 All right, with that, running a little early, but Chris Cochran is here, it looks like. Would you like to join us? I'm sorry, I'm Jacob's going to be here, but I can sort of get going. Keep you on schedule. Good afternoon, thanks for having me back. Chris Cochran from the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. I'm the Director of Community Planning and Revitalization and I, then the agency I work for, the Department of Housing and Community Development. I have, I guess last time I was here, I ran out of time. I don't have a whole bunch of slides, but what I was going to do is just kind of reset everybody and kind of where we are on this bill, talk through a few points and then go to the slides. And then I think, you know, from the testimony of watch, there's a couple of questions. And if that works, if you have time, you know, I think we can probably dial into some of those questions. Jacob hopefully will be here. He's kind of the detailed guy. So if we could hold off on those to the end, that would be great. So updating everybody and where things are. Last Thursday, the Senate unanimously passed S226 bill came over Friday and it was referred to House General. I understand, you know, they're already taking testimony on it now. And I understand you guys are looking at this stuff in Title 10 and Title 24. And that I presume Ways and Means is looking at the tax credits in Title 32. Just as a reminder, kind of how we got here. Bill stems from a memo that a bunch of local planners wrote and shared with legislators and with us recommending state level changes to remove barriers to housing in our compact centers. I think Representative Von Garts got a copy of this bill and I think or the bill of the memo rather. And that was our starting up place for H511. We had a stakeholder group. We worked on this a long time, many, many meetings. And included VNRC, the Regional Planning Commissions and the Rock Planters Association to really refine and review and refine and kind of dial in the language and the bill that ultimately became H511. It was a really good process. I think everybody involved. I think you heard testimony last week, said it was a good process. Everybody was listening to it. We kind of found common ground. That's not always easy, but it was a really good group. And I was really pleased that we landed where we did. Last week, the Agency of Natural Resources, VNRC, Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, VHFA, and VLC all testified and supported that of the bill. That doesn't always happen. So I think hats off to you, Representative Bonn-Gards, for doing a great job getting everybody on board. The Natural Resources and Energy also reviewed the sections in H511 and they were also supported. So we've got a whole lot of people lined up around like these are good support houses in our compact centers. Really the only voice of opposition I've heard was from Thomas Weiss, the engineer. And I was sick. I didn't get a chance to hear his testimony, but I know ANR had some concerns about some of the statements made and I hope they're going to come in tomorrow and hopefully correct some of the record there. So that's background update you kind of where we are, for why I understand you where things are. Why are we here? We have a housing crisis. We're all trying to work together to solve our housing problem. It's a top priority of the speaker and the pro tem. Vermonters really need your help. I've got two vacant positions and I can't fill them because all I know is what's happening in the state agencies is we're stealing employees from each other because they're living here and they already have homes. If you recruit somebody from out of state, they accept the position contingent on finding housing and they can't. And it's really, you know, this is state government. It's happening all across, you know, in the businesses. You know, it's really hurting. We do need to really find a solution. And S226 and for that matter S234, I think provide meaningful changes that can help us move the needle to kind of create more housing options in our centers. S226, you know, aligns state level policy Act 250, local bylaws with new funding to create housing out and create more homes in our walkable centers. We've been talking at length with the media seven days is working on a big story I expected to come out tomorrow about the housing crisis, some of the challenges, some of the barriers that I think have unintentionally been created at the state and local level to housing and centers. And they're going to relate it to this bill and how this bill is going to hopefully solve some of these problems. I know this committee is, you know, prone to weakening the housing bill to take off the 511 pieces to support the Act 250 bill. And I would I hope you don't do that. Housing is a real challenge. And I would like to see the question obviously to your choice, but keeping the housing bill together intact, I think is really important given the severity of the crisis. So with that, I'm going to pause and then I have like I said, I've got a couple of slides more left in my presentation. And then from what I saw from testimony, there were some questions around like, you know, how tax credits work, happy to ask, answer those, I think get some questions around the safe infill provisions within centers, questions around the infrastructure requirements for neighborhood development areas. Were there other items off the top of your head that, okay. All right. So with that, I'm going to present a McCullough. Yeah. Thank you for asking that question. Were there other issues and you sort of touched on it, but as you recall, this committee pulled out the wastewater and water connections part of as far as it 101 last year, and they've been put back in here. And I, for one, inability to understand how the trade off going to create lots more housing, the trade off being agency oversight. How does the lack of agency oversight create lots more housing, which we all understand we need. I don't get the nexus there. I think I have a good answer to your question. Could I hold them all to the end? I wanted to get through my last slide. Oh, no, I just wanted to know, like, what are the lists of things that you guys wanted to talk about? Oh, well, that would be one of them. I got that one on the list. And Lizzie, I think we queued up those slides. Great. Thank you. I'm going to sit to the side so I can actually see what I'm talking about here. If you recall, you know, Jake and I just kind of gave you high level review kind of the why and the bill. And this is where I ran out of time or the community ran out of time. So the really the focus of this bill is to create an easier path for communities to achieve neighborhood area designation. Right now, these are the communities that have the neighborhood designation. If you look, there's a decided trend. What county are they from primarily Chittenden County? Well, they're from Chittenden County because that is where the housing development is. It tends to help right now the benefits that we have for neighborhood development areas growing communities. There's really no meaningful benefit for smaller communities. And that's what we're hoping to change in this bill. Some of the next next