurred. Didn't contemplate only exempting areas have capital budget programs as in section D and page 48 of the bill. Urban form bylaws, which is section F on page 48 historic preservation bylaws, which is section GM 48 municipal staff, which is section J on page 49, where wildlife habitat bylaw reviews in alignment with the Fish and Wildlife Department. And section eight on page 49, perhaps the most, the last one's the most in best example of an unnecessary and likely limiting requirement that's in this bill. If our goal, right, and efforts are to incentivize place based jurisdiction, that's the whole I think the whole idea of this bill, right? Place based jurisdiction means we are designating places where people can live. And we are designating, well, I don't know, 95% or more of the rest of the state as places where it's going to be harder for them to develop. Then I don't believe that the same old layering the same old permitting requirements and this is a really important one because a lot of this bill creates new appeals processes. Creating new permitting and appeals process that mirror. It's not the goal. The goal was to say, these places we want development in and we recognize the towns have planning and zoning bylaws in place and planning and zoning processes in place. And I say yes to development there. Creating an entire new process is going will not come to a better outcome. The same mirroring the process will not come to a better outcome. I'm also concerned that the tier one be may have structured maybe structured improperly to reach other communities with historic development that would be appropriate for exception. So tier one be, which is most of the towns that have historic settlement, right? Tier one a seems to be your downtown's and maybe a few other places regional county seats. Tier one be, you know, there aren't many, there aren't many benefits in in tier one be by the way of I read it correctly just the 50 units of housing and to get there you need to have professional staff, which, you know, that's not a common thing in our tiny towns. And the language requires that they have adequate planning and zoning. Sorry, that's, I shouldn't have brought my eyes up. The staff issue. Ultimately, in my opinion, and tier one be is if municipalities have adopted town plans and bylaws. They should be that should be more than enough to qualify for one be. I want to pause there. I have a couple more things on RPC relationships. But I want to pause there because I've just been talking at you and that's not effective. I have a somewhat, I have a question. I'm curious. I think there's about 94 towns that are currently one acre towns. How do you work with them? What do you know about them? Why are they one acre towns? Yeah, so let's see how do we work with them? The most common thing that we work on planning and zoning issues is that we have for attorneys at VLCT that anybody, any municipal official can call and ask a question. And so planning commission members from those towns, select board members from those towns will frequently call us and ask us, hey, can we do this? How do we do that? And we'll give them confidential legal advice that answers that question hopefully or unfortunately there are plenty of times where I have to say you have to go talk to your municipal lawyer. The other way we interact with those towns is every year in the spring, trying to line up with when new planning commission appointments might be made. We hold the two part planning and zoning training where we go over the roles and responsibilities of the planning commission and we usually have like 100 to 150 people attend these trainings. And we do in addition to that, we give them an overview of the laws you've changed in that last year. So those are the two ways that we're primarily working with those towns. So I guess I'm, do you have any insight as to why 50 years later, 50 plus years later they remain one acre town? I don't have insight. I think if you'd like, I can try to bring a couple of those communities to the table. I mean, there's. So it seems like a lot of your members would be those folks. And because I'm wondering how engaged they are in your planning process for your setting your priorities and how do you make sure that when you reach out to communities, it's not just the larger communities. Yeah, I think if you look at our board, our board has people from. Communities of thousands to communities of 20,000. And when you look at our municipal policy folks on those summer committees, I mentioned, we intentionally make sure the tiniest towns are represented. And if you look at the league, this is a dirty secret of the league, the larger members pay the largest dues and the smallest members use us the most. Because the smaller ones are the ones that call us the most. So I, I don't think that's the concern in our part that smaller ones are the ones that need the most help. So they're using us the most questions. I wanted to explore with you, but I think you would, but the person who was here from Montpelier. I think you said the same thing that this notion I, if we give exemptions to the one a town so for the areas within. In that area, there will be some existing active. The way that I think we're thinking about it is that rather than still have somebody from the active 50, I'm going to try to enforce those permits would turn