Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Start. We have testing today by Janet Hurley, Chair of the Land Use Board. Please introduce yourself.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Hi, I'm Janet Hurley, Chair of the Land Use Review Board, and Pete Gill, our Executive Director is on the screen here. Pete, do you want to introduce yourself?

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I'm the Executive Director for the Land Use Review Board. I've been in this position for about the past three years. I was previously with Norwich University before that, and before that, I was with the predecessor to the Land Use Review Board, the Natural Resources Board as associate general counsel for about eight years at that time. So with that, I can start our presentation here on our budget overview for you all. I imagine you're probably working on your budget letters to the appropriations committee, and we appreciate the opportunity to present to you today an overview of our budget. Excuse me, I'm just getting a little over a little cold and didn't want to share it. I'm on on Zoom today. There we go.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Can I just ask, there a noise like a Can we mute that? I

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: can You want me to just turn it down?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: If you could turn it down, that that would be great. Thank you.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: All right, give that a second. Let me know when you're set there.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Thank you. Go ahead, Pete.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: All right, great. So here's a budget overview slide. We've got about a $4,300,000 budget on the general fund side and then on the special fund of 1,500,000.0. The special fund is our Act two fifty fund that is generated by our fees, permit application fees, sustains that fund. The general fund is comes from the property transfer tax appropriations. Make mention here real briefly on our carry forward amounts. We have about 117,000 that was carried forward. That's over a series of years that that amount is accumulated. We utilize that to help with one time temporary staff position. We have a long term, excuse me, leave vacancy, and so we're able to fill that with that carry forward amount and then also to adjust things under the pay act. And then I just wanted to put this note upfront in our slide presentation, is our one request beyond the governor's, recommend. We are satisfied with the governor's recommend, except for this one point where we are encouraging full general fund support for our two existing roving coordinator positions. These are positions that were converted to permanent positions last year for these critical district coordinator positions. These are the individuals that are taking in applications, reviewing them with the district commissions, helping to write those decisions, supporting our volunteer district commissioners in that process. They've been very critical to the work that the board does, but certainly for our overall permitting and allowing for flexibility within that program to adjust needs to where our highest workload areas are and being able to be flexible in that way. So it's been really critical. I'll just stop to say that previously these were funded through ARPA funds, the American Rescue Plan Act funds, and were then converted as I said most recently, but only half of that funding was utilized for this most recent term and the rest was general fund. We again, our request here is that the full amount for those positions be covered by general fund rather than the special fund for that other that other half of those positions. That would be a total of $136,000 added to our general fund appropriation. Any questions there? I went through that a little bit quickly.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: And maybe just to add, Pete, to be clear that that would then reduce the special fund budget by that equivalent amount. The special Yeah. Fund

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah, not asking for something additional beyond our total sum there. Right. Just a a shift in in resources. Right. Great. Let me move on to the next slide here. Okay. So this is a little bit deeper dive into the budget numbers here. You can see I'll just work with that first chart there on the top. Just give you an overview of that. It's our budget broken down into both the personal services, that's our personnel, and then the operating expenses. As you can see there, our personal services are the ones that consume the most resources where operating expenses are fairly fairly slim in comparison there. You can also note the difference between the 2026 and the 2027. That's that latter column there between the two. So just under 300,000 difference in the personal services and then about 60,000 in operating expenses. Just to just to note there that those numbers increased a bit. The personal services are increased because of in part in large part because of those two district coordinator positions that we mentioned previously and combined with step increases that are required for personnel as well. And the operational changes are based on head counts of an entity. And as you are aware, we have five new board members. We have a new attorney. We have these two limited service positions and my position as the executive director that have been added under act one eighty one to implement those requirements. And so those headcount or those of those charges that are related to those operating expenses reflects those increase in in staff numbers that we have. Next, I'll draw your attention to the chart below. That breaks down our budget into the general and special funds that you saw on the previous slide, but you can see the comparison between the '26 and the governor recommended in the '27. And then those notes down below, that's what I was talking about there. I see a hand.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. Yeah. Representative North. Thank you. Senator?

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Oh, god. Should do that now. Yeah.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative, please.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Peter, thank you so much for your for your presentation. Just a quick question. Think on the previous slide, said that the two new FTEs were really just a switch from the special fund to the general fund. I'm kind trying to figure out how that aligns.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: They were switched from ARPA you know, to permanent, and we asked for the funding to come 100% from general, but the governor's budget has them from special, half and half special general. So we're just asking that it be 100%.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Okay, so the governor's budget already has the two

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: FPAs baked

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: in, just not in proper funding source.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah, not in our preferred

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: funding sources. These funding sources are estimated based on what the property transfer tax will raise or is this what you're expecting regardless of how

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: much No, the special funds are estimated based on what we anticipate coming in from fees from permit applications. Perfect.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Then on the general fund side, property transfer tax?

