Changes to Act 250 and what it means in Thetford

Back in June, both the Vermont Senate and House voted by more than the required two-thirds majority to override Governor Scot's veto of H. 687, the bill that makes fundamental changes to Act 250, the state's land use law passed in 1970. 

In recent years, Act 250 has received its share of negative press and has been harshly criticized as a disincentive to development of commercial and housing projects. However, to appreciate its value it is worth looking back to the conditions leading to its inception. A commentary from vermonthistory.org sums it up: "... support for legislation such as resulted in Act 250 had been building since the early 1960s when Vermonters began to sense that growth was threatening to destroy the state’s natural heritage and essential character.  The expansion of the interstate highway system into Vermont in that decade opened the state to an influx of affluent out of-staters who were attracted to the region because of skiing, second homes, and retirement. Burgeoning ski complexes attracted developers who began buying up large tracts of land for construction of vacation homes. Site planning, lot size, and sewer system adequacy were being sacrificed to quick profit. Small rural farm communities, most of which lacked local zoning or planning control, were being overwhelmed by the rapid growth. Property taxes soared as communities struggled to pay for increased road maintenance, police, fire protection, and garbage disposal."   

It was a conservative Republican Governor, Dean Davis, who established a state commission to look into environmental abuses by the vacation home industry. Its findings laid the foundation for Act 250 which, despite vehement opposition from developers and realtors, passed both House and Senate with large margins of bipartisan support. The Act has been revised several times to account for new pressures on the economy and the environment. As legal historian Paul Gillies wrote in 2013, "Certainly the law has improved the quality of development in Vermont.  . . . More than 23,000 permits later, Act 250 survives, somewhat battered, peppered with holes, but very much together, disciplined, functioning." Ninety-eight percent of all applications under Act 250 are approved, with modifications to a proportion of development proposals.

The jurisdictional focus of Act 20, prior to the passing of H. 687, had been on large developments that altered more than ten acres of land or created more than ten housing lots, unless the town has no zoning and subdivision bylaws, in which case the law applied to a one-acre area of disturbance. Development projects were assessed according to ten criteria that were designed to defend the community life, aesthetics, and environment of the state.

H. 687 (now Act 181) is a radical departure from project size as the basis for invoking Act 250. It focuses instead on where a proposed project is located and, as such, divides the state into different tiers, informed by regional land use maps, that will determine how development is reviewed under Act 250. The boundaries of the different tiers will be determined through the lengthy process of mapping and rulemaking that is expected to take several years. The least permissive tier will serve to strengthen the protection of sensitive ecosystems, while rules will be relaxed to various extents in other tiers.

For now the legislature has approved several interim exemptions from Act 250, effective immediately. One that will be in place through January 2027 completely removes Act 250 jurisdiction from housing developments within Vermont's 24 designated downtown areas. It also exempts 50 units of housing in the ¼-mile zone around designated village centers, such as those in Thetford, "provided there are Zoning Bylaws, sewer and water, or adequate soils."  

Another exemption of note allows 50 dwelling units along urbanized transit routes "within census-designated urbanized areas with over 50,000 residents + ¼ mile of a transit route."

With respect to protecting “ecologically important natural resource areas” such as forest blocks, H. 687 (now Act 181) triggers Act 250 review for the construction of a single private road longer than 800 feet or a network of combined roads and driveways greater than 2,000 feet. A rulemaking process would determine how the road rule should be applied and how roads and driveways will be defined.

After much debate, the legislature also agreed on a new property transfer tax on second homes that are suited for year-round use, to discourage the proliferation of vacation homes in Vermont. The hope is to open up more properties for long term residents. To further encourage full-time resident homeowners, they approved a modest reduction in the transfer tax on owner-occupied homes.

While up to 50 housing units may be built in the exempted area around a village center without invoking Act 250, it does not mandate that anything must be built. That is still entirely up to property owners who own buildable land, and Thetford’s local zoning regulations.

These Act 250 revisions strive to balance the need for more housing with protecting Vermont’s environment. Compared to other states that do not have any equivalent of our Act 250, Vermont’s natural surroundings are still beautiful and remarkably intact, in spite of absorbing a large amount of development since the law’s inception in 1970.

Maps courtesy of State of Vermont; Interim Act 250 Exemptions