Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: We're live. Alright, everyone. Welcome back. It is 11:35 on Thursday, May 7, House of Government Operations and Military Affairs. We are doing an introduction and a walkthrough on h nine five seven, an act relating to the approval of amendments to the charter of the town of Williston. We will open things up with sponsor of the charter proposal, representative Burkhart. How are you? Great. Thanks for having me. We finally got our schedules all in order.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhart]: Yes. Sorry that the one day and two years that I was homesick was the last time you guys wanted me to come in. So I appreciate the reschedule. So good morning, Government Operations and Military Affairs for the record. I'm Bridget Burkhart. I represent Chittenden 8, which includes a part of Williston and a part of South Burlington. I'm here to introduce a very straightforward charter change from the town of Williston. Williston has decided to align itself with most of the municipalities in Chittenden County, and they are eliminating their board of listers and moving to an assessor led model for groundless maintenance and property tax appeals. Voters approved the change on town meeting day this year by a margin of about 68% in favor to 32% unfavorable. Currently, the town's listers are responsible for signing the annual grant list, accepting or denying grievances, and providing general oversight of the assessor's office, but there already is an assessor's office. Listers do not participate in the daily operations of the assessor's office, though, and they do not value properties. There was concern that the new education requirements for listers would make it hard to attract and retain listers. They already struggled to keep all three lister positions filled. And they were also concerned that as Williston continues to develop, property tax appeals are getting more and more complex, especially on the commercial and industrial side. And so there was concern that listers might not be able to keep up with the education they needed to they were concerned themselves that they might not be able to keep up with the education they needed to be effective in that role. So that's pretty much all I have. I think it's a pretty typical charter change. So if you don't have any questions for me, I'll hand it over to Tim.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: She's a representative or our it's a pretty crisp idea. Pretty straightforward. Yeah, lots of complexity. Excellent. Thanks, Jinx it. How are you, sir?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You're welcome.

[Tim Young (Legislative Counsel)]: Thank very much for having me back. For the record, my name is Tim Young, Legislative Counsel. For you, you have H-nine57 a charter change to the town of Williston. Let's see, it is a relatively brief bill, essentially four pages long. I think it'd be fine to just go through line by line, but I defer to

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: chair. Yes, please do. Yeah, yeah, Let's do chant through the bill, and then

[Tim Young (Legislative Counsel)]: we'll kick over to the town manager. So section one is boilerplate language. It is just general and would be on all charter change bills, just generally approving the amendments of the charter change and then indicating when the voters approved the amendment, is on 03/03/2026. Section two gets into the language of the charter itself. Just to orient the committee, we're in the appendices of Title 24 where we find all of our charters. This in particular is in Chapter 171. Just a quick note that curious, that was redesignated just a few years ago from where were we, I think we're in chapter 156, but now it's 170 So first change of substance we have in the charter itself is in the charter section 14 of the page at top, top of the page two here. And we just simply repeal lister off the list of local elected officials. Then further down in the same section 14, subdivision c for elected officers, duties, responsibilities, and conduct. There's subdivision three, gets which had the meat of the law for listers that is repealed in its entirety. That takes us to the bottom of page three of the bill. We have section 15 of the charter appointed non administrative officials. Subdivision B4A contained a, let's see, A and C both contained references to those listers and those that language has been struck out through. Moving on to the to be added section 21, title assessment of property. This reads subsection A, the town shall employ or contract with one or more professionally qualified assessors who meet prior to conducting any assessment of the work. Town training requirements established by the director of property evaluation review under 32 BSA 4,052. I should just note that that explicit cross reference is not necessary. It's redundant, due to the discretion of the committee whether you want that to be removed or not, general law would of course still apply. But it's also just as fine to maintain. Remain here. Subsection B reads, The assessor shall have the same powers, discharge the same duties, proceed in the discharge of those duties in the same manner, and be subject to the same liabilities as are prescribed for listeners under provisions of Ethel 32. Same kind of comment about cross sectioning other law. Section three of the bill, now we take ourselves out of the language of the charter itself and get into some session law. We have a transitionary provision here that reads the term of office of any lister in of sorry, that's again. The term of office of any lister in office in the town of Williston shall expire forty five days after the passage of this act or upon the date on which the assessor is employed or contracted with an accordance to that new charter provision. Section 21, bring us to Section four, the effective date act shall take effect on passage.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Right up, angle.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you, Tim. How will this mesh with whatever Ways and Means is doing to establish new regional assessment districts? Do you know?

[Tim Young (Legislative Counsel)]: I do not know. I'm unfamiliar with what they're doing, but I can confer with some of my colleagues and check.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Because I think what I'm understanding is that will be a contract with some assessor firm or organization, is my understanding. So probably, if that law were enacted, this may not be necessary, but perhaps Williston is getting, this is what it appears to me, is getting in before this all happens. They want it to happen sooner rather than later. It's just thinking aloud, thanks for indulging me.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Anything else to cancel? Nope. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. Hand over to Eric Wells. How you doing, Eric?

[Eric Wells (Williston Town Manager)]: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for having me this morning.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yes. So what brought us here?

[Eric Wells (Williston Town Manager)]: Yep. Representative Burkhart outlined it well. It was supported at town meeting day, put on the warning by the select board for all the reasons that representative Burkhart outlined. I will just add that our current elected listeners were all in support of this change as well, and that was part of the conversation moving forward. To answer the question about the assessment districts of ways and means, This change is really operational for the town on a day to day basis. We employ an assessor and a part time assessor right now who do that day to day work that that would carry on. As we look for reappraisal moving forward, that's when that really come into play in addition, and we'll need that staff on hand for that operational work as well. Working with a contracted reappraisal firm is something we're lining up here in the next couple of months as well since he has reappraisal order standing right now. And we would continue to utilize our existing staff structure. This eliminates the office of elected lister that's primarily working towards that grievance process, which as we've outlined has become more and more complex with the commercial appeals we've experienced in recent years.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhart]: Thank you.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Representatives know, Ben Coffin.

[VL Coffin IV]: Could you tell us the vote results, the number of yeas and nos?

[Eric Wells (Williston Town Manager)]: Yep. I've got to hear from the clerk. Yeses for fifteen sixty, and noes for seven twenty seven on Article 17.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you. That was the exact question I was gonna ask.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: And we do have that SharePoint that does get uploaded with all that stuff by council, so that is a feature that we have living in our Outlook system. But thank you for having that information prepared. Anything else for Mr. Wells? This does seem like it's pretty crisp, understandable, and it kind of jives with the other policies that are floating around about the evolution of how we're doing appraisals and assessments in a more professional landscape.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhart]: I think we'll see more of these, I believe.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Was that a hand representative? No. No, Well, was just like a fucking motions. Love

[Eric Wells (Williston Town Manager)]: that. Yep.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright, guys. Well, I think that was pretty straight to the point as we thought it was. So we'll talk about whether or not we want to do continued work on this or just set it up for a vote. We'll have that conversation later on. But yeah, barring anything else, we'll break for lunch because it's going to be a long Florida today. Seeing no hands, seeing no comments. Right, thank you, team Williston.