VALA Board of
Directors Meeting
July 2, 2008
In attendance: Galen Mudgett,
President, Pat French, VP, Louise Ferris-Burt, Treasurer, Dave Beach,
Carlton Domey, Al Jerard, Mark Paulsen, PV&R, Randall Mulligan,
Carolyn Kinney, Angie Abbatello, Terry Knight, Karen Horn, VLCT, Yvonne
Welch, Jessie Nygren, Robin Voitle, Ed Claudfelter, and Robert Sanborn
Secretary’s minutes accepted as emailed.
Treasurer’s report accepted
as presented.
Education Fund: $ 926.03 A/R IAAO Course $ 77.97
General Fund $ 4,079.85 127 memberships paid to date.
Dues are now due for the new
fiscal year.
Mark Paulsen represented PV&R He introduced his replacement in Colchester: Randy Mulligan
He spoke about education and
said more courses are coming up. The RFP Committee has not met
He talked about the Town of Canaan’s addition of value to land with
a VAST Trail running on it. There was a brief discussion of that
and other types of trails.
Karen Horn represented VLCT She brought us copies of the FAIR Committee 2009 Municipal Policy Write up. It is a significant departure from the current way school funding is handled by the towns. It would have the State “assume full responsibility for funding Vermont’s education system. Municipal government should no longer be responsible for trying to administer a state education property tax.” There was a lively discussion. Some points of the handout were said to be good and the main question was of the cost effectiveness of this. How does this impact the listers and does this cause the state to incur the cost of mailing a separate bill(s).
This will be discussed at the next VLCT meeting in August. If the Board decides to present it at
the Town Fair it will be accessible
on their website vlct.org under the Advocacy Flag. There was some
discussion that this may not fly, but there were some good points that
maybe needed to be addressed seperately. Mark asked if the Moratorium
on electronic supplying of all data on our computers is still in effect,
limiting the data to just the minimum of NEMRC GL. There
was also some discussion of the Cable companies and the 25 town consortium.
Town Fair will be at the Killington
Grand on October 2nd.
Annual Meeting topics are needed
Sales Studies - Foreclosures
if less than 1 year of sale then still a valid sale.
Cell towers - Lease = real
value - runs with the land as commercial - non residential rate.
Website Analytics were available
for anyone to look at during the break
Policy Change Ideas 1 Contiguous land
2 What is a parcel? Legal description in deed.
State recognizes a parcel
3 Subdivisions higher value - when?
4 CU benefit value of forest land is it realistic to use income approach, would sales approach be better?
Those volunteering for the
Policy Committee were as follows: Galen Mudgett, Al Jerard, Robert Sanborn,
Randy Mulligan, and Louise Ferris-Burt
Our next regular Directors meeting is Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Our Annual Meeting is Friday
September, 19th, 2008
Louise Ferris-Burt for
Carol Hammond