 Actually, I had a chat with one of the financial people at VTRANS and they tell us because of the FAST Act, we have all the authority for bills. The transportation money is not an effect. Some of the transportation staff may be over on the government side, but the ones who they need to talk to or have been there and they're answering the phone, they're paying the bills, because we're authorised. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's very big. It's like 20 years. Yeah, I heard about 20,000 IRS people, is that what I heard today? Yeah, he'll get a kick out of it. They're beautiful. He's leaving some accountable things. He's got his projects still. Oh, yeah. All the little ladies in the place are bringing up their roles. January 16, 2019 meeting of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. First item on the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Are there any? Hearing none. The next item is a public comment period for items not on the agenda. Are there any members of the public here who would like to address the topic that is not on our agenda this evening? Hearing none. The next is action on consent agenda. Are there any, does anybody wish to remove any of the items from the consent agenda? Is there a second? I'll second. All in favour say aye. Who's second? I'm member of communication. Everybody should know I'm also acting as the S-extrusion alternate. You should have you bring like a sock puppet when you do that. I could say really be. No, no, no, no. All we need. And just, yeah, and there were new ones that were passed around. I am. Next item is approval of our November 28, 2018 minutes. I'll second. Are there any comments, changes, questions? Any comments, changes? I have to abstain, I wasn't here. That's right. Well, that's true. I should have done that. I read them to find out what happened anyway. In lieu of Catherine, anyone else? Hearing none, all in favour say aye. Opposed? You guys have it. Next up are our mid-year adjustments with respect to the budget and the fiscal year 19 UPWP. Oh, I'm sorry, abstentions. I was just seeing if you're paying attention there, Bernie. Tony. I'll say Bernie. Yeah, work program. I'm sorry. Yeah, there's an updated memo in front of you, I hope. So one pager. So you may or may not recall, but every year in the middle of the year we do an update to our work program. We usually have a few tasks that have kind of been asked for that have come into the work program or some changes. There may also be a couple tasks that will fall out. So in the document, the big document, I'm not going to walk through it line by line because I care about you too much. Yeah, but there's so if there are any questions on that, please let me know. And you'll see in the revised memo, we have a few little financial tweaks as we were just adjusting some dollars different than what your document says. So a few thousand dollars in different tasks and the overall budget changes a little bit in terms of the MPO work. Questions, no comments. All right. Now this is a MPO vote. There's actually two votes is MPO vote and then the full RPC votes on the UPWP. Okay. So I guess first we will have the MPO vote with respect to the mid-year adjustment to the UPWP work plan. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it. Now for the RPC approval. And it was unanimous. Is there a motion with respect to RPC approval? So moved. Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. And now for the budget. RPC approval. Yeah, do you want to look at that a little more detail? Is there anything more to do? Any further discussion? So the earlier discussion. Okay. Is there a vote for RPC approval of the mid-year budget adjustment? Second. I'll second. Tony. He actually only asked for a motion on the UPWP and not on the budget. That was on the full UPWP for the full RPC. Yeah. Okay. Before the whole budget now. That's all right. To approve the RPC budget mid-year adjustment. Jim moved it. Tony seconded. Just testing the systems Bernie. Get our money's worth out of you tonight. Any further discussion? Any questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it. Next item is the Richmond town plan approval, confirmation of planning process, and determination of energy compliance. Emily will address this. Thank you. You have before you the Richmond town plan. And we have three things as was mentioned. The first is the approval and confirmation of this plan, which is something that you've seen quite often for plans that are in front of you. We have staff review of that aspect of the plan that was included in your packet. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have on it. The third item in here is a determination of energy compliance. As you might remember from our Ecos plan process, we now have our own energy compliant plan. And with this, we get substantial difference on our policies before the PUC. And we're able to also grant this to other municipalities that meet the requirements and having a determination in their own municipal plan. So Richmond is our very first municipality that has chosen to do this. They've worked quite extensively with Melanie on this. And now that the plan has been adopted, we're able to review it against the standards that the Department of Public Service puts out. We've determined that it does meet them. And we're able to give them this determination as part of our approval and confirmation process. So you have advised the Planning Advisory Committee and staff both recommend that the plans meet all the standards for approval, confirmation and determination. I'm happy to answer any questions about the process. Otherwise, anyways, that's all. Any questions? Comments? We're required to make a motion. Well, my first comment is thanks for all your help and support in getting to this. It was interesting. The one point of controversy was actually about energy efficiency. The select board included a sentence, which was quite controversial among some of the Planning Commission. But the voters as a whole approved the town plan. So it was an interesting political exercise or case study. So thanks for your support in getting to this. So I guess I'd ask you in a motion to approve the Richmond Town Plan as presented. Second. And by approval, that would mean authorization for me to sign the resolution that's included in the packet, which makes all of the necessary findings. Move the staff recommendation. That's right. And is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Possible friendly amendment. Did we include a confirmation of their local planning process? Yes. That's encompassed within the resolution. Anything more? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it. Next item on the agenda. The Clean Water Advisory Committee membership guidelines recommendation. So there's a little memo in your packet. You'll remember, I'm going to say it was maybe back in the spring. Or was it the fall? Sometimes in 2018. There was discussion. Yeah, it was the right October at this table. And we adjusted the quack membership as a board. We then asked them to come up with some more guidelines. I think these were some suggestions that were tossed to the quack. And you'll see that it wasn't a unanimous vote, but it was 15-4-2 against and two members abstained to approve the four criteria or guidelines for non-municipal members of the Clean Water Advisory Committee. And so this is just coming back to you for board approval of these guidelines for future non-municipal members. Is there a definition of the fourth part of the recommendation? How primarily is defined? I was going to ask the same question because by design these organizations, their entire mission is to lobby for water quality. So I don't understand how that last one works. And maybe you're thinking about a particular organization, I'm not sure. That was really the primary topic of debate at the Clean Water Advisory Committee. I think they were asking some questions of that. I'm looking at Brian a little bit because he was there, but I don't think they reached any better resolution other than they know it when they saw it. Yes, I think they could speak for at least one of the people who was outvoted. I thought four was covered within one. I hadn't looked at it at John's point of view, but I think that still sort of applies. If you're a lobbyist and your primary focus is watersheds and from often you're going to fall under the first of those four categories, for lack of a better word. And Don expressed it pretty well that he didn't think there was any point in limiting the membership and having that fourth one in there as sort of a negative to perhaps keep the membership down wasn't necessary. Now, it's my understanding that these are guidelines, so it's stuff that is taken into account as the quack would evaluate and ultimately the commission would evaluate whether a particular correct. 