Williston
ECRWSS PRSRT STD US Postage
PAID
Permit #15 Williston,VT 05495 POSTAL CUSTOMER
JANUARY 2, 2025
Planning the Village’s vibe WILLISTON’S NEWSPAPER SINCE 1985
WWW.WILLISTONOBSERVER.COM
Hearing set for new Williston Village land use rules BY JASON STARR Observer staff
Town planners have rewritten land use regulations for Williston Village in an effort to spur home improvements and economic activity in the historic center of town. The planning commission has set a public hearing on the new rules for 7 p.m., Jan. 21 at Town Hall. Planning and zoning department staff have been working with the planning commission since 2022 on rewriting regulations for the district, which runs from just east of Williston Federated Church to near the Williston Fire Department, and is bordered North-South by the Allen Brook and Interstate 89. In December, the planning commission approved a finalized version to present at the public hearing. To take effect, any changes would require subsequent selectboard approval. The Village’s standing as a National Register Historic District under the National Parks Service compels the town to strike a balance between preserving the village’s 19th century character and giving property owners
Williston Senior Planner and Deputy Zoning Administrator Emily Heymann leads a walk of Williston Village in 2022 to kick off a rezoning effort for the Village Zoning District. The resulting new regulations are up for a public hearing Jan. 21. OBSERVER FILE PHOTO
some flexibility in how they can build, remodel and add to their properties.
The town has historically required property owners to apply for a “Certificate of
Requests for BLM and Pride Progress flags due by Jan. 17
These are the questions members of the public and the school board have wrestled with when the board has fielded flag display requests or attempted to set flag display policy. The first such request came in 2020, when the Champlain Valley School Board approved the flying of the Black Lives Matter flag. More recently, the Pride Progress flag was raised outside local schools. Now, under a new flag policy the board adopted at its Dec. 17 meeting, these discussions will be taken out of the public forum of school board meetings and be worked out between students and the district superintendent. The policy replaces a flag policy the board approved in 2022, stripping it of the board’s
see VILLAGE page 2
Students, superintendent centered in new flag policy BY JASON STARR Observer staff
Continued display of the Pride Progress Flag and the Black Lives Matter flag at local schools will require new requests from students by Jan. 17 under a flag policy adopted by the school board on Dec. 17. OBSERVER FILE PHOTO
Appropriateness” (COA) as part of any remodel or redevelopment. The new rules allow some properties — those built within the last 50 years, for example, that don’t contribute to the historic character of the area — to bypass the COA application. They also prescribe detailed design criteria related to building materials, footprint size, landscaping and street frontage, echoing elements of the “form-based code” that was approved for the Taft Corners area in 2022. The Williston Historic and Design Advisory Committee threw its support behind the changes in a December memo to the planning commission. “It is our hope that … greater opportunity emerges for the adaptive reuse and long-term upkeep of individual structures” in the village, it wrote. The first step for any village property owner seeking to build or remodel will be to obtain a determination letter from the zoning office that rules whether the property “contributes to the district’s historic significance or character.” Those that do — buildings built in the mid-1800s, for example — will still require a COA to be modified. More modern buildings deemed “non-contributing” won’t need a
Some of the more heated school board meeting debates this decade have centered on what gets approved to fly on the flagpoles outside school. Why fly anything other than the American and Vermont state flags? Is Black Lives Matter a saying or a political organization? How long does a flag approval last? Is raising a flag taking the place of doing more tangible equity work?
guidelines for making requests and affirming the superintendent’s decision-making authority on flag display matters. “It allows the procedures to be modified as needed as administrators see fit without needing board action,” school board member Angela Arsenault said. “It gives some much-needed agency to the district leaders who are actually implementing the policy.” The new procedures for the superintendent to follow state that requests can only come from “officially recognized student groups” and must explain how the flag supports the district’s vision and mission. Requests must see FLAG page 2
MARKET STREET LOCATION OPENING SOON BREAKFAST • LUNCH • DINNER @getblissbee
DINE-IN/TAKE OUT/ORDER ONLINE GetBlissBee.com Market Street (COMING!) & Shelburne Road, S. Burlington • Maple Tree Place, Williston