Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you, welcome everybody. Today is Thursday, 01/15/2026, and you are watching the House General and Housing Committee. We are going to hear first from the Division of Fire Safety and from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. This is all part of our initial round of hearings, which relate to what is working, what is not working, and what should we do differently with respect to our legislative initiatives. And the issue of permitting, building permits, etcetera, has come up repeatedly, and so we thought we would hear, I don't want to say the horse's mouth, that's not appropriate, but we would, from the authority. So, could

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: you introduce yourself and take it away? Good morning for the record. I'm Mike Burrows, I'm the Executive Director for the Division of Fire Safety, and I have with me, Armanden Wheeler, he's our Deputy Director. So I thought what I might do here briefly is just quickly go over some of the stuff here that the Division of Fire Safety does in case folks aren't familiar with us. But we do all the plan review and permitting for all construction and renovations of public buildings, basically everything except your own single family owner occupied homes and some farm and ag exemptions. We do all the code enforcement for rental housing, health and safety, which we had rules that went into effect 01/01/2024. We're responsible for fire service training for all volunteers and career firefighters. We also have the Urban Search and Rescue team within the Division of Fire Safety, and they are pretty much focused on slickwater rescue operations, structural collapse stuff, and they help us out with body recovery and our fire investigation scenarios sometimes. We also have the hazardous material response team. We also do fire investigation, we're paired up with a fire investigator from the Vermont State Police, so there's somebody from Fire Safety and VSP. And we have the Electrical Licensing Board, the Plumbing Licensing Board, the Handicap Access Board, and the Elevator Safety Board. And we also have the Fire Service Training Councils also within the Division of Fire Safety. And I also chair the legislative governance committee which oversees the training facility for law enforcement and fire down at the academy down in Pittsburgh. So we looked at things, access and use issues, contracts, all that kind of stuff. So the Division of Fire Safety has inspection permitted authority for buildings defined in statue as public buildings. Public buildings include structures or dwellings rented for long term or short term. Farm housing provided to farm workers is defined as a public building, and these can be found in 20 BSA Chapter one hundred seventy two and one hundred seventy three. Chapter 172 is the new regulatory authority over the rental health and health safety code, and not picked up the short term rentals. So short term rentals have to comply with the rental housing health and safety code.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Can I ask a really quick question? If I stay in an Airbnb and something is wrong, it's up to me as the visitor or short term renter to contact you and make a complaint. Correct. You don't go unit to unit.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Correct, there is no proactive inspections on any housing, whether short term or long term, we don't have a proactive inspection program. We do get involved in a number of purchase and sale type inspections. It's not statutorily required, but what happened was fifteen, twenty years ago, over some Supreme Court rulings, the attorneys would not close on a particular transaction unless they knew that that structure complied with the Division of Fire Safety requirements. And so, no good deed goes on tonnage, So we didn't want to hold the real estate market hostage, which was what was happening, right? If we didn't go out, they weren't closing on these buildings. We started out just doing maybe 50 or 100 a year, and most of them were up in Chittenden County. That whole entire concept now is spread across the entire state. We now have, like up in Chittenden County, have a full time inspector. All this individual does is purchase and sale inspections. So we do about 600, 800 of these a year roughly. We charge $125 and then we produce an inspection report, and it helps facilitate these real estate transactions. Again, it's not statutorily required.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. And so, if I could just go a little further with this. So, your jurisdiction includes all rental dwellings of any size. Correct. And multi family housing? Correct. Also, and short term rentals. Correct. What I remember from previous testimony is that there are different levels of requirements for short term rentals depending on the number of bedrooms, or? Correct, I'm gonna go over this. Okay, good, thank Right

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: now, the division only responds to complaints, and that's true across all our housing programs, even the new rental housing health jurisdiction that we took on in 2024, that is all complaint driven. We have an online platform, people can go in and enter their complaint online. Real easy process. And since the inception of those rules, we've done about eight seventy five complaints that we've received division wide. The legislature afforded us five positions to carry out those responsibilities. Right now, we've four positions that are on board with us now full time, that's all they do. And we also spread the wealth out among some of our other inspectors, electrical and plumbing as needed to deal with some of the safety concerns.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Mike, how many inspectors do you have overall on your budget?

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Maybe. 16 fire marshals and four residential health and safety inspectors.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Three plumbing inspectors and eight electrical inspectors. So, yeah. And so we were approved for five positions, the legislature gave us five positions. This was back during when we were receiving ARPA funding, so the first year we ran the program in the housing, there was ARPA funding that was available to fill in some gaps there. So those eight seventy five, roughly, complaints have resulted in about almost 1,400 building inspections. That does not include several 100 more electrical and plumbing. Are different inspections that were part of our initial building inspection.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You have a question here, Mike.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Just a quick clarifying question. When you talk about plumbing, is that because of, like, gas lines?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: It could be anything from the heating system to because now our plumbing inspectors years ago were classified as plumbing and heating inspectors to deal with our carbon monoxide poisoning problems. So we sent them through certification, gas certification, oil certification. So they're right there in the building, we kind of made them focus in on preventing CO poisonings and fatalities.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do they also do air circulation systems? Because that's more and more common under the building codes. As buildings are tighter, there's active air exchange systems. Right, anybody in a public building has to

