Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Actually, well, the four options that you have on your place that the planners can offer. You're welcome. Welcome back to Senate Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs, and we're turning back again to housing. And, Rachel, we welcome you. Thank you very much for Zooming in from Philadelphia. Where where is Pew these days? Isn't Pew?

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: I am in from the DC office. But yes, we also have a Philadelphia office. They focus just on Philadelphia specific topics.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But where is Pewhead Fork?

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Yeah, so the original office is in Philadelphia, the largest office is in the DC area.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Ah, got it. Well, welcome, Rachel. You we understand that you had interest in weighing in on section 11, which is our manufactured housing, piece I think. And that is, my understanding is that is the section you were interested in weighing in on?

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: So I focus on any

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Or of the Johnson do you have general comments about the person who, or a senator who had asked that you testify is not here, Kesha Ram Hinsdale. So if you have general comments on the bill, that would be great. And I thought I thought we were looking for your comments on section 11.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Right. So I was told section 11, and my understanding was that it was specific to manufactured housing on just in, like, on manufactured housing and kind of what what's going on in the country that's related to that and and what it looks like in Vermont.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great. Okay.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Great. I have some slides, so I'm gonna share them. Let me see if I can get it to work. Let me send a request.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We're missing our committee assistant at the moment, so if you just just talk it through for the moment until she Sure.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Well, I wanna, thank you all for having me today. Let me get myself oriented here. Sorry. The system. It's a little bit of a problem.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So I take it your expertise is housing.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: That's your Yep. Yeah. I apologize. I'm having some trouble with my screens. Okay. There we go.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Don't worry about the screens. Just tell us Sure. Okay. So

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: yes. So the Pew Charitable Trust,

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: just as a little bit of background, is

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: a five zero one(three) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. My focus is on manufactured housing, which is what I'll focus on today. But the housing policy initiative broadly focuses on a few areas, including challenges with access to small mortgages, use of alternative financing arrangements like rent to own and contract for deed, as well as zoning, building codes and land use policies. And manufactured housing tends to hit on all of those areas, to be really honest. So my goal was to talk through, a few different things, what manufactured homes are and how they differ from some of the other factory built homes, current use and shipments in Vermont, some of the zoning and land use state approaches that we're seeing in the country recently, and to the extent that it's useful talking about how minimum lot sizes can impact affordability for homes. I'm happy to take questions as we go through. So if there's anything that comes up that folks want to chat through, please just interrupt me because I can't

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: see you on

[Matt Belanger (Planning Director, Town of Williston)]: the screen.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Our committee assistant, Kiara, has just returned. If you want to, can do that. Needs it. Yes.

[Kiara (Committee Assistant)]: All right. It should be upvoting now. Sorry about that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Let me Thank you for doing what disappeared. There we go.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Okay.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Let me see if this will work. It looks I'm going to share this and then I'm going to get it into There we go.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Can you

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: see my screen okay?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes, perfect.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Okay, great. So this is what I just talked through. On the right hand side, I'm glad you can see it now. This is a snapshot from Zillow over the last twenty four months of manufactured and mobile homes that were sold in the state of Vermont. So I think it's interesting to see this varies quite a bit by state, that manufactured and mobile homes tend to be somewhat in certain areas of Vermont. But in general, it's fairly cohesive across the state. So just because definitions can be helpful and important, I wanted to flag that people often get confused between mobile and manufactured homes. And so on the left, we have an example of a pre-nineteen seventy six home, which would be considered a mobile home. This is before we had a federal standard for manufactured housing. And so even though folks tend to call newer homes, they still call them mobile homes. Manufactured homes, like the one on the right, are constructed largely whole in the factory. But anything built after 1976 was built to that current standard of federal HUD code that was put into place honestly because there was a lack of consistency in quality in the mobile home space. And there were significant updates made in the 1990s. And then, of course, under factory built housing in general, there's modular housing, which differs in that it's not built to this one federal HUD code, but also can be made as panels. And so it's not necessarily as whole and finished as a manufactured home when it's delivered to the site. One of the key differences between a manufactured home and modular, both of them are made in the factory. Both of them have some efficiencies in how fast they can be made. Manufactured homes tend to be lower in cost because they not only have the factory efficiency, but they also have the efficiency of the federal code. So for example, a home that's made in Pennsylvania could be sold in Maryland, New York, Vermont, whereas a modular home would have to be changed to meet the building codes of each area that it's going in, not even just one state code. Sometimes it's the local building code as well. So that creates a little bit more efficiency and cost savings in the manufactured housing space.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You wish we had a building code nationally.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Right, so the manufactured housing is the only one that we have the national building code for. So but there has been some work on modular different localities and states working together thinking about how to create more regional building codes for modular. One of the reasons we started looking at manufactured housing, of course, there's an enormous housing supply shortage across the country, every state, both in metropolitan areas, more rural areas. The challenges differ, but the shortage is significant across the country. And there's especially a lack of smaller and more affordable homes. But we're starting to see developers turn towards manufactured housing to fill some of the lower cost housing shortage. In addition, challenges in this space include access to mortgages, but also zoning that keeps manufactured housing out of single family neighborhoods. They're an array of manufactured home types and styles. So on the top, in the middle here, the white with the blue shutters is a single section home in Vermont and on the right is a double section home. These are kind of the more standard models that you might be more familiar with. In the middle, though, the brown is something kind of new called a single section cross mod home. These are still manufactured homes made to the HUD code standard, but they're intended to be a bit higher end with usually garages or porches, higher end finishes and to really seamlessly fit into single family neighborhoods. And then on the bottom, the blue is an example of a duplex where land costs can be especially low because of the efficiency of the build, but you have two different modest sized units that are transported, each section whole, and then the roof is hinged and constructed on-site or sealed on-site. And then on the right, something a little less usual is a two story manufactured home. This is less common right now because all manufactured homes to the HUD code have to keep that steel chassis in the bottom of the section, even when you're going to put the section on top. It's not real efficient to build this way yet, but there's work being done to remove that requirement, especially if you're building a second story because it just doesn't serve a purpose. To give you a sense of the difference in prices, this is from the Harvard Joint Center of Housing Studies, where they looked at single section and double section homes in comparison with similar site built home costs. This is from 2020. So prices have gone up a little bit, but the differences are still very significant, similar to what this shows. So for example, single section compared with a similar sized site built home is less than half of the cost. And a double section is about a little more than half the cost of a similar sized site built home. So three ways we've seen to improve manufactured home availability and affordability. First is zoning. Manufactured homes have to be allowed to be built, and especially this is useful in single family where single family homes are allowed. Lower minimum lot sizes really make a difference for the overall cost of the home and expanding eligibility for financing for mortgages can be key here too. Manufactured homes, many of them get mortgages in the state of Vermont. At least three quarters of manufactured home owners who are borrowing are using a real estate mortgage just like any other home. But for some folks who are on rented land or in other scenarios, it can be tougher to get access to a real estate mortgage. So currently, about 6% of the housing stock in Vermont is manufactured or mobile homes. In the darker yellow in this map, those areas are where it's between 12 to 19.9% of the stock. And the light blue at the top corner is where it's 12 to 19.9%. Overall, 6% of the housing stock is, about what it is as the national average as well, so very similar to the rest of the country. But this is where you can also see the differences in price. So the Vermont median home value according to Zillow is about $380,000 whereas manufactured home values for homes on owned land between 2018 and 2024 was just $175,000 so significantly less expensive. And then for rented land, it was just $85,000 when you're looking at just the home. Shipments, and this is true across the country as well. When we look at the state of Vermont, this graph shows shipments per year. So on the far left, back in 1999, shipments were about 700 homes per year that were going to Vermont. As you can see, that dipped a lot over time and around the Great Recession was about 100 homes per year. It's improved very modestly, but it's certainly never gone up to the rates that it was in the late 90s. United States productions are down by about a third on manufactured housing. And it's likely that this is a combination of zoning restrictions and challenges with access to financing that never really recovered after the Great Recession. I mentioned before, but this, might drive it home a little bit more. When we look at manufactured home buyers and the kind of financing they're using and the kind of land ownership that they have, we find that about 79% of folks in Vermont are on their own land. So that's the most common way that people who are living in manufactured homes, it's their own home, their own land, and they're almost always getting a mortgage. The 19% is more like mobile home parks or manufactured home communities. And then there's a very small percentage of folks who are on indirect land that's a resident owned community where folks own the land as a cooperative or unpaid leased land, that little purple slice, which is usually family or tribal land. So over the last five years, we've seen nine states take up some kind of zoning reform to help manufactured homes be possible to build in more places across the state. Some key examples include Maine, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Maryland, and Virginia legislature has passed zoning reform for manufactured homes in 2026, and it just waits the governor's signature. One of the most common attributes for these states were that the that the manufactured homes be treated just like any other single family home and be allowed by right wherever single family homes are allowed.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Great. Yeah. Kesha Hinsdale, stop you there for a second. This is super helpful. Where we'll probably have to drill down in this slide specifically is, I don't think this is unique to Vermont, but we're making sure that by right means it's actually permitted. It can't be appealed over and over. It you know, like, I'm just trying to figure out if our if you looked at our language or if one of these states really gotten right, that it's just this conversation is unheard. It is the same as a single family hub.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Yeah. And you're right. Whether or not it works, it comes down to really fine details often and whether there are loopholes that localities are trying to get around. Looking at the language that you all have in the bill, I don't have a strong sense of whether that's better or worse than any other state. Kentucky has often been flagged advocates as being a potentially really good model here for how they put the language. A lot of these pieces of legislation, I noticed in your bill, wasn't specific to single family, which is not necessarily a problem, but that's what we see in a lot of the other bills is allowing it where single family zoning or where residential zoning is allowed. So the link at the bottom, and I'm happy to share the link also, is a paper that we published in 2025 that gives more details about all of these various bills with links to them. So if that's useful, that could be worth looking at. Great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Just have ten minutes, so Okay.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Yep, I'm almost at the end. We don't have to get into deep detail here, but I wanted to also flag the Move In New York pilot that is working on bringing hundreds of homes to various smaller metros across the state. And one of the things that strikes me here and that also comes to mind when thinking about your bill is that a big component here when we've talked to folks in New York is about the buy in from that place in trying to ensure that manufactured homes are allowed and are able to be used. And a piece of that that we've seen not only in New York, but in other states is having pilots where, you know, one or two homes are built in prominent places where folks can walk through them and see what they look like. And the buy in piece of it seems to be crucial for localities not pushing back too much and trying to sneak in ways of preventing it, if that makes sense.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes, a picture's worth a thousand parts.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Yeah, well, and in this space, I think beyond the picture helps a lot, but what we found is people

