Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Okay. Morning. This is Center of Natural Resources and Energy and it is Tuesday, February 17, and we are starting our morning talking with, quotes from, Department of Fish and Wildlife and about S224, and some language that they,

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: have offered.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: And I would love to bring And you just to clarify, there's a question about the use of public access points, and then there's, did you also want to speak to fishing tournaments?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: I certainly could. I can talk about the language that we offered, and we can get as granular as we like about any of it, generally,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: yeah. Well, and just we are starting a little bit later than anticipated, so fifteen minutes okay?

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: I'll get

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: out of way quicker.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Again, just to clarify, this is language that we did, or at least partially put into the latest draft, but is that 4.2? Yes. Okay. I mentioning But to the committee earlier that I should have had you come present this first before putting it in, and it's still, I think, an open question as to whether or not this is the direction we should go.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Okay, well I appreciate that very much. For the record, I'm Jason Passover, mister Robert, commissioner. Thank you so much for having me and all all the work you put into this bill. I I had that language from this morning, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but that's okay. I read it more than an hour ago. So I think generally, feel like the department is at a point where we're generally leaning toward being opposed to the efforts of the bill. We submitted the language that we submitted to you in a way to be helpful, I still feel as though we're trying to manage, and I hope I'm saying this in the nicest possible way, in spirit of collaboration, I'm appreciative of how much effort is going on and the intent behind what you're doing. I appreciate all of it very much, but I do feel as though we're looking at a couple of couple of generally minor issues that can seem conflated at times, the sort of loss of control and the contamination stations, and then the access piece that is the fishing tournament management, which is is essentially one person trying to trying to forth his way through what what he thinks is doing the right thing. You may you may understand that that fishing tournament is canceled. I don't know about the subsequent fishing terms, but we're dealing with a couple of very specific spots and I feel as though one of them is regrettable because we feel like we've lost some ground with Thurman Dickson, we were inefficient, and I was the warden there and I thought the things were harmonious, and then all of a sudden that's gone and now we're looking at regulation around that specific body of water and other bodies of water that are similar. When I think looking at the problem that we're trying to solve is nearly non existent, and looking at anglers and users of the bodies of water as folks who might pollute or create a biosecurity issue or simply not happen, and I would add having folks access a place, lights at, not that I'm proposing to Ronald Paulo, Mr. Farell Castro, I'm not, but having wardens present was always a wonderful thing there, thinking of helping clean out trash and keeping folks dishes where there was space, so that's my thought around there, and sort of the lofty control piece around mandating decontamination stations through regulation is a real one for us, but I also I think more importantly would like to point at our access area manager and how far he goes to permit activities that are not priority uses, and including decontamination stations for all the benefits of AIS control, which we share with DEC and we share with you and Vermonters. This is we're talking about one place where we're having trouble locating a decontamination station. Yeah, not that we're without options, but we're certainly hopeful that our thoughts are taken seriously there, and mandating that or suggesting that we're not neighborly in all other access areas is simply untrue. We go out of our way to permit a lot of things at those access areas. I realize I'm bouncing all over the place. I'll get to the language that we offered. We did go at the meeting with Mr. O'Grady, we did go to our individual manages fishing acts, excuse me, fishing tournaments, and he proposed language that we thought would be helpful to the conversation, and that's I think simply around specific bodies of water where municipality moved all the way around and having applicants identify access points. We thought that could be helpful. We're still generally of mindset that we don't necessarily feel like this language is necessary and we don't wanna give the impression that we would ever support something that gave municipalities the ability to manage fishing more important.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So just to clarify, so you're speaking now about the fishing tournament portion?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yes. Okay. Sorry, you're jumping in my

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Is this the language on page 19 of the draft?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: In terms of highlighted?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: In my, yeah, highlighted yellow. Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: And the language that you were proposing for the term is not what's reflected here.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Correct. Yeah. Oh. We proposed, I can just read it to you, Applications to hold a fishing term in bottled water in the state for serve as a public drinking water source for a municipality and where the municipality owns and controls all of the land surrounding the water shall be submitted on a form issued by the commissioner. Forms shall require the applicant to identify an access point to water school participants in the tournament, scan at the access points on a private right of way without the shell and the fee, whether the applicant has secured permission to use the right of way skills or voice terms. That was the language offered by our Bushy Charter specialist. Is

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: that something that you could forward our committee assistance so we can I can send the reading? Okay, yeah.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Helpful language that seems to get at the issue, but it also doesn't capture every scenario, and it offer an enforcement or enforceability piece to those access points, simply says identify them for us, it's on a private right of way. And I think it's a bit of a concession and a helpful tool to a situation like the hermeneutics, where if you identify a point, that's where people are going to go, and that's where they can be turned away, or managed, right? Or managed in another way that's easier than having folks come on from a dozen different access points, which isn't a possibility at Vernon Dix, because it's all closed. Right? And almost everyone agrees on that, but I'm happy to take questions. Yes, go ahead. Yeah. Thank you, Commissioner.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I'm interested to see the language you proposed, but I think the way you read it, it doesn't include any kind

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: of communication with the municipality, does it? Because I think one of the, well does it actually, just to make sure.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: The I just read is

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: not It's not okay, because you may have heard me talking with other witnesses about the whole communication issue, because it seems like part of the problem that arose with, that brought us to this bill was a lack of communication. The municipality was surprised and not consulted with about the fishing tournament. And given that it's their drinking water and they own all the property, I'm surprising that there wasn't even just a, hey, heads up.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: In fairness, I did call Mr. Straub after and had a long phone conversation with him. He told him the tournament was coming, that I had planned to approve her. That may have been lost along the way and there was no formal letter or email communication, but I did call him directly and he Well, talked this

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: that's good to know. I'm just wondering, it seems to me that having that communication as part of the process would be helpful. I'm also wondering when there is efficiency in front of me, part of the conversation in here has been about big events that cause expenses for the city or a place where they are, the municipality where they are. And I don't believe the fee for fishing tournaments covers that necessarily? It covers the expense of your department issuing the permit, but does it cover other expenses like trash removal or extra security or parking issues or anything like that?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: To my knowledge, does not. And I can think of a few expenses that might be incurred in specific place like Thurman Dicks, but therein lies the challenges of holding one there, and I feel as though, and I'm not neglecting all assertive answer to your questions, but exposing the fact that this was public water was more the effort for this fish internally, and I haven't spoken to the gentleman about that specific desire behind the effort, think pointing at this water as being public and not the property of an entity or a person was the goal. But I think it implies that a tournament like this leaves piles of trash and x y and z, and I would say that perhaps if the place was like a mallet's bay or a focused area, then it might, but I can't see that, you know, I've used the cascading derby in this instance before, cascading is placed for folks access from dozens of places. And we sit here in 2026 without a finger pointed at that entity that happens year after year, trash, no, you name it, and I get that. And I completely get the focus that a drinking water source would bring, but I also point to the dozens and dozens and dozens of other places that are drinking water sources, that just because the town doesn't wall all the way around doesn't mean that they're not exposed to ethylene or meaning, right, and saying that because this is protected and that anglers would be allowed on it, it is now unprotected, doesn't just doesn't sit well with me. Think it's a wash of it, really think it's an opportunity discussion and certainly not without its challenges. This would be an adaptive challenge for folks to say, well we've been doing this for one hundred years now, can, but right down the road I think it is a prime example of a place that's worked fairly well over the last ten years, in Berlin Pond. I know that that's not without its broad nerves either, I