over enforcement to the municipalities through their. Oh, I missed the zoning board. And I think we had one comment that we're not equipped to take that on. And yet. You can't just erase them. Because in many instances they were negotiated. You know, to make it work in the neighbors are happy with it, which is settlement. And they deserve still to have those parameters that was set by the process. So any ideas. Yeah, we were trying to, I think in this bill, we were trying to like say, no, okay, we want to stay state out of this and let to have the towns and force it. But we'll push back. I'm going to go on that so. Yeah, so what I think it's actually a pretty artful idea as I said, I think sometimes are going to say yes, I'd like to do that. And so perhaps that's the solution, which is you can delegate that out to communities that want it. I think there are also a lot as the bill contemplates there's some conditions that can be retired. And it would be fully appropriate to retire those and the last thing is if you gave municipalities the authority, perhaps change them also. Maybe that that lays some of those concerns there towns that are going to have the ability though to manage an active 50 permit condition from 20 years ago when they have just a volunteer planning commission and a part time zoning I don't know how often that's going to happen because how many of those tier one and tier one be towns don't have that infrastructure, not many. We're probably talking about a, but so your suggestion would be to allow towns to opt in or out of taking on enforcement. And if they opt in to allow them to change the conditions. Yep. So, the one a towns, and I have asked this question for I'm assuming you are going to have this information. Okay, you're one towns. I think I've heard a reference of we expect that will be about 23 towns, zero list somewhere of those 10 of those towns. We haven't created a list. We looked at it and this is one of. So my largest concern about the entire bill is you're trying to codify everything right into the bill to say this is what exactly what we mean. And ultimately, we don't have the maps. We haven't gone through that process yet. So, we don't really know what it means and I think there may be an opportunity to give more deference to the newly created environmentally environmental review board to do some rulemaking or something along that to get there because I actually don't think I could answer that question. Now, I don't know. I don't know if this is based on what I read and the requirements that it's just our designated downtowns. But I don't know if our designated downtowns have all adopted, you know, form based code or if they've all adopted wildlife corridor things I think I heard earlier today that some of this was taken from the downtown designation program. So I don't know if it was added, right? So I don't know if one of the new layers that was added takes some of the downtowns out. What a long answer. I should have just said I don't know. That's. So, rather than trying to codify everything all at once. Do you have any thoughts on kind of. Yeah. Absolutely. Confication. Well, I think the best way is to give the body that you establish more deference and establishing rule and go through a rulemaking process that would also be much a little more democratic in that you'd have municipalities from around the state able to weigh in outside of, you know, four months in this building. You'd have potentially more science and data on your side through a professional board that's going through a process conferring with other entities. I know it's safe for all. I mean, I know you have to put some definition out there, but. This is the definition you have is pretty deep. In my mind for tier 1 a when these are places that we want development to occur and why are we creating a. Deplicative permitting process that has just as many opportunities for people to appeal. Just as many opportunities say no, as there are to say yes. So, do you feel similarly that definitions for tier 3. No, so. I listen, I have plenty of members and I didn't bring with you the comments that are saying we. Want to preserve our content or sensitive areas. We have comments like that too. And so I'm trying to stay away from tier 3 today because I'm not a substantive expert. I'm saying, what are we going to say yes to, but I do want to point out there are plenty of opportunities in that tier 3. To. Mistakenly and unknowingly hamstring the ability. Of our smallest towns have any growth occur. And that's 1 of the things I hope our universal goal is every town in Vermont should have an opportunity to grow. And 1 more question. So, when we're thinking about these tiers and I appreciate that you're trying not to wait into the muck on tier 3. When you're thinking about these tiers. And, you know, we're thinking about, you know, whether or not this is something we're going to define here. Present to Vermonters. Do you have any advice for us in terms of this kind of large scale. Designations of active 50 in terms of how to engage with communities on this. Yeah. I think the statement I just made is the goal should be for every town in Vermont to have a place where they can grow. In municipal planning and zoning the whole purpose of municipal planning and zoning is to balance the individual property rights with the community get right. And