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: walking Yeah, no, no, that's what I mean.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: So the last piece I wanted to flag was that several studies have also found that large minimum lot sizes can really raise housing costs because buyers tend to maybe not necessarily want or need the larger lot size, but they still end up having to pay for it. We've seen a few place localities and states take this on. So Houston and Austin, Texas, Durham, North Carolina, Spokane, Washington have all cut minimum lot sizes. And then Texas and Maine have also reduced minimum lot sizes in 2025 via state legislation. And just to give a high level sense of how much cost of the lot can really make a big difference in housing costs. These are just two examples of a average cost single section manufactured home in the Northeast in 2024. That was $90,000 was the average. But here on the scenario one, we've got a land cost of 25,000 versus a land cost of 200,000. Giving the total home cost, of course, is very large. But one of the things that's very important to folks in affordability is really whether they can make that monthly payment consistently and feel really comfortable with it. So when you have these different land costs, the monthly payment differs by quite a lot with the scenario one saving more than half compared with scenario two. Key takeaways, manufactured housing, we know is an important source of naturally occurring affordable housing and is one of the only ways these smaller starter homes are being built across the country. And there are some key opportunities to expand shipments and fill vacant lots, residential neighborhood use and subdivisions essentially using manufactured housing like any other single family home, but at a lower cost. And states, many states are starting to take this on via zoning changes at the state level instead of at the local level. As a result, we see developers starting to use manufactured housing more. And lastly, the minimum lot sizes can really help preserve affordability. And honestly, when we look at, you know, the mobile home park, which people talk about as being especially affordable, a piece of why that comes off as very affordable is because those lots are so, so small. Whereas when you're using it like a site built home, if the lot size has to be very large, that inflates the cost quite a bit.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. Thank you. We've tackled lot sizes in our other bills, not, you

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: know, fully.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But questions for Rachel and Kesha.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So one thing you briefly touched on, Rachel, is something we've agonized about in committee for several years, which is land banks. It I mean, maybe this is us reaching out to New York housing folks about how that's working, but

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Michigan. That's so great.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We've kept circling around like, we create functional land based tools that reclaim blighted property? You know, it really would have to be a public private partnership because our municipalities often have vacant or blighted land that they can't afford either to do something with. So maybe if you could send us somebody in New York that we could would literally go without her because we, as you may have heard, this is something I say a lot here, we gave back FEMA trailers after our last major historic flooding event because there was no sited area with water and sewer that was willing to accept them, and that was such a shame. That's what I think about all the time when I think about manufactured housing and land banks. It's just we are not well set up for the next event that makes people homeless. We had very

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: good testimony last year on land banks from Michigan. Really excellent. And this bill sadly doesn't, but that's why we keep meeting every year. Year in, year out, we can address land banks more fully, hopefully, next year. Thank you, Rachel. Any questions? David, Randy, Tom? No. Thank

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: you so much. I'll I'll definitely follow-up with some information about land banks. There's certainly more than just New York.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Michigan was really excellent. The the testimony we had from them. Okay. Great. Okay. That's good. Or Illinois. Was it no. Was

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: we need all the examples we can

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: get of how to make it work. Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And thank you, Pew. I mean, thank you, Rachel. Pew Research with Housing has been so illuminating. Really appreciate it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, thank

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: you. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you all.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. And I think we, you know, we've been educating ourselves on the difference between mobile homes and manufactured housing. And now that what was really helpful with your presentation is understanding the Hue code, the the national code that is with HUD. And that that's that's helpful because we are working on energy codes in the building at the moment, and we really would love to have a regional. We we even like to have a statewide building code, which we don't have. And it would be great also to have regional if we're gonna go into modular building in any kind of efficient way in New England. It would be great to have a a regional building code that we could then build to in these manufacturing centers and build pieces and parts that were able to be used anywhere in our region.

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: Yeah. Yeah. I'll chat with the folks on the team. I know they've connected with, various folks in the modular space that have been working on these things. So if I can find somebody that would be useful, I'll pass it on to you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We'll keep a talent bank here instead of an expert go to bank here in our committee. Thank you.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: so much. Okay. Have a great day. Yeah. You too. Thank you for helping on section 11. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. Okay. We are going to turn to Chip and Matt, I think. And Ellen, is Ellen coming in? Or

[Kiara (Committee Assistant)]: Ellen should be coming in shortly. Chip and Matt just joined

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: the studio before I

[Kiara (Committee Assistant)]: just get it done. Okay.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Let's bring them in. Welcome. Welcome, Chip and Matt. It's good to have you. Chip, thank you. First of all, we this committee gave Charlie Baker the challenge of going forward and taking these trans this transit corridor idea, had been proposed in legislation two years ago, and really help make it a little more rounded in what's possible. And so we really are grateful to you and Erin and all three of you working with Charlie to come up with these options. We really appreciate.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Can I Yeah? Can I just re reframe a little bit? Only because I think this came up.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Let's just introduce ourselves to Oh, don't think have any of you been in already before? Yeah.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Yes. Couple years ago. What? Yeah. A couple years ago, I think.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. So we have some new players here. So why don't we just quickly introduce ourselves?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I'm Thomas Chittenden representing the Southeast area of Chittenden County.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Kesha Ram Hinsdale, same district.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Alison Clarkson, Windsor District.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Randy Brock, Franklin County, and Northern Grand Dole.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Good morning. David Weeks

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: representing Groveland County. Right. So, Kesha, you want talk and then let's

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So and and I don't pass dispersions on anyone for, like, continuing to to knit phrases together. We've packed a lot. But our initial effort on transit corridor was different than our work to try and make quadplexes by right in areas with water and sewer, served by water and sewer along water and sewer. I think the three proposals you put forward do a really good job trying to meet our intent on the quadplexing by rate. I just wanna make sure we don't overlay that, which was HOME Act, with discussion of transit corridors, which was Act 181, because the transit corridors was more about letting Act two fifty go, like exempting transit corridors like Route 7 or Berry Montpelier Road from much of Act two fifty for housing units up to something like 75. So taking the existing designated areas, which are still poorly defined at this point, unfortunately, going into the end of this session, and saying they are not always a circle around a downtown. They're often a rectangle, you know, between two communities. So I love to work on transect corridors, but unfortunately, I don't know what DHCD is doing. They're coming in, frankly. But what what this group has done, I think, effectively is look at our quad flexing by right along water and sewer, and how to define what we mean by along water and sewer.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I'm Yes. Chip Sawyer, Director of Planning and Development for the City Of St. Albans and I'm the Vice President of the Vermont Planners Association. And I'm joined by Matt Belanger. Matt, you want introduce yourself?

[Matt Belanger (Planning Director, Town of Williston)]: Sure. I'm Matt Belanger. I'm the Planning Director for the Town of Williston. I also serve on the Vermont Planners Association Executive Committee and Chair of the Legislative Committee.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Yep. And just like Senator Clarkson and Senator Ram Hinsdale said, there was one provision in section 12 of S-three 28 that was, I think adding some clarity to what we would define as a water and sewer area using a quarter mile as a measurement. Some folks, myself included, were a little alarmed thinking that might be too broad. And then Charlie Baker from Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission volunteered to try and figure out what the legislative intent of the change was, and was assigned the mission by Senator Clarkson to come up with some example language. You know, I think part of the important background of this is that way back with Act 47 in 2023, the legislature, I think, basically said that we want to allow more housing by right, especially up to four units multifamily, And we think that areas that have received the public infrastructure investment that have become water and sewer areas should enjoy that density allowance. And it was pretty well understood by everyone at the time, and a lot of towns have gone out and put it into their zoning. But when you look back at it, a water sewer area is defined as where it is available. And in retrospect, you know, that could be interpreted widely differently. And as you know, you know, all the provisions in state statute having to do with zoning, you know, the rubber hits the road when a community and a DRB interpret what they think that statute means, and then writes the zoning and makes decisions. And sometimes, there's a lot of gray area and room for interpretation. So, we, and Charlie, and we, Aaron and Matt and I, as we brainstorm with Charlie, we're trying to figure out, well, what is the problem here that we think is trying to be solved by this language change? And we heard about a couple situations, I think both of them in Shelburne, where someone wanted to build a quadplex on a parcel that's near water and sewer. And we came at it from the standpoint of do we want to make sure they enjoy the density allowance of having a quadplex bi right? Is there also a desire to make sure they can connect to the water and sewer? We're going leave that one for last. So, one the first, and Senator, do you want me to share the document or do you have it all in front of you?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We all have it in front of us.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: So, Charlie's option number one just goes straight to the point and says, you know what, if you'd really like, say a farmer, say you have a farm family that owns a large tract of land. And as we know, every once in a while in Vermont, these families will sometimes subdivide up a couple housing lots. They might use it for their family, but it's also a way to make some money off of their land. They continue to farm the rest of it. Do we want to make sure that these types of folks or anyone really can build a quadplex, or get started building a quadplex under zoning? There are a lot of other factors that determine whether or not you can actually build it, but they do, do we want them to have the ability under zoning to build a quadplex by right? So, Charlie's first suggestion is, in that section of chapter 117, Just change the word, just change duplex by right into quadplex by right. Now that would have a lot of implications and there are a lot of other local planners that we haven't spoken to about that, but that was, that's the first suggestion, you know. There are a lot of other things that will determine whether or not you can build that quadplex. Do you have the septic capacity? Do you have the well capacity? Can you connect to municipal water and sewer? Are you somehow triggering Act two fifty? You know, all sorts of different things. But that was one suggested change. Not quite sure that's where the legislators wanted to go with it, but that one got right to the point. So, that would be irrespective of water and sewer areas. Would just be across the state.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'm not sure that's fully intact, but I think we were going to what you originally said, which is where water and sewer are available. Yeah. Because this really would allow quadriplexes anywhere, anywhere. Yes. So,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, I love this, but let's say that doesn't make it across the finish line. You started to touch on this and maybe it's safe for the end, but this one highlights the notion that we are trying to say you can't deny them a water sewer connection if you wouldn't deny a single family home, a water sewer connection. Right? So that's where you've you've like, maybe you're saving that for later and maybe that's why I don't wanna be the one to take us down this road even though I like it. But, you know, it's it's that wastewater water sewer connection shouldn't be the sort of like decision point for whether or not you could have multi family housing versus a single family housing.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: In terms of just being able to walk into the zoning office and apply for a permit for a quadplex, are saying that think, are talking about making sure the property has the density allowance or making sure that the property can hook up to water and sewer if they want to build that quadplex?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, both. Both. Guess. Both. Yeah. I mean, because that's the thing. Like, they're like, oh, you get the density allowance, but the water and the sewer and the road, you're not already connected to them. Right? That's what happened in Shelburne was the question of what does it mean to be a long water and sewer if it's not on your property already? If it's in the road?

