Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, good morning. This is

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thursday, February 19, and we're studying a little bit later than we had The schedule changed this morning. We canceled our first thing, so we are jumping in here at 09:45 with Beth Baker from VAPTA and the Chuden County Regional Planning Commission, as well as Catherine Demetriuk. Good morning. Good morning. Yes, from Northwest Regional Bennington yes, okay. With some proposed changes to, or additions to our bill on Act 181. So, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, and, and other things that

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: you might want to share with us. That's all good. Okay, turn it over to you.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah, now thank you for the record. Yeah, Charles Baker, Chinook County Regional Planning Commission, really here on behalf of our state association, FAFTA.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: And Catherine Bingenture from North West Regional Planning Commission. We

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: will get to the changes, but we also want to give a little context of kind of how one hundred eighty one is working from an RPC perspective. So we're not covering all of the details, there's a lot in that. But so what are we really focused on? The housing issue is really big for us as we have to break down housing targets for all of our families based on the regional targets we got from the state, from the Department of Housing Community Development, which was part of one hundred eighty one with the housing target portion. And then we're really spending a lot of time on the path to pull this out of what's eligible for tier 1B and trying to align growth areas from the region and state and I think that's what we're really feeling good about and optimistic about is that for the first time we'll have kind of a fully agreed upon growth area maps from town, region, state. Jump in anytime, Captain Rodriguez. And so you know in our role, that's our kind of role, that's what we're focused on, but the land use review board has a lot more that they're doing. I'm sure you've already heard some from them and probably more. Tomorrow, right? But they are now reviewing our recent plans which is

[Scott Beck (Clerk)]: the first time that any state body has reviewed our plans so that is

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: you know a process we're going through the first time and then they're looking at the 1B areas on our maps that we worked on with our towns. They will eventually when any municipalities want to get full Act two fifty exemption under Area 1A, that's something between municipality and the LERB directly, so they are also in charge of that. These maps tier 1B areas are really also the designation areas, so that qualifies for designation benefits that are run by the Community Investment Board. Act two fifty extension area, the 1B, 1A, tier two rules, tier three mapping rules, which I'm sure you've already heard more about and we won't talk about again, don't think. Any just questions just on kind of basic responsibility?

[Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Well,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I guess I want to, I think you're going go into this more, but I just want to highlight, I think there's the tier 1A and tier three area maps that are coming. And then there's, the future land use designated area or not the future land use maps, which interplay with those. And then there's this third category of designated areas for the purposes of tax credits and investment from the state, and those, there's interplay between those two as well, and I know you're going to speak more to that. I just wanted to make sure that,

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: mean I just wanted to highlight passages.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah, just

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm sorry, do you mean tip discs?

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: No, not tip discs. Just, the village centers, downtown centers, I see. So those are the designation program. Okay. Prop tips. Okay,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Which that's another, that's we got a fourth layer. Got some layers. Yeah, so

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: what 01/1981 really did was those were three separate parts of such three separate processes and now they all kind of talk to each other and it's more integrated is really what was accomplished in 01/1981. So just to kind of dig in a little bit more, this is just for your edification, guess the regional targets that we all got handed, the regional housing targets, they were developed by BFFA, the Housing Finance Agency with DHCD was really the final decider and you know kind of we had some input in there too and so that set out the goal and note we got a goal for 2030 and a goal for 2050. From a longer range planning perspective, we've really been using the 2050 goals we've been working on. Part of 2030 goal seems really close. And so we're you know the 2050 goal I think also is helping us have maybe a little bit more realistic conversations and note in the 2050 goal you know it's kind of a low, there was a lower target and an upper target kind of basically a target range from 79,000 to 172,000. For context, I think we have about 300,000 housing units in the state. So you know this is that's a big percentage increase even the lower one is a big percentage increase. And you know the BHFA methodology is on the DHCP website, know people want to, they're definitely, we've been working with talents, people feel like, well how did you come up with that number, where did that party come from? And you know they do a lot of housing data analysis so you can dig in, let's say you're factoring second homes, homeless, kind of all the housing factors were factored into the targeted development. Any questions on that? Yes, Bennington. I'm okay at it online, I can

