The gap the two dates leave

Put § 1-201(a) and the new § 1-204(a)(3) side by side and the coverage is complete for one class of community and empty for another.

• Twelve or more residential units, created on or before January 1, 2011 — covered by § 1-204(a)(3), as to events after June 30, 2026.
• Twelve or more residential units, created after January 1, 2011 — covered by the § 1-201(a) amendments sentence.
• Fewer than 12 residential units — covered by neither sentence. Both are written in terms of communities that “contain 12 or more units.”

That third line matters more in Vermont than the drafting suggests. Under § 1-201(a), condominiums of any size created after January 1, 1999 are fully subject to VCIOA, but other common interest communities — planned communities and cooperatives — are subject only if they contain 12 or more residential units. A small Vermont planned community was already outside most of the Act. On the face of these two sentences, it is outside the charger section too.

What “events and circumstances occurring after June 30, 2026” does

The phrase is the same formula § 1-204 uses for its other two retroactive lists, and it does real work. It means the section attaches to the application, not to the covenant. A declaration recorded in 1984 that bans any alteration to a parking area is not rewritten; it simply cannot be enforced against a charger installation applied for after June 30, 2026.

Section 1-204 also carries a general savings clause on each list — the listed sections “do not invalidate existing provisions of the declarations, bylaws, plats, or plans” of pre-existing communities. Section 3-125 supplies its own, narrower answer to that tension by declaring the offending provisions “void and unenforceable” as to charging equipment specifically.

The two facts that decide whether the clock runs

Two facts decide whether the 90-day deemed-approval clock in § 3-125 is running at all: the number of units in the community that may be used for residential purposes, and the date the community was created. Neither is a judgment call, and both are in the recorded declaration.

A community that does not meet the 12-unit threshold is not thereby free to refuse — 27 V.S.A. § 544, Vermont's renewable-energy covenant override, has no size limit and no date limit at all, and the declaration itself may say something. It is free of this section.

What to watch next

The Legislature has now used three different applicability formulas in one statute — 1999, 2012 and 2011 — each with its own list of sections. The Office of Legislative Counsel's report on common interest communities, due to the House Committee on General and Housing and the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs on November 15, 2026, is the first document in years positioned to say whether that structure is worth keeping.