Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Okay, good morning. This is Senate That's probably me.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Okay, we should be here.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Great. Good morning. This is Senate Natural Resources and Energy, and it is Friday, February 20. We have so many members of the Land Use Review Board here with us. Welcome. So glad that you're here. We have so much to talk about and I'm delighted to be jumping into this.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: I'm going to turn it over to Hurley. Janet? Thank you, Chair Watson. Thank you so much for having us. I am here, Janet Hurley, the chair of the board with three of my colleagues who will introduce themselves shortly, but we appreciate this opportunity to let you know where we are with the Act twenty eighty one rollout and for an opportunity to comment on some of the proposed tweaks to what we are implementing. So, Jude, can I share? Yeah, you have arrangement. Okay. You can just click the little. Yeah. I'm on that. I just wanna make sure I'm sharing the right screen. Sorry, there it is. Okay. Is it under Sarah Hodzney? Yes. Okay. I got it. Okay. Is it showing? It is. Okay. So as I said, I'm Janet Hurley, the chair of the Land Use Review Board. I live in Windhall. We've been at this for a year. Before taking the board position, I was a regional planner for the ninety two community regional planning commission. And before that, eight years, the Planning Director from Manchester. I would like my colleagues to introduce themselves to you.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: So I'm Alex Linehaven, another one of the five board members. I live in Burlington and prior to joining the board last year, I was a municipal planner for the town of Hinesburg for about twenty years. Prior to that, the town of Westwood. Pete Gill, I'm the executive director for the Land Use Review Board, formerly an attorney for the Natural Resource Report successor. Thank you for having us.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: And I'm Sarah Hat, I am from St. Louis, Vermont, my hometown. And before joining the Land Use Review Board, I was the town manager of New Orient Pass. And before that I was the director of planning and zoning and town planner for the town of Woolchester. And I spent a little bit of time during grad school over the Voltston South Mountains.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And so we're focusing first on tier three, letting you know where we are with tier three. Alex is going to do that. And then we'll turn it over to Sarah to let you know where we are with tier 1A. And I'm gonna go take a seat and let Alex come up here, and I'll press forward on slides as he tells me to.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Thanks, Sarah. You can advance to the next slide. Okay.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Oh, I should be in. Present your moment. Yeah, sorry. Didn't see that I wasn't. So, as you have said, thanks

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: for having us and having to answer questions beyond two or three, but there's been a lot of talk about tier three as one of the aqua 81 rollout items. That's, I've been the board's project lead on that. So I can give you the summary. So the drafting of a map is part of what tier three is. Tier three are areas that have a Kansas Act two fifty jurisdiction. So not just large projects, but potentially most projects. And so tier three are areas of the state that are critical natural resources where some level of review and good design is necessary. And actuary one granted our board the authority to determine where those areas are and what the jurisdictional framework should be within those areas. What types of development should trigger an Act two fifty permit and what should not. So we formed a working group, tier three working group last year of about 25 groups. One of them is seated behind me. Thank you Megan. And we've been working last year with them to sort of scope out what should these areas be, what resources should be included in the tier three areas. And we've also been working on drafting the rules that would surround that. So it's a two part effort, it's math and it's a set of rules. We've released the first map and a very rough draft of the rules in October and went to public engagement sessions around the state, four of them to introduce the concept of a lot of person to start to get feedback. We're working on making some pretty substantial revisions to both the map and the rules that we hope to have ready for everyone to look at next month. And we intend to do another round of public engagement then. And our original hope for the timelines outlined in Act 181 was to polish it up and have a final round of public engagement in May or June, finalize the rule at that point, deliver it to LCAR and be able to have it come into effect on the December 31 effective date. That's when tier three begins in Vermont under Act 181 is December 31 year. So that's been our plan. And I'm telling you that at the public engagement sessions in October, I was hoping that Vermantras would start to give us some substantive feedback. Like this is my 40 acres and you've got this map and I think you should change it a little. Like I know where the sensitive areas are and you didn't quite get it. That's not what we heard in October. What we heard was, I don't understand what this is. I'm really kind of afraid of what this could be. And I need you to explain it to me because I can't give you feedback until I understand. And so we heard that loud and clear in October and we did get enough substance feedback especially from our excellent working group to make course corrections and to work on these revisions. But the education of Vermonters about what this means and what it will mean to them is still ongoing and needs more time. I fully expect that in March when we roll out the next version, there's gonna be a lot of signs of relief but there's still gonna be a need for people to just be introduced to the topic. And we heard that on the clear as well that the people who showed up at our public engagement sessions in the fall said, most of my neighbors don't know about this yet. You guys gotta do a better job of getting the word out. And we took that seriously, and so my intent is to do more this spring to get the word out. So anyways, that's sort of where we are. I skipped over the substance of what's in tier three. Our intent and based on the input from our stakeholder group was to make sure that these areas were not duplicative with existing permit protection programs for the agency of natural resources. So while the statute requires us to consider at least six resource areas, we looked at, we thought of our own. And so we looked at 17, but most of them are either already protected under an AMR permitting system or will be. So river corridors, for example, and are getting ready to stand up a new permit process for developing river corridor areas. River corridors was one of the resources that Act 181 said we had to consider. We did, and our group fell. It doesn't need to be an Act two fifty jurisdictional trigger because there will be an ANR permit that'll cover. And that permitting system will be targeted so the river corridors themselves, it'll actually do a better job than Act two fifty one because of that. So we've whittled down a list of critical natural resource areas with that in mind and some other criteria for what should and shouldn't be included. And what we ended up with that we released in October were three components, three areas. Those are significant natural communities that are mapped by Vermont, Fish and Wildlife, but only the rarest types of those and only the types that are non wetland. Because again, Vermont gets very robust wetland protection rules. We don't need to have FQ50 jurisdiction in wetland significant natural communities. So we took a slice, small slice of significant natural communities that are mapped. We looked at headwater stream areas and those cover 80% of the state. Never gonna work for tier three, that's far too extensive. So we focused in on an intersection of other resources that overlay with headwater streams. We looked at steep slowness over 35%. We looked at poorly draining soils and we looked at elevations above 1,200 feet where gravity is going to have impacts on stream. And by merging those, we were able to come up with a headwater stream area map that is far more narrow, about 2% of the state rather than 80% of the state. And then finally, high-tech connectors. So this is a resource that gets talked about a lot, but it doesn't get a lot of protection. And there is no ANR permit that really effectively protects areas for wildlife and plants to be able to move across the landscape. And as climate change and habitat fragmentation happens, we need to preserve those connections between large blocks of forest and habitat to allow them move that over time. So we wanted to include habitat connectors. Fish and wildlife's best mapping also covers nearly 60 or 70% of the state from the wild conservation design plan and database. And that's just not workable from a tier three perspective. It captures too much of the state in Act two fifty jurisdiction. So we narrowed it and we said, are the areas that are most critical and not going to be covered by Act two fifty jurisdiction through another means? And this is where the road rule plays. So the road construction jurisdiction provision in Act 101 requires an Act two fifty permit if you're punching into the woods more than 800 feet. You're building that much new road, you're gonna need an Act two fifty permit. The intent behind that was to try to address forest fragmentation especially in interior forest areas and so we felt that important habitat areas deeper in the woods would be covered by Act two fifty through the road construction jurisdiction division that will take effect in July. And so the habitat connectors we selected for tier three were actually road based. The areas that would not be covered by the road rule but still are critical connectors that without which, if those areas were entirely developed, core forest areas would be disconnected from each other along roads. Vermont Fish and Wildlife again has a very good data set to help us with that and so that's where we started.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Can I interrupt? Oh, go ahead. So this was a big question of mine. Don't know if you heard that, but how you're defining habitat connectors. And you did just talk to it a little bit, but I'm not a planner or this is not my area of expertise, but when I think about Habitat Connectors, I was surprised that it was defined along roads.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yes. Most people were, when we rolled it out.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, partly because in some senses it makes sense, but I would also think we would want to encourage wildlife to not connect through roads, but to connect through areas that are safer for them. A lot of things, frankly, just get hit by cars, but we're directing them toward roads. So why wouldn't we be trying to create habitat connectors that are not Great on

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: question. So the way that Fish and Wildlife maps habitat blocks, forest blocks, they're very large, thousands or tens of thousands of acres, and what divides them are roads. Yeah. So the only place that we need to be really concerned about in terms of the potential disconnect of those blocks are roads. Except if you're talking about developing deep in the woods from a large subdivision that fragments the and that again is something that will be jurisdictional and would be reviewed under the road construction provision. But it's not that we are sending wildlife to roads in order to make those connections, it's that the roads are what divides the habitat. Okay. I guess, so by connector,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: isn't it actually more a habitat divider? The roads absolutely are. Okay. And so

