 Today is Wednesday, June 3rd, it's 10 o'clock. This is a meeting of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. Today, we're going to be reviewing just for context. We're working on Act 250 issues this year, primarily in the form of H, it came over to us in the form of H926, but there are also many provisions related to planning in the Senate Economic Developments Housing Bill, S237. So the pathway for moving our Act 250 work is to craft an amendment and bring it into S237. So today, tomorrow and Friday, we'll be talking about three different areas. Today is mostly focused on municipal planning and development sections of the work. Tomorrow, we're going to be talking more about force blocks and Friday, the forks product industry and trails related aspects. So with that, I'd like to invite Senator Sorotkin to join us since he's not here and I don't want us to lose time. I'd like to turn then to Mr. Kowski. And when Senator Sorotkin gets here, my question to him is our basic question that we start pretty much all our bills when a sponsor comes in and that is, what problem or opportunity are you seeing and how does that bill address it? The reasons for doing the bill. So the council can't really speak to the reasons for doing the bill, but if you can, Mr. Kowski, take us through, I think. So I think because Sorotkin is not with us yet, I think I could start with my basic Act 250 refresher overview so we can set the stage for the requirements for development. So that might be a good place to start. Excellent, thank you. Okay, I made you co-host, Ellen. Thank you. So I provided multiple documents to Jude this morning to post on the website, including a couple of PowerPoints that are background information on these subjects. So first, this committee hasn't done a full deep dive into Act 250 recently, although I know many of the members of the committee are very familiar with Act 250. So here is a sort of a PowerPoint list under my name as brief overview introduction and it's a four slide PowerPoint that has some key points about Act 250 so that you have them readily available as we move forward in this discussion. So first, the basic premise of Act 250, the state's land use and development law, no person shall sell a subdivision, commence development or commence construction of a development or subdivisions without an Act 250 permit. Development and subdivisions are the two key definitions that we talk about. And so if you have a project, the place you wanna start is determining if what you're doing meets the definition of development or is a subdivision. And when we're in Act 250 sort of realm, we often use the phrases Act 250, jurisdictional triggers or thresholds. And what we're largely talking about when we say that, we're referring to the definitions of development. So whether or not your project triggers Act 250 is whether or not you have a development as defined. So this first slide has the eight definitions of development under Act 250. The three that we primarily talk about, I highlighted in yellow, we do obviously the others are used regularly so when you're doing an analysis, you have to make sure you look at all of them. But we are often talking about acreage of land and what type of project it is. So the first one that's highlighted in yellow, development is defined as the construction of improvements for any commercial or industrial purpose on more than 10 acres of land, 10 acres of land or one acre of land if the municipality does not have permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws. And so for a commercial purpose, we establish this 10 acre, one acre distinction. And so if the municipality does not have permanent zoning, it's a one acre threshold. If they do, it's a 10 acre threshold. The second one in yellow refers to the construction of 10 or more units of housing triggers Act 250 as development. And then also the construction of improvements for a governmental purpose, including municipal, county, state or public purpose. If the project involves 10 or more acres. And we did recently talk about this type of project when we talked about the recreational trails recently. We won't be talking about that too much today, but commercial, industrial, as well as the housing units will be relevant to our discussion. So the other definitions of development include construction above 2,500 feet, communications tower, broadcast towers, 50 feet or higher, extraction of fissionable source material, oil or gas wells and 340,000, 340,000 gallons of groundwater per day. Next, the definition of subdivision. It's the creation of 10 or more lots or in a town that doesn't have permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws, six or more lots. So for subdivision, we don't have the 10 to one, we have a 10 lot to six lot difference. And then the other definition is lots that are by sale at a public auction, it's five or more lots. So those are the primary numbers. So next, the sort of brief, but incomplete analysis that one would go to if they're thinking about permit requirements. Here are some of the questions you wanna ask. What is the purpose of the development? Is it commercial, industrial or for a governmental purpose? And we talked about that a lot with the recreational trails at the last meeting. If it is for a commercial purpose, does the town in which is located have permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws? So is it a 10 acre town or a one acre town? If it's a commercial project in a one acre town is one or more acre of land involved. If it's a 10 acre town, 10 or more acres involved. And for commercial projects involved, land includes the whole tract. So is the whole tract of land 10 or more acres or one or more acres? If the answer is yes, and there are other ways to get there, but if the answer is yes, and if an Act 250 permit is needed for any of the other definitions as well, the applicant must demonstrate that the project will comply with the 10 criteria of Act 250. And those are what are on the last slide. So this is a sort of quick chart of the criteria, very sort of boiled down to the basic. Yeah, so do you want me to go through them all or is it just good to have them on a chart? If there's anything I'd like to point out like this, it might not be obvious how it applies, but let's just go through in two minutes. May I ask a question, please? Senator Campion, thank you. Thanks, Ellen. As you're going through this, can you tell I'm assuming all of this criteria is the standard criteria? In other words, this is not, is there anything in here that we as the commission for the next 50 years, are those kinds of things incorporated into this? No, this is the status quo current law. This is the status quo, perfect. Thank you. Yes, I was going to reference at some point, the commission on Act 250's work the next 50 years, which Senator Campion was a member of, comes up a little bit later when we start talking about the differences in S237 and 926, but these four slides are status quo law as they are now. Okay, thank you. Good question, good question. Okay. So quickly, criteria. One is no undue water or air pollution, and the sub criteria of those are largely to do with water. So headwaters, waste disposal, wastewater, stormwater, water conservation, floodways, streams, shorelines, wetlands. Criterion two, is there sufficient water? Criterion three, is there an undue burden on existing water supply? Criterion four, is there unreasonable soil erosion? Criterion five, unreasonable congestion on safe traffic conditions. Six, unreasonable burden on educational services. Seven, unreasonable burden on governmental services. Eight is undue adverse effect on aesthetics, and that includes a few different things. Scenic and natural beauty, historic sites, natural sites, and necessary wildlife habitat and endangered species. Criterion nine is the big one. It's got a lot of different components, but it's, is the project in conformance with the capability and development plan. And you sort of look at the, the many sub criteria to determine that. So there's impacts on growth, primary agricultural soils, productive forest soils, earth resources, extraction of earth resources, energy conservation, private utility service, cost of scattered development, public utility service, public investments, rural growth areas. And then finally, is the project in conformance with the local and regional plan. Mr. Kowski. So in, in criteria nine, conformance with capability and development plan. Who authors, I just want to pause and say, do those exist for all towns and regions? And who authors them? So it actually refers to the capability and development plan, which is referred to in section 6042 of act 250. And it is a. Kind of a mysterious and complicated subject. That we can talk about at a later time, but there was initially a, there was initially a, that we can talk about at a later time, but there was initially as conceived under the original act 250, the idea to have this state wide capability and development plan. And. Great. I'm sorry. Yeah. So, you know, Sir, I can just join. So we should follow. Yeah. Okay. So that's a, I'm guessing that's sort of a perfect point to jump off and go to center. Sir, I can, right? Was that your last slide? Yes. Great. Thank you. So good morning, Senator Sarrotkin. Thanks for jumping in. You're on mute still at the moment. And still muted. There we go. Good morning. Making a lot of bad mistakes here. Sorry. I don't know if you've suffered from this, but I meant to mess up my schedule quite a bit. So I was going handily along in my committee, running a committee. And then I realized I needed to be with you folks. So I just left that. I just left that committee and didn't tell anybody. They're going to just think you have a bad connection. Allison will take over. I apologize. I hope I didn't screw things up too bad for your schedule. No, Mr. Cowsley jumped right in and helped us get started on a review of some activity basics. So thanks for coming. We'll, I'll jump right to it. Since you have a committee you'll want to get back to, but, you know, we're looking at the two 37 sections related to. Planning. And which is where we work all the time in this committee. And so the, I guess I'm thinking of this as, as a chance for you to tell us from your perspective. What either problems you saw that you wanted to address through S237 or what opportunities you saw. That you wanted to address or some combination of the two, but kind of a street. Smart review of what you saw going on that made you wanted to bring this legislation forward. Okay. Well, as, thank you, Mr. Chair. And again, my apologies for being late. As you know, our committee. Has been not only named the housing committee, but over the last few years, we put a lot of our energy into developing more housing. We have a housing crisis on many different fronts in the state of Vermont, which I won't go into in detail. Fortunately, the administration was with us on the $37 million housing bond that produced over a quarter of a billion dollars in housing. As a result of that bond. Of all ranges of incomes. And we tried to do another bond this year. And we're unsuccessful because of bonding capacity. But fortunately, I think the administration was looking at alternatives, ways to improve the housing stock in our state. And it's not always all about money. Some policies can make a difference as well. And that's what this bill is about. At least the government. It's a lot of things