Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Welcome back, everyone, to the Committee on General and Housing. It is still January, and we are continuing with an initial set of hearings, will go for this week and into next week, that are addressing the question, with respect to housing, what of our legislation is working, what is not working, and what should we change? And our witness this afternoon is Moreau Weinberger from Executive Chairperson from Let's Fill Homes. And Moreau, we do have time, but we do have a hard stop for the Governor's address.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Understood. We have plenty of time.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Great. Well, thank you for the invitation to back in front of you. One of the you know, a year ago, Let's Build Homes launched, really think it just got the very first official act of Let's Build Homes to come talk to this community, I think the next day. It's exciting to be back with you, and I really appreciate this process to kick off the legislative session as you have, by reviewing what's working and what's not. I think that's my understanding. A real problem in American governance in recent decades, there hasn't been enough of that follow-up and review. There's a lot to talk about. It's an exciting time, and I'll dive right into it. I'm gonna try sharing my Hopefully I'll able to share my screen in a moment. Just to say again, I think some of you know me, but not only do I bring to this conversation the executive chair experience at Let's Build Homes, also twelve years as the mayor of Burlington, where housing was top priority. Before that, I was an affordable housing developer for fifteen years. It is exciting to be in this role and be able to focus on housing and use all of that experience to try to address Vermont's acute shortage. Diving right into it, what's working? Certainly, my sense is it's very early, course, the program hasn't even opened yet, although it is about to. We are very hopeful about the topic you have up here on your wall, the CHIP bill that you guys worked so hard on last year. Everything that has happened since you adjourned gives me optimism that CHIP is going to be the game changer and the tool for new housing production across the state that we hoped it would be. I went around the state last summer talking to seven different communities, every one of them was focused on CHIP, Small municipalities that have done very little to both housing development for decades are focused on this and are interested. You will see when the program officially opens, I think later this month, exactly how strong the interest is. But every week I have conversations with municipalities and builders that are exploring, working with this new tool. I'm very hopeful that this is going to have a big impact.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're having a hearing on

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yes, won't- Are you gonna be there? I will, I will. And so I will move off this quickly. Before moving off it, I wanted to say-