50.01% of their activity, is it 60, is it 75? I'll often develop that over time. Can you say primarily is 25? I just wonder in what day we're deciding. As a municipal member of the organization, I would hate to see just political organizations become voting members of the Clean Water Advisory Committee for whatever reason. So the flavor and the tender that I'm getting is that we're not going to micromanage the Clean Water Advisory Committee. We're going to allow them to self-select their members. They would only be recommending to the board a member. So these are some guidelines for the Clean Water Advisory Committee, so there's still kind of a double screen happening. Okay, so we are... So, okay. I mean, and I was wondering, so if you're a member of the Clean Water Advisory Board, you are a voting member. We don't have non-voting members, except for... Yeah, and that was another topic that they kind of flirted with addressing and then they stepped away from it and just decided to approve these four guidelines. Yeah. Because that could have been part of the solution, would be maybe they're not voting, but they didn't end up there. They just sort of recommended these four guidelines. I'm trying to respect the committee's process. So the primary guideline is that they're interested in watersheds. Well, and I think number two is... And three are both important in that they're trying to have organizations that are actually actively partnering with municipalities in furthering water quality projects. So I don't want to over... Given that as their mission, how is that not lobby? I mean, they come to our towns and they lobby in favor of these things that they want. They talk to our leaders. I mean, lobbying can be a dirty word if you want to look at it that way, but it's also just a process of what people do. These organizations, and I'm not speaking against them. I support them. But their whole mission is to lobby for water quality. So if they're primarily engaged in that political... That's what they do. Well, isn't that what Charlie goes to Montpelier? Isn't that what he's doing on behalf of our municipalities? And I think it's a question of whether you're a 501c3 that is not supporting a political candidate and... We don't lobby. Well, we're advocating. Well, that's the distinction. You can be an advocate without being a lobbyist. And I think the term here probably ties into basically the regulations regarding when you have to register as a lobbyist. That is, you are lobbying. I can go down and testify. I'm comfortable with that. If that's the interpretation, if somebody's registered as a lobbyist, but the problem is, as you well know, that nonprofit organizations can have multiple arms. And they're all registered as lobbyists. They have people who are registered as lobbyists. Well, a lot of them do. Not all of them. Not all of them. So we're going to exclude them? That don't make any sense. Well, and again, I think that that goes back to... These are guidelines. As long as the top of the food chain still has a yay or nay. It's okay. I think it's something to take into account. If you had... So whether a group is overtly political or somewhat political, that'll get thrown into the pot with everything else, and they'll evaluate it and make their recommendation based on that. And if it doesn't work well, then we'll task the quack with coming up with better guidelines. Better guidelines and a better acronym. That's like water. Just so you know. Any further discussion? Hearing none, is there a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the guidelines that's recommended by the quack. I'll second that. For discussion. Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The ayes have it. Next up is the commission on Act 250, the next 50 years and its recommendations. Regina is going to be the master of ceremonies for this. She did give you a one-page bullet list. Two. Yeah, I guess. One piece of paper. She spared you the other 74 pages. Exactly. But this is kind of an introductory pages on top of the draft bill. The older list of what was coming out of this. Yep. So what we're going to do tonight is just give a little bit of an overview of some of the key points that are made in two proposed legislations. One is from the active 50 commission. The other is from the administration's proposed bill as well. We'll talk about this again at the end, but essentially what we've got going on is an ad hoc review committee of the board members. So this is just an overview. That ad hoc committee is going to work for the next two weeks on proposed recommendations for the board. Executive committee and Pat will review those in February. We'll be back here at this board next month with some recommendations. So I invite anybody to chime in along the way. Sharon very worked tons and tons and tons on this. Chris is probably pretty well aware of everything. And anybody else who's got thoughts, please chime in. I really just read through this stuff today. This is the most boring presentation. Lots of words. Sorry about that. Only 12 slides and we will see maps. That'll be the highlight. Okay. So active 50 was originally enacted in 1970. So in 2017 the legislature charged a legislative commission actually to look at the legislation now that it will be 50 years in 2020. This active 50 is the most amended legislation in the state, which is pretty interesting. It has been messed with, tweaked whole slew of times. And its effectiveness is highly debated. So essentially the legislative commission put together a whole report. They just finalized this a week and a half ago. It's a pretty in-depth report and there are recommendations. Chris is showing it for anybody who would like to see. And it has no maps or anything. I didn't have the 19 appendixes that go with it. That's where you get all your maps. But the commission worked on this quite a bit. They did a whole lot of public engagement. VPA was pretty active. Lots of other advisors to the commission were pretty active in getting input to them. And so the report summarizes some data points and then goes into recommendations on changes in all areas of the law. So these are some of their findings from the data part of it. And it's pretty interesting. So we've got some environmental problems still. But one big component that kept coming up quite a bit, when this was first enacted in 1970, there really was not much other environmental regulation at all. Now we are in a very different environment, both at the municipal level and at state, federal level. So I'm going to try to keep my opinions as much as I can off the date until we get to that. So this was a great summary, I thought, from Alex Weinhagen. He's the BPA Legislative Liaison, Vermont Planners Association. So I'll just let everybody read that for a second. So one important thing, I think, at least from my hope when we went into this, is that there would be some clarifications, but we would also, clarifications in terms of what this regulation should be protecting, but also where development should happen. And I think the latter half of that is lacking, from my own opinion. Again, anybody chime in. So I think some of the good that's in here, there is greater emphasis on the importance of regional and local plans. The commission's proposed bill does indicate that regional plans should be approved in order to come into play at the Act 250 perspective. As most of you know, regional plans aren't approved by anybody other than the RPC boards themselves, with the exception of the enhanced energy designation, which is a new process. So we'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. So currently, in most of our region, Act 250 is triggered, meaning a development has to go to Act 250 if commercial industrial development