Hinesburg Affordable Housing Committee
Meeting Minutes
December 6, 2007
Committee Members Present: Rocky Martin, Bruce Wheeler, Carl Bohlen, Julie Pierson, Dale Wernhoff.
Also Present: Andrea Morgante, Mike Wisniewski
The meeting came to order at approximately 7:10 PM.
Update on the The LaPlatte Headwaters Conservation Project on Bissonette Farm: Andrea Morgante, a member of the Hinesburg Land Trust board, provided the following information on the status of the project. On October 29, 2007 the Hinesburg Land Trust (HLT), The Vermont Land Trust, and the Trust for Public Land received the deed to 301 acres of land from Wayne and Barbara Bissonette (the total project encompasses 627 acres). On December 10, 2007, 22 acres are to be deeded to the Hinesburg Land Trust and another parcel is being purchased by a conservation buyer, with an easement to allow up to four houses being built on the parcel without effecting the conservation easement. In addition, two other parcels will be sold to a farmer with a conservation easement to keep the land in perpetual farming. A 1.6 acre plot will be donated to the town for a cemetery.
The 22 acre parcel has four building lots and a 50’ right of way for access to town land. One lot is an existing 2 acre building lot. Of the four lots, the HLT would ideally like to use two lots for market rate and the remaining two for affordable housing but have all the units be similar. The HLT wants to know how they can work with the AHC to get this off the ground. Julie stated that no other affordable housing agencies would touch this because it’s small and rural except for Habitat for Humanity (HFH). Andrea said they want somebody who would maintain perpetual affordability. Julie said HFH would do that. Carl asked Mike Wisniewski, a partner in Duncan-Wisniewski Architecture in Burlington, VT, if anybody would bid on the project if you had all the lots ready to go but had two of them affordable. Mike said the only way to make it affordable would be to have a subsidy of some sort. Housing Vermont "http://www.hvt.org", Champlain Housing Trust "http://www.champlainhousingtrust.org", or Habitat for Humanity "http://www.vermonthabitat.org" are about the only routes to go to make this work. Mike suggested doing two deals: one for the market rate units and one for the affordable units. Carl said as far as the AHC is concerned we’d like to see as many affordable units as we can. The problem will be NIMBY (not in my back yard). We have to try to balance quantity with the concerns of the neighbors. Any housing project on these lots would occur in 2009 since you would need to put in a road, power, well, and septic system.
Discussion of LEED Certification and Efficiency Vermont: From the U.S. Green Building Council web site "http://www.usgbc.org" : “LEED Certification provides independent, third-party verification that a building project is environmentally responsible, profitable and a healthy place to live and work”. Efficiency Vermont is a “provider of energy efficiency services” per their web site "http://www.efficiencyvermont.com". It was decided that LEED Certification isn’t currently something we want to incorporate into the AHC while Efficiency Vermont is.
The meeting was adjourned at approximately 8:50 PM.
Next Meeting –
January 10th – A wrap up of the AHC Community Survey and discuss means of public education to deal with attitudes about affordable housing that the survey brought up.
Respectfully submitted,
Dale Wernhoff