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: what we're delineating in the tier three mapping, what we're trying to delineate, are swaths of intact habitat that exist on either side of certain road segments. So, you know, there's plenty of roads where there's houses and gas stations and it's difficult for wildlife or plants to move from the woods in the back across that development, then across the road, then to the next patch. There are other, plenty of other spots along the roads where the forest comes right to the edge of the road. And that swath of habitat extending away from the road that's intact and forested represents a connector between the two blocks on either side.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so the mapping that you're doing along the road, the designation of these habitat connectors, so we looked at some maps that have them on it. I remember whose testimony that was, we've had a lot. The connectors that you're trying to protect by including them in tier three are the ones that don't already have development.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: There you go.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, that makes more sense. But are we trying to make them actual connectors rather than dividers? And how are we doing that safely for? So the way we want

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: to do it is to ensure that there's a review process, the 50, with design standards that will ensure that some degree of the forest and habitat that's adjacent to the road remains. So that instead of a development punching in and maybe spreading out and taking up the entire frontage, that it might be clustered to one side or occupy one portion of it to retain another portion that would stay intact as forms.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, I mean, but some of the pushback we're getting is that your maps are inclusive of places where there already is development and is, but what you're saying is it's where there's not

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: development again. Well, that's great question. And yes, that's part of what the revision we're rolling out next month will do is to refine that in order to avoid more of the areas that have development. But there are places where there is rainforest cover right up to the road and Fish and Wildlife identifies it as a highest priority road segment for wildlife processing, but there still is a house on one side. It's not completely forested. So it's not that there isn't any development in these connector areas, it's that there's less and that the forest cover is intact. So yeah, it's not an either or, but it's moving in the direction of less development, more intact for these connector areas.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So the next math you release with these forest cathode, habitat connectors will narrow it down more.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yes and well one thing that you might have noticed if you saw those bubbles Yeah,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: exactly.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Is that they have holes in them and where those holes exist are where structures exist. And so what we're doing in tier three is we're making sure that if we're mapping an area as a habitat connector we're actually picked a jurisdiction by trigger. We are excluding the area around homes so that if somebody wants to build something adjacent to their house, they may be surrounded by tier three but they won't be in tier three areas. They may be excluded from. And we've been talking about what that area should be around homes and how to set the exemption levels and the rules so that we do not snag the person who wants to build a garage next to their house or a shed in the backyard with their laundry. Types of development that should not hold right. Right, yeah, okay. Okay, that's helpful, thank you. Sure, so it is the habitat connectors that have generated the most concern. Because they are located along roads and a lot of folks say, wait a minute, that's where development happens. So what are you doing? And so again, what we're trying to do in the refinements is be more selective about the road segments that will generate these connectors and leverage our protected lands so that if there is a habitat connector adjacent to a protected land that isn't going to be developed anyways, that would be the one we focus on for that stretch of road and we could turn off the others that might be on lands that are not already protected. So by eliminating smaller tidbits, doing some of that, we're gonna focus and reduce the extent of them. But they will still be there. They will still impact people's lives. I was just on the phone last night with someone who had questions about. So anyways, those are the three resource areas that right now are in the first draft of the tier three areas. Just at our board meeting yesterday, we talked about maybe eliminating one of those. So we'll be coming back to our working group and moving forward with the next draft soon.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Bennington. So

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I've been watching your sessions in Rome when you guys were talking to the RPC. Thank you for your work. I really appreciate it. I got a question. Has anybody taken into consideration? I can remember when I was a kid we used to have fire watchtowers and a lot of the roles that were in existence were created in the twenties and thirties because of forest fires. You know we hear a lot of talk about the asbestos for us in Vermont but we haven't had a lot of drought since the 60s and last year we started no drilling and so on. I'm just wondering is that if any of these forest fire control roads you know for blocks where we can actually control fires that gets in there, is that been taken into

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: consideration? Not with the tier three areas, no. Generally when fish and wildlife through the Vermont Conservation Design Program maps these blocks, those kind of roads don't really separate blocks. It's pretty much continuous habitat across roads like that. It's more significant roads where you see blocks break and you have a real divide that we want to try to create a connection for. So not really roads.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So we're not talking about blacktop,

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: we're talking about both gravel and paved roads, yeah. But generally not the kind you're talking about. Frankly, yeah, there's plenty that worked their way into the Green Mountain National Forest that are not seen as dividing or really fragmenting the habitat.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I know typically, you know, I'm a hunter, like the yellow yellow doors. Animals, you put a rodent and the animals use they'll

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: They do do. That's for That's for

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: sure. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We have another question.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: One other question just to that I know know you've had a hard time with this and people have actually, I just wanna say that protecting habitat connectors is the single one of the most important things out of that is going to go. And if you look at the Lamar conservation design and really understand the box that we have and the little endless threads holding together, protecting them is critical. Now, I appreciate it looking at or maybe go narrow it down and maybe expand the areas of our housing, all that because we'll try to think that through carefully. But the notion of actually doing this and protecting habitat connectors is critical to this process.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah, I think it's really important to note that the working group was very clear that habitat connectors important, but they should be of statewide significance, right? If a scale matters and as a 100, you know that, right? So when you're on your 40 acres, like you know the intricacies of that land and where animals travel and all of that. We're not working at that scale. We're working at the statewide and regional scale. And so the great thing about the Vermont Conservation Design data is that it is a statewide scale and it prioritizes habitat that Fish and Wildlife has identified that scale. So we've been able to select highest priority blocks and basically set aside huge chunks of the mud that are forested to say, those are important, but they're not gonna form the basis for where these connectors need to connect the highest priority areas. Same with these road maps. Model prioritizes road crossing based on the forest cover on either side of the road. And we wanted to work with just the highest priority boat segments that have the best forest cover on both sides. And by doing that, I I think we're honoring the intent of Act 181, which is we want to preserve habitat connectors, we want to have a reasonable design for development that happens in them, but we really want to focus on just what is necessary to keep the statewide sort of landscape level connections and not just in your backyard kind of thing. So we do need more time to refine to inform. Can you go to the next slide? So I've mentioned a few of these already, but I'll just reiterate. Right now, for drafting in October, tier three covers five to 8% of the land area of the state. That's gonna shrink substantially in the next revision that we put out next month. The point is, it's a very small amount of the state. When we first started the effort, Megan can tell you, ANR provided us with maps for the six resource areas that the legislature said we had to consider. Many of those maps indicated 60 to 80% of the state fit the category, that resource area. So that's been part of our task is to really winnow it and focus on one of the most sensitive areas. It's a small area. However, it is small because it relies on the rule. And the road rule is a very blunt instrument for ensuring that interior forests don't get chewed up by development, that there's some reasonable signs. Because it's a one instrument, it covers a very large percentage of Vermont or it could. And we leverage that with tier three to say those interior forest areas, we don't need to include in tier three because most development there is gonna get picked up by the road rule. So if the road rule were to go away, which has been suggested this session by some and some bills and last session by others, it would fundamentally change what we were doing with tier three. We would have So to start I'm not here to pass judgment on the board rule, I'm just here to tell you that there's a connection with the tier three mapping. I think part of why this has been hard for Vermonters to get their head around is that it is a new concept for the ACTU-fifty program. ACTU-fifty for the fifty five years, it's been around fifty six, has been focused on larger development. This is not, this is focused on development in sensitive areas. And those sensitive areas are on people's property. So that conversation we need to keep having and we need to help people understand both why their properties are included and what levels of exemption they will have to still be able to do development even though they might have tier three. So one other aspect before I get to our recommendations on this, working group, several members of our working group have expressed interest in having a more targeted active 15 review for these tier three jurisdictional areas. Think of it this way. If we determine that there is this important habitat connector that crosses a road and the landowner says, great, but I need to do some, I need to build a house there. It's time for me to build for my kid. I've been saving my property. They're saying, fine, I'll go through your permit process. But all they're building is a house. One, does it make sense for all 10 of the Act two fifty criteria to be invoked for that review of that single family home? And our board feels like it's not. But the way Act 181 was set up, we don't have the authority to change and limit those criteria. If I wanted to say that you know in that habitat connector maybe we don't need to worry about criteria five which is a traffic and transportation criteria because why we have jurisdiction in that area is about habitat, not impact on roads. We would like the ability to be able to narrow the review, but Act 181 did not give us that authority. Two or three is a jurisdictional question. You gave us the ability to set that. But once a project triggers a jurisdiction, it's the same Act two fifty review that a massive commercial complex would go through. Some

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: the working group members expressed an interest in that on board, talked about it yesterday and felt that was a good idea. So it's something to think about. Go ahead to the next slide and then I'll be done.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So do you have a question? One more question. Yes.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So how does use value properties in use value fit into this?