is on a parcel, 10 acres or greater, or if you're doing a housing development of 10 units or more. There's a whole bunch of other triggers that kick you in as well, but those are sort of the two kind of main basic things that kick you in. This proposed legislation really proposes a big switch from that, and it identifies natural resources, and if your proposed development is in one of those natural resource areas, then you go to Act 250. The other thought about that is that we would also identify areas where we want to see growth to happen, and you wouldn't have to go to Act 250 in those areas. There is, I'll get into it a little bit more, there's a concept of an enhanced designation, which plays that second role, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. There is a permit release provision, so this essentially means if you have a property that had to get an Act 250 permit the very first time it happened, and let's say you're in a growth center, and if you're doing a change to it, or the new development that you want to do on that lot no longer meets the thresholds or the triggers for Act 250, you no longer have to just go to Act 250 because the property at some time in its history had to go to Act 250. That's kind of the general concept there. But you'd still need to meet all the other permit requirements. A and R and D, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then there is a consolidated appeal route for Act 250 and A and R permits, so the idea here is to try to bring some coordination and some consolidation between the Act 250 permit and your A and R permits. So some initial concerns, the decreased jurisdiction in existing settlements isn't super clear. The enhanced designation is really only tied to the state designation programs. Those are really, really small, limited, geographically, areas. And there's really no accommodation for areas planned for growth. So our map that's up on the room to the left, everything on that map outside of the green areas in our plan are areas planned for growth. I'll show you this on a map later, but the red areas, if you can distinguish on that map, are some of those state designations and then some of those yellow areas are the village designations. But much, much smaller area than what we planned for here in our region. So the proposed legislation has the regional plan approval. So again, this is proposing that if our regional plan has weight in Act 250, it's because it gets approved. And the approval body is the Vermont Environmental Review Board, which this bill proposes, this board replaces the Natural Resources Board, which we have now. VAPTA has had some thoughts about this and we've got some concerns about whether that's the right board to approve our plan. And ultimately, I think we'd really want a lot of collaboration in that process of figuring out how the plans get approved and some fair representation on there. The proposed bill really expands the legislation, I think. It brings in, not that these are bad things by any means, climate change, energy, forest blocks. It includes, so right now for ag soils, if you develop in ag soils, you've got to either avoid developing the ag soils or mitigate that development through a mitigation fee. This bill also calls for a mitigation fee system for forest blocks. So just in thinking about that overall in relation to our bigger other challenges and goals that we've got here in the region and the state in terms of the cost that that adds to the overall affordable housing challenge. River corridors. So the state has been reviewing developments in river corridors. So just super, super quick. A floodplain is the area where a river goes up. Floods takes up area this way. River corridors acknowledges that rivers move and shift and evolve over time. So it's more of a horizontal area that the river needs. These maps have been mapped by A&R, but they're not tweaked with more accurate data that we have from geomorphic assessments that we've done quite some time ago. We've been waiting for that to happen. They have not adjusted that map data. And so this proposed legislation really solidifies that they're looking at river corridors. We're not opposed to it, but they've got to be using the right data before they do that. Can I just quickly add some things in response to this? I think you're right about the first bullet that's still an open-ended question about existing settlements under criterion nine. But part of this was also making the state reissue their capability and development plan maps, which technically are supposed to show where existing settlements are. And there's also a more heavy reliance. I think there will be criteria 10 in local and regional plans for defining those planned areas of growth. And I will also say that the test under criteria 10, we've had years of debate over should versus shall and whether plans are aspirational or not. They've revised the test under criteria 10 based on the last Supreme Court decision. I wouldn't say it relaxed it, but it allows a view of the planned maps and the narrative to make those interpretations and not just specific policy language. Did it change any of the roughly three dozen criteria at all? Or was it that? For which? There's 10 criteria, but if you look at all the criteria. There's all the criteria lines, and that's one of the reasons they're bringing back the capability and development plan maps because they were specifically tied to that originally. And without that for context, they're very hard to apply. With the second one, there's options for that too. The reason it was picked as the natural resources board and environmental board is because they currently review the energy plans on appeal. And it's also this is specific for active use in Act 250 and not more general function, but that's definitely open for discussion. And Regina's right about the bullet. There are going to be some costs associated with some of the criteria about, or especially around climate change. The force block step, I think they were mainly looking at the pattern of development and in other words requiring clustering in those areas and some other things. But there is that mitigation for you to catch too. And I will say, as Regina noted for the river quarter maps, they already apply those in Act 250. Basically in all of this, the maps are going to be used as indicators. They still have to be improved on the ground in relation to a particular project. So my understanding is that ANR protocols will still apply in terms of how that's defined on the ground. But you're right, the maps themselves have not been updated. And just to answer another question, there are additional, the number of criteria. So criteria have increased. So criteria in 1A right now deals with air pollution. That's going to be broken into two pieces. The air pollution will remain and then there's going to be one with respect to greenhouse gases, emissions associated with a project and it will have that mitigation regime that we currently use with agricultural soils. There's also going to be new sub criteria within criteria in 8 for force block fragmentation and habitat fragmentation. And both of those likewise will have a mitigation fee component which is going to require whatever the board ends up being called if this were to pass to promulgate rules regarding that as well. The energy piece, there's currently an energy conservation, there's currently an energy conservation criterion. They're also adding energy efficiency to that as well. So there are some more things that would be going into the process. There's also a proposal to drop the 2,500 foot threshold for 2,000 to cover some more regional areas. And obviously there's a cottage industry and project sizing to not hit the triggers in the current Act 250. That's why we've got 75% of the growth not being covered by Act 250. Is there any discussion about, I'm assuming, that the resource base triggers now for coverage or designed to lower the percentage of, has anybody given, is there any discussion about the size of the administrative apparatus and the timing? I imagine Chris is staffing up at his shop and things like that. There are still some yellow highlighted areas of the legislation that need more discussion around that. But this would contemplate, I mean, when the environmental board