Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, we're live here. Yeah. Okay. Sorry.

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: And then I- Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Good morning. This is Center of Natural Resources and Energy, and it is Wednesday, March 11, in the final week before crossover. And we are taking up S-three 25 again. We're going hear from some folks and then have some committee discussion about what we want to do. And so we are joined this morning by Mary White

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: from the Vermont Farm Bureau. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me all. I am Mary White. I am the current president for Vermont Farm Bureau, and we sincerely appreciate your time. We know the hectic atmosphere this week in Create, so we are all here for a greater cause, we really appreciate the work she's doing. So today I'm here on behalf of Vermont Farm Bureau members from across our state who are sharing their stories of the adverse impact that Act 181 may have on their livelihoods and businesses. Vermont Farm Bureau, for those of you that don't know us, we are the largest and oldest association of agriculture producers, and we are a nonprofit. Our policies and priorities are set by our grassroots, which values every member's voice and input, which makes us such an integral part of shaping public policy. We have members across the state in all 14 counties. Our members range from rural Vermonters to homesteaders, generational farmers, and those 32 foods for local markets. Our role Vermonters are hardworking families who value environmental stewardship. They live with the land, not on it. Our agriculture and rural heritage is who we are, and for many of us, it's all we are. Vermont's unique. As we all know, no two farms are alike. Every family has their own journey, and every piece of land has its own story. Vermont agriculture is a fundamental part of our state's economy, landscape, and way of life. While the current agriculture exemption in Act two fifty remains, many parts of Vermont agriculture will be touched with the implementation of SBP proposed in Act 181. Our major concerns, as presented, are farmers retiring, farmers diversifying, and farms starting new. We are also concerned with the overall economic viability of our rural findings and rural communities that greatly support the ability for us to farm in these communities. Vermont farmers are business owners and employers. We absolutely understand the need for housing directly, as many of us provide on farm housing and we rely on our local workforce. Over the last ten years in particular, we have seen this workforce disappear. We have seen less youthful involvement when it comes to farm opportunities for employment on the farm. Many farmers or produce farmers, even sugar makers now, are referring to the H-2A visa program for temporary added housing, and is, sorry, added labor that requires housing. It is not affordable or practical for farmers to transport these employees from hounds at home to our condos in Montpelier. We must preserve the right for the farmers to be able to ensure housing for their employees and to grow our rural communities to support our farms. The average age of a Vermont farmer is just shy of 58 years old. Vermont preaches to encourage younger generations to stay or return to the farm, but in turn seems to be making it harder to do so. For many farmers, everything they have goes back into their land. It is the retirement, their largest asset, as is the right to choose how they transition that land to the next generation. Jim from Wisconsin shares his story. At eight years old, Jim has given the state a lifetime of stewardship and service to others. He has raised sheep, fed neighbors, carrots, and left for them, and fostered children and given them a home. The vision for this property is to leave it better than he found it for his children, so they too may build a home of your own, be good stewards of the land, and leave it on for the next generation. Our wealth is in our land, he says. The land is remote, and I fear that future use will be threatened by not being able to use the land we are well over 800 feet from Route 25. There are many stories like Jim throughout rural Vermont, who will reimburse landowners for their families for the regulatory laws of assets and development rights for market value. A farm appraisal calculates the best use of our property. Who will back the farmers' business when the bank depreciates their largest borrowing asset due to this regulatory change? These are stories of someone's livelihood, not just in key developments. Vermont has been a leader in the nationwide development of agritourism. We encourage farmers to diversify, to be open to the public, to offer farm stays, on farm dinners, and local events. A great thing passed by the Vermont legislature just in 2021 was the Additive Torts Unlimited Liability Law. This really opened the door for Vermont farmers to feel comfortable and able to embrace a lot of these events. Now just five years later, we're telling farmers that the potential growth in this market might be limited to their geographic location, and will most likely trigger an Act two fifty review. I think we can all agree that agritourism must start with a farm, not just a venue, but we must allow our farmers to be able to diversify in this area, to share the Vermont experience with others, so they may too come back and start a small farms or put down root catered rural Vermont. We must support a dairy farmer with rising input costs and a fluctuating milk market, who has a business plan to diversify their additional income through a farm stay. These are things that fall through the cracks of Act 181. Neil Brian is a third generation Vermonter who owns 200 acres in currently Orange. Stayed in his white barn where his son is fired on beef cattle, and Neo's grandparents live in Foxborough. The Brians cannot make a living from beef cattle alone. Many other Vermonters feel this struggle if input costs rise, so they work full time jobs off the farm or they diversify. The Brians rely on agritourism as part of the farm operation, including farm stays, professional development, and workshops. Neil says, Our farm is a place of beauty and meaning that people want to be a part of. This land slated for Tier two and Tier three restrictions was Governor Dean C. Davidson's Boyhood Farm. They see static categories of forest blocks and habit connectors drawn on screens. I see two hundred years of human stewardship, creating the biomass mosaic fields of farm and fort that defines Vermont. The Ryan's necessary diversification of their business and agritourism helps sustain their way of life. They have nurtured life back into historic homesets that was long forgotten, while contributing to our local food supply. It's in Bath and Vermont we want to support, not where we want to impose limitations. Michelle Storia is a new Vermonter who moved to Vermont to build a home, and has developed a farm business that's still evolving. She includes maple sap and orchard, and is growing agritourism. Her dream of growing agritourism would include farm stays, and she worries this will be gone as her parcel is proposed for tree of remapping and become unaffordable. She warns that this will burden her ability to continue her business and negatively impact the future value of her property she is greatly invested in. Our local food movement is growing right from these tier two and tier three areas. Our native syrup industry is thriving right in these four blocks and habitat connectors. And a lot of agriculture, a lot, but some agriculture does happen above 2,500 feet. In response to the Food Security Act in declining dairy farm numbers, the Vermont legislature relaunched an act relating to agriculture development. This led to the most recent Roadmap to 2032 Food Security in Vermont. This calls for Vermont to increase sustainable economic development, create jobs in Vermont's food and farm sectors, while providing healthy access to food for all Vermonters. This movement is happening across rural Vermont, producing food for our local communities and markets. The very implications, as presented in Act 181, will hinder growth as many of these stories start with a home. Their aftermath from Cabot share their story. Caitlin and Ian grew up in the hills of Cabot and watched many of their peers move out of state. They felt a deep connection to the land. They were able to purchase their dream 150 acre property in

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: their hometown. They built a

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: home much further away than 800 feet from Anytown Road, then minimally off the land as they started a sugarcane operation in a young family. Their business has grown to over 18,000 taps, and they sell award winning maple products across the country. Their lane provides the opportunity for them to both work full time, along with a homestead that they sum maple to share with their three young children who are fifth generation Vermonters. This dream and business started with a home, another store that would not have been possible with the new proposed restrictions. In rural Vermont, we measure land in acres, not the take a drive, I know many of you have. You will see how it is built well away from the road. The road rule exemption for farming and forestry is absolutely necessary, but the road rule itself will cripple our rural communities and pinder growth where we need it to flourish. Hanford Berg expresses extreme concern within her community, as well as small towns like Newark, Granby, Emerald, Gladstone, Watson, Barry, and thus leaves others across the state that will not meet the tier 1A or tier 1B requirements. She is the exemplary of hostile rural communities and is structurally inacceptable to the rural communities that need it the most.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And it's not just

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the smallest of the remote towns that fall through this gap. A growing, thriving, economically active community that people are moving to, does not yet have municipal water or sewer. FERC would assume the full weight of permitting systems and discourage exactly the kind of organic community trope that it represents. World Vermonters are not part of the landscape or housing developments, where you can common sense and environmental stewardship with the lay of the landscape to make sound decisions for building. At two fifty, we proposed increased costs for our rural landowners who are just trying to get by. The criteria and conditions are not unethical rule review for the vast majority of individual landowner projects. This project will deter landowner from applying or purchasing property altogether, leading to concerns of decreased value in private legal maintenance sale competition. Rural homeowners are speeding up, and we have received testimony from many members, which we have provided, just a sample, we have many more, and non members are reaching out as well. They have spoken, they are fearful, and they will leave because of affordability. Young families will leave, rural businesses will leave. When we hear generational Vermonters who have committed everything they have to the family farm tell us, If it wasn't for this farm, we still wouldn't be here. That is when we know we are not doing our job. They're not leaving because of the weather or market conditions. They're leaving because the implications of restrictions on their way of life this act advised. The purpose and goals, outlined for agriculture in Act 181 read, to encourage strategies to protect long term viability of agriculture and forest lands while maintaining low overall density, to encourage the manufacturing and marketing of value added agriculture products and forest products, to encourage the use of locally grown food products. Vermonters and rural landowners are accomplishing these goals independently with the trust of their communities. If our goal is truly an environmental concern, we must trust the farmers who work this land to leave it better for the next generation as the generation before. We must listen to the people who work the land, those who inherit the economic outcomes of this act to accomplish the true goals of strengthening our agriculture and forestry industries. We have seen firsthand the confusion and frustration and unfair proceedings this act has caused in our rural communities. Our local planning commissions are being asked questions from land owners they cannot answer because the answers do not yet exist. We recognize the land use of torrents' efforts, but they can only work within the legislation provided. We must know the direct and indirect implications of this act that will have on our rural communities before commencing the amendment. If anything, we need more time. We need more time to understand the full economic impact of rural Vermont in our agriculture and forestry sectors. We need more time to hear from our rural landowners and farmers, and come up with solutions that will allow them to continue to grow and support a viable Vermont. We support and encourage our full act extension of the implementation of this Act until December 2027 or further. In addition, we would request an economic impact study on rural Vermont, continuing engagement with rural landowners, and a landowner survey that we conducted. In closing, less prospective growth in rural areas were less than our community's representation, and promote the voice of concentrated growth in larger cities and towns. This is when we will lose the voice of Vermont agriculture when we prioritize larger developments over the cancer of Utah's. Thank you. Thank you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you for sharing those stories and for being here. It's so important, and I'm really grateful to have this perspective that you're bringing and appreciating your ask for more time that spades into the bill, which is great. I'm also appreciating your ask about an economic impact study.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think that's something we can talk about.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: In the meanwhile, I mean, just want to at least express that the vision that I have for Vermont is a place that can feed itself. And that doesn't happen if we

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: don't have our own farms. And so

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: anyway, we've had this conversation, but I just want to say it out loud that I am looking forward to working together over the summer, over the next year to continue to find solutions. Especially if we've bumped things out,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: that will give us the time to continue to work together. So we also have visions of increasing voice pulling more coalitions together of farm advocacy groups and really grafting with a picture of how this would impact agriculture and forestry because it is such a vulnerable and diverse state, such as everything we do, every committee in this room in this building. Thanks for your testimony.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: First of all, the more time, it sounds like that is what our plan is in the bill to do it. I'm curious, and this is maybe just me not understanding, but I mean, it sounds like the concerns, the specific concerns you have are about the road rule and how it would impact rural communities. And then Act two fifty regulations, most of the area that I think you're talking about would be tier two. And I think that tier two, at least my understanding, if everybody in this room

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: has heard me struggle to understand all

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of this, but it's basically status quo. There's not like new things imposed on it. Are you, and there are like exemptions for forestry and agriculture. Yeah. So is it really just a road