dealing with. Municipal zoning land use planning. Act 250. That's trying to improve the density ability of housing. Stock and the cost. Reduced the cost of building housing in the state of Vermont, where some of the things that you'll hear about from the other witnesses or were either duplicative and costing developers. Money they didn't need to. To pay. So the administration, fortunately, as I said, over the summer had been working very hard to come up with a housing proposal that was less. And had some money financial aspects to it, which have sort of fallen by the side because of COVID, but had a lot of policy and statutory changes. And as you know, Mr. Chair, they work with a very, very broad range of. Stakeholders over a six month period of time. And came up with a very, very broad range of. Stakeholders over a six month period of time. And came up with. A lot of proposals that are reflected in this bill, some of which we modified some of which we added to. But I think one of the better tools that I've seen is a. Summary of the bill that was put together. Of how we passed it out of economic development was put together by Ellen. I don't know if that's on your webpage. Or if you want to, I think you should look at it as a cheat sheet all the way through, because it's in late terms and it's short. You'll hear from other witnesses, it could get very weedy and dense. Some of the sections, but this outline really sums up the policy changes. Very well. And I could go to some of them. But as I've said to you all along, Mr. Chairman, our goal and our committee was to promote the development of housing. We tried not to change. To try to avoid duplication in the permitting process and other areas. But we knew that your committee would get into the, the details of some of these laws, whether it be active 50 review or municipal planning and zoning. We don't think we did any damage from what we can hear from the witnesses we had. And we had pretty strong support. All the way through by the league and. And most of the stakeholders. The biggest change probably is the trying to develop. Economically and housing. That's the benefits that are now. Come to only downtowns and to expand those to neighborhood. Suburban areas as well for more dense housing and to eliminate the active 50 requirement around those. Towns or suburbs that get the appropriate designation. That was a big change. And you'll see a lot of minor land use. Changes well dealing with like ADUs. Trying to promote. Accessory dwelling units in more areas of the state to try and allow for more small lot. Development. To be built in towns. I could go into the details. You probably don't want me to do that. But I want to tell you of one major policy. Change from the administration's. Position. The. Originally the administration came to us with all of these. Land use municipal changes on lot size, how you use, how you did ADUs. The active 50 changes, all those things. And they were conditioned. By the way, I'm not going to go into the details. But I'm going to go into the details. I'm going to go from a. A carrot base kind of thing to get towns to. Change their zoning laws. Within a certain. Period of time. They had it as. Time delayed mandate. In the course. At the very end of December. Or January. The administration backed off. That. Proposal. And they said, I don't want to comply with one major exception. I had an off ramp, which where they could say, this is too hard for us. Here's the reasons why we can't do it. And they could be let out. And there would be a compilation of all the reasons. Town would giving. And then we would go to our next step. They backed off of that and said, they just said, these are all suggestions. We decided to do a. We like your mandate better at the beginning. But what we'll do is we'll give you. Three years to come in to compliance with these. Mandates. And then. If you still can't do it, you still have that off ramp. To. Talk about constraints that make it too hard for you to do. So there are several off ramps here, but we're still trying to promote the incentives for. Towns that do. Comply with these changes. Can I ask a quick question? So how do you balance off. The notion of, you know, local control. A town being. Expressing its own way of how it likes to look field develop. And how do you do that? For itself through planning and zoning, as opposed to, and I'm thinking, for instance, of the requirement to allow development on lots of an eighth of an acre or less. And I can see how it plays out in the village. We've moved to one of the things that's pleasant about it is that I think houses, many houses are still on relatively large lots. So I don't think that's why people pick this area. I think one of the reasons. Would Bristol, for instance, be forced to allow subdivisions down to the one eighth of an acre. As proposed. I didn't. I don't think the answer to that is yes. I think the eighth of the acre example is for existing lots only. So, but you can ask Ellen and Chris Cochran, more of the details of that. The overall, the overall overriding question is a good one. I think the reason that the administration came forward with these policy suggestions. Was because they saw other states moving in this direction. And several West Coast states among them, where by unless you started to put pressure on. On communities, we are not going to be achieving the housing need and smart growth objectives that we talk about. So there needs to be some statewide policies that promote more inclusive and dense housing. And there are other laws that I'm sure you're more familiar than I am where we don't defer entirely to each municipality, how they want to grow, especially if they want to qualify for some of our incentives. So I can leave some of that to the. But it is a policy choice. If you're going to take local control. Into into account, you, you know, you, you may decide that we should just not do any of this. But if that's the paramount goal here, it wasn't for our committee, Senator Campion. All right, thank you. So what I'm trying to understand, Senator Sorokin is, is again, the natural resources impact of this bill. And maybe you can help me with it. It sounds like, check me if I'm wrong. At one point, the administration was supporting something. Now they seem to be perhaps that I don't want to, I will hear from the administration having a change of heart on a particular position. But I think overall what I'm trying to get a sense of is the, the natural, the impact on natural resources as it relates to this bill, which is largely of course, our committee's jurisdiction and whether or not there are, what those exempt, if there are exemptions that are happening, if there are things that happening are happening that we really need to have our eye on. Yeah, I guess what I thought that you would have your eye on would be like for instance, where we took away. Act 250 jurisdiction over the neighborhood, the new districts that are being created. Did we do that in an appropriate fashion and, and whether you feel that's a smart. Change of policy, municipality will have to have the same rails and protections that an act 250 process would have. So is that a duplication? I think the administration and most people say, yeah, the way we've written it up here. We're not really giving up any natural resources protections by getting rid of the act 250 protections. So we certainly welcome natural resources double checking that because in terms of the wording that we came up with, but the goal was not to, it was just to get rid of duplication and to allow for more cost effective housing to be built. I don't know if that specifically answers your question, but in each of these areas, I think the policy. I mean, I'm anxious to hear what the policy issues against the greater density is from a natural resources perspective or the smart growth. This is a smart growth bill. What, what the smart growth proposals here in each instance are, if you don't like those from a natural resources perspective, I'm not exactly sure what the arguments would be. But I think on the technicalities of how we structured to get to those points, you know, we could have easily missed nuances about how active 50 works or how zoning laws work. But I think in terms of our overall policy, I think the mod has been moving in a growth direction. This expands upon that. And it also, in a very major way, I think will ultimately result in more housing. And in the neighborhoods, I think we want to see housing in. Nice. Well, I would expand a little on center champions. Framing of the question around the natural resource impacts that to me, I would not want to sort of overlook any of the 10 criteria. You know, I mean, it's the strength of active 50, I think is its comprehensiveness that it tries not to look at a project through such a narrow window that it overlooks an unintended negative consequence. So I think I would still want to make sure that we're thinking about, you know, all of them as we work our way through. So I don't, I'm not trying to. Be difficult, but I do want to test a little because I, you know, this is feedback I'm getting from instance from a. Mr. Sawyer, who's director of planning and development in St. Albans and Stan Braden, who's chair of the St. Albans planning commission who had some real concerns about for instance, section two. So did you hear from, you know, local planners who had concerns about the degree to which this would take decision-making powers away from them on a plane? I would phrase it this way. We certainly had the League of cities and towns involved in this process. All, and all of these planners worked with the administration during the six month buildup that I've seen those comments from St. Albans and Franklin County. They did come to us after we passed out the bill. They were certainly aware of what we were doing. You know, I think they may have preferred the proposal from the administration, which was sort of making this, everything being suggested here or most of what being suggested here as a voluntary goal. We went sort of a hybrid where we went half of a way where we still provided for an off-ramp, but we wanted them to make a, have more incentive to go in this direction in the first three years. I would defer to Chris on that shift. We basically disagreed with the administration. We didn't, we wanted to get there. We didn't want to just have an aspirational goal out there. And we thought the way we did it was a little, it's not, it's, it's, you know, towns still have all the ways to get out of this they need. But I think we've made it more attractive for them. Work in this area to get towards, towards this kind of plan. Senator McDonald and Senator Campion. I'm, I remember two years ago, or I think it was two years ago where, where we put together a commission to take a look at the, act two changes after 50 years. And that we have that product that has been sent to us, but this bill appears to sort of carve out a whole bunch of the possible recommendations of those commissions and is silent to the other recommendations. That's, that strikes me as unusual, but this is, you know, an unusual year. What, what is the, what is the primary reason that your committee has come to that there is a lack of affordable housing in our cities. Well, I mean, I mean, there's been report after report on the problems being faced by Vermonters in terms of both housing stock, its quality and its affordability. And our committee did a tour around