that. That I think recognizing that that's occurring in these smaller towns is important. Now, just because they're 1 acre towns doesn't mean they've given up all hope of having, you know, a implication, a impact or having impact on what their town looks like going forward. I'm not answering your question, but I do understand it. I'll try to put some more talk to it. I don't think that one could assume anything about these approximately 94 towns that have stayed 1 acre. I think some of them refer to active 50 oversee larger developments in their town. And that they care a lot. I'm not saying I don't think it's a comment on whether they care or not about their town. I think it's. Well, I don't know because we don't know, but I have a lot of thoughts on potential reasons why we've heard from some why, but not that many representatives. Thanks. I'm sure. I'm literally and figuratively scratching my head. I find that statement the goal should be to allow every town to grow a curious one night. You know, we haven't talked about that as a committee, but I would say. A large percentage of the energy in this building right now is trying to figure out costs to support education. And, you know, as someone from a. The largest community of the state. You know, I sometimes wonder like at what point. And we as a as a community of 650,000 people. Make sure everybody has everything the way they want within a finite budget. And so, I guess I just want to push that a little bit more because. Is that I mean. You're the executive director of the LCT so you can say yes, that's my goal. That's fair. But I guess just to the committee, I don't know that that is a sustainable path forward that if you have a town with. 100 people in it that. No matter what we're going to try and keep that town going, I don't I don't know that that's sustainable. And I'm not saying it's not, I'm just saying I. I'm not sure it is. Again, I would bet that in some of those smaller towns, there's going to be a debate about whether they want to grow also. And that's what I'm really saying is every town should have the ability to have that debate and if they debate and say, yes, we want to have some, you know, new housing built in our community, they should be able to say yes, because you've all recognized. We've all recognized that they have a place in their town that is the least environmentally sensitive. They have a place in our maps. And they could grow there but I feel like that town should be able to say yes or no to that I understand what you're saying that you. But ultimately, the concept of, you know, democracy in this local democratic process should allow a town to say I want this or I don't want this. And I guess I just as a follow up, I don't know that the bill right now is saying they can't do that. But it seems like you're interpreting the current draft 2.1 is potentially same. Yeah, so I proceed going back to tier three and environmentally sensitive areas and critical areas. I think telling a town if a town ends up having, you know, a lot of tier three in it and almost zero if any tier one a that could happen which is most. Most towns should have a chance at 1b or something that says we can grow here, even though most of our town is in, you know, in a critical area. This area here we can can say yes to I also think you can't just say yes to the downtown's the flooding and river issues. Some of the areas we say yes to need to be higher right and that might not be the most environmentally sense that it may be an environmentally sensitive area but a small portion of that. Made we may need to say yes and to I hear your question about scale and concern and I just want to go back to. The democratic process should determine where we grow and where we don't within the confines of all these other things that we're going to layer. Can we talk about RPCs briefly. So regional planning commissions are like the life of municipal government right now. They are keeping us alive. They are our partners. They provide the technical assistance. I am nervous that what you have before you will redefine that relationship in a way that will harm the relationship. And so, let me just give you a couple of examples. I'll try to cite. On page 50 line 11 subsection 3. The bill allows regional planning commissions to approve or deny an application for planned growth area for municipality. I think this is on 2 1 version 2 on page 50 line 11 subsection 3. I don't believe them RPC currently has any yes or no approval authority. With the municipality has a big change and one that will change the way municipalities and RPCs relate. I don't actually actually know how, but I know it will change it. There's also on page 53. The bill gives regional planning commissions party status to appeal. I don't going back to what we talked about projects of regional significance you have seen. Some RPCs are extremely active and define almost every project in their community to be a regional project. And they weigh in on every single act to fit the application in their jurisdiction. That's not appropriate. Other act other RPCs have sued towns. And one, because the law has been interpreted to say they get to do that. I don't think that's appropriate either. That's the point that you folks obviously have to decide on, but giving them another opportunity here to. Wedge between the municipality in the