 Thanks for being with