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: They don't.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: They don't

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: at all? They don't. There's no connection. Yeah. We've got that question a lot.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So so if I have land that's not in use value, I and somebody next door has is, it affects my land but not the person that's in New South. So the

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: sensitive areas that we're mapping that would trigger Act two fifty jurisdiction are being mapped based on where those resources are, not who owns them and not whether they're protected and not whether they happen to be in the current use program, which in my mind is probably the state's most successful conservation tool in our district, right? So really important program, but not tied to this question. Say Say again? Say broadly. Yes. Yeah. The road goes the same way. It's indiscriminate. It's about how much road is built. Not where it's being built. With with a little bit of an exception. The road rule does not apply to forestry and agricultural access, right?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So if

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: you're building a long road to get in or do logging or forestry operations, the road rule does not, does doesn't trigger same farming and the road rule does not cover municipal road building. So if the town needs to create a bypass or put in a town road, the road rule doesn't apply to that. So we have some recommendations. The bill that you're looking at, S-three 25, has great language in it. We think that it could be better. And yes, one of our recommendations is time. Please give us more. And please synchronize the effective dates. Right now the road door goes into effect on July 1 of this, but tier three doesn't go into effect until December 31. It makes no sense to have a jurisdictional provision tied to road construction take effect in the middle of the building season when people could be halfway done building a road and suddenly they have to decide whether, we have to decide whether that's a jurisdictional project. So if you take nothing else away from this recommendation, please know that we really think the road rule should be moved to a wintertime effective date when people are not out in the middle of a construction season. With that said, the 12/31/2026 effective date

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: for tier three, we feel should be

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: bumped a year to 12/31/2027. That will give us more time to refine the rules, to educate the monitors, and to make sure that this happens in a way that people understand and we can take the fear level down a notch through iterative rule making and not like here's the draft the real world's going to be in effect in a couple of months like we can have a longer runway. That's one of the recommendations move the effective dates for tier three and the world rule to 12/31/2027. In your bill, I think it indicates a 07/01/2027 date. So again, don't do that. It's not an idea. So just pushing it to December 31 would solve that problem.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And for what it's worth, the days that were in there as, to be able to delay two, we're replaced first. So they're really great. Similarly,

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: the bill has extensions to the housing exemptions. We think those are really important and we didn't come to consensus about what those dates should be. We did on the others, but not really on those. But what we want to tell you is that the reason those exemptions were put in place was to allow time for regional plans to be updated and all of the permanent exemptions within tier 1A and B areas, which Cheryl will talk about, to come into effect. That will not be complete until the end of this year. And from what we're hearing during the regional planning review, there are lots of municipalities that are gonna wait a little bit beyond that as well. They don't want to be on the bleeding edge, they want to be on the leading edge. And so they're gonna let other municipalities move forward first. Because of that having the interim exemptions expire at the beginning of 2027 I think is not a good idea. Pushing them forward to 2028 when all of these other pieces will sort of come into play and kind of full year of regional plans having been reviewed and municipalities able to actually leverage those tier 1A and tier 1B exemptions, I think makes a lot more sense.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So Yes, Ben. So I had been thinking, studying to the level of 27. You're saying

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: 12/31/2027. Okay. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: A little bit little bit further. Okay. For both the exemptions and the three.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah, makes think sense to try to sync them up. And the reasons are different though. Like the reasons I'm giving you for the road rule and tier three, pushing those to 12/31/2027 are both practical and allowing us to do good work. The reasons to extend interim exemptions have to do with the regional plan process and how that's evolving in getting the aspires time to stand up those requests.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I don't know I've got 8C.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah, sorry, I left that one sort of to the side. 8C goes part and parcel with this expanded jurisdiction, particularly the road rule. Criterion 8c is a new criteria that I'm going to do on Rutland District to establish rules for. So any project that goes that is jurisdictional and needs that two fifty permit will be evaluated against this new criteria. And that criteria is about ensuring that when you are developing deep into a forest area, that the design of your project is done so as to limit the amount of fragmentation of that forest. So we're early on in that. We frankly could use more time to evolve that rulemaking as well even though I didn't talk much about it. We're actually a little, we're behind on that, further behind than we are with tier three. But what we're talking about is saying if you're in jurisdiction, you're in a forested area, where can you nibble around the edges and easily satisfy that criteria? And where you're doing more extensive development in the interior forest area, you need to hew to certain design standards with regard to cluster and the like. And so it's a work in progress.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So when thinking about your review process of the matters as they come in, some of them you're not gonna get until December. Right. Is your

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: For the second look. We'll get the first look

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: before Yeah. Okay. So the final map, you'll so many people get until December. How was how much time are you gonna need to do the review? That comes out on December 15.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah. At the final step, the review happens, and Janet can help me on this, relatively quickly, within four to five days or so between submittal and us reviewing it and issuing a decision and that sort of thing. Less than two months. Yes, but I think it's really important to understand there, I used to be a municipal planner, that's my background.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: can't get away from that. There are municipalities that would like to leverage tier 1B and can't because they have zones, but they don't have subdivision regulations. You need both if you wanna have a tier 1B area. And it would be much more fair for those communities, which many of which are rural and still wanna see development in their designated centers right now, which the interim exemptions allow, it would be much more fair if we give them another year or so of the interim exemptions in order to tune up their regulations to get the tier 1B or potentially a tier 1A status, which is a higher

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I'm probably gonna

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: ask about this. You were gonna say this, but interested in a comment that you made. So about the interim housing exceptions, you mentioned that the board didn't come to a specific date of recommendation. You have a recommendation. I'm sort of ripping with your hand. Okay. You're on spot. Amazing. That's fair. But I'm curious for the arguments about just like what did that discussion look like in terms of where the dates ought to land. It's a lot of what I said, but Janet,

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: you can answer Well, this as far as you want

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: as Alex is saying, if it expired when everything else goes into effect on 12/31/2027, there's still a lot of municipalities that aren't ready to take advantage of tier 1B, tier 1A, and would need a little time. And there are these other municipalities, as Alex said, that are in medicine. They want to see what's happening before they jump into that pool. So there's an argument to be made to let the interim housing exemptions go a little bit longer than the effective dates of tier three, etcetera.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah, I think it's, I don't wanna speak for the whole board, but I can speak for me. Some of the regions, there's a lot of tier 1B communities. We just had a public hearing on one of them and that was in Addison County. It was really impressed. Other regions, Memorial County where we also have a lot more rural communities that lack the necessary regulations to even qualify. And so much less tier-1B uptake there. And the fact is that these interim exemptions are doing good work, They're targeted at the legacy designation areas and providing exemptions in just those areas. They're doing a good job and tier one A and

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: B will eventually do that good job too. But it's gonna take a little longer because of what we've been talking about. So what I'm hearing is that the interim and housing exemption extension should, well, I'm not saying in a formal way be contingent on the date of the maps coming up, but that it does sort of, we should set a date that is reflective of when the tier one 1A would be or when the maps are done.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Is that I would say probably by year. By year out. So if that's all coming to fruition at one point, let's give municipalities at least another year of those good interim exemptions before they disappear. And everyone is, the only option we have is to get a tier one B or tier one A status.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Okay. So that translates to so the maps are gonna be all amounts will be in at the end of point six. And then finish the process by February and March when we set up. Then the talents would have them in the next nine months. So you're saying line everything up basically, including the exemptions with 731,207?

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Potentially or given that we know how the town government works in Vermont with the town meeting being important and in some communities I go there, it might be better to move it into 2028, post town meeting, maybe in 07/01/2028. The draft that you have right now, I think has a lot of twenty twenty seven's in it, Some of them July and you know, there are a couple of exemptions, the oddball ones that are I think into 2029. You can talk through that, maybe lunch council can help me understand, you know, where, to what extent you want to synchronize those, but a little bit more, I think is in order. Yeah, what you're saying, Seth, makes sense to maybe pushing to mid-twenty twenty.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: There wasn't disagreement on this at the board level when we talked about it yesterday. It's just we didn't finish and come to a concise date. Okay,

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: yeah.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And I don't think that anyone on the board would disagree with what Alex is saying.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Okay, so the logic was all sort of agreed upon. And so last point and then I'll let Sarah take the podium. As I mentioned, the working group expressed interest in being able to tailor which active 50 criteria we use in these special tier three jurisdictional areas and we support that, but we don't have the statutory authority to do it. Please give us that statutory authority. We can go through rulemaking. It will be a public process. The environmental groups who are very interested in Act two fifty as good mechanism will have a seat at the table to help us know which criteria are relevant in these two or three areas. And I think it's instructive that the NRC is all aboard on this. They feel like, they actually feel like we have the authority to do it and how we disagree, our legal team disagrees, but we would like it. If you give it to us through rulemaking, we'll make good use of it.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And you heard from John Rodman last week in your joint committee on that very point.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Think we'd

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: some input on your initial thinking about how we're to go with that.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: We're happy to give you language that you could insert into the bill. But that language will be authorizing language, not prescriptive language, right? I don't think it's appropriate at this point for us or the legislature to say, we know which criteria apply in tier three, let's codify that in law. I think that deserves a public process with lots of stakeholders and people talking around tables. So give us that authority to rule making and our rule making process is rigorous.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I would just say at the very least we'd be delighted to have any language you would like to suggest. Yes. And I do want to talk about that more as to whether or not we need to do that and get the opinion of our legislative council, but having that language I

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: think would be helpful.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Okay. Great.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And I would want to have, I think, we're thinking about it a little bit, but I would want to have something that makes not only prescriptive, but, you know, we know some of the things that must be protected. Just something that language that says that instead of you doing, it's within this realm. I do understand. I don't know how to say we'll think about it for you, but Yeah. By the language, we'll think about it. Some of it is obvious. Yes. The screen by traffic, you know, being a person who has to