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: completely My get understanding though is that at least the testimony we heard from city of Barrie is that pond? DICK'S Dix Reservoir? DICK'S Reservoir is open for fishing. It's just not with motorized vehicles. I think that's correct, but maybe I'm misunderstanding that.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Generally at one time until recent history, maybe within a few months, people could walk to the shore in three designated locations at a fish from shore. They did not want motorized vessel, and I'm not saying either. The individual that was pushing the boundaries of those rules was gonna counteract into an economy, but nobody has any will to put a motorized boat on there, at least to my knowledge, but I haven't spoken with those. But yes, they were allowing fishing at two men's and then a middle

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: the Okay, that's what I thought.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: And I think they may have paused that while all of this is going on. Traditionally they fell out fishing there.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: They have. Not ice fishing, which brings up another issue for us, but that's weed sick.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Not a battle you're gonna fight? I have a couple of questions.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: One of the reasons this is difficult is because it's a drinking water source, and I'm wondering if as a part of your process, do you have any coordination with DEC regulates drinking water?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: I think early on in the processes of use of public water, yes, but in crossover at the moment a permit is issued. I don't think there are communications there, not to say that there aren't considerations. I don't think we call, but I mean, they work in the same building, so maybe. More

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: informally than formal. And then I want to go back to the prioritized list of the use of Sure. So like, it's your access points. Is that what we call them? Sure, access areas. Access areas. The language that you all wanted is in version 4.2, does not put boat wash stations, decontamination, aquatic invasive prevention in the list, it just makes it a permitted use. So someone would have to apply and then get a permit to have one of those stations. Is that accurate?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: I believe that's accurate.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Did you catch that? Sorry. As the same 4.2, it put aquatic invasive prevention stations of any kind in the prioritized list, just makes it a permanent use. Right, so for

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: the record, this is Hannah Smith with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the language that we had discussed with Mr. O'Grady, in the access area rules currently, section 4.6 talks about any other news permitted by the commissioner. And so the language that we proposed does specifically refer to DEFON stations there. It just doesn't create a separate authorized use. Instead, it proposes, I can find it, that this would be, instead of this being an approved, an authorized use, this would be one of the permitted special uses. So permitted special uses, including the establishment of approved aquatic nuisance inspection stations for goat watching. So it does refer to them, if that's sort of a, you know, it articulates that this news might be authorized, but it would require perfectly inefficient. And why, I think I need

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: again from you all, why not put it in that list?

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Because there are certain circumstances where actually locating a dehon station at an access area would interfere with the priority uses for which the access area was, for which the funding was granted. And that creates, it does create a legal issue with us around the funding, the federal funding and the regulations that apply to the access areas that require we maintain them for the uses for which they were originally granted? So two things, one is,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I'm not, I mean, just now you were using the phrase decon, which is for wake boats, but I'm thinking about boat washing stations in general, and this is a goal we have, right, keep our legs clean. So is what you were saying, does that apply also to boat washing stations or just decompose stations?

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: The way we, and I poached the language from what Mr. Brady had originally drafted. So including establishment of approved aquatic nuisance inspection stations for boat washing or to decontaminate wake roads pursuant to 10 VSA And 20 why not put that at a lower, so it's a, there's a list, right, of uses.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Why not just put it into the list behind whatever uses are mandated for federal funding?

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: I think the concern with adding this as an explicitly authorized use is the issue that the commissioner articulated, that if it is an authorized use, the department no longer has any oversight and that loss of control creates potential interference with the uses for which the access areas were granted. So it's the distinction between an authorized use and a permitted use. If we have some oversight to make sure that there's no interference, that reduces our concerns about conflict with our federal funding sources. And if it's permitted, you

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: can say here, not there,

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: These are conditions associated with the radiation, the use, when it can be there, if it's a mobile washing station, when it might, you know, permit conditions that would prevent any interference with the priority uses.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Okay, yes. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I think there's, we've been careful about this or trying to make the distinction between boat washing stations and decontamination stations. If the decon are like major hot water, spray out a massive, you know, the face, I'm not a

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: boat person, so spraying out

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: all the goop in the inside of the boat, the wake boats. And so it seems to me that's not something we would want right at an access area because that creates a lot of water and runoff of potential decath contaminants into the lake. But the other, the boat washing and inspection stations are less of an impact, it's my understanding. And I think they already exist, right? So how do you deal with them right now? Like, you have the greeters and boat washing stations that are at, I mean, I've seen them at some places. So how does it work now?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: It's a great question. I would love to have VC in a room to explain more how these work. There are some that exist now, and I don't want to hypothesize about the semantics of what runs where, but carefully situated spots in access areas where they're not conflicting with uses and where this water is absorbed before it goes back into the lake. I think to the Chair's point, I think the existence of this language in rule is the concern, and ensuring the neighborly aspect of us allowing these in certain areas is the goal here tonight. And I can give you assurances that we're striving toward that and we have in the past.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So the ones that are there now, you've permitted

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: to be there. If they're in an access area, we

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: have permitted.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Okay. And not everything is an access area, right? So where I'm seeing them might be like a parking lot, but not an unofficial access area.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Or like Cascade, where we don't own that access right now.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Okay, so unfortunately that we're

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: all talking about body supply that I don't know. Sure did. I see that there's a couple other hands. I do wanna recognize that we're, I'm hoping to get Mr. Carpenter in with four eleven. If we run out of time, we will find more time for you.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Please certainly, I'll my line,

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: which will help answer some

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: of the confused questions. Okay, but before

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: we go, did you me? Okay, so just

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: in this conversation that Anne referred to about authorized and permitted feeding, in your world boat watching stations and those are offers, that's maybe that'd be correct?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: They're permittable, they're not a priority use. So we have a list of priority uses like hunting, fishing, but they are not a priority use and they're not listed as a specified use. Whereas we're saying that you wouldn't specify painting, you use another hot button. Yeah. To just say something we allow, but if you want to have a picnic, come to us and ask for a permit, like we permit claims, we permit things that not listed in our rule and then better off- Boat riding stations are not in the- They're permitted

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: on a, I guess a pond or lake by basis. Okay.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: And they come to us and they say, did this work? Yep. It'll work, here's your problem.

