Making a run
Sports wrap
Candidates announce bids for school board, city council
Catch up on the latest South Burlington week in sports
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the JANUARY 26, 2023
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VOLUME 47, NO. 4
SB officials mull regulating rental housing stock
Youth opera
Rental registry, short-term rental law in discussion COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
COURTESY PHOTO
Lili Diemer performs with the Youth Opera Company of Vermont. Read about her journey starting on page 12.
Efforts to regulate South Burlington’s short- and long-term rental housing stock may gain some traction this year with city officials discussing the possibility of adopting a short-term rental ordinance and creating a rental registry — an effort that was implemented in Burlington but has failed to become law statewide. City officials during a recent council meeting continued discussion around adopting legal language regulating short-term rentals, a conversation that has been ongoing since last spring when council member Meaghan Emery put forward language to put limits on housing used by companies like Airbnb and VRBO.
Since then, discussions have evolved into a broader look at the city’s rental housing stock, with talks of setting up both a rental registry and an enforcement arm within the planning and zoning department. “A city our size, we need to get a handle on our rental stock, with all our aging inventory, for all of the safety reasons as well as the enforcement and collecting the appropriate taxes,” said city councilor Tom Chittenden. With city council elections set for March, city manager Jessie Baker said the city would begin “putting together ideas to bring back after Town Meeting Day.” “Anything we do here is going to require future elected officials to weigh in on ordinance changes See RENTAL LAW on page 11
Classroom space shortages put pressure on school districts COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
Shelburne Community School’s “B-Wing” has been comprised of six temporary classroom spaces for at least a decade now — not as temporary as was envisioned when they were first installed. The South Burlington School District hopes to avoid that fate. The district began using temporary classrooms at the Rich Marcotte Central School and Orchard
School in March, and the district will begin using education impact fees to cost out the district’s use of zero emission modular buildings, but the city will still have to develop a more permanent solution for a growing student population. For the Champlain Valley School District, the problem of overcrowded schools may be coming to a head sooner rather than later. At Williston’s Allen Brook School, a shortage classroom space for the school’s K-2 population is forcing the district to
earmark more than $400,000 for two temporary classroom spaces. “This is really urgent,” Jeanne Jensen, the district’s former chief operations manager, said at the Dec. 13 board meeting. “It is a major problem for Allen Brook; it has to be addressed.” With K-12 populations expected to increase over the next five to 10 years, officials with Champlain Valley School District are beginning to formulate a plan to refurbish their schools to ensure they meet the space demands of their
member towns’ increasing populations. It’s a district-wide and county-wide issue that, according to demographic reports, should continue to increase in intensity for both the Champlain Valley and South Burlington districts in the coming years. Hinesburg is set to see a spike in K-12 populations in the next decade; the town already has the highest percentage of renter-occupied units among the Champlain Valley district’s member towns
but has hundreds of housing units that have yet to be permitted on the horizon that were not accounted for in the district’s demographic report that was released in May. And increased student enrollment from new development in Williston will begin overwhelming capacity at the Allen Brook School, the report says. However, potential renovations at Allen Brook come at a hefty price — to the tune of $47 million. See CLASSROOMS on page 11