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Typically, the way you typically understand it is that there are water and sewer mains on the street, and your parcel is on the street. And maybe your parcel is 500 feet deep, or maybe it's only a quarter acre lot, but that because the mains are in the street, you should be able to walk into the town office and say, Hey, I'd like to apply for a water and sewer connection.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Now,

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: typically, zoning will be concerned with how many units are you building and where is it on the lot and all of that stuff. Water and sewer connections aren't supposed to act as zoning, as a general rule. But, a community can say, for some whatever reason, you know, we want to know how many units you're building. We want to know how many bedrooms you have. Because we have to make sure we're, what's the right, protecting, let's say the word protecting our capacity for the water and the sewer. We gotta make sure we don't over promise.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: When we award a connection for any given development, that development may not be built for two or three years. So as we hand out these promises of connections, knowing someday the shovels will break ground and you'll make the connection and you'll build it, we've to make sure we don't promise too many.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think But

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: you're aware of our other lovely sheltered example of being appealed over and over again on a multifamily housing project in a former bowling alley, and we ended up with a car wash. So the question in my mind is, do these regulations actually make sense to steer us towards valuable uses that may use some water sewer capacity probably less than a car wash, you know, or do they just allow for appeal or denial or appeal or denial until we until we end up with a lot of Dollar Generals at car washes, frankly, instead Right. Of

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I mean, I think typically there's not an appeal mechanism for a water or sewer connection. It's typically zoning. Like I would appeal, I don't want that multifamily housing next to me, I'll appeal that. A car wash gets proposed, and it doesn't really bother me as a neighbor, but maybe it will someday.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It's more that they didn't have to go through Act two fifty. Yeah. And feel it was on commercial. So

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I think the proposed change of making sure it's clear how close to the water and sewer lines you are to trigger the water sewer area definition in chapter 117, which then triggers the quadplex by right provision in chapter 117. And then, I think what we'd advise is that a community still gets to use its general guidelines for when it will promise that water and sewer connection based on its capacity. Typically a developer On

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: capacity, I mean, because sadly many of our towns are facing capacity I mean, we can't use any more in Woodstock because we get our capacity at the moment on our water.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: So, we go straight to Charlie's Option three, which is saying a quarter mile long distance, there are some and I'm not an expert on this, but I know especially for the drinking water state revolving fund out of DEC, they kind of use a rule of if you're within 500 feet of a water main, it's considered feasible that you'd be able to extend it as a service into a parcel. So, that's why Charlie went with, you know, a thousand or 500 or 100 feet. Know, say within 500 feet of water and sewer lines, and let's assume these mean distribution and collection mains, right? The actual municipal ones. If you have a parcel, and there's a portion of that parcel that's within 500 feet of those water and sewer lines, then that portion of the parcel should enjoy the quadplex by right provision of Act 47.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: But the rogue rule is

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: 1,200, so that's what I'm gonna advocate for, is 1,200. I mean, 1,320 is a quarter of a mile, right? So that's what I propose, which I don't think is a problem, frankly, at all.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But It's actually quite a bit. I think that the chart they they're recommending less than that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, they're recommending less, but then we get into incongruency again with act one eighty one, which has the road rule at 1,200.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But that's not water and sewer.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: 100, but then it's 1,200 if it's a network of roads. It's 2,000. It's 2,000. So we're at 2,000 with the road rule if you're talking about a network of roads.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But that's not water and sewer.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: A road. But that is where you pile on all kinds of regulations that don't talk to each other.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Are you saying you would prefer that it's a longer distance or that it avoids that road rule distance?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That it's a longer distance, once

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: you say 2,000 people.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: What I think she's saying is that it be consistent with the road rule.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And then it the act one eighty one and the home act just be consistent. That's what we're facing right now is that we are doing a push me pull you But to every community with our maps.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. But a road, it is not necessarily real a road is quite different from being able to hook up water and sewer. So what Wow. The road envisions is, let's say, it's 2,000 feet. You're going to a place, and then you're gonna be doing a a septic and and and well as opposed to being 2,000 feet from a water and I mean,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: that's a not huge very valuable if you are denied a water super connection. If one of those absolutely. That you're I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: don't agree. I mean, you could have 2,000 feet of a to a property that then is assumed is gonna have septic and drilled well, not water

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: and sewer. But if that home is 2,000 feet from water and sewer on the main road That's a huge, huge cause. But to the property developer. To the property owner. Right. Or to Chittenden. Right? Or for the kinds of things that we're actually trying to do, which is alternatively housing.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Yeah, I mean, if I were to, if we, there's an elegance to using the same numbers of roll rule, for sure. It does widen what a lot of communities might have thought the water and sewer area was. But if we're limiting that just to the quadplex by right provision, it's not exactly a Pandora's box, because there are a lot of other factors determine whether or not development would explode on this parcel. You need a developer who wants to extend the water and sewer service. You need, you know, there are other, you need a community to agree that they have the capacity. There are all sorts of you know, this could be used as a loophole for a developer to say, I'm going to build quadplexes on a septic system because I happen to be within 2,000 feet of a water sewer line. But I'm never going to connect to that. I'm going to build my own septic. I mean, that could happen.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Which is fine.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Yeah. That's fine.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, I'm saying it's like a single family home.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We're saying it's not discriminated against.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Right.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And if you could have a little plot of, you know, 10 single family homes, why can't you have 10 quadplexes? I mean, just to come to like what the horror story we're worried about. You know, that's I'm trying to show that this is getting ridiculous, you know, that

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I mean, suggest option three, based on what I'm hearing. And then I think legislators maybe play with that number. Playing with that number is what gets people together, then maybe that's what you do by the time the session is over. 2,000, you know, maybe you go to 1,300. But I think option three might be the way to go. This conversation actually also helps us understand, I think, a little better about what the problem was that was attempting to be solved. I think one thing that we'd advocate is very important is that we don't mess with chapter 101 and the whole process by which water and sewer connections are allocated, because that would be, you know, you'd have to bring in VLCT and DEC and the Green Mountain Water Environmental Association, you know, that would be a whole different conversation than just the quadplex by right conversation.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. So, to summarize, if we adopt option three, which makes probably the most sense, although you haven't gone through the options, but, you know, the big

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I can't live with option two because there's been no great designated area

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Out of place. Think we're very behind on designated areas.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. We've updated designated areas significantly. We haven't heard what that looks like now, have we? I mean, unless I missed it. No.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Have, there are, I think there are four or five counties that have proposed new designated areas, but none of them have gone before the LERB yet.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Or they've been, right, potentially denying the rest.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, anyway, not more accepted. David.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Oh, I was just gonna

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: concur that Walwe County, as an example, has already designated the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: tier one.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But they've been denied some of their Tier 1A and B.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I'm happy to concede the rest of my time. I really appreciate the ability to come in here and discuss this. But I mean, I'm just in case Matt has anything he'd like to say.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So, okay. As planners, because you're our experts in the room on this, if you could just summarize for all of us who don't live in this space all the time, what we would accomplish with option three.

[Matt Belanger (Planning Director, Town of Williston)]: I'm happy to take some of that. So what you accomplish is a change, a likely change to some of the zoning provisions on the ground that are currently either prohibiting the quadplex development type or prohibiting the density that would support it. So it extends, you know, in Williston's case, sort of a halo of some distance out beyond where that infrastructure is located. Sometimes into areas that in our town are currently zoned for lower densities, but are quite proximate to this infrastructure. So in in our permitting world, when someone wants to connect to that infrastructure, they fill out an application form. And the first question on that form that I'm asked to answer is, is what this person wants to do supported by the zoning? So that's that's sort of criteria number one of will the town consider extending a connection to its infrastructure? So the function of option three is to create that area around the infrastructure, which may allow greater density or a more multifamily unit type in an area of a town where it's currently not allowed. And it answers that first question that we ask when we're considering extending that infrastructure. So it has a positive outcome in terms of potential dwelling unit count that can be built in a municipality, from my perspective.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Randy Brock would object to option three, what would those objections be?

