Awards
Each year the Vermont Planners Association recognizes citizen planners, outstanding plans, and projects as well as professional planners.
2024 AWARD WINNERS
Professional Planner of the Year – Jacob Hemmerick
*also winner of the 2024 Northern New England Professional Planner of the Year Award
In his role as Community Planning and Policy Manager at the State of Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development; Jacob works to modernize planning and development regulation in Vermont to meet the very real challenges of climate change, and our critical need for more housing in the state. He provides ongoing support for municipal efforts such as Zoning for Great Neighborhoods, Bylaw Modernization Grants, and the Homes for All initiative. Jacob has also been an influential figure in recent State legislative efforts to address housing shortages, including the Home Act and the Missing Middle Housing Development Program.
What struck the selection committee most about Jake was how his colleagues describe his approach to the work as personable, hands on, and determined. Colleagues have described him as having unparalleled skill in fostering consensus in an areas of policy that are fraught with differing opinions, difficult policy tradeoffs, and competing interests. He is known among his peers for bringing stakeholders together in pursuit of common goals, and always using a systems thinking approach.
Project of the Year - Vermont Health Equity Planning Toolkit
*also winner of the 2024 Northern New England Project of the Year Award
Health Equity is achieved when everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health. The Vermont Health Equity Planning Toolkit serves as a guide for communities to introduce the concept of health equity and incorporate it into municipal planning documents and bylaws.
The Toolkit was developed with a grant from the Vermont Department of Health, and produced in a unique collaborative fashion with participation from all 11 of Vermont’s Regional Planning Commissions (RPCs). Each RPC performed extensive community outreach engaging their local health stakeholders, and making efforts to include marginalized and underrepresented communities. The result was a toolkit that provides clear, illustrated examples of how to incorporate Health Equity concepts into community planning at the local level. The toolkit can be found online at https://www.lcpcvt.org/healthequitytoolkit
Citizen Planner of the Year - Jak Tiano
Jak Tiano is a community activist in Burlington, Vermont and is a founding member and a leader at Vermonters for People Oriented Places (VPOP), which describes itself as a big tent, grassroots organization that envisions a future of more livable and affordable cities and towns in Vermont. Jak has a civilian life in computer engineering, and is known in Burlington for using a data focused approach to advocate for change at public forums. Through social hours, potlucks and other community building activities, Jak and VPOP have successfully engaged a demographic of residents in their 20’s and 30’s to be regular attendees at Planning Commission and City Council meetings and active participants in the city’s planning process.
Jak has advocated for better housing, improved transit, and pedestrian and cyclist safety. He helped VPOP grow to be a statewide organization with hundreds of members across Vermont. Jak’s efforts were described by members of Burlington City government as having significantly improved the discourse on housing in the city, and instrumental to the development of Burlington’s Neighborhood Code.
Also recognized in 2024 by the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association:
Lee Krohn – Planner Emeritus – for his long service to the planning profession in the town of Manchester, the town of Shelburne, and the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission
2024 VPA Awards were presented at the June workshop in Rutland, VT
2024 Northern New England Awards were presented at the October conference in Stowe, VT – more info online at https://nne.planning.org/chapter/awards/
About Our Awards
Our awards focus on the following categories:
Project of the Year, Plan of the Year, Citizen Planner of the Year, Citizen Planning Board, Commission or Committee of the Year and Professional Planner of the Year