the state. This fall we went to five different regions of the state having very large turnouts from people telling us of their problems. And we could always try. This would be a terrible year to try and throw money at the problem. And we're going to do our best, but it's forward thinking policies like are in here that can be a win-win for a lot of the builders, the. No, wasn't my question. What is the, is the, in your, in your tour, what was the reason that people told you that folks weren't buying houses in municipalities and there were a lot of for sale signs and they weren't being purchased. Why, why are people not moving into villages now? What's the, what's the problem that's preventing them? Well, I think if when you hear about the individual proposals here, that answer will become evident in those solutions that we're suggesting, but people came forward developers and said, there are permitting hassles that are unnecessary. There are land use restrictions that are not working in the favor of more housing development. And this is not. Senator, this is not a, a, an act to 50 bill per se, as you'll hear about it. There's one section that lists acts to 50 for development of housing in neighborhoods, but that's the only change. We have the same law that exists for downtown right now. We had priority housing for downtown's being relieved of some act to 50 requirements. And now we're just extending it to a larger downtown growth center. Well, I met Mr. Chair. I'll turn it back over to you in a moment, but the. It was members of national resources committee. There is nothing new about developers telling us that affordable housing would become more affordable if we just removed a bunch of the requirements that, that builders had to have in order to build new housing. And it hasn't really made much of a difference. Because people who don't have enough money to buy houses. Don't buy them. And with. You can ask a minister, you know, I don't know what the statistics are for this year, but. 40% of new construction is. It's not going to solve the problem of people not being able to buy the first one. And I, Senator Campion was on the active 50 commission. I'd certainly yield to him, Mr. Chair. Yeah. Senator Campion and then Senator parent. Next. So what I'm trying to understand is, you know, I'm trying to understand what's going on. I'm trying to understand what's going on. I'm trying to understand what's going on. I'm trying to understand what's going on. And I'm trying to understand what's going on. But what I'm trying to understand is. Senator is when you mentioned that it's, there isn't, you said something about this, not being an active 50 bill or things like that. And I understand that. But. We are pulling away. Correct me if I'm wrong. As the bill is written from act to 50 by giving a lot of jurisdiction to the towns that can now ignore. Possibly act to 50. So that's my first question. Is that accurate? I don't think so. What we were. Told was that. The act to 50. Requirements. Would effectively. Be met. By the towns. Because they would have to go through a qualification process to show. That their process. For approving subdivisions and other active 50. Related. Land use actions. Would be every bit as. Protective as active 50. Would be it. I would, I would think. Better off leaving that to the. To Chris. And others. If they're the same, then I'm not sure as stringent, I'm not sure why to remove away then from the active 50. If they're equally as stringent. Because they have to do them twice. Apparently. They have to go through both processes twice now. So your committee take the consider take up the idea of just going through the active 50. Requirements. No, I think we did not. We were presented. Because of the way downtown's had worked. Where we lifted. Some are all of the active 50 requirements. It was the pattern was to go in that direction. Rather than getting rid of the. Municipal. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the qualification was the same because having served on this commission, the qualifications for downtown are not the same as active 50. No, the. From Cochrane. Do you remember? I don't know who specifically said it, but it's, that was what we were left to that. We weren't losing protections of active 50. We were left to that. We weren't losing protections of active 50. So we were left to that. And we were left to this for this new category of. Neighborhoods. So. Can I jump in that? Hopefully you help. And that is. So council, just when you were coming in centers, Rockett was relating to us that 33, I think of the 44 pages. Relate to planning. So sometimes I think we get tripped up a little by being overly literal. But I think we get tripped up a little by being overly literal. I think we get tripped up a little by being overly literal. Versus other planning. So where we work is two titles. We work. Our active 50 work is by in law and title 10. All our municipal planning and development law is entitled 24. And we. It's like left and right hands for us. So whether we call it act to 50 or not. We still. We still have a lot of changes. We're still focusing land use and development, whether we're doing it through title 24, we're doing it through title. 10. And sometimes. And two fifties, just in 10. And there are a lot of changes in this bill that happened to be in 10. And then a lot of them are in title 24. So we're equally interested. And I think in the end, what we're looking for is. What we're looking for. What we're looking for is. What we're looking for is effectiveness. And effectiveness. Whether it's lands in one place or the other. And so. Yeah, I. I totally agree with that. I was just. Responding to the. Act to 50 commission. A focus. And that's the one place where I know active 50. Appears in this bill. But yes, there's definitely a lot of land use planning thing. That need to be looked at by your committee. I think it's. Yeah. Yeah. As I said, I'm giving you the overview. I think it would help if you start getting into the. Specific changes that we recommended. To promote more affordable housing in Vermont. And. And, and see if they're problematic. Great. Oh, great. Senator parent had a comment slash question. I don't know which while you're still here. I don't have a comment, but you know, when we want to talk about explaining and. You know, I've explained it, but you know, I own a couple of apartment buildings in St. Albin's and I've talked about it, but. Some of the regulations, you know, that, that frustrate me and, and I've spoke to the planning commission. They are looking to change it, but. I have a three car garage on a nice property that has. Next to my parents. And I want to actually tear the garage down because it's older and build two apartment unit, two apartment units above it. And right now the city wouldn't allow that under their current regulations, but they'd allow me to subdivide and build a duplex in the backyard. And from a, from a natural resource perspective, you think you would just be easier to build a garage with another floor on top of it. Two units versus subdivide and take up green space. So I do think, you know, that's where areas, when we talk about housing being affordable in some of these communities, there are people like me who are looking for unique ways to obviously increase our investment, but also not take up green space and take up anymore, you know, of what we have. And so, you know, I think this bill has a lot of merits. I think there are places and I understand the concerns of communities like St. Albans, but I do think there are ways that we can take their concerns into play, but also nudge them towards ways to, to meet some of our public policy goals because that would be an affordable way for me to build two units. You're talking about $120,000 to build those two units versus if I had to go by land and build and do that, it'd be much more expensive. Sure. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for that because I like to say, I think you'll like the sections on accessory dwelling units because we liberalize that quite a lot. And that's a law that I've been involved in for a long time representing seniors. So it's an example of some of the changes we could make that don't cost money. That could also help promote more units. So, right. Well, I apologize for, for my delay. Trying to deal with the economic recovery package and right now. All right. Well, thanks for joining us. You know, the, we're not in our committee room, but if we were on the wall, you'd see this sign that says, you know, start with the S. So we're looking at why we're not in the committee room today. The, to save you from that. No, I'm saying that because the questions we have are, we're, I think we're aiming for the same kind of place. We want high quality development. And we're trying to be supportive, but we also want to make sure that we're paying attention to how we're getting there and how it would work with existing law. Okay. Well, you're a good hands with Chris Cochran. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So we are. We jumped off at the end of your four page presentation. PowerPoint. I don't know if you have another document you want to share with us, although I'm seeing that we had a lot longer visit with Senator Sorotka than I anticipated. So what did you have on your list of things you wanted to share with us? I know you also gave us a great summary document. Yes. So it's sort of up to you. I gave you that the short PowerPoint to start as the intro to act 250. I did also prepare a second PowerPoint. That has a comparison between current law. And then it talks about some of the municipal zoning regulations that you were just talking about with Senator Sorotkin. There is also the summary document of S237. So let's spend, can we, is it reasonable to just spend maybe 10 minutes or so to go through your sort of that at a high level. So you're smiling. I don't know how much time you think you need to lick that side but that would be very helpful because as we talk to our next witnesses, they're all going to be talking about different pieces of that side by side by side. Sure. It's, I tried to prepare a lot of information and so wherever you want to start, I also am probably going to have to join the house floor sometime around 1130. So I might have to jump off, but we can just start wherever you want. Yes, please. So let's look at that side by side by side and we'll, we'll use it as a high level overview for the time being. And then we'll get into the other witnesses, but you'll have to have us seeing the lay of the land better. Senator Campion, before we go on with that, you had something. No, I can wait. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. So on the committee page under my name, act 250 2020 comparison. So to start and on the left column, we have some of the information on the current law. As it relates to S237. So starting on page one current law, we just talked about the act 250 jurisdictional triggers for subdivision and development. Yep. As we've already alluded to S237 exempts designated downtowns and neighborhood development areas from act 250. So they're not included under those definitions. So any development in those areas are exempt. Also currently under existing law, there are already a number of incentives for these designated areas, including section 6086 B is findings and conclusions for downtowns, which allows them to go through an exited process with no permit fees. So they only have to address some of the act 250 criteria. There's also a 50% reduction in permit fees already for designated neighborhood development areas. So 237 repeals those because they're not necessary anymore. If these areas are exempt from act 250. Also priority housing projects under act 250 are exempt. They're defined as mixed use or mixed income housing in a designated area. So that's already an incentive for these areas. So we have to amend that definition in S237. And S237 also addresses that loss of incentive by requiring that designated downtowns and neighborhood development areas. Add additional affordable housing requirements to sort of address this lost incentive. Also current under current law, once a project is under act 250 jurisdiction, once an act 250 permit exists, it exists in perpetuity. S237 as well as H926 creates this new opportunity to extinguish act 250 permits. This is a new concept. So any, not only do projects do new projects in these areas, not need to go through act 250 existing projects in those areas can have their act 250 jurisdiction removed. And then as we've already discussed, projects currently may need to go through the municipal zoning process based on what the municipality requires. And that is true regardless if they're exempt or not. And so that will be the sort of default if they, if the municipality has those regulations. And as I mentioned in the overview, there is an act 250 sort of already acknowledges this by the 10 acre town one acre town sort of distinction. Towns that have permanent zoning regulations are 10 acre towns, meaning that smaller projects in those towns are not required to go through act 250. So S237, so that's the information. There's also a technical correction for mixed income housing. We haven't talked, that's sort of a separate topic. It's needed. It needs to be updated based on a change of procedure at the Vermont housing finance agency. And just by way of comparison, a lot of the language that's in S237 is in age 926, the big act 250 bill from the house, but there was a floor amendment to 926 that extends this exemption to designated village centers. So. So I have a big picture question on this. And we can come back to it or just file away maybe by the, you know, I think one of the things I've wondered and others have asked the same question is in the process of becoming a designated downtown, do you in essence go through an act 250 proceeding or something like it. So you've, you've actually addressed the 10 criteria. And now these are already sort of baked into that area because someone's thought about it all ahead of time. So that coming in to a downtown is like, well, why would you start from scratch? You're designated a downtown or village center, whatever it is, is basically done that planning on your behalf before you ever bring your proposal forward. So we do have Chris Cochran, who is the expert on designated areas, but I do have this second slide that addresses what you just talked about. So the different designations, there are five of them. There are three core designations and then to add on designations and they have different requirements for how a town gets designated. Different things are required to be demonstrated by the town. Currently, designated downtown's neighborhood development areas and village centers are not required to have permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws. They are required to have their planning process confirmed. So they are required to have a planning process, but they're not required to have the zoning bylaws. And a long time ago, Senator Campion may remember that one of the proposals that came from the commission on Act 250, which was the sort of counter offered to this exemption was to create a new designation and enhanced designation that would require that all of the areas that wanted to be exempt had permanent zoning, as well as that zoning addressed all of the Act 250 criteria. So I'm going to, the rest of the slides on this talk about that a little bit, but while it's true that a lot of these designated areas, there is overlap, it's not exact as that's sort of what you guys were just talking about. So these areas are not required to have zoning. The NRB keeps a list of the 10 acre towns and the one acre towns. It's a roughly 50-50 split on who has zoning versus who doesn't. And so I looked at the list. There are 23 towns that have designated downtowns. There are six neighborhood development areas. And of those, based on the NRB's list, it looks like the Wilmington, which is one of the designated downtowns, does not have permanent zoning bylaws. And it looks like it's the only one. And then the town, there are six designated areas. They all, they are also the neighborhood development areas. They all have permanent zoning and bylaws. So that's just, did I answer the question you just asked? Sure. I mean, I'm going to, this is a little bit, drinking from the fire hose to keep all these details straight, but I get the picture. Some, some I have and we'll have to figure out what they're, how to sort of balanced way of looking at, I think everyone's interesting. If I had to boil it down, I'd say everyone in this committee is interested in good planning. And how do you ensure it happens, regardless of what we call it. And under what rubric it happens, center camp. Yeah. Good planning. And I know that the chair, we were also interested in protecting our natural resources. With that, that of course is involved with good planning. When I'm trying to understand myself and all of this, Ellen, is where exactly there is going to be, or there is a push away from good natural resource protections. And, you know, one of the things I keep hearing is outside of some of these developments, we are taking away certain protections. So if you could just keep that in mind as you take us through this and as you communicate, at least me as things pop up, I think others would be interested also, where is it that we really are saying there will be less protection than there is now. And I know in some cases that might be difficult. There, but even, you know, to actually determine, but as you point out, there are, even if it's in certain towns, but it's in certain communities, where is this sort of give and take. And where is the, the negative impact, the potential for a negative impact on our natural resources, which this committee is responsible for protecting. Sure. And I hope to address some of that in the later slides on this. I'm still a bit new to municipal zoning and it does very widely based on the town. So I think we will maybe get some help on some of those questions from the planners also. Great. Thank you. And let's try to finish if we can, even though I know we're in hurry up mode here. But if we can just see, and you can sort of introduce the slides you have in the next five to 10 minutes, because we have an hour basically for our four remaining guests today and I'm sure they're good at responding. But so let's keep cruising along here. Thank you. Right. So municipal zoning, if a town has municipal zoning, there's different ways that a project can go through it. So, you know, zoning districts are established and these districts state what types of development are permitted as of right in that area, or which, which are for our conditional use and that need extra approval to move forward. So the, the permitted right as of right development goes through, usually goes through the zoning administrator and is a more specific way to move forward. So, I'm not going to go into that. Whereas conditional use is a little bit more of an in depth review. They also, both types of projects may also require site plan review by the municipality. So here are some of the criteria that are used in conditional use. And I'll highlight that some of them do overlap with act 250. So what a municipality is looking at a development. So one of the key issues that a municipality has with a plan review is that it has a fixed cost and an undue adverse impact on any of the following capacity of existing or planned community facilities. And that likely relates to sort of a criteria six and seven. Character of the area affected. Relates a bit to criterion eight, which is aesthetics under act 250. Traffic on roads and highways that relates to criteria five under act 250. I do not know the full contours of this area but one thing that comes to mind is that most if not all municipalities have flood hazard area and river corridor bylaws. So this does touch on the criterion one. Some do have some wildlife bylaws also so that there could be some overlap with criterion eight there. And then utilization of renewable energy resources. They may also require a minimum lot size, distance from adjacent or nearby uses, performance standards, criteria related to the site plan review which is on the next slide and any other factors. And then the municipality may also adopt one or more of the 10 criteria for conditional use review. So some municipalities have but they're not required to. So then with site plan review, the municipality looks at these criteria for different types of projects and they largely relate to criterion eight and criterion five. So adequacy of parking, traffic, landscaping and screening, protection of renewable resources, exterior lighting, location and size of signs and then other matters in the bylaws. So those are some of the criteria that a municipality may apply when they're doing their review of a project. Is that a sort of including list, in other words that under law they can be come up with other criteria of interest to the town and add them. They're not prevented from I don't know what it would. Right. So broadly municipalities only have the powers given to them by the legislature. But they are there are a number of powers that they have available to them through their bylaw power. And both conditional use and site plan allow for them to address other things through their bylaws for this review. Right. OK, right. I mean, if I wanted to dream something up, I might say noise. I don't see noise anywhere, but in some neighborhoods you might, I don't know, someone's going to operate a home business. How noisy could it be, you know, that kind of thing. All right. So thank you. And then there's just some information on this slide about some of the procedures in municipal zoning. So a conditional use review is 15 day notice posted in the newspaper, three places and to the adjoining landowners site review. A site plan review only requires seven day notice and three public places and adjoining landowners. Appeals may be brought by an interested person, which is slightly different than under Act 250, which is sort of party status under Act 250 is based on particular any person with a particularized interest under the criteria. Whereas an interested person, two of the relevant definitions are a person owning or occupying property in the immediate neighborhood who can demonstrate physical or environmental impact on their interests or any 10 persons who may be any combination of voters or real property owners within a municipality. So slightly different of who can participate in these proceedings. Well, that is very helpful. So that's the end of this PowerPoint. Well, thank you. Any questions for Mr. Kowski before we go on to hear from some of our other guests today? OK, so then I'd like to invite next Mr. Cochran and Mr. Hemric. I don't know if you want to sort of do the tag team on this. The time is