The South Burlington, Vermont City Council is discussing community resilience and biodiversity protection.
On Monday, the council heard an overview of and discussed how to meet the provisions of a bill passed in the previous legislative session that is intended to enhance community resilience and biodiversity protection.
Act 181 was passed in 2024 to help the state and communities mitigate the effects of climate change by providing a regulatory framework. It also adjusts the administration of Act 250, the state’s environmental zoning law, by creating a Land Use Review Board.
City Manager Jesse Baker said the provisions of the act follow South Burlington’s 2024 City Plan and 2023 land development regulation updates.
“We, as South Burlington, are really uniquely situated in Vermont to lead in this conversation. And what I mean by that is, as the targets are established statewide, I think we have a really unique opportunity to, with our municipal partners, go to the state, go to the legislature and say to achieve these targets these are the changes we need to see. These are 25-year targets. We have a runway. We have intentional ability to go and be part of that solution, whether that's regulatory change, zero interest loans, grant programs, designations, things like that. I think this is kind of the culmination of a lot of the work we've been doing as a community over the last couple of years.”
Director of Planning and Zoning Paul Connor used colored maps to detail proposed regional land use zones.
“The new state law says that regions must develop new future land use maps using 11 categories. The draft as presented by the Regional Planning Commission of how the whole county looks in these future land use categories aligns with a lot of work that's been happening for a decade, two decades, at the regional level about really targeting to have the overwhelming majority of future housing and development taking place in a small portion of the land areas, either in our core Chittenden County communities, or in the villages around the region.”
City councilors had a number of questions about the new categories, how the city is mapped to meet the bill’s categories, and potential changes to the city’s current designation. Councilor Laurie Smith was concerned about the pattern of development illustrated on the maps.
“If we're not able to gain the density through concentric growth, we're going to just develop the same sprawl and I'm wondering if there's a way to incorporate that model into this map, because this map misses that,” notes Smith.
Connor responds, “This map is a higher level than the decisions that we make at the local level to emphasize certain areas, incentivize certain areas, have a variety of density.”
“So the control I'm talking about comes to our planning and zoning office,” Smith says.
“Through the policies you adopt at the local level,” affirms Connor.
South Burlington City Councilors unanimously approved a motion to request Act 250 Tier 1B status for eligible areas of the city under the new regulations.
The state defines Tiers 1A and 1B as areas with capacity for growth where limited, or no, Act 250 jurisdiction will apply.
