Tier 1A Status Application

At a glance

Based on auto-generated captions; names and details may be misheard.

What: the city plans to apply for Tier 1A status under state law, which requires amending its development regulations. A Housing Committee memo dated October 6, 2026 asks the city, commission and the Land Use Review Board to add baseline Tier 1A language to a minimally amended set of unified development regulations for council adoption as soon as feasible.
Where it stands: on 2026-10-13 staff said the work is already underway alongside the zoning map. A draft set of zoning regulations is targeted for the end of the 2026 calendar year.
Next: the regional commission is not expected to have a final approved regional plan until about January, so submission to the Land Use Review Board will come after that. Staff will reply to the Housing Committee with the timeline and ask for its sample language, whose link in the memo pointed back to the top of the memo.

South Burlington and Rutland already included baseline Tier 1A language, per the memo.
A Tier 1A map is required, and the regulations must be shown to meet state requirements.
Design review changes and wetland and species-area referrals are among the Tier 1A pieces (see the related issues).
A Zoom connection dropped for several minutes during the memo reading because of a building internet outage; the discussion was restarted.

About 6 minutes across 1 meeting (from transcript timestamps; approximate).

Meeting	Minutes
2026-10-13 - Planning Commission	6

2026-10-13 - Planning Commission — Housing Committee memo read; staff confirmed Tier 1A changes are being drafted with the map, with a draft by end of 2026.
2026-10-06 - Housing Committee - Committee voted unanimously to recommend baseline temporary Tier 1A language in the development regulations.
2026-09-28 - Planning Commission — staff said regional plan adoption is the prerequisite for the pre-application, river-corridor rules are a problem for downtown, and no municipality has achieved Tier 1A yet.