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: rule that's the problem or is really a huge problem. And I think for us, it's hard to gauge what the potential Tier three picture looks like, because it is reliant on the real world at this point. It's really a hard picture to gauge, where if we're relying on the real world as part of Tier three, but it sounds, again, it's developed until we see the actual mapping, and it's hard to gauge. So, the tier three might be larger. It would take away the vocal, we just don't know that answer. So, as far as tier two goes, we are concerned with, especially the appraisal value for the best use. If that will raise an effect for those tier two farmers,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that will have an impact on that.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: If their best use for an appraisal value is development, that will negatively impact the value of their land. And if they have an old logging road or an old agriculture road and their child decides to do that or they want to build their house, the second that road transfers, that would trigger a review as well. Just if they use that road for something else.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But if it's an existing road, then? If it transfers the use from agriculture to housing. Even if it's an existing road? Correct.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay. And

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: so in the areas of the state where the maps have been presented, because there are a few counties that have already presented their maps to the Land Use Review Board,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: are you

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: hearing fewer concerns because people now see the maps or more concerned because they see the maps? Because I understand that not knowing is hard for everybody.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think getting those masks to the landowners is crucial. I think more engagement needs to happen in that areas because we not had anyone coming in to us. We did have one, she was actually on for planning commission and she came to us after a mask in place and her parcel is still designated for tier three. I'm the stories that she already covered. She's just building a new farm, and she's actively involved with planning commission, which she's seeing her maps. So she's still concerned that she's falling in that tier three area.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. So it's basically just that unknown of what it all means. That's unknown. Yes, and

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: again, it's okay. So if we take away, you know, if we take some parcel out, how does it change? Yeah, exactly. How does it impact otherwise? The rural rule is a huge piece, especially that they're a big concern, I think, for our startup farms, for our new farms, is they will automatically trigger because that's starting with a home. They don't have an infrastructure yet. That's something that they're building for. And we're seeing so much growth in that area. And how do we capture that? How do we make it affordable enough to do that, to continue to build cold stands and viable businesses that will grow our food security?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And my understanding, and again, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but the road rule, the way it works is that it doesn't prohibit you from building, you just have to get a permit to say that it's Correct.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: And follow the permit. Which is, again, some of these, they're trying to live in a little bit off the land and Act two fifty, it will be a deterrent for them. They will be more incentivized to go buy a native New Hampshire rather than start a farm here.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I don't understand. I don't understand that

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: because- They see it as a return from affordability, from a process standpoint. It can be a lengthy review. Sometimes Act two fifty is great, and sometimes it's not a headache, and it can be done relatively quickly. But this is where, you know, education for our landowners is going to come into play, is what does the process look like for that single family home? Is it a full out two fifty review? Is it something more affordable? Is it something that we can work with? Because this is not a one size fit all. As we said, our money is unique. Our farms are unique. No story is insane. So how do we make it so we can still entice these people to come here? Have it be affordable and have it be attractive for them if they want both their family here and their kids in our schools and contribute to our food economy. Thank you. Oh, did you have

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: a Just a quick one.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yes. Sure. Thank you for your testimony.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I can relate to some of the stories that you told about some senior experiences. I think, you know, and you mentioned the the depreciation of the value of the property that's in tier three if the role will go into effect. Is is that really a significant consideration? Because I know I haven't actually thought of it in that light. Is that the value of my property is now diminished? Is somebody going to compensate you for that? Do you think that Farmers,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: we are hearing a lot of concerns in that. And I think a lot of it might be towards that unknown. But when an appraisal does happen on a farm, development is absolutely looked at. And if you actually conserve your farm and sell your development rights, that appraisal retracts that value because you're being compensated for it. So are we inadvertently doing that and taking that value from that farmer? And we obviously want be in full conservation by any means, but there is some value there and it is considered an evangelist of all. That's something to think about. Great. Great. Thank you so much to be continued and appreciate your testimony. Thank you. Okay, so.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: By the time.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, and that is very important. I apologize for listening to Seth.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I apologize, this being the last week, I think we started nine unfortunately. Okay, so we're going move on to, I think we're going to go just in the order that folks are listed. So we're going to move to Mr. Coster who is here. I know you

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: have very brief things to say.

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I try to be that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, you don't have to be brief,

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: but it's all good. Great, so good morning for the record. My name is Billy Coster. I'm the director of planning and policy for the Vermont Agency Natural Resources. And I'm here just to follow-up on some of the land use review board's testimony from yesterday. Act 181 requires municipalities to meet nine requirements to obtain tier one A designation from the land use review board. The idea there was that, as you all know, tier one areas or places where actually the jurisdiction will not exist once that's dated. So the act wanted to ensure that municipalities had sufficient capacity plans, programs, and bylaws in place in those areas to not entirely replicate Act two fifty, but make sure that the important stuff that Act two fifty did was being covered by the municipal land review that includes from our agencies perspective, impacts of floodplains, river corridors, consideration of public drinking water and wastewater systems, and impacts a significant natural communities where it's threatened to engage with species. We generally support this approach and we're working with the alert to develop guidance on how towns who are seeking tier one and that process. We've also met with a couple of municipalities who are seeking tier one A to kind of talk with them about what bylaws and other systems that need accomplish that. Through that process, we've identified one small aspect of those requirements that we feel that may not be feasible for municipalities to implement. Frankly, doesn't seem consistent with the overall intent of that. And I'm gonna hand out, I've got some handouts here. This is what the LERB used yesterday. So if folks have it, let's have it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'll take another one then.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: for those of you who have that, yeah, if you wanna turn to page 12, it's the second to last page. And at the very bottom, I circled it for those who have a new copy. There is a proposed change in section eight, ten BSA, sixteen thirty four. And if you look very closely on line, I guess what would be 19, it strikes the word brick. So that's the only change we're proposing. That requirement would still require towns to identify and plan for the maintenance of significant natural cleanings, threatened endangered species, but would no longer have a requirement that they address rare species. And I'll explain why we support that proposal. But first I wanna say in supporting this change, our agency certainly acknowledges the wisdom of protecting species of plants and animals that are known to be rare across the state as a strategy to avoid having them become threatened and listed, which is a more significant level of decline. The agency is certainly mindful of the ongoing biodiversity crisis and generally supports strategies for accommodating thoughtful development that also protects the interest in the endowment species. But we also believe that those concerns need to be taken in balance and consideration of fairness, good governance and the understanding of what proposed requirements was simply not feasible to. So in this instance, support the LERBS markup first and foremost, because Act two fifty does not currently regulate rare species. So what ACRA one eighty one does is create a new regulatory standard for residential and commercial development that will only exist in tier 1A areas, which is the place where ACT 181 is really trying to encourage further. So there seems to be just a general disconnect with the intent of tier 1A and this new standard that doesn't exist elsewhere in the state and doesn't currently exist in that two

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: zero

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: one. In talking with the municipalities, it seems to create an almost untenable in some instances of burden on towns to figure out how to do this, to figure out how to identify and plan for the mates of these mates. They're an order of magnitude greater than threatened with naked species. Our natural heritage shavings has about 100, 110 threatened species, 110 endangered species, and it has over 1,100 rare species. So there's 10 times more likelihood that these species may be present in these areas than the others. We also lack a lot of species specific guidance for rare species on how to avoid and protect them. We have a lot of that information and guidance for threatened and endangered species. So we're able to help towns and develop the bylaws or review processes to avoid impacts and maintain threatened and endangered species. We just don't have the same tools for rare species. So we're asking towns to provide the same level of protection to something that has 10 times the likelihood of being present without the same level of support that's been offered though. So we absolutely support maintaining requirements to address significant natural feelings, CNS diseases, but the rare species is one

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: that we thought was gonna

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: be problematic. In closing, I'll say this doesn't mean we're gonna ignore these altogether. We will have these relationships, dialogues with municipalities, CPTOA. They will be talking to us about the balance of these requirements. And in those conversations, if we're aware of rare species in these areas, we'll share that information, we'll share strategies protect and avoid them and encourage towns to kind of work proactively to do so, but removing the statutory requirement that they do so seem appropriate for the society as

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: a whole. So that's all I have for you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. I just want to follow-up. So the surrounding language in that document, what comes after is threatened and endangered species. And as

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I understand it, T and

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: E, right? Threatened and endangered is kind of a term of art and there's guidance on that as you mentioned. They're statutory defined. There's

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: a whole list that defines what their opinion Okay,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the other question, so the words just before that, significant natural communities, is that also defined? I feel

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: like that's the tier three but I'm curious, can

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you speak to significant natural communities?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Sure,

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: so in Vermont, well, of all, a natural community is an assemblage of plants and other living organisms and bedrock and soils that constitute a community. Northern hardwood forest, stagnant swamps, recognizable areas on the landscape. In Vermont, through the artificial water department, we've cataloged all the natural communities and we've ranked them on a scale of significance. So we do again have a list and the consideration of those does directly tie back to Act two fifty's criteria related to rare irreplaceable natural immunity. So we saw that there was kind of a parallel between protections in tier one A and protections in Act two fifty, which didn't exist for rare. Thank

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you. Any other questions?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yes. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: an act two fifty right now, rare, the time it comes up is rarer, this will natural varies? Correct.

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Yeah, the way the criteria actually only speaks to endangered species, but then the definition of endangered points back to our statute, which includes threat. So that's what actually goes numbers. Happy to follow-up with anybody.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you, appreciate it. We're gonna move to Ms. Gallagher from DRC. Welcome.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Thank you so much.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Thank you, chair and thanks to the committee for having us back. My name is Katie Gallagher. I work with Vermont Natural Resources Council as our Sustainable Communities Program Director. As the NRC has a long history advocating for sustainable land use planning and development, I wanna speak today to our general support for the bill and a couple of considerations moving forward. I have written testimony that it's submitted early this morning, so apologies that was delayed, but I'll

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: just keep on the key points to keep this brief.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: I'll say just in general, this is a really monumental law. I think that it's very sensible that there's going to be fixes and verifications that need to be made as we work through the process and figure out how it's actually working on the ground. And so we've been really appreciative of the solutions oriented collaboration that has come up from stakeholders and continue to shape these conversations beginning at this committee. So thank you for that. So we are supporting generally the extensions of several timelines to give us additional time for outreach and engagement. And then as I noted some technical corrections. So on extending the dates, for the vertebral tier three criteria in EC, I think this will help again, to ensure sufficient time for technical refinement, as well as extending the interim housing exemptions. As you think about the extension of the interim housing extensions, and I know Senator Bongartz had some questions around, is 2030 the right time? I just wanted to refer back to the conversations that we had in development of AC-one 181. My recollection is that we kind of set these initial, you also view this initial sunsets on the interim exemptions with the intent of kind of checking back and seeing how things were working, particularly their impact on smaller towns that generally rely on Act two fifty. So I just wanted to propose that if the committee chooses to extend the sunset to 2030,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a report to

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the legislature, then the income might be helpful way to identify any

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: potential impacts on smaller towns and identify

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: measures to mitigate those impacts. Moving down to the provisions related to tier 1A, so there's the verifying the permit enforcement for tier 1A areas. We think those changes make sense. It would not take away from the role of Act 181. This section, section eight on the tier one area guidelines update, we think that because you have the language in and related to the permit enforcement clarification that the update to the guidelines might not be necessary.