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Okay, thank you,

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Thank you. Just a quick question, so the boat washing stations are primarily to wash off what came from that way. If they show off at the access point and there could they have vegetation or contamination for another weight they shouldn't be allowed in there. Right. You don't you don't wash them there because well that could get into the weight.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: You could wash them there as a precaution and but I think this is some of what we're getting at. Exactly. Great, thank you. Thank you.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Okay, and so we, what do you think Mr. Carpenter, about seven minutes? We do have, I think should have least

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: sort of do a pretty good, madam chair,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: if that's suggestive I of

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: mean, I can certainly come back

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: at another point as well, so. Let's at least take a few minutes here to see what your language is, then we can talk about it further another time. And actually just to say it out loud, anticipating that we're going to hear from some folks from Barry, like Ann, about the tournament language, and then I think that's it, and I would love to have a committee discussion about the direction that we want to go with this bill about, particularly the parts that feel unresolved, but also just all of it. Then out of that conversation, we'll have to create a new draft and then, so that's where we're headed for this.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Okay. So good morning for the record,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Jared Carpenter, Lake Shank Planning Committee.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Probably make the confusion a little bit more, it's I am working off of not the draft, it has the Fish and Wildlife language in it, but I'm working off of draft 2.1, which is sort of the last version beforehand. Quickly, I worked with Pat from the Broad Federation of Lakes of Ponds and Barry from Gatos Pond within the course of the last two days to put together some language to collaborate on the equality conditions and address some of the concerns that are out there. Is everybody thrilled about this? No, this certainly doesn't meet everybody's expectations, but we thought it was a good start for discussion. The first thing is, Senator, as you noted, we're sort of interchangeably using different things when there's actually three different, I've learned, ways to address aquatic nuisance species. One is the inspection station, the next one is the boat washing unit, and the next one is decontamination stations. So I figured it would make sense, we figured it would make sense to have definitions of those. Mr. O'Grady probably would wanna massage these a little bit, but I think the most important point to note from this is the aquatic nuisance species inspection stations, also the breeder programs, have a minimal space impact. It is a person with usually a lawn chair, beach umbrella, and a card table who are handing out information, doing inspections, collecting data, pointing out when boats have a broad invasive species on them. Very, very minimal, if any, footprint. Boat washing stations, the next biggest portable units with usually some sort of way to decontaminate the exteriors of vessels. And then the decontamination stations are the full ones that wash out the ballast tanks and

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: the interiors with hot water

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: and everything. Those are called.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Are We get out the goop. Get out

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: the goop, the goop stations. So the focus of a lot of these lakes groups and the Champlain Committee is that these fishing access areas are able to accommodate the first one, the inspection stations, the greeting programs, not require the examination of boat washing units, but we'll get to that in a bit. So changes to section E is the fishing access areas shall accommodate approved aquatic nuisance species inspection stations to allow for inspection of all vessels, trailers, etcetera, etcetera, looking at E1 here. Number two is, use of access areas that shall comply with the federal regulations on 50 CFR Part 80. And if the applied nuisance station conflicts with a higher priority use, with the hunting and fishing uses, the Fish and Wildlife Department shall work with the entity managing the Echolitis Nuisance Inspection Station using on the local lakes programs and their volunteers to resolve any conflicts or issue that such authorized users can be reasonably accommodated and prevention of the introduction of invasive species into waters of the state is enhanced. So can parties get together and sort of work on the differences and see if they can work that out? The next section is also section three is current language, focuses on the higher priority uses. But what we've done with F is the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Department of Environment and Conservation Lakes and Ponds program will develop guidance the criteria, conditions, and under what circumstances fishing access areas may include boat washing units, working decontamination stations when proposed by any entity. Guidance will be reported back to this committee in the one upstairs by 01/15/2027. The minimum guidance will acknowledge that after requirements of 50 CFR Part 80, the requirements for hunting and fishing access, preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species is a priority at fishing access areas. If deemed necessary, reasonable effort will be made to accommodate boat washing maintenance or decontamination stations at a specific fishing access area, even if these higher priorities of hunting and fishing access are minimally impacted as long as this does not significantly impede these higher priorities.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: So it can have a little bit

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: of an impact, but it can't go up. If it's determined that a washing unit or decontamination station is needed at a specific area, but would it significantly impede the use of higher priorities? A reasonable effort will be made to find an alternative location for the boat washing unit or decontamination station as close to the fishing area as possible. Can you find some area that's close by where you can put it that's not going to impede the parking or whatever of that station? Make a reasonable effort. Finally, number four, go washing units and decontamination stations must be used in such a manner and location as not to impact the water quality of the adjacent surface waters or any adjacent weapons. So please don't put the decontamination station right next to the adjacent weapons and have all the hot water and everything else go. So finally, very quickly, because we're almost time's up, there has been some talk about priorities. We restructured them a little bit because some of them didn't quite make sense to me. But so you'll notice 4.1 hasn't changed. That anglicense fishing and launching of any vessel to be used for fishing and parking vehicles and trailers is the first priority use. I'm not sure why hunting, trapping and parking vehicles or boat trailers necessary for this was 4.3, but that's supposed to be one of the priority uses. So it's moved up to 4.2. The 4.3 is now Bluetooth Biotic Nuisance species inspection stations for the inspection of all vehicles, trailers, equipments, entering in Exedy Lakes pursuit. Fishing and hunting are still a priority uses, but the next priority is trying to address the biotic invasives. And then the other ones are just sort of moved back at. The launching of inboards and the launching of non motorized vessels. Four point six is the use of ATVs and snowmobiles are our priority use when they're being used for ice fishing. I think that could be struck because it has to do with ice fishing. So technically it would be number one, because you're going ice fishing. You're just using your snowmobile, your gravity TV to get there rather than your feet. So that would mean to me a priority number one use, a lower down. Taking a breath, that is what we have sort of put together to try to make inspection stations with the greeter program with a volunteer sitting there in my lawn chair, a priority use in all these areas. They don't have to have all their own parking spot, just stick them somewhere in the corner. They can be out of the way, but they can be there. And then the two departments will work together to see if in some of these stations, there is a reasonable way to accommodate a decontamination station or a full block in station as sort of a collaborative effort that we work together on guidance, some rules, some criteria for how that would be determined. Mr. O'Grady got this at about 09:30 this morning. So he hasn't had a chance to see it. I didn't have a chance to share it with the departments because same thing, I was tinkering with it.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: I will.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Thank you. We are. Be sitting in tomorrow morning, madam chair

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: at 09:00 if folks

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: have questions. So I will. I will unplug. Okay. Thank you very much. Yep. Absolutely. Appreciate it. Good morning. This is Senate Natural Resources with.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Senate Economic Development Housing and General Affairs in a joint meeting on a subject that is dear to us all, which is housing development.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yes. And so we're going to be hearing about eight zero two Homes, Homes for All, and what that all could mean for the state. So thank you, Mr. Nunberg, for being here. So grateful. And just for context, I think our company has had some of this background, but I think it does not hurt to hear it. Again, I think that there's gonna be a little bit more that we haven't heard. So thank you so much.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Yeah, thank

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: you. Chair Watson, Chair Clarkson. I'm Jacob Hemmerick, I'm our Senior Planning and Policy Manager in the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development, Division of Community Planning and Revitalization. And put together a presentation quickly this morning to give you an overview of homes for all and to your points and reflections and kind of explain different components of it and how it relates to homes. Just by way of background, I've held a lot of different homes and municipal and state government and the thorough planning nerd, that's in a way with every respect to the legislative office that you can say. And Jay, if you

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: could speak up, we're competing

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: with MOIs from the event here. Yeah, absolutely. Back here.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: So I work with this team in

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: the division of community planning

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: and revitalization. And a lot of what we've been focused on the past eight years is making it easier