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: see it better, but I think I've asked this question before and maybe I asked you,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: so apologies if I

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: have. How is homes defined in these targets? All of them. Okay, so- Whether it's an efficiency apartment above your garage or a 10 bedroom house, they each have to talk. Okay. So not all. Each one building? They're not all equal.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Twenty year apartment building is 20. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So housing unit got a, that is not.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. No, I mean, that is helpful.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: It should, mean, the cost and viability of getting to different types of housing units varies greatly. Yeah. And one of the things we're required to do at the regional level is to take these targets and divide them out by housing type. Like in an ideal world, what would be that mix of 20 unit apartment buildings and large homes and small apartments? And what would be that mix of homes that would help us reach that target. Yeah okay so we do break it down a little more. Yeah. So the question here.

[Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Do these homes have a like a lifespan? Do you have you built them? I know a lot of them are built modularly so it

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: can be taken apart at a certain point of their life. Yeah this is the targets that were developed is just kind of a unit count without regard I mean yeah modular could be part of the mix but it's kind of every type of home. We're obviously not builders of these, we're just trying to work with our talents to try to create a supportive environment for home building. And you know as we talk about this, was started thinking about it, we're really what are we really trying to do here? We're not trying to have towns or the state build 80,000 homes, we're really trying to unlock the market and have the market start responding. That's going to take a little while because the market, however you think about that, the labor, the materials, know it's not all here right now so it's going to take a little while for the market to really respond to these. And I think this is a large part of this is just in creating a message of whether we're open to housing growth, which to be frank was not much of a message that we had the last few decades. Sorry, hope that didn't resolve any.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Am I taking some? Sure. So all the regional funded commissions are as part of our mutual land use mapping is our mapping, these areas are eligible for tier 1B designation. And tier 1B means that you could build up to 50 units of housing on 10 acres or less without even go through Act two fifty. There are four land use areas that are eligible for tier 1B. They're all road areas. When we are done our mapping, we estimate anywhere from two to 3% of the state would be mapped as eligible for these areas. And that is a result of our balancing local plans, regional policy, and the state statutory language. So we're balancing all of those. And this is what we come up with, in comparison, the legacy downtowns and villages that were previously eligible for incentive programs and some act of 50 jurisdiction benefits was about 0.3% of the state. So it's a huge leap from what was, even though it is still only two to 3% of the state.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: And one caveat I wanna mention is that central, the number percent of the amount here is artificially low. This is the legacy designation percentage of 0.8%. It's just they're a little bit behind producing a draft map. So I think probably very soon we'll have a draft map. So that maybe this number nug is off a little bit closer to 2.5% or something.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: And you also notice that the Northeast Vermont Development Association Association and and the the ADA region is very low percent. And that is primarily because to be eligible for tier one B, you need to have local regulations because the idea was to not have duplicative review, not have local zoning and then act two fifty because the towns without zoning are concentrated in the kingdom that's why their number is low so the community is ineligible for tier one B but they also don't have local regulations so it's just a one stop for the developer.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: In terms of the process, five of the regions have now submitted to the LERB for that preliminary, the initial sixty day review, which is sort of you know it's not for I don't know I've been calling it informal review so it's something that kind of baked into the process so that we could hear early on if where the learner was you know and in their review our maps for compliance with statute. So five of us have submitted, three of us have gotten our comment letters from the LERB and the first three of us are kind of working through addressing those comments and you'll be going back.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: I had to submit our final band March.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah, so that'll be the first one through and just know that these initial reviews are extending into probably the summer, the July from Two Rivers. Having said that though, we're all on schedule to get our plans orally adopted by our boards certainly before the end of the year, know, a little review by the LERD may roll over a little bit into next year I think but we're on schedule with the deadline that was in statute which regions are going to finish our regional plan is by December again December this year. And so this is kind of what you were referencing earlier, you know, kind of these three systems here, the regional planning, which so we're doing the basic mapping with the towns, language review board reviews and approves. There are two maps really that come out of the designations, the centers and neighborhoods, and then the Act two fifty tiers, so tier 1B is the primary thing we're asking for in our mapping process now. And then this is kind of a different way to visualize this. Sorry, I know this is a lot to digest on one graphic, but kind of the regional plan future land use categories are across the top so we have 11 future land use categories which were pretty similar to what the RPCs were using historically. We've been doing these regional planned future land use maps for decades and so what we did was kind of like okay let's just get to a consistent terminology and definitions. The four pink to purple categories, so village area, plant growth area, village center, downtown center, those the downtown center village center become the centers under the designation program, the growth area around centers and the village area around the village centers become neighborhoods, and so each one of those two designations have a slightly different set of benefits. So there's some more benefits, particularly like historic tax credits and things in the village centers downtown centers. And then the third piece which probably got more attention has been the actually 50 exemption pieces. 1B is all that pink to purple area. Village area does not qualify for 1A, so the top three, the top three they can apply to the Villeberg for full 1A active duty exemption. Then notice we have tier two spread throughout the rest of all of our miscellaneous areas and we used to have a little box for tier three at the corner. It says we've just now added a note to the bottom that says tier three is subject to rule making by the learner that's not derived from regional maps and this is we've been running into like some a lot of conversations we've had to have with towns and residents because particularly we are mapping rural category conservation and there's been some conflating or assumptions that that's going to be tier three.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, that