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I think that it expands the quadplex by rights area further than most folks thought it was when they first read Act 47. And, you know, but that ball's already gotten rolling with, you know, across the state. I think I would say there's peace of mind in the other parts of the water sewer area definition that came out of Act 47. A community is able to say, we have water sewer going by here, but this area is conservation. There's still the ability for communities to tweak what they think their actual service areas are. If there are natural resource protections that they want to put into place, they still use some of the much longer second section of that definition to protect that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And can I just clarify that? I think we had a really long conversation about that in here and with Natural Resources when we passed the Home Act, because the idea was you can have the peace of mind to say, we don't want any new development here. We don't want any housing here. But you can have the peace of mind to say, no, we only want single family homes here. So we're going to deny and discriminate against multifamily housing. That's what we said over and over again and what Natural Resources agreed with. You can say, in general, we don't have the capacity for this level of flow or this type of project, but you can't say, no, we'd allow single family homes here, but

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: not But they can't they can't say, no. We don't have the capacity.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: They can't say, we know we don't have a for any housing. For I was gonna

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: say for any No.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: For a six bedroom single family So

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: for a single family home, we could obviously come back with the same response, which is we don't just as sad as we are in Woodstock at the moment. We don't have capacity to do anything.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I think one thing that might lead to some consternation is the fact that, you know, Act 47 calls this area the water and sewer service area. And some people may read that and think that it's the area where I have to provide connection no matter what. You just redefine what our municipal service area is, And it's not, it uses the same terminology, but this section of chapter 117 only uses that definition of water sewer service area as a trigger for the quadplex by right and a couple other zoning only provisions and allowances, it's never saying that this is your new water sewer service area for the provision of your municipal water and sewer. And that might be where some people look at this and they're like, Oh, what is this doing? There could be some clarification on that. What does this actually mean?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Just a question. So by extending it to 2,000 feet, would that be permissible for a single family house too? Or are we making it even greater distance that is?

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: No, I think it's only about it's within that 2,000 feet that the quadplex by right allowance kicks in. And you don't have to build a quadplex. You can propose to build a single family home if you want. Right. But yeah, it would just This be is the area of the community.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay, sorry. So we have our Legislature Council here, but maybe this will help. We'll get Ellen, do you have any would you like to join us? Do you have any thoughts on this? Would you like is there anything that you'd like to weigh in on?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: No. Oh, and I remembered what I was gonna say, is kind of, Chip, what you started with is I didn't want us to have to go down this road either. Right? Like, we tried to just say a long water and sewer. We all know what that means. Right? And I don't think many planners have tried to, you know, flout that or or, you know, people have tried to really understand that that has some mental flexibility. But we have seen, you know, quad flexes denied in Chelburn, Montpelier, I mean, or challenged. And I think that is is the problem, you know, is we have to start naming names in a way, which we've done throughout these bills just to say, like, I wish we all could just be flexible mentally about what a lot of water and sewer beans. We really have to create a standard definition that captures a lot of different types of communities that aren't all built up right along the road. But even where they're built up right along the road, they're saying no to complexes. That was like completely not our intent was to have to get this prescriptive, but I believe we have to, because I've asked the committee over again, what did everyone else remember their intent was? Because I've been asked to speak to our intent before various planning commissions.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. And I I think our intent was that we develop and build density around where we

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: have the infrastructure. Which is 41 square miles safe.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. And so that is what I hope option three would do for us in a significant way. So it would be up to 2,000 feet. Obviously, it would take care of the Shelburne situation.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't even wanna say what it would take care of, but it it became a big legal argument Right. You know, that that no one

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: had the power to resolve. Thomas, you were out of the room, but we're landing on option three, which I think that the committee is willing to go ahead. We will have Ellen Graff, and that would be up to 2,000 feet to make it consistent with the road rule. And do I hear support that? And I clearly support here. David, Randy. Should we have Ellen drafted and further discuss it and then could we get it?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Perhaps further discuss it. I'm

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I'm I'm not overly comfortable.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: What? I think the road rule doesn't necessarily endorse the road rules. Right? If we're this, the road rule could still be repealed in the future. This would just be used in think the distances of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: system, which is I think the objective.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. And I guess, like, then let's let's make sure we're having the same argument. Right? We People don't like the road rule because it limits what you can do after 2,000 feet. So if you don't like the road rule, then let's at least give the 2,000 feet to develop up to a quadplex because otherwise you do end up having a more limiting effect on the road, which which if you now are a community that's dealing with Home Act and ACT-one 81, and you're told, okay, there's, like, bigger habitat here and there's, some other corridor here and now you're limited to 500 feet. You municipalities

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: who frankly are annoyed at the state's constant interference with the little things from their perspective that we do, such as telling them what can be built where. And there's, I think, considerable objection to that, as you can tell by the number of appeals and not, as well as just So the good that's probably the first issue.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, I mean, in a way, it's why we did the Home Act and then Act 181. And I agree we need to fix Act 181 because our promise was we are gonna say you can't be so limiting as to have a patchwork of two fifty two rules about where you can build, but we are also going to get out of your way at the state level. We need to get out of the way at the state level, but we do also need to try to be consistent with both.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: This is not necessarily getting out of the way when you add funders Because there's some towns who believe in the character of the building and the allowances that they've made over many, many years, and now

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think said 41 square miles where we have water and sewer that the federal, state, and local government have all paid for. Yes. Okay. These are precious resource I'm gonna say precious resource that I think.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It is a precious resource that we wanna take full advantage of, but in a thoughtful way. And, Randy, I'd remind you that every town, as Chip said, every town is still able to identify areas that are precious, that they wanna protect, that are part Right. That are that are conserved areas. It's not like this is just heartwashed 2,000 feet.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: From not to mention And

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I just wanted to say, it's incredibly dumbness. It's incredibly expensive to bring water and sewer connection 2,009 to a project.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That links to my next point, which is the third bill we passed was CHIP. Right. Was ensuring that we are giving money for infrastructure and that it can be used to actually get the infrastructure. And the housing projects we're talking about are gonna be 10 to 40 units where it's very expense I mean, that's literally where we had the press conference that we attended in Fairhaven. Probably gonna be 50 units on a racetrack next to water and sewer where it's going to otherwise be too expensive to get the water Right. Without ship.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. All of these have to work together. So I think to move this forward as we have to because we're needing to vote this out in the next few days, I think for this iteration of this bill, will probably move to option three. Ellen, as you draft it, Chip and all that, if you'd be kind of what puts you in Hudson Valley, would that be helpful? You're already in Hudson Valley. And to do the next draft, we'll look at in the next day or so.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: One question for Chip also is based on your role with the Association of Planners, what do the planners feel about this? Is there a consensus?

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I don't think there ever will be, or for the people who employ the planners, the select boards. Like you mentioned, Senator Brock, when the mandates and preemptions started rolling with Act 47, our initial reactions were, what are you doing? What are you doing changing the fundamental aspects of how we've set up all of our zoning and kind of knocking it all down? And I would say that I don't think there will ever be a consensus on this. I still think that whether it's spoken or not, those who make the rules or those they work for are still going to prefer that some areas not be as dense as having quadplexes. But I think another thing, something we talked about when we were brainstorming with Charlie was that, no matter what a statute says, the rubber hits the road when the community writes their zoning. And they might still write it in violation of some aspects of the statute. And even then, a DRD might make a zoning decision that doesn't quite follow some of the new density allowances that came out of Act 47 or Act 181. And oftentimes this, and that's another reason why decisions can be appealed. Sometimes decisions are appealed because someone says the town got it wrong. Know, really the only way to correct that is in the courts through creating precedent and saying, yeah, you know, and to keep fortifying that this is what the statute says and this is really the way you're supposed to do it. And sometimes it's done in a town by town basis, unfortunately.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And if I could address that, having been in a town that went through this question of what did the legislature mean, multiple sides spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal opinions before I go into court. Right? Like, it was like, can we resolve this without an appeal just by getting having, you know, legal opinions go to the select board so they can be, you know, kind of clear on what they think our intent was, which was felt like a lot to be living in that town, you know. But then if you get past that and we just say, you know, I mean, appeals are important, but we are getting into very expensive territory when I'd rather we just say what we meant by a long water and sewer.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. I think- Well, there's a balancing act here

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: because there's also, you represent the people of your municipality as we theoretically represent the people of the state. And more and more you see concern at the municipal level that you've got a few people who are telling us how

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to use our own money

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: and insisting that we do so if pressuring our local officials to go along with it. So my question is, from what you hear in the planning community, is that what you hear or do you hear something different?

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: I actually wonder if Matt, I mean, in my community, we are 100 water and sewer. So this change doesn't really affect us. But in Williston, it's a different story. I wonder what Matt had to say about that.