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No, no, just opened it up, you guys were gonna be tested.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yeah, I'll be back on Friday. I wanna applaud the work that Betsy and legislators did after adjournment to get this program to the point where it can open this month. Think it really, in many ways, process is a model of how to do right, thoughtful guidelines, but do so quickly. There was a lot of urgency in the process. People met throughout the summer, about every Wednesday morning. And in general, I think it's a very strong set of guidelines that has been issued. I will get into this further on Friday. I do just want to flag at the start that there is one implementation concern we do have that hopefully will not need to be a legislative issue, will be something that will be possible to work out through the vaccine process. But it is, as of right now, unclear how for sale projects will be able to use the tool and be in compliance with the guidelines. It gets pretty weedy pretty quickly. Don't think probably what we wanna do now, maybe we'll talk more about it on Friday. I think you guys should be proud of Act 181. Big Bill did a lot of different things. I think my sense increasingly now that we're almost two years into the implementation of Act 181 is that perhaps the most significant part of the bill is that for the first time in fifty years, first time since Act two fifty was created, there is now a consensus that is a real legal map consensus or will soon be mapped. Some of the counties are starting to, some of the RPCs are starting to produce their maps, others are a little further behind, but we will soon have a statewide future land use map for the first time really has consensus about where we as Vermonters agree or more or less agree at least that more homes are needed. We are generally pleased with how the RPCs are mapping these potential tier one eligible communities. Tier one, of course, that's the tier where we want housing growth. We think most of the maps will do a pretty good job or pretty good first cut, at least call it, let's call it, of mapping these areas. There are implementation concerns we have about that. Know last year and I understood the decision last year not to reopen ACT 181 in any way. I think it would be a mistake to go another year without some review of these implementation issues. And I don't think that should be seen as a problem with the original bill. Any landmark major bill like 181, I think almost inevitably there'll be some details that need to be reviewed and iterated, modified over time. I think it's time to do that with some of the Act 101 details. Specifically, we do have concerns from a housing perspective about what the tier three regulation will mean for future rural housing and even existing rural housing. I think there are some concern that the new Act 50 requirements for tier three areas can make it difficult for existing homeowners to expand their homes or make modifications to their homes or address septic issues at their homes. And that is concern for Lettsville homes if we see an erosion of rural housing. Another concern with 181 that I think is worthy of your attention is not that as we're generally pleased with the tier one mapping, the tier one eligible mapping, a significant number of municipalities are not opting to take advantage of this new tier one eligibility. The best numbers I have on that right now are in Chittenden County, which is the mapping is sort of farthest along there and in Northwest and in Chittenden County, I believe are the 19 tier one eligible areas. Seven communities are at this point not opting in. I think there are similar numbers emerging in Northwest, although I'm not as certain on exactly the numbers there. And then within just tier 1A specifically the Sherman interesting concern that I think can be addressed in a number of ways, but does need to be addressed, which is that the late addition to the legislation that tier 1A areas are responsible for the enforcement of existing Act two fifty permits is causing some real heartburn from potential tier one A communities about what that means. It's pretty ambiguous and unclear what that would mean, what would be expected of them, how you would enforce these full permit conditions when the whole thrust of Act 181 is to have the local regulations take over in these areas. So there's some questions there that I think could be addressed, and I am concerned that there will be a negative impact on the early years of ACT 181 if it's not addressed this session.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Marill, a question for There's been discussion about the wisdom of the opt in versus opt out. Do you think it would make any difference? In other words, the towns, one of the things I wondered, if towns don't want in yet and are choosing not to opt in, If we change the rule to opt out, would they just opt out?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I think there's a good chance that many of them would. I do think those choice architecture decisions matter, I think that it sort of changes the presumption and puts the burden on the people who don't think the town should be taking this pro home step to make the public case for why they do so. Supported last year that concept and we would squeeze that again. I don't know, honestly, how big a difference it would make. To address everything I've just quickly tried to raise here, I do think the legislature should reopen and look at these issues. We support the rural caucus bill that essentially calls for that and has some specific notice and extension provisions for the tier three implementation. And then we also think this root zones concept we're excited to talk to you about today could be a partial solution to bullets two and three there as well. I'll say more about that in a moment. Very quickly, think Vermont should be proud, you should be proud of the new, someone not so new, but the Vermont specific housing funding programs. We think these programs are proven and they work and we support continued investment in permanently affordable housing and these other affordable housing new efforts. Let's Put Home supports all of these programs. Are they getting further details if they're interested? Can I just go,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: is there a way that you could share this presentation with, so we can post it online? We absolutely will.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I'm sorry we haven't done that already.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No, that's fine. Thanks. I just haven't heard that.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: We will be sharing this and I'm gonna share another document with you in the follow-up today, which has more details on this Rutland concept.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: This is not an updated chart. This is the chart from the 2020 Sorry, I think I have that mislabeled, I apologize. This is the 2024 housing needs assessment, which dealt with years 2025 through 2029. And this is the chart from that. So this is like a chart that came out in the latter last half of 2024. Well, I think those 2024 numbers have been updated. The 2025 numbers are not in there yet. No one has them quite yet. Our expectation is they're going to show another relatively strong year the way the last few years have been. Certainly an uptick from what was happening in the early 2010s, but well below the formal goals laid out in this needs assessment. I think that chart alone, I think creates the argument for continued focus in this area and continued action. What should the legislature do on this in 2026? Here, it's such an exciting time for housing reform. There's so much legislative activity happening across the country. I just saw a couple of year end, year start posts just this morning, I threw up on my LinkedIn page, long lists of different creative things that different states are doing. And I think it could be really hard to know how to focus the limited capacity that this committee has, the legislature has in continuing to work on this area. My pitch to you is that you do something, you're not gonna find it on any of these national lists because this is a Vermont specific solution. Builds on the breakthrough that you created with ACT 1E1. Now that we have these tier one areas, these housing growth areas where Vermonters agree, we need more homes, let's take more steps to make that happen. Let's look for what other interventions we can make that will accelerate the creation of housing in these tier one areas that will actually push those numbers up on the ground. And I think broadly speaking, there are two ways to do that. I think there are even in this year of such constrained financial resources, think there's some financial steps you could consider. Then I think there's a big, the next regulatory step that I hope you'll consider as well. First, quickly in terms of the incentives. This idea has been talked about before. I'm proposing it again, but in a more focused way than in before. Let's waive sales tax on new construction or housing in the tier one areas. So not statewide, just in the 3% of the land area or so of the state that is in tier one. There would be some financial impact to that. I don't have a good number for you there. I believe any comprehensive forward looking analysis would say that, well, first of all, this will have a direct impact on construction costs. This is something you actually could do that would bring down the high cost of constructions. I think just about all Vermonters agree housing is too expensive, new housing is too expensive. This act would on its own bring down the cost of housing by about 3% in these tier one areas. We do that, I think it's important to note for market rate housing, it would also do it for affordable housing, because the way our affordable housing industry works, the way our affordable housing developers have to work to take advantage of the federal tax credits, they create for profit entities that actually do pay taxes. So this would bring down costs on both types