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: our maps are regulatory, they're not.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah, that is not the fact, but it is

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: admittedly, it does cause some confusion out there. We're working through that with our analysis. Yeah, so this bottom row, this is helpful visual.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Or I'm still not getting this in my head straight. So tier 1A and tier 1B, can a town be both?

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: They have to qualify for 1B before they can get one A. Right, okay,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: the B is coming before the A. Already

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: It doesn't quite feel if

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: they're sequential over to do A.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. But they can't, if they qualify for

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: B, they they can get into A, but you can't be in without B.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: That's right. Yeah.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Okay. So B is a lower bar.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: But not everything can become A.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: But not

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: everything can become

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think of it as like, A is like the highest density, like the biggest areas. Yeah, there's like the, that your dad would stop. Yeah, it was a lot of stuff.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: They had to go to do what actually he was doing. Right,

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: they have to patent so many Yeah, okay.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: And as we've been talking with towns, cause we also did some of the tier one a study work in 2023 that got fed into this. You know, we've kind of, there's really, I think there's 23 downtowns. Those are the the largest, you know, cities or towns in every region. You know, it's the Bennington, the Brattleboro, the Rutland, you know, White River, Dungeon and Eddy, right? You can Those are probably the candidate pool of 1A accounts just because of their capacity to do these things and as we've been talking because I have a couple of the 10s that are most interested in this, there's probably about eight to 10 that seem very interested in pursuing it, so just to set expectations, that's kind of what we're seeing right now. And if,

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: not anything else.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, was going to add, I want to clarify my point because it's not necessarily the whole town that becomes 1A. There's areas within the town that can be designated as 1B.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: So

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: even like Burlington example, have where I probably will apply for one A, but there is a good chunk of weapons and stuff like the Intervale. Right. Right, and so that would not be part of the one A area. Got it. And

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: if you do have some language in S-three 25 now that that removes one big hurdle for tenants wanting to be 1A, which was the responsibility to enforce all the adjectives. So I think that does become, removed from my requirements and more counsel. Yeah,

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: yeah that's a very good question. And this is, sorry, it's already good. Yeah, just another way to look at like the RPC is doing the tier one growth areas and then the LERB is really responsible for all the rest of the thesis. So sorry, rough transition. We

