We heard from developers, both subsidized and market rate, this week that things need to change if we are going to hit our target of 7,000 new units of housing annually. It's not one thing, it's all the things. Lengthy appeals processes delay projects and drives up costs. The cost of materials skyrocketed during Covid and has not come back down. The shortage of labor is really impacting both the cost of doing business as well as construction times. Cost of financing development is also too expensive, particularly for developers as they can face interest rates double that of homeowners to cover construction costs.

The Education establishment provided mixed feedback on Governor Scott's education reform proposal this week. They generally focused on the need to provide "sufficient funds" for education and predictability in funding. Of course, the teachers union already took a shot at the Governor because they rightly concluded that cost-savings would be generated by staffing reductions (both teachers and administrators). We already know that a driving factor in Vermont education spending is our ultra small class sizes; it seems like others are also catching on. They also took the opportunity to attack the 3500 students in tuitioning districts who chose to take their tuition dollars to independent schools.

The Senate Economic Development Committee and the Senate Natural Resources Committee met jointly on Thursday to review the House changes to the Act 250 bill, H.687. Representative Bongartz was there to help walk them through some of the changes. There were some minor changes to the implementation dates. The first major change is that the Land Use Review Board (formerly the Natural Resources Board) would not hear appeals to Act 250.

Chairwoman Kornheiser opened the Tuesday House Ways & Means Committee meeting by sharing the Representative Demrow had a suggested amendment to the housing and Act 250 bill, H.687, which the Committee had some jurisdiction over.

This year’s “major” housing bill, H.687, reached the Senate Floor on Thursday for an informational session. Senator Ram Hinsdale stressed the need for additional housing and the replacement of the 5,000 housing units damaged by the recent flooding.

The Senate Economic Development Committee convened on Wednesday morning to review the new version of H.687, which incorporated parts of the bill they had worked on earlier in the session – S.311. Chairwoman Ram Hinsdale noted that there was a new amendment from Senator Bray that had just been released. She noted that Bray was claiming this amendment was the “holy grail of negotiations” between her and the Senate Natural Resources Committee.

Peter Tucker (Advocacy & Public Policy Director, Vermont Association of Realtors) joined the Senate Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday to discuss S.311 and H.687 which both deal with overhauling Act 250. He was excited at the prospect of the “ways these two Bills will end up working together,” suggesting this is a “real opportunity” to reform land use and housing development. He acknowledged the work of the Summer Study Committee and the Natural Resource Board (NRB) and study of land use designations and the realtors association were participants in both.

The Senate Economic Development Committee spent most of the week working on their draft bill titled 'BE Home'. The bill would overhaul the current Act 250 framework and development designations into a new mapping structure.

The Senate Economic Development Committee met on Friday to take additional testimony on the latest draft of the BE Home Bill.

Elizabeth Bridgewater (Executive Director, Windham and Windsor Housing Trust) thanked the Committee for prioritizing housing issues and seeking ways to make the development process itself faster and more efficient. Reforming the appeals process, she believes, is particularly needed as she “unfortunately has some experience” with this.

Chairman Bray kicked off the Senate Natural Resources Committee meeting on Thursday by acknowledging that Legislative Counsel has done great work producing a “very long bill,” S.308, based on the Natural Resource Board (NRB) recommendations. The core bill concepts were presented to the Committee, but they did not do a full walk-through because of the length of the legislation. The “advocates who are in this morning” were encouraged to respond to the draft with comments and concerns about the draft.