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

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: pause for Yes? A

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's because you're referencing some specific parts.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Are you, you're not looking at

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: it specifically, like right now. I just wanted, like I would love to follow along. Sorry. Yeah, no, you're

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: not being around right now.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You're up 2.2.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, on page 11, section eight yesterday. Page 11, okay.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: So this is section eight, tier 1A area guidelines. As I think the learner testified yesterday, they have been kind of working through those, the tier one guidelines. I think that what we heard in stakeholder testimony was that there was this concern from towns about the permit enforcement specifically in terms of that being kind of the big question mark as to whether towns were going to choose to become a tier 1A area, if they are eligible for that. So don't have a strong opinion if you want to keep in this section eight update. We just felt like it, because there seems to be still kind of questions about what we are trying to achieve here, he might have already achieved the purpose and the other language related to the permit enforcement.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: this basically, you don't think it's necessary. Correct. Correct.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: So then the section 10 going down to page 12 is the tier 1B appeals report. Think this study would be really helpful, makes a lot of sense of the 2025 fair appeals report did not really get into the challenges specific to municipal zoning permits for housing. A consideration that we're proposing since Biller has voiced concerns about them being the appropriate entity to lead the report, a legislative study committee could be an effective approach to help analyze the issue and develop policy recommendations. I also note that we've seen from several stable or some more potential specifics that could be added in to make that report even more pointed as to what we want to address. Then I have a couple other proposed changes to add into the bill. I believe you've heard most of these already from various people who have testified already. The first would be to streamline the process for accounts interested in opting into tier 1B so that they can do that outside of the full regional plan review process. This is really important to ensure that they can opt in when they are ready so that they both aren't rushed at the forefront and we give them time to do the necessary planning and regulatory work that we need to do. Speaking as someone who's on like year seven of updating their bylaws,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: adding the smart group principles back to

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the statute. As was noted, they were inadvertently struck. This is a really important change. They were foundational to our planning framework.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: They really need somebody back

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: in there.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Third, extending the expiration dates for regional plans that are five minutes to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: twenty six to the end of

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the year, just to kind of give reasonable breathing room. And then finally, similarly to the provision that you have in and related to allowing the Land Use Review Board to limit the Act two fifty criteria applied to projects that are triggered under tier three, we think it would make sense to also provide that same authority for the Similar kind of idea with the Rural. Divert rule if projects weren't being triggered except for divert rule or except for tier three, they might not need to have the full slate of Act two fifty criteria applied to evaluate their impact on those specific natural resources that the Rutland is trying to address.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So gonna pause there because I, we have talked about that idea and where, I believe, like where that idea lives right now is just in relation to tier three and does not, we don't have language yet about, and I don't know that it's in Baptist recommendations and I don't think it's in the LORB's recommendations to have that

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: same limitation on road rule.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Anyway, just flagging that, that I would value that. We have a protection. We do. Yes. No, I guess I'm looking, what I'm thinking about is like,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: specific to make that happen. Yes. Yeah, I mean, in relation to this conversation, we

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: had a confusing conversation about it yesterday related to the tier three and how to limit that, best weather to, it was actually about the word weather. And

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think where we ended up, but we don't have language yet,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: is that they should report back to us about how they envision doing this for tier three. So we could

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: also add to that the proposal.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Yes. And I think we've agreed that more specific language than whether

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it is possible. We

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: are happy to provide recommended language.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Think on our team, I'll just

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: say there's also kind of a disagreement as to whether a report back is necessary or the learner already has the authority for rulemaking to make both of these changes, but we are happy to.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think our legislative council attorney thinks that they can't do it without an actual statutory So they can't just write a rule to say we're not gonna do all of the criteria. So they have to come back to us and tell us how they would like to do it and that we could leave the changes to statute or how they would recommend it. One question for you. We're running out of time. If you would like to offer language about that, I would say the sooner the better. Yes. Okay. Thank

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: you, carry on. That is all of our recommendations. Okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: One, this is not necessarily a question for you specifically, but I think maybe for Mr. Metric, maybe for our legislative council. In the language that Ms. Metric, that you all had provided about tier 1B, I'm thinking specifically about your recommendation to allow municipalities to opt into tier 1B, whatever makes sense for them. I know in your language, had a new process that would apply to tier 1B areas, but I was unclear as to whether that language, because that

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: was a new process for amendments. I guess it is also to the status of the request.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So your sense is that that covers

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the asks that they can request a VITA?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes, Catherine Demetriuk, Northwest Regional Planning Commission. Yes, our language does address that tier one B request. The LERB did provide you with a markup to our suggestions that were better for their process and we support that portion of it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, super. Thank you. Any other questions for, let me see, I'll grab this point. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Okay, so we are going to move to Mr. Kempsey. Welcome.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Sort of feel like I need to just

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: reset my brain for a second. We had a draft and we did not get to finish walking through it with you the other day. So I think that is our first priority, is to continue to walk through version 2.2. And then I think the thing that is in order is to continue to have a committee discussion on how we as a group want to move forward and some of these suggestions. We we have you till 10:30, which

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: is great.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think you have longer than that now. Amazing. But you have other witnesses. We do. Just to flag the committee, we have one other review that we need to do of a different bill that's in development. So that is also going

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to be with Ellen. So that's sort

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of the lay of the land for the next forty five minutes. Okay, I'm gonna turn it over to you to continue to walk through 2.2.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Helen Jacobs, the Office of Legislative Counsel. So yesterday I was here on S-three 25 draft 2.2. You were discussing at the bottom of page seven into page eight, which was about the tier three rule making process. Then I ran to another committee. So there isn't that much else left in here, but you want to start with the tier three rulemaking or

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: do you want to look at that?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, so I think it

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: would be useful because we didn't really get to talk about the topic of change. Yeah. Right. I think if there's anything more that you want to add that'd be useful, because I would also, this is a slightly different topic, but I would add that I am interested in including in this the authority for the Land Institute Board to eventually be able to apply not all of Act two fifty

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to the road rule, just

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the parts that don't make sense or apply, but maybe that can be baked into what we're asking for at

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the top of page eight.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm curious if you think it should be

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: there or elsewhere, or if you have any other thoughts about Top B.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't. I would go and pull the rest

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: of the tier three women came on the bridge, and see what else it said. I don't have that actually. That's okay. But

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: just let's flag that like, we want to do that. Yeah. Okay. The top of page eight, the sixteen eighty six says, what is that? The activity criteria. Okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: just to clarify, so the idea is that we would be asking the ladies from being bored to come back to us with recommendations on how for statutory changes so that they could apply less than the whole slate of back two fifty criteria.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think that's what you are asking for. Yes. Yes. Yeah. But not part

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of the rule section because they can't just make rules about it because it might conflict with statute. So let me take a step back because

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I guess I'm also happy here to learn all sorts of things that I have with security. So my understanding is the Landed District Court does have fraud in moving in authority under the existing moving in statute in Act two fifty. And when you amended the Act two fifty jurisdictional triggered in Act 181, the language that you included itself is a little bit broad, but in note, and I'll read it to you, but in no other places have you given them authority to use less criteria. So I

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: think there is a little

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: bit of ambiguity in the tier three jurisdictional trigger

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that I think is a

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: little bit ambiguous of whether or not it actually gives them that authority. It currently has that they

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm not finding it.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The authority is that they have any development within tier three, as

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: defined by the rules of

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the board, trigger the need for a permit. And so it does say as fine than the rules, and so that does give them some leeway because you gave that very little detail in the

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: statute regarding tier three. I'm not 100% confident that that gives some reduced criteria authority. Perhaps they have an argument there to think

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: they too gently interrupt authority. That's why I grace this.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Most of that, having to hear what their lawyers say,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: but that's why I'm underneath an impression that

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: they do need a statutory change. Not just come alerts. Correct. Okay. But I do think they said that they didn't.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that they said that they agreed with that. Okay. And that they were like, we wouldn't know which ones you want us to apply or not apply. And so they need to come back and they need to think

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: about it and do some work and come back.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That was my takeaway from their testimony. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I'm happy to do that. I think that's probably the cleanest thing to do. I do see a potential other path because we have left that rulemaking sort of vague and we could say your rulemaking authority is to apply less than, all of the criteria as you see fit. But that might be, if the possibility that that might be problematic,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the statutory change I think is the better option.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Then if we were to do this also, well, actually, work with them.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Does that sound okay to the committee to do it?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But Yes. Go Oh, sorry.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: There's a thinking about this, there's if we do it in statute, that kind of also that it's their vision if we get by rule or doesn't. So I guess I was wondering whether better off than what by rule would be about to do it. Because once we lock in, it's a little we're locking in specifics statutorily, theoretically, they still have the authority to then to accompany who are making a board, but it's just or so it's always a little dangerous, but it's to get specifics in statute when we we actually wanna give them a

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: little flexibility and the ability

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: to think and rethink. So I'm I'm just wondering whether we'd be better off trying to fix it now to give them the authority, but I'm just interested in your response for that thing. I'm worried about something that's not an issue, I don't know.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So there hasn't been a rulemaking initiative in activity over ten years. So it's not as though you have a bunch of precedents on how they would treat the requests. I'm not aware of any other requests related to them changing criteria review. So I

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I wasn't thinking of the question, I was thinking about authority.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, I know, I'm trying to think if this is ever possible for and I don't think it really has. So it is definitely a policy choice. You are on LPAR. You have seen rules that come to the committee and how much authority LPAR has after something has been drafted. If you have a vested interest or a specific interest, being direct and specific is a good idea.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: If you are open to just seeing what they come up with, you could leave it to that. It's good. I would rather have them come back to report on what they want, what their recommendations are, and then we could, it would probably be, whoever's here next year, it would probably be a combination of rule and statute. We might still need to get them rule making 40 to implement what they're recommending, but

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: they might have completely different ideas about what they, how flexible they want to be or not than we would. And I think given how

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: controversial, important, you know, how much conversation there is around both of these things, having the legislature look at it again would be helpful.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I a problem with that. I was on the advice of just thinking out loud. Wanna make sure we go inadvertently, take it harder. Yeah. But I'm fine with that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I know we're going to be next, I just want to say that that's where my head was going as you were talking. It's like what would be asked for as a recommendation of statutory changes and rules that they would recommend that they have the necessary flexibility because I can imagine they need to rely on statute, but we want to give them the flexibility too for the shopping center in tier three to be able to navigate

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: a specific request. And is the timeline enough though? We're pushing out the implement, if we're waiting for a report back from them, do we need

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: to give them more time before these things go into effect? Well, that, I actually wrote down next to this, by when, like when should we, because ideally they would be coming back

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to us in time for next legislative session to say this is what we would need to,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you know. Right, but then if they have to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: make rules after that, I'm just wondering, and we pushed out some of the dates to 12/31/2027. Is that enough time? It's a good question.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: That's almost two years. We can get with one year ago. Probably not. And we'll go pay for now.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Know what, it's possible that with the December 27 date, could, it's less than ideal. We, then next year we could push it out again if we had to, based on this rule making, but you know,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I'll hate to, you know, push out too much. So, yeah. But ideally we would have this recommendation back from them by December,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: so that we can move as quickly as possible to make sure that those changes. Does that sound reasonable?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah. I'm still just worried about the time after that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's the Rule making and

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: having, and making sure everybody understands it. I mean, we just heard testimony about how confusing it is for people and making sure that if we're going to make, we're going to actually make it easier for things because there are fewer categories that

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: we want people to understand that. And I wish there was a, if there was language where we could just say, you have the authority to just do this now.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: You're- I'm big nervous about that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It might not do what we would want or there might be unintentional unintention to it.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay, Terry. So, mean, so that I'm looking at from S three twenty five. Yep.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So we've of taken a lot of information. We've got you know potentially bring that to Ben back in 2081 and a lot of the stuff we're hearing and stuff is rulemaking. Where we go, how does that affect point five?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You mean in terms of this particular section? Yeah. So I think the thought is that that's going to We need to set up We we need to get some recommendations for how the rules need to change and make sure that we have statutory authority to do the kind of rulemaking that we're envisioning. And so that's all going to have to roll out, I think, after please get