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yes. Make any And some of the ones we would definitely include are also obvious. But there are some in the middle and that's where I think conversations would be better than inserting into the statute. But I hear you. But

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: also because we don't know yet what tier three is going to be.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Right. We're still in the process of figuring out which critical natural resource areas will define tier three. Again, I told you what three of them are. I teased you with that one might go away. I'm not gonna tell you which one that is. And it's not habitat connectors, I'll tell you that one. But that could change. When we go to our next round of public input in our working group, that may evolve some more. And boy, if you give us some more time, it'll give us some bandwidth to make it right.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I have two more questions specifically to tier three. Was not looking at your presentation digitally. This is your last portion of this, is that right? Before we leave tier three, two things. One one of the things that I know the rural caucus was interested in, things that have been discussed in the building is about notification for outreach education, that kind thing. Wondering if you can speak to that at all. I'll just say one of the things that I am potentially interested in is like, if you all need more support in terms of getting the word out, educating people, you know, that's something that I am open to and would love to, and Yeah, well I'll just say I'm open to it and would love to know what might be useful. Yeah. So

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: we're committed to the law, which says we have to do public outreach for landowners and the news followers that happens two or three areas, just so they know what it means. So we will be doing that. The world caucus suggestion was that we send a letter to every landowner that has two or three on their property and then it went beyond that and said, every landowner that might be affected by the vote rule. That's most of Vermont. That would be difficult. Jen and I have argued about this. I would like to send that letter to every landowner who has tier three on their property because it's a much smaller suite. But until we can figure out where the tier three areas are, I can't tell my chair whether that's 2,000 people landowners or 20,000 landowners. And our budget won't bear, won't mail them to 20,000 landowners.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And 20% of Uganda.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Right. Right. In terms of our grand list there is that we have is one or two or three years old, depending on municipality. So I think that I really appreciate the role of offices intent along those lines. I think that the practicality of that is problematic. So what we intend to do is to use all the other levers at our disposal, including partnering with municipalities. We've had a lot of positive interaction with municipal officials who would like to help us get the word out. We've had suggestions from folks saying like, hey, you're supported in the tax bill, everybody gets the tax bill. That would also be problematic as a former municipal official. I know how that works, we're

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: going

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: to use those mechanisms. Could we use more support?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yes. I think we could leverage even more is more time. And that ties into our request for to extend the effective date for tier three. If that moves a year, that means when we have to finalize the rules and deliver it to Elkhart also moves substantially and gives us more breathing room to do the outreach. But yes, if there were a fiscal allocation that gave us some much shared resources to do a mass mailing, we would have to wait and take it.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Or as Pete said, Front Forge Forum membership.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Oh, right. Yes. My first thought was that we would do that, right? And then we talked to Front Porch Forum and realized they don't just do that for the state. It's a very expensive proposition to hit every Front Porch Forum in the state.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep, well, I'm thinking about, you know, time to go to farmer's markets or time to, know, just other avenues for A lot of farmer's markets. Is true. You have another

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Just a, so just a comment. When you come into the our district and you're gonna hold a public hearing, let us know in advance. That way, because I wanna be there Yeah. To field questions because I'm gonna I wanna hear about it. Yep. If I'm not,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: number one, number two, we can help to get to work.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Excellent. I was thinking about it last night.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Tell me. We I mean, we're we're going around in town 27,000. And we could be talking to

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: And it really I

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: really think that would be a powerful tool, especially if you can extend the time horizon so we could do it in our meeting next year. Next year. But we actually have this much better developed and conventions. But I was thinking, you you as legislators probably are a tool. We're not using enough. Like the rural caucus, we're, I'm working with them. In fact, we have been for months and they're getting the word out, but I'd love to use the old legislature because of the deal.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right, so the second thing that I have, which is not something that I think we've talked about yet, is this idea that tier three as a part of your mapping is, as I understand it, automatically excluding potentially tier one errors. Yes, yes, the

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: current

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: proposal. Yes, and one of the things, does the December date reflect, I guess I don't have in my head when the maps are going to be done.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah, I'm just so glad you broke this up. So as Seth was saying, the original plans will finish their initial round of adoption of all the tier one areas by the end of this year and probably slopping over into the beginning of twenty twenty seven. So we actually won't know where those tier one exclusion areas for tier three. We don't know where they are until the end of this year, which is another reason that it makes sense to kick the tier three effective date burn around. So yes.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And we may only know tier 1B for the most part and tier 1A might lead even further. True.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Sarah will talk more about tier 1A, but that's the connections that we, yeah, we won't know the tier one areas completely until the end of this year. And right now the board would like to exclude those areas from tier three, meaning that if a habitat connector got mapped at the edge of your village center, and it's in a future radius type that's eligible for tier one, we would turn it off. It wouldn't be both. It wouldn't be tier one and tier three at the same time, which would be ridiculous.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Nuts, that would be nuts. That would be nuts. And so

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: too Yes, go ahead.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah, people have actually just a close connector. We don't wanna lose it. So, and

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I think that we feel comfortable that at least within the tier one A areas that we see, it's such a rigorous review to get that designation that I don't think we'll lose anything. Tier 1B may be a little different, but I don't wanna speak for the board. We haven't talked about this in great depth. I think the board was responding to the statutory application that we not have a disproportionate impact on municipalities or regions. Or the ability of a municipality to build housing. Yeah, specifically we are, third three rule making cannot have a disproportionate impact on the ability of the municipality or region to have two to one areas. So we felt like the easiest way to make sure that we don't go nuts is to just keep them separate. But you're not wrong, there's that one.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And Sarah can address that a little bit, Seth, when she talks about tier one.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I know it's a good one. Yeah, I was thinking more about being the one. Yeah,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: well and then follow-up to that, and this is, as I understand it, is not in the law, but so after this process plays out, we take the tier one areas out of tier three. Moving forward into the future, if the tier one maps are going to change or go through some process, I was speaking for myself here, would not want a tier one area to expand into a tier

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: three area, right?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So initially there's this exclusion of tier one from tier three, but then after that, tier one doesn't get to go into tier three.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Interesting idea, yeah. We

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: aren't excluding tier one areas, So tier three right now, what we're excluding is an estimate based on the current.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Well, so when you look at the maps, the tier three map viewer, you're going see these red cross patch areas around villages and downtowns, and that's sort of an approximation of where we would exclude tier three from just based on the interim exemption areas. But those will be refined as the regional plans identify the future land use areas around those villages and downtowns and determine which of those future land use areas you could be eligible someday for a tier one. Those are the areas that would be where tier three would be excluded from But I take your point and maybe there's a way to write the tier three rule to honor that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, yeah, so instead of using tier language, I'm going try to use language. Real language. Right now the critical natural resources are excluding cities. Right? So the city takes priority. Yeah. And so, and that's fine. Like, you want to build housing, great. But once we've established that, and the city area is up for debate and potentially expansion or whatever, I don't want the city to expand into a critical natural resource area. This is after- After it's- All the tiers have been established. Okay. Yeah. So Montpelier wanted to go out into- Right. Some place that's critical habitat then there would be another discussion about whether that was allowed on this tier.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: You still want to see automatic and it is true the draft that we have right now would have would make it on that. I would have done it's tier one, get work, know what I mean? Just like it would if tier three was there it wouldn't be tier three anymore. So we

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: could have to keep exempting the tier one if the city continues to take priority.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Right.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: On into the future.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Rather than having it be a conversation and a rule making change before that. Sure, and that's probably fair,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean maybe it's not we automatically say that critical natural resource area has priority. Maybe it is a conversation if you try to figure it out, but I guess I'm thinking I'm a planner,

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: it shows the answer. There's a couple

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: comments here, Simms.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Just a question. So I've seen the map for my community, and it shows proposed growth areas. Mhmm. And so I I'm concerned that it's already on a map, but nothing it's hasn't defined much yet. But if that happens to be somebody considers that to be tier three, will that affect that in your growth area?

