Wards 4 & 7 NPA

NPA Meeting September 24 2025 Miller Center, Gosse Court, Burlington VT 05408 Facilitator: Sarah Diaz Notetaker: Annie Lawson Library update from Fletcher Free Library by Megan Butterfield: the library has many things to borrow, not just books! Snow building-tools, pasta makers, yarn spinners, food dehydrators, garden tools, yard games: all are available with library card. Free streaming on Canopy, The NY TImes, and other digital streaming things. Programs open to everyone, not just folks with library cards. An upcoming event: Construction-Fest: celebrating the construction in downtown BTV. Kids are into it! Construction at library likely to end in December! State Reps present on housing issues: Abbey Duke and Carol Ode. (Bob Hooper is sick.) Update on housing. Main issues contributing to the lack: 1) stock 2) affordability (we are one of the highest in the country as our prices went up 13% last year). Policy updates -​ Money: -​ One idea: a land bank, where state owns the land, rehabs it, adds infrastructure, and makes it ready for developers. -​ VHEB: A fund of money that makes it possible for homeowners to build a ADU in the backyard for very little money -​ Modular homes? More complicated. Looking into options. Homes for All is one group working on this. -​ Infrastructure: -​ CHIP: Community Housing Infrastructure Program: -​ A different form of TIF income: the builder and the city will work together so that the builder will take on debt, over 20 years, and the cash to pay down the debt (for the infrastructure) will come from revenue generated from the project: aka future tax revenue. So, 20% of the future tax revenue will go to the builder to repay their debt, and the rest will go to education fund and the city or town. -​ In order to incentivize the building of affordable housing or rental housing, developers can qualify to borrow more if they build these types of units -​ Cumbersome regulations: -​ Recent session revised Act 250 and made it Act 181. A good start but Abbey Duke is hopeful more work will happen in the coming session. Stay tuned for more changes to come, to make it easier for building to happen in a way that is still accountable to minimizing environmental harm: ie taking the time to map wetlands as part of preparing for and determining where housing will be built -​ Questions taken and answered. Nominations for Steering Committee members: Amy Bielawski-Branch. Voted and approved! Next Meeting: Wednesday Oct 26, location TBD.