slide, please. Are those towns of particular order? No, they're just, yeah, they may be alphabetical. I think they might be in the order that they were created according. I don't know. I think I just, I made the list. I think they are in a relative order of like when they're, yeah, because I think I just had a running list and I was just adding them as they were. Yes, thank you for making that point because that was my question. What's in it for smaller communities? I appreciate that. Not a whole lot, but I'll tell you more about that. So thank you for asking. One of the major barriers, you know, obviously, an active 50 benefit is not a great benefit for a smaller town because there's not a lot of developers working outside of Chittenden County. Generally, Chittenden and Franklin County see the most of the development. But really the bigger barrier to a smaller community achieving the neighborhood area designation was that we have to update their bylaws. They have to support compact development within their centers and the state is chronically underfunded planning historically since forever. I think maybe for the last 20 years. So communities really didn't have the resources to make this change. The good thing is, and thanks to that with the help and support of this committee, we did, you know, launch those bylaw modernization grants. We now have 41 communities who are actively working to modernize their bylaws. The requirements of the bylaw modernization grants, no coincidence, line up very well with the requirements of the neighborhood area designation. So getting the bylaws up to speed, I think we're working on that. So we shouldn't achieve, you know, within the next year. So a lot of communities will qualify for the neighborhood area designation that they otherwise wouldn't have without this investment. So thank you for your support on that. Next slide please. Again, the major benefit right now for the neighborhood area designation is the active 50 benefit for priority housing projects. You've heard a lot about this. You know, the 10 acres, 10 units, it's a blunt instrument to age developmental impacts. But it's what we have. It's the rule. It's the law. But it becomes really, really challenging in centers. It's, it's one thing, you know, because you have a lot of neighbors, you have a lot of people concerned about any change in their community. So it creates a very appeal rich environment for people to raise concerns about any project. So the solution, this was several years ago, and it's gone through iterations over the time was a jurisdictional change to support affordable housing in our centers. No, we need affordable housing, affordable housing in centers is naturally affordable housing, because you don't necessarily have to have two cars to work or to get to school. They are compact centers, so you can get a lot of the services that you need right there. So it's been enormously effective. I think the NRB ran some data recently, and there's been over 200, 200, 2,500 priority housing project units approved in the last five years. If you look at the data, they're mostly in Chittenden County, because that's where the growth area is. And that's where the neighborhood area designations are occurring. But we need a solution for the entire state. And obviously, creating more compact development within these centers, you know, meets our environmental goals and our climate emission goals too. So we want this bill aims to make smaller towns, level the playing field for them so they can create more housing options within their centers. Next slide. Thanks. That said, smaller towns, you know, I think I mentioned before that, you know, Chittenden County, Franklin County, some areas around White River Junction, they have developers who do projects. There's, you know, they know the rules of the road there. That's where they build, that's where they're comfortable building. So the active 50 exemption that comes with the neighborhood development destination is not the most attractive benefit for a smaller town. So that's, you know, what would a small town need? Small towns, my town, my village, where I live, there's two abandoned homes. It's been that way for 20 years. People are not improving these buildings because the economics don't make sense. It costs too much to fix them up. But those buildings are an eyesore. They're dragging the community. I would see them fixed up. I would love to see two new families in our communities. Lord knows our schools need more children in them to remain sustainable. So that's where we're hoping is, you know, the expansion of the downtown and village center tax credits. It's been enormously effective in revitalizing our downtowns and village centers, expanding them to focus on neighborhoods and improving housing in and around the designated center that we believe is a tool that smaller towns will respond to because that's what their need is. There's a couple, we all drive around. I guess you go home to your districts. You see these homes all the time. You know, I know you're worried about second homes in the state, but I'm, you know, my background's historic because I worry about all the abandoned homes. They're just composting. And when we, these are, these are buildings already in the ground. They're easier to permit. Let's fix them up and create new housing options located in and around our centers. Chris, though, brings up a point around private property and the cost of land, which got some press this morning in public radio, but these are private properties. And they all probably have a different story or reason that they are not being used. And I guess, I'm not sure a tax credit is what's going to reach into the Well, we have this stepping back 20 years. We have the same problem in our downtowns, all private property owners. Nobody was investing in their buildings. How do you get somebody to do that? And we created this tax incentive that somebody took a chance on. We had empty upper floors, just ground floors of buildings. So they're completely underutilized. They weren't doing anything productive to the community. They weren't creating any vitality in the community. And the same question I'm sure was asking, well, how are you going to make a property owner do something that they don't want to do? We found the tax incentive caught people's attention. Several, you know, there's a reluctance, I think, at times to take advantage of some state programs and benefits. But once a couple people did, it was a snowball effect. You know, our downtowns, you know, I think if you recall my slides from a couple from last week, you know, Bristol 25 years ago versus Bristol today, it's remarkable what that changes seem. It does have an effect on the neighborhoods, but there are many communities, especially in our rural areas. There's just nobody going to invest in it. Don't work. But if you create an incentive there, I think people will start thinking outside the box about how can they make the numbers work on something like this? And if it is a family that's disagreeing over, you know, who's going to fix up the old family home or whatever the circumstances are, oftentimes putting an incentive out there and a buyer willing to take on that building is what can change things up. So I agree with