was replaced or transformed into the natural resources board and they stopped doing Act 250 appeals, that organization shrunk significantly. The new tasks here not only returning the appellate function regarding A&R appeal, permit appeals, and Act 250 appeals, but also these other review functions would require ramping that back up significantly. Another issue that creates, I was on the environmental board in the mid-2000s and the happenstance that the day after I was appointed pretty much the legislature started talking about getting rid of the environmental board is purely a coincidence. But back then one of the conundrums was if the environmental board is hearing Act 250 appeals it's supposed to be an objective quasi-judicial body. Yet the environmental board is supposed to administer and supervise district commissions and provide them with advice and guidance as they deal with permits. You couldn't really do that. You could advise them on a particular application if you were going to be judging it later. And that was one of the benefits of breaking that into the core because it allowed a freer conversation to take place. And I think that's one of the unintended consequences of if you move the appellate function back to the board I think that that either is going to limit their ability to provide advice to district commissions with respect to pending applications or it's going to involve a quasi-judicial body advising on the decision below and then deciding it on appeal. So there's a whole lot of moving parts here. In terms of the potential climate change review is that going to include the impact during construction or just the long-term impact of whatever the development is? It does not limit it to any particular phase. One thing that they do specifically mention is vehicles. But there's no limitation to whether that's going to be once it's in operational mode or if that's construction phase as well. There was a lot of discussion about things like concrete and how much greenhouse gas emissions come out of things like concrete. So I think the intent is to somehow deal with both and it's still really up in the air and how that can be addressed. I'm just thinking in terms of transportation projects in specific, I mean, they're a mess in terms of what they do while they're under construction but can have great benefit once they're finished. You know, so I don't know, not knowing anything of where it's going, I'm just wondering how much one phase of operation will play versus another, considering the development is for multiple, multiple years and the construction is short-term. If they don't mind me interjecting. How fast is this going to develop? I mean, you know, we're talking about having a subgroup, getting something turned around in a month and making decisions about what we think the position should be and what our input should be on the legislation, okay? This is an enormously complex issue. There's a lot of things that we're not going to know about it. So how are we reasonably going to be able to put forth a set of recommendations in a month? I don't think it's going to be as... I mean, there may be some basic concepts. I mean, this is as I envisioned the task force. There's going to be some guiding principles that we'll bring to the table. But other than that, I agree. I would be shocked if anything comes out of this. Maybe we could spend an hour and a half just doing bullet three. Yeah. And I think even between now and a month from now, the proposal is probably going to change a whole slew of times. If they do want to get at least portions of this through this year, it's going to start in house after resources. Amy Sheldon is the chair of that. She was also the chair of the corporation. Structural things like adding the criteria or something? I also think you're right. There's a lot of open-ended stuff. So some of this very well may go into the two-year session or even into the next... But yeah, my understanding is it's going to start in house after resources. In 2014, for those of you who were here and remembered, we had a permit reform committee provide some sort of pretty overview policy statements. It's about a two-page document. And I envision we would come up with something similar in nature to help guide this. Can we revitalize that or something? To see where we come from? Start from that, because that has some principles. Because I can't remember what we did in 2014. It might as well be 20 years ago. I'm Kurt Carter. I'm old enough to be to have been an Act 250 coordinator back in 1970, so I'll admit to her up front. Here, as a... trying to help out a little bit in the process based on my close to 50 years of experience with Act 250. And I think Regina's had a good job of glossing over some of the main points here, but there's a lot in here. And I think I've read through 76 pages of the proposed legislation. And it's a moving target. There's going to be lots of changes to it. But I think, Jeff, it's important that the commission get involved and raise some flags here. I think there's some real issues as proposed. One of the things that's talked about a little bit is this tiered jurisdiction. They're really looking at changing the jurisdiction and dropping it down to projects on more than one acre if you're in a rural and working lands area, which is defined as any area that is not an existing settlement or a critical resource area. So to me, that's kind of most everything out there. And I think we're going to, even though there's an opportunity on the enhanced designation to be exempted from 250, I think that's going to be a long haul to get that designation. And I note that something that Regina hasn't got to yet, it looks like for village centers, you need water and sewer in order to be qualified as an enhanced designation. And that's going to be difficult for a lot of people. You look at the maps up there, and there's not a lot of municipal sewer for most of our county. So I just think it's important to get involved and take a good hard look at this. I'll help out on the subcommittees where I can just give a little bit of background to it. But I think it's important that CCRPC weigh in on this. There's some really ramifications here that it's pretty kind of loosened right now, and he's a lot tight now. Do we have, at the early indication, is that how he wants to respond? At this point, I just think maybe he's just starting. Yeah. I don't want to demonstrate something. I don't think I've even heard if the bill's actually been introduced. The bill that we're looking at is the one that was appended to the report, which was a draft. And it still does have a lot of mail on it. All right, let me just get through a few more of these slides. We're talking about most of it already, so we can get through here pretty quick. So here's the concept, a change in the jurisdiction. This is the first bullet, is what Kurt just was mentioning, rural and working lands, and the critical resource areas. I'm going to show you a map in the second of what the critical resource areas look like for our county. And there's some room for no Act 250 review in enhanced designations. Again, that's a small geography under this current state designation system, including villages. But one thing, like Kurt just pointed out, you got to have water and wastewater first, which is sort of really unworkable. Well, that's what some of the municipalities were pushing for. They actually wanted to be exempt from Act 250 if it was in a downtown, right? Yeah. And the water, wastewater thing is an issue, like maybe if you're in a small village, it could be that you're trying to need a development project to come in, like St. George kind of needs that development project to come in to get the wastewater project to happen. Jeff's everywhere that they need to do that stuff. And then we will have made a desert and then we will have to build a irrigation system to flood the desert. So, this is essentially the critical resource areas as mapped for our region. So there's, this is very difficult to see. I don't expect you to see it, but just trying to give you a sense overall of what the areas are, what the overall areas that are essentially the concept is no matter what development you're doing in these areas, you're going to go to Act 250. That's the idea. Again, some of that's not