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: be a certified technician, either gas or oil. So we rely on our third party certifications to do that work properly, because we just can't be in every single place all the time. So we let industry provide us their national certification criteria, like oil is a NORA certification. Well, that's what the national practices and the national certifying agency are. So I don't know if I'm answering your question fully, that's, we rely on the industry fully.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But there is capability to investigate air circulation.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I don't think To be transparent here, I don't think our plumbing inspectors are out doing balance testing and all that on ventilation systems. They're relying on the contractors that did the install to do that type of work. We're just making sure that each person is certified, and then looking at the general fire safety hazards, clearance to combustibles, the vent connector, combustion air, all that kind of stuff, real focused in on preventing carbon monoxide poisoning or or fungus. So we're not in the energy efficiency side of it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'm I'm not thinking so much energy efficiency as mold. If there's a complaint of mold, does that fall under your

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Yeah, under the rental housing health and safety code, complaints of mold. Is that correct, Lamoille? That is correct. On the mullet part, if you want to

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You know what, why don't you tell us your name? I'm

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Landon Wheeler, I'm the Deputy Director of the Division of Fire Safety. A real quick summary, so we do have codes and standards that cross over into the subject of air movement in a building such as a humid plant working and things of that nature. The residential health and safety code does cross over and capture mold issues within a building and there are requirements for ventilation and bathrooms, but they are very different objectives than whole house air movement. And that would be outside of our scope of our codes and standards, unless it was heat related or it was related to the proper operation of a heating plant. We're not looking for, or we don't have the capability and the training to assess whether an HRV or a heat recovery unit is properly moving air and there's enough air circulation to make that work.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What happens if, I guess I wanna drill down on this for a minute just because buildings are getting tighter and tighter and concerns have been expressed that if the things aren't done right, you get mold. So if someone complains about mold and you go in and yeah, you find mold, what is the corrective action? I mean, may be that it's because their air circulation system isn't working.

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Yes, that very well is. So we treat the cause to find the cure, is the easiest way to explain that. We try to find why the moisture is being created where and it's then we try to help the tenant and the landlord reduce that moisture level to then in turn remediate the mold. That is our current practice, and that's what we've been doing for about the last two years.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Thank you. A lot of this, some of the mold creation is from water damage, right? Right, yeah. Roofs leaking, all that kind of stuff, infiltration of water into membrane of the structure. We do tell the landlord, you gotta fix your roof, you gotta do this and do that. But it is, a lot of it is certainly water infiltration into the building.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, Mary. I have two questions.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: The Cortina Inn in Rutland housed, do you know what I'm going to say, a number of people without homes, and when I toured that building they had the laundry room blocked, taped off, because it was loaded with mold. You could see it, people are living there.

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: That's a great question. That specific facility, because it is a hotel and the statutory requirements that overall saw and guided that hotel program kept the health under the Department of Health. So that wouldn't have fallen under the Residential Health and Safety Code for the Division of Fire Safety. I fully understand that may be an issue. The complaint process for the Department of Health is very similar to the divisions of fire safety. So if a client was residing within that facility, they can contact the Department of Health and they would follow-up with that facility because there is a defined area where the Division of Fire Safety does have jurisdiction and where we don't, and transient lodging such as a hotel or a restaurant or those types of facilities still fall under the Department of Health not the Division of Fire Safety even if it was part of the hotel program. So transient doesn't fall? Transient such as a hotel but transient in regards to short term rentals does fall under the division of fire safety and that is But not hotels. But not hotels. They fall under our other codes and standards under the life safety code. Sorry, sir. Thank you. I have

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: a very quick, just to relate to that, and that division of jurisdictions is a state statute. It was at some point our decision to say short term rentals should fall on one side or the other. It it started, I believe around 2021,

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: statutes were generated. The carve out was from '18 BSA and it was recreated into 20 BSA 01/1972.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: If you recall like four years, five years back, I think you were with us, right? On the Rental Housing Advisory Board that was created, is actually what spearheaded this whole entire debate regarding, given primary authority of the Division of Fire Safety to enforce the rental health and health and safety codes that previously was being enforced by mostly volunteer health officers in the communities. So we took over what two twenty health officers were doing, and we took over those primary responsibilities for a host of reasons. But it was, the catalyst to this was the recommendations produced by the Rental Housing Advisory Board that was created.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: there were a lot of meetings on this So right now the division has nine inspection agreements with local town units, agreement that's specifically tailored to the community. So some are existing residential only, while others include plan review electrical plumbing. So the city of Burlington, we have electrical plumbing and permitting MOUs with them. Might go to Fairfax, they do existing Palatin only. So we tailor it to what the community wants. So, for example, if Fairfax wanted an ordinance to inspect short term rentals, we could enter into an inspection agreement with the town of Fairfax, they'd have to have a certified inspector attend our training and that kind of stuff. So, we actually, I actually enjoy kind of working with the communities that want to be involved and Vermont's very fortunate in the sense where there's regulation and consistency over that process where if you go to some of the other states, it's just a free for all. Here, you have to have the same codes and standards we do so the people aren't playing off 20 different sets of rules and standards. It's all housed here at the state level. It's worked out pretty well, but we have nine agreements right now. We're very reluctant right now to be turning over plan review agreements, because when we do that we have to turn over our permit fee revenue that we would be charging a state, a constituent, not those to the local folks to offset their cost of running that program. So we're shooting ourself in the foot by turning over the revenue on our plan review side. This number's been pretty well leveled here. So the question came up, we have three major occupancy classifications prescribing what safety codes and standards apply to particular housing projects. The code itself, the life safety code that we adopt is a national standard. In the code, anything over three outsiders would require a, would be classified as a rooming and lodging facility. And our rules, because we had so many bed and breakfast operators, we raised that number to eight guests, so they could comply with the requirements of the single family home, which is the least restrictive out of the room. This has been a good economic driver for those operating bed and breakfast and housing less than eight guests. We have not had a fire problem in these places, there's been, we prescribe reasonable requirements, and this actually extends into everything to the H-2A program for farm housing, which helps and supports that economic program as well too. Nine to 16 guests is considered a rooming and lodging facility. We have specific language in our rules where this is where it gets a little more interesting because