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: It's Yeah. We're not making estimations though about Okay.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: You're just asking for this much. Yeah. Yes. Even though that's where it comes from. Yes. Okay. But the if the special okay. That is the source. Okay. Yep. And that's the estimated full source of the special funds.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yes. So as we said, if if the legislature agrees and and gives 100 percent to the to converted ARPAs, then that would it would it would shift the general and special by 137 ish. Is that right, Pete?

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: That's here on the slide there, 01/1936, yeah.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah, so that much less on special but added to the general. And it's basically because we don't really know what's gonna happen with the implementation of January in terms of our permit revenues. Just Yeah.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: I think we have a

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: pretty good to consider those from the general.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Just just for, again, for my my benefit, do the numbers that are presented in this chart reflect your desire to have them all in general, or are you asking for that to change yet to these numbers?

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: For this, no, does not reflect what we desire.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: It does not reflect.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yes. Right, Pete?

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Yes. That is correct. Yeah, it would be a $136,000 difference shifted from the special fund to the general fund.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah. Okay. This reflects the governor's budget.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Correct. So $3.58 does also?

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Everything on here does. Yes.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. $3.58 is the total.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: That's the total That's the total amount. Fiscal years.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: But but the $5,000,008.97 won't change. It's just gonna it's just gonna move from one bucket to the other.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Correct. Yes.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah. Representing Bobby in there.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'm assuming that you provided the governor with input as to what you needed for funding. And I just I guess I this is really important work. I feel like it's laying the foundation of the future of Vermont. And I'm I just wanna make sure that I don't ever really ask for more money, but I just wanna make sure this is enough to implement your work with Fidelity. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. We're not

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: skimping ourselves.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Good. Because it's really, really important work.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah. We were conservative. We're not asking for more than we think we need, but we're not short tripting so far as we can tell. There is uncertainty in terms of this special fund, that's why we're asking that these two positions be 100% from general, just to give us more because in the past we haven't met our special fund targets. Yeah. Thank you.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah, and on that point, historically we have had a different balancing of our general fund and our special fund. There was a reallocation of that in this last previous year. And that I think trues up what our special fund revenue capabilities are. And one of the points that we're trying to make with these two district coordinator positions is that in order to keep that proper balance and truing that up in the right way, it would be beneficial to have those funded through the general fund.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay. Think that would be Mhmm.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Great.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Let's see. I can move on to the next slide. We've really covered the bulk of what we had to say here too on budget. But let me move on just to orientation slides here and more reference slides for you all. I know you've seen these in our joint session that we had earlier in January, but this is kind of our organizational structure. We've got 33 permanent positions in our group. We like to think of ourselves as slim and mighty, doing lots of good work with that relatively slim crew. But it's important to note down at the bottom, have 60 citizen, plus or minus commissioners, one of whom is in the room with you today as representative North or senator North, sorry. So at any rate, it is a small but mighty organization there and that's kind of our structure. And again, we've gone over some of this, but for reference, we have a very strong permitting program. We have consistently in the last five years been around three fifty to 400 permits issued, permit decisions issued in a year. We're at three eighty four, which is a slight uptick from last year. So although some of the exemptions, interim exemptions are in place, we still do have a hefty permit decision load. And in fact, it has increased slightly from the previous year. Interesting, wonderful project that we've been working on through some funding, both ARPA funds and legislative appropriations most recently is digitizing our permit files. This has been an amazing project to keep our files safe. I will pause to say that just a few weeks ago, we had a flooding event in the Montpelier District office, our main office. Fortunately, we just had three boxes of files that were affected by this, but we were able to lay them out and amazingly three file boxes, which is only a small handful of actual permit series numbers can can recarpet most of that building by laying them out to drive. It's amazing to note here, we've been dealing with 10,000 of those permit files in the scanning project currently and many more to come. As I mentioned before, we've expanded that roving district coordinator position. We would like to keep that going strong because that is the heart of our program and really important to the continuation. Recently, we've updated our application form that seems to be going very smoothly in terms of its rollout. As I mentioned previously, this was a project that we looked at lots of incomplete letters that are issued from the district coordinators in collaboration with the technicians to determine whether an application is ready for commissioner review. We wanna make sure that that's got everything it needs to make that lay commissioner process move smoothly and the application process move smoothly from there, on out. So what we've done is analyzed where those incompletes are and tried to address those deficiencies in our application to make it more clear and understandable for applicants as they're, submitting their forms. We reached our hundredth ARPA project, which is pretty awesome. We had a fair number of housing projects within that, but lots of other related ARPA funded projects. And we've continued to implement the governor's executive order on housing. So busy shop on the permitting front. That doesn't touch the new requirements under Act 181 and duties of the board. Those are listed here. I know we've gone through those, so I don't wanna dwell on this, for too long for you all, but, happy to stop anywhere that, you wanted to dig in a little bit more. I'll just note here that we've got, three items there on the list that have check marks. Those are items that that we've ticked off. So we did the the wood products manufacturers report. We're working on some implementation and follow-up on that, including some legislative recommendations. There's an Act two fifty appeals study out there, and I know that's being considered by committees in the legislature at the moment. And we've created a future land use map viewer. The legislature appropriated us some funding for digital infrastructure. And this was one of those items that we were able to do with those funds. And that helps the board and its review of the regional planning applications, Sorry. Regional planning plan review and map review. Janet, I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to highlight on this. Oh, I see a few hands as well. Yeah.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Answer. Yeah. I'm just wondering if