quite worked out. It's not clear if it's going to be like a two lot subdivision has to go, but there's, this is the general concept. So, if you, I'll zoom in a little bit. This, the purple are the steep slopes and it's an enormous data set. So this, we might lose this map as we go here, but there are orange circles around the interchanges on the interstate. So, the proposed bill adds a 3,000 foot buffer around the interchanges. Development within those areas would go to Act 250 unless you're in an existing settlement, that area that's not well defined or mapped anywhere. So, other things just very quickly. This shows elevation over 2,000 feet. Again, that's a proposed change right now. It regulates over 2,500 feet. This shows critical resource area includes 15% slope and greater. River corridors, where's my quick list? I'm going to forget the other ones. Forest blocks? Forest blocks are on here and mapped, but they are not in the critical resource area. They're just being added to the legislation as a new area to, to regulate. River corridors, steep slopes over 25, over 2,000 feet. Wetlands? Wetlands, thank you. That's a, that it is truly a critical resource area. So, just for that real quick. Then... What was the blue? Oh, so that's showing under here. I turned on the state designations, so they're kind of hard to see, but you see those areas. The blue is right in Burlington. You see, well... S-exjunction. S-exjunction. South Burlington. It's a little easier to see those over here on their own. So, these are the state designations. You see the orange villages out further east, and then our growth centers are... The blue is the neighborhood development areas. So, just again, these are small, small areas. Yes. Okay. Let me just pick back up here. Three more slides. So, this is Sharon mentioned. The existing settlement areas, not well-defined, they are bringing back the concept of the capability and development maps. These were part of the original Act 250 legislation. They basically are intended to be a plane, like we know them, and maps that explain where you shouldn't develop and where you should develop. So, if this happens and it helps bring consistency, and we've got an ability to influence that, these could be helpful. The proposed bill does require consultation with the RPCs prior to completion of the update. I think it'd be better if it was much earlier in the process, and that might be intended, but that's definitely the wording. Are not municipalities just RPCs? I don't think municipalities are listed. And then the idea is that once these maps are developed, like they were back early when legislation first started, that they actually stay updated along the way. So, other components, just really quick. We don't need to get into this in too much detail, but how recreation trails are dealt with in Act 250 today is very confusing. This bill proposes to clarify that. There's some agriculture and forest exemptions worked out and clarified in here. Already talked about the 2000 from 2500 feet. Talked about the interchange areas. There are lots in here, again, about how A&R permits and Act 250 sort of play together. There is an addition, which I just wanted to point out for our region because we do have some impaired waters. There is a presumption that there's no presumption. If you get an A&R permit to discharge into impaired water, it doesn't just mean you're okay. In Act 250, you have to work through that. Just so people understand, that means lay members of a district commission would be making determinations about stormwater and water quality and would not have to defer in any way the technical expertise of A&R. You could get a permit from A&R, you could design it in accordance with A&R's guidelines, but if the three district coordinators just thought it just didn't seem right, they would not have to defer to A&R on those issues. Likewise, that would carry over to the Environmental Appeal Board as well. Appeals, Chris talked about this already. This is not in the proposed bill because it doesn't require a legislative change, but there's a concept in the summary report, I believe, to reactivate the development cabinet. This is an idea that at the administrative level, there would be much more coordination and organization between all the permits that one would need. That's the idea. We don't need to go into that too much detail right now unless you want to add anything, Sharon. It's really intended to re-establish what used to exist. There was a group of staff-level folks under the development cabinet that used to coordinate the Inter-Agency Review of Act 1548 permits, and so there was one contact person if you were dealing with all the agencies that were involved. There was one consolidated review that was issued through their attorney. That's since broken down, and so now applicants and everybody have to go to a bunch of different people, and every agency that you have to deal with under Act 250. So the intent was to try to re-establish that just through a coordinated inter-agency review process. Then enhanced designation. This is what we talked about so far. So this is essentially really the kind of one avenue for lack of a better phrase, getting out of Act 250 review if you already do a lot of this stuff at the local level. The bar is kind of high in some circumstances, I think, and again, the geographies are pretty limited. Talked about this already, but this is essentially the next steps for us. I was kind of struck that the commission didn't really look at the larger context of this. Act 250 makes a lot of sense to me in the context that it came about. We were in a high growth period after IBM and the interstate opened in the 60s and 70s and it was trying to get control of that. Municipalities didn't have the regulations they do today. I guess because I just came from another couple of meetings where I was hearing things about our growth rates and what's happening in the entire state. Which is that in today's circumstance and context for this, and I started reading the report and I kind of got frustrated because it is starting from the presumption that we're in kind of the same place we were in 1970 and the same issues of high growth and sprawl and things are the things we need to get control of. I'm not saying we shouldn't have control of those. I'm just saying I'm not sure that we couldn't have used this opportunity to also address our current situation which is that we are not growing as a state. There's been some population growth in Jidding County but it's basically been offset by population decline in other counties and I think that extends a lot to employment as well. So I'm not sure how this is helping the context that we are in the state of strengthening both our natural resources and our economy and our quality of life. And I saw no discussion of that really in the larger context. So I'm not sure where to go with that other than be frustrated. Well, I know that in the findings that they had as sort of the foundation that leads into their various recommendations what they were doing a lot of is they were taking data points 1970 and now saying how much things have increased or decreased which seemed like a big number but there was no effort at comparing that to anything. So it might have been the slowest rate of growth in the country or the fastest rate of growth. So you had for instance since 1970 Vermont's per capita income adjusted for inflation has nearly tripled. I'm not sure what that has to do with Act 250 except and I don't know if tripled is a lot or a little for 50 years. Vermont's ranking among U.S. states for per capita annual income rose from 33 to 19. That's good but it's sort of it stands alone. Vermont's population has grown by nearly half and it's workforce by more than half. That is reflective of the past not the current in accordance with what you're saying Charlie and then Vermont's unemployment rate has dropped from 8.7% in 1976 to 2.8% in August 2018 which suggests we've got some room for more unemployment. I'm not exactly sure. Why didn't they use 1970 there? Why did they use 76? 