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: had met that.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: I will kind of talk about potential edits and kind of what we've seen. I'll do the slide and then you can do the So slides just as background, we've aggregate cumulatively, I think we've done well over 500 meetings now with towns and residents that have engaged thousands of residents in total. And a lot of us are still in those processes and even those of us that have gone through the first round of review with the LERB, like we're going for the towns where the LERB had questions or comments, we're going back to those towns. I was just at a joint meeting with Select Board and Planning Commission kind of digesting the comments. These meetings are going on, I have no idea what number, we may get up to maybe a thousand meetings by the time we get to the end of the year. So really working on the 1P areas and really talking amongst ourselves, we've been trying to do it as consistently as we can, but part of the objective is like let's see if we can have a 1B eligible area in every town. That you know just the reality is that there's some really small towns that don't have centers and so you know I think as we were talking about it there's I don't know probably a dozen maybe up to 20 towns that don't have a place to really qualify, but the vast majority of towns will have a 1B eligible area. Oh or a designation thanks, yeah which may just be a village center designation right, that's what we're really talking about about that that threshold minimal designation area.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

[Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Is there a list of towns that actually don't want anything to lose? That would that would be So I'm I'm thinking 27 towns in the history. If they all align in the same you know longer I think they'll know who they are. Yeah I think by the end

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: of the year we'll definitely have that you know it's kind of working through even those of us that have gone through or at the front end I don't think we have a final list of towns because I even had one time that's debating whether they want be in one b or not in the coming weeks.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: And Rutland was the first

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: to go so I think

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: they they might have that list already, don't you, Finny? Yeah.

[Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I've following the RTC. They were right on it, so that's right. Actually turned a couple of your meetings. Right. Yeah.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: And there's an important point here about it doesn't mean, yeah, there's also a decision on the chat about whether they want to opt in, but they should at least have the option. As we've been doing this, two major issues have bubbled up. One is about our ability to amend our plans and we just I don't think any of us were kind of thinking we're so focused on the first step we weren't thinking about subsequent steps. So we'd like to see some process for us to be able to amend and make tier 1b requests alert and an easier process than the full eight to nine month review process. We'll talk a little bit more about that and then the second issue is really about clarifying the definition for these 1B eligible areas those four land you know purple to pink land use areas And just I think it's all consistent stuff, but it's just in a variety of places. And we think it's important to make these two changes now because it gives us a little bit of time to adapt our plans before submitting the final review. We can reduce a little bit of municipal frustration and provide more clarity and then we'll talk a little bit more about the details.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: All right, so we have been working with a number of partners over a few months to really talk through what we see as some potential improvements to title 24, which is where all this gets located to really help the process go most of the things Charlie outlined specifically in terms of improving the regional plan adoption and amendment process, we have recommendations. The first is to move comments from the community investment board to earlier in the process. The community investment board is the state board that doles out the designation incentives of the tax credits primarily. And right now it's set up so that we get those comments later in the process and we'd like them right up front when we first get our first review from Ruth Hardy work, just to make sure we can really operate them. And then we have some specific suggestions about a streamlined regional plan amendment process. So once we've adopted these plans, they should be in place for eight years. We would like a two to three month process to make amends, whether it's adjusting a future land use matter, like the town maybe now is eligible for tier one B that wasn't the board or maybe water and sewer is now available. Yay, that'd be great. And they want to expand an area available for growth. We want to be able to have a shorter process to do that, which would involve one hearing or renewed by the community surgery board and then moving forward. And then the other thing that would be attached to that is that a similar short process for tier 1B changes. Right now the statute is written so that I could tell who isn't opting in now wants to opt in later, we have to do the full six to eight month adoption process in order to get that town their tier 1B benefits. And we think there should be a simpler two to three month process to do that, which does still involve public hearing, public engagement. And then maybe familiar with the fact that the regional planning commissions also do this enhanced energy planning, where we do a more detailed energy plan, and that gives our plan added weight in the public utility commission hearings for utility budgets. Right now, the statute is written so that every time we update our regional plan, even if we don't change the energy plan, the department of public service has to do their full review to make sure it complies, including a public process and a long written decision. Our proposed language would basically just say, if you've adopted a new regional plan, but you haven't changed your energy plan and the requirements haven't changed, you're good. We don't need to go through another process all over again. Both of the, all of these four changes, but really just streamlining process and make it more efficient without changing thoughts.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Any questions on the notes?

