4TH ANNUAL VERMONT CAPITAL PLANNING FORUM

GMP’s Underground Distribution Project & Municipal Truck Procurement

Our most recent regional road foremen’s meeting at the end of February saw two people from northern Vermont make the trek to Wilmington to talk with our highway department heads about two important topics affecting towns. Tim Jones spoke about Green Mountain Power’s Zero Outage Initiative. Many of GMP’s 20 worst circuits for outages are here in Southern Vermont, and one solution is placing distribution lines underground, typically in the roadway. There was a lot of discussion about the work being done, and efforts to coordinate this with towns. GMP personnel will be meeting with towns this spring. The project will continue through October 2026.

Mike Murray from Viking Cives talked about issues with purchasing municipal trucks. With increased demand and fewer suppliers, there is up to a two-year backlog on orders. Bottom line: “towns can’t wait until their truck is about to die before thinking about acquiring a new truck.”

New 4-Town Resilience Project to Kick off in April

You may recall that in 2024 the Windham Regional Commission (WRC) explored housing needs and solutions with the towns of Jamaica, Londonderry, Weston, and Winhall. This year we are going to kick off a new 4 town effort working with Dover, Readsboro, Whitingham and Winhall to explore resilience and flood adaptation issues. WRC will continue this work in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Center for Resilient Metro Regions in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Foundation’s Communities by Design (CxD) Program, who have been great partners. 

The housing project was successful bringing folks together from multiple towns and helping them to think about issues and potential solutions in new ways. As a result, WRC decided to build upon this approach to address another topic, resiliency. We felt that this would be a good approach to address the increased flooding and related issues the region has seen in recent years. The project team will conduct a preliminary visit to the four towns in early April. Then next fall a UMass design studio will begin to explore the issues and the team will return to the region for visit in September. The team will engage with stakeholders and the public to hear their concerns. This information will be incorporated into a final report that will lay out alternative solutions. Be on the look out for more information later this year.

UMass-Amherst Students in Saxtons River

Senior landscape architecture students at UMass-Amherst met with residents of Saxtons River at Main Street Arts to get a better understanding of what connects people to the place.

The students are using the village as their laboratory to explore design ideas in their last undergraduate semester. This is part of an ongoing effort by the WRC to bring area university faculty and students into the region. Thank you to the Village Trustees for their help getting word out and Main Street Arts for hosting!

The Southern VT Economy Summit is an annual networking and learning opportunity for our region. Many of the day's topics and sessions are planned with the concerns of SoVT municipal leaders and staff in mind. We encourage you to attend!

Discount Code for the Southern VT Economy Summit:

Early Bird pricing is in effect through March 20. After that, municipal leaders and volunteers can use code MUNI35 to continue to receive the lowest pricing. 

Click here for more information and to register.

Regional Conservation Partnership

Since approximately 2015, the idea of working together with local partners to enhance regional scale conservation goals has been swirling through the Windham Region. From the Massachusetts/Vermont Woodlands Partnership, Act 171 (Planning for Forest Block and Habitat Connectors) and the Windham Regional Collaborative, Windham Regional has been engaged in working with regional partners to look at land conservation. These past efforts have coalesced into a new collaboration that WRC hopes will be a regional partnership that lasts.

In January 2025 land conservation organizations that work in the Windham Region gathered to discuss how working together could advance conservation at the regional scale. Windham Regional organized the gathering and the excitement of what could be achieved through collaboration was felt throughout the room. WRC is excited to continue to work on gathering these land conservation groups together to leverage the power of a larger entity that can achieve more towards regional conservation goals.

VIRTUAL PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE

Disaster Recovery Funding (CDBG-DR)

The State of Vermont's Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) will be holding a virtual/in-person public hearing to get input from Vermont residents before submitting its U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Block Grant Disaster Recovery CDBG-DR Action Plan for 2025.

The Public Hearing will be held on Thursday, March 20, 2025, from 6 p.m.- 7:30 p.m. The in-person location will be at the Montpelier Senior Activity Center Community Room, 58 Barre Street, Montpelier.

To participate electronically, go to the Departments Website and access the link below for the TEAMS meeting:

Join the meeting now

Meeting ID: 213 649 989 25

Passcode: CE9YG9df

The purpose of the hearing is to listen to residents’ views that were impacted by the June 2023 floods to help determine the state’s unmet needs for planning, housing, infrastructure, economic revitalization, and public service from the flooding.

The Vermont 2025 DRAFT HUD CDBG-DR Action Plan outlines priorities for the use of over $67 million in federal funds provided to the State for the Community Development Block Grant- Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds which are aimed to primarily support low- and moderate-income households. HUD has determined that over $54 million is to serve communities in Lamoille and Washington counties. The Plan also serves as Vermont's application to HUD to gain access to these funds. The goals of the Plan are to provide decent affordable housing, assure a suitable living environment, and expand economic opportunity for Vermont's citizens.

More information is available on the Department’s website.

Municipal Leaders Network Survey

The Southern Vermont Economy Project is looking for your input to guide an upcoming series of gatherings for municipal leaders. Click here for a short survey to help target these meetings to your interests.  

Reflections After Taking the Plunge: My First Few Months at WRC

Before joining WRC as a full-time staff member in August 2024, I had very few expectations about what moving to and working in Vermont might look like. Now that I am seven months into my role, I can confidently say that the experience has been rewarding, challenging, and galvanizing.

I had not spent much time in Vermont prior to my start at WRC, and I wanted to change that as soon as I began working at the Commission in earnest. I was extremely lucky to have found an apartment near our office in Brattleboro. As soon as I moved in, I started exploring the area as much as I could. I prioritized this effort because there is critical knowledge to be gained through familiarity with a local landscape–through understanding a place’s mountains, forests, rivers, villages, and residents. I also really needed furniture. It turns out that driving around an area and picking up random household items from Facebook Marketplace is a pretty great way to learn the lay of the land! 

As I was getting adjusted to life in Southern Vermont, I also began learning about how regional planning manifests as a professional practice in our area, and the many ways in which in which land use issues affect towns in our region. Through this work, I have gotten to deepen and develop technical skillsets that would have been foreign to me otherwise. I have learned how to inventory local energy data and use it to establish energy and emissions reduction targets. I have gotten instances to practice writing in various contexts, whether for grant applications or for town plans. But without a doubt, the most insightful aspect of the work so far has been the opportunity to cooperate and engage with towns in the region, and to learn from members of the public, town officials, and other local leaders. The conversations that result from these interactions are a highlight of my work, and something I look forward to each day. 

In the coming months, I eagerly look forward to continuing conversations with our towns on energy topics, town plan projects, and whatever else I find myself working on. Vermont has been nothing but welcoming to me thus far, and so too has the team at Windham Regional Commission. For that reason, I am extremely grateful and motivated to continue serving our towns and the Region. 

Anand Fedele