CCRPC releases draft future land-use map and municipal housing targets under Act 181 implementation

Commission staff presented the CCRPC’s draft regional future land-use map and accompanying municipal housing targets March 19 as part of Act 181 implementation work, and opened a public comment period that the commission plans to close May 19.

Taylor (first name only in the record), the staff planner leading the effort, said the draft map and targets were posted the same day on the CCRPC board page and on the ECOs engagement page. Staff will accept public comment for roughly two months, summarize responses and post a summary by May 23, and then continue follow-up outreach with municipal planning commissions and selectboards.

Taylor said the planning advisory committee (PAC) has spent more than a year developing a methodology for disaggregating the statewide/regional housing target among county municipalities. Under the staff and PAC approach, 60% of the regional housing target is assigned to the region’s urban municipalities (the commission identified the four urban municipalities in its materials), around 3.8% is allocated to rural municipalities, and the remaining share (about 36.2%) goes to municipalities classified as a mix of urban and rural. The allocation to mixed municipalities is driven by acreage of mapped “planned growth” categories, with additional weighting for presence of water or wastewater service.

Taylor described three regional scenarios — low, mid and high — for 2050 housing targets. The low scenario largely reflects historical or business-as-usual growth (Taylor said the low cumulative number was “about 15,000+ units” across the region over 25 years), the high scenario would be an ambitious build-out that would concentrate growth in walkable, transit- and infrastructure-served places, and the mid scenario is intended as a practicable, aspirational target that staff think municipalities can plan toward.

Staff reported substantial outreach since January 2025: 35 municipal meetings or events, six focus groups with more than 66 attendees, and nine key-informant interviews with stakeholders including municipal officials and housing practitioners. Taylor said the commission will hold additional focus groups and a semiannual regional housing convening April 30 at Hula at 5:30 p.m.; registration will be required because of space constraints.

Common public comments and themes staff reported included concern that the map might constrain housing choice in rural areas, questions about how the map interacts with the state’s Act 250/Act 181 tiering process and the Land Use Review Board’s forthcoming rulemaking, requests for clearer explanations of municipal responsibilities if a town opts into tier 1b, and interest in how industrial and enterprise areas were categorized on the map. Staff also noted specific feedback from one recreation-based stakeholder (Bolton Valley Resort) about how resource-based recreation areas were mapped.

Taylor said staff would provide municipal talking points to support local outreach and anticipated multiple committee and board reviews through the summer ahead of public hearings on the ECOS plan. The commission encouraged municipalities and residents to use the interactive map viewer to post parcel-level comments.

No board action was required at the March 19 meeting; staff will bring revised materials to the commission and to LRPC and PAC committees later this spring and summer.