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: It shouldn't because the reason it's on a map is because the regional planning commission is working with the town to define where they could grow into and we're gonna keep to the And that's good. Yeah. So we're actually planning for the future. Yes. That's one of the Ruth Hardy's back where they want is to empower regional plans to be important. To mean something. There's a plan. Yeah, great point.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, me too. I'm taking up a lot

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: of your time. Do you have any more two or three before I turn it over to Sarah to talk about the other end of the

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: spectrum? I think that is everything I know. Okay, good. Okay, thank you so much. Welcome.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Before Welcome, thank you so much for having me. I'm going downshift, quite literally, from the third year down to one. And I think our, FAFSA gave a great presentation yesterday to you, touched a little bit on tier one A and B. So I think what I'd like to do is just sort of try and pick up from that a little bit and sort of walk you into tier one, a little bit of a change in pace, because this is the area that we're talking about exclusion for accident.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Great, you have to sign up.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Just as a little thing of what you heard from probably happening yesterday is what we're undergoing right now is a province where regional lands are coming to us and we're looking at their future land use And what those future land use maps are doing is they're setting up specific growth future land use areas. There are four growth areas that are eligible for tier one B and three that are eligible for tier one A. So what that does is it sort of sets the framework because I think you asked the question of like, where are these areas? We don't know yet because we haven't gone through all the future land usements. While these conversations are happening in communities right now, our RPCs are really hitting the ground running, trying to have as many of these local conversations with their municipalities as possible as to where they want them, where they don't want them. So what that was set up is once these regional plans come to us for their confirmation, they're through the pre application, they actually have their full adopted plan and these future land use areas are set. And you can begin state of wood at that sort of next step, is just because these areas are future land use categories doesn't necessarily mean that they're too complete. We have some communities that want the future land use category, don't necessarily want the tier 1B right now, don't want the tier 1A, but it sits it up for the future. What can happen is, communities can request tier 1B for the pre built in, or they can go back to their RPC afterwards and say, well, I watched on the next town over to the I think it's not that bad, we'll try it. So, I think there's gonna be a gradual process chair there. So, yes, at least, And it's interesting to see how this is all sort of shaking out. So, I think one of the things I wanted to hit on as I sort of walk into tier 1A and tier 1B is what was really intended is these are municipal conversations happening at the local level very fast. And you're having some towns, I'm gonna pick on a couple, that we've already seen so far, like Williston that's coming in and saying, here's where our growth center is right now. We don't want all of that as our growth future landings. We want to shrink that down. You have something like Middlebury, where we just add on Tuesday, that want to decrease that. And that is going to impact what is going be tier one A and B home. Alright, I haven't lost you yet, but feel free to stop me along the way because it's, and the A and B thing and the sort of converse, think you got that yesterday, but, Trust me not. So, if you were to take a look at point in the future, we're talking about next winter, when we've gone through all the regional states therein, Republican have some tier one meetings to start, and that's the point where we have a municipality say, okay, I want to come in for tier one. So, it's not until after their regional plan base through the process that they come in and request tier one. Switching into what tier one A is right now is within ACT one A1, it was prescribed to the Labien Surgery Board that we had come up with application guidance, which we did in time for January 1, because the requirements of what you need to achieve tier one A are fairly prescriptive in thousand thirty four, ten days a 6034. And what that does is it sets up how we apply it. We came up with an application process that was really geared to, we're not quite sure what we're doing yet right now. We want to build this to be as accessible to as many municipalities as possible, and so it's more of a narrative process for people to apply. Good, we're still on this one. So, once you apply, we're using a pre application process with that. We're trying to make it as and foremost possible, come to us, tell us what you're thinking, we can work with you on this, be as hands on as possible to find and navigate municipalities that have different levels of staffing through this process. And then part of that is also because once we get an application in, we have a very limited time. And this is going be pretty significant to get the first ones through. We want to make sure we get this. So you have the guidelines about where we're at on that. And I will say that Janet and I went out to ANR's municipal net EOCT, both during presentations on tier one A and VR, but also listening to communities. There is a group of communities that are thinking about tier one that I'm aware of and I've been trying to work with to sort of get what their questions are because I think it is equally as important to what the application process is and letting them know how they can apply and what they need to do, what narratives they need to fill out is what they get out. And so I'll take the next slide. And I think that's where a lot of your questions are so far is I think there's hesitancy of particularly, I think there's contemplation for a lot of people don't understand the difference between tier one and one one it's a little bit hard to figure out. But sort of trying to demystify it, trying to explain it, and again, I think we could use more time on education. Absolutely, I think we've all gone to those phone calls, tried to go out and talk to people and discuss some of the misinformation. With tier 1A, a lot of the questions have been, okay, great, so we get tier 1A, we have exemptions for Act two fifty for both commercial and residential development within this specific area of our town. What do we need to do as a fiscal? And it gets to this question, which is in 4460G, which is the administration piece. And then there's the enforcement piece. So, I'll walk you through these first of And so, what this says is your legacy ACT two fifty permits do not go away when you get your money. Then the question becomes, what do you do with them? If you're a developer, you want to come in and amend it, what happens? And you have to let municipality tackle. And so this is the process that's been given for how municipality tackles that. Is they can decide that that's no longer relevant, it's been built, or you're applying those good municipal regulations to try and amend the Act of 15. We looked at that as, all right, that is the transferring of permit. So once you get through that process, your municipal permit has amended the Act of 15. Stands right, I'm happy to take questions along the way. So the way that state statute is right now is the day that you become a tier one A community, congratulations, you're the proud parent of all the legacy Act two fifty permits in that tier one A area. That is a lot for a municipality to take on. And there have been a lot of questions on that. I only know one community that said, Oh, that's okay. All the rest are the same. Yeah, and take a breath in and say, Wow, how many permits do we have? We have some communities that broke our database because it passed out at 500 permits, and said, okay, we know that there are at least 500 permits. Could you tell us how many? And that's where we really want to make sure that we're working with communities, trying to make sure that this is a successful process for as many communities as possible. So, we agree that's not the way to go. The way to go is that you use that amending process to transfer. And so, once you take an Act two fifty permit, you're a tier one A community, you have a developer that comes in and wants to amend. Once you amend that permit, it transfers that permit, and that is the permit that that municipality wants to administer. Can I clarify? So we've heard from folks that their preference is that those existing permits become, I believe, your responsibility, the LERD's responsibility.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: They stay your

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: and not be transferred to the towns. But what you're suggesting is that all of them be amended and become the town's responsibility? I'm unclear what you're recommending. Sorry, I lost you on the way. So let me back up. So the day that you have a tier one A community get tier one, Under the current law, all the pre existing Yeah, I get that. We don't like that. I don't think anybody likes that except for that one. What happens is, over time, you will have the governors come in with projects and want to amend the Act of 50. I get that, yeah, yeah. And the way that you do that is through the municipal permit process. Okay, and then they become the municipality's responsibility, but in between? They stay with us. Okay, you are on work with them. Absolutely, okay. It's just after they become a municipal permit, it would become really muddy for Act two fifty to come in and say, all right, we're gonna enforce these two conditions in municipal permit and municipality. You don't want Act two fifty coming in and enforcing what that is. No, I get that. I was just trying to figure out what you're recommending happens in between the tier one A designation and changing the permit. So sometimes there will just, the permit will just stay there. Right.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And it stays with us until the landowner developer wants to make a change, and then they have to go get a municipal permit and it transfers. So Only as the project is amended.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I think we're on the

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: same page. Yeah. So knew about I'm just gonna say, so the reality is that probably 80% of the permits would end up staying with you long term, and one by one the town might take some on. Yes, yes. Might rather So it'll be 500 permits in a town, the first time a town amends a permit and takes ownership, there would be four ninety nine that you're still responsible for, mentality responsible for a plan,

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: would transfer the

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: permit.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Well, have a question about even after that occurs, because let's, so let's, I guess I'm wanting to know how that municipal permit works, so that it like interplays with the Act two fifty permit. Does the Act two, does the municipal permit sort of sit on top of the Act two fifty permit or does it replace, It replaces. Okay, so it's not that I'm getting a nod that it replaces, which is to say that, because I don't want to be in a situation where, okay, now they've transferred the one permit and now the municipality is like, how do I enforce all of these criteria, etcetera, for this one permit? And we have this learning curve to do that, but it sounds like we, I mean, would not, that would not be the case. It's now just the municipal permit takes over and that is all that it is. But the municipal permit has to look

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: at the policies and permit conditions and consider whether that condition is still relevant, and if it is, do our local regulations address this issue, and if not, the municipal permit must take on that condition as part of its permit and must enforce the issue.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Okay, that's helpful, thank you. Happy to take more questions, but I think what I want to do is inch forward a little bit, which you need to do when you're in first year, just the tier one A. So that section, that 40 four-sixty H is that enforcement piece. And I believe what your bill has in it proposes to strike out most of what's in the MG, as well as previous section entitled I'll get to this on the next slide, but there can be a much more modest change to that, that also will make sure that we, if we need to ever revoke a tier 1A, can specify what happens then, is that it all comes back to us. So, we want everybody to be successful, but there was a thought process, you might also have a municipality that wants to give up tier one A. You need to allow for that and for a transfer back to the city that we're done. So, I'll just on that point, that process does not, is not spelled out, doesn't exist in statute? It does. Oh, it does, okay. It does to some extent. Okay. So do we need to add

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: anything in the interest bearing? We're just saying not to delete. Sarah's saying that S-three 25 has some strikethrough language, and we're suggesting a more nuanced, elegant

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: approach. Okay, correct. Where is

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: the cinema draft? Page three. And then page eight.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: But page three at the bottom says that the municipality is out of turn and sort of if we need to revoke their tier one A status that we can then impose. So, that's proposed to strike out right now, not necessarily sure that you need to. Go ahead. If you have suggested language to replace that, that would be very well. That will be on the next slide. Oh, we're getting there. I just want to say, we have our guidance about applying, but we realize there needs to be a little more. We're working on some FAQs for municipalities about how they decide to take over administering and enforcing. So, what you have in '24 BSA 4460 is a process for municipalities to take over administering and enforcing. As Jan said, they're going to have to look at their own regulations to preserve diversity throughout the state of Vermont and allow them to adapt. So, we're doing some FAQs about how you could do that, but ultimately it's going to be the municipality's responsibility and decision. You want to make the