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: to build homes and where

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: we need homes the most and where they are affordable. And I should give credit to Jeff Doobie, who is the project manager, created two homes and another principal for this project. But I've been involved in a lot of pieces in my eight years in state government, really my eight years in state government has been focused on planning for housing in places where we can afford that housing. That all started in 2013 with the neighborhood development area designation. And that was really the first attempt to ease action 15 review in communities that updated their zoning to proactively enable housing. The program essentially rewarded municipalities that did the hard work upfront and to create more clear, more predictable pathways to housing in affordable locations. From there we went to 2020 to zoning for great neighborhoods. This was a partnership between the ACD, the Vermont Housing Conservation Board, AARP Vermont, and the Vermont REALTORS to promote best practices in local zoning bylaws. So we're focused on how do we enable infill and missing middle housing by modernizing outdated zoning provisions and providing practical local examples and locally tested models. And we worked with municipalities to put that kind together. From there, we went to bylaw modernization grants with leadership from Senator Fuchsland and Senator Pinsdale. It's more than $1,000,000 was invested to help communities implement zoning for great neighborhoods guidance. So we did the guidance and then there was funding to help roll it out at the municipal level. And today's 63 grants are awarded, reaching approximately one third of the communities that have local zoning. So it demonstrated a strong appetite for reform where technical and financial support was available to cities and towns across the state of Vermont. Then in 2023 was the big year for the Home Act. It was in earlier efforts primarily aimed at helping communities, I'm sorry, the earlier efforts were aimed at communities that were willing to take up reform. The HOME Act signaled that Vermont really need to be all in through some sometimes controversial preemption of certain ozoning provisions. So it activated important changes to housing, it increased density, increased allowed uses and allowed smaller lots. They made a lot of reforms in areas served by water and sewer, as well as

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: the Presidential Southern District's statewide.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: The Community Partnership for Neighborhood Development was a funding round table with $100,000,000 in support that reduces redevelopment expenses for projects, late projects in Senator Hardy's district, Stonecrop Meadows has received a lot of publicity. And from there we went to Act 181 where DHCD led extensive engagement on approving the state's designations program. So those are downtowns, our village centers, new town centers. And it worked directly, the work from our engagement produced a report that informed Act 181. And it was all about aligning the state's plans, the state's regulations and the state's investments in areas for growth. As you know, that's rolling out now. From there, we went into the homes for all toolkit, which is really the bulk of this presentation. And it was designed really to help win more hearts and minds around infill development and to demystify the development process for new and emerging space like

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: John

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: and Richards and fairly amazing articles about. Then there's now the infrastructure rolling out and the executive order and the homes for all training cohorts. So I'm talk going a little bit about more of that in details,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: but I wanted to give you a sense of the timeline as these things roll out.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: That's helpful, yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: I like your chart. Yeah.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So when we say the missing middle, sometimes it can get confused with

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: middle income housing. By and large, we're talking about a housing type that's in between the single family homes and the large multi unit putting construction. And those are predominantly where we're seeing a lot of housing growth in the state of Vermont.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So missing focus on this in

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: the middle was really about focusing on where can we put homes where there's already existing infrastructure, water, sewer, and electricity lines. And it's also where a lot of Vermont housing improvement funds have been focused to fix up vacant or flooded units. Much more of the support for missing middle and infill housing, as I mentioned, flowed through to vital modernization grants. So that was three years of one time funding that's still in the municipal and regional planning resilience fund. But we have all for thirty years, the state's invested in municipal planning grants. This is funding derived from the property transfer tax. In just the past four years, 4.6 millions of grant funds have been requested, 2.8 millions of grant funds have been awarded, serving 160 municipal planning projects. And really flexible funding to meet towns, work with planning projects that are their priorities that also meet state priorities, especially projects that relate to housing. Just a

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: quick second question. Sure. Our municipal grants, do we need more money than municipal grants? There money in the budget? I

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: don't believe there's minimal money in

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: the governor's budget for commissioner. I believe there's money.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: And this comes out of the property transfer tax. Yes. So it is a fund that gets 13% of the property transfer tax when you not withstand or when you don't not withstand. But I have a proposal I'm hoping to put in somebody's bill to increase right now the municipal and regional planning percentage from the property. Thank

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: you. And was that with, because you said there's some else. Okay, you. Okay, just wanted to make sure that

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: it learns.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: It's great.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: And I highly advise as the two programs that generally supported municipal actions to change their planning and regulatory program and boost housing production. So the Vermont Homeschool Toolkit was this first phase of this broader effort to make it easier for infill housing. It was designed to do toolkit for small scale developers. It had three phases. There was an engagement and design where we worked with communities around the state to see where there are infill opportunities and tested different housing types people could be unbeatable about. Yes, in my neighborhood. Yes, can see that next door to me. Yes, I would love to have that in my community. From there, we developed the training toolkit. This was all about how do we grow the number of small scale developers throughout the state and demystify how they enter that business. And then the phase three, which we're working on now, the pre approved designs that ANO2 holds. These are construction ready public domain designs that can be used for regulatory streamlining. We've kicked off this project. It'll close out in December 2026. I'll break

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: that down a little bit more. And I

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: guess a question. Okay. So I think you're gonna deepen our understanding in the next slide. I think whether it's the toolkit or it is the manufactured housing that we're looking to advance, things often get hung up on the units per acre or the sort of what we mean by infill to make sure that we're not creating a costly purchase with the land that it would take. So I think these are all great things. I just don't want us to lose sight of where they are and how much they're able to drive cost per unit down because we've seen projects where they want two for an acre instead of five for an acre outside of our exemption areas and that makes the project not doable. So how we make sure infill means next to other things in a way that drives the land cost down as well. So

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: the guide really started with infill case studies and we worked in the towns of Arlington, Bellows Falls, Middlesex, Rutland City and Virgin Islands to see where are there infill parcels and then what types of homes, what dimensions would work for infill on lots that were identified. And there are often plenty of lots in and around communities when you really do a deeper data to see where can you put two or put the three in the four unit section and Sorry Senator Clarkson, I'm just getting over cold but I'm still a little hoarse.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Competition there.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, so

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: this is an example of

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: a vacant flat, corner lot, gridded walkable neighborhood surrounded by one or two story buildings. It's already got access to water and sewer, good to go. And these were the types of sites

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: that

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: this guidebook really focused on. From there we looked at potential floor plans that met a variety of needs, like accessible units, like right sized mechanical closets, reducing down the size of things so that there could be cheaper economies of scale for construction. There was still some storage and functionality like a little mud space in an entryway and safety things like primary and secondary egresses. So these three redesigns were all about creating affordability by design, but balance livability needs in the modern systems.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Before you leave that slide, Jake, I know they'll leave this question when you have presented this to the House, you probably already have. Did you also take into consideration your prototypes universal design? Because I know that's something you're all

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah no all we do is we're universal design but the larger like this is an example of a side by side plus one, three with the back unit was ADA accessible and you can see the ramp kind

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: of where it

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: says accessible, it's underneath but there's an accessible unit.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Okay, great.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, but it was not all units were, but it would be it was meeting the code thresholds.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Right, here's the question. Thank you.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Sort of, your training for potential developers, I shared a lot of information with my constituents recently and I was trying to figure out like, what is the definition of a developer? Because I think