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: we have a lot of

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I'm so sorry. We need to pause real quick. Our stream is broken, so we can't continue to convert SAIDI. We're not

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: accessible to the public, so we have to stop for a minute. No, it's

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: okay. Now we get to talk about anything except fire safety,

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: can talk about how great Fairfax is.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: I really have a great rest. I hear they have a really great charging station for your EV, and a little market where you can stop and get your groceries. That little market has some of the best cheese in the world. And baked goods.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're back live. Thank you everyone. This is just to remind everybody who's listening, this is the General and Housing Committee, and it's January. The Division of Fire Safety is in the middle of its testimony. We temporarily lost we we lost the ability to have our video work. So go ahead.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Thank you, sir. So where where we see some challenges is the nine to 16 guest range. That's a room and lodging facility. So the code requirements are a little more restrictive as you go up in the number of people, and and these are mainly transient guests, right? They're not familiar with the environment and there's a lot of issues there. So in our rules, we have an effective date where if you're an owner and you created this rooming and lodging type facility with nine to 16 guests after the effective date of our rules, then you're expected to comply with the new provisions like you just started it. Because what people were doing is bypassing, they would tell us, well we've been operating for fifteen years, when in fact they just built this house. And this is more relevant, I think, in the ski areas, where you have these five, six bedroom homes that are built, they put a keypad on the outside, and they just advertise online, and there's no control over that. There's no way for us to identify them, other than you go online or something or we get a complaint. And like I said before, on short term rentals, we don't receive very many complaints on these.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, Mike, hold on. Ashley, do you have a question?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I have two questions directly related to this. I don't

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: want to

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: name names in case it's being done incorrectly, but I'm thinking of specifically, it's more of a vacation area in Vermont that has a short term rental on its property, but the property's actually a motel or a hotel or motel. Since they are not connected but on the same property, would it default to the 17 or more or would it stay at the nine to sixteen?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: We would treat that auxiliary type structure as a single As a home.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: My other question would be, do you want, do you have the capacity and or do you want the ability to pull up like a short term rental and look?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Do we want that capacity? Yeah. We gave a couple of years, or four or five years ago, the division was directed to provide all online operators with some guidance and safety considerations, in partnership with the health department and the tax department, and we do have guidance that has gone out to officers. However, there was new legislation that required us to provide precise guidance to all the online operators, and we are really struggling with this, because for this reason that I'm showing you right now, you're talking about a checklist that could be five, six, seven pages long. Nobody's gonna read it. So we are internally trying to figure out how we can best educate these operators on safety concerns based on the number of people they have, where we can put something meaningful out to them and direct them maybe to our webpage, right? Where then we can house more detailed information, but this is a real, but what happens is when you provide these self inspection checklists and all this, it doesn't cover all the possible hazards, and then the people get complacent and think, well this little six, seven item checklist is all I gotta do. And then you get a complaint, you show up, there's other items that are found to be in violation, and they just argue with you to no end. Well, leave it as a checklist. So the checklist, is it helpful? Yes. Is it definitive? No. And we are trying to figure this out. Most

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: our fire fatalities are in single family owner occupied homes. We haven't had them in our short term rentals, but they are in single family owned or occupied home, which makes up, as you all know, there's a lot of single family homes being used for short term rentals. It is definitely a high priority and on our radar.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: That was really helpful, thank you so much. How do you discern the difference between eight guests or nine guests? If my mother rented out her four bedroom house, would that be considered a three guest house, or do you consider the capacity of it being a 15 person?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Yeah, there are so many different scenarios. I mean, we can walk in and there'll be four bunk beds in a room, and there's eight people. The other challenge that we've had is there's really no definition of a family, right? What do you do? You rent a camp for a week, and your brother or sister comes with you, and they have their three, four kids, and you've got nine people in this camp you're renting. The only time we respond is to complaints, and I don't like to think that we split hairs to that degree, but that is just a good question. I don't have a perfect answer for you. We do do a room count, bed count, that kind of stuff, that sets the baseline for us.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Can I ask another question?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, but that's when there's a complaint, right? Correct. Yeah, mean, you don't have any way of categorizing whether it's a guest, a rooming and lodging facility, or just a single family home.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: On a purchase and sale inspection if we're contacted.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. But if you're not

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: If they do a renovation or put an audition onto the building and they gotta do something with their electrical service and we end up getting a construction permit for a project or something, that would create a review of that information, because in the plan review we would classify that particular structure one way or the other.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Right. Elizabeth, you had It's another related to that. So let's say you do do an inspection, do you give out a certificate declaring which category it Yes, falls

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: it's an inspection report, and we do classify it at that point.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: And so then, do you know whether the tax department notes that classification?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I know that the online operators are somehow connected with the tax department, because the tax department, few years ago, working with us and the health department and stuff, they were legislatively directed to address the tax issue on short term rentals. But I don't wanna speak for the tax department.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: I just wondered whether there was any coordination between the classifications and how each one gets taxed.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I'll stop my head.