RPC. I don't think is going to create a healthy relationship on page 63. The bill gives regional planning commission substantial deference and municipal regulatory proceedings. I just want everybody to understand. Like significant substantial deference in a municipal plan. So, so somebody is going to tell the towns now what they can and can't do that. Couldn't do that before. On page 67 municipalities lose the right to appeal. Sorry, lose the right to veto a regional plan. So, I'm sorry to dictate it to read what's in your bill again. I'm not just trying to show you I did my homework. I promise this is kind of a big deal too. I mean, right now. I, you know, the RPC's boards, which are made up of municipal appointments, right, approve the plan and then the municipalities have this right to veto it for so many days. It takes it away. So municipalities are losing the ability to weigh in an opportunity to weigh in the plan. There are a few of those things in there that are changing the relationship. Can we just rewind to that one for a second. All of the towns have a member on the board of the regional planning commission. So when you say they current town currently has the right to veto a regional plan or their support of it. Is that what you mean their support of it. No, I think they can veto the plan because the, the person acting on behalf of the town at the RPC doesn't need a vote of the select board to act right. They get to vote yes or no, based on their own opinion. And I think the current law intentionally gives the select boards an opportunity to weigh in as a board because a select board member unlike that person seeing the RPC has no power on their own. The select board member is nothing without their two or four friends that they sit down with every other Monday, right. So it gives that board a chance to say, we actually don't agree with the decision that person made. And it's the democratic process and weighing in, I don't think it happens. I don't, I'm not unaware of it happening in my state. Never heard of that. I will have to look into that one. All of these things are just RPCs are going to play a very big policy role here and I want to be clear. I'm uncomfortable with giving them all of that policy control but I see why we have to. Like it for the greater good weird, we're sacrificing some municipal control so that we can get something in the end which is more control over development where we want it right. So I'm not arguing that we shouldn't do any of this, but that's a lot. That's a big change in the relationship. Ted, you just said something we want is more control over development in areas that we want. I think you want less control. The towns want more control though to be able to say this is where we want it. So the whole idea right is because we have made decisions as towns through the local planning and zoning process to say we want development in these historically settled areas. We don't think the state should be saying no to us. That's what I mean by we want more control the town wants to be able to say this is where we want development where local control less state control. My last comment I'm sorry I've taken so long is the current bill doesn't include immediate relief in the midst of the housing crisis. I want to remind. I'd like to share my trauma with all of you from last year. When act 47 passed. Most of act 47 was supposed to be implemented one or two years in the future. And on the last day of the session without anybody calling VLCT or a single town. The legislature decided, we're going to make everything in this bill effective July 1, because it's a crisis. This bill does nothing for three years. I shouldn't say that I apologize. This bill does not make a change in on the ground land use policy for three years. Until 2027 and so my recommendation because I recognize you can't just wave a wand. Is that you extend the active 50 changes you made in act 47 until 2027 or when this is implemented. And you give municipalities some deference and say our designated areas. Designate downtowns village centers. Are exempt from active 50 period until this is put into place. So that's it. Thank you for the time. Appreciate you putting up with me. Any other questions. The exemptions that we did last year in S 100. It's been one for three years. So they're still in effect and they will be. So that would take us to 2026 right through 26 right because they took effect. Yeah, they started July 1 of 24. So the code of July 1 of 27. I think that's one of the things that we all have in our hands is that those exemptions are in place. Coordinating making it so I get your point. I just want to note note that they have a couple more years. So noted your skepticism about July 1 getting this done by July 1 2027. What do you think is the hardest part of getting this done. This done by July 1 2027. So I think the maps are going to be harder than. Than we all would like them to be right. I think a process by which those maps that all the municipalities get the way in those maps. It's going to be hard. And then I also think the way the bill structure now. I'll take the environmental review board years to start approving. Tier one A and tier one B town. So it could be 2028 2029 2030 before. You know, a substantial number of those downtowns are approved. I've seen government systems take longer than they should. Thank