yours to use. Basically, you've heard the discussion so far. I think what we're looking for is a sense of kind of the same question. I asked Senator Sorak and at the outset, what problem or opportunity that you see and how does this bill attempt to address that? Yeah, I think I'm going to tag team if I may. Can you some of these natural resource questions in mind? I think it would be helpful to hear from you as it relates to where, again, this push and pull is on our natural resources. Yeah, I mean, I can just quickly just try to answer that question. I'm sorry, I can't turn my internet or my video on my daughters in school right now and we have one we can support one connection at once. We did some analysis looking at the different designated centers and kind of where the natural resource impacts were. And the areas that we're proposing to exempt from Act 250 are downtowns and neighborhood areas. These are areas that represent hundreds of years of investment in infrastructure and building and looking at them carefully. There are not a lot of natural resource impacts in these areas because they're essentially human habitat areas. So above and beyond, you know, kind of, you know, river corridor protections and things of that nature. We were comfortable that making it easier to develop in these centers. And by concentrating development in these centers, we were taking the pressure off the natural resources areas, off the natural resources in our working lands in our forests. So it was a way to channel development to where we want to see it grow and discourage development where we'd like to see natural resources protected. Does that? But to answer your specific question, it doesn't align up perfectly. You know, all 10 criteria are not perfectly aligned with all local bylaws. There's a lot of the same flavor. But again, these are areas that most everybody agrees that we'd like to see development happen. So how can we make it easier to support smart growth smart growth values in these areas? So are there any gaps between, you know, what Act 250 does and what you're proposing? Yeah, it doesn't. Yeah, that doesn't align up perfectly. I think there are some things that are. If I may, I just want you to give us your assessment of where the police is going to be in terms. Are you saying that there's going to be possibly no pullback with regard to natural resources protection with the exemptions that you're proposing? I can't say that specifically. But I think the thing to remember is that, you know, all of the permits that are typically rolled up in an Act 250 permit, they are still going to take place. So, you know, protections that are part of other state permits are not proposed for exemption. What we're talking about exempting is just the Act 250 process. And the presumption there is, you know, Act 250 was created 50 years ago. It was put on the map to fill our gaps in our local land use policies. Communities weren't prepared for the development that was coming. I think you know the story, but a lot's changed in 50 years. And communities now are a lot more sophisticated than they ever were in reviewing development and projects. And I think, you know, when you look at the, you know, Ellen talked about the basically, you know, 10 unit trigger that Act 250 has but it doesn't, it just isn't graduated. It doesn't look at communities in different places in different ways. So it treats, you know, South Royalton that doesn't have zoning in the same way. It treats, you know, Bennington, Manchester, you know, St. Albans that have staff who do development review and have sophisticated regulations. So in a lot of ways, you know, we are we are recognizing the good work that municipalities have done in the past 50 years and we're giving them some difference. And what we're doing by eliminating the Act 250 review is making it easier to develop in the areas where we said we want to see development happen. Right. But the chair just said, and I think he was right, that, you know, A&R permits, you know, they don't address things like noise and river corridors and aesthetics and historic preservation. Yeah, but part of the designation process does, as Ellen was talking about, aesthetics is absolutely core to the designated downtown process. We insist that communities do design review because we're part of the benefits are tax credits. We want to make sure that we're investing in buildings and our community character, not taking that away. Municipalities right now, you know, regulate floodplains. I would hope in the same way that that A&R does and the Act 250 does. So, you know, again, we we're we're trusting their sophistication. And I think are you trusting municipalities to do their work? And what about what about river corridor protections? Floodplains and river corridor protections are talked about in this bill. And there are provisions to, you know, ensure that municipalities have those in places to get to achieve this designation. OK. But to get to the chair's question about, you know, why do we need this? You know, why are these changes necessary? Several years ago, this committee passed provisions called and I think Ellen mentioned these priority housing project provisions that exempted certain qualified affordable housing projects from Act 250. We've had an affordable housing crisis forever within these designated centers are areas that everybody agrees that housing development should occur. What this does is this levels the playing field for all types of development within these centers that have achieved the designation process. Our research showed, you know, looking back and interviewing applicants who use the priority housing project provisions, it saved them about not a ton of money, but maybe like $60,000 in permit fees. And it's saving them about six months in permit time frame. But where the real savings was for them was the reduced risk. As as everybody knows, Act 250 permits are easily appealed. And I think a good example of kind of what we're trying to minimize is in Montpelier. I think in 2018, the community bonded for a parking garage to support, you know, greater vitality in the community to get more people, more boots on the ground supporting our downtown businesses. That project was appealed. It continues to be on appeal and it's it's held up. Other important projects, the community wanted to build a hotel and it needed the parking garage built to support the hotel development. So that project has stopped. But if not 100 feet away from them, there was a priority housing project that built the new transit center, created 30 units of housing. It was not subject to local Act 250 review. It was subject to local review and act in our permits. It was built and it was leased up, you know, almost the day that it opened. So why are we why are we treating different types of projects differently? How can we make sure that most of us agree that development within these centers is the place we'd like to see them grow? We have an affordable housing project and we have an affordable housing affordability challenge that we never seem to quite tackle. How can we make broad systemic changes to our state land use and our local land use to align them to support the outcomes we also want? That's the intent of S 237. How can we work together to get these make these centers strong and ensure development happens in a way where we want them to happen, where we have water and water and wastewater infrastructure where natural resources impacts are going to be limited because they're largely completely developed and paved. You know, how do we make these things happen? And by removing the Act 250 review, it removes one step that reduces a lot of risks and ensures people who are interested in investing in these communities and building them up have an easier path. So I appreciate the comment about, you know, again, the natural resources piece. But I want to go back to the river corridors, if I may, for a minute, Mr. Chair. Please. So it seems to me that there is more impact on the river corridors with this bill than what exists currently. You agree with that, Chris? Well, not necessarily. I mean, if you look at many of our communities and if you look at the river corridor procedures like Montpelier, for example, just for familiarity, but they're armored banks, they're managed channels, you know, they are not going to be modified in any significant way because of the built environment around them. What this bill does, in fact, is ask communities to look upstream and downstream for opportunities to protect floodplain, to reduce hazards and risks within our centers, work areas that aren't developed. So there I don't think it's going to increase our flood risk in any significant way. It would allow development to occur within centers, but these areas are already developed and these additional development so long as it doesn't encroach any closer to the river as existing development is not going to make matters worse. Chris, can you say something about, you know, what's required to achieve these designations? I think, in part, whether we're calling something Act 250 or a designation, it's the robustness of the planning review that is sort of at the heart of the matter. Yeah, yeah, I'll talk just briefly about the downtown part. And then I'm going to ask Jacob to talk about the neighborhood development area. It's a lot more robust downtown. Again, these are super small areas. These are highly concentrated areas. These are just the commercial districts. The the primary goal of the designation was to create or delineate the commercial district that that needed investment in existing historic commercial buildings. That law was passed in, you know, about 2000 and it candidly is not super rigorous on local review requirements. The biggest review requirement that, you know, communities must have is prove, you know, prove that they have water and wastewater capacity to support new development. They have to have some kind of proof, a planning process in place to assure orderly development. They have to prove that they can do design review in some meaningful way to ensure our tax credits or investment to improve the existing buildings are not wasted. There are other check boxes that off the top of my head, I can't get you, but I can follow up and get you a complete list of all the different designations and all their requirements. Jacob can talk more about the neighborhood area, development area designation. That's our most modern designation. And it creates a much more rigorous process that does align better with activity, values and goals. Right. And so for the neighborhood development area, we're looking that there's a wastewater system, our wastewater service available for the proposed area. We check to make sure that the municipal planning process is confirmed by the RPC. The current current law requires the exclusion of flood hazard areas. And in the bill that you have, it would ease up on that. And the reason why is that the flood hazard and the river corridor regulations are mapping. They're not that was a desktop exercise done. And and there's an incentive in this bill to get more communities to adopt the river corridor regulations but allow the neighborhood development area to overlay that. And that would allow for flood, flood safe infill based on a more granular analysis at the local level. We also look at the local bylaws to see that they have complete streets provisions that is compatible with the historic registered