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: And the second set of changes really involve clarifying some statutory language around the four areas that are eligible for the designation program and the Act two fifty jurisdiction changes. So around the four growth areas. When Act 181 was drafted, there were bits and pieces of definitions for those future land use areas that were scattered in different places of statute. And they're often saying, trying to obtain the same policy goal, but saying it in slightly different and potentially conflicting ways. So our proposed language would delete the extraneous places where it's located in statute and concentrate the definitions only in one place in our future land use area definitions. So it adds some clarity and certainty to what those definitions mean. The proposed changes would also really enable every town to qualify to have a center that has the designation benefits and allows us to incorporate these newer or emerging centers that perhaps don't have a place that's eligible for historic designation for a national historic register designation, but do reflect our growth patterns of traditional downtown centers surrounded by the working landscape.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Hasn't that program always been about historic, it sounds

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: to me?

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: It has always been about preserving the traditional development patterns, but there was never a requirement that the center itself be eligible for the national register. So that was a new requirement that was included in one place in Act 181, but not in another. So it currently conflicts. So our proposed change would make it so at least for the very basic benefits of the designation program, you don't need to be eligible for the national register of historic places, but to get the greater benefits.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Is that program called step one?

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Next. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes, lots of moving. Yeah. That's a come before A and B.

[Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So step three.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Step three. And that's not. The steps are numbered the opposite way of the tears.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So step three is the best.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Over time, sequential.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And is that program a federal program? It's state.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: It's a state designation program too. It's the entry level village center. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Some monster of our own meeting. Yes.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: And then the final change here is that there was a definition of smart growth that was in statute that was, I think inadvertently removed when there were some deletions in statute. So we're proposing adding that back in with some tweaks to reflect the current state of land use in Vermont.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And just to notice, step one sentence, the idea was to amend the to get them into the program and then move them up as they do the work to get there.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah, that's a really good point is that all of this, know, and all of our conversations with our town are kind of in that mode like okay here's what we are now what are you planning for because even if they don't want to do tier 1b now we're like you know and maybe you want to do it in the future so that's where I think the amendment process is also largely about that, like let's have the flexibility to meet the town where they are as they're evolving.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Like in the Redland area for example, there were several communities who wanted town tier 1B but didn't qualify because they didn't have subdivision regulations and the Rutland Arkansas is working against subdivision regulations about them. That's right. Yeah.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Then this last slide is really just saying, the other stuff on three twenty five WC, her part was good. Okay. Don't know if I got them all exactly right,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: but Extensions.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah. Great.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah. That's sort of through, right?

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes, just as that's what we currently have in there, yeah. Clarify, and maybe this is for you too, the

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: existing Act two fifty permit enforcement would not go away, go, it would stay with ANR?

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: No. Oh, no, with the With the lawyer, yeah, okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: The irony is at the time we wrote it, we thought just like you know you go the other way and you'd get them all, but it turns out it makes, I guess why.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Yeah, you

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: guys have a transition period right, so that if a property owner comes back, if they're doing some development work and they're coming back to the municipality then the municipality can kind of, I don't subsume, I'm not sure what the right verb is, but they can kind of replace the X-two 50 jurisdiction with the town jurisdiction. Yeah. But it doesn't happen all at once, it'll happen more incrementally, be easier for town to manage.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. And this is your

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: You guys do

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: this? We did and apologies to the lunch council to the other room because So I mean,

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: I know they don't want you They think you guys do slides much better.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So they graphed really well, they do slides.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah, so this is, you're not exactly right, but it was just easier for us to look at the statutory language and actually make the edit in the statutory language rather than trying to explain it. It would take many many more words, but we did add a commentary on this so you could get some sense of why we were proposing that specific change from page to page.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do have a little bit It looks like you're at the end of your We don't really have time to walk through this whole thing, but are there any pieces that you would want to highlight as specific language changes? If not, that's How

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: about, were there any questions or issues that came up? Don't know if people even had time, it was very late, but we submitted it and just look

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: at it. Just remind me, is the work supposed to complete the process by December 31 as well or is it just you have to get it?