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: No, there's not an between the two, And I'm not really sure what the nexus would be because the classification for rooms and meals tax is kind of the same for them once they start collecting rooms and meals tax. Again, say the same statement as the director that would be kind of outside of our scope. The Division of Fire Safety's, we had to classify the occupancy to be able to do the inspection and provide write codes. So that's where we have to have a number to start with process. But the nexus between our classification and the tax department, I'm

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: not aware of any system in that. And where does it get filed, the classification?

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: The owner is always the responsible party to uphold that information, but we do have a records management system, and then currently in the Division of Fire Safety that is operational where we store all of our historic documents, inspections, and we'll call it an occupancy certificate, which is an inspection report. We are currently going through an RMS bill bill to have additional abilities. One last question I have

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: and then another on this tiered system. I'm trying to just get a general sense of the difference between the major material differences between rooming and lodging and hotel motel. So for example, and then any other major things you want to indicate, if there's a hot tub in a rooming and lodging facility, I assume, but don't know, that it doesn't have to have a lift device to allow handicapped access, but if you're in a motel, hotel, you do? Is that true?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: You can't explain the changing

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: options for it. Currently, the Department of Justice has not provided a lot of institutional information in regards to homes that are transitioned to short term rentals. The current guidance from them is a home, which is typically exempt from federal ADA requirements, meets kind of the same layout as some most of the short term rentals. So therefore applying ADA to those facilities is not necessarily practical. That's currently the information that I have.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And put in the nine to 16.

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Correct, it's still most of those nine to 16 are single family homes that were converted into use as short term rentals. So the layouts, the number of bedrooms, they may be a little bit larger in nature, but they still resemble a single family home and their nature and maybe not so much their use, but in the way that they're built, their construction, most of them don't have, correct, the same requirements as a hotel or a motel for ADA. So it's ADA light inference? It is on the federal side, on the state side, the twenty twelve Vermont access rules do have minimum requirements when the buildings are renovated to be adaptable and visitable where those items are applicable. The former Act 88 was a driver for the definition of visitable, which makes buildings more usable for people that may have daily needs. And as the Division of Fire Safety, we do enforce that when there's a renovation, but it's not a retroactive item until there is a renovation and that's an important distinction. We don't go into an existing building and say, start opening up your total roofs and things of that nature. It's when a building is renovated we would apply those co T standards. Thank you, yes Tom. Yes, so with an eye towards long term housing, which we're short of,

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: they say a homeowner, big old house, big old farmhouse takes a loan from VHIP and they create an apartment in what used to be the Kitchen Owl or whatever, does the health and safety code apply to the rental unit or to the building as a whole, if the bulk of the building is still primary residence time? Does the whole thing have to come

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: up to code? It would apply to the whole structure. The whole

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: structure. Okay.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Leonora, did you have a question?

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I was sort of jumping the gun and I was looking ahead in your presentation because I'm trying to get to the meat of like, if you haven't asked of of the legislature. That's why I was asking about, like, when did we separate this out? I'm trying to so I think we're about to get to it. Is this sort of the the your challenge that you're facing right now is with this growth of short term rentals, towns are asking you for, for you to come up before there's a complaint?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: One of the challenges we have is, and I'm not sure I call it a challenge when you look at all the responsibilities that the division has, but what we are experiencing is the locals trying to pass ordinances that require the short term rentals to be inspected by the Division of Fire Safety. So we have been proactive in then reaching out to those that are trying to pass these ordinance and saying stop. We don't have the capacity to inspect short term rentals, and certainly not gonna be selective go into one community and doing it, not to another and so forth. We would have to have, there was a housing study done years ago when Tasha LaMont was our commissioner. And there was like 30 inspectors or something like that to pick up the workload off, whether it's short term rentals and existing residential inspections on a proactive type basis. It's just not, it's never gonna like materialize to us. That's why previously, as I stated, you know, the agreements that we do have with our municipalities, it does make, it does increase safety because there's another set of eyes in the community where we would not be engaged. So we have been successful in fighting these off, if that's the right word, teetails, but discouraging folks from doing this. We were just down in November, down at Fairlake Resort, speaking with Vermont leads and city of town, city managers, health officers, and regional planning commission folks. So we emphasize that down. Same program I delivered down there. So we haven't seen a big influx of these ordinances being produced at this point, but requiring an inspection from the Division of Fire Safety.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Let's drill down a little on this, because this is coming up to us. We have on our wall a short term rental bill, And it may not, it may just end up being a vehicle for change, but one of the active issues that we have to face is the following. As you probably heard in that conference where I was, a lot of communities want to regulate short term rental, not with an idea of reducing or eliminating them, but to ensure health and safety, but they feel like they don't have the resources. So, of course, then they say, well, you do it, right? The Division of Fire Safety should do it. Is the supposing that we were to provide an income source for that, A 1% charge is what the Vermont League of Cities and Towns recommended, you know, allowing towns to impose a 1% tax, but or to have the state impose it. The question is, what should be done with that money? Should it be used by the town to use your standards, in other words, town officials use your standards, or should it go to you?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Well, I'm just going to tell you that I wouldn't want it housed in fire safety. It's a lot much. I'll just relay that. We have our hands full right now, and we're just getting by making sure we're not exposing the state to liability here. And the other issue, just for awareness in this committee, is the ongoing effort to take all the energy efficiency and then throw that to us through an ops, there's like two bills now out in the bill. Enforcing codes. Enforcing all the energy efficiency codes, promulgating the rules, being the authority out of jurisdiction, and the list goes on and on. And this is a result of the Building Energy's committee work that has been spearheaded by Representative Camp Bell and former Senator Ray. So we're not looking for any additional work.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But is the uniformity, I mean, indicated that one of the benefits of the current system with respect to fire safety is that there's uniformity and that is one thing I'd like to clarify. Do towns right now have the ability to adopt a fire and safety code that is at variance in any way from yours? Does our fire and safety code preempt local fire and safety codes?