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of Yes,

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: absolutely. Love this idea. Obviously I loved it last year when I said, let's just do it for any materials. My concern about having it in tier one specifically is we know that tier one is going to be those centers that kind of like already have that municipal capacity that may be better off. Do you see this being an issue of discrepancy between different areas?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Well, right now, represent Bartley, that issue comes up again and again. How do you support housing in the growth areas when our smallest communities, our rural communities don't have tier one areas? The root zones concept I'm about to get to would address that. I think it's a big issue right now. It's a break equity issue. It's a big concern that essentially less than the best that I can tell, and no one really knows where this will land exactly. But when we have all the tier one communities mapped statewide, maybe there'll be about 100 of them. That would mean about 150 of our municipalities. The majority of them, there's no pro homes benefit of 181 in those communities. This root zones concept would create a path to tier one for all Vermont communities that want it.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Can I ask another question? Yes. Understanding you're about to go into root zones, I won't ask too many questions. Are your recommendations just, are your recommendations, let's do all of these at once, one or the other, or if they really need both of them to work together? Certainly any

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: of these in and of themselves would have an impact. Think you would have I'm for us pulling all the levers we can as quickly as we can. This has been such a chronic inexorable issue if we have a way By its nature, resolving the housing shortage takes years, it takes time. Let's not wait. We know we're well below our targets. Once we start getting closer to the targets, think you should have sunset provisions in these, maybe these shouldn't be permanent. But when we know that for the foreseeable future, we are gonna be well below these targets, why not pull them up would be my perspective.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You wanna take it one minute and tell the committee what the Downtown and Village Tax Credit System.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yeah, popular program, been around for, I don't know, twenty years. Bond Store Preservation Trust was a big champion of this. These are credits that builders in our historic downtowns have used. There's an elevator tax credit, there's a facade tax credit. They are small credits, but that can make a difference in these small projects happening or not. We have always had a cap on them. It's never from my perspective- In total? Yeah, there's a cumulative cap that the state will allow because by getting this credit, you don't have to pay that amount of taxes. And so there is a financial impact of it. Here's the thing though, I think there's always been very questionable why there should be a cap on this program. And that if a project actually gets built, the investment dwarfs the credit and the new revenues created to the state dwarf the credit. So the league of cities and towns and many of others have long maintained that this is a program that pays for itself. I think this is worth revisiting now when you have expanded these designated areas that are eligible to have these credits. If we don't expand this, there will be a dilution or there's a risk of a dilution of the existing credits over sort of bigger than the historic downtown areas. This could be used by projects that are not just in the historic downtown, that is concerned to other stakeholders. I think the governor's bill proposes raising the cap from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000. We're putting out there, why don't we just get rid of it entirely? Finally, and this is a concept that if there's interest, would be a new, this housing acceleration fund is a concept that a number of other states are now using to try to keep the housing momentum going even at a time when market conditions are challenging for housing development, high interest rates. Last step, we showed a few, quite a bit has been built in 2024, 2025. There's a risk of a slowdown in future years because of higher interest rates, because of tariffs, because of just the point of business cycle that we are. If the state wants to keep the momentum of the last few years and expand that momentum, is something that we recommend consideration for is a one time investment in a housing acceleration fund. This would be a fund that would be self perpetuating, would be paid. These are investments that would be paid back. And so you wouldn't need to make this again each year. States that have done this have seen a dramatic increase in production of both market and affordable housing as a result. This is a hard thing to get into in a very quick flyby, but something we're working actively on and we could bring expert testimony in the weeks ahead if there is interest in exploring further.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Personally, really appreciate that you added that last part. So I personally believe that we need to pull all these levers, but I also believe that we have to have the conversation about financing. Would you agree that we really need both? Can we continue? Even if we just deregulate and do all these other things, we still need to make investments in housing. And your proposal is a way of not just putting a one time money, but keeping a rolling fund going?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yeah, that's right. I think fixing the rules is critical and is necessary. If all you do is fix the rules and then wait for the market, wait for developers, nonprofit and for profit developers to take advantage of these new opportunities. That can be a slow process and you can be waiting for a while. If the state has the courage of its convictions, wants to make meaningful of these targets, I think coupling both regulatory action with proactive state investment is a very powerful combination. In some ways, reflecting back on twelve years in Burlington, where we were trying to do that, we did have some impact on our housing production with the rule changes that we made in our zoning. It was where more than half of the homes, the 2,000 homes that got built during the time that I was mayor, which was a big increase from prior times. More than half of those were from units, from projects where essentially the municipal government was a partner making infrastructure investments, making financial investments in parks alongside the private investment. And I do think if you're serious about accelerating this, about having results in a time period that makes a difference through your constituents, you gotta do both.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No, I appreciate that because that's something that I myself, the yes and. I'm not for one or the other. I think they need to go hand in hand. I do appreciate you highlighting that.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I do wanna quickly hit on the regulatory things before we hit the hard stop. This is also conversation of short, of course, but We just lost our