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: sometimes people think, oh, if

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: you're a developer, you're like the developer of StoneCraft Meadows, like you do some huge thing, but it can also mean somebody who just turns their single building into a duplex. And right?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, absolutely. I think this is the person who's taking financial risk to the building and manage the project.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So I'm wondering how we can sort of make people feel comfortable with oh, I could be a developer too kind of thing within reason, obviously. And maybe you do that in your training, but.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, absolutely. And this book was really about helping people who are like plumbers or realtors. Yeah. Trace people with money to park and they're ready to invest and grow their business in a different way. Yeah. It helps them understand like what the other aspects of the development business are involved in the development business from, and it's all small scale, 6,000 below but to the similar accessory building with a developer for somebody who wants to build a whole new venture.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yeah, because I think sometimes the

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: word developer is intimidating to people. Yeah. Don't know if

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: there's a developer. We may have an essay. Tag out of it. We have copies off the toolkit. It would be great if you'd bring another copy because I think lots of us took the call.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Yeah, we can do that.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: And it

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: would be great if we had some more. And the other, what was the other piece? Oh, I also had a question to tag on Ruth's question. I had asked how does small scale developers even know about this project? How are you promoting it?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, so department's promoting it through a variety of partners that we have involved in this project. And you can see in the second to the last slide, there's a list of all the partner organizations that we're working with. We're using the newsletter to promote the training opportunities. And so those first training sessions and the registrations are rolling out just now. You'll see the dates on a subsequent slide, but the motion is underway.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Okay, right. Sure.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah. Part of the development, Holmes World hookup found that there's a sweet spot for small scale. It's really the one to four units based on different code thresholds. And this is really a great spot for the new developer to get started because there's lower risk, there's more financing available, there's fewer code thresholds, it's just easier to start with. And then sweet spot number two is five to 11. So the builder's workbook provided step by step guidance in the toolkit, roles in small scale development, how to identify development ready sites, how to build your team, business and financial framework, ways to measure feasibility methodology, including template pro formas for mitigating construction. So really broken down step by step to make it a little bit easier. So anybody like Senator Hardy, if you know people in your district that are interested in this, I would absolutely point them website and this resource, and we're available to answer questions from from people who might be interested. Okay. Is there a

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: question you Gotta go back to senator Gordon's question about definition of the developer front because I'm thinking, you know, you've gone to the next step because we always think of general contractor. Mhmm. Are they do they still fit into this picture?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Although sometimes we'll typically, though, we would think of, like, the developer or hiring general contractor unless the general contractor is taking, assuming the financial risk and will own the product at the end.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Because we don't have to, we don't have development at all. But I think

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: But you have general contractor.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: We got a lot of general contractors. I

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: was waiting for the part where this becomes by writing.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: We're almost there. Great. So

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: the almost world training, Senator Clarkson,

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: you asked about these are

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: the dates for this training. This is a promotion poster, this is the link where people can sign up for that training. So we developed the toolkit, now there's this training, the resource that's rolling out for small scale developers. So it's more than just reading a book, it's going to coursework and having mentors like John and Jeff Dunbar and Bella's Falls who are in that community. So into halls, these are going to be the third phase, 10 hall designs. Each designed for two ways of construction. One is on-site traditional framing and another is off-site modular construction. So factory built construction, they'll be up to a six plex and they'll build on the homes for all toolkit prototype designs, but they'll get to that construction ready drawings. So the general contractor can take this design and apply it to a development site. There are many benefits to this off-site housing, it's generally that it's faster. The quality can be inconsistent, particularly with energy efficiency because the same person is doing windows every day and they get really, really good at edge at the installation. And it reduces a lot of on-site building construction. Those are the key benefits, faster and cheaper. We have development ready community partners right now in Essex Junction, Hartford and Manchester that we're working with to go through the process of identifying eligible sites again in different communities than we did in phase one to test the whole designs with the community and work with them to explore ways in their local codes that they can make it easier for the housing developers. So to streamline that process for administrative approvals at the local level.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: I'm just gonna do that until we have time.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Quick question. So for the first five, do you have data about,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: have they moved forward in those communities with projects that are a result of the

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: work you did in them?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: We've heard a little bit of anecdotal. We haven't done a survey yet, but we do have an annual planning. Our planning survey that we do every three years is going be coming out this March. Okay. And are thinking about how can we integrate some questions about the implementation.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yeah, would be helpful to see.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: But exactly at this point where we hear the project and or developers are talking about how they're using those designs as inspiration

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: or working with their architects.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: But we don't have a product yet where they can take a construction ready drawing and hand it off to the permitting authorities, the building code, fire marshals, a state delegating building permit.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Well, just know that there are

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: some things happening in Virgin's. I just don't know if they're a result of this project or not. It'd be nice to know, like, was the impetus, if anything.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So as Liz was paused, I have a couple of questions. So one, you mentioned you have 10 designs. Yeah. Maybe you'll get to this, but wondering if, because it looks like a variety of kinds of homes, but wondering if there is, if you could see a need for more than 10 kinds of designs.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Well, think, yeah, more than 10 would provide more flexibility. The cost to produce these designs, it's a $500,000 contract. For each one? No, for those

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: 10 designs. Oh, For 10, it was 7,000.

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: If you looked at that, one state had 20, what state that was, it had similar growth. So

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I'm so sorry.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: The other question about these, do the three towns have similar permitting, zoning and code? What's making it easier to do those three tasks?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: I know, they're all very different types of communities, different permitting styles.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Because one of the things that came through loud and clear on this fabulous program National Radio last night, Building Tomorrow, was one of the things that would be great to work towards is regional building code so that you could then build faster, more efficiently, and then you could reduce the time of getting all the permit. And you're working on permitting and zoning uniformity here, but not building codes yet.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah. And most of the building code is fairly uniform across the state as administered by the Division of Fire Safety and

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: the Fire However, there are

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: 10 elevated communities that are most of the larger cities in the state of Vermont where there's an agreement with the Division of Fire Safety to have a separate building code, but sometimes there's differences between the state code and those local codes that are administered. In these cases, it's really about how do we streamline the local approval to get the administrative permit. So it doesn't have to go through before discretionary review by an appropriate municipal panel, whether that be the planning commission, Department of Development and New Board, that it can be permitted by the zoning administrator, the administrative officer without having to go through a board hearing. So no appeal. Well, it still could be appealed, but it's faster and there's less likely to be appealed.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: That's the permitted use piece that I think is the only thing we could do to potentially limit costly, timely, delaying appeals is to make things a permitted use. You're saying that this would still be appealable. Like somebody doesn't want something next to them. Doesn't matter if it's approved and up to code, they can still appeal it. I think that is the problem that we are trying to solve because otherwise I don't think that as many of these will be built as could be because they are in fit.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah and under the act right now, the Municipal and Regional Planning Act, all municipal land use permits have an appeal function and different noticing requirements. So there's less notices involved if it just is a zoning permit that can be administratively approved by the zoning administrator. And those permits can then be appealed to the local or it could be more of adjustment depending upon-

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: And some of these could still be appealed in Act two fifty.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yeah,

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: so that's the problem. So we're not solving that problem.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Well, they could in their building they're taking up and the appeals- Well,

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: I hope we solved that problem this year because that's what the cost of a multi unit, small missing middle building, if it's ownership, if it's even someone who owns one side and rents another side, the thing that scares people away is you could get appealed twice in the process. People generally do that when something's infill. So unless we limit the duplication of appeals at the very least, I don't see that we've solved any problem.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Well, solved,

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: like what?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: I mean really, like what?