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Yeah, so yes, the minimum standard is our standard. There are very few occasions where some communities will have some requirements that may exceed our standards, but it is very, very few. And I hope that answers the question.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But they can theoretically go stricter. I mean,

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: you had, example, city of Burlington years ago, if you put a fire alarm system in your building, they would dictate where it went. It might not be consistent with the fire alarm code itself, but they, the fire chief in the city of Burlington, may want it in a particular location, or they may want the alarm signal being transmitted a certain way. So there are some of those type detailed amendments to our rules that a local may choose to do.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And the energy efficiency proposal, again, I'm assuming without knowing since it's across the hall, that the goal is to have a uniform energy efficiency regime statewide. I've heard complaints that there's a concern that some towns are looking at adopting stricter energy efficiency guidelines, and that we're interested, for example, in modular housing, off-site modular housing or manufactured housing, and the people who are working on that don't want to see a hodgepodge of different requirements. Did I intuit that you're saying about the idea of putting an enforcement of a standard energy efficiency code with you is not something you would

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: seek. Absolutely not. And we have I've been pretty vocal about it, I mean, for the past three, four years. And I could sit here all day and go through all the aspects over that, but it goes back to fire safety has no subject matter expertise at all in energy efficiency. Public service right now promulgates the rules. The contractor pool today is challenged with energy efficiency. My position has been, let's educate, do energy efficiency awareness, do some training for our contractors, and build any energy efficiency program or initiative from the ground up, and not create a whole layer of bureaucracy, and push that down onto an industry that can't do it. I consider ourselves experts at, I just call it code management rather than enforcement.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: I'm a non scholar.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Because it is a management system, it's not just going out and pointing at people saying, You gotta do this, you gotta do this. It's all about variances, controlling the permit process, not delaying the permit process anymore. Delaying permits is money. Are we gonna hire electrical engineers, plan reviewers, all this kind of stuff, to manage an energy efficiency program, which is just gonna have a negative effect on affordability. There's just no way around it. We're statutorily charged with reducing fire fatalities. And that's what we're trying to do. We've had twelve fatalities in '25, which I don't like to sit here and say that. And those are real numbers, they're kids, they're family members, and so it's hard for me to say, well, make sure this window is installed properly when we have people that are dying in fires. So that's kind of where my focus has been. Sorry to get off on that tangent.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No, no, that's okay. We have two questions here. Let me just ask before we get to these questions. Samantha, you have testimony prepared. Right? We are gonna our schedule says that we take a break at 10:15, so that means we have twenty five minutes or so, fifteen, twenty five minutes left. So, Mike, I just wanna know how close are we to the con besides the fact that there's questions to the conclusion of your testimony.

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Sorry.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I don't have any real, our next steps right here on this slide here will be the end to this. Okay. And that would be that our goal is to enhance our educational and public outreach, and develop a wide range of educational material, easily accessible to short term rental operators. Can we do better? Yes. And then again, I've already stated, provide online resources and so forth. So that's my goal in 2026 is, what can fire safety do to enhance safety through education and public outreach?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Elizabeth, and then Leonora,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: questions? My question is directly related to that. So, I think you said you had 1,800 complaints, of which there were some I'm just

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Approximately 900 complaints. I've the number here.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Do you track how many 13 Okay.

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Right

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: there. Do you track how long it takes you to respond to a complaint?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: There are mechanisms in place, but I will tell you this. Are in the process of building out a new RMS system. This new RMS system, not only is it gonna track all this type of data, but it's also gonna give tenants, short term rental operators, the ability to go in into our database and into a read only dashboard, and they'll be able to see their inspection results and that kind of stuff on our system.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Well, my follow-up or my real question is if there was a, say, a requirement that on a sales receipt for a short term rental, notice that complaints could be lodged with the Division of Fire Safety, would that hamper you? Would you be able to manage any kind of increase

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I'm sorry, in could you repeat that, I'm sorry?

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I probably didn't say it right. If there was a requirement that tenants, short term tenants, be notified that they have a way to file a complaint, do you think your office would be able to handle whatever influx that created?

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: That would be part of our outreach to the online operators. That is something we should be doing right now. We should be in this guidance that we provide. Number one, we got to get rid of the previous guidance document that's out there, provide a new one, because the whole authority and chain of command has changed. And that would be part of that. We would give a direct route for people to access the online complaint form. And then the double back on, can we tell how long a complaint stands before it's responded Yes, we have to go behind our database. It's not some report that we have, but I have to have an IT person go in and do scripts, right, in order to generate that kind of data, but we can track our open inspections. We have a hazard index rating system we use. So there's multiple ways in which we can track this stuff. Our new RMS system, which hopefully we go live late fall or early winter in 'twenty six, I'm optimistic we're gonna be able to do a lot more stuff than our current system has the capacity to do. But yes, we can track open complaints and all that stuff to make sure these are being responded to.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Windham, Laura.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Yes, thanks. So, your opposition or frustration with the thought of setting up a new energy code is that it's currently being imagined as coming under your job description. And you're saying that that lacks logic because regardless of capacity, it would open us up to having to specialize in something that we're not we're not experts in currently. Right. Is the logic just to understand, the logic behind placing it under your your jurisdiction, is it because you are some of our only eyes on the ground when a complaint is lodged? And I guess my follow-up would be, what would be a compromise? Would it be something like keeping it a complaints based system where a complaint, can also send in somebody. So maybe that's not a do it at the building or imposing it, or is that too problematic because then you're tearing apart structures and