you, there are all different circumstances for why buildings are abandoned, why they're underutilized. We found from the downtown tax credits that it is an incentive that does give people to think differently. And would the proposal in the bill address rule development housing like these look? Well, in a very limited area, you know, because really, you know, if you recall, we're focused on centers only. So downtowns and villages and, you know, the neighborhood area that is designated out of them around them. So we're not talking all across the landscape, we're just talking about those close in homes and built up areas. That's where the benefit would be targeted and be great if we could do more. But I think given the amount of resources we're looking at the Senate supporting a $2 million increase, the downtown ability center tax credits to support neighborhood development areas to get more communities achieving this designation. That's probably all we can do to see a meaningful effect. If it was an everywhere benefit, it would be very expensive and chair Ansel would not be very supportive. I guess I'm headed towards, like, it'd be good if we could have specific examples as we explore the bill further. And these all look very rural and not necessarily in designated areas. I will be candid. These are, you know, clip art of abandoned old buildings. I can show you two buildings in my community that I've lived there for 20 years. Yeah, no, I'm familiar with them. And we've all seen them. They would, my village just got Village Center designation. And I know everybody in the neighborhood would be very excited to see these buildings improved. And can you remind us what your town had to do to get a Village Center designation? They had to fill out the application. And so the process is fairly simple. Village Center is kind of our low barrier designation. You know, you have to have a village that meets the definition. So there has to be some there there. So it has to be some kind of commercial use. It has to be some kind of mix, mix of services. It can't just be a residential area. So there has to be like, you know, a municipal building or some kind of community gathering space or store or something like that out there. The very small and my village is very small. We were designated Janet Ansel's village of Maple Corner, you know, to the store and a few other buildings around it that a community center, it was designated. But they're very tight geographies again. You fill out the application, the RPC regional planning commissions work with you to go through, you know, you delineate a boundary. And then you go to the downtown board. So this is, you know, our designated Village Center. We'd like to designate it. And primary benefit that comes with it right now is the tax credits to improve existing only commercial buildings. And this bill would extend that to Village Centers, the housing. Well, right now they downtowns and villages are eligible for the tax credits. What this bill would do is extend that area to villages who achieve the neighborhood development area designation. So to create a larger benefit area, and it would allow investments in housing and to be, you know, sorry, getting into the details. It is only for commercial houses, rental properties. It is not going to improve single homes. But if you want to do an accessory dwelling unit or anything like that, so long as it's kind of cook on income producing, it would qualify. But to add an NDA, I just want to make sure we're clear on what's happening in the bills from sort of, but so that the neighborhood development area in a Village Center would be able to have a neighborhood development area if it did what? Oh, they'd have to meet all the neighborhood development requirements. So they'd have to, you know, Jacob walked you through all those different requirements. They have to have bylaws updated to kind of checking that box, priming the pump there, so more communities can qualify. Jacob, I don't know if you can up the top of your head. Go through. Well, sure, for the record, I'm Jacob, I'm a policy manager at the Department of Housing Community Development and program manager for the neighborhood development area designation. So to become a designated neighborhood development area, the municipality has had a regional planning commission approved planning process. They have to have a pre-application meeting with the Department of Housing Community Development worth looking at what's looking at the area that the municipality is interested in designating. When we are doing that, we're evaluating if the location is within the planning area radius, which is a half mile around downtown, a quarter mile around centers or village centers. And so that's kind of the starting point, although there is a little bit of a given that boundary where the downtown board can push it out or bring it in from that radius based on certain criteria. And for instance, like if there's a lot of constraints, can serve land within the planning area, or if there are considerable steep slopes or areas that are not served by municipal water and so are under the current guiding statute. We also look at the natural resources that are within the area, including anything that's defined under Title 24 as an important natural resource. So that's wetlands, ag soils, steep slopes, those types of things. We evaluate if they have complete streets, what's served by sidewalks, what's planned for sidewalk or pedestrian connections. We're looking at historic resources within the neighborhood development area. And then we're really digging into the bylaws, what does these are allowed and it needs to match the bylaws need to allow at least existing average density of the area or be at least four dwelling units per acre. And then we go into a variety of checklists of complete streets and building law and development patterns. So it's a pretty thorough process and I think it's part of the reason why there are 10 designated neighborhood development areas currently. That is a big lift for the benefits that are assigned to that designation right now. However, the addition of additional, if tax credits were extended to support income producing properties, the renovation of income producing properties within neighborhood development areas, we think that that might be an added incentive for communities to pursue the designation and update their bylaws to welcome housing and neighborhoods connected to their core civic and commercial area. And can you remind us who the downtown board is? It's a, I want to say like 13 member panel. I can get you the exact titles of everybody. A lot of it is state agency head. So the head of, or their designate of the trans A&R, the natural resources board. But there's also, you know, my agency or ACCD has a rep, but there's also representatives from local governments of the LCT has a rep, the preservation trust and BNRC for rep. I can get you to complete this, but it's a board comprised of kind of folks, agency folks and folks who are interested in supporting municipalities. So our planners association has a member. Let me just get you the final name. I'll get you the list. I agree. And they meet, you know, I would say semi monthly just based on what application needs and demand