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: passed or amended potentially next year. That's going take even more time. I mean, it's all important. Yeah.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Everything we're hearing makes sense.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, okay. Let's keep going. Do you feel like you have enough clarity for now on

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: on what we're hoping for?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. Well, think, so I think the language at the top of page eight at least partially addresses what you're asking. Do you want it to say legislative changes or statutory changes?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, I would like it to be both statutory changes and the rule making authority. This is in the rules, this language right now. So rules adopted by the board shall include. We're not asking them to make rules right now. Okay. What we're asking for them is a report back. They shall report back to the legislature to the committees of jurisdiction by 12/15/2026 with recommendations for statutory and regulatory rule changes necessary to allow for fewer criteria in the review of tier three net road quote.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Got it. So it's dash 14. It's a goal making report.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah. Yeah. So I think you've just come out of that old rule making stuff. Okay. Before we go, I'm going just pick on Ms. Gallagher. Thoughts?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: If you don't have thoughts yet, that's okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I want to give you the opportunity. I think this makes sense. Okay. And maybe we should check-in the ballot afterwards on that to align proposed vertical. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay, let's keep going.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All right, so still on page eight, mean, I

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: think this is part of

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: what you're just discussing. Right now it says that the board shall file proposed rules with the secretary of state at Elkhart by 12/31/2027. I wasn't sure if you're still with that age.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think we are. And I think the Labour's Review Board had an earlier date, but I think this is

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: fine. Okay. Yes. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Section six has been added on the bottom

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of page eight and page nine, and I will flag that there are no changes to the statute of units. So this is a

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: miscommunication with me at the CHIPS.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: No, no, no. This is say I because I knew that this was going to come up and so I was like, let's look at the language. Sure. But I wanted to check with you all before we have to strike the language as opposed to, Mr. Kostra was referencing about striking the word rare. I am okay with striking the word rare, but I wanted to check with you before we

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: did that. Yeah. Okay. Yes?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I'm just thinking, so I think it sounds like Rare was kind of inadvertent this study came in last year, not enough thinking about. So I think it's probably something that makes sense.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. Can ask a question

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: about a comma on line five? Is the comma after threatened correct?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Is threatened and endangered a term that, or is it threatened, comma, and endangered? Yeah, so species can either be threatened or endangered. Okay. They're not both?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. I just remember

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: think it's T and E. T and E.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, yeah. So both both types of species need a permit, both T and E.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So you need to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: have a naked species permit for it. For the bread. Okay. So the comment is correct. Yeah. Okay. Usually. There's there is it's reminding me of I think it was in the this set of recommendations that was highlighting that there was the quotes that she brought up, which is a part of her law. Pavement Street. Yeah, Pavement Street. Oh, yeah. Which is sort like a similar- Well, was on my list to ask about. But we're not there yet. Yeah. That's a separate thing. We'll still get there. Great. Okay, let's keep going. So I think we're good to cross that out. Great. Okay.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So page nine, section seven, there are no changes from the prior draft in this section. This is amending 24 BSA 4,460, which is the authority of the municipal review panels. And so this has the language, it spells out first in subsection G, the process that municipalities are supposed to go through when they're doing a land use review of a permit application, a municipal permit application. So if you want to talk about that and how the permit conditions are transferred from an active duty permit to a municipal permit, that language is there. And on page 11 is where suffragment age is being struck and that it says within a tier one area, the appropriate municipal panel shall enforce any existing permits under active duty that has not had its permit conditions transferred to a municipal permit.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So this is where I repeat yesterday, talking about leaving this section and just taking out the word bond. Correct. So

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: don't words for words. Yeah. What's that word? Down. So, okay. So on one of what we're saying makes sense. Within a tier one area, the public must file shall enforce any existing permits under the NMAA section three fifty one that has had its prohibition emissions against murder, which means divide via the focus of benefit we should count on.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I disagree with that same Okay. Think

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Okay.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The purpose of this original enforcement language I thought actually worked well, but maybe it's not actually working. The appropriate municipal panel will always just

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: be enforcing their permits because the Act

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of 50 conditions have been uploaded into the municipal permit. And that process, getting rid of any Act two fifty old conditions that are

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: no longer valid, we're just enforcing their permit.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Because it becomes their permit. Yes. You're saying if anything, this is, it doesn't It doesn't work. Additive.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah. Even if you fix it.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, and then it would just be saying you would be enforcing an Act two fifty condition, a permit condition that may be out of date now. Because if it's gone through the municipal panel, there has been an update to the site in some way where there has been an amended municipal panel permit,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: but not an Act 15 permit.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So you're saying it's safe and strong, correct?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think so. But,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so. Yes, it is a cheesy question, thank you.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I have some suggested language from Paul O'Connor of South Burlington, which I just forwarded to the committee. His recommendation is to add language that would be a number seven under G, because his concern was about the actual transfer. And so his language was, at the time of final action by the appropriate municipal panel, conditions contained within permit previously issued to 10 BSA Chapter 151, as amended, shall be transferred to the municipality. So just makes it explicit about the transfer. No, you don't like that.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, it already says that. Okay. I mean, I'm happy to consider amending it, but No, no, no.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Go ahead. Can you just point me up?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: On page nine, in Subdivision 2 Of G. Okay, so for a development that already has an Act two fifty permit, is located in the Tier 1 area, and has now applied for municipal zoning of permit or amendment, subsection two starts, the panel reviewing the municipal permit or amendment shall include the conditions contained in

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the Act two fifty permit unless

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the panel determines that the permit conditions pertain to any of the following, which then lists ones that they can get rid of.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the panel shall include the conditions from the Act of 50 permit unless they're no longer relevant. Those changes have to be recorded in the land record. And then H said, the noise until panel shut out in force Act two fifty permits that haven't actually gone through that

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: transfer process. So I think it's there, but

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm also not able to look at his language. Well, yes, because you're making a slightly different policy choice.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: His age says that they have to enforce permits that already exist. So we're getting rid of that. And

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that just leaves that the permits that they have to enforce are

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the permits that have been amended in these ways on page 10. Correct? Yes. So I think it does do it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. I'm still unclear, but I am happy to have

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: more conversation offline. Sure. Okay. Okay. And

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: if hopefully with that explanation, if other folks in the room are still feeling unclear, like

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: let's talk more. Okay. Because if it's there, then we need to change it. Yeah, I mean, it feels

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: like it's a moment of like, if we want

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to put in kind of a hokey, we'd suspend our language.

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

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: You do not need to.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm willing to move on, but I'm just going to flag that like, I need to have more conversations about that to make sure that it's, make sure that I'm clear. Because I think I was trying to do too many things like reading too many options sentencing. So let's keep going.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Where are we at? Oh, section eight. Yep, on page 11. So section eight hasn't changed, but this is saying 10/01/2026, the board needs to update its tier 1A area guidelines to set procedural, ensure consistent application to the requirements across these policies. Did that say standards?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Yeah, it is a word missing.

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

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is an accidental typo, it should be standards. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Interested in the committee's thought on this. We've heard that there's a couple of groups that think it's not necessary. I mean, I have concerns about the consistency across time, but I'm curious for

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: your thoughts, what you would like to

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I think it's like a matter

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: of fact. It seems to me that they are kind of doing this along the way, anyway, and that anytime there's a new big process, things are gonna be all they learn from each time they do. But

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm a little worried that this would give them extra work to do because they need to like present something or produce something rather than just have it be organically part of the process.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Any other thoughts? So are you or are you

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: going to take the blame you child?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, I think it's not necessary. It seems to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: me that they're doing it anyway. Okay, but it was fine. Okay, yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: They said that. Okay,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: if it all becomes clear that they're not, happy to revisit that. That's perfectly fine. Okay. Thank you. Let's keep going.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section nine is amending the effective dates from Act one eighty one. So Subdivision 1 on line 15 is the tiered jurisdiction, the criterion AC.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And I just want to note, I'm sorry.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, go ahead.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Because we're in section nine now,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: yeah? Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I just want to note that the Lands Review Board's set of recommendations has this being pushed out to 01/01/2028.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Right, I think to make it consistent, we were saying December 31, which is one day different.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Either way, because we pushed a bunch of things to twenty to thirty one, you know, December 31.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I just wanted to know, it's at least six months or so out from that

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: date, but yes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Tell them to have it in the back of your head. At least if they said January 1, it's supposed to December 31. Oh. We worried about one day lapse. Just Oh. Just so that I'm not sure there there is or isn't, but that was the that's why they said January 1. So I'm not I don't remember the details of that. I remember that there's not a one day lapse.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I know you didn't. You brought that up.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Did they bring that up too?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: You know, it's too early. I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: don't know. Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I think maybe nothing.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That might be a thing that I will let the house figure out. That was splendid.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Mean, they had both of these. We have

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: them twelvethirty onetwenty seven. They had them both 01/01/2028, which I mean, if they feel like that's better, it's one day.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: They also said they trust that one. Just did it that way because they had that. Somehow they had thought there might be one day lapse.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I don't care. Either one is fine. I would just make them consistent. Yeah.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Just so you know, subdivision one there are the definitions related to HZ and the HZ criterion itself. Section 21 are the tier two and three jurisdictional triggers. Subdivision two, section 19 is the road,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the so called road jurisdiction.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I apologize, going to, I want to write that down. I think I have it written down and I took it out, but can you just say that one more time?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure, section 12 are the definitions related to criterion 8c. Okay. Horse blocks and compact measures. And then section 13 is actually the new criterion AC.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay. Section Are you on 2.2AM.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And it's on page 11, line 15. In the effective date sections. So these are the old sections that were in

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Act of 'eighty one. Yep. So 12 is the rules? No. Sorry. 12,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The definitions of course, blacks related to criteria 8C. Yep. Section 13 is actually criteria 8C. Okay. Section 21 adds the jurisdictional triggers for tier two and tier three. And section 19 is the road jurisdiction.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay, thank you.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great, so then they'll, and I'm changing those days to be 01/01/2028.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Whichever you think. Whichever you whichever you think.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay, yeah.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The last section, section 10, is this tier one B appeals report. It's on page 12. It hasn't changed from the prior draft. And so this is by 01/15/2027, the Landischief Board, after consulting with BACDA, BLCT, the NRC, and the Vermont Planners shall report to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the General Assembly of recommendations for how

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to limit the number of appeals of municipal zoning permits that can be brought against housing projects located within tier one B areas. First, identify mechanisms for permitting appeals that allow municipalities to address legitimate concerns of projects, and also identify the most commonly raised issues on appeal, evaluate statutory or procedural tools to limit duplicative or non material appeals and recommend legislative action necessary if needed, and then submit the report to default.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So the LERP does not want to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: do this. They don't think it's their jurisdiction. I

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: think they're also concerned that they have a

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: lot of other stuff to do and this would distract them from it. So I think those are compelling arguments. I think these organizations, many of whom are in the room, could just kind

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: of get together and do this on their own.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We can't direct them to me, but

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: they could do it and submit a report.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Y'all are always welcome to report.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, was appreciating the suggestion to make it a legislative studies committee. I think that would be fine. I think that would take some significant reworking of how this functions.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Think it's not a necessary thing to have a legislative. This is not, this is like, legislative committees are her big things. I mean, I know this is big for,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: but

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it seems to me like these organizations could get together and talk about how they could, and legislative study committees cost money, take staff time, they do all these things, and this is a municipal issue also. I just feel like it's not unless that would be material.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And also, know if it's a issue. It's a issue.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's a fair point too. I think they can just sort of,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: like I said, you're welcome to come and talk amongst themselves about it. Other thoughts on this? No?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I mean, if the land

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: use review board doesn't want Mhmm.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Would be hard for us to imagine that they're going to

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: do a good job with it, force students do something they really don't want to do, so I think we just can't let these people do their work.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'd like to put a pin in this one,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I'm hearing you that we do it,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: but most people don't want to do it. I'm not ready to jettison it quite yet. Let's Okay. Let's Let's put a hold on that one. More conversation to be continued, if that's okay. Appreciate

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Leave it in front of me.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Leave it as well. But appreciating that we're thinking about jettisoning it. Oh,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, we don't get any purchase. Okay. Great.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Well, are also some suggestions in the other. Yes, we'd love to talk through that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Unfortunately, we need to transition to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: a different bill at this moment. Yes.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Before we transition off to this bill, just, eight zero two homes yesterday did not get to set the vibe. I know I think I haven't had a chance to read it, I know VLCP submitted, but I think it might be a good time at this point in the next forty four hours to circle back to the housing people.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, fully agree. We need to get them We the have a fair bit of time tomorrow.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So I think that would be excellent to hear from them. There was a couple of people that we hear from yesterday, but yes.