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Yeah, I'm not, to back up here real quick, I'm not frustrated with the effort to move the energy efficiency over to fire safety, I'm just opposed to it, it's probably better. I work with a lot of these people that are on this work group outside this, so we keep our relationships positive. But you're looking at, they want to extend us into single family owner occupied homes. I strongly oppose that. The design professionals, there is logic to it, okay? If you're a professional and we're looking at plans, there is logic behind can fire safety do this and review the plans and do all this stuff. We have people that are out in the field doing this. So the logic is there. When it comes down to business process and practicality and cost and the impact on contractors, the impact on our permit process, And when you start getting into the details and the weeds of all this stuff, then it becomes a real significant challenge where I just, I can't envision how this would work when you don't have the ability at the contractor level yet to comply with all these provisions, so you're just stacking up the bureaucracy over an industry that is probably gonna struggle with this.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I clarify just for the committee that I've had several conversations with members of the energy committee where this currently resides. There is, in fact, the representative Scott Campbell is kind of the residential he's the code expert here. There's been a committee that has been assembled and has been meeting for several years, in fact, I years on this think everybody's aware that we're a bit of an outlier state and that we don't have a residential I mean, we're the size of a medium sized town and we don't have a residential building code. And I think everybody's that aware of that, that we're outliers that way. At the same time, I think everybody on that committee is aware of what Mike's talking about, which is that we have a real problem with the sort of state of education and the capability of our entire contractor community, our building community. And I think there is a consensus that a step without commenting on where this legislation will go, that a necessary step is a much better education system for existing contractors.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: We should support CTE a little bit Yeah.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This is a real issue that we have to work with. So I'm not saying I'm not taking a position on where it should reside or when it should be done. I'm just saying there's a lot of work being done. It's being done across the hall. It may come to us because it involves housing, so it may well come to us.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Just about done, one minute on the building code, and just for clarification, we do have a residential building code, it applies to three units. Right,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: yeah.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: The only buildings that are not under single building called is the one and two family dwellings, the duplexes.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: With a duplex and a single pool. Correct.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, any other questions before we let this man go? Yes, Joe, and then Mary.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: One would be just a follow-up here, noting that STRs that I've been in are anywhere from like a bill one pager at the door to let you know about the place to, like, a

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: binder. Yes.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Like this. And in both those cases, they had any health or safety complaints can be filed at blah blah blah blah. So I think it's something that's kind of There's a posting in another way. I've been in too. So I don't know if it's being done anywhere.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Where they can?

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Yeah. They're gone. The next would be, I'm curious how you handle complaints that come in when, I shouldn't say quite clearly, but when the evidence seems to lead you towards this was caused by the tenant.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Right. We have ability to issue administrative penalties to tenants. It's not desirable because we never received payment on the penalties and a lot of these complaints are based on either retaliation or whatever. But our inspectors are trained to educate tenants about their responsibilities out there. When we took over rental housing, health and safety, one of my objectives was, can we enhance the relationship between landlords and tenants? And we strive to do that. Have we done a great job with it? No, because we've been, the volume of complaints that continuously come in, that's where our focus is. But we spend a fair amount of time dealing with tenants, educating tenants, telling tenants you have to let contractors in when they're here to make the repairs, and that kind of stuff.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: It sounds like there is

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: an action for it. There is an action for it. Tenants are responsible for things, especially the biggest deal is tampering with smoke alarms. So we can find tenants, we do find tenants for tampering with smoke alarms or CO alarms and that kind of stuff. Most tenants refuse to pay it, they get evicted, they move on somewhere else and there's no tracking mechanism to follow them. But we do have mechanisms in place.

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Okay, that seems to be, I think one of the problems is also that, and end up in the same boat that the landlord is in where you can do what you want, but they ain't paying. So what are you gonna do?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Mindful of time, everyone. Mary? This is unrelated to inspections. It's more of a curiosity question. Does state of Vermont have a program for firefighters to use abandoned buildings for training, and the reason I ask is because next to a high school, you know mean, is an abandoned, burned out, horrible mess of a house, and for ten years we've been trying to get that house taken down. And I was told by the previous mayor that firefighters don't do that.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Can't be certain that I think

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: they totally, the town bought up or had donated a couple of properties that they used for firefighter training.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Sorry. Don't think that I don't

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: think they burned the ground anymore to get rid it.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Right. That's how

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: they were trained. I I

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: would gently suggest that we

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: should move on to the next witness. But they don't literally tape the house down. This was really helpful.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This has been very helpful and very informative, and I really appreciate your time.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: It was nice meeting everybody here and seeing Samjia again. Anything the Division of Life Therapy can do, just please reach out to me, I'm more than happy to speak with you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, thank you very much. Samjia? Yes. I take it you have something to tell us? A

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: couple things.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Good. You asked her to tell us a few things.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Know. Well, but I mean, there's always the possibility she'd tell

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: us that it might cover it all.

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: I mean, to be honest, I really don't think my

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: first member is they installed it,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: and it's now occupied by the Honeywell.

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: We're on the Building Energy Committee's rather.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Oh, you're on that committee? How many people are on that committee? Sorry, It's big let me

[Joseph Parsons (Member)]: committee.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: A lot. Am I in and waiting?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Oh,

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: wait. I'm using yesterday's one for two. It says.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: For

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: the record, my name is Samantha Chean. I'm the municipal policy and advocacy specialist for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and have prepared to talk to you today about municipal authorities related to local regulatory processes related to housing and development. Did you send it? I sent it.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: Okay, no problem.