are. The biggest thing that we're looking at right now for our next board meeting is there's a big increase in the downtown transportation funds that provides kind of sidewalks and street improvements that make our downtowns more walkable. We got a $5 million one time increase and we allowed expanded the eligibility to include, I'm going to go into the weeds, but you know about this program better places. So looking at alternative modes of trails, bikes, sidewalks, you know, how do we make our needs more walkable inviting to people and not just cars. So we have, I think, nearly $2 million in requests. And we're very excited about support that investment. And then the other big thing we do is award tax credits, and that's a very busy intense time. Can I ask a question? My first comment is I appreciate that integration because sometimes transportation projects such as a sidewalk may take 10 years of design time and public engagement to actually get it in the ground. And sometimes those designs are already set. So to be able to integrate better the planning objectives. Yeah, we do a great job, I think, in estate planning where we do where we fall down as implementation design and implementation. So this is hoping we're hoping to fill that gap. That's what someone focused on. Thank you. And then my question is in regards to removing the municipal sewer infrastructure and water. Was that simply because not to make that a barrier to obviously they still need, if they're going to have compact development, they still need to make sure they provide for water wastewater, but not to have it a barrier for the designation. Yeah, exactly. So in a case study that, for an example, Westford, I don't know if you heard about their apparels, but they wanted to create more housing options in the village center. They needed a wastewater system. There is a process where you can design a system, get it pre-approved by an R, and proceed with a destination that was cumbersome. And they had to make it real. So they had to go out to a bonbo. They had to do all these things. And they just wanted to be able to support compact housing within their centers. That infrastructure requirement as a prerequisite was a huge stumbling block for them. It took them many years to get this. What this change does, obviously, they still have to get a permit from A&R to do in-ground disposal. There's a lot of advanced technology that weren't available many years ago. And this effectively transfers the burden of finding, getting the permitting from the municipality that can struggle with these projects, the infrastructure in a town, for many years, to the developer, who often can find solutions more quickly. And because if the community can get the NDA designation, they are potentially eligible for the priority housing project if they create affordable housing in the community. And there's examples all over the state. I think you're just Irisburg. They did disposal in the green. There's examples in Shorm. They happen all the time, but we just didn't want to have that, like, no, you don't have this. You can't qualify. We want to be more inclusive and more welcoming to villages working to create vital, dense downtowns. Since we're on that topic, can you speak to what Thomas Weiss brought up in terms of the setback requirements on the shield areas around wells with septic? It's not my area of expertise. And I missed his testimony. I was sick that day, but I know Jake. Yeah. Yeah. I can't speak directly to his concern other than that these projects would still have to get a state water wastewater permit. And then I look at those separation distances and shield areas. And so as far as I understand it, there would be no loss of protection. Still have to be a state with stuff to design the system that complies with the NR's permitting standards for both water and wastewater systems. I guess the question is, are you imagining that these are going to be more of a traditional village treatment? Or are you thinking more of dispersed community? I'm sure it matters what kind of village we're talking about. But it does come up with onsite disposal. Yeah. And I think it could be in both cases where we could be where the downtown board could prospectively designate an area that is currently unsewered and does not currently have plans for the conceptual and our design would allow a private developer or a community to say we're getting our planning framework aligned from compact housing development. And we don't know yet what the water wastewater service is going to be. We know we're going to have to permit whatever happens with the agency of natural resource and department of environmental conservation. And so the planning framework enables compact development. The benefits of the neighborhood development area principally would be attracted to a developer doing compact development because the priority housing project exemption is about affordability. And to get affordability, you by and large have to do density. One of the potential conflicts are that you need space to do an onsite and have room for wells to be affected. Many communities use a shared well from further away so they can get the disposal grounds closer. So there's lots of different options and examples across the state where traditional systems can support the densities without having a big pipe system, which are very costly and very few communities until we were blessed with new federal funds or even considering especially small towns because they just won't bond for them. But in those instances we have had to go back and put in a water system or correct the past conflicts. I would hope the permitting process catches that. So I think we got, I'm sorry, just going to pick up where I left off. So the tax credit stream for commercial bill or the housing is really, I think it's going to be a key incentive to get small towns engaged in thinking about how they can create a vital active neighborhood that supports the downtown or village center. And Ways and Means has looked at this before. And they were open to doing a pilot and the Senate bill essentially, it doesn't give, it's not exactly what Ways and Means approved of last year, but it's similar. It proposes a, you know, let's try this out and see this works. Let's do it for five years and see what kind of outcomes we get. And then so essentially it sunsets it where Ways and Means recommended a just a five year pilot. So I think they're very close. I think it's going to be a great tool. One, to leverage the designations and to help put under these buildings back into service and get used to our communities. So the next slide, the other thing that we're looking at, I'm sorry. Question from Representative Morris. Thank you, Madam Chair. Tax credits. I'm looking at the four buildings of the previous four buildings. So you get a private developer or private owner that's looking or not looking to necessarily develop that structure or to bring it back into housing. So we offer tax credits. What other incentives are there or how optimistic are we going to be that a developer that doesn't have interest or an owner, private owner who doesn't have interest in developing that, that the tax credits will be effective. Optimism, pessimism. Well, kind of this is similar to