districts. We're looking at important natural resources like steep slopes, rare threatened and endangered species. And and we're looking at to what extent the municipal bylaws welcome housing. So it's a it's a it's a pretty thorough analysis. OK, thank you. I'm just looking. Are there other committee questions on this? So I'm I don't want to pick on something too narrow in the bill. I know there are there's a lot of aspects, but I'm sort of harkening back to that one eighth of an acre requiring, you know, if you have town sewer and water, I don't know if it's one or the other. Bristol is kind of an interesting mix. There's town sewer, but many people are on their own wells. I don't know if there's any. No, well, it's anyway, it's a mixture. There's a mixture. I think I said that backwards. We're on town water, but we have septic. And I think that's true for many neighbors at any rate. Would the town be told, well, it's your bylaws that that need to accommodate subdivisions down to the one eighth of an acre level and which would create, you know, on some logical level, you'd say, well, yeah, there'll be opportunities for quite a bit of infill. But it may well be that a town feels like part of its character is having that green space and a neighborhood. So is that choice left to them or are they no longer have the opportunity to make that decision for themselves about that kind of neighborhood density? Jacob, are you still there? Yeah, and I can jump in. And I think one of the I'll just start by with an answer to Senator McDonald's question to Senator Sorok and kind of what changes did they see about the housing market? And what we know is that our housing stock is getting older. Our household sizes are going down. The condition of these old, large homes are generally not appealing to or do not align with the budgets of downsizing seniors or new families. And as much as people would like to have a large how home with a large lot, many people are priced out of that market in Bristol. I know that you have excellent sandy soil. The downtown served by sewer, but most of the surrounding neighborhoods are not under this proposed bill. The eighth acre provision wouldn't apply outside of the downtown. It would be the quarter quarter acre provision. And we know that land, the more land you require as a municipality per unit, the more expensive that unit becomes. And and I think there's a lot of natural resources, intersections to Senator Campion's point that we know that walkable communities mean that people are driving less. They're walking more. They're healthier. There's less pressure on the working lands to develop. And and so lowering that threshold for a walkable settlement, allowing more infill development in places served by water and sewer makes that state investment in water and sewer more sustainable. I mean, a very few municipal water and sewer enterprises are flesh with money. And part of that is because they were built with tremendous federal subsidy that is just no longer present. And so how do you make those enterprises more sufficient? You support infill housing. You make that housing more affordable. And I think that's what this bill does is establishes new provisions for municipal bylaws to make it possible to build housing in places that are close to daily destinations with economic opportunities for jobs and lowers the land cost associated with each unit. OK. Well, thank you. Yeah. And I would add that, you know, this is I think this is modeled after, you know, work done in other jurisdictions. Just because you're enabling these lots to happen, doesn't necessarily mean people are going to take that opportunity. And that was the experience, I think, in Portland, where they enabled tomorrow lots, but they didn't see a groundswell community character altering overnight. You know, a few new units were created, but it wasn't, you know, it was just an enabling provision. Sure. Well, and there's good and bad ways of doing. There are many houses now in town that have been subdivided, however, informally and in some cases, people just start parking and in opportune spots like on town right of ways and lawns disappear. And, you know, so it may be aesthetics, but it's not necessarily creating good. High quality parking for and so I realize not pretending that the current situation is ideal either. There's better ways of proceeding. I'm looking at the clock and we're at that half hour. We're going to be switching over to hearing from Mr. Shoeb and Mr. Gregory. So, Senator Campion, thank you, Mr. Chair, Ellen, I'm wondering if you you're still there, I believe. I would like you to look up the river corridor piece. I know I keep harking back to this, but as I'm understanding it, there is now expansion to allow for development in a river corridor that wasn't there before. So that's one of the things I'd like you to look into. I also, Mr. Chair, feel it's necessary to bring up the point that we keep hearing about a lot of things being done in a similar value or a similar a similar set of standards to Act 250, but it's not Act 250 itself. And I do think this committee does need to pull apart and more on what the possible impacts on natural resources would be. And then along those lines, if I could direct just go quickly, you know, there's been a lot of conversation in the press and as well as in this committee around protecting forest blocks. And I'm wondering if Chris could say a little something about Act 250 and whether or not he believes that we should be protecting forest blocks in Act 250, which are outside, I know, of the actual development. But yeah, I'm going to, you know, our focus is our is our downtown centers and ensuring they are vital and active places. I think A&R really is the expert on our forest blocks. And I would like to defer to them on this question. I would say that forest blocks are an important piece of just development in general, you know, again, outside of communities where things are being developed. So I'm wondering if you you would just say a word or take a decision on whether or not this discussion as it relates to Act 250 and protecting them. Yeah, where I would just kind of repeat what I said initially, what, you know, by concentrating development within our centers, where we have where the natural resources impacts are less because they're human habitat areas. It takes the pressure of development that parcelizes our forest blocks. OK, well, that's a good transition to we're really going to be talking more about forest block tomorrow. But no, thank you for bringing it up. I noticed as Mr. Cochran was speaking that he alluded to taking pressure off of forest blocks. And that's going to thank him for mentioning that because one of the other things that we want to put into any kind of amendment we bring forward is not just a development piece, but also a forest block piece that keep these two traveling together because it doesn't it doesn't really make sense to talk about one without the other. OK, and with that, so Commissioner Walk, you've been patiently listening this morning. I don't we're not going too far on to natural resource territory per se the moment on the bylaws and downtown development and stuff like that, but river quarters come up. Do you have anything you want to share with the committee about the two thirty seven impacts vis-a-vis natural resources? Sure, I guess I for the record Peter Walk, Commissioner, the Vermont DC. I've also been taking a sort of lead role with others around the administration trying to help find some shared values on on modification to activity. I am what I what I what you are struggling with in this conversation is the is the time in which you have to have this conversation. The details of the discussion that have occurred for the last well, if we want to have a starting point at the beginning of the sort of consideration of act forty seven and then leading into the commission, you are getting, you know, a tiny portion of the deliberation that has occurred. I would say that there has been a lot of discussion around what the natural resource impacts could be in in various scenarios around downtown, neighborhood development areas. In fact, the house added designated village centers into that grouping as well. These are really are built environments, right? They are those things that are already occurring where from a climate change perspective, from a impact to natural resource perspective, we want that development to occur. We want those opportunities to happen. The amount of driving that doesn't have to happen when people are able to live where they work and be able to access the activities that they need in their day to day existence without having to get in their cars and drive is incredibly important to our overall carbon footprint. We what is often missing as we think about active and the discussions around active 50 is it is holistic in a sense, but it is not a count for every aspect of potential environmental impact nor nor can it, frankly. And we talk of center can't be and you mentioned this idea of very similar, but not the same. That's the same constant concept that we have that that that marks all of our environmental laws. We have different ways of thinking about things because things pop up at different times. They evolve. That's why we have a whole underpinning of of our permitting that that supports the active 50 process that provides detail and technical analysis to the big relatively vague criteria. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, but I want to Mr. Chair. What I the reason I said that is I want us to go into this with eyes wide open that sometimes language people. I'm not saying we're manipulating language, but I want to make sure that people that we are cognizant that the values of active 50 are not the same as actual active 50 policy. Simple as that. That is absolutely correct. I don't think anybody disagrees with you, Mr. Mr. Chair. Here, MacDuffle. Some of the proponents of the bill have suggested that this is no different in policy from what active the protections are no different from active 50 and that it is necessary to promote affordable housing. That's the same exact argument that was given when natural resources was bypassed on citing cell towers that the PUC was going to do the same thing. And the only reason we were making the change was because active 50 was backed up and didn't have the time. And it was going to be the same process and the same, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that didn't turn out to happen. It's worrisome. I'm Mr. Chair. Once again, I'm less worried about the proposals that we have here, but they strike me as being one-sided. We've got an active 50 bill that we have before us that is balanced with similar appropriate proposals on the natural resources side and forests and other places. And they're sitting at the bus stop right now while the bus ain't stopping. So I think that's what the problem, one of the problems is here, aside from some of the smaller technical issues, which are resolvable. If we're resolving a body of work that's been worked on for a couple of years, not a subsection of that body of work that's been worked on for a couple of months. Thank you. Yeah, I think Senator McDonald as usual, he's got it. And our permits and designations aren't the same as active 50. Hi. Well, thank you. So it's very helpful to hear all these pieces. I think that for this morning, we have another half hour left, so I'd like to turn and we haven't