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: So we're going to talk about universal municipal authorities. I'll explain that some unique municipal authorities exist. We'll talk about local planning, regulatory and enforcement processes. I might skip over fee setting, but the information is there. I want to introduce or discuss a concept called form based code. And then, don't know, time permitting, or if maybe it's even more interesting to you, I did update this slide deck after I sent it to Miriam yesterday and added in a preview of the Act two fifty exemption process, which we discussed yesterday with Senate AG.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You know what I think? We really do need we have a 10:30 hearing with one, two, three, four witnesses. And we, I think, need to start it pretty much at 10:30, which is only twenty three minutes from now. And we have a, I think need a five minute or ten minute break. So what I think you should do is assume that we'll have you back. Great. To complete this testimony. It's more than I think can be done in twelve minutes. So, I think you should just, you don't have to, I think you shouldn't just think, oh, I'm just going to skip over and only touch the most important.

[Landon Wheeler (Deputy Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I think you should just

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: start

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: we'll We'll have you arrange to have you back, if not later this week, next week. Okay,

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: so all towns have broad regulatory authority for land use under state law. That does not mean they all use it. So every municipality may have a municipal plan. If you have a municipal plan adopted, which there are 200, then you may adopt permanent bylaw and zoning in order to enforce and realize your municipal plan. If you have permanent bylaw and zoning, then you may adopt other or use other enforcement tools that are universal authorities of the municipality. And those enforcement tools, such as an inspection requirement, would be created through the adoption of a municipal ordinance, which is like our town law. And that is also where fee authority rests, is by ordinance. So there are two forty seven municipalities, that doesn't include villages. 200 have a municipal plan. 142 are what we call 10 acre towns that have adopted zoning and bylaw. 89 cities, towns, and villages have charters. Actually, about a quarter of those are villages, for reasons I'm curious to learn why. That's important because charter is a way a municipality can acquire a non universal authority. So for example, Burlington has the authority to regulate thermal heating in buildings, so gas, propane, oil, as opposed to electric. A charter authority. And that's a charter authority. And then 43 municipalities operate water and sewer. Some operate just water.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is the 10 acre just called 10 acre, but it just means any town that has zoning and planning? Yeah,

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: it's called 10 acre because of the jurisdictional 10 acre trigger if you don't have zoning under Act two fifty. That's where the nickname comes from. So, I already explained this. So, the systems and tools that municipalities have to express their authority and utilize it are zoning, as we discussed, where they may regulate land development in conformance with the municipal plan. There are many enumerated preemptions, what we call preemption in Vermont state law that says the municipal zoning does not apply in this situation, or the municipality may only regulate up to X for this type of land use. So the current total preemptions are cannabis and renewable energy,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: so solar.

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: I'm going to put farming on the side because that's an open question

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: or

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: a reasonable decision. There are other preemptions that say a municipality may regulate this type of building, but not to the extent that it prevents the intended use. And things like that are hospitals, places of worship, homeless shelters, state buildings. And then that's pretty much it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Shelters, hospitals, halfway houses, no?

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: Just emergency shelter, so short term, not transitional housing. So emergency shelters, hospitals, and places of worship. And I think there's one more. Is it like banks? It's something, there's like another random one.

[Mike Burrows (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: There's a lot around that. Emergency housing space that conversion of a different use to that use

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: can There's be that one. Conversion of hotels and motels to short term rental is one of those. And then, of course, we have a new preemption that says if your zoning allows a single family home, it also has to allow a duplex, and that all municipal zoning must allow an ADU that is up to 900 square feet or 30% of the primary structure, residence.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Whichever is larger. Yes.

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: Addition to these tools we've discussed, there's also policy. So policy generally applies to employees. Where this comes into play is, Mike was describing, do you inspect always? Do you inspect when there's a complaint? Do you inspect when there's capacity to inspect? That would be like a policy of the town. This matters because various components of local regulation may exist in bylaw, ordinance, charter, or policy. And then to change those for the good of the people is a different process for each. And while municipalities, so the municipality corporate, the town of Hancock has broad regulatory authority, state law absolutely requires a robust citizen led democratic and transparent public process to create, adopt, amend and enforce local regulation. The

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: state defines the process.