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Well, in a vision, permanent is when they tend to be much less than they tend to. They're much quicker in there. So I

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: think it a long way for the solid.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: How do you know they would be more likely with their lenses? I think Montpelier told us differently last year. I mean, lot of communities came in and said, get rid of the appeal of a municipal decision. That's the biggest barrier we have to three to 12 unit housing.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah. I will say that my experience as Milton's Planning and Economic Development Director, it was most often the developer who was appealing for the municipality's decision when

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: was there, but that's been more than eight years ago.

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Oh, that was probably because they wanted fewer units.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Well, they disliked their condition that the military board put on the project. Thank

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: you. So the project schedule, this is we're going

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: to end this project of developing the catalog by December 2026. We're now actually in February. That's where we are. And so beyond the eight zero two homes, we're in conversation with the finance and banking community because we know there's still some financial claims quotes and lending, particularly with accessory dwelling events that make it tough for individual homeowners to get financing. We know there's workforce development, pension points, particularly with tradespeople, plumbers, and nutritionists, contractors. We're working with the energy efficiency community to make sure that these align with the tier three incentives and the energy code requirements. And then the other thing that's really going to help, I think supercharged, a huge pinch point is chip because infrastructure is often the barrier to housing development. I know like in Colchester, you know, they just have a slightly larger pipe there, they can lock up, unlock 600 units. I know in Milton we had permitted units that weren't built in the hundreds because of issues around road street construction or single device intersections, things like that. So I think the infrastructure pinch points you're looking at. And then we're exploring public communities within the community in Yalts. So this is the big picture and these are the partners that we're working with and advertising with.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: So they're doing what? They're helping?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: We're advertising the training. So we're advertising the training opportunities. The US dollar center.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Okay, so when that's the question, how are people going to know about it?

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yeah. So I have a couple

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: of questions to follow. So this is going back to one of your first slides about the timeline, that there's been an incredible amount of work that has led up to this point. Do you think that the work that we have done up until this point is making a difference on the ground in terms of housing starts?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, I think it is. And we're seeing that in the housing tracker with the number of permits that are being used. So there's an accelerating permits, but it's hard to say if it's directly related to the permitting reform or the funding boost. Think it's everything.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yeah, so it's the combination, it seems to be we're at some kind of inflection point for the housing. Yeah. But that's okay, that's encouraging. And then I wanted to ask about something that you just were talking about in terms of the pinch points, because the pinch points are interesting, right? And like, are the bottlenecks to developing more housing? You mentioned infrastructure as a big factor. Is there, just digging a little bit deeper in that, is infrastructure data, mean, one of things that we've talked about in our committee is water and sewer connections, and we certainly heard from communities that were like, we cannot build housing further slope because we have to build a new pump station, etcetera. So we know that just the infrastructure is a bottleneck. But to what degree is that infrastructure data not being available eventually?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: I think it's a famous point because you said that developers don't have transparency about where the water, available water and sewer There's no maps about There's no comprehensive statewide map that there have been maps that have been provided by in 2017 by the regional planning commissions that were best available maps. But in terms of, and sometimes there's sewer service areas and sometimes they don't really know where the pipes are and they'll be great into this with Plainfield right there, a neighborhood development area where they didn't exactly quite know where the sewer lines were. And so there hadn't been GIS met. So this is a big data gap.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I also just want to say for playing field sake, it's not, this is very common. No, it's very common. Yeah.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Got a good thing. They also don't know its capacity.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yes. So you told us about that. So

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I think that that if we could get some sort of a statewide system for really understanding where the ones are, what the capacity is, what the is, and it could be.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Who does that? Is anybody doing that actually?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Well, University of Vermont Center for Complex Assistance with the LABE Center funding did a first swing at it. And I think they got maybe 60% of the state done with student labor. So it hasn't been QA ed by professionals, it's gotten mostly there through that. And I think that was, oh, I'm trying to remember the amount. I think it was $150,000 from the way you center.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: We have Senator Hardy mentioned. Thank you. I can't

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: see everybody up there, but I don't see the LCT, but I'm assuming they're one of them. Oh yeah, that's on top of report that is intact. But VCRD, the Vermont Council on Rural Development, are they on there? Because the reason

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I asked specifically about them is there are a couple towns in my district that are very small rural towns that have been working with them on sort

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: of community plans and one in particular, the town of New Haven, just finished theirs. They're interested in housing. They have lots that they're trying to identify. I've tried to push them towards some of your resources, but especially for these smaller towns that don't have access to as many of the sophisticated things, that VCRD might be helpful. VCRD is not on there. Yeah, I don't see them on there, but know they're working with a lot

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: of town.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, do work with VCRD closely at town, yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: But they're key because they, with all their visioning projects where they're working in every town developing vision for the future, it would be great for them to be selling this too.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I'll go over it somewhere, Roslindale and then some

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: of that.

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: So if you go back

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: to your timeline slide, I certainly know a lot of the things on there as the bills that we wrote, it was the one with our bills that you're giving us of the timeline of the law. Sorry.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Yeah, no, that's okay. Yeah, it's the, we're, yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: I worry that in 2024, we really diverged in terms of tier 1A, B, two, three and whatever was going on with the state designation programs. I still honestly don't have a handle of how they are supposed to overlay. And I think that could be very helpful in unlocking the potential of 1B2, particularly. We were supposed to have new growth areas and all kind and like transition zones along transit corridors. And I have not heard that in relation to the tier conversation at all.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Well, yeah, and I can't speak for the math reasons.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Well, so I was actually just having this exact engagement with Charlie Baker yesterday, and so we are gonna be having him on our agenda anyway on Thursday to talk

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: about how these things all

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: map to each other.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: When we were writing Act 181, we used the growth centers and the idea, and when we said we're getting a new one so we can see how much bigger we could make these because they should be all water and sewer, right? They should be tier one B. I heard you bring that up on Friday online. We were supposed to use both of these to expand the areas that would be exempt from Act two fifty. Was the point of the exemption. Gonna flow right into the tiers of them and the designated areas. 2024 since then has gone awry. And the benefits of being a designation program should couple really well with getting tier 1A. And

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: really my understanding is that they do, it's about better planning. There's a regional planning report, better regulation and necessary updates to act, bid to report and designation 2,050. So better for community investment. Those three reports came together as grafted at quantity one. And what it did is the recognized regional planning future land use area for category employees and future land use will automatically establish designation upon approval by the land use for new visitors. So that's downtown and village centers, plant growth areas, village areas. All water and sewer areas will, should be 1B unless the municipality offsets.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Exactly. Sounds like maybe

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Francestern Estics have opted out as I understand

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: in

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: So the Cheyenne even if we're not dealing

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: with people

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: who opted out, we were supposed to design it so that people could understand besides what's tier 1B, because that's a gourmet concept, what is a growth center?