you for your testimony. Thanks. One more question. Yeah. Will we get a copy of your testimony? Yes, I will email it right after this conversation to. Will. Thanks again. Right members. We're going to take a 10 minute break. We're going to reconvene our afternoon hearing and. Continue to talk taking testimony on each 687. We're going to welcome Brian shoot. Thank you Brian shoot. I'm the executive director of the natural resources council. And just for the record, Jamie Fidel are forced in wildlife program directors here today. We're both listed as witnesses. We weren't quite sure how we were going to sort things out, but he's available for questions or whatnot if needed. So I was asked to talk about the so-called road rule, which was a jurisdictional and active 50 for service. Decades. What it was is the construction of any new road. And that included the upgrade of a class four road triggered active 50 jurisdiction. I'm a road was defined as having serving three or more houses or lots. It was repealed in 2001 as part of a package of changes. When the so-called 10 acre loophole was repealed. And what that was, was prior to that any lot could be created without an approved septic system. If it was 10 acres or more. So there's a package of kind of active 50 and other regulatory changes in 2001. That resulted in the repealed the road rule. I was not at active 50 at the time. Oh, I'm sorry. I'd be in RC at the time. I believe that we opposed it. But other folks did support it. Because it was considered by many to be a flawed. Jurisdictional trigger. And it was flawed in that. It could result in the. Construction of two 790 foot roads on the same property. Or 790 foot road that had extensive driveways going off in all directions that would have the same fragmenting impact of a longer road. So it did. Result in some kind of strange subdivision design. And many folks in the planning community. Felt that better jurisdictional triggers were needed. Interest in re-establishing it has arose several years ago. Largely. Kind of at the same time that the legislature was getting more aware of forced fragmentation. Issues and the loss of our forest lands in the state. And as well as other resource lands like farmland. And. As a result of that kind of greater awareness that house has passed a forced fragmentation criteria. Of act two 53 different times in 2017 2020 and 2022. And we view the road rule as a result of that. And we view the road rule or some other jurisdiction will trigger in rural areas and in our forested areas. As being an important companion with a force fragmentation criteria. And I think Jamie. Has been in here earlier this year talking about force fragmentation. The trends that are happening in the landscape. And why action is needed. In act two 50 and in other policies. So the commission. On the future of act two 50. Issued its report in 2019 and they had gone through a pretty extensive public process and a stakeholder process. And came up with a whole host of recommendations. Many of which have been included in legislation passed out of this committee. In the past. Most. Noteworthy in a. 2020. And they didn't have specific jurisdictional triggers, but the commission did say that the commission. And they didn't have specific jurisdictional triggers, but the commission did say that we needed better rural jurisdictional triggers in order to address things like force fragmentation and the loss of other resources. So when this commission followed up on the commission's work in 2020. And I'm trying to remember that. When you passed. The commission in 2019, 2926, that had a variation of the original road. And what it was was a 2000 foot cumulative road role. And by cumulative, I mean. It included not only multiple roads in a project or on a parcel, but the driveways associated with them. And I think you're planning on hearing some testimony tomorrow on headwater areas, and really. One of the issues that's probably most important to us, is when you have extensive roads and driveways and upland areas on steep slopes, you've changed the hydrology and you need to be careful about how you're engineering the property. And most municipalities that I'm aware of, and I've written a lot of zoning in this state, don't have very sophisticated or if at all, stormwater regulations and erosion control regulations in their zoning. Act 250 is very good at bringing state resources into the review process for those types of developments. So again, in 2020, you passed 926, which included the 2000 foot Keemler road rule. And as I mentioned, it differed from the original road rule that it included all of the roads and driveways. So BNRC supported that policy at the time we've advocated for it ever since. The NRB has issued their report a couple of months ago. They included a consensus recommendation that there'd be a 2000 foot road rule. And I think the reason there was such buy-in from diverse stakeholders, including housing folks and the administration, was that it would likely result not necessarily in a lot more Act 250 reviews, but in how changes in how developers configure their properties through site design and clustering to try to avoid jurisdiction by minimizing road and driveway length, which we consider to be a good strategy, a good policy to address forest fragmentation. So it would both capture more development in the Act 