other enforcement actions. Yeah. And this is similar to the question that the chair asked, you know, like, are you confident it's going to work? Well, it worked in our downtowns. It's the same tool. It was very effective there. So different circumstances, I don't know what, you know, how it's going to play out in your community or in Manchester. But I think the key thing to remember is the tax credits are only for an existing building. So if somebody wants to improve that building, they get the tax credits. If they tear that building down, they've lost the benefit. They could tear the building down. And so long as the Division for Historic Preservation approves it, they could rebuild and use the Act 250 exemption to create a higher density housing option where a historic building was. I don't think I'm giving you the answer that you want, but I'm struggling with the optimism that this is going to be effective. You know, the ones that want to develop are willing to or private owners that are willing to develop the program. We had people with their arms crossed and are downtown saying, I'm not investing in any of these buildings that go to, you know, I don't care. Montpelier, you know, nothing changed for a long, long time until we put these tax credits on the table. One person made the improvement and they were getting higher rents than the other person was getting. So you can choose to let your property go down to nothing and not get a great return on it, or you can use a public benefit and make an investment and make some money. So these are all individual decisions. I don't know how it's going to play out, but I think from our experience in the downtown, it's a similar effect to, again, these very tight geographies of housing in and around our centers. They're desirable places to live. They have usually stores. They have amenities. Why don't we put them into good use, you know? If in my community, if we pass this and my kind of village center designation and the NDA, well, we have the village and we got the NDA designation, I'd have to deal with some conflict issues, but I would go knock on that person's door and say, hey, you want me to sell me that house because I'm looking at it. There's other people who got care about where they live and they're going to improve the place where they live because that's where they live. And they don't want to see an eye swarming. If they can use a public benefit to make the rehab pencil out, why wouldn't they not do it? I know you're skeptical. I'm not convincing you. I'm not skeptical. I'm from a community that has done both. We've developed our downtown, the vacant dilapidated unsafe, burned out structures, and then we have others that have private owners that are not interested. And I hear what you're saying about the tax credits and the incentive for them to do that. I mean, our communities, some of them, you know, they didn't get run down overnight. This is like a hundred-year slide, you know? You can't expect them to come back in 10 minutes, you know? So these tax credits are good for a hundred years? They're good until you use them. As proposed, they're good for five years, so get them while you can. But I think, you know, the confidence a community projects is in their building, you know? And, you know, the picture of Bristol, you know, what place do you want to live in? Do you want one with buildings in good shape, with active people walking around in the streets? Or do you want one with a bunch of vacant buildings that are not being used? And I think that tipping point doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen. And we've seen, again, examples all over the state. So I do think it'll work. We have five years, if this bill passes, to prove that it'll work. If it doesn't, then it's sunsetted and that was a nice experiment. But we do get improved buildings that are on the grand list forever at an improved value, and we do have more people living in a community that otherwise wouldn't. So I think it's a low-risk investment. All right, we're keeping going. So the other thing that in the tax credits is a proposal. And this is not a new proposal. You've seen this before. As Representative Dolan knows well, everybody on this committee as well. Historically, our downtowns and villages were located on water. We've seen flooding. These are historic buildings. They're part of our community character brand economy. You know, we need them. They're not going to be relocated. But we want people to look at opportunities to, when they're making improvements to these buildings, to get the utilities out of the basement to floodproof the building to the extent possible. So when floods do occur, the communities of people living in the building, the businesses in the building can bounce back more quickly. We do know climate change is coming. You know, it is inevitable. Anything we can do to make an investment to help our communities become more proactive so our buildings are safe and our economy is not risked from these floods is a good investment. If you look at our coastal communities, they're doing this. They're hardening their infrastructure. They're raising their buildings for month is not doing this. And I think it'd be a wise investment to encourage people to consider this while we're making improvements to their buildings right now. It's often not required because they're historic buildings, but with an incentive, I think we can get people to look at this option. Next slide. I think this is the last one. Again, coastal communities, you know, they're going to experience the effects of climate change. They're already experiencing them in a much, much higher degree than we are in Vermont. You know, these people are going to be reluctant to move. This is where they live. This is where their families are. This is where their jobs are. But I think what we learned from the pandemic is everything has changed. The state is making huge investments in broadband. We've all had to work from home for two years. We kind of figured it out. It seems to me like where one works is less relevant today. And I don't think we're ever going back. We saw the relative safety of Vermont brought a lot of new people to the state because they felt like a safe place to live. We're out of the city. Lesser hearts, most of them didn't have broadband service, so they maybe regretted that decision. But we are enabling this backbone. We are a desirable place to live. If you look at the climate models for the future, Vermont is going to suffer from climate change, but not to the degree that the coastal areas are going to suffer. I think, you know, we need to be thinking ahead proactively about what the state's going to look like 30 to 50 years from now and what steps can we take to shape the housing development to ensure the landscape that we all love and want to protect is here. And the way to do it is to direct more development toward our centers and make investments to make these communities more violent. We need to shape where this housing is going to come. We shouldn't let it just happen, willy-nilly. The other thing I wanted to mention too is, you know, the designation final point, the designation programs, you know, I think you've heard me talk, they've been on the books for 20 years. We've