76 was right at the end of a recession and it was one of the worst recessions that we ever had. That's at the beginning of the report. We're talking about unemployment rates that are as low now as they were in the late 60s. What I think is trying to show is that we have all this new development because we have all these jobs coming in with jobs equate buildings of things and therefore we need to control these things. That's what that's trying to do. Growth and wealth. It's fun with statistics as well. Then you had another one and this was again with no barometer to measure the relevance wasn't clear to me. Vermont's rate of land development has substantially exceeded its rate of population growth with land development growing at a rate of from 2.5 to 6 times its population growth since 1982. I don't know if that is in terms of grand list value or what it is. That's based on land cover data. So land coverage. Vermont is experiencing significant creation of small parcels. Now we're going to pick a time period 2004 to 2016. 8,645 new parcels between 0 and 10 acres in size were created in the state. I have no idea what that means other than 8,645 new parcels. Sounds like a lot. Big numbers. So there was a lot of this and it was intended to and anecdotally They were all in downtown Burlington right? Anecdotally I also can say that the Act 250 regime has felt as if it's been shunted to the side over the years. Part of it is because as more and more property is subject to Act 250 there's less property to become subject to Act 250. All of these sort of high profile energy projects were sent over to the Public Utility Commission for review. Appeals were taken away and people who work within Act 250 feel very strongly and very passionately about their mission to protect Vermont's environment and this is very much an effort by them to reassert the Act 250 regime as sort of a leader in dealing with all kinds of development. One of the other jurisdictional changes that wasn't mentioned one of the options they have in their proposed legislation is that energy projects above 2,000 feet would be subject to Act 250. So along with PUC they're contemplating that. So there's a lot of moving pieces here and every legislator hears from constituents on both sides of the issue and a lot of them will have very personal stories that they're going to bend their legislator's ear about and I fully expect that what will eventually come out of this process is going to look very little like the start but as was mentioned we want to be in the process as early as we can not to be drafting legislation or to be getting down into the minutiae of this consistent with our 2014 policy statement really set forth some guiding principles based upon the realities of Chittenden County and our member municipalities that we would like to see dealt with either to the extent they are dealt with be supportive of it or to the extent they aren't advocate for them being more clearly addressed like how you deal with affordable housing I mean that's always about chasing the tail Does this mean we're going to have to go out and collect comments from the legislative bodies and the staffs of our member municipalities too? I don't think so we can certainly solicit it but I don't know that we're going to hold it up because frankly each town and the LCT So whose water are we carrying when we're sitting educating and listening the RPC as a planning organization and not as an organization representing our member municipalities or trying to make it so that they don't do something like all of a sudden we have to put in our UPWP $25,000 every four years to get our plan approved and that kind of thing Is that what we're doing? That'll be the discussion the first meeting of the task force I'm looking at as sort of guidance what we did with the 2014 statement and to the extent we can align our principles with that I think it's a continuation of a message that we've delivered over the years with respect to permit reform which has been talked about every biennium but not a whole heck of a lot has been done they threw in 9L and stuff like that I would really like the ad hoc committee to spend a little time figuring out how we're going to interface with our member municipalities on this so that we're not doing something that they're going to do themselves or that we can do something that maybe can help them do things they wouldn't ordinarily be able to do in a world where it's better to not just have one voice but have a lot of them and have them be coordinated it just seems to me that if we don't interface municipalities and their staffs who are missing a really good opportunity to leverage what we're doing and to make it more effective if I could just kind of add to that I think we'll be most effective when it's there's more people behind us whether it's the municipalities the environmental community and the business community there's a middle spot here that works and we spend a bunch of time on our plans trying to come up with the right balance so I think furthering our plan objectives and goals and doing that communication outreach I think critically important because the more voices we have singing from the same sheet of music I didn't have the free time to go attend one of the wonderful sessions that they had all over the state and I'm just curious were they really listening were they telling people what they wanted what they wanted to do or what was the sense of those just at a point of curiosity because it might tell us a little bit about how we approach and be how much we do because I don't know if we've got enough resources to just go beat our head against the wall and not I think that the report we'll just leave it to Curt and GBIC to do the report reflects the fact that they heard issues and concerns that were raised how much what they heard ultimately led to what they recommended you would have to ask them after putting sodium pentothal to them but I think that sort of the issues that were raised and the concerns that were raised are reflected in the reports they acknowledge them and then they ultimately so they listen good good I also think the advisors who participated they have a lot of input into the process on both the process spectrum BAFTA was had a seat but I don't know that the regional commissions as a group came up with I was just kind of taking my lead from the frustration of our executive director about the overview of things that led me to ask the question I just I'd love to participate in public policy discussions but only if we feel like we have a chance of actually affecting it, otherwise we should do what we need to do to be a presence and have an I presence there and that kind of thing but if they're not going to listen to us we shouldn't do a lot and just wait for our opportunity to work with somebody to get make sure that the point of view is heard but if this is something where they're really talking about doing something formative where we can have a contribution to it where we can make it work effectively and achieve the objectives that we as an organization and our members want I'm all for going in with all fours and having ad hoc committees and having things come to the board every month if it needs to because this is really important particularly if it's going to cover more than 25% of the development it's really important really hard to tell the political dynamic right now Jeff because the committee has just formed and reformed and particularly in the house new committee chairs and leadership and I don't have a sense but hopefully by the time we get here next month I'll have a sense of how quick is this trying to move are they looking at this as a two year process or are they trying to get it done kind of the feeling that I was getting with Regina saying well there's some good but there's also a lot of issues and you I was starting to get worried about okay is this somehow on some kind of track that unless you can stop a locomotive we're not going to be terribly effective I will say that I was advising for the planters association we have recommended in several areas including appeals that they needed to do more work on that and they signed a new committee of jurisdiction to take more input and they decided not to go that route so I think the sense of the commission working on it is they'd like to see this sooner than later but given as you said all the issues, all the concerns all the yellow highlights and the draft bill there's plenty of room for discussion we can raise all those legitimate concerns to make sure