heard from actually that sort of in planning and environmental voices yet per se. So how about if we go to Brian Shoup for the next 15 minutes and then Peter Gregory to bat cleanup for the balance of the morning and we'll be done at noon. Thanks for the record, Brian Shoup at Vermont National Resources Council. Sorry about the lighting in here. I appear to be in the witness protection program, but I'm not. We have a lot of notorious witnesses this way. Maybe I should be. Now, I wanna thank you guys for taking this up. And also I wanna thank some of the thoughtful comments and questions regarding kind of the larger context of active 50. We raised concerns in Senator Sorotkin's committee about moving this piece of legislation forward absent the larger context that the commission on active 50 was set up to examine. We were a strong proponent of that process of the legislature's initiative is to undertake the comprehensive study of active 50 that the commission did. We've also been a strong proponent of the effort of the House Natural Resources Committee to draft age 926, which is also on your wall and I'm glad to see you're gonna be taking up tomorrow. Our concern is that active 50 has unfortunately undergone a history of piecemeal and incremental changes that have tended to weaken its effectiveness and weaken the level of natural resource protection and community protection that it was intended to address. It's also hasn't kept up to date in terms of just contemporary changes in science and changes in state regulation and changes in municipal planning and all that. So we're really pleased to see a comprehensive approach to undertaking active 50. And we consider this proposal to exempt development in the downtown and the neighborhood development areas as just another example of the incrementalism and the piecemeal changes to active 50 that will continue to weaken it. And we would ask you and we can talk more about this tomorrow when you're gonna be talking about age 926 to not look at this jurisdictional issue in a vacuum to look at it in the context of the commission's work in the house natural resource commission's work and try to have a more of a comprehensive and balanced approach to look at jurisdiction. You've raised the concern about forest blocks quite a bit. We share that concern and would hope that you would look at the forest block provisions of age 926 that are intended to kind of deal with the scattered random load entity kind of high elevation development that's occurring all over the state and undermining the health of our forest and the land-based necessary for a forest product industry. So having said that, I don't have a lot to add about the provision in 237 other than we urge you not to look at it as a single change to active 50 but consider a package of changes that would provide more of a balanced approach to dealing with the land use issues that Vermont's facing. I have a particular question about the, one of the proposals as jurisdiction is shifted out of what would have been 250 to a municipal plan. Does it seem overly, they're not equally rigorous I would say and so are, do you have any concerns about being able to extinguish active 50 conditions and then having someone now regulated at the municipal level because I would think conditions are imposed for a, they're usually sort of balancing considerations that are baked into a permit as the way I think of them. And so if you're going to give up the active 50 permit with those conditions, might you disadvantage adjoiners who were counting on those conditions back when the original permit was granted? Yeah, we were actually very concerned. The initial proposal from the administration was to just extinguish permits and the associated conditions with them. And what just for background, what we're referring to is- We'll go back to what the administration proposed. Would you repeat that? Yeah, so the issue is if we're going to exempt active 50 from these designated areas, there's 50 years of history of permits that may have been issued for development in those areas and they may have conditions associated with them. They often do. And the initial proposal was that they would just be extinguished, they would go away. And we raised the concern that landowners made investment decisions in neighboring properties or neighborhood properties that were based on certain conditions and that they shouldn't go away. But that was part of their decision-making process and how they use their property. And we had proposed, there is a, and I'm gonna get it going on a little bit of thin ice. There's a Supreme Court case in Vermont, Stoke Club Highlands, which really put a test around how permit conditions should be able to be changed. And what that project was about was there was a development that was a subdivision that was created. It had a designated open space lot. And then the review board in that town a couple of years later said, oh, you can build a house on that lot. It's okay, it's not open space anymore. Neighboring properties had said, wait a minute, I bought my lot here because that was open space. That was the understanding. So it was determined that that was an illegal change in permit conditions. So we had said that there needed to be some mechanism in place to allow for the people who would be affected by a condition change or a condition going away to be aware of it and there'd be a process for that condition to be changed or vacated. And that's the test that Senator Breaker referring to. Whether it's too weak, too generous, I would need to look at it again. It is a pretty easy test, but it does it. At least it puts the burden on the local review body to go through a process to say, yes, the conditions have changed or that's no longer a relevant condition anymore. So we can modify it. I think it's better to have that process than to not have it, whether it's a strong test or not. I think that's debatable. I think you're muted, Senator Bray. There we go. That's so that my dog doesn't jump in and help unannounce that dog helps from time to time. Anything else on the downtown pieces that you want to flag for our attention? No, it's really our concern that we don't lose the opportunity to say, what are the different jurisdictional challenges and shortcomings of Act 250 and look at it in a more comprehensive and balanced manner? I guess I do have two other things just to add about some of the prior testimony. I do take exception with Chris Cochran's characterization that Act 250 is easy to appeal. I've actually been involved in appeals of Act 250 for him, it's just not easy. It's really a last resort for many neighbors and other parties to a project. And I also want to be clear that when we're talking about downtowns, I agree that these are built environments. Neighborhood development areas aren't necessarily built environments. They're land in close proximity to built environments that are suitable for development. But it's not the designated build-up downtowns. The downtowns are defined very narrowly and the neighborhood development areas are defined more broadly and by design include vacant land. So I just want to make that distinction that you're aware of it. Okay, great, thank you. Senator Campion. So Mr. Chair, when are we gonna jump into the forest block piece? Is that more formal? Okay, come on. It'll get its due. We're really dividing it into three pieces. Right. And okay, so with that, and I'd like to invite Mr. Gregory to join us. Who's been patiently listening all morning. Good morning, Peter. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. My name is Peter Gregory, Director of the Two Rivers out of Quichy Regional Commission. Thanks for this opportunity just to give you a few thoughts here. I certainly recognize the need for the housing provisions, the chapter 117 changes. We're engaged in a three regional planning commission by state housing study right now to look at impediments to housing development. And permitting while not the most important at all is one of the facets we're looking at. So some of the changes in here I think will help. I would say before I get into a couple of specifics on some changes I'd suggest is that I've testified in the past that the Act 250 exemptions for downtowns related to spring more housing development should occur at the same time that we provide further protections for natural resources of statewide importance outside of the built up areas. That's something I've been very consistent on. And I think the balance package is something that I see as really important. Previous speakers have mentioned that. And I think other committee members have alluded to that as well. So I would just throw that out there for your consideration. And just so I make sure I understand that. You mean not only that while a town works, for instance, to get a designated area that they would then also engage at the same time in doing like force block planning. I mean, we've had these discussions in past years where municipalities were encouraged to do that kind of work. Are you saying that we're incumbent on them? If you want one, you also have to do the other sort of planning? Well, I think they're required by law now in town plans to do that kind of planning. Not as rigorous as I'd like to see, but I was referring to Act 250 changes and protecting those statewide resources. But yes, local and regional planning is starting to address forest resources, but I think jurisdictional changes in Act 250 for those resources should occur at the same time as the downtown exemptions. Okay, thank you. So I've got just three or four small changes. I think I'd just like to mention on the chapter 117 area. In section one of the latest draft, I've always suggested that town plans, it ought not be optional for them to be consistent with the goals. So I would change the main to shall in section one of the bill that's in section 4382. The second change I would like to mention is the opt-out provision for municipalities. It's probably fine that there's a little bit of an off-ramp, but I would suggest that DHCD be tasked with approving or disapproving those opt-out reports rather than just accumulating them and reporting to you in a couple of years how many are taking that avenue. We want to make sure that the justifications communities use are legitimate and warranted. Just filing it, it's like sending my audit to Indiana and stuff, I don't think anyone ever looks at it. And then the effective date, the last section, I think it should be moved up a year, you know, to say July of 22 rather than July of 23, I know Chair Saratkin suggested a little bit more time for communities to make those changes. I think, you know, with Regional Planning Commission to help those changes can be made, those conversations can be made. Housing numbers and quality remain a real crisis here. And I think we need to work faster at making these changes. So that concludes my thoughts at this point. You're muted. I'm writing. Handwriting notes as you go and looking at the screen. Can you email in those point edits you made just so I make sure I cross-reference them correctly to the bill, which I also have on another table right next to me? Happy to do so. That would be helpful, thank you. Okay, and yeah, so the, and by way of reassurance, I mean, it's come up a number of times. So again, we're today, although we're focused on downtowns, tomorrow we're doing forced blocks and Friday forced products industry and recreational trails. And I think the