by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com

You do not need to know a board member, hire a lawyer, or learn a secret handshake to speak at a Vermont Land Use Review Board meeting.

You mostly need to know the meeting exists.

That may be the bigger problem.

The Land Use Review Board, usually shortened to LURB, publicly posts its agendas, meeting notices and approved minutes on its 2026 Board Agendas and Minutes page. It also takes public comment during meetings, accepts written comments and posts full meeting recordings to the public Vermont Act 250 YouTube channel.

And right now, what gets reviewed in those meetings matters more than usual. Under Act 181, Vermont is redrawing where Act 250 applies at all — every regional planning commission must adopt a compliant regional plan by December 31, the LURB reviews each one into 2027, and the approved plans and their tier maps then stand for eight years. Which tier your land falls in decides whether Act 250 reaches it. These meetings are where that gets settled, region by region.

Yesterday, Thursday, October 1, the Board held a hearing on the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission plan.

The next regular Board meeting is Monday, October 5.

The item to watch on that agenda: the South Burlington Tier 1A Preapplication Response Draft. Tier 1A areas are the zones where development would be exempt from Act 250 review entirely — South Burlington is working through the new process for getting that designation, and the Board’s draft response is on the table. (The agenda also carries the Board’s FY28 budget paperwork, if that’s your idea of a good evening.)

Then, on Friday, November 6, the Bennington County Regional Commission gets its hearing — the review of the plan that will set where Act 250 applies across Bennington County for the better part of a decade.

If any of that touches your town, your region, your property, your business, or simply something you have an opinion about, you can show up.

How to get the floor

This is probably the most useful 30 seconds of the article.

The Board says that during a meeting, you should raise your hand and wait until the Chair acknowledges you before speaking.

If you are participating by phone, press **\*5** to raise your hand.

Press **\*6** to mute or unmute yourself.

If you are participating through Microsoft Teams, use the Raise button in the Teams ribbon.

That is it.

The meetings use Microsoft Teams, and you can join through a browser without installing the Teams app. The notice posted on the Board’s agendas and minutes page has the exact meeting link and time for each session.

You can also write

You do not have to speak during a live meeting.

The Board publishes act250.board@vermont.gov as its email address. For general questions, it also lists act250.general@vermont.gov, with preset subject options that include “LURB Meeting question” and a public records request option.

And people do use the comment channel. The Board’s recent document feed includes memos from the Windham and Two Rivers–Ottauquechee regional commissions pushing back on plan language, and letters from individual Vermonters — including one from Stephen Whitaker flagging a public engagement gap. Regional commissions and private citizens are landing in the same public record, through the same door.

So even if this Monday’s agenda does not involve your particular corner of Vermont, the next one might — eleven regional plans are moving through this process, and every county’s turn comes.

The hard part is knowing where to look

This is one reason we built FYIVT’s Civic Radar. It collects open hearings and public-comment windows around Vermont by county, because the LURB is only one of many public bodies holding meetings that are easy to miss unless you already know where to look.

We also built the FYIVT Vermont Finder so you can search for a town, commission or plan by name when you know roughly what you are hunting for but not which government page has it.

Neither replaces the Board’s own documents. For LURB meetings, the Board page is the source to check — what’s coming up, the agenda, the participation notice, the approved minutes, the recording if you missed it.

Monday, October 5, is the next chance to watch your land-use map get drawn. Bennington County, November 6 is yours.

If you have something to say, you do not need an invitation beyond that.

Start with the Land Use Review Board’s agendas and minutes page.