that okay wait a second let's take a look at this I think that's a very useful role for us and it's what we should be doing because we don't want to institutionalize bad planning because I think everybody has issues with Act 250 both extremes but we want to do what we can to not institutionalize bad development so for instance this week the house committee with respect to this they got a presentation on Act 250-101 by the interbies general council so really basic because they got a lot of new committee members and so they're not hitting the ground running on this and to their credit they're starting so it's not it doesn't strike of course as can change without notice at any time but at this point it does seem that they understand the ramifications of this how every change over here has three or four impacts over here that different parts of the state are going to be affected different ways by different parts of it so it appears to me that they're not going to rush to judgment on this whether or not rushing to judgment means they're also open to change unless you've been through Act 250 it's really hard to describe to somebody what it's like to go through Act 250 questions comments there will be a focus on this one but the administration was presenting another proposal do we have that yet or when might that be coming we should be looking at both of them we should be looking at the same quality together so for the most part the administration's bill gives more detail in terms of how one would go about getting an enhanced designation in a sense as it came it came more out of the agency and it's not really a difference so much as it's almost like a companion the commission's bill describes enhanced designation and then the administration really describes how you would go about doing that and what you have to do to get it it's not clear yet where the administration stands on the bigger portion one of the controversial things was kind of one of the last decisions that the commission made there's still quite a bit of discussion whether it should stay with the environmental court or to go back to a positive judicial review process and in the end they fell on the positive judicial review because of the many concerns that were expressed by the current judicial process they didn't really talk about how that might change to make it more accessible and go from there directly to the supreme court so you're not adding an extra step you're just changing the step the way it used to do it I mean a quasi judicial board is a lot more informal it encourages citizen participation to a much greater extent than a judicial proceeding does I mean judicial proceedings can be very intimidating and I've spent dozens of hours before the old environmental board and everybody's welcome to express their view even when they're not qualified to do it in many respects so I mean I can be persuaded both ways on that one of the concerns was the length of time because we only have two judges there and everything in all of it there's also concern about how much power and authority that invests in one person in terms of reviewing a DeNovo Act 250 all the ANR permits and the local permits so one person is making a decision on behalf of all of the agencies, the community and the board but there was also a discussion as you said about if it goes back to quasi judicial that it's got to be potentially more professional structured with real with real criteria about who can offer testimony beyond general testimony there would still be a public interest I think but it would also be like an architect's engineering people that have some so you make facts matter more than just verbal testimony I understand but that is still and I know the bar association quasi judicial board as they testify who would have seen that comment I tell you what though it goes quicker through the court than the practice before the former environmental board as you over called Jeff was everything was done by pre-filed testimony and if you want to see a lengthy non-human being friendly process go to a utility proceeding before the PUC sometime and so that's the model that they're looking at is a more professional lay board but you know from my perspective a somebody acting in their own capacity without the benefit of a lawyer is not necessarily going to be any better off in front of a PUC like environmental review board as compared to if you execute the cause of judicial proceeding the criteria that allows people to qualify to testify and sub criteria okay and not just have the expansive view that if you're breathing you're qualified to testify in certain cases I think there's a happy media in there and I love lawyers but the judiciary everybody hates lawyers until they need one and what happens is that in a formal structure judicial proceeding you actually discourage participation because it's intimidating and if I think if you can strike some balance between the two you can get the benefit of having the diverse opinion on everything and getting everything expressed versus allowing everything in the kitchen sink in versus just allowing the professional arguers to have their say yeah there's quite a bit of resistance to going into the PUC model so I think that the hope was that because they're important local decisions and people should have the ability to express their views without having to hire a freaking lawyer well that's true but if you look at the criteria more and more of them are technical you know you're talking about they're talking about ANR having a map of forest blocks and that's going to be basically that's going to create that whole issue you've got all of the water quality issues and those things there are certain areas like aesthetics and things like that where you do gain the benefit of LA boards perspective but then if we're talking about well let's make sure that there's architects engineers and so on on these boards to deal with the technical issues well are those the people we want making aesthetic decisions so there's a lot I mean there's no if there was a perfect model that would have been arrived at a long time ago and there's this is also the position that they took regarding the appeals changed at their last vote they literally had recommended sticking with the current situation until their last meeting in December tell me what the rules are and I'll play by alright I just had a quick question for Regina I haven't seen the administrations annex yet but is it fair to say that it's going to elaborate on the intent of the summary that we have seen where this notion of expanded enhanced designation providing an alternative pathway to compliance it's not a raising of the thresholds it's an alternative enforcement mechanism of all the same criteria that would be adjudicated at the local level yeah so essentially it's not an exemption it's just an alternative hearing at the local level with more criteria added to the local review process if you want to garner this benefit yes um I don't I don't envision that to mean like the municipality would issue another permit but to the extent that the local permit would have to address all the same criteria for the new and improved Act 250 yeah well it would work like the designations do now as a municipality you have to go to the downtown board and prove that your regulations do everything they have to do for the base designations and then also address all the Act 250 criteria right but on a per project basis not just in planning for the designated area I mean I'm thinking in terms of you know we have this framework of you know at the end of the day are you making it easier to do smart growth and harder to do sprawl and fragmentation that should be the filter we're looking at that was certainly the intent and so I think it is on the area not on a project but my point was going to be around the current perverse incentives you have where you create a higher threshold a higher standard for development that falls under Act 250 jurisdiction than you do for development that does not fall under Act 250 jurisdiction and that drives the cottage industry that Jeff describes about how do you avoid jurisdiction at all costs if at all possible because you don't want to say build to a different energy code than the rest of the state or have additional costs imposed in terms of