250 process by having a new jurisdictional criteria, but it would also result in on the ground changes in how projects are designed. And we think that's a positive. So I did share with Will a variation of the road rule that was passed in 2020. And the changes that we would recommend for it, it did a couple of things. And one, it dealt with all roads and driveways cumulability. We felt as though there should be a trigger for a single road in addition to the cumulative road and driveway trigger. And that was not a consensus decision. So that's not a recommendation of the NRB. We argued for it, we advocated for it, we let people know that we'd continue to do that. So the draft that I provided adds a new provision that would include an 800 foot single road in addition to the cumulative road and driveway construction on the property. Another thing that in 2020 it did is it looked at kind of looking at the extension of roads over time for a 10 year period. So if you built 800, a thousand foot driveway and then next year another 500 and then next year another 800, at some point you're gonna get to 2000 but this expired that after 10 years. So after 10 years you basically started over again 2000 foot into the forest or 800 feet into the forest. We would suggest that you just start from day one and continue and at some point you're gonna hit that trigger if you continue to approach into the forest. So eliminate that 10 year expiration date. So those are the two recommended changes and we provided that draft language to you. I'm sure there's other ways to do it. There's improvements for it. We're not beholden to that language by any stretch I think as the committee works through different ideas it would be there's probably room for improvement. We just wanted to kind of update where you were with where we would suggest that you the direction you head in now. So that's it in a nutshell. It's not extensive policy. This is something that's been before the committee before it's been before Senate committees before it was in place for a couple of decades in a different variation. And it's not the only jurisdictional trigger that would work to combine with a good forest fragmentation criteria. I do wanna emphasize with regard to the forest fragmentation criteria and I believe in our B chair Haskell mentioned that there is currently no functional forest health forest fragmentation criteria. There's no criteria in Act 250 that really gets at the issues that are happening in our forest today. And that's really critical. And as I believe Jamie Fidel has testified before such a small percentage of residential development of the large lot scattered residential subdivisions that are occurring come under Act 250 today, it's really important to have a different jurisdictional trigger and new jurisdictional trigger to bring more of that into under review. Members have questions? Are there any more questions? Ask. We saw some examples. I think even a couple of them from Jamie of roads just going straight up into the forest of 2,000 feet or and I guess I just keep thinking about that some of those images and that's a hell of a distance into the forest. And so how does what you're talking about help with not let that happen? I kept the 800 feet for one, but then just put on two when you're there effectively. So how do we stop that? You know, we're supporting something that that was a had a lot of other political support. And it's there's no criteria is perfect. You could have universal jurisdiction. You could have a shorter length. You could do a lot of different things. You know, have been advocating for this since 2020. We felt as though it was meaningful. That there was a strong recommendation in the NRV study, but it's not perfect. So just to my picture, I think one of the things we suggested is that this would tend to result in cluster development. And I guess the theory would for that would be that the developer would want to conserve road length. Yes. And I think that's one of the things that would be beneficial in order to get more houses. So that's one of the is that one of the fears on which you're successful. And I do believe that would be the case. And there are a few towns that have a road trigger for conditional use review under their zoning. And I believe that's been the case in those towns, but I'm not going to. I would want to come back and confirm that. You get us the names of those towns and it may be great to get their look at their zoning. Unisburg to Unisburg. Yeah, we've worked with we've done some work with communities and we worked with both Unisburg and Montgomery on habitat protection and forest conservation. And I know one or both of those did that. And I will probably get that too. Kind of Smith, thank you. I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over, but not necessarily with you, but with anybody that's sitting there. Representative Bongars mentioned something about 2000 foot roads. How do you stop these roads from being built into large expanses of woods when you can't even stop the state of Vermont from building one that's 5,000 feet in the hurricane? I'm not familiar with what you're saying. I'm sure, I didn't think you were. And I don't mean to sound offensive over it, but I haven't been able to get any good answers from anyone. Well, I just thought I'd let you look into it if you want. This road