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Hi, no.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: We're back.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're back.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Great. You may be aware, you're probably aware that the Land Use Review Board recently published this report about the appeals process. It noted, but did not expand on this concept of buy rate permits, where in some way housing projects in these growth areas can be speeded up and can get permits without having to go through a board process. This is a hot topic in the housing pro homes field. There are definitely, I've heard, I'm aware of other proposals to essentially do this. I think in some ways the governor's eight zero two Homes program is in a sense a way to create buy rate housing for certain prototypes of homes? I've heard other talk, although not specifically about certain mandates that maybe the state could do that would just say that sort of would trump local zoning in some way and say, this type of housing is now legal. I think we should explore those and I'm not necessarily, I'm generally probably supportive of those. I do get concerned when I hear that to me in a way, I worry that what those efforts will face is the same problems that like ADU reform faced in the 1990s. The state said in the 1990s, ADUs should be illegal, but until you got into the DNA of the local regulations, until you got down to the detailed questions about how ADUs interface with lot coverage ratios, with parking requirements, setback requirements, very few ADUs actually got built. What we are proposing with root zones is hard. It is not something that it will take real effort, but it is a comprehensive way to actually, a meaningful way, create this fire rate hazard. In my two remaining minutes, we're gonna leave you with a handout on this that goes into more detail, but essentially the way this would work, the big steps of it would be the state would create a model code, lots of precedent for model code. Oregon created, put forward a new model code, statewide code last year. A lot of interest in this. There's a need for these model codes because most communities have very old out of date zoning. Model code, what would make it this model code differently than some of the others is they would only have clear and objective standards. It would only have rules that you could say yes or no are the rules being met. Once this model code existed, municipalities would be able, would be encouraged, incented in some way to adopt these model codes for their tier one areas. The state would then review and confirm that they had done that in a way that meets the state's housing goals. And then here's sort of the magic of it. If once all that happens and that would all be very democratic, the public would be invited during this local rulemaking process, zoning setting process to come in and give testimony to weigh in. But once the policy has been set, a project would come forward and apply for a permit. Getting a permit instead of this months or years long process that can be involved in getting a discretionary zoning permit now, the permit becomes a question of a zoning administrator going through a list of questions and checking whether or not check boxes essentially, whether or not the rules have been met. If a project is in compliance with these clear and objective rules, a certificate of compliance is issued and that is all the builder then needs to go and build these homes. This is not, that would not be a new discretionary government opinion that is subject to appeal. The democracy and the planning all happens upfront and we are not relitigating literally housing policy on a project by project basis the way we so often do now. And I will say that tour I mentioned last summer going around the state, almost every community brought up recent problematic appeals that this is a very live issue in Vermont right now.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: What does Root stand for? Oh, there

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: it is. Sorry, switched the order of these slides. Residential opportunity overlay towns. Every bill has to have a good acronym. I think I basically said what else is on here and I think we're out of time. I'm hoping this is something you're interested in, would be interested in talking about further. Do you have questions?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: More of a favor. So more of us in earlier, and then you and I chatted in the hall about your board just agreed on kind of what your platform's gonna Yes. Be this Can you send that to us?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yes. Thank you. And we will be having an event about that platform

[Unidentified Committee Member]: here building. And we'll get the slides as well for this presentation posted publicly as well.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Yeah, we'll send that over right away and we're gonna send you a two page concept paper on this root zone. Excellent, thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But the idea is that it does apply, does it apply only in tier one?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Well, but I believe this is a way to give those 150 or so communities that are being shut out of Act 181 housing growth currently, potentially this is a straightforward way for those communities to adopt the root zone and create new tier one communities. I think the intent of this model code would be to address all of the issues that were called out in Act 101 is what you need to have in order to be a tier one community. And the intent here is to make this available to even our smallest communities. Will tell you in parallel to this legislative conversation, we are starting to talk with municipalities of different sizes to confirm that this would be of interest and possible for them to consider. And I don't have a lot of results from that yet, but over the course of the legislative session, if this gets further investigation, we will be able to bring municipalities that we're working with in to speak to that directly. Great.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Questions? I have some questions, of course. So is your thought, you mentioned the Governor's eight zero two program, which as I remember is an effort to create kind of a certain number of vernacular housing types, of Vermont housing types. Is your idea that this code would contain either such housing types or features that if they were included that way, then they, then that would be that. Would be big. Yeah,