[Matt Belanger (Planning Director, Town of Williston)]: Sure, and I'll just say I'm speaking from my own experience and not providing any sort of opinion of the town. But Chip is right. Williston has a sewer service area with a defined boundary in our ordinance. Our zoning and our land use designations in our town plan also follow that boundary almost perfectly. So the effect of a provision like option three is that we do have some places where there's water sewer in the road where currently the town allows significant density on one side of the road and does not allow significant density on the other and allows quadplexes on one side of the road and duplexes on on the other. So the town's zoning would be modified by option three and would allow a unit type and an amount of residential density greater than what is currently allowed in the town zoning. But that boundary isn't just about quad plexus versus duplexes or units per acre. The zoning district and the land use designation on the non non sewer side of that boundary. Has greater clustering requirements. It has conservation design requirements. It has a lot of other things that fulfill the goals of the town plan. And so whether it was when act 47 came through or act one eighty one came through and our community was starting to wrestle with these provisions, I think our experience was similar to a lot of communities experience of planners was similar to a lot of community planners that our municipality had used residential density and unit type as a as a frequently used tool to do a lot of other things. So there was concern about losing character in our historic village. And from 1986 to 2007, the town went from six units per acre density down to two units per acre density. Really as a proxy for trying to do other things that probably could have been better addressed through other types of zoning, whether they were design standards or historic preservation standards or whatnot. Similarly, in our agricultural rural areas, density and unit type is has really kind of faded to background over the last twenty years as the town has really focused in on what it's trying to make happen in that district, you know, conservation, preservation of a working landscape. And there are lots of ways quadplexes can work in a working landscape. There are lots of ways that relatively dense things in Willison's case on 25 Percent of the base lot area because we have a 75% open space set aside in that district. That's still gonna be true even if we allow that greater density. And so we've really gone through an evolution to the point where the kinds of preemptions that are happening in act 47 or act one eighty one or this option three, yeah, they change some of what the town zoning allows, but they they don't change the town's fundamental achievement of its land use goals and its comprehensive plan.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. That's

[Matt Belanger (Planning Director, Town of Williston)]: that's that's my perspective.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Doing such a phenomenal job. Attractive, affordable housing. Thank you. I don't want to miss the opportunity to say thank you.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I am biased because they're in my district, but you really are all for the state. I love what Milliston is doing and you're just doing it really well. So, Matt for everything you do.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah, well done. How long have you been the planner there Matt?

[Matt Belanger (Planning Director, Town of Williston)]: I've been with the town for almost eighteen years and I've been the planning director for almost the last eight.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right, well bravo. I appreciate

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: what you said so much because I I do want I do wanna remind people when we passed the Home Act, Burlington didn't allow duplexing by right. Burlington limited duplexing. I mean, like, we That's right. We had a lot of single family zoning and it's gonna take a while for people's mentality to evolve, that it's just, it's okay, you know, to have multi family housing. And that it's not ugly, it's not, you know, doesn't ruin the character of a community. You can do it well and you still have the tools to do that well, is our hope and desire and intent.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Back to Senator Brock's question, I think that when I was first coming up in planning, the position of the state was to effect change through a lot of outreach and education for planners and zoning administrators, whoever's writing the zoning at the local level. And just like Matt said, in the city of St. Albans, we were using density as a proxy to control or preserve the built character form of our historic neighborhood. And Act 47 kind of basically took a community's ability to use density as a proxy away. Now, back in the old days, the way we would have approached it is we would have said, too many communities are using density as this sort of proxy, we're going to roll out a whole bunch of educational materials about design review and other things that you can do that are built a form based codes, form based codes a great example control the built look and feel of your neighborhood. And then you can detach density from that. And it would have happened over time, very slowly, a patchwork. Act 47 just took the density out altogether. Now we're at, well, what we could do is just educate more communities on what other rules they can implement that would have accomplished what they were accomplishing by using density as a proxy.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Trying to do that too.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah, got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? My favorite discussion like

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: to have all. This session. Right. Ellen, any other would like to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: come join us? We'll chat about the next sections. Thank you. So we will have option three drafted in in lieu of what we have currently in section well, I think it's section 12. Is that right? Yes. And, Ellen, thank you. With with the leak from not January, May, or a thousand, but 2008. Right? Big leap. We'll see where it ends up. Mhmm. Okay. Chip and Matt, do you want to stay for the next or you're welcome to stay if you want. Any other thoughts you have on this bill before you bid us adieu?

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: If we discover amongst our membership and associates that this creates some unintended situation that we hadn't, I mean, we'll reach out to you and let you know.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: If you do that before we actually pass it, then there'll be no business for us to do next year. So, that's what we're specialty at, is addressing unintended consequences. But you, of course, will have that opportunity in the House if we get this through the senate. If and when, we will it'll, of course, be taken up events. So it's got lots of it it's got a travel space here. Thank you very much. Really helpful. We're so grateful to all of you, including Aaron and Charlie. Charlie's in DC for for most of week.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yep.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you very much.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Thank you. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Bye bye. Just really appreciate their work. They took that on and helped us create a silk purse or more of a silk purse. Ellen, thank you. It wasn't exactly a style.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So yours is gift.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Just No. It was. I I saw I went to back away from that. Ellen, welcome. Thank you for working on that. Let's look at the other anything you wanna add as you look at wrapping that? Is there anything that gives you concern?

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: I'll check out the absolute subcancel. No.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Okay. And Just for clarification. So the tier three is where the 2,000 foot rolls roll comes in. Distinction between tier 1A and tier 1B, are there also other measurements in there that are potentially relevant?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yes. Well, what, when they come into play is the exemptions we wrote in, which I hope would-

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: downtown or something.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Or all of the downtown I don't there was no exemption at downtowns. I'm sorry.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Was There were total

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: There was no limit to the exemption of downtowns. There was then, like, a 75 unit limit in certain rings around growth centers

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Right. Village So that distance from the growth centers. I'm just looking to see if there was another measurement we had in there. Yeah. We're looking for some congruency, not jumping all the way to tier three.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So that's why I put in a quarter mile, was that was the limit. Yes, I'm looking

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: here now, we're looking at the final moments of- Sure. Are we both just seeing how is there other-

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I mean are there other areas to be consistent in? That's true. Yes, yes. So, well, we're, I think this is good one. This is at least a good one to start. So, Ellen, and let's keep our we'll ask Cam that question too, Ellen, if there are any other places we

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: that we're working to be consistent? So I'd like to revisit the, manufactured housing by right language. Permitted.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I mean, because I think No.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: No. No. Well, besides that, I think I think when I looked at it more recently

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So let's go to Section 11 1st, and then let's go to Section 13. Because that section eleven is the manufacturing company. Okay. Because I'd love to land that if we could. I think we're looking at option three for Section 12, but let's look back at that's what we just heard from you on section 11, which is basically gives the green light to manufacture housing.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't have it in front of me, but I think I I'm trying to correct something I may have done unintentionally, which senator Weeks highlighted, which is we are trying we are trying to allow manufactured housing by right, not mobile homes by right. Does it say that, Matt?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I didn't hear a very good distinction of the Pew summary, that presentation. They're both

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the HUD. I mean, they're sort of interchangeable in terms of

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: the HUD. I know the language is very specific, but I'm not sure it really has the intent. I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: thought it was defined pretty differently. Was I don't think they're defined

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Module housing. Module housing was used interspersed in that presentation But module housing is different. Manufactured housing and mobile homes have the same code. I mean, was trying to I didn't know. They're only form of housing that has a national code, and they are different in that manufactured housing can be used as a kind of building blocks to create different housing looks as

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: we saw. Can we pull up that slide deck? Mhmm. That slide. Yeah. Would be Because I think that's that's that's gonna be a really important thing. I'm not disagreeing with senator Fein. Yeah. I make sure.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And I wanna make sure the language that we're clear on.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And we've and for those who don't know, we've spent two decades trying to find what a mobile home is because A mobile home is able to be Moved. Exactly. That changes. But I don't know if that's unique to our definition of a I don't even know what

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: we how we have. This is your section. So how can we clarify in this that we're really addressing manufactured components and not bubble forms? I think the language

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I thought the word bubble must have been there.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: So if you're on page 21

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We're on page twenty one and twenty two. Yeah.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: So this is a pretty old statute, so I don't have legislative history off the top of my head. But what it reads is that no violation shall have the effect of excluding global loans, modular housing, or prefabricated housing from any districts and municipality. And then it does go on to mention further, they may establish specific standards to regulate individual sites within pre existing mobile home parks, and further down, mobile homes on existing lots. There's a discussion of mobile homes modular and prefabricated housing.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: But not a mandate, Doctor.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Will Which would

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. That's That's become a term of our that was a term of our when this was written, eventually.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: I guess I guess the question

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: is is prefabricated housing different than manufactured housing? And I think that we call like, once upon a time when people felt like mobile home was was stigmatized language, the term of art alternatively was prefabricated housing. But the there as long as we still have that second sentence distinction about what a mobile home is, which is not tethered to the ground in the same way it faces different regulation, then senator Weeks, it should address what I heard as your concern that you can't simply plop a mobile home anywhere without consideration for water and sewer and habitability.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But you can put prefabricated housing anywhere with it. Does it bear getting up to find?

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not sure. Because I think Cameron has been working with people on other statutes. I don't know, I haven't heard

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: about this issue before, so I'm happy to hear more.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I could just ignore it, but I wonder if those other states have a different definition. I mean, this is the problem is we've worked for twenty plus years to try and do these definitions, and I don't want us to completely rewrite. I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: don't think all that Rachel had, the differences between the bubble and menu.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, but I'm sure each state that's the nine or 12 states that did something probably have different definitions than we do of what manufactured housing is or prefab or

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: She alluded to it. She just Exactly.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But it's not here. And she it's kind

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: of in her own lane maybe. But

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I don't think it's And we could certainly ask her. We could ask her for if she has a definition that they have worked with in those different states.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Alternatively, do we just add manufactured housing as a current term of our to this list?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'd be fine with that. Oh, I was gonna say, where is the yoga? It's like, what? Because I've lost already once today. Well, I yeah. Okay. And take that. K. And, Ellen, where would we where would we have that?