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: next slide? Well, the one point here that we should, I think, point out is that once the permit transfers to the municipality, the LERB gets notified. And so there's a paper trail so that the LERB has some understanding of how things are going, and if maybe if a means start getting lots of complaints about permits not being enforced, can I just talk? There's some of

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: that question. If you're gonna testify, can you come up here? It's really awkward to have you right

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: behind me.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Thank you, I So, appreciate

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: just, I wanted to- take chair of the chair.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Sure, thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Thanks for saying that, Doctor. Harty.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I'll take Jan's spot, please.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I just

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: wanted to point that out because Sarah says we do have, as Sarah said, we have this ability to revoke tier 1A or a municipality could choose not to have it, but there is this communication so that, you know, there is some oversight as to being inclusive, even if it is turned over to the municipality with a transfer department.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I'm going on to the next one with the changes. So the first one, I just spoke about, is we think what you could simply do within 446H is strike the word of knots. And

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: that's it, and you don't have to have the other struck through.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Because we still want municipalities to have the ability to transfer permits and have them enforce them. Again, back to what

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I said is, if you

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: do not want Act two fifty coming into municipality and saying, Great, you've amended it, now let us impose it. So, they have a municipal process for them to let them do once it's transferred. Mhmm. So we can hang out here for one minute as we check out. It's bottom page eight. Yeah. Okay. And it's

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: h. You can get the main bridge. You can get you all the language.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah. Yes. That would be great. So, student grade knot, oh, I think it's on line 19. That's the only knot that's in here. One knot. That way for me. Yep.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Take Yep. Out that word. Okay. And keep everything else on page three and here. Okay. So

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: keep it not as struck analysts, but reinstate the rest.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yes, fantastic.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Then, don't strike out on page three. Okay.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Feel like I'm going to want to think about it. Yeah. What have we just reinstated? How does it I think we're on the same page. Should buy that. Okay. We can help again, I think that would help a lot of communities that have a lot of peace about tier one A and administering it. I think that's a way to roll it out more slowly. And I think that would be fantastic. Okay. I think that's something that the board has spoken about and endorsed. And so your rate of that change would be that it would, that would accomplish the not transferring all of the permits At once. At once, and allow for the sort of rolling adoptions of permits as projects come forward? Yeah. Okay.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And the issue that it's addressing is the reticence that municipalities across the state, there are some that don't even want to think about it because they do not want to take on the responsibility of existing Act 15 permits.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Okay. So we'll put the town's clearly had in mind. We'll call them back to County.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yep. Absolutely.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Yes. All right.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I think the next thing is we actually had a question for you in terms of clarifying the intent of section six. There is asking for us to revise our guidelines for specific procedural secrets. And again, what 6034 had was guidelines for the application process. So I'm not sure if there are new guidelines, we need to change our existing guidelines. Sure, well, I can speak to that. So one of the things that we heard from people who submitted maps early in the process, they expressed that sounded to them like the, that there was learning that happened through that process and that maybe if they had gone later in the process that their maps might have looked different. Oh, okay. And so the intent here was like how, what's the process that you all have in terms of either taking a second look at those who went early on, or how are we ensuring that there's consistency across the map so that they're all, I guess, having to follow the same interpretations, I guess.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: I feel like we're doing that. Okay. And I don't know that it's necessary to have that paragraph in there because we, as a board, we did three before the turn of the year. And we spent three or four meetings discussing, you know, how can we, we learn from this, how can we express how we're going to be consistent moving forward? You know, like we may have told Rutland something who was first that, you know, on second thought, maybe we shouldn't have said that to Rutland. Okay. And so I have been trying to find the time to work that up transmit and- it out, and I haven't gotten to it yet.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: But I think that the other part was yesterday you heard from Charlie Cath about Blue Maps are separate than tier one. And so I'll come back to where I started with is, communities are deciding which of the future land use areas, and then they can apply for tier one A or one B. And so I think that language you have in section six sort of anticipates the founders of that. I think that Because the future land

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: use map areas are going to be what determines the boundaries of the tier one A. So we're actually talking about drawing those future land use boundaries consistently, and us giving the Regional Planning Commission consistent guidance about that.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: So I think the intent that we have is just to go back to what you heard yesterday, is those future land use map areas. BAPTIS has proposed some updates to the future land use that we're aware of, that we've worked with them on, think that's supposed to help clarify the process as the RPCVs go through. We're very much talking together. We don't think that, particularly since what you have for language in that section six is focused on tier 1As and not the future land use. We don't think that we need that, but there's something more. And again, absolutely, as I said, there's, I think that commitment to trying to work with municipalities more than what we're statutorily required to do in terms of FAQs and really assisting the process. Yeah, in looking at this again, I think if I was, my thought process around this was actually beyond just tier one, it was just the tier one area in general. And it's, I mean, sounds like you are doing that, like it's in process, so you know, do we, and the intent here was like, just to make sure that you had some process that sounds like what you're already doing, but noted. But you're like, so that you all think that we could do a way of that. Yes.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: So, I'm going to

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: switch gears with you one more time before we leave this slide, which is also within section B, we have three twenty five, you have section of appeals. And what that is specifically looking at is tier one B. So going back, tier one B is where you have active 50 exemption. Or housing? Up to 50 units. This is fun, we should tag team because we're all set. Been working together here, almost incomplete in each other's sentences. So, I think that, great idea. However, we don't have jurisdiction. So, if you're a tier one B community, congratulations, you've got to go back to 50 for up to 50 units. So, for us to study what would make the appeals process work better than that, we don't necessarily have a goal. So, what we're going to recommend is either move this to one of the other entities that's listed, the PLCT, that it would be very, very participational sort of the mass of all communities, or that maybe this gets moved into the appeals reform bill with S-one 169, because under that, then some of these appeals would come to us, if we even have more of a rule. But right now, having us drive the bus that we don't have

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: a license to drive. It's fair enough. So, do

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: you want answer the next slide? All right, these were a couple other recommendations that

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: you have. So the board had, yeah. So we discussed yesterday pending legislations and the board feels that we should recommend that you revise the priority housing project exemption language to be more in line with the rest of the housing exemptions and to address flood hazard and river corridor areas. Then, because what the current language effectively does is says, it's okay to build affordable housing and flood hazard.

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Sorry, when you say the current language, you're talking about current statute or this Current statute. Okay.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Current statute doesn't, current statute could encourage building affordable housing in the flood hazard. And the board sees this as an environmental justice issue for one thing, why should we be encouraging any So all of the rest of the housing exemptions address the flood hazard in the recorder, and they say, can only happen if we have regulations and it can only happen in April, right? So the priority housing project exemption does not address the flow hazard like the rest of them do. So we're suggesting that you should address it. And you should add the same language to the priority housing project exemption that you have in other housing exemption, temporary exemptions,

[Sarah Hadd (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: interim exemptions. Again, if you are able to get us to exactly what means.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: And then in the commercial to residential conversion exemption, you do not allow for new permits. Only commercial projects that have an Act two fifty permit can, that already have an Act two fifty permit can use this exemption. So if you have something that predates, you know, it was built before Act two fifty, there are plenty commercial properties that have been used commercially for one hundred years or whatever. It would not get this exemption if it predated Act two fifty, because the words new permanent is not in that paragraph in the exemption, the end of the exemption

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: for the

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: versions. Same thing, we can provide you language, set airbox. Yeah, that would be great. I think that is all we have. So we are here for questions as long as you want us now, but you can always reach out to us outside of here.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I do have a question. So you saw Mr. Baker's testimony, and he asked her that people were

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Sarah watched it. I looked at the presentation, but I didn't have time to go

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: and Something watch that would be useful is if you have comments on their suggested changes because it's a whole different set of ideas and things. And one of the, just as an example, so you talked about the pre application process. One of their suggestions is including the community investment board upfront as a part of the pre application process. And are you amenable to that? Like, that, does that make sense?