pathway that we're working on is to try to assemble a package that all travels together. So I want to acknowledge that and appreciate the fact that people are saying, well, if don't just pay attention to downtown, you also need to be paying attention to the natural environment outside of that downtown. So we're gonna do both. Okay, any questions for Mr. Gregory? Okay, Senator Campion's been asking some questions following up on river corridors and river corridor planning, flood plains. Can you speak a little bit about how that planning happens now and how the bill, Mr. Gregory, would change your role on planning related to river corridors and flood plains? I'm not sure that, there you go. I'm sorry, but that question was directed to me. Yes, sir. Sorry. Well, I think as Brian Schuett mentioned, the floodplain work that we would do has begun to focus more outside of an upstream of downtowns in the context of floodplain storage protection, making sure communities kind of keep those lands functioning as flood plains and stuff to further protect downtowns so we can continue to develop in the downtowns. Is that answering your question? Yeah, I mean, part of what I'm wondering about is some of these things would be multi-jurisdictional, right? You might need a town, an upstream town, handling its land in a way that's helpful to a downstream town. So is that only through RPCs that that kind of work can happen? Just who has to reach in order to do that kind of work, coordinated work? Well, we certainly look at those issues, you know, irrespective of town boundaries and to the extent we're invited in by communities to assist them in their planning or they're willing to accept some suggestions on those issues, we absolutely do provide them because we're looking at, you know, we're helping towns prepare hazard mitigation plans and town plans and floodplain ordinances and how to administer them properly. So yes, it's usually at the regional planning commission level where we kind of have all that stuff together and then as towns are ripe for that kind of input, we're there with it. And are we making progress in the state? I mean, I think Irene was a wake up call for lots of towns with flooding. If we, did we learn enough out of the Irene experience plus other work that predated that to not be, to be building appropriately post Irene? I think so, you know, the longer we have, the longer time passes from something as catastrophic as Irene the harder it is to keep people focused on what could happen, but it does seem that we have enough flooding events here on yearly basis where at least pockets of the state are being reminded, you know, all the time about what they should be doing to prepare. Thanks. Senator Greatman, jump in there. Yes, please. Talking about our world, just I asked Rob Evans who runs the reverse program at the DC to sort of provide me with some basic statistics on where we stand in terms of river quarter protection, just for context. And because this is coming in at the moment, I can't do the overlay with where our designated downtowns are, but by the FEMA database, 249 of our communities are covered by flood hazard bylaws and make them eligible for the flood insurance program. 36% of our towns have flood hazard standards that go above the federal minimum and 43 of our towns manage their river quarters in similar ways to what we do through Act 250. So, and I use the word similar precisely here, Senator Campion, because that was what was given to me by the leading expert, but my understanding is that those are, that we have built our model bylaws on the way we have do that evaluation under Act 250. That provides coverage for every parcel within those communities and not just those that are subject to Act 250. So, providing a little bit of context, obviously Mr. Gregory is exactly right that we have, Irene is in the rearview mirror a little bit, but that's not true for the number of smaller, more localized floods that we've had and the number of nationally declared emergencies we have which are actually continued to tick up. Since Irene, we just haven't had sort of the statewide issues we had with Irene. Right, I think Huntington has had a road closed with the Huntington Gorge and permanently closed the Gorge. So, just, there are these things keep coming. It's kind of the new normal, severe, severe weather that is pretty damaging. I just wanted to double back to Senator McDonald's remark about the bus stop. I mean, I think it's incumbent on the committee working with the Pro-Tanzer Office and the Economic Development Committee to make sure that that bus stops at this stop, and picks us up. That's the agreement. And I just wanna, I'm not as, I'm gonna figure we're sticking to that agreement, but I think we're all gonna have to be attentive to sort of the full meaning of what that agreement is. So, I'm not interested in seeing, for instance, sort of a skinnyed up version of what we would call a crucial section on forest blocks, travel with a fully robust, designated downtown development bill or something like that, they need to be balanced. And I think that's what we've been, fair and balanced is what we've been talking about for years. And so we'll keep aiming, we need to work at it. May I ask, is that, tell me the genesis of your concern, Senator Bray, with that? Well, I was just thinking back to what Senator McDonald said, like, does it wanna see our areas of particular concern, although everything we're talking about today, tomorrow and the next day, I'd say all our concern. And that we want all of the issues to travel together, get on that bus, not have them left behind. Absolutely, right, yeah. Is there opposition to all three of those groups getting on the bus together? Well, let's see. This is what happened in the house, this is right. Everybody was on the bus over there. Yeah, everybody was on the bus and a few people maybe got off the bus during the trip over or something like that. Really? I'm gonna, the analogy is gonna fall apart pretty soon. So I just say we'll keep working to have everything traveled together and we'll do our best work. That's always what we aim for. All right, well, I wanna thank everyone. If there are any other questions, comments before we wrap up today, I appreciate people coming in and helping take on, as Commissioner Walk was saying, Commissioner Walk was saying, I think the first meeting that Act 250 Commission was September 25th, 2017. So there's a lot of history behind what we're looking at today in just two hours. Senator Parent. I was just kind of asking, I mean, today's discussion is good, but to kind of get to the concerns, especially the ones that came out of St. Albans, are we gonna be looking for a way to kind of bridge, you know, I'm in favor of doing more to allow more development in these areas, but I also wanna give deference to local communities. So are we gonna be looking, spend some time to discuss a possible solution there or do you foresee that? Yes, thank you for that question. I take yes, always when we do two things in the committee, we carry forward local interests and try to make sure they're engaged respectfully in the conversation. And then we also think statewide. So we sit a bit of a juggling act sometimes to play both those roles. I would encourage any member of the committee, including you to reach out to Mr. Chakowsky, for instance, and say, well, how might we, you know, make a, we need to get to language. So I would work with Mr. Chakowsky to look at how language could be altered in order to address those concerns. Because we're all, we need language if we're gonna edit. So you'll do us a favor if you push something forward. Okay. Senator Bragg, may I interject? Please. So as I was providing my testimony, we got off track a little bit as we were talking about the word similar and how it relates to review. From a broader perspective, and I think you saw this today as people wanted to think about packet pieces of Act 250 that go beyond the discussion of designated downtowns and neighborhood development areas, is that this work and the discussion about this and the sort of various back and forth that have occurred over time, you are getting a sort of a really, really thin slice of that in this moment. And for those of us who have been thinking about and engaging with this over the last three plus years, I am loathed to sort of go back to the bus analogy, but there have been multiple different buses with slight variations of routes that have had different people on them at different points and different people have gotten off at different points. And so to describe the sort of the three-legged stool that exists in the discussion that you're happening, I think it frankly minimizes much of the other work that's been done in a much broader sense on Act 250. And I appreciate that you do not have time to look at that broader package, but two things. One, there significantly more work does need to be done to look at the broader set of challenges and issues that Act 250 modernization was intended to address. And I would be, I have concerns about sort of thinking that there's a package of things that is creates that balance here that exists when there is significant other pieces that should have been addressed. And so I wanna make sure that there's an opportunity for us all to be able to come back to this in the future and different parties involved have the incentive structure to be able to do that work. So I think that's incredibly important. Okay, well, thank you. Yeah, we know this is an ongoing work in progress. I hesitate to say this, but we're only about six months away from the opening day of the next biennium. And so we do incremental work sometimes and then come revisit something and add to it. So I think the point in my mind would be to do things in a constructive way, even if they're incomplete, that allows for and anticipates more work in an next biennium. What I don't wanna do is sort of throw the spanner in the works in some way that causes complications, unuseful complications for that future work. Senator Campion, last word to you, and then we're adjourning. I just wanna, the three people on the bus, are we referring to the three parts that the house and the administration have agreed on, which is traveling together. This is the forcefrag, the downtown, and the trails, Mr. Chair, is that what we're talking about when we're talking about the... That's the three legs that I generally... I called that the three-legged stool and I just wanna be clear that that's not a position the administration has taken. So the administration is not, does not. Okay, I thought the administration had agreed to that in the house, but that, I guess, would be a conversation. We worked to deal with a much broader package in the house, and as things fell off, we have not been supportive of how they have ended up. So if you're gonna just tackle those three issues, no, we're not gonna be supportive of that as a package. Okay. And so, Commissioner Wach, just so I have it straight, did the administration support 926 as passed by the house in the end? We have not been asked in a while, frankly, what our support of where that bill was going, but we do not support as how it came out of the house. Okay, all right. Well, although we're optimistic in this to me, we're gonna end on that down a little bit there. And adjourn for the day. Thank you everybody. Thank you. And see you, well, see you on the floor at one. And other folks, again, tomorrow at 10.