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Online 11 probably. Well, loaned in the modular house is

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: manufactured housing with prefabricated housing. Prefabricated. Yeah. Prefabricated or manufactured, and then we just took out of it.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So the intent of the section just to help me out is really to allow mobile homes, modular homes, prefabricated homes, and manufactured homes anywhere by rent.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Permitted. Permitted,

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: well yeah if there's the necessary whatever. Safety environmental. Yeah. But that's okay. So I'm a little hesitant about all that. Again I used, is a while ago, I've used the example of Proctor's Mill which is historic home, historic home, mobile home, mobile home, historic home and it just, that's the end result in my mind. And I kind of push back at that as being where twenty first century law is going. I I I'm very hesitant. I'll just leave it at that that even if we add another definition to the list of definitions, I'm struggling with that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: But in his example my understanding of forms based code is all about the presentation and look and feel of the structures being built and not the use of the interior so in that Proctor's Villa they had forms based code where they define certain aspects of how the house looks and feels along the road front. Would that still meet any desired or required objective criteria of the local community so that those manufactured homes would still have to conform to some in more urban environments. I'm guessing Procter's a little more developed. Oh, good. Am I mistaken in that?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Think Chip would agree with you. I wish he was still here. What did you think though?

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Potentially. I don't know the level of distinctions they include in those codes if they have distinct codes for

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: But I think this is absurd. Well This language.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: But that's the well,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: it says to the same terms and extent, and conditions as confederate. Right. Conform to the conditions of the town and I don't know if Cavendish has something. I mean we have to, I think I can, we can quickly find out but I'd be curious to find out what you're

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: How about using it as an example of, I'm using an example of optics. An example of zoning, you know, real zoning whether they do or don't. The end result is it's there, it's been there for decades. A lot of times. Yeah.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Just to further exacerbate, so your interpretation of that language is that the communities would still have requirements on the optics of these manufactured homes. They'd have to conform to requirements of new levels. Mean, that's what we have in South Burlington, sometimes required two stories.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: If they already have those kinds of codes in place. Yeah. It sounds like Proctorsville doesn't. Maybe they do now. Well, I I don't know

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: what Cabin Chess would find out. It's Montesville as a

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Hamlet in Oh, okay. So

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I would my impression and understanding is that there's still visibilities for communities to apply requirements on what the look and feel That new

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: is what That's what shows testimony. We can confirm that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: As for existing development, if the house burns down, I don't know if that's still the same Right. Thinking where you're

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: concerned about. Think of the standards there. The standards there for rebuild.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: If you're in one of the 40% of communities that doesn't have zoning bylaws, then if you own your land, you can probably do a lot of different things that we aren't touching here anyways, that that situation would exist with or without the law if you don't have zoning or

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: would I suspect most developed communities are the ones that have the developed bylaws, but I don't know what Proctor's point or not. That was Proctor's building. Okay. Key piece of information. I figured I could just Google it. No. The town of Cavendish does not have any zoning. So they don't have in place probably what what Chitt was referring to. Vermont does not have local zoning ordinances or subdivision regulations.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So then they already have no basis to deny whatever

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I get that. Again, not using it as a municipal challenge. I'm using it as a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: No, it's a visual, and I appreciate that. Yeah, definitely.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: You must, of course, say an active voice, but becomes effective. It's not beyond the realm of possibility.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: But without that, let's slow Google right now. Could that already happen? Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It already happened. I think without zoning, you get what prod the the visual example David is bringing out in habit this year. That in Procter'sville, in the Hamlet.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I was really I've got a bit of South Burlington bias and I'd be happy to show you that in South Burlington we have forms based code, my understanding, I'm gonna talk to them later afterwards that even this requirement, those rules still applies, have to be very strict.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well it says notwithstanding, right? Mean just the standing of

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: the existing kind challenge, that's the whole point, that's a direct challenge. But why should a community establish such a standard at the exclusion of being able to introduce mobile homes, prefabricated homes. I

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: bring it to my point about what I understand about forms based code, it's focused on the look and the feel to the street, meeting street standards and not what's actually in the building or used in the building. What I'm hoping this is getting at is if the building is pre constructed, fabricated, manufactured elsewhere, that you can't object to, you can't restrict it, but you can still require it to be second story, it's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: not

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: a front desk, you can have a set back.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You can require it to conform with whatever the viable ordinance is in that town.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Yeah. Form space code.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Is part of the conversation in natural resources right now.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I'm not speaking confidently. I'm just trying to understand, but I will take this as an action. I will speak to my planners that this is where it's like which went into effect.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So let's let's clarify that, and maybe we could is there any language we could add that would clarify that for us, or is that what this language implies? What? Oh, why we just 21.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Does this meet your intent? I'm not sure

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: I fully understand your intent, so if you are, want to be more specific than the language that's here, because it does say except upon the same terms and conditions as conventional housing is excluded. You could add more detail there if you don't think it's sufficiently clear.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So let's put a pin on this because we need I think we need to confirm that all town code zoning would apply, but these would be permitted. This is So let's move to section 13. I mean, fifteen minutes before we have we shift we do a a shift of the cannabis. I think we're gonna look at section let's figure out how we organize. But let's look at 13 because I think you have new language on 13.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So try the union?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Union then? Yeah. We have new language on there that

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And to be fair to Ellen, she's representing kind of three ledge council people. Okay. No. No. I I just wanna make sure I can't remember.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I have to to that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But I think our question Yeah. Question for you is, does what Chip what we understood Chip to say and what Thomas is reiterating, is that implied and is that included in all this intent language in the except except provided in subdivisions, in all that language, which we don't necessarily fully know.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: I think so. I don't have a lot of experience with base code, so, I I can't answer that. So.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. So we need that answer. What?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Sorry. Because I don't know. Like, that's a conversation that Spilt with Thomas wants to have because they proposed some version of a code toolkit. Right. Let's say, that Natural Resources is looking at. I think that's premature without communities giving having some

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I agree with it. So let's look at union labor and and see if we can get to a guest on this on this new language.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: You should post it. It's not because

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: I didn't have permission, but I can't bring it up. Do you Sure. I said

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I haven't had a moment to look at it. Yeah. So let's just look at it. Sure. And see if it works. Okay. I can pull it up. Yeah, sure.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: So, on page 24 of draft 1.1 is section 13, union labor. So, there is language here. I have redrafted it slightly to include references to 45 units or more, and to also, it's union labor or, labor using the prevailing wage. So, it's slightly different, and then I think there is another language proposal that could maybe just be more succinct than minus.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I sent you what David Meckenburg had suggested. Yes. But I

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: was in another committee when you said that. Okay. So I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So we may and I can pull up that too. Yes. We may get bigger, Kiera, so we can see you.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Figure out how to do

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: it, but There is a question.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, and I'll read it to you too. So, a density bonus of an additional 20% shall be awarded for the construction of multiunit dwellings with 45 or more units that uses union labor, or labor paid the mean prevailing wage, published periodically by the Vermont Department of Labor in its Occupational Employment and Wage Survey for Construction of the Units. What I you, what I said a minute ago was the distinct version, but this is 20% entity bonus for 45 or more units built with unit labor or labor with prevailing wage.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: And David? Yeah, so, I'm still hesitant about this particular section. In particular, we're taking union versus nonunion companies, and we're giving one an advantage versus the other. I'm not sure why or what the intent is.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well, so this language takes away the union versus nonunion. It says union or labor paid the prevailing wage. So the the second part that was added means you can follow certain

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: compensation If someone can explain how that stacks up.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, that just supports the value that we want to have people pay.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: You can have a project labor agreement and not This

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: one requires some testimony on what that impact really is. And is this really the intent, what we're trying to do by building more housing versus making the housing we're building for? I just need to see what the impact is. Previously it was all about the union versus non union. Now I see new language but prevailing wage.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It expands the opportunity that they don't have to be union. David's language is simply any multi unit residential construction project. There were 45 units that enters into a project labor agreement for construction may receive a density bonus in a zoning bylaw of an additional 20%.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So what's the net effect? Are we trying to create more cheaper housing or are we trying to create an effect on how much we pay or

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: what we're trying create an incentive to have a build more densely with people. Well, hopefully it makes it cheaper the more units you build, the less expensive hopefully the project is. But the other key piece here is that that would be guaranteed a significant income. Mean, that it

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: is Significant income and cheaper or more affordable housing, not necessarily I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: would argue that probably most of the housing that is built on this scale is already operating on a union contract. Okay, no good. But maybe not.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I just think we need that kind of testimony before we All pull this

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: of that would be a reiteration of what we heard, that the unions did come in and say they didn't ask to come in last minute at great cost for a lot of these large projects, because they are, because we don't have the workforce necessarily.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: We only heard one side of the story.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: No. Well, heard Wabi, I mean, don't think

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that's here for Wabi? Contractors. Right. We heard And Rich Dick Wabi was here. Right. We could hear from other developers. But this is just an opportunity. It's not it it's not a requirement. And it is it fulfills for me two things. One is people being paid a a civilized wage, and they get density bonus. To me, that's a that's a a a good and more density means the project hopefully will cost less. I don't

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: know why JP just stepped down.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah. That that that's irrelevant. If the project truly costs less, you can build more. Whether this results in less cost to build more, I think the jury's still out.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. But, again, it's it's an option. This is what we're trying to do is create an option for people for developers who wanna take advantage of it and build more units in the project they're trying to build. If they pay the prevailing wage, and that is, I think, assumed with a project based agreement. Correct? Is that correct?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Project labor agreement? Yeah. Project labor agreement. It is basically saying we are going to commit to certain compensation and safety standards for a project regardless of whether or not the workers are union. It levels the playing field.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: If anybody provide us with any evidence

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Evidence of of That this, in fact, will

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The virtual, I know for JP Isabella coming back then, because-

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: My mother said he's done this. He's like