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: The state defines the process. Yes. So zoning is not from the mind of a select person. Zoning is created through a process that begins at the citizen level. So state law requires 12 elements of every municipal plan, and there is a statutory process defined to create and adopt a municipal plan, including what we call statutory notice requirements. So you have to share it with a prescribed list of likely interested stakeholders. And then it has to go through approval at the Regional Planning Commission level and at the Department of Housing and Community Development. Municipal plans updated every ten years, although lots of municipal plans are out of date. And oftentimes, reason is because of a lack of ability to receive professional planning support from the RPC in a timely enough manner to do that. Same thing, state law prescribes a process for the adoption of zoning and bylaw. And in most cases, this process begins at the citizen citizen commission level, most often a planning commission, but sometimes a different one. And then at minimum to adopt a bylaw or bylaw amendment, you have to publish a report that explains how it is consistent with the municipal plan. You have to hold at least one public hearing. Many charters require two. And then there has to be by state law a minimum fifteen day notice period where public comment may be received. And many municipal policies or charter require more than fifteen days. And every time there's an amendment, that has to start over. So if you say we're going to have setbacks of 15 feet, and then at the public hearing, fire safety comes in and says that's an unsafe setback, we actually recommend twice that and you amend the number in the code, you have to start the whole public process over. When we're talking about the enforcement of code, and I think a really easy way to think about this is actually parking. If you've gone somewhere in Vermont that has public parking and you may have gotten a parking ticket, it's the same authority in state law, basically. So the municipality adopted a parking ordinance that says when you park on State Street, it's two hours and it costs this much per hour to park. And then if you violate it, you can get a ticket that's this amount for the first offense. That's all prescribed in ordinance. And then the municipal employee who works in parking enforcement walks by, sees your meter expired. It's basically the same system, although much more complicated. The ordinance and codes are much more technical in the regulation of land use and building development, but it's the same kind of idea. So when a municipality is considering, well, we have zoning and bylaw, what are we going to do for enforcement? There's some really important considerations. Maybe most importantly is just like, what does the future look like for your community? Are you building a building inspection or a rental inspection or a weatherization inspection enforcement team to fulfill a state obligation? Or is it according to the plan of the community that's been developed through this public process? Does the standard of the code support the need for enforcement? And does the town have the administrative or financial capacity to execute enforcement? So do you have enough people to issue permits in an effective timeline? Do you have enough people to issue inspections if those are required prior to construction or renovation? What is a reasonable penalty that's not so punitive that it would prevent the development you wish to see happen in your community? And are you providing the right to appeal, etcetera? Fee setting happens by ordinance. It cannot be used as purely income, and fees can be punitive. So you can have punitive fees for the violation of a code. Generally, And when we're talking about fees for building permits, those are put into what's called a fee schedule so that the ordinance doesn't have to be updated every year or every two years. So the ordinance has a schedule attached and the construction community and homeowners know over time how the fees will go up or not go up. And it's usually done on a cost per square footage or a cost There's also filing fees, which are a cost per page.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Samantha, I think we should go maybe one more slide, and then we'll have you back to complete the-

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: I actually think let's stop here, because then I was going to do form based code and Act two fifty, and those are big ideas.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: May I ask one? Sure. Sorry, just so I'm trying to understand the order of today's testimony and whether whether there was whether you have a response to us regarding what we just heard before about code compliance and fire safety?

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: Sure. Well, VLCT advocates for municipal authority. We would strongly advocate to protect the authorities that municipalities have now to realize the type of development that they want, need, and make legal, as well as to regulate against non conforming or non compliant building, Period. When we're talking about state building code and state energy code specifically, I want to maybe underscore something that Mike said, but maybe he used more words, I'll use less. So the state building code and the state energy code apply. A municipality does not need zoning or bylaw or inspection or enforcement in order for those codes to apply. The municipality may also adopt an enhanced code above and beyond that or one that's particular to them. So for building energy code to apply to construction in Vermont, the municipality does not need to adopt the code, but it can, and it can adopt what is commonly referred to as stretch code above and beyond the state code. I will not comment on where building code should live in state government. That's for you and your colleagues and agencies, I think, to discuss. I will say at the municipal level, where we are the practitioners of these things and sharing the goal of safe buildings, smart growth, and new housing. It would never happen that we would have energy code before building code. And it would also never happen that a municipality would adopt these laws, these requirements, without the commensurate enforcement systems as well. That's very unusual. I think it's instructive to look at some of these codes that are building permit requirements at the local level, because some of them are pretty thin and may focus just on, for example, fire safety. And some of them are quite robust and specific and prescriptive in our denser areas and our bigger communities. And then they have the permitting and inspection department to match, to assist with the outreach, the education. They work directly with builders and homeowners. They have folks who just work on permit mapping, telling you what permits you need to get in what order and how to find the resources to build to comply prior to having your inspection. I think you said permit management, not permit enforcement. I think municipal permit professionals would say they're permit educators. They're educating on

[Unidentified Committee Member (Speaker 4 - mixed)]: the code. They work towards compliance through education. And then specifically to the comment that, or sort of the next steps of if we're doing any kind of complaint response with short term rentals, So blah blah what's your comment about that? Can we aim it towards education? Mean, this seems to align with what you're saying, but I just wanted to hear clearly what does VCLT have a position on like, have you heard Fingertowns? Yes, that's what we would like. We would like to have education from the fire safety folks so that we can.

[Samantha Chean (Municipal Policy & Advocacy Specialist, VLCT)]: I want to say, first, I should have said it already, our municipal officials report really great, excellent working relationships with the State Department of Fire Safety. When it comes to short term rentals, we advocate again for the local authority to regulate and the local resources to enforce, especially for fire safety for short term rentals. A lot of these units are not single standalone residential homes. They're in condos and really large multifamily developments where there may be dozens of short term rentals. And in those communities, fire safety is a big concern. Wastewater is a big concern. The number of sleeping units, these are all public safety and life safety issues. And there are other things that other towns want to regulate for in the scope of short term rental ordinance. So where was I going with that? You said do a position on education and outreach. Would say it's a both and. Yes, the ongoing work with the Department of Fire Safety in that area is really important, and we totally support that continuing improvement. And we want that local authority to set the local reg and to make sure that it's a force and that folks are safe and that there's not too many people sleeping in a place that's too small to safely house them or without having a disproportionate negative impact on neighbors in the community, with parking, traffic, egress, ingress, wastewater, etcetera, housing availability. Thank you, Samantha.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We will have you back. And for the committee, what I'd like to do is take a break until twenty five minutes of twelve Our hearing was scheduled for 10:30, excuse me, eleven. The hearing was scheduled for 10:30. We will postpone it until ten