Planning Commission

Meets 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month at 7 PM.

The Planning Commission serves as leaders of the community on planning matters. Based on the input the public provides, the Planning Commission conducts its primary responsibilities of preparing and amending the Town Plan and the town’s land-use regulations (zoning and subdivision). The commission holds discussion sessions and public hearings to determine whether our current regulations are meeting our present and future needs, and whether they align with new state regulations concerning land use.  

We meet 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month at 7 to 9 PM. Meetings may be fully remote on Zoom or may be hybrid, with an in-person presence in the Town Center Meeting Room as well as on Zoom.  Please check the meeting date and the agenda to see what type of meeting will be held and what is to be discussed. This information will be posted 5 days prior to the meeting, and often there will be additional materials for you to look at before the meeting. The public is invited to attend any of our meetings and provide comments at any stage of our deliberations. You may also view the video recordings of our meetings (at MMCTV) and email us your comments. 

Update for April - June 2025

We are underway with our Town Plan 2026 updating process. The Planning Commission has formed a Steering Committee with three public members, three planning commissioners and a selectboard member to guide and manage the work. In reviewing our 2018 Town Plan, we find that much of the visioning and public outreach work done in   2016-17 is still relevant today, and once again we will strive to walk the line between aspirational and feasible for our proposed “Goals” and “Actions.”   We will be looking to our residents for their views on how our situation, needs and desires might have changed over the last 8 years.

We anticipate meeting every few weeks from now until this time next year. Working with our Director of Planning and Zoning, Keith Oborne, we will consider methods of outreach; we will review the changes suggested by the relevant town committees and parties responsible for the Action Items in the current Plan, and we will look at the new state statutes that will need to be incorporated into our Plan.   We will look closely at how we can mitigate our worsening climate-change-related flooding events, and how Richmond might assist with the state-wide housing crisis.   We hope to have a draft available for comment by the summer, and a final version by the end of the year which we can bring to the Selectboard for a March townwide vote.

This is your plan, and it represents your vision of Richmond over the next 8 years. We are hoping you will help us to represent that vision. We are looking forward to hearing from you at our outreach events and hope you contact us with any ideas you might have. We will be keeping you updated on our work as often as we can. You can find the current Plan on the Town of Richmond web page under “Ordinances and Policies,” “Town Plan 2018”. Let us know what you think.

In other Planning Commission news, The Selectboard has approved our zoning revisions that would allow the town to move the playground up onto the plateau where the bandshell is currently if that is chosen as a plan to reduce the frequent flood damage these structures have recently experienced.   The Three Parks Committee continues to study and refine this proposal as well as their other ideas for managing the parks going forward.   Our work on the Village Neighborhoods North and South was approved by the Selectboard in January. This work gave special status to the residential areas of the village and tied them more closely to the concept of a “walkable downtown” which our previous Plan and State “smart growth” goals  have encouraged.    

Virginia Clarke, Chair, Richmond Planning Commission vclarke@gmaavt.net

Keith Oborne, Director of Planning and Zoning koborne@ richmondvt.gov

7 members – 4-year term