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: running back up the street, so.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: The cost impact would be appropriate, not just one waiver union's perspective on one sentence. It's what would be to that effect. We're trying to build more housing, that's great.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay, so I think what you see is a net effect of you'd have more units and you'd have people paid a prevailing wage. To me, are both goods. Those are both goods that we would want to incent.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Also creates a

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: It's be system column A, column B. With this, without this, it's gotta be some comparison on who benefits, who loses, including the state treasurer. It can't just be

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: What? He's running

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: up this for me. I don't know what you mean by that. Who loses in the state treasury?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Cost. My point is simply about cost. It's gonna affect cost.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So let's, what labor will come in and say is

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: It's not a verbal conversation, it's show us the value.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay, so what labor could come in and try to show you are recent projects where there was contract labor used, and then what they wanted to highlight was a lot of the large project, there was additional cost to those projects added on at the end by getting labor unions to come in and subcontract because things weren't done on time or well. So they want to be able to say, make the first argument that in fact, just because something is union, it doesn't mean it costs support. It means they're just treating people fairly.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Bring in the data.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And then the second question would be, let's say it does cost a little bit more, but we believe it's good to have a steady, trained workforce that has significant demand for their work, then we would be saying you get a density bonus so that that cost gets absorbed without increasing the cost per unit.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I think I'm convinced of the efficacy of what's been claimed and would like to see something that confirms that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: There is there's gonna be I don't think you're gonna have data that confirms any of this. This is an objective, an objective that we want to build more dense that this is the opportunity that we're trying to create that offers more density. You could build more units.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: I should have thought to

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: text you like you pay people. Didn't even

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: know you were allowed to like.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: It stuck to me. Build more units, pay people.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And like Show us the doubt. Do you

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: want to ask AFL CIO to comment?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Need both sides of the argument. Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Not just this.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But also this language has been out there and that's why AGC just came in and asked to testify. No one else has come in opposing this section. Right.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Okay,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: let's give David David, an opportunity to I do, ask our question. Ask your question again.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Good data that supports this. But this is the best use It's a great way to protect.

[JP Isabel (Vermont AFL-CIO)]: JP Isabel with the from our AFL CIO. Yeah. We have there is a the AFL CIO Housing Investment Trust, which is testified on the other side of this building. They will invest in projects that are built by 100 union labor. We are trying to find a project for them here in Vermont to invest in since we're trying to have as many options on the table for housing, we feel that we can be a part of that. We have the labor, and we see the AFL CIO Housing Trust as an option. This language would meet that requirement and help us find a project for that.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Take one. So I didn't hear any math that because of this, it's x percent cheaper to build versus commercial developer.

[JP Isabel (Vermont AFL-CIO)]: I can certainly get non you a study. I think our approach on this is housing is at crisis. How can we get more investment and more jobs in Vermont? We see this as an option. We're not the only option. We understand that. There are lots of folks out there. And so when you are providing incentives for housing, This is another area where there's an incentive, there's an actual program that we can take advantage of. It's a $7,000,000,000 housing investment trust, excuse me. And I can certainly get you more information on them as well, but that's I think where this language came from. We're really looking for a large project.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: An opportunity to invest

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: in a Everybody's looking for a large project. I mean, well, all companies want projects. That's the nature of capitalism and business. Right. And so they should be one company versus company A versus company B, one union, one non union. It's all about best value. Who provides the best value for the money? In this case, state projects, whatever the case might be. But you know that's where I don't see why one side should benefit from a density bonus or any kind of bonus that upsets that balance of competitiveness. I wouldn't stand for it as a contractor and I don't think we should if we you know representing the state.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I think your valid point is because the quick Google search is that when you use labor or union employment it can usually cost 20 to 30% more and what we're really talking about is the marginal contribution rate of those additional 20 units and another quick Google search that only is likely to be 10% more. I don't know if the math is there, and I'm just doing this with a quick Google search. Actually, just You by the way, would think this had an analysis losing

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: that has addressed this.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: I'd welcome a counterargument looking at the numbers, but if you're paying 20% more late, you're only getting back 10% more on each of those additional 20 What

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: are you on? What what like, what's that you want?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: This is using Google Gemini sources. My point is, to your point, seeing a mathematical argument of this developer looking at these two options, I can see why you would think this probably isn't gonna be actually opted for.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So and the other question I have is we are already building projects of this size and more. Why is this and and surely, some of it's being used

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Before using union labor. It's just pumpling to me that we haven't that that that this housing trust hasn't already been able to be accessed.

[JP Isabel (Vermont AFL-CIO)]: I would love to provide more context, but in the short period, can tell you, for the Burlington Square project, which was kind of the hole in Burlington and the Burlington High School project, we had contractors that bid for those projects, were not selected. In the in the instance of the Burlington High School project, they actually went with the higher bidder. In both instances, union labor had to come in. They were able the Iron Rivers were able to come in and finish the second tower quicker than the first tower had been completed be because of issues around that. So I'm saying the union experience counted there. We've got the high school project is under budget and is going to be completed ahead of time. So, again, this is we're really trying to take advantage of that hit fund and ensure that we can build a project that is a 100%. Right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I we have to pause this conversation, but to move this forward, we should figure out who we need to hear from additionally because clearly a developer would be somebody we will wanna hear from. And I think how it pencils out I think what we were trying to do is create an opportunity. It's not you don't have to take advantage of this opportunity, but it's concerning that if it doesn't actually

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Pence loud.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It pens loud. Then if it doesn't it it and this is just very rough. So I think one question would be to add one question. Thank you. You know, I think we need to figure out. I think

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: we need obvious support So discussion. The reason we have had a larger conversation about density bonuses at all is because there are a lot of things that either municipalities or government ask projects to do that don't pencil out. And what it means to quote unquote pencil out is what that cost per unit will end up being. So if they can't even sell it for that cost per unit at market, then they aren't gonna do it. So a density bonus is a tool for any public good we want to include in the project, conservation land, a bike path. Projects like the Hula project, for example, are gonna do all the wastewater treatment for, like, the entire South End Of Burlington. They wanna do a big transportation hub. They're asking for state money to add public goods to their project without increasing the cost per unit. So when you do that, the question is, what tools do you then have in your toolbox to say, okay, maybe it wouldn't pencil out, but that's why we're offering you something that would not only pencil out, but then it would add more housing to the market, which is great. So it is a reward for things we believe are a public good. I believe that there are many municipalities asking projects like the Hula Project to use union labor, and this is a win win win where those projects then can say, okay. But then you need to bring our project up a couple stories again because, for example, the city of Burlington has brought their project down from up 12 stories to eight.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Very

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: quickly. Yes, because we need to- I

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: know that. Have. All about dancing, a sport concept, 100%, okay? But tying it together with labor and such, think is not necessary. Best value in a contract is best value, providing irrelevant of who's building the project. If it's best value for the, it could be the highest bidder, lowest bidder, one innuendo project. It

[Rachel (Pew Charitable Trusts – Housing Policy)]: doesn't have

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: to be union labor. It could be a project labor agreement where you ensure it.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Have that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Quality of things. And you ensure that people are compensated in a way that they can afford a home locally. Right. I think- Which is also something we should care about as the- We're going

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to continue this conversation at a later point. I think we've got some additional help here, which we will have weigh in. Right now we've asked, apologize, but this was the only time we could have our commissioner of Kelvin come back because one of the bills, as you know, we are needing to get out is the Danville Beach. And so welcome.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Commissioner Hillelbrand, it's great to have you back. Good to be here. And I think there were a couple members who felt we needed more balance, a little more balance in our conversation about the cannabis bill. And I am I expect that that you have opportunities here to bring in if you'd like on couple of the key things that we're looking at. I think a lot of the objective of our cannabis bill is to make us more consistent with the states around us and pull more people out of the illicit market and by raising the solvency caps, having people using the regulated market that we have worked to create so that we have fewer people on the illicit market. But there are some concerns I know in this committee about the potency caps and about the packaging. And I I think those are the areas that that I think you were interested in weighing in on. And to Tom and David and Randy, I think these are your concerns. So I take it away.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Sure. So as you said, know

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, introduce yourself. I'm sorry.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: The record, Rick Hillerand, missionary for the Department Health. You know, this is a topic that I've done a fair amount of investigation on in recent months, before that as well, just for me, the context, and my wife is a social worker, she works at a therapeutic workbench program in Huttingsville called Spring Lake Ranch. That's swai duck food. Right, I love Spring Lake. Yeah, so of note, a number of the individuals there, more than half of them, have this link between cannabis and psychosis. And it's something that I had heard from her a bit about, I did some research on my own, and it was concerning to me. So, I was looking at some of the research, and there seems to be this link, this concerning link between high potency THC or cannabis products, and psychosis in young people, and it has to do with, specifically in adolescence. I did have an opportunity to go there and speak with some of the residents, some of the staff persons, and some of the stories I heard were concerning. The thing that concerns me is this perception that cannabis does not have any effects, and to the point at which parents would be providing their children, their underage children, with cannabis because they used it for anxiety or depression or some other condition that they have, and this perception that there's no harm to children. Had led, unfortunately, people down a very bad path of kind of addiction, spiraling behaviors, poor school performance, dropouts. I heard a number of stories from some of the residents where these were people who were very intelligent from very wealthy families. This is a business that caters to wealthier individuals. They don't take insurance out of pocket in place, and these are young

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: people who were It's illegal to give young people cannabis

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: at I know. The

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I mean, that is why we have a regulated market.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: And that's the concern, is that despite it being illegal, the message that parents and other folks are hearing is this is a safe product, and that but that's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: don't think any parent is hearing a message that it's okay to share cannabis with their children. Mean, at all fairs.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: So I spoke with their executive director who set two independent examples of parents who so strongly did not believe.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thought we were gonna talk about, like, cited studies. I don't know what happened right now.