goes probably 5,000 feet up into the woods and stops and goes nowhere. The reason being was they want to let people get back into the woods a little bit low. You want to get back in the wood, you park by the road and walk in. I would agree with you. And I don't know how we can stop anybody from building a road if the state of Vermont can do whatever they want. Well, you can bring state and municipal projects, including road construction under active 50 jurisdiction. So I believe that the 2020 language may have exempted municipal and straight road construction, but I think that would be a great suggestion that you're making that we include that new construction for state and municipal roads. In your spare time, just take a look at that. Look at that map in the hurricane. It was built under the auspices of it being an existing logging road, but it was a path that they used for pulling wood out of the woods when the ground was frozen 50 or 60 years ago. Now there's four feet of gravel and if they want a black top, but anybody could drive up in there. It's ready for black top. So take a look at it. I'd like to hear your opinion of it later on. The historic road rule exempted farm and forestry roads, but if they were converted to development, it triggered jurisdiction. I think they're probably trying to say that it was a historic road, but anyway, thank you. I just wanted to share that with you. Appreciate it. You know, I have concerns about already built private roads and I guess I feel like there's a lot of them already there. And I'm curious if anyone's tracking the existing road densities across our landscape or what your knowledge of those are. I know that when Jamie presented some mapping, we looked at public and private roads related to E91 points, most of which are single family homes. The reality is you're absolutely right. There are very few new public roads being built except in South Burlington and Williston and Essex. In those communities, if a private developer wants to come in and build a subdivision, they have to build the road to the town specifications. Indeed, that road's over to the town. That rarely happens in rural Vermont. I was on our DRB for many, many years. We approved a lot of subdivisions and they all had private roads. I'm on the select board now and we don't want to take over any more roads. We plow all the roads that we want to plow. I mean, that's pretty much the case across the state. New development is almost always served by private roads. So in that way, I think that the road rule would be a meaningful policy to bring in and make sure that these roads are designed properly. They're located properly and that the associated developments not having in a critical wildlife area. I think the question you're raising though is what do we do about those existing roads? I remember when Act 62, the water quality bill was passed, that brought municipal roads under water quality jurisdiction for a general permit to have to deal with runoff and sedimentation. We were advocating that you needed to apply that to private roads as well, but that didn't go anywhere. I know that Indira Morganti is going to be testifying, I believe, tomorrow and she has a lot of experience over her close to 30 years on the Hinesburg Select Board with private road development. And I think that representative Bonn-Gards in this don't mind and aside conversation mentioned, how do you trigger the new road construction? Do you trigger it as if a private road is extended? Do you measure from where it meets the public road or from where the existing private road is? That's a great topic to talk about. I haven't thought a lot about that and maybe that's a way that you bring in the existing roads and make sure that any necessary kind of remediation for water quality or whatever is addressed at that time. That was a little rambly, but is that clear? Yeah, I guess the costs of not just private but town roads up in our high elevations near our head of water streams has certainly become front and center most far last summer and now December and how we collectively manage that is increasingly front and center on my mind. I think the costs of that, both the dollar cost and then the impacts of flooding downstream that can occur because of them. And I guess if there's folks out there who are studying that, I would love to find them. We've done a lot of research and documentation of subdivision trends and it's a lot of work and nobody is tracking on a town-by-town basis. I mean, that's the reality of having most of our land use decisions being made by municipalities. There's no central bank, you know? And then the level of review varies greatly from municipality to municipality and the level of record keeping varies. So it would be an interesting question for someone like John Adams who does GIS mapping and private roads are a map GIS feature. I don't know if they can kind of date them to show trends of how they're developing over time but that would be an interesting question for them. We've actually been doing a little bit more GIS mapping develops a little bit more capacity lately. So I think I'm gonna look into that as well. It'd be great. Do members have further questions? Great, representative Tori. Thank you. So private roads for sure where I live. I even move on long. The other trend, and it's not easy to manage. The other trend that I'm seeing is when these high elevation homes are put in is a lot of clearing. Would that get addressed if more of that development was under Act 250 because habitat and the other criteria that we would... In most instance, you're gonna have not just a road construction but an associated subdivision. I think that 2000 foot road to a single house is gonna be unusual, but in this market it's not unheard of by any stretch. But I think mostly it's subdivisions and they would look at the impact of the entire subdivision or whatever development is being served by that road or driveway. So yeah, if that's... Impact, and especially if we had a forest fragmentation criteria, which does look at siting and mitigation and impacts on habitat and other resources. Members, any further questions? I'm not seeing any. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for your testimony. Thanks for having us in. It's just an early afternoon for you now. It's okay. Later on. Three hours, that was pretty good go. Okay, members. We will adjourn for the afternoon. We did actually, let me just see quick budget check-in, just a letter. And we just need to find your timing for when we can talk about budget issue. Just a sense of that. Well, they're only... Next week? Yeah, I think it's next week or the week after. I could follow up with someone in the process. They're only here from the Public Service Department in this book. So, for a comprehensive letter from us, I don't think, I mean, definitely not this week. With regards to A&R, I'm not starting on anything related to the letter. If it's helpful for folks, I can start to flush out something. But I figured, unlike last year where we did actually all listen to some of the feedback, I didn't want to presume and start drafting something based up of what I had just heard. I guess we haven't heard from commissioners. Do members want to hear or digging in from three commissioners? We heard from the secretary last week. Representative Sebelia. Yeah, I'd like to hear from DPS. I didn't, and can you say? Yeah, go ahead, Jets. Okay. DEC seems important, given how much we've talked about water quality and how much we've talked about waste management and toxics. I don't know. It seems like it would be perhaps helpful to find out how all those various funds, those special funds are actually holding up or not. Do you have their charts from Representative Squirrel that you could email to the committee and share with us? Yeah, I will share what I have. I'm not sure. It's not quite as pithy as the BAA. The BAA that Rep Squirrel was able to share last time around, you know, it fits on like three pages. Whereas this time it's like the long. So I will share. When he came in, he had the graphic. Oh, yeah. I can, yeah. I think those are. I can find that, yeah. Well, look at it before we hear and then get our heads into it and then be able to ask questions. Yeah, I can find that. That'd be great. Representative Squirrel. I'm taking maybe hear more from Commissioner Herrick, specifically on that fish hatchery issue. You know, whether or not anything can change out of that or not. Some letters about that, too. Yeah. Yes. Representative Pat. I just, People's information, I attended the testimony from the Public Utilities Commission, the PUC at the Appropriation Committee a late morning today. It was pretty brief. And I'm just gonna say in overview there's not a whole lot going on there. I mean, they're funded pretty much entirely by a special fund by a dedicated grocery, grocery seeds tax. And there was one issue that Representative Dolan was a member of the committee had raised and texted us about, which is that there were three positions that were temporary positions that were created by the Global Warming Solutions Act that are not budgeted anymore. And the answer to that, that I wanna look in more is that given the timing of things, there is no program now for them. There may be in the future, but there isn't one going into this fiscal year. And I need to look into that to understand it a little better. But other than that, I think that the department's budget, which is the public service and they'll be in on Thursday, is a bigger budget, more people and more of a program staff that I think will be probably of greater concern in terms of our review of it. That's my first impression. Senator Smith. I thought I heard Paul talking about Shrewsbury. Do I hear his answer? Paul's very good. Yeah, the fishing factory. I heard some stuff today about some of the budgeting that's been going on with that and it didn't sound like it's above board. And I'd like to, I would like to hear a question and hear more about it. Because how can a property that's owned by the state of Vermont all $12 million in disrepair? That doesn't happen. Oh, there's something fishy there, so to speak. Well, I don't think it's how you consider disrepair. But it's the permitting that they have to have a special permit for the discharging of the river. Well, from what I understand, the discharging that's going into the river is way under what state specs are. And I don't know. Oh, that's what I understood today. I could be wrong. I doubt it. It's your birthday. Happy new year on. Okay, I can't be wrong. Tomorrow's coming. Yeah. Tomorrow's coming. Yeah. And only 365 days, I'll be 74. All right, and with that, we'll adjourn and see you in the morning.