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: you can update us

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: on the tier three rulemaking. Yep. Is almost ready to come out a second draft that will be proposed to the public for input. We we put out a first draft in October, took it around the state. We've been modifying it and expect to get public comment and a public hearing in the spring, and we are hoping to submit final rule to LCAR by September 30. So we're still accepting public input, and we had asked committees of jurisdiction for that extension to September 30 so that we could do that robust engagement with the public in a way that allowed us to hone in on what is most important on that tier three. Yeah.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: And that's really laying the foundation and stage for the public engagement that occurs in the direct rulemaking process as well.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Maybe I'll just point out that we're also working right now on road construction jurisdiction guidance. And, you know, as much anxiety or fears around tier three as there are, you know, there are just as many around this this road construction jurisdiction that is slated to go into effect on July 1. So we're also working on guidance there and hope to get that out in the next couple weeks for public comment. And we are also working on the Criterion 8c rulemaking, and we are reviewing plans. And we also expect, after the first regional plan is approved to start receiving tier 1A applications. And we're ready for that when it comes, but we don't expect that for another few months.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Right. Any other questions on that? Otherwise, I just have one more slide. And that one is more of a resource for you all in terms of a little bit more bells on allocation of that budget. Let me just orient you briefly on it. I think you can see where my cursor is under there, that first block. It's sort of an off brown color, but personal services is there and that maybe you can see that in this in this box here. There we go. I think you can see that. But that's the personnel services that we were talking about there. The final, bottom line of that is right here, at the top. And then down below that is the operating expenses under that next kind of beige category there. And you can see that bottom line change over here in this upper corner here. And then the total amounts down here at the bottom, sort of a summary of that previous slide is down in that purple and yellow at the bottom of the slide. So again, a resource there for you.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Pritchard. Yeah. Thank you. What's the total amount of classified employees?

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Classified?

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: To the number number of them?

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: The chart if you go to the organizational chart, I I'm not so

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Maybe it might be easiest, Janet, to just take the exempts out.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah. That's what

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: So the board and the chair are exempts.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Right. The executive director is exempts. Executive director.

[Speaker 0]: Six,

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: seven, eight, nine, 10, or eight, nine, and 10 because one of our district coordinators is not classified yet. So right? So 23 classified?

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah. And on the Janet's last point there about one of the district coordinators not being classified at the moment, what we've done is to maximize the use of the federal ARPA dollars. We have continued to utilize those to fund that roving district, that one roving district coordinator position. We will intend to

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: To the end of this fiscal

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: year. Correct.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah. And then it'll convert, and then we'll have 24.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: And that sort of sums up our presentation unless there's other other question.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: It's like no.

[Speaker 0]: You very much.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank Peter.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: Yeah, thank you for having us. We appreciate your support in this process. It's been quite a ride for our staff, but we are excited to be part of it and again appreciate the legislature's support in that endeavor.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Alright, keep drinking fluids Pete. Thanks.

[Pete Gill, Executive Director, Land Use Review Board]: You.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: You feel better Pete?

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Thank you.

[Janet Hurley, Chair, Land Use Review Board]: Alright, thanks everybody. Thank you very See you soon I'm sure.