made tweaks to them. We've worked to refine them. I think I know this committee is very interested in location-based jurisdiction, but really kind of a challenge with the designations is they are not designed to do that exactly. They were designed as benefit districts, but that's what we have. So it's what we've been using. I think they're a decent proxy for it, but we'd like to take a step back. We'd like an external review of the designation programs. Senator Bray supported this in his Act 250 bill was an external view of the state designation programs to bring them up to contemporary standards. I think to get us on a path where we can look at designating the entire settlement area, not just little pieces of it, not just the center and the neighborhoods or it's part of it. How do we look at the whole community holistically? And I think that sets us on a good, it creates a good foundation for ongoing conversations about location-based jurisdiction. Where do we want to see investments happen? Where do we want to discourage investments to happen? What kind of incentives are going to get us the outcomes we want, compact development in the centers? What kind of investments or what kind of tools and regulatory tools can we use to discourage investment in the countryside? And that's all I got. But I do, I hope you guys can support that because I think it is really important and I think it feeds into the work that you've been doing for several years. Great. Thank you. I would love it if you could provide for us examples. Your second to last slide shows an inundation type of flood, but mostly what we know we're vulnerable to are erosion flooding hazards and this kind of ask on the infill development in flood prone areas is a concern to us. So if we could ground that conversation in specifics from the existing neighborhood development areas or places that you know. I've got an example right now. I mean, you know, Taylor Street, the multimodal center, you know, that is in, you know, it is in the river corridor, in Montpeliers River corridor, but that is a managed corridor that's not going to move. The building is elevated. There's a bus station down below on its design. So I'm interested in like the universe of these. What's the, how much are we talking about in terms of increasing those investments? I get a little nervous when everyone's now all of a sudden deciding that those are not going to move when we've seen them. We've seen big things move before and they'll probably move again. So just I'm curious about how much are we talking about? How many Taylor Streets exist out there that we're talking about? In terms of the overall investment we may be looking at when we, if we enable this change, just it would be a more informed conversation. I'm happy to work it. I don't know. I mean, I don't do development. I don't do buildings, but we can ask some of our partners. Well, I think it's a GIS exercise for me. So the river corridors that are in these designated areas and that would be in these expanded neighborhood development areas, I just, I'm curious how much land are we talking about? And there's been claims that they don't have anywhere else to grow, but there's usually an upland adjacent to a valley and I guess I'm. I think, well, we can, we can do some work on that. We don't have any GIS staff, but I think we can ask ANR to help. I don't know how quickly they don't work for us directly. I try to get an answer to this. I think the thing to understand though is, you know, right now ANR's policy on infill allows infill within these areas. It is in conflict. It conflicts with our neighborhood development areas. It says these are no-go areas. We want to bring these two programs into consistency with each other, but I think the important nuance is if a community wants to do infill within the river corridor area to allow this, they have to adopt floodplain protectors up and downstream to protect the entire community. The communities who have adopted river corridor protections are very limited. I want to think it's 10 percent of communities in the state. This is actually an incentive to increase river corridor protection. I get it. I'm still just curious about what we're talking about in the universe. I'm just saying the universe is pretty small, because most communities are going to say, look, we don't want to adopt statewide border standards in our community. We're just going to exclude these areas, but for the small subset of communities who are willing to do it, I think it's a win. It's a net win. I think Representative Dolan was talking about the balancing act between the two. I got your question. I'm not arguing one way or the other right now. I just need some information about what we're talking about in terms of the area. I'm in sales mode. Sorry. I'm in fact finding mode. I lost my train of thought, but I do want to make sure that we get back to this question. Thank you for your question, Representative McCullough. I think this is not my area of expertise, so I'm just going to repeat a little bit of what I heard from other people. There is a duplicative process that A&R testified to the fact that the municipality has the same requirements that the state does. The state has testified that their oversight doesn't have anything to do with the permit fee that they collect. The oversight that gives you comfort I don't think is substantive. The oversight that A&R provides is usually at the treatment plant, as far as that has its own separate permit process. But we're talking about a very, very narrow set of permitting to make a connection to a water line, which what they look at to see is the connection designed appropriately the last 100 years or how long it needs to be buried in the ground is at the right size, the amount of people in the building, and they also do the same for the waste pipe. Is it big enough to remove the waste from the building? And the municipality needs to count the amount of gallons in and gallons out because that ties to their treatment permit from the state. The state reviews this paper, I don't think they review it, but they collect a fee for doing the same amount of work. You really need to talk to A&R about what their process and procedure is and their due diligence. But from my understanding is that there's not any meaningful oversight. And that's the frustrating thing for me. It's like, well, there's not any meaningful oversight. Why are we doing it? We want the environment to be protected. We want people to be safe in their homes. We want them to have clean water. But if the process is creating a barrier to creating housing, and it is substantial, particularly for people wanting to build ADUs, you have to hire an engineer. Before you even started, you have to hire an engineer, which can be very expensive. You have to get your local permit. And I think you'll hear from Kathy Beyer that the state permit can take a long, long time to get. And the way Act 250 works is you can't proceed with your Act 250 permit review until all your state permits are in. And sometimes these permits have taken more than six months. You should talk to her about how long it's taken. And that's expensive to hold up a process, a project for a permit process that is not providing any meaningful environmental