LONDONDERRY, Vt. – At their Jan. 22 meeting, the Londonderry Selectboard discussed the North and South Village wastewater projects, hiring a short-term rental (STR) administrator, and gave updates on the progress of the STR bylaws. The board also approved a cannabis cultivation permit for a tier 1 small grow operation, as well as a retail cannabis permit, which is subject to a regulation compliance review.
Chrissy Haskins from Dufresne Group presented the board with the budgets and design plan options for the North Village and the South Village wastewater projects. In the North Village, the 6,490-gallon collection system option would cost $3.85 million. The town’s local share is 10% of those costs, which comes to $282,000.
Haskins explained that the town has another option for North Village to increase the capacity to 8,000 gallons, which would create two 4,000-gallon tanks with pretreatment, and bring the total cost to $4.8 million. “It’s a lot of extra money for not a lot of extra capacity,” Haskins said.
Haskins confirmed the original plan for 6,490 gallons would serve the current North Village businesses, but doesn’t leave room for growth. She also explained the town needed to decide on one plan now, as the designs would be completely different, and they would not be able to change the plan after they complete one design.
The board agreed to go with the smaller capacity project and add cluster systems later on as more capacity is needed. “It’s encouraging to think there’s a way to close the gap,” to get both sides of Main Street functioning, board member Melissa Brown expressed.
For the South Village, they are looking at increasing the capacity to 12,000 gallons. Haskins explained she had her designer start laying out the field where the collection systems were intended to be installed, but it is entirely in a flood plain, so that is no longer usable space. Haskins said they are planning to move forward with the same plan, which was a single field with a 6,200-gallon system, and a potential to increase to 12,000 gallons with a second disposal field and collection system design in place, to be approved by the state. This project has a total cost of $4.5 million, which leaves the local share at $515,000.
Haskins also explained that the budgets for the bond on each project are completely separate, and if funds are not used fully in one village, they cannot be transferred to the other village project.
The board approved both village wastewater project declarations for the two new systems. ARPA will cover 90% of each system, and the remaining expenses will be funded by a general bond, for a total of $797,700. The budgets will be discussed at a special informational meeting, scheduled to be held on Feb. 29, at 6 p.m., and voted on at the annual Town Meeting on March 5.
The town’s fiscal year 2025 budget of $2,697,517, to be raised by taxes, will also be voted on at the Town Meeting.
The board then discussed the need for a part time STR administrator, with a salary of $50,000, to be offset by STR registration fees. Brown said the housing commission has been working on the language on limitations for the STR zoning bylaws, to mirror the language in the selectboard’s ordinance. The document is “super drafty,” Brown explained, but they are making progress to finalize the bylaws “to have cohesion between the two documents.” The planning commission intends to discuss the bylaws at their Feb. 12 meeting, and hope to hold their public meeting in March.
The next selectboard meeting will be held Monday, Feb. 5.