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: What is your background? Like, what's your

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Professional thought with each other? Because now you're talking about, like, a private facility that your wife worked at.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Yeah. I'm trying to give the perspective, the public health perspective, that some of the research that I've done, frankly some of the people that I've talked to.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I thought you were coming in with that research.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Yeah, I can talk about some research, but if that's helpful, I can give you, actually there's a research article that came out just, three

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: weeks could do, like, said, for that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: about cannabis for I'm gonna leave. But I think Thomas had a question too. Sure.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Thank you for coming in. Really appreciate it. And I'm struggling to get up to speed on.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Pot. So on potency, the one question I have, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I think edibles, I don't think anybody's talking about making those things stronger. Then there's the bud, it's the flower we call it, and then this liquid that I'm trying to learn more about. I am under the impression, but disamuse me of this, that the buds, I don't want people to have to smoke, like messing up their lungs two or three times as much to do what they want to do. So that's where I'm okay with increasing allowance and potency of buds and flowers, but the liquids is where I have a lot of concern with because I don't know what that could impact and how it's used and vapes and so on. But is that fair to say that we don't want people smoking

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Inhaling and bring their lungs any burning product is not good for

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: your lungs,

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: okay? The bud products that are in existence today are very different than what they were. They've sort of down regulated some of the CBD content and increased the THC content in a way that is concerning. Even potency of, even bud is at a potency that's considered high potency marijuana at this point. Should you be inhaling burning plant matter? No, of course not, but any high potency product and that includes bud is of concern because it can lead to significant ill side effects. Yes, the higher the potency, the more concern. There seems to be what we call a dose response relationship between the content of THC and the ill effects, the side effects of this stuff. So if you're smoking or in some way getting more of the product into your body on a more frequent basis, we're seeing more of these concerning findings than the medical health.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: The other convincing argument, if I also have the floor to just consider this, is all of our neighboring states that have legalized this, but for one, they don't have these potency requirements. What is your point to that? Why should Vermont be out of step with our neighboring states?

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: So again, I think there's a lot of research that's developing that is of concern around high potency THC. I think when this legislation initially went into place, there was a very strong sentiment that we wanted to protect Vermonters from this, and that's why we put some of these regulations in place. My understanding of the original legislative intent was to legalize an illegal market with protections in place for the public, for youth specifically, and that's why some of these protections were put into place very much in consultation with the health department. I have concerns that eroding those protections and were instituted by the legislature, because I do think they were intended to help protect youth and the people of Vermont from some of the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Rich, I'm just, given that there is this other balancing concern, is trying to get major concern, which is we're trying to have fewer and fewer people getting their product from the illicit market. Getting it from a regulated market really matters. Have you spoken to the other commissioners in the states that do have higher potency, Massachusetts, New York? I mean, we have all these states around us that have higher potency levels. Have you spoken to any of them about their, about what's happened in those states?

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: So, I did have it, actually last week, was down in ASTRO, which is the Association of State and Territory Health Officers. Cannabis was a topic that was hotly discussed in my groups that I talk with. I can tell you most public health professionals are concerned about the cannabis market, right? Because we're seeing LFS as well. I can't say specifically to New Hampshire or Massachusetts and what their experience has been, but part of regulating is having a So if we just say there's gonna be no cap or a reason to cap, we're not, we're no longer really regulating the product anymore.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And I understand what Well, you're regulating it in a whole lot of other ways. In my perspective, that's one

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: of the most important, though, is how potent this product is. Again, I was trying to mention this before, you know, the the concern that I have is that the products we're seeing now are just so vastly different than where they were in the past that people are very confused that this is a different thing than it was in existence in the sixties. And the what I was talking to before about the the sort of parents and giving it to their children, I had I know.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But that's illegal. That is not

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Despite what we're talking it being legal, the legislative action that we take does paint a picture to the public about what this means for this product. And when people believe this to be an unsafe, when I have to convince my patients that the side effects they're experiencing in the hospital are due to marijuana and they come to me in disbelief, they'll say, well, it's legal here, it can't be bad for me. I've heard that so many times in the hospital, that's very alarming to me, and I'm hearing that again in this space as well in the mental health space, which is concerning to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: me. Okay. Kesha and then David.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So I'm just surprised you haven't come in on the tobacco bill that we have. Do you support further regulation of vapes and and vape liquids and tobacco products in the bill. I just think tobacco and alcohol are still far and away a greater threat to public health than taking a few percentage changes on the cannabis potency. Cannabis does face way greater stigma. A few research came out with that yesterday. But are you does the Department of Health support the tobacco regulation bill that's before us?

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: So, I will come in and get tested on whenever you guys

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: promise you email us if you support that.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: And I don't know all the details of the tobacco bill to be fully transparent. I don't know all the regulations that are placed in that bill. I haven't been fully briefed on it, but I am in support of making sure that we're keeping our public safe. So that's whether it's tobacco, whether it's alcohol, whether it's cannabis,

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: or cannabis.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So you believe in listing access to vapes?

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: I think we should be having appropriate regulations. I haven't been read into the bill. I don't know

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: all these And it's so great that you haven't. Mean, that I think is the greatest public health bill we've had this session.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So I think

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: the big one reinstate

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: of life is on campus, a say it's here for Yeah. Talk daily. Oh, I just wanted, I didn't want to gloss over the fact that, like the old grounds, right, that marijuana in the 60s is radically different from marijuana at that point. It's truly serious. And so when we're talking about incrementally increasing potency on top of where it's already come from, There's caution, and I think we just need to hear that caution.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yep, and I think we're not

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: neglected with tobacco and what have you. Is super interesting.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Did you know the reason? Yeah,

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: so anyway, this is something that was literally published three weeks ago. The largest study that I see today out of California involved 400,000 youth, and it's a longitudinal study over many years that looks at, again, the same length between cannabis use and mental health disorders, specifically psychosis bipolar disorder. I don't want to go through the details of this study, but this is the most compelling article I've seen to date on this particular topic that is of concern. It shows a significant increase in this correlation between cannabis use and psychosis.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And you're gonna get us your opinion on the tobacco.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: I can certainly do that, yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But I think the biggest concern I have here is we're not really addressing youth in this in as much as it is already illegal for anyone 21 to even purchase or obtain it. One of our concerns in the vaping bill is how many how much access you seem to have in being able to purchase nicotine, which they're getting addicted to at an alarming rate. And so we're trying to rein that in. I know that there's concerns about some of the consistency in this, but we're not I mean, it's already illegal for young people to be accessing it. I realize that people access it, but we're not there isn't anything in this bill that that addresses, you know, reducing exposure to to young people because they it's illegal already for them to possess it or purchase it.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: I completely hear you. I also know that if we increase access, our youth will have more access to this. You mean if we increase potency? If we increase the access to this higher potency product, our youth will have access. Because again, what I've heard time and time again is people are getting

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So your concern is really that by increasing the potency and making it more consistent to the region around us, we are increasing the opportunity for young people to even if they aren't legally

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: allowed to have them. The times of concern are fourteen to 25, that's when the effects are seen to be the most prominent. It's not exclusive to there, there are people who are developing conditions in their 50s, but the real, you know, a lot of these studies are really focusing on that cohort specifically because we know how the neurodevelopment is during that time and how it's being affected by chemical.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: And by and large, you have looked at the bill that we are looking at now, you do not believe that it is wise that we pass the bill with the increased co Coaching, correct. I

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: think there's a, you know, there's a couple of pieces that the other piece I would say that is of some concern is having an increased quantity available because of some of the poisoning data that we've seen. Doctor Bell, a pediatrician, had expressed that to me. I can understand that concern as well.

[JP Isabel (Vermont AFL-CIO)]: And is

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: it your sense of that as a view that is held widely in the medical community with respect to the public health community that you represent? Yes. I would say that. And are other states acting on those concerns at

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: the report? Every state is very different than this, I gotta tell you. That's

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: the

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Have

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: you seen any other states that have acted to restrain these kinds of changes.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: I don't know the full answer on every state of every state, to be completely honest, but I know that's been a package of discussion.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I know. I hate, we hate to rush you because it's the end of the time, as you know, And do you think it would be useful for you to come back with additional information? I mean, we

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: always have to come back.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. We don't have much on we just have to wait. But I think don't wanna rush through doing something that's fair. Gonna if we're not gonna get it right, we'll take it out. The question I have for you, and I would really like to I'd really like to ask you to weigh in with the states around us because the states around us have no limit. Many of the states around us have no limits. So Maine, New York, and New Jersey all have no limits. Connecticut is still 60% as we are. And Massachusetts, it's the one that has has raised it only to 70%. The others have no limits. Yeah. So in in a way, it would be I think we would, at least I would, really appreciate compare any any data you have from the other states about about whether there has what the effects have been of having no limits or having it raised to 70 which is in Massachusetts.

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: And again, you know, the thing I must caution is that the rates of psychosis are not so high that we're going to see a dramatic change over a short period of time 60 to Right, 50 it's gonna take a while. The concern that I think we have on public health systems seems to be this dose response relationship. If we have kids exposed to a high number of milligrams of THC, there's an increased incidence of psychosis, and that is of concern. Now we are increasing the amount that's dependent.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: Thanks. Really appreciate your testimony.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you for making time for us for this week, because I know it's a busy week for you, And we can go

[Commissioner Rick Hildebrant (Vermont Department of Health)]: Busier for you guys.

[Ellen (Legislative Counsel)]: Just for

[Chip Sawyer (Director of Planning & Development, City of St. Albans; VP, Vermont Planners Association)]: me to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: put it that way. We can go offline. Yeah. And I guess, now that you're how many months