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Gourmet, I'm gourmet. There's lot of environments. Well, it's gourmet.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: And my understanding too is that the way that the designated areas, particularly for the Community Investment Board purposes, doesn't line up very well. And so Charlie's going be bringing some proposals to try to help make them.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Given our time, we may want to move that if you stay active in the conversation after we finish with our other two witnesses, I think they won't have to go place in time for court motions.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Super. All right, so next is Jennifer Murray, Director of Planning and Zoning, who was in Hanover, New Hampshire, as I understand it, Jennifer is formerly of Middlebury and was very influential in the zoning update that allows Stone Crop Meadows to happen. So welcome.

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Ruth. Hi, Jennifer. Long time, Rosie. We used to be neighbors. How how can I help you, Jake and company? What sort of things would you like to hear from me today?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Well, introduce yourself first for the record.

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: Okay. Great.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: And then I I have some questions I can, yeah, I can compose. Perfect. Yes.

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: Jennifer Murray, I was the planning director in Middlebury for just about ten years before that I worked in Williston and Jericho. Yeah. So I've been a practicing planner for quite some time. And you're right. We did do a a bylaw revision just prior to the Stone Crop Meadows project. That bylaw modernization was done with a municipal planning grant. But it wasn't just a standalone thing, like we changed the zoning and then an amazing development happened, so spread the It was a very long multi year process where we started in 2019 with a downtown master plan that identified proposed development areas. So when you're thinking about that infill and you're worried about those neighbors appealing, choosing some really good sites where people are receptive to change or receptive to a new neighborhood is helpful. And then that followed with the bylaw modification grant and project, and that lasted from 2021 to about 2022. And then in 2022, we were lined up to get our neighborhood development area designation. So we got the designations that go with these things. And so we just sort of set up all the dominoes so that by the time the college was Middlebury College was ready to buy a parcel and bring in a developer to to partner with, you know, we already had that highlighted on our zoning map. And we had some some really good zoning that we had started to build some some buy in for that we were able to pass at exactly the right time to get everything to fall down nicely. That's great. I don't know if you wanted to know that or not, but I always like to spread the word that it wasn't just a biologic Well,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: and one of the things

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: that you mentioned was that you all access to the municipal planning grants, is something that we were talking about a little bit earlier. Do you have a sense of how much that municipal planning grant was and what, I don't know if you have a sense of like what's typical for municipal planning grants?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Oh,

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: okay. Boy, Jake is the expert on that. They're around 30,000, aren't they?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, the mass awards are 30,000. Not all, some grants are smaller than that.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: They're not that big. We got a big bang for the buck here.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Yeah, it's huge bang for the buck. Yeah.

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: We had a consultant that really helped us out too. She met a tight deadline and I think she ate some costs because she really believed in this bylaw modernization. That was Brandy Saxon who used to do a lot of work across Vermont.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Sure. And actually just to dig into that, so how did the modernization actually, enabled something like Stone Top Rentals to, Meadows to, to happen? Like what, what changed that made that, so functional?

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: Right. Well, we kind of worked backward from the neighborhood development area designation. And so the neighborhood development area designation, in order to do that, you need to prove as you should, when you're building a new neighborhood, that you're going to build a neighborhood that fits well in the community. And so it has some basic sort of urban design concepts built in. It's just a simple checklist and we weren't able to get all the way through the checklist with our very old zoning. So we knew that we wanted to update it so that anything new that we built functioned as like a, a really good walkable community that was close to amenities and where, you know, people would be proud and, you know, able to live and that it would look like the rest of Middlebury. If you go by there, think it looks pretty good. Don't know how Ruth feels about it, but I think it looks pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah. There will be parks, right? And and a and a bike path and all kinds of things. So I start I may have started out just kind of skeptical, why is Jake making me do all these things for this NDA through this designation? But then once I got into it and I was updating the bylaw, which I was able to do because money came from Vermont to be able to hire the consultant to work with me to make it happen, I was really glad we did it. And I'm really proud of it now. And weirdly, Summit was already sort of in conversation, to do the Stone Crop Meadow project with the college. So they helped me with the bylaw revision as well. So they were able to make a couple tweaks at the end. And then, we passed the bylaw. They were there when we passed the bylaw. So they had buy in right from the start. So to come all around Robin Hoods Barn, to answer your question, it enabled, it allowed us to kind of bring the developer on board and have their buy in in what the bylaw change was going to be. It allowed us to lay out street networks and conserve green spaces and create, sidewalks and on street parking and and all of those things to make it a a really useful community. And the developer was okay with that because they've been through this before, and they knew that a really good functional community allows allows them to sell their market rate units at a decent price and allows their non market rate units to be a nice neighborhood for them.

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Thank you. Think we have another question here.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I have more questions. Go ahead.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Jennifer, me, I think some of were at the StoneCrop Meadows Groundbreaking. So maybe you were there as well. And something was said that made me feel like I can die happy. The city council president.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: City council?

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: The select board. Select board chair president. Brian Carpenter said, we have a target of 500 units of housing in Middlebury, and these are two fifty of our 500 units. Let's get working to build the rest. That feels like really good planning to me. And I know you said you're trying to sort of go where there's more political will. But how do you see as a planner using the tools we've created to get those two fifty additional units in Middlebury?

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: I'm glad you said that back to me, Keisha, because it wasn't just political will, it was also water and sewer, walkability from downtown and all of the other things that that NDA designation really tries to target. So if you look at the map we created in the downtown master plan of lots that we thought were vacant and had good potential, it aligns really nicely with our NDA designation. So that's one tool that we used to try to identify that area. Yeah, and it's not just housing units either. It's not just two fifty random units. A lot of them are the missing middle housing type that Jake referenced that is really hard to get to. And we had a big subsidy to accomplish that through ARPA funds that came through the state. The program had a name, I'm not remembering, the missing middle housing fund, I guess. So that was an essential tool too.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: We're gonna move to Mr. But if you have one more question. No, that's okay. And then I, Jennifer, I do have one more question, which could I think be for both of you potentially, so I'm gonna ask it later, but Mr. Bremer, welcome.

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: Good morning.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Good morning. We met some of us met you up in Fairlane this summer as we were all touring around.

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: Yeah, we have had a spate of multi family housing starts, permitting issues, now it is a matter of keeping the funding together for the projects. Kind of rolled in before the modernization effort at the state level. And it was interesting as we went through with our regional looking at our bylaw, are you going to be in conformity? And it's like, well, we kind of already are. We treat one and two family dwellings identically and have for the last fifteen years, apartment houses are a permitted use in the zone. You know, we allow people to add ADUs up to 900 square feet. So a lot of those things were already accomplished. What we really have a hard time working around is that through a set of historic circumstances, Fairly has an extensive and well developed water system. But at the same time, it's built on top of what's called a glacial esker. And what that means is we're sanding gravel a 100 feet deep underneath the village. Literally the best conditions you could possibly have for septic systems and that sort of thing. And we have been looking at, designs for, call it, low flow community septic, especially under, like, the playing fields at Samuel Moore Elementary, that sort of thing. But we kind of feel like the tier system doesn't know what to do with these larger water system villages. And as you come up the Connecticut River Valley, you will find these little clumps of density, and they're there because there were good soils on the one hand and a good water source on the other. And we kind of believe that these water system villages on this side of the state are real squandered resource. They can support higher levels of density, but they're kinda dying on the vine for lack of capital investment.