climate mitigation than the rest of development in the state you make it economically disincentivized for a project to fall under Act 250 if there's any way to design a project that wouldn't fall under Act 250 so it's a perverse incentive and to the extent that the new and improved Act 250 might touch just about every development in the state well hey that solves the perverse incentive problem so that's one way to look at this but my reading of this is that it's not clear whether you're exempted from Act 250 or you're just required to have a bunch of new conditions on your local permit to touch all the same basis it is true that the municipality is going to the table and saying in this area we are meeting all of this and so although actually some of them actually say you approve that your regulations are getting to that level of standard throughout the whole town so from a local perspective it is evening that out a little bit but probably nothing more than a way to stop shopping and keep it to the one stop shopping which is one of the prime criticisms that a lot of people make of Act 250 to me that would be a completely political decision is there go once and do it where you say you want to do it because locally you don't have to come to the state that's all it's probably trying to say we'll be till next month I just had a I don't know whether anybody knows but in the process of doing this did anybody develop a timeline of all the additional A&R permits that are needed that address some of the criteria that were originally in Act 250 and so a timeline of what those permits that are now required so you kind of have this I think especially from lay people to understand because oftentimes people are referring to meeting Act 250 permits but really they're talking about everything else and so understanding when wetlands permits became a criteria that a project whether it's Act 250 or not need to be there so just kind of a list of all the A&R permits that are needed and the dates at which they I kind of thought about I want to do this myself but if somebody's done it already I'd love to see that there is a lot of information out there and it's probably one of those appendices about that both legislative council and A&R produce there's actually a whole Act 250 kind of compendium but yeah, I don't know if there's a timeline but there definitely was discussion about each and every permit and then you're probably aware that the Belmont community and Mr. Pong was a skinny diagram that kind of showed the complexity of the permitting process but so many projects that were permitted originally didn't have to comply with any of the regulations that we have today and so if there's any changes on a site within a permitted project I mean it seems reasonable that they should try to meet some new standards but that's where it gets so I'll look for that in one of those appendices anything further look at all those smiling happy faces alright nothing like an Act 250 here well thank you very much and the task force is going to meet a couple times before the next monthly meeting as luck would have it I will not be here at the February meeting so Mike here will be shepherding the discussion in February bring back Montreal bring back Montreal next item executive director report so just a few items first I want to have you all welcome Amy Irvin with him who's Amy stand up so everybody can see hi Amy's our new business office associate so you'll be seeing her every month and I'm glad she joined us so a week and a half ago two weeks ago yeah thank you and secondly hopefully you all heard Lee Crone is now the permanent Shelburne however permanent full time permanent Shelburne town manager you're on camera you know I've heard both managers and select board members say virtually that same but anyway I do want to congratulate Lee and thank him for all the service to the RPC and wish him well and that work and look forward to working with him in that role thanks you gave him to us and sorry we took him you know what I mean right I think you understand what I mean crocodile tears yeah will there be a new hire here so one of the things that Lee was working on was emergency management Christine is Christine's hate Christine is she's going to try that on see how she feels about it I can't see her face right now tip and emergency management crisis management Marshall had been doing that work while Lee was at Shelburne so we'll see how that goes with internal staffing possibly but better since as we go through the work program for FY20 if we need to look at something like that for FY20 the ECOS annual report is getting work done that should be here for your next meeting wanted to open it up if you had any feedback for the legislative breakfast or not that would be fine too and then legislative oh yeah feedback not a lot but I just heard from in meeting at other times two or three different representatives that these are really good valuable meetings okay that's at least good to hear yeah most of the meeting feedback we got was pretty positive but you know I know there's always a diversity of opinions around the room you know there's always and always the balance of you know fewer topics and being able to dive deeper would be nice so yeah any other hearing the representatives voice their concerns and things like that and especially having like the municipal managers there it's always important thank you for those of you that were able to make it that morning really appreciate it and then legislative update so there's this bill around Act 250 you may have heard about that the other one that I'm paying some attention to at this early stage is around water quality funding which is again another topic that we've talked about here repeatedly and the administration is had at least initially suggested can't remember if they're calling them water quality districts or water quality utilities and trying to set those up for the express purpose of requiring towns to band together if they can or want to to work on projects that are non-regulatory in nature so the towns are already required to do quite a few regulatory that comply with a three acre permit if your public works yard is more than three acres do the road erosion municipal roads general permit right the MS-4s of course have another set of requirements on them so there's already a bunch of municipal requirements this would require towns to join some sort of utility to work on again what they're calling non-regulatory but more natural resource type projects so you know might be stream buffer planting or probably more work with watershed associations and conservation districts and those types of things I don't know if you appreciate that all of the projects that are listed in the tactical basin plan and all these wonderful projects are basically need private landowner approval and you know who is going to do that and you know we're asking municipalities to band together but really who we really need to be engaging and working with our private landowners so it feels like the list of tasks that you know have potentially been identified but you know it's just a ton of work with people. Yeah and just for context my sense in talking to Secretary Moore is that she's coming to a greater understanding about what needs to be done to get comply with the Lake Champlain TMDL whereas a year or two ago she had been saying about 90% of what needed to get done would get done through the regulatory processes so you know the permits on farmers, municipalities and you know large property owners in talking to her and why she's proposing this is really because she's getting the sense that it's not 10% that is outside those permits it's probably maybe 20% of what needs to happen is outside those permits and so she's trying to figure out a way to push that work more I think there may be more direct and simpler ways than creating another level of municipal government so we'll have some of those conversations so those are the couple big things and happy to answer any questions as we go and I'm sure we'll have more updates as we continue along here so that's all I have. Alright various committee reports and minutes are in the materials are there any members items or other business? Move we adjourn Second All in favor say aye Opposed the ayes have it Thank you very much folks