protection. That's my take on it. You should talk to A&R. They run this program. They are supportive of this change. And many of the other stakeholders who are involved in this conversation did not see any risk in removing this duplicative review. Yes, I could see where the agency of natural resources, the agency would be supportive of removing the program where they're totally understaffed, overstressed, and would like to offload some more. So I'll just leave that as a comment as to what they might want to be doing that. You should talk to her. I mean, this is my understanding of the world. I thought you should hear from them. So I got to go back to one thing. You said you don't have GIS staff. How do you get GIS support? It's a great question. I usually beg John Adams to help me from VCGI. He doesn't work for us. He works with the agency of digital services. So we do have limited support from agency of natural resources. So we can occasionally ask for help, but we don't have any direct GIS person tasked to the agency. Did you use to before ADS? It was more, well, before ADS, VCGI was part of ACCD. So and John Adams worked in our, in my division for several years. So it was very easy to ask him for like, hey, can you help us ground truth this? And we can do that, but we just don't have, we don't have the same level of capacity service that we once did. So your question, I think it's a good one, but I don't have anybody who works for me. You can just do it. So I will work on it. Wow. Thank you. Representative Dillon. Just a follow-up on represent the colors question. It's really about the permit pertaining to the discharge of the treatment and discharge versus the hookup. So nothing changes with respect to the treatment and discharge that's still within the A&R purview. So as I'm sure compliance with Clean Water Act and our water quality standard. And then the other question kind of more directly related to represent the color is whether by removing the state, the duplication pertaining to the state and leaving the municipality, does that create, is there an incentive at the municipalities part to approve hookups because they're, you know, the more people hooking up to the system, you can spread those, the costs of that, of the maintenance of that infrastructure to a greater rate base. So the, so any issues pertaining to oversight is, are they overlooked at the local level? So that's, that's the kind of question. Are we, are we creating a greater problem by removing state oversight? I think the question you need to ask A&R is what is the nature of their oversight in this process? And if they tell you they go out to the engineers and look in the hole and to make sure it is the connections good, but they rely on the same engineer that the municipality lies on to certify the connection was done. And from what they've said in this committee is they collect their fee and they don't really look at them. They use that larger permit, this plant to monitor compliance. Thank you. Representative Bunger. Can you talk a little bit about how the tax credit works? Yeah. How much it is. Like you've got that, you've got that, how one of those forehouses, you know, but it's in the, it's in your NDA. Thank you for giving me a question. I can actually know a lot about it. What's the, how big is the tax credit? How does it relate to the investment? And what are we, what are we talking about? It's, it's a, I'm trying to do it really quickly. It is, so there's different tax credits. There's tax credits to improve the exterior of the building, so the facade tax credit, there's tax credits for code improvements to the building. So making them, you know, doing the fire protection or, or sprinkler system or anything you need to do, make the building safe, making the building ADA accessible. These things that are expensive that you need to do, but most people don't do them. And these are available only if you're on an NDA. Only if you're in a no, only if you're in a downtown and village center, right? Okay. Okay. And we want to, okay. And there's also tax credits for the upper floor access. So wheelchairs, you know, elevators, lulas, you know, which are baby elevators. So how do you get people, how do you make the building fully accessible? The really the, you know, when you do the application to qualify for the credit, really what you're building needs actually determines what your actual tax credit yield will be. So if you don't need an elevator, you're going to get a less tax, a smaller tax credit than if you do need an elevator. There is an existing historic tax credit at the federal level for historic buildings that we key into. So if you qualify for a federal rehab tax credit, you get an additional 10% from the state. So really depending on the facts and circumstances of the building and what the plans are, you kind of, you know, do this menu of options to figure out your tax credit yield. You submit the application. They're always due in July. The downtown board reviews them. We always have significant, really more demand than we have available. So not everybody wins. It's usually we're about too short of what actual demand is. Once you receive the tax credit, you do the project. Um, Julie, what people do is they take their tax credits because the numbers are not working on their building. You know, if you're only getting, you know, $5 a square foot of bank's not going to loan you the money you need to improve the building. What the tax credit works out is like, here's a check from the state of Vermont. The whole faith and credit of the state of Vermont behind you. The bank will loan on that. The project gets improved. And typically the bank purchases the credit after the fact. Somebody like me, you know, the tax credits can be $50, $100, $150,000 depending on the nature of the project. I would die before I was able to use that tax credit. So most people sell them. They sell them. You can sell them to insurance companies. You can sell them to banks. They're usually lenders who purchase them. Um, banks, bank banks, usually make a little money off the deal. If you give them $100 on a tax credit, they'll give you $0.97 back. But they're, you know, a tool that affordable housing communities use, affordable housing developers use, Monpo Main Street, you know, program works. And it is a unique program in so much as the Waze and Mean actually likes this type of revenue spending. So they're very supportive of it. And we'd like to see what it can do to support housing. Does that help? And that's high level. Okay. So what we're talking about, you can do it now in the downtown, but now we're talking about taking out to the NDAs. And, and to these, to the questions that were asked earlier about this, the forehouses and will the owner be interested? It's really, in my right, is it, it will most likely be a developer seeing the opportunity and approaching the owner. The owner's not going to get a full tax. Right. Somebody's, somebody's seeing the opportunity. Somebody's unwilling to do something with their property. They haven't done anything for 20 years. It's probably going to be somebody else who does. Yes. Okay. Give me an offer I can't refuse. And if I know I've got a tax credit in my pocket to make that work, I think you'll see