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: So I can say to that, that we think that the pre application process is the place to get as many people that have an interest to comment on that plan as possible. So we certainly wouldn't be opposed to that. In fact, we would agree that it's an important, you know, it's important to get that entity in there as soon as possible, because why wait until after the plan is adopted? And, you know, and the CID has a big problem at this certain boundary that got drawn. And we didn't necessarily see it as a problem at all, right? And so we allowed for it to move forward and they went through the whole adoption process, and then suddenly CID is saying, wait a minute, right? So we would not oppose that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, specifically that aspect, it makes me wonder about that sort of iterative process of going back to say, oh gosh, we need to amend what we initially said. And again, it sounds like you're doing that. So, but I'm imagining that that input might affect the maps. Yes. Yes. Okay, so I mean, that's just one example. There's a whole series of recommendations that they have and your input or feedback on those would be valid.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: So the board as a whole hasn't looked at their language that they proposed. I've looked at it, I looked at it early on just singularly, but I didn't want to bring it to the board until we knew that if there was a vehicle for it to move forward. And board, some of us will be gone next week because of school and so

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: we

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: may be able to get to that early in March.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: So maybe responding to legislation that's put forth would be the next step.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Or if you want us to look at what the proposal is currently, we can do that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think that would be valuable. I would appreciate those other thoughts. Which proposal? Charlie Baker's proposal. Oh, we just heard yesterday. Okay. And we'll, whole bunch of comments.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: What?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: We have a crossover.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, well, our time is running out. So in fact, I mean,

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: so I can forward the proposal from BAFTA to the board members and when we get out of this room.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: I'll read it on the plane.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Okay. Sarah's only gone for part of the week. I've already read it. Okay. Okay. So, and we can discuss it on March 3.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Okay. Is that

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Might have to somehow figure out if we can get some forgiveness. I don't think any that is doing a bunch of worship, but, you know, do things.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I even if if we could get individual feedback, I don't know. Maybe that's not something you do. Well, mean, we

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: are a board, we try to speak with one voice. Okay, well,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: give us feedback when you can try to get on that.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: So I figured it was,

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Senator Hardy, are like over a dozen different verbal tweaks that they're proposing and they're trying to address things that we've struggled with this board, because there are different descriptions of the same thing in different areas of statute that don't completely line up. And so they're trying to address some of those issues that we've encountered, but as a board, we just haven't looked at the language they're proposing as a board. Of us have it individually.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, so give us feedback when you can. Okay. And we'll go through our process and try to, I'm imagining that this bill, he's one of the last things that we get out, But I don't want to, we're going continue our work in the meanwhile.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So March 1, so March 3.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Right, and this because of open meeting law, we can't do this behind the scenes via email or, you know, we have to do it in a meeting. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Well, super. Well, actually anything else? Check my list here. Okay, think having just gone through my list, I think I'm feeling good. One of the things that actually, there's one thing that I think we remember if we talked about it, things are sort of flurrying together. One of the things that's on my radar is that some of the regional plans are going to expire. Meanwhile, they're hoping for an extension. I guess that doesn't really necessarily pertain to you. That's not your, you're not worried about that. That's not your, you're different. It's more of a concern of some of

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: the towns that are going

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: to see their plan or regions that are seeing their plans expire this summer. I don't have any comments on that.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: I mean, presented us with their estimates as to when they're going to get their pre applications to us and when they're going to get their final applications to us. And I'm not aware that any of them are in danger of expiring before they get to us. Okay. Municipal plans are expiring here and But I think the regional planning commissions are set on their schedules, and the ones that were going to expire before they got to us, they've already addressed that with updates, because I know because Bennington County did that, where I left Bennington County, and they're working on a new one right now. Some of them did that, they did a quick update, I think Wyndham did that too. Okay. And they're, so that they could have to do this act one eighty one on twentieth of say, Okay. Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: One of the proposals we've heard from a variety of folks is that making amendments in the interim between the ten year plan updates, making a shorter process for amending things. Have you all discussed that?

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: We have discussed that. We have looked at the language, but in the past, the board agrees there definitely should be a shorter process for minor changes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So if you have suggestions for that, that would be helpful. Or if you like what they We'll

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: look at what they proposed and see whether it reflects what we had talked about months ago. And yes, we definitely think that that is fine.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, great. Super. Any other questions or phones?

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Was really helpful. Yes. Absolutely.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And well organized. Thank you.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: Sorry about the sitting behind. No, no, that was fine.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So we have Legislative Council joining us at eleven, so I think we're going to take a break until then, but just to preview that conversation a little bit. So that's going be about S-two '24. And I actually need to wrap up community time today a little bit before 11:30. And I'm anticipating that the conversations that we are going to have around 02:24 are going to take more than the time that we have. So referencing Senator Ray, he used to talk about painting ourselves out of the room with a bill. We might look at some of the We might start with some of the pieces that are controversial, how we're feeling about them, try to close out some of that language and walk our way through it until, and get as far as we can.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Do we have a, four there point two or

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: any more version?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, I am sticking with 4.2 right now. We did make some suggestions around education outreach, but we can talk about that. So that's where we're at. Okay. Super. Then looking towards next week, generally speaking, the plan is to try to close out some of these other bills. I'd love to finish two thirteen, to finish two twenty three. We're going to make more progress on commercial pace. We may take some more testimony on the net metering pause and the plastics bill. We'll see how that goes. Definitely taking more testimony on 03/25, again, making as much progress as we can on that. And then also I'd like to be closing out. I think there's a few people we need hear from on 02/19, and then I think we can tap forward on that. So those are, generally speaking, those are the bills that I Did you mention 02/13? I did, was the first one. Yeah, sorry. No, that's okay. Yeah. Or maybe some indicator that like, you know, ones that we are hoping to share with you. Think that's everything I wanted to say about that. Actually, before we're done, anything you folks want to say about what we just heard from the land use surgery? We

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: all have been in same mood for about two days. Well,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: does it does feel like things are starting to gel a little bit, like the Pardon me. That was heartbreaking to me. There are still details to work out, it seems like people are moving to a safe beach. Yeah, I agree. And we did cancel Ellen the other day about the walkthrough of what the law of 01/1981 is. So we will fit that in next week as well. Any other thoughts or comments?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: That's very helpful.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah, one

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of the things that feels helpful about this is that I think, as you're saying, the vast majority of it is not actually terribly controversial. It does feel like people are generally going to St. George. Yeah. So, it's good. I'm appreciating that. Yeah. Okay. So we can go out live. We'll come back at eleven. Third, why? Okay, this is Southern Natural Resources and Energy coming back for free. And we are going be jumping into a discussion of two twenty four about, like a miscellaneous lakes bill. So if you, if our, I'm just gonna have the customers join us up here, the intent right now is to walk through some of this language and close out sections that that the committee feels like we have agreement about, or they see where our consensus lands. We're working off of draft 4.2. And we did, I think previously talk about some education. Yeah, education

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: and outreach about decontamination and other requirements for training, cleaning.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right, so for a new draft, my assumption will include that. I think there was consensus about That makes sense. It'd be great to have Senator Beck back towards particularly the conversations about the difficult parts, but I would otherwise say, let's just walk through the mill, in part to remind ourselves what's here and to see how we're

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: all feeling about these parts.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So this is Mike O'Grady with legislative counsel. The first component of this matter in the bill is regarding the gate votes and phone line designation for registration. And the the first section is the definition section in the use of water's law, which is a DEC program, A and R DEC program. And so there's that definition of the motorboat, which is just cross referencing the definition under transportation's vessel authority, and then definition of wakeboat, which is consistent with the definition of wakeboat in the DEC use of waters. So it's a motorboat, it's one more ballast, it's style slash other devices, for design features to increase the size of the motor space.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Is there anything Before we go on, this is and just to clarify, this is we're defining it here, because this is not DEC, this is

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: No, this is DEC.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, this is DEC, so

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: it's But they don't have in statute the definition that they adopted it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: And so what you're doing is you're bringing in that rule definition in the statute, and then in the next section, you're going to have statutory requirements for me. You. That are that are largely consistent with the rule. Yep. But would have additional requirements for weighing boats that would move us on that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: K. And before we go on, are we okay with that?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yes. Which

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: part of? We're looking at h two lines, basically 14 through 17.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: There's one definition that's the definition of motorboat in title twenty three and one definition that's already a DEC definition enrolled, which is bringing it into the sash.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep. That makes sense. Alright.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So section two is the substantive regulatory requirements for wake loads in UC water. The first subsection said the person shall not operate a wake load. Shall operate a wake move only on a wake authorized by the department under their current rule. So there's 20 odd things where you can operate a wakeboat and within that area on those lakes, so that's the first prevention. You can only operate on lakes authorized by DEC for that under their use of water regime. And then in order to operate a wake vote, the person who owns or controls it shall own the vessel registration or validation form annually or by annually identify a home link for the wake vote for the calendar years for which the registration or validation is valid. You heard from DMV that they can change their vessel registration form to add both a designation of what type of boat it is in that wakeboat as a checkoff and to add a provision to say if you are our wakeboat what home late you are. Now validation is only required for out of state and or in state for more than sixty days consecutively, so there will be those out of state vessels that won't have a registration or validation form because they're not required to have

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And can you speak to what is annually or biannually?

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Because that is how EMV currently registers, that's just how you register your car, you can register as a go to the spirit annually or biannually. He does the same Right, that's the choice. If you're going to register for two years, you're going to have a two year registration, in your vessel registration, and those requirements for registration which we will see in a minute, you get a certificate that you are supposed to keep with you during operation of the vessel. So your only designation is going to be on that certificate. It's either under validation or registration.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, Or we can come back to you. I'm just I haven't seen it,

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: so I'm really hungry.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: If some say somebody does a two year registration and halfway through they move and their home life changes, is there a process for them?

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, you can leave your baby, and you can basically go through the requirements for the new, like, decontamination, etcetera, and you can amend the registration.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's what I mean. Like, if they move from one, they

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: would not

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: That's what you can amend your registration for motor vehicle, and you can amend your registration for us.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yes. So So if you've

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: got a wait bill, there's no provision in there. A wait bill to that's on the home plate now that doesn't for them not operating wait mode?