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: think so let's unpack that. To me, this shows why something like root zones are needed. The governor's proposal, as I understand it, it's a great proposal. They've won CNU award already for this concept. A great organization, CNU. Designs are- Congress of New Urban. Yes, Congress of New Urban. The designs are beautiful. I think most Vermonters would agree, yeah, this should be legal in my neighborhood. The proposal, as I understand it, and I'm not totally expert in this, but I've been briefed on it. And I believe basically the governor thinks you could act this year and say and mandate these homes being legal. However, I believe there will also be language in there that acknowledges they still will be subject to setback required. They still will be subject to local rules. And again, it's what I was saying with ADUs in the nineties, those local rules, there are a lot of them and they're different from community to community and they will very frequently stand in the way of these prototypes actually getting built unless the local zoning is modified and tailored to meet these. So the idea with the root zones would be that, we're missing like four or so templates of communities of different levels of intensity and those sort of prototypes should be legal and all of those templates For downtowns and for bigger communities, there should be larger types of prototypes that are also legal under the root codes. So this is an idea that I think is very complimentary with that and really helps have that program make an impact quicker and it goes beyond what that is.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Have you given any thought to, let's say you did this, let's say we had some sort of state put together state code, can I assume that a town when adopting it would adopt it with reference to certain areas where they wanted to see development occur, correct?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: Well, exactly, yes, they would define They would define the boundaries and they might choose, I think very likely they would choose different levels, They would have sub zones within their root zone likelies. Template four for neighborhood level, template three for the arterials, template two for the downtown in Burlington, Burlington, one for the large, our biggest downtowns would probably have its own template. So there would be a lot of local decision making here still. And I think communities would need some help with that. However, it would be a huge help and this is the feedback we've gotten so far to have the state having done the work to actually create this model code. And if the state could in addition to that offer some kind of planning assistance, I don't, it strikes me as within the realm of what municipalities do to set this kind of policies. And again, there's been strong interest from the communities we've talked to so far.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is there, when you say the state, do you have an agency in mind?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I think that there are probably several that could do this. If the goal of this in large part is to build on this consensus that we have for tier one communities to create more homes, to address our housing shortage, it would make sense to me for the agency that is most committed to that outcome, the ACCD, to be the agency in charge of it. I think certainly historically, they have had that kind of skill set that would be required for this. But I think there's probably other agencies that can do a good job as well.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Have you thought about the issue, which I know we've talked about a little bit, have you thought about the issue at all of how we deal with state permitting? Yes. And the permits that are issued by ANR, etcetera, how we would integrate that into this process. I can see a developer getting your certificate of compliance and then still have all to navigate all these. Well,

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: yes, I appreciate your comments on that. And I do think there's an opportunity within this. And I think a really good model code would

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: ensure,

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: would have root zone specific language on some of these other issues such as blood control, such as wetlands and historic preservation and maybe a few others. And I think there's an opportunity to, by doing it that way, ensure that in these areas where we are prioritizing housing, we get that balance between these different critical state values right. I think that there'd be some rationale for these tier one areas having their own clear set of rules. In a way like the governor has proposed, and I know maybe it's, I get a sense there's some controversy in this building over this, but what he is saying, as I understand it with this wetlands executive order, is that we should think of wetlands differently in the designated areas than we do in the rest of the state, because in the designated areas, housing's our priority. I think there's the possibility of that kind of thinking in some other areas as well. And so that could, and I think should be part of this model code.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, do you have a question?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I do, I've got a couple of pretty simple questions. It's time for us. Yeah, we have to be on the floor in three minutes. It's a simple question, Did I you say you based this root proposal on things that are already in place in other states?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let's Build Homes; former Mayor of Burlington)]: I was making the point that there are, no, there are model codes in other states. I was just saying that there's lots of precedent for this, and this may have some similarities with those. This would be an organic Vermont specific Vermont model code. And I think there's an exciting opportunity to ensure that the code captures what we love about historic Vermont settlements and really make sure that those sort of historic New England settlement patterns are baked into the scope.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you so much. I'm really glad you came. See you again, I'm sure.