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: You have to adopt the plan.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And they have then, I think they have

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: a sixty day final approval period.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: So everything should be done by early March, February,

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: early March. That's what it says. Yeah. Okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So they do that. Okay. Those lease renewals that happen in two months. Okay. One

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: of the things that I don't think I saw in your set of suggestions is around

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: One of the things that

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: we heard from Devin Neri, from Rutland was, because they went first, and it sounded like the process, well, it sounds like, there's been some learning that happened, and we can ask, you know, the, learn about this tomorrow, but something that is on my radar anyway is to have some, you know, that I guess I'm feeling the, I'm interested in consistency across the different regions and that's not addressed in here, or is it addressed in here? Like, it's some kind of mechanism to ensure that there's consistency across the different patients.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Consistency from the larger decision making? Right. I don't think we had anything that No, that's okay. It's a

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: hard thing to address and they really need to kind of go, I mean, I think we're all trying to be very sympathetic and supportive of the work and the process because and you know like the way they're doing the regional plans that kind of have one lead board member and I think they're kind of working through that consistency as they're working through our regional plan reviews. And I think you're getting there,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: There's it seems one other thing that I want to ask about. There's, again, is about Rutland, that my understanding is that they have some local plans that are timing out soon and need some extensions. Yeah. I don't know if you can speak to that or maybe we should just have Bennington and we can Yeah

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: I'm not sure if he was referring to municipal plans well although that could be a bit of an issue but there is one issue with the regional plan inspirations. If the amendments to the like some of the definitional center growth area language gets out, we'd like to get a mobile extension of our expiration date to the end of the year, so not change the overall things, it'll get done by the end of the year, But there's three of us that our plans expire in June, Chandon, Rutland and Addison, so we all would like a few months to like, we may not need it, but we'd like to have it available if you do need another extra month or two.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: They expire in June '26. Yes. Yeah, so we won't make it.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: We will be able to adopt our plan at our board and then submit it to the board right after.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: But if these changes are made to statute those three regions for just like a few extra months extension to their regional bank expiration so they can adjust their maps accordingly. And there is a note about that on

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: H2. It's got a blue highlight, I don't if there's some color. But you do raise an interesting point also, think one of the things that we're seeing as we go through this process with ALERB is some of this question about timing and operations. We have some town plans also that are about to expire, so there's kind of a rush because the LERB won't approve tier 1B at that time unless their plan was fully up to date and I don't know how much you've been engaged in templates every once in a while like there's like a tour a few months of like oh we expired but we're just finishing our process and so I don't know it'd be nice to have a little bit of slack in the system so that a town whose plan expires for two months isn't kicked out and has to come back in like some sort of grace period like that. So I'm not exactly sure how to deal with that. It wasn't something doesn't necessarily need to be dealt with this year but probably something maybe that we can perhaps next year if we start to try to change the system work and have enough flexibility in it to like keep the purpose, but not drive ourselves crazy with every detail that happens.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: And we can ask our colleagues if that is an issue in all the regions where they have a few towns where this is an issue. If so, we'll let you know because then it could simply be as simple as similar language to what we're looking for with the regional banks.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: You're talking one time language?

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yes.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah. Session.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah. One yeah. Okay.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: What was done during COVID where all the bands were extended?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: You mean for this blue line, the extension for 26?

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Yeah. Site. It could be done. I worry about it going forward too, so I'm not sure. Like even five years from now, like, are we gonna take a town out for two months and then bring in my next?

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Oh, are. Okay.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Well Sorry. Thank you. Very good.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you so much.

[Charles Baker (Executive Director, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission; speaking for VAPDA)]: Very much. Appreciate your time. Yeah.

[Catherine Dimitruk (Executive Director, Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Absolutely. Absolutely.