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Mhmm.

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: And we noticed this with the tier map that we're dealing with and kinda negotiating with our regional on. They've entirely excluded from, that tier one b area and the south part of our village, which is actually got water infrastructure in the ground right now. And it it feels like someone looked at a topo map without actually getting on the ground and looking at the local geography, both the human geography and our geology and our topography and so on. And we're kind of struggling with how we're going to deal with the mapping with our regional. They've left an entire commercial section of town out of that tier one b. And I don't know if any other town is making similar observations about dealing with their regionals or not.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Yes. They are.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yes, they are.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Questions, yes. How much headway do you feel like you're making on that front? I mean, you gotten a land use review board member to agree to come to your community and walk around and look at that?

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: Currently, I think we're going to have to go to the senior planner. We're going to have to go over somebody's head, I believe, to actually get any adjustments to the map.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Do you mean at your district level?

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: In that regional planning commission level.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Okay. Are you with Two Rivers? Are you with Two Rivers Towns?

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Are.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Yeah. You're the, like, the most northern town in the 2 Rivers District, I think.

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: Bradford is the

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: next Oh, Bradford.

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: I believe Newberry is in that as well.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So one question for the both of you. What would you identify as the most useful tweak or fix or support that would be, know, practically speaking on the ground, the most useful thing to getting more housing starts in your area?

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: Money?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: Think

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: that's important to recognize, right? When I think about the regulatory barriers, there is financial barriers, that you are saying is money.

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: It is money and infrastructure.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Thank you. You mind going a little bit deeper? Money for what?

[Mr. Bremer (Town of Fairlee representative)]: Well, one thing I've noted is that we've done a really good job in Vermont at eroding the tax oh, what's the word I'm looking for? We've eroded the taxing ability of small towns. Often what happens is taxes go up, property taxes go up because of the state school, you know, the state school taxing system. And the voters only have one level of government that they can get their hands on and shake, and that tends to be the town government. So town governments are desperate to cut their budgets and level fund and money just isn't going into sidewalks, playgrounds, that sort of thing, because they're desperate to shave another 1% or 2% off because the state school tax has gone up. And one suggestion I would have is, you know, you're asking towns to adopt a 1% option tax when it's politically impossible for them to do so. I I think one big thing you could do is make the option text just automatic.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: That is an interesting one just after. Miss Murray, if you're, up for answering the same question.

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: Yeah. Sure. You know, from a developer's perspective, I like to think of it as a really simple formula with a little equal sign in the middle. And one side is the cost to construct, and on the other side is what people can afford. Sometimes they talk about it in terms of their salaries. And so we get so caught up in all these little nuances of how we can balance that equation, right? Like we were talking earlier about land costs and, you know, oh, land cost is the problem. Or like, oh shoot, the development cost is the problem. Or your permits, us. Okay, now you're balancing one side of the equation, but we're having trouble is the other side of the equation. People just need to be able to make enough to be able to afford what it costs to build the housing. And until the developer can get that equation straight, you know, we can't work with them on the local level either. So what I found in where I am now and in Middlebury, we've done a really good job of, you know, deregulating and making the zoning simpler and streamlining the processes. And yes, there's always work that can be done. And that's kind of a planners work. We know that when we get our degree and come to a town, right? It's always our job to make that easier, but we've made it really, really easy and we're still not seeing the units coming online. So there's something else that we need to focus on. I know in Hanover, we're working on exactly, and I'm gonna steal Jake's work like crazy. Like we are working on like coming up with little models as is our neighboring community Lebanon, working on model homes that people can plug in and use for ADUs because there's a little bit of they choke a little bit when they're trying to figure out, oh, how can I build a house? That's a really hard thing to understand. There's contractors and there's developers. Developers know a little bit more than contractors too, right? So anything you can do to get these little local contractors built up to be more like developers and really focus on that, I think is helpful. So what's an easier way to say that? Doing anything you can to build local capacity. Local capacity might be adding really experienced planners at the regional planning level or the local level, or getting these contractors to learn how to be developers and understand those nuances. And I think it's important, especially in a state like Vermont, where every community is so unique to build that local capacity in any way that you can, because otherwise you just have these very clunky top down tools of like, oh, we just need to add more units per acre, or just like allow anyone on water sewer to have this many units or whatever. Know, I think those top down, those top down, solutions result in communities being more alike. And I think it ignores the fact that every community is different and every project is different. And that's why it's so you have such a big task ahead of you to understand all of that on your end. So, yeah, just building local capacity and I think that the eight zero two program is heading in the right direction there.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I'll have a question from Senator Beck and I have follow-up, go ahead.

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Yeah, just for a comment, we were running out of time here. I think the other equation that we all needed is the cost to construct versus the asset value and right now they are totally out of whack and if you know when you come back if you had some estimates of what these homes are expected to cost to construct versus what you think the asset values of what they would be regional town, whatever. Because unless we solve that, the only way you purchase a home in Vermont is if you come to the table with a big bag

[Jennifer Murray (Director of Planning & Zoning, Hanover, NH; formerly Middlebury, VT)]: of cash

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: or you're willing to lose it.

[Hannah Smith (Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Or lose some vacancy rate. One

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: further thing, you mentioned that every town is different, so I want to ask specifically about this idea that is being piloted in the three different communities where, that is Essex, Hartford, and Manchester, where ideally, if I'm not mistaken, you would have a, with these designs, you'd be able to go to the fire marshal and say this is, it is the vision that this would be pre approved.

[Senator Scott Beck (Clerk, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Right.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: That's I think the objective is that this is all code compliant, fits every zoning, permitting and code compliant, and then it's ready to go is the whole point I think of this.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: I don't to put words in your mouth. Is that more or less accurate?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: I think that's the, their goal is to streamline the permitting process and so that they're recognized as much as they can be in the local permitting process and the state permitting process.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: And do we have a report coming back to us about

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: how that goes? What's the pilot report after these? How long do they have to do these and when is the report due?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Mean what will the final designs look like? No.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: So after you do these in in Essex and goes and is there going to be a report on it as to how it went?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: Well, the outreach in the community is really about helping develop the designs. The deliverable is

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: the design. It's not a problem.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: Okay. But I guess I'm also thinking about that potential future expansion. And I know we've got to wrap up here, interested in the tension between wanting to streamline the process and the local conditions are different everywhere. I mean, as Mr. Bremer was Yeah, that's

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: why I asked that at the beginning was how uniform are those three towns and their permitting and building, you know, the building code we have in Vermont, the permitting and the zoning, how similar are they? So that I would hope we'd end up on a pilot where we could roll this out and grow it.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs)]: So when when is it due?

[Jacob Hemmerick (Senior Planning and Policy Manager, VT Dept. of Housing & Community Development)]: So December 2026 is when the the designs will be available and there will some sort of summary of findings put together. Okay. For the the outreach of those

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: communities.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy)]: With with that, think we should probably be sure.