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: There is there is no statutory provision in this bill that prohibits operation in wake mode. What it does is it says you can't operate that wake mode on a lake that isn't a home lake. It doesn't make that distinction of the boat can't operate in wake mode versus it is operating in wake mode. So that's, I think that's a valid question.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So we wanna I know there's people who've got weight bulbs that as the rule rules change, Mike, beyond weight, it's not gonna be able to operate that ball. So rather than moving it, if they agree to operate it not in weight mode, you know I'm saying?

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, that's partly what the current rule does. It says it finds wake boats, finds wake boat zones, and then defines where you can engage in in I can't even remember. Wake boat sports or some term like that. And so that that's a consideration. This would be more prohibitive than that.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: And rule making is in progress, right, then?

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Right. There there is there is a a proposal by the EC. Yes. But there's already a rule that exists.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: And if they're operating right now, and that I'm gonna home link that says they can be

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It doesn't there's no home link designation right now. Oh, okay. It's just you have to operate in wait mode on a wait where the main sports is up or not. Just

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Let's did you have something? Okay. Let's keep going.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So page three, line 10, prior to entering of Vermont Lake, other than the way it goes home link and prior to reentering the home link, that the person who cleans or controls the Waco shall decontaminate the Waco at an ANR approved decontamination service provider. Boat washing stations are not shall not be considered an agency approved decontamination service provider unless approved by the agency to provide the decontamination service. Well last time you walk through this, you ask for a definition of decontamination station to be added to distinguish a boat washing station from a decontamination provider, I can do that. There's examples of that from around country criteria such as using hot water 140 degrees or more located in a way where runoff doesn't discharge or runoff into the the adjacent water, etcetera.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We talked about, I agreed

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: to do that and then failed to-

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's okay. So we did have some recommended definitions from Jared Carpenter for definitions of aquatic nuisance species inspection stations, boat washing units, and decontamination stations. I think that would be useful to include those definitions, especially if those exist in statute somewhere else. As you just described it also sounds reasonable, yes?

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I just, maybe I'm overthinking this. Okay. And if I am, you're so

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But does that language could somebody interpret that language meaning that they only have to decon it if they used it as a wakeful? In other words, full weight weight growth, they pull it out, they go to

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: some other body of water, never bring on board water, never use it as

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: a weight growth. And then

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: my work thinking it. I think with this definitely on the weight growth that's on page two where it has one or more valve scanning, valve stacks, or other devices, you need to increase the size of the motor growth rate. It doesn't matter if you've used it in weight or not. If you're gonna have a ballast, if you have other provisions or devices within the vessel that can that has using water or other or that could decontaminate the lake of the product. It's a site. It's a product nuisance species. You're gonna have to decontaminate. Thank you. So prior to entering a late law enforcement, an employee of the agency or person staffing unauthorized aquatic nuisance species inspection, the station may request Person owning or controlling the way quote provide proof of decontamination by an antisemitic for decontamination service provider. I just wanted to be clear that there was that on page four, the person staffing an authorized aquatic nuisance inspection station is authorizing the former person who owns or controls the wake vote whether their wake votes are authorized for use on the lake. But those persons are not law enforcement, and they don't have law enforcement authority. And that needs to be clear because sometimes there's tension between the staffers and the ownersoperators and the staffers need to know if there's a bond.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Everybody needs to know they're not on. Some people No.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, like, the person they're talking to also

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: finding that. Yeah. Okay. And page four, all concurrent provisions about aquatic nuisance inspection and drainage

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: or

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: that section. One second. On page four, line six through nine, all provisions of the title regarding the product inspection, product, that's drainage inspection, movement, and wake load users shall drain the bowels of their boats to the full extent practical immediately before or immediately after leaving the water of the state. So could we have a note here

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: striking this? I'm trying to remember, is that from Judge Downing? I see Judge Downing, he invested striking it, and I think it's because he thought it

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: was duplicative.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: That yeah. Right. But there's one part of it that's not, and it's the immediately before. And Oh. That is because it's sometimes easier for raincoats to drain before they leave the water rather than after. So she can just start the sentence with raincoat users. You could do that. With rings? Because his his argument that I heard was they are vessels, and so they're already separated to the requirements of fourteen fifty four, and you don't need to Yeah. Restate that. Oh, it will be said, wait, won't use Rochelle drained the ballast piece. Oh,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: okay. Yeah. Oh, I see. Oh, I see what you're saying. So striking basically The first stick in half of seven. Oh, okay. Are we all okay with

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: that? Right? Sure.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. That sounds good to me.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: And then clarifying that the violations are going to be brought in the judicial bureau. I don't think Judge Zona had an issue with that. We'll continue that. Right. Okay. Section three is

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Before we go on to section three, just want to reflect for a section on section two, or for a second on section two. Any thoughts or concerns about this? We're going to add some definitions. I don't know if the definitions will go in this section, but

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: No, it will go in the first. Right. As such. Okay. And then

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: a little bit of change to D, three d there. I think that's it. Okay, great, thank you. Just wanted to pause to see if there's any concerns or questions about that. Okay, moving on.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So moving on to section three, this is the section that lists all the judicial bureau's authority. I can't remember if Judge Zoning wanted to change that or not. Don't think it's beyond what's already proposed. I don't think anything else is additionally needed. Consection four, are you Section three. Section three. The

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: title that I have says that it aligns with fourteen fifty four.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Yeah.

[Janet Hurley (Chair, Land Use Review Board)]: So

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Then page five, section four, these are the existing provisions related to control of the product nuisance species, and you will see page five, line four. That's where you see that immediate would be poor or immediate after. Because right now, it's when feeding the water, and this is so allowed before or after. There are. Alright. Moving on then. Then on page six, this is moving to DMD registration requirements for vessels. The changes are substantive changes are page seven. These are the definitions for the adding weight point. Same definition that you saw earlier in the bill, same definition as what's in Hayward. And then you can move to the right now, the section on registration is just called the fees section, but it's actually the registration section.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So before we move on, my apologies, the definition of whiteboard in section seven, because this is DMV language now, does it I'm wanting to I'm wondering about using a cross reference You can do that. Instead of having a

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Yeah.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Sure. Which is fine. But do that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Just in case things evolve and changes are made. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So the the registration requirements, you will see page seven, line 18, there there see annually or biannually that's incurred and involved for the registration of your voter vote. And then you'll see all the feeds and all the different types of class motorboats that you may be. There's nothing being changed for that. If you're a wake load that falls in one class and another owner has a wake load that falls in another class, they're already subject to these differential peaks, so not changing that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Can I ask? Oh, you did. What are the classes based on, size?

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Basically, yes. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And did we talk about, I guess when we had the conversation about whether or not we're going to fund de common stations, we talked about fees to cover, but we're not funding decontentations. We're just saying they're required to paid out to find decontentations. Is that that's not understood.

[Alex Weinhagen (Member, Land Use Review Board)]: Okay. Okay. So we don't need to change the fee.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So moving down on that page, and I'm moving quickly this time, page eight, line twenty, twenty one, you'll see the registration certificate, checking pocket size, and you're gonna need to have a little asterisk section on the photo below.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Before I move on, because we are adding this four up at online four. Yeah. Think this is probably gonna go to finance anyway, but just noting, I'm assuming that they'll go to court.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I would assume that the secretary will look at it and see if the class that's being registered will change, and I think he will look at the registration certificate as changing. People probably make the determination of the class is changing. Even though it really isn't.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Just making a note. We'll get some talk about this in the morning. We'll give it more. Okay, anyway, all right, moving on.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: You can move on to page nine, line 19, and putting one on to page 10. The application forms that the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles provide for registration of vessels shall include a checkbox for an owner to designate a motorboat as a vehicle. I showed you their form, they already have a face ring check if you're a houseboat or etcetera, so they'll add it there. And they will also designate their home wage on the application form, and then the commissioner of motor vehicles annually compiles the number of motor boats, registers, way boats. And then I have that raised. There was a question of whether or not you want them to submit that information to ANR in the way.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Speaking for myself, I do want them to submit it to ANR to DEC and I have a note here that they can't do this until twenty eighth. Yeah. And so as soon as it becomes available for

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Is that meant annually thereafter?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. This feels like a good place to stop, just want to check-in with folks about anything that you, that we've got over that you've got concerns or questions about, or yes. If it's question, who's going to be tracking down the

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: number of weight loss and the VDME?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: DMV, and then they're going to communicate that to DC. Yep.

[Mike O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So I will need for the next graph, the edits that you just requested, plus the edit you requested before, which was the outreach and education.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's great. And then is that outreach and education part gonna be in sections one through six? Yes. Okay. So we might go over that when we see the new draft. But otherwise, done with sections one through six. She feels like progress. Check. Check. Okay. Thank you. Thank you everybody. And actually one further note, next week when I think that we've got you scheduled for like a new draft. It will be a new draft, but we will continue our walkthrough of this checking off language. Okay. Great.