some changes. A couple of questions about the tax credit. How is it decided which projects get the tax credits to feel more demand than you have? It's a beauty contest. People have to fill out an application and kind of read the board has criteria, you know, the looks at the community, you know, the value of the project and the return on the investment, you know, tax credit versus their dollars and, and they have to make some tough decisions, you know, because they're, they're typically all great projects, but they can't fund them all. And can these credits, are this the credit application process only open to people who are owners of particular buildings? No, no, it's, so you could have a project, so someone could have a project in mind and say, if I get this tax credit, then I could go ahead and so owners or you could have an agreement with a, with an owner that says contingent upon getting a tax credit. Owners or lessors are qualified, but you have to have the, if you're the leaseee of the building, you have to have the permission of the owner to do the improvement. We often see this in Main Street buildings, you know, somebody owns the building, but a new business wants to go in. The owner's like, yeah, I'll sign the lease, but I'm not making the building improvements, you know, to fit up your space or do whatever you need to make the building safe. So in that instance, you know, the person leasing it will get the credit, make the building. Somebody has to be an owner or someone who's leasing the building. Not for private owners. Yeah, this would not be for like, I can't get a tax credit to fix up my house that I live in. But if I wanted to do an accessory dwelling unit within my house, because my child's leaving the house, we've got, you know, we live in a 3000 square foot house, there's too much space for two people. And I want to divide the house and to create another unit, I would be able to to create and use the tax credit to create an accessory unit within that building. Yeah, so many of you talked about different types of the different programs that for facade for accessibility and such. What would that one fall under? Well, it just depends, you know, like, if it was just if I was, let's say I just wanted to fix up the barn to make an accessory dwelling unit. So not subdividing within my existing home. And the outside of the building needed a lot of work. And I wanted to make the building, you know, accessible, because I wanted it to, you know, it was the right thing to do. It really depends on, you know, the nature of the development that's proposed, but but just because it's an accessory dwelling unit itself would not qualify it for tax credit. You know, the income producing, it has to be a rental property. Right, right, right. But I'm saying in terms of being able to access the money, even if it's rental, a rental property, producing property. The fact that it's an accessory dwelling unit by itself would not be enough to trigger a tax credit. You'd have to, you'd have to fall into one of these other criteria of facade or. Yeah, yeah. I mean, one, you have to be in producing and then two, with the needs of the building have to be a good fit for what the programs offer. And then there's a cap. So right. Not everybody who applies presumably gets it. And I'm done. We're hoping, you know, if we can get the increase in funding that we can make the program a little bit more reliable and predictable. So if I do X, Y is going to happen. Right now, it's a little bit of a risky proposition. I kind of get some other question, which is, you know, we've, I've heard figures about the housing, the cost of the housing needs in state being like hundreds of millions of dollars. And we're talking about adding $2 million to this program. It's sort of seems like we're not, we're not really talking about very much money here compared to what our need is. It's what it seems. It also sounds like it just feels like it's some sort of disconnect here for me that even though the program is oversubscribed, you're getting more demand than you can fulfill already, this increasing, this increasing amount of money, especially if you open up to bigger areas, it's probably not going to solve that problem. We're still going to go demand. But it also sounds like the overall demand, which is out there for housing is so much bigger than even what people are asking for help with. This is not the only housing investment we're making. This is a little bit of a proof of concept that, you know, our ultimate goal is just to get communities to modernize their bylaws to create compact centers so people will develop them in a compact way to get them open to change, welcoming change to welcoming new communities, welcoming new members of their communities. Right now, we don't have the right benefits to get the small towns interested in this designation. This is proposed as a five-year test to see if this, you know, shiny thing will get us elect board's attention to go through the process to qualify. Again, bylaw, bylaws were the major barrier. We hope to, you know, we've got 41 towns working on bylaw modernization grants to overcome that barrier. The Senate supported an additional increase of another $650,000. So we have a next round of communities that will qualify. You know, this is, this is an incentive to give people's attention to modernize their money. It's not going to solve the housing problem. No, no, no, no. I'm just trying to put my mind around, you know, where it fits into the bigger picture. And many communities, you know, the zoning is not supporting, you know, they have large minimum lot sizes and they have water and wastewater infrastructure makes no sense. You know, this is where homes can be naturally more affordable. But where the zoning is such in the single family neighborhoods, you know, people don't want to change, you know, and how do we, how do we get these conversations going? And we get it by getting a few communities making a few changes and the sky doesn't fall and actually having a few more. Which was actually a good thing and people are more welcoming, but it's not going to, it's not going to change quickly. Just a small point, the five-year sunset, that's just for this additional $2 million that doesn't touch the... So the principle, I think the way the bill's structured, it increases the cap overall to $5 million base funding. The NDA benefit splits sunset after five years. It's one quick one. It doesn't matter. Short-term or long-term rentals, long if it doesn't matter. Right now it's agnostic whether it's short or long-term. Another piece of the bill, just FYI, is Senator Sorokin is a big fan of accessory dwelling units. There is a $5 million carve out in the DHIP program specifically for accessory dwelling units. Those must be long-term rentals. They can't... Oh, so but the tax credit could be in either, but because I remember seeing that, Sorokin. Okay, great. Thank you. It's very helpful. All right. Thanks for your time. And if you have any more questions, you know, how to get us, and we'll work on the mapping thing, but I don't think I can get you something like, you know, it may take a couple of days. It may even be next week. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll take a 10-minute break.