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I know we definitely. Oh, was. I'm sorry.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Let's go

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: home. Let's go home. So we'll

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: hear from, let's look at them

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: on the agenda for tomorrow.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Commissioner, do you want to?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: If you want to. Yeah. Okay. Too high.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: It's been a while since. So

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: we have time tomorrow. But tomorrow's going to be, like, we're going to dive deep into this and try to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: get it. So

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: are we not, do we not have time

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to go through these, the VAPTA and LERT? I don't think we have time right I'm just say. So I just would like to go through all the stuff we have and

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: then have another draft and then have people react

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It gets really confusing to have all these things on the table that we haven't dealt with. Do you have

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: to work nights?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: It's not about that, I do work nights. I mean,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: well, we have,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: thinking out loud here, so, Ellen, you have to leave. No, you do not have to leave. Okay. There's one possibility is that, because we're on this topic and it is important, we could wait on a review of 03/28.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: We could do that tomorrow. It the housing bill. It's in my pocket.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. There are three zoning sections. So it's actually short, very short. So the records you'd like to do that sooner rather than later. And then the hope is to take some testimony on 01/1938, and then we need to talk about 02/25.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I mean, could wait on 01/1938 because I haven't even had a chance to review that draft. Sure. So we'll just do that tomorrow.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We can do that tomorrow. So what if we swap, if you're here anyway at eleven, if I'm not mistaken, Ellen, right? So we could just replace that with more testimony in 03/25. We're just, not testimony, going through it. Yeah. We do have some folks here

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: who are waiting to testify in 01/1938. So want to honor them,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: but then we could go back to 03/25.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Well, there's a new draft. I really like the chance to go to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the next draft, 138 before we get tested on the content.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Exactly how many changes to give

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: to add. And I've not had

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: that chance to do that. And so if, I mean, I see

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that people with apologies to Josh, but he's in

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: the building a lot. He can probably wait.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: My testimony is two minutes

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: on this. And same Samantha and Erin. The only one is Erin. And is Erin with He

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: said yes, but he didn't join virtually yet because one time he said ten.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: He said he's, ten. Didn't come on until-

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: He didn't come on and he's, he's a Zoom thing. So

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I don't know if

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: he's- Okay. If we could have you come

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: back

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: tomorrow and then we'll see if we can reschedule Aaron tomorrow. And that way, do you want to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: jump? That

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: way we could keep going until basically 11:30 on this. Think that would be great. I think that's, I support it. I would like to spend at least the last twenty minutes of that time doing 03:28. Does that make sense? Okay. So let's keep going on three twenty five for now and let's move to, just to check. I don't think we need to do anything more with the Landis' Review Board's recommendations. I think

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: we have talked to all of them. Preference would be to move towards, wait,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: have we talked about them? Let's just do a quick scan here and see if there's anything that we haven't talked it through from the land use review boards recommendations.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Had a recommendation on page two. I think we've talked through all of their recommendations.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: There's, you're finding something else.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: There's one that on page three, there was a question of whether to put a period online after River Corridor Mall period.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, so, and if I recalling, thank you, that was because the remainder of that sentence was going beyond

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: something. Yeah. The other, the other Intro, not to conception. Exactly.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, they were gonna

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: be at

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that stage to be consistent. I'm okay with striking the rest of that language. Yeah.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Suggested something, and I have a question mark. It's a bunch of them. I understood. We had a date change. I can't find it. Oh, okay. There it is. Yeah, that's it. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Anybody finding anything else we haven't talked

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to? Okay. On the LARS On

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the LARS LARS one. On So let's do, let's go to the VACDA suggestions. Okay. So, I

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: saw it. I don't currently have it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do you need a copy?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you have another copy of this?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so the first change is about recommending that they include the Community Investment Board in the initial conversations, pre purging or something like that.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: First, we need to speak.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, I was okay with including the key on the passing board. That seems good to me. The next part, there's reasonable evidence to that. I guess I don't have strong feelings about

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: that language on line 19.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: What's the date of this?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Yeah. I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: didn't really care about the language on the plan 19, you could do it or not. Yeah, and I think it's the next paragraph that's done more. Yeah, confirming that there's enough land to meet housing targets. This is one that I will say I have mixed feelings about.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: But so I'm curious for anybody's thoughts.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: This is completely your language?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yes. I think it is.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And what it's trying to do is to make it bigger. I think it's not like a pot. It's a big bottle of snow.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, that's my inclination at this point as well. Talk about that later. Yeah, I'm not sure about a substantial majority of these as well.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Impact existing IP.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Is it existing one? This is going be- Elsewhere. Oh, it's elsewhere? Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Is it defined? So happy to have to revisit that language, see if people want to press for that. But my plan for right now is to not include that.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: This next section about a new process for regional thin limits and tier 1B says.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Want to read through it, my inclination is to accept it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: This

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: is an attempt to This is supposed to allow for tier one B status approval in the interim periods, basically. There

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: are comments that the LERB has on this language. I don't know if folks have that.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Was that in the LERB thing?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: No, it's separate. Wait, it's a CTF, another. It's JT218. Okay, I'm not sure. Sorry.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: To I think it would actually be good to take just a quick break. Yeah. Okay. Let's take, let's just take a two minute break. Make sure that everybody has all the topics and everything. Okay. Yeah.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Think we have somebody who needs it. It

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: was posted yesterday. Yes. After yesterday's date

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And I have a paper now. Okay. Excellent. So be ready, we should have both Baptist recommendations and LERB's comments on Baptist. Now, Baptist, just the LERB's

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: comments on Baptist? Do you need LERB?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Did get Lurbs, I thought yesterday as well. It was here. I've got extra.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Okay. Right. So just looking at both of these. Yes. Okay. So I think we're up to part N, which is about the regional plan amendments. Now, the land use review board's comments, they add into that non minor future land use map amendments.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: And I find that in addition, quite non minor. Yes. I

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: don't love that.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: You don't

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: love that. Well, I would like, I'm sorry, I'll look at it in context. Is there already language regarding how

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: a minor is processed? There is, but that's that 10 acre change that we

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: can make without going through

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: the process. That's called a minor Yes. Okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Non minors are part of the regional plan amendment according to us.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So in tier 1B areas, status requests can be made separate from the regional plan approval or the amendment process.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think that's fine with me. This is all the top of the page two is all part of the same thing. Mhmm. That's true. I am up to the doctor adoption of the meeting plan commissioner's consent. Request alert, affirmative

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: determination.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Are there any concerns you have about the sign when she presents?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Not at the moment. Okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yes. Yes. Thank you. Sorry about that. I'm leaving your space. I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: am feeling okay

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: with basically all

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of section N, both one and two.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay. Unless there's objections.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: The Baptist has said that they're okay with the Lord's comments on their recommendations. Adding non minor. Adding non minor. So I'm okay with all of that. Unless there's objections, because we'll have

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: another chance to look

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: at this if it gets- Yeah. We put it in the middle.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Like the user itself, correct?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. So I think for now, let's just say we're good, unless there's objections, we'll move on. Yeah. The move on to an expired thing? Yep, I would like to include the extension for these plans so that they don't expire.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: That just the, would that include town permits or just the regional plans? What about town permits if it expire? I, so I'm just seeing this different time.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It just says regional plans.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So I don't, that's all I'm trying. And when town's plans expire, that doesn't,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: because they don't lose authority when they expire. Okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: But I actually haven't heard or read this proposal yet, so I'm not the person

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: to ask. And he's gonna ask you. It's what happened that this would just apply to regional plans, not municipal plans, and there's no need, is there a

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: need at this point to extend municipal plans? There could be an argument made that it would be beneficial because if a regional plan expires while we're going through the process of updating, if a municipal plan expired, we were going through the process of updating the regional plan, they're not eligible for tier 1B. Yeah, I mean, because I have a

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: bunch of my towns, including Middlebury, which- We

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: have one that's getting adopted the same night as our regional plan,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so we're- Yeah, know

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: going through the process of updating it, but it might delay

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: quantity. So you would like to add into that an extension, not just of the regional plans, of municipal plans? Yeah, well, reason I'm asking is,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: are there unintended consequences that I don't know about? So that's,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I would defer to you planners that know more about this than me.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: I can't think of any negative unintended consequences.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I know- Oh, was gonna if could just identify yourself for the record.

[Amanda Chan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: For the record, it's Amanda Chan from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. I would say in addition to what Catherine said about a potential benefit of extending is that while the FLU mapping process is going forward at the regional level, there's limited planning capacity for municipal planners rely on those resources as well and forum and vision capacity. So I think that's an additional sort of benefit to help us along. And I cannot immediately think of any negative unintended consequence of allowing extra time.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. Perfect. So let's do it for both

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: of Yeah. That's okay with me.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: No, just goes till the end of the year.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. That sounds good to me. Can you say?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Say, so I'm not inferring?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah. So that I think that

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: we, or any plans, any regional or municipal plans that expire prior to 12/31/2026, they shall be automatically, I don't know what the right wording is, but they'll be. So their language here is regional plans, I think you're gonna say, and municipal plans expiring in 2026, shall have their plan expiration dates extended until 12/31/2026.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, because I want to, I guess I

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: want to know the unit numbers you're talking about. It's only those that were set to expire before deciding to encourage them bring them all to the correct actors. Right. Okay. Yep. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. I think we're, any objections to that? Hey, let's keep going. So now I think we're in section x to x, it's 24 BSA 4352. Well, so sorry, right above that it does also say

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: adjust other parts of 43,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: 48 to conform.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I'm also gonna do that. Oh, yep. Yeah. Yep.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Thank you. May move to the municipal plans

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: or to conform? Well, believe it's to address the benefits

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of adoption, which is higher. It's got it. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I think I just didn't even process that. Oh, this is the energy planning. Yeah. I'd like to hold off on that. I realized this is, I think it would make the process smoother. I'd like

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to hear more about that before we adopt it. I do want to flag

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that Housing Energy's Community Bill correctly has language regarding updating

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: the process for enhanced energy planning. I don't know if this is the safe language that's in there. It's different language. We prefer the House Energy version. Now that that's moving forward, I think, oh, Bennington supposed to vote it out. This was a placeholder in case that didn't happen. Going to just

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: take this right.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: That's good. They've presumably taken testimony. And

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: we have worked with DPS on this language, so they had

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: to see it.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Okay. But we preferred the house version. Okay, that's great.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So now we're up to 24 BSA, 43, 48A, homes for regional plan. I have questions about the compatible with regionally approved municipal plans in terms of the deference that we were talking about. But I am okay with later in that paragraph, consistent with the smart growth principles in this title, and then ultimately adding back

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: smart growth principles. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I do want to just flag

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the smart growth principles were not appealed. They're in chapter 76. However, that section is sunsets in 2034. So having them somewhere else is

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: a good idea, but they did not get her pink. Thank you. That is

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Any

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: other comments about, it's like section 12 there, that paragraph 12. The compatible with originally approved municipal plans. Yep. I mean,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: that

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: seems like something we wouldn't want to do.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Don't know. I don't know.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: It's a policy change. So it's a tradition of trying not to do that. We haven't really been. I am in favor of that. Well, the extent we can create a system with this. I think it's change that we have fully gotten. Alright. I'm done. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's fine. That's that's fine. Let's keep going. We're into paragraph labeled a.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it just gets into the different categories of the doubt and the future language stems. Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think the key, well, there's, I see this as having three different, this paragraph having three different chunks of potential changes. So one is about the, you know, definition of, You know, is it traditional and historic or is it, or historic or historic? And then the mix of different elements. That's one piece which we should talk about. The second piece is this municipalities having more than one center, including merging centers and anchor, plant growth, village areas. Basically, the municipalities can have more than one. Then the third part being,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it's the intent that almost every town in Vermont should have at least one village center.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Going in reverse order, I'm okay with this last part about the intent that almost every town in Vermont should have at

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: least one village center. The LERB

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: has some recommendations for changes, but I think it's useful to include our intent there. Do you have some thoughts or not?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I would remind myself of the requirements to become a village village center because well, what there are a number of times I have no no no center, period. Mhmm. And then soil is a matter of the best. For a village center? So you can't have the soils. No, but do you have

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the console? If you want to make sure we're fair, what we're talking about here, these are as mapped in the regional plan. The designation program requirements are technically separate. It does say here in this section that currently under the Statute Village Center, they're not required to have water, wastewater zoning.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Just want to be clear though. Okay. Yes. I feel like this, I'm not sure what the unintended consequences of this might be.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: If there are any, I'm not sure if

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you understand it or not.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I feel like it sounds good, but I'm not, I don't know exactly what

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: it would mean to put that intent. I mean, I know it's just intent. And then the almost every town, it feels vague to me. So it's like

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: our intent is vague and I'm not sure what it means. So the

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: alert comments on this is it should say the intent is that every town in Vermont may have at least one village center, which

[Billy Coster (Director of Planning & Policy, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Oh,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: yeah. Because also the word should, it's like,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I kind of like that a little better. It's more clear and it also is a may, not a should. I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: do also like the municipalities may have have more than one center hitting emerging centers. And because that is true for a couple of my municipalities. I also like,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I do too. The danger is small. And what I but I'm also in favor of it. I'm just wondering if we need to define it better because I you you and I had this conversation, but sometimes need to shoot at their center of gravity and to allow them to do that instead of back of listening. But I just wanna make sure this doesn't just become one big blah that we can't scroll. And so we'll wanna figure out how to really say it will return to beer. Well,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: mean, I understand that concern. And I wonder, I mean,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think this is stating something that already happened, especially since it's a May. I mean, I think the town in my area that's a really good example of this is Flunkton, it has, a very, very rural town, but

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it has like two, three little four corners that are

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: like village center things. And they mapped it really well to have all of those things on their plan,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: but also conserved areas. You know, so I don't think there's anything

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: that is prohibiting it right now, if I'm correct.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: You know more than me, Catherine. But this is making it explicit that they may do it, so in case there are tasks appropriate.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: My thought is that we include this language for now, and if there's wordsmithing that we want to do, that we can think about that and come back to it. Okay, and then again, working our way backwards through that paragraph, the historic piece of it,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I know there's some controversy over that phrase. So one possibility is that we leave it out for now and hear more and potentially put it back in after we hear a little bit. Does that

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: make sense? It's okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: No, don't know what you just said. Okay. Do you want me to Okay, go so the

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: changes from lines 21.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Page one.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: On page three, lines 21 that starts with crossing out the orange from historic down through line 24 that says San Float. That one, we would not include that change. But we would include the line municipalities may have that left and left slide. And then the final lines, seven and twenty eight, that change, with the word Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Any objections to that? Okay, great. Let's keep going. Paragraph B, planned growth areas. These areas either surround or are adjacent to downtown centers or village centers. This is as a planned growth area, high concentrations of population, I'm fine with that change. Do have any objections to that sentence?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Which

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: one are you on? Want to

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: You mean this, right? Seriously, for sure.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Exactly. Yep.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Well, I don't know.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Feels kind of restricted to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I mean, we have this down probably before I maybe got down to the center. Well,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I kind want to go back to miss Demetriq on this because I because what you're if I'm understanding you correctly, it's like maybe they don't have to surround or be adjacent to downtown. So maybe they they could be elsewhere. Is that kind of what you're saying?

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: If they're planned.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do you have any thoughts on that, Ms. Major?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes, I have two thoughts. One is that is the very reason why we were seeking the language change from historic to traditional or historic. And so we can accommodate those areas that are planned for these newer growth areas that still meet the characteristics of centers. So up above, that's one of the reasons why we were seeking out language change. My second thought is if that's the route you want to go, I do think that that's a big policy change and would require you to amend some of the other requirements under the Plain Grove areas that require connections to the centers.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So you are not wanting to include that sentence? I am wanting

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: to include that sentence because I think it is important that they're connected to the centers. But the reason Okay. What

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: do you mean by connected?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: So they're surrounded, like connected in some way, they touch in some way, whether it's along the road corridor, whether it's a surrounding So

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I have a village center here and there's a really good piece of land over here that would be a good place for a growth center and they're connected by a road, is that okay?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: The future land use area on the map would

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: be to find a way to connect.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It would have to be adjacent. You're talking

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: about it. Land connection.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I don't know. Mean, I think that's just pretty constructive.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: I'm just saying that the rest of the statute as set up right now to meet the other criteria, it has to be adjacent to the center's contiguous in some way, but it doesn't actually ever say that in statute.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Doesn't say statute. But

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: it doesn't say it explicitly like that. I think this year, like what you're talking about, there's a good piece of wind that's, like the town is planning for and due to an emerging center. That is why we were seeking a language change of a lot in centers, is to accommodate situations like that rather than a plain book. So the same concept, but any to it.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So did you have a question?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: No. Was thinking my community's got a village in town, and and the planned growth area has water already too. And it's on the map, but it's in it's technically in the town. So Mhmm. So it's kinda outside. It's not really connected to the

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

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: The building center, but it's already pointing.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So is your information to non

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Well, before we move forward.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Mean Or is senator Beck, do you have more

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: any more thoughts on this one?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah. I just my only thought is things I think that's pretty restrictive, especially for areas of the state that don't even have downtown centers or Yeah.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: In this plan, growth areas, walkable, biking, That's

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: coming up. Okay. I would say, yes, if this is a concern that we leave it out. We just did that for my understanding. It was a concern for center. So this is a concern for center. Let's, okay, we'll leave it out and we can hear more about it if you want. Then there is this language in the next sentence that makes it again, or non historic. I'm assuming that we're going leave that out

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: as well. The historic is something to talk more about. Yeah, so we just leave all of that out and leave it out. We'll get more testimony in the house.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, and then, among the next page or the next, or later in the paragraph, these areas include new town centers, downtown, downtowns, village centers, growth centers, and the reason I had written down for leaving now is because these are already centers. These are or should be a part of the centers and not part of the

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: planned growth areas. And that makes

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: sense to me. Does that make sense to you, Melanie?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I like it.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is the damage to the growth plan.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Are you on line three, page one? Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep. So I was okay with taking that out, if that makes sense to others. Are you comfortable with that, Scott?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I was thinking this is all part of the same thing, but I

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: mean, I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So if down nouns, that's a part of A.

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

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Mean, can an elimination of sincerity, but does that make it more descriptive?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, so these are places that are in the future land use maps. And so I do see that if you've got one area that's called downtowns or village centers, that having downtowns be referenced in a different section is confusing.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, so I think we're talking about the difference of if the

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: planned growth area actually over the center or is adjacent to it. Oh, that's huge. That's where you're going for it.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes, I think elimination of this language gives us, but if you delete new town centers, downtowns and village centers, it gives us the flexibility to place them either in centers or in the Plain Grove area, whatever makes sense.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah, so it's- Okay, let's- Okay, yep. And does that include the non scare rupture block?

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

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So what about the language that's the line 33 on the bottom screen, line one on the top of the report? So leaving those AMs. Just trying to be precise

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: for Ellen. Oh, I was just

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: going to hold off on those because those are part

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: of the no. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: All right. And then, so on page four, line six, these areas should generally meet the smart growth principles definition and blah blah blah blah. So, I think the reason that we're deleting that is because

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: we're referencing it elsewhere. Yes. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So it comes up again. Where does it come up with that?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Because it's, I know it was suggested to be added on page three, lines eleven and twelve. So that way it refers to all of our future meetings planning and not

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: just specific. Oh, right. Okay. So we're not just interested in smart growth principles in planned growth areas. Correct. All

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: of them. I'm

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: okay with that change? Yep. We're good? Okay. So we already talked about page four, line 11, but think we're ready to move on to line 15. Is that fair? Okay, the area provides. This is under planned growth areas. Area provides opportunity for development, infill, development and redevelopment. I will say this one, I had questions about. I'm not sure that I disagree, but I had questions, So would love to hear more about that unless other folks are clearly feeling very comfortable about that. I'm just not sure what is this area?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: What in this area is so it's the, yeah, the and road areas. Okay. Let's,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: do the other folks have thoughts about this? I'm okay with the children. You're okay with it? Yeah. Okay, if I'm the only other night questions, I'm okay to include it. Okay. Sure.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay. Great.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Let's include it then. Rather than that's a paragraph, and this is my question on why is Complete Streets in quotation marks? So you probably proceed to drafting it.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Well, sometimes when something isn't proper, put quotes around it, but it probably puts quotes around it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: When it's lowercase too, usually it's capitalized if it's in a draft title. Where are you when we were looking?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Know what I

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the rule is. They will probably flag

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it when I get it to them. It looks just weird and it made

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: me wonder if it was a real thing.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, I know it's a real thing, but like, you know, sometimes you

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: air quote things like, oh, complete streets.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I was just, you know, it's like not real.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I do want to go

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: back briefly.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sorry, I don't want to interrupt. Oh yeah, that's better.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: You can

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: call me out. I do want to go back to III, Line 9, because the LERB had a recommendation that they wanted to replace within walking distance to say generally has multimodal connection.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Doesn't want to make it sound clear. You know, say more

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: than just walking distance, know, you can bike there, bus or something. I'm okay with that. That's all right?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So that's the letter of recommendation. Sorry, I think we're good to go down.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I just want, I do want just flag that the strikeout of Newtown Center and Growth Center is slightly different than what's above.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, because it'll, do you mean on line 11? Yeah. I

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: think it was consistent, will you explain what you're doing there? Yes, I will explain what we are doing. Line 11. On our eye line 11. Yeah. So this is saying that a planned growth area has to be generally within multi, has to have a multimodal connection using alerts language to the municipality or the neighboring municipalities downtown center or village center. We're suggesting striking new town center or growth center because they go away in 12/31/2026.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Okay. Great. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: There will be no new town center. Okay. By my count, we are up to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: paragraph seven or line 17. Is that fair? Okay. Mustered.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, it's a complete streets, and we're gonna find out more about that principles described in deleting

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: What's a complete street?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's a big question. Is

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: that main cul de sacs or does that have to Auto

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Auto lanes, lanes. Flight planning. Sidewalks. Yeah.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah. There's whole Yes.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's a program under 19 BSA Chapter 24 that is statutes that when new things are being built, it should have multimodal. So, sidewalks, by lanes,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it should be important to complete.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: The LUBS comment on this particular part says that it is The multimodal access is covered previously, so this is a miss.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: But

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: not in the whole paragraph. No, the gist the choice. So then yes to these changes. Yes. Okay. That's fine. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Now we're up to village areas. And I would like to hear more testimony about traditional versus existing. Like, is one that I, I need some examples why that is an important change. So should

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: we hold off on these three?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Don't have that traditional versus existing piece go. We can let that particular change go.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, you can let it go. Okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: One last thing to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: talk about. Okay, down to Line 27 and walking distance from the street. Are we okay with the or, not the and?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: So, I missed them. Line 25. I'm okay with that. Sometimes it works for

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: things matter.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I really don't.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep. Live within. I'm appreciating a reference to the downtown center or village center instead of the core.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Well, that's, well, it probably is

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: a little bit of a typo board.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Oh, okay. Right? So, to that one point, maybe you kind of got to this board. I think

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that is actually I should've

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: heard about medicine when they were So, okay, we'll do 27, the addition for 27, 28. These

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: areas include existing village centrist designations and similar areas statewide, which is larger than those.

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Oh,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: this is confusing because we're no longer in the planned growth area section, we're in the village areas. Yeah. And to say that, well, I guess it is a village area, but it's larger than the village center. You can see it, I can see that. But any comments about this, Ms. Demetri?

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes, because village centers are actually included in centers and not in village areas. That's why we're proposing deleting this.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, because this is just a proposal that it's encompassing, that

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it was the maps of

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: her lab. We don't have maps of

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: her That's also a remnant.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Because originally they were all encompassing.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Got you. Okay. Don't want it to overlap. That makes sense to me. Any objections to that? Okay, great. Top of page five. I'm okay with changing from municipal to public. Yes. Great. Okay, the area that's on line five. There is some opportunity for infill development, new development areas where the village can grow. Supports the development of housing to be envisioned. Housing targets, any questions? So, housing targets? I've had questions about housing targets. Do you have questions about housing targets? So, Martha, hold off on that panel.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Oh,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: in front of support?

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: In front of the district. Regional,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: are you suggesting? Oh, yeah.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Hopefully, we'll be supporting both, but

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

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Is that

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, let's talk more about that one. Moving on to enterprise

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: areas and hearing Senator Hardy's comment from yesterday, oh,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: about Eric Mines next to you. Yeah. Appreciate that maybe they just are, but this is one that I think based on your comment and agreeing that do we want to have industrial parks and or mining next to and planned growth areas include housing. So, yeah, think I'm not comfortable with this.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I would want more, you know,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We can talk more about it. I'm seeing that you have things to say about this, so to be continued on

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: that one. So no for now, but we can come back.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Rural word conservation. This is the whole maps are not regulatory and these areas change. They

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: don't want them on the regional planning maps because it's not part of their responsibility. I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: had questions about this. It's not that I don't want to include these, because but there's two sentences here and it feels like two very different things. So the first one being about the 30 by thirty, fifty by 50. Actually, just like to take the temperature of the group. What's your sense about that particular sentence?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Like twenty one and twenty one?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, twenty one and twenty two.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: 10 BSC, D9,

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: that's 15 by Yeah,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: 30 by thirty and fifty by 50.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: And this is just saying that the regional planning maps are not ones that,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: right? Well, the first sentence is about that these policies are intended to help meet those goals. I feel like this is a bigger question and I'm inclined to keep the strikeout because I think it's kind of a different topic that is going to need more attention.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I agree.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But what do you think Senator Bennington?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Well, this was in here, This is current law. And I remember this, Scott Beck, the phone yesterday. Last year. Two years ago? Two years ago. It was mostly just so people could in one place, with the transparency over it, see where everything was once hot, once hot, and I definitely believe.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: The Lerb's comments about this are in the actually, they don't

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: have a comment on this sentence. They have a comment on the next sentence.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I'm okay to take your comments. Was for to help people understand where it is, where they are, and hopefully the regional commissions roll out some of the methodology. Some way to do that. Right. And

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: actually now that I'm reading it, the Lerb's comment is that neither 30 by thirty, fifty by 50, or the tier three areas are influenced by the regional plan maps. So, that, I'm okay with taking out both of those pieces,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: unless there's

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: As far as you can.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Okay, so we are going do that. Okay. And we have a little bit more time here. Okay, with the exception of pre existing non conforming designated That's improved. Oh, this is one of part that we said was duplicative. I don't have strong feelings about that. It's actually duplicative. Can we ask you to look to see if it

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: is in fact duplicative? If

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: it is duplicative, fine to

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: take it out. If for some reason it is not, let's keep it in. That sound reasonable? Okay. Oh

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: yes, the meeting investor program. For what it's worth, I liked the idea of having references back to the future land use map areas, which is done for planned growth area, and it's done on line 24 for village areas. I'm not on the other page. Yes. Well, the sprawl repair is just referencing smart growth principles, which I think can, I think we're agreed that we're going to want to add smart growth principles into a permanent part of statute? Adding a reference there,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think is fine. The one note I had

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: on this whole section, since the community investment program is run by ACCD, was to make sure that they were comfortable with these changes before we mess with that. So I think we should have Michelle's not here now. So Jude, if we can add, make sure that we are adding Alex Farrell to the agenda for tomorrow, that would be good. I did. Okay, amazing. Then out of your reference under downtown centers or village centers,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: I think that makes sense. I I guess my inclination

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: is to make those changes and then let them comment on it, unless you think we should do the opposite.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Should we wait, should we not do it?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Them I'm very skeptical about changing this work, plans for the tax credits. There's not a lot of money and it's going to get diluted and it's going to develop better where the whole point was historically. I think Yeah, think this is

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: a pretty big policy change.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: This is a big policy change. We shouldn't pay the line.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. So are you Sorry. So I wanna make sure I'm understanding. Are you saying don't do any of the changes for the community investment board program? Or are you saying just don't do downtowns and villages?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I think what we wanna be here is that not including the tax credit program. So Crossing out on 05:15. Working with the store. That's a huge change.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. I guess this full section, section, before putting it into the bill, we should have the commissioner because Senator Bongartz is right. This is the sort

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: of basis for a tax credit program and it could have unintended consequences. That's fine.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So we'll leave all of this as is for now, get some comments from ACCD tomorrow about this and go from there. It's also a policy.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah, it could be actually be a grand policy. So like he may be in favor

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: of changes and we may not want. Yes, go ahead.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: If I may add, we should go have Commissioner Farrell come in. We have worked with them on this language and I'm sure he will express that support when he is able to come and talk with you. One of the reasons why we're proposing to meeting a portion of which is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places is that is a potential stumbling block to designating some of our centers that make sense as centers. For example, Market Street in South Bruin. For example, village of Killington at the base of the mountain road where they have really worked to build their new center. And so it is for those reasons why you're proposing deleting it here in the overall definition. I will note when you get to the designation program itself, centers have steps of eligibility and already in statute, because this is a bit of a conflict to reach step two, you have to have a portion eligible for listing on the national register. So this change will just mean that a small class of centers would be able to be designated as centers and get certain benefits. But to get to step two, you would still need a portion being eligible for the designation, which is already in statute.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So it's a bit

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: of a conflict that exists now. And so we're just trying to clean

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: that up.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, that makes sense.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So you're saying that this would have opened up eligibility only to the level one benefits. Only to the level one.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Only to the what now? Level one.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: Yes. Step Step Yeah. Thank you. That's tier.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: And they go opposite in numeric. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: So I'm sure Michelle Grill will speak to that,

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: but before you had too much space from that conversation, just wanted

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: to point that out. Okay. Just really quickly, This next section, don't, I don't have thought about line 32. I don't have thoughts on line 32.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: This

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: is still in the chapter on community investment program. Maybe we just leave it. Okay. We're gonna leave it.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: We're gonna leave.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, not because we're not doing the changes. We're gonna hear from Alex tomorrow. So that in my mind includes line 32, I think. Would mention a very

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: We small can save a smart growth area, which is on the last part.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: We decided to do that, right? So that's easy. So I'm, well, I'm considering putting

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it in chapter 39 unless you think

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: it should go in 01/2017. I think wherever you want to put it, as

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: long as we can reference it from this

[Catherine Demetriuk (Northwest Regional Planning Commission)]: one is the most important part and

[Katie Gallagher (Sustainable Communities Program Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: that it doesn't go away after 2034.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep. And then on page seven, there's a block of language that's deleted because it might be duplicative. Again, if you could check to see if you think it is duplicative. Nope. If it is, great, let's take it out. I think

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that it- People should. You see headaches again. If

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you think the, well, I realize there are some pieces about sets here, which seem like they are just clarifications and alignments. If that's true, if

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it's just clarifications and alignments, great. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think that actually brings us to the end of it. Actually, is one other thing I do want to note, sorry, about Smart Growth areas. I just want to flag, I is a new idea that was not in the Smart Growth Principles as they used to exist. And I'm okay with including it for now, but flagging it for discussion. Okay. Thank you. We're gonna move on. Thank you, Ellen. So grateful. Thank you everybody who was here for this discussion. I need like thirty seconds to transition my brain. We're gonna switch to two twenty four.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Okay,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: we did not actually think of rates, we're still going. We now have a new draft of 02/24, and because the secretary has a time limit, ready to start with

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: you?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes, no enough concerns. Take it away. Sure.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: For the record, Julie Moran, Secretary of Natural Resources. As some of you may have seen, I did send a letter this morning outlining a set of concerns around the weight sports, weight votes portion of S224, And what I see is some conflicts, the work being done in that bill presents with the draft rules that we are moving forward. I've tried to identify and summarize those areas of conflicts, but I would say the long story short is I've asked the team to pause their work up in rulemaking while we start this hour. I am concerned we're gonna end up at the other end of the legislative session with changes to the underlying statute that require us to change the list. Just to sort of take them in the order they're presented in my letter, the first is this bill talks about wake boats and our rules really focused on wake sports. This is a recognition that we chose can be operated as a traditional motorboat. And so it does feel like an important distinction and in many ways substantially changes the regulatory construct if we're talking about wake boats versus when wake boats are operated in weak sports mode. The next potential challenge or inconsistency, obviously, is around the home lake registration and single lake use restriction. Our draft rules really are focused on that hot water flush requirement and in order to achieve AIS aquatic invasive or invasive species decontamination. The approach we have in there was developed through stakeholder engagement and a reflection of the resources available to us to actually do this work. The idea of the home link provisions that come with the vessel registration, and then the oversight of that creates the potential for a significant workload or frankly an unenforceable rule. And it obviously would supplant the regulatory approach that's currently reflected in our draft rule. And just flagging, we also don't have the resources to do what's envisioned in S-two 24. The next piece that we've identified is around decontamination standards and service providers. The idea being that we would register or have approval of decontamination service providers starting as soon as the summer. We don't have a program to do that. And so the idea that that could be in place by, in time of the 2026 voting season is simply not possible. And instead our goal is set for performance based criteria. So we would hold decontamination stations accountable to meeting those criteria, but not necessarily an approval process for decontamination service providers. The next piece is one that I'm sort of looking to the future. The way we have developed our draft rules is we have established a set of criteria where wake sports can take place based on the number of contiguous acres, the minimum depth, the distance from shore. The S-two 24 secondtion two sort of turns that around or asks direct the department to make a lake by lake list of water bodies that are Wake Sports eligible. We have over the last several years seen dozens of petitions in this space, both the initial petition that caused us to go through the rulemaking and subsequent petitions that have been filed by individual Lake Watershed organizations. I believe this would result in an equivalent, if not even larger number of petitions coming to the agency. These are incredibly resource intensive for us to work through these petitions. And this is a different framework that is being presented in our draft rules. So again, it would require us to overhaul what we've done there. The last two are probably the ones that are most easily addressed. One is there is some conflict created between S-two 24, potentially other parts of statute, I think regarding enforcement jurisdiction and penalty structures, and just getting clarity around what is intended there and making sure there's one set of rules that apply feels really important. And then there are several definitions. The first one, aquatic nuisance inspection station. In our rules, the word species is there, I believe boat washing unit and decontamination service provider are either inconsistent with the draft rules we have, confusing, or inconsistent with what we've heard from folks engaged in on the ground operations. I do also have some feedback on the access area and fishing tournament language, you are inclined to hear that as well, but also happy to pause here and answer questions you may have about the concerns around the exports.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So you're in the process of making new rules. The existing rules have only been in place for less than a year, or a lot of years.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Little over time. Do you

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: have any scientific data that says your the original rules didn't work, that the archives and soil erosion on the on the shoreline? So and what's the process that can maybe my ignorance but when when health care makes the rule, they say that that meets the legislative intent and all of a sudden because petitions have come in, you've started rulemaking again. Don't you have to go back to the legislature for that?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: They started with the last point first. The existing statutory construct is when we receive a petition under the use of public waters rules, we are required to take it up. So it doesn't require legislative approval. We have to consider it. We received, I think in total 12 or maybe a couple more than that petitions from individual lake associations following the original statewide rules. Those in many ways are different, right? We took statewide action and then these were lake specific concerns that were being raised. We carefully reviewed all of the petitions and the supporting materials they provided and made two decisions based on our review. First was that we continue to believe that wake sports are best regulated at a statewide level, as opposed to any weight by weight changes. And then second was there was some additional information provided about sort of the operations of weighted boats that caused us to look at changing those criteria. We also proposed to eliminate the home label in our rules in order to, just in a reflection of the fact that we couldn't come up with a reasonable way to implement that program that would create the right level of accountability. It would sort of be a rule that was unsupported by our ability to ensure compliance. And then the last piece in the rules that are currently in draft would give the secretary discretion to put in place a time limited restriction on weight book usage. That was a concern raised to us specifically by folks adjacent to Lake Carmine and Lake Moray, both of whom have recently gone through an alum treatment and asked if there was sort of an accommodation that could be provided in the first year or two following an Allen treatment to make sure that that sort of settles into place. And so the goals would also provide that flexibility for us to say, is a time limited restriction based on some action that's been taken within the lake.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I can see those last two weeks and doing it there, we've already got rules in place. People got weight loss and they can be operated and a lot of them haven't left their body of water there and they can get operated out of wake mode so right

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: and that that is that concern about wake boats as is described in S224 versus wake sports which is really what our rules focus on. So why did you change the wake sports to wake sports? We continue to regularly wake sports. Wake sports know that one of those boats are operating, wake sports.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do have a question about one of your, so number three on your list about decontamination standards. Mentioned here that the bill would require the agency to initiate approval of decontamination services. I just want to clarify because it's I want to make sure that we have the same understanding of what the bill would do, which is that starting July, the intention anyway is that it would develop, that ANR would develop a, a process to approve decontamination stations. They wouldn't have to be approving decontamination stations by July, which is why we had offset, the requirements for decontamination until think it was like July or January 1, that

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: it would be, there'd be six months to develop a process for approval.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Does that make sense? It does. It may just be the reading. Right.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I just wanted to make sure that we had the same understanding of that. We would not expect you to be approving decontamination stations starting in July.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: And I would just reserve the right to go back and check

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: with the team that Steve did

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: this and brought additional feedback. That's perfect. Appreciate No, if I didn't miss no,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: no worries. And then, I don't think I have any other Well, feel like I'm understanding the comment about definitions, I'm understanding the comment about enforcement, wake sports. One part that I Can you explain a little bit further? Well, think I understand what you're saying, three d, because your rules are changing lakes that can have wake sports on them. Somehow our reference to she'll operate only on lakes authorized by the department.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Correct. Cause that Conflict. To be Yes.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not sure I understand that. Offensive conflict?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I may need to have our legal team answer that question, but I think it is us proactively certifying the lake as opposed to establishing a criteria and then simply listing the lakes that meet the criteria.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So one possibility is maybe we just reference whatever process you all have, because I don't

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: think the intent is to try to create a new list. We're just trying to, and so if the phrasing is problematic, think there's a way around that potentially, you know, in whatever criteria you all put together, then sure.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. That. Yeah. I mean,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: in some ways it would be the

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: directed to establish criteria in our rules to ensure wake boats operating, wake sports mode are being done so on suitable water And

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: then if you don't still have Will, the last part is about the whole registration. I'm not sure that I have a question about that yet. I think I'm still like just percolating with that. Yeah, but

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: so Senator Bennington. That was actually my question was about the enforcement concerns, because

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think we were trying to come up with something that was enforceable through the registration of the vote with DMV. Like, votes have to register already. They would have to pick their lake and register it at that point. And so I'm assuming there's some kind of process just like cars that I don't have a boat, you know, you could have Fish and Wildlife or somebody or Coast Guard or whoever's monitoring boats would just ask to see the registration of the boat if they wanted to make sure they were on the correct home lake or if they moved, then they've decontaminated.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: So, yes, and that would be a terribly incomplete system. Don't recommend anyone is pulling votes over to check their registration specifically. Enforcement is really around safe operations. And then to the extent folks are engaged in fishing to make sure that they have valid licenses. Right. And so this is creating a new category of violation of the workload and something that I think the experience of my team and others that have gone out and watched weight boats being operated in weight sports and non weight sports mode over the last couple of summers is that on my side, it is almost impossible to distinguish weight boat from a non weight vote unless it's being operated in weight sports mode. And so just as I say, our ability to effectively, to have that be a compliance check. That's

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: totally fair. I mean, I'm just wondering kind of enforcement of any of these types of things sort of happen in conjunction with somebody else, something else happening. So if the fishing wildlife game ordinance checking somebody's fishing license, would they also ask for their boat registration potentially?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: There may, I don't know that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I suspect they do, just if

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: you were pulled over for some sort of violation, but speeding,

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: they might ask to stay Right, so that's what I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: was thinking is that the enforcement would be in conjunction with other types of enforcement. But I don't know, I'm just trying

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to figure out how to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: make this work. And I do also, the distinction between wake boats and wing sports, I think is a fair one because we did get testimony from wake boat owner operators that, you know, they can use their boat in non wake sports mode and it's just like a regular motorboat.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: That seems like something we could talk about, but is it, I guess, say similar to center lines, science, sorry.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Fine. Money that's center wants. Whatever this wants me. Is it possible at this point to make the bill compatible with the rule making that you're doing so that you don't have to stop your process? Because you're pretty far down the path with it.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We are pretty far down

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the path Yes, with

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I think it is. It's just this tension that occurs when there's work being done on the underlying statute at the same time we're attempting

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: to adopt rules. Yes, and I think that we, when we were getting testimony from your people,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: maybe that wasn't made clear by both parties.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I don't think so at all.

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

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Last minute, again, after we've been working with this for two months with nothing saying this is an issue.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Now two days before the process were implemented, what's going on? To be frank, this is when it came to my level. I think the staff were managing at their level. They were working through it. They were providing testimony. And as it was raised to be both in DEC and I'll share some concerns on the official wildlife side too. So wait a second, why are we continuing to work on rules if the underlying statute is being changed? We're constantly receiving pressure for votes to try to complete our rulemaking in advance of the coming voting season.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Think- Which is fine, I certainly

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: have a question. I hope everybody else in

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: the room knows the answer to this, but I'm gonna ask.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Is there a pro ambition in Vermont on a boat that is not a wake boat, that's not a wake boat participating in wake sports?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I don't think a non wake boat has the ballast capacity to generate the wake for wake sports. I can't say that with certainty, I'm not a motorboat expert, but the ballast tanks are very critical.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I mean I've seen boats where they put six people in the back and they drive around and know 11 miles 11 knots or whatever and they put a wake board out there and it's not a wake boat but it probably doesn't create the wave that a wake boat does necessarily but people do it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: But, you know

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Yeah. So it's not prohibited.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, what I hear in your question is, like, if

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: we change it to weight sports, is it somehow more prohibitive?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah. So it's kind of

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: a question I'm kind of mulling over.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Yeah. Or more, to put it another way, more effective. Oh, sure.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I I don't know. I'd have to think about it, but, you know. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Let's, we've got a little, only a little bit of time left. Okay. Would love to hear your, I realize this is not in this letter that you just, that was provided, but if you have concerns about the

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: fishing tournament portion. Sure. On behalf of the Fish and Wildlife Department, in section 11 of the bill, I'm sort of understanding and appreciating what I believe is the intent to ensure that acquired nuisance inspection stations would need to be permitted. Having them listed under an authorized activity seems to occur in section 4.4.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, you're not talking about fishing tournaments. You're talking about Well, I'm sorry. Starting in text 11. This is page 21.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: You on draft 9.1?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I'm on draft 9.1, page 21, heading 4.5. Okay. Earlier in section 11, it does indicate, or maybe it was in section 10 that the stations would need to be permitted by the commissioner, but then they're listed as an authorized use. It does say approved, but the word permitted, I think would make us feel more confident that everyone understands that we have discretion in terms of allowing this, reviewing and allowing these stations to be placed at fishing access areas. In section 12, the asks, yep, starting at the very bottom of page 24, they ask that there be notice provided by the tournament organizer or by the department to the municipality or municipalities in which the tournament is proposed. We can commit to posting this information on our website, but the commitment to distribute by the applicant is potentially cumbersome. And they may not have that information necessarily readily available. You can imagine certain lakes, touch multiple municipalities, multiple tournaments, but our hope would be that making that information publicly available would satisfy the needs, and that is relatively straightforward for us to be able to tend to because the tournaments do register with us. And then finally, just on page 27 of 28, the language around requiring the commissioner to require the applicant to reimburse the municipality for costs to ensure the drinking water source is not contaminated. Our legal review suggests that creates a buyer than liability, and it is nothing that's important.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Question regarding,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: is it because it's the commissioner that is required to, the commissioner is required to basically go to the applicant to recoup costs. If it was just that the applicant is required to pay the municipality and then push it out.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Ensuring the source is not contaminated is very broad. There's no

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: de minimis anything in there

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: in terms of what contamination involves, You know, it's extreme, one cigarette butt thrown overboard can be considered contamination or a piece of air trash. And so it's just, as I say, it does create a wide open viability. If it's around gasoline powered motor, like, More specifics in there might help, but as drafted, it would be impossible. Too broad.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: That's good.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, that is helpful. Actually to be fair, I want to recognize that we are overtime right now and you got to go. We're going to talk more about this tomorrow. We do a new draft, but I'd also like to hear from Mr. Carpenter on this. We'll schedule some more testaments tomorrow to revisit this draft and all the

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: things that you brought up.

[Helen (Ellen) Jacobs (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So thank you. Okay.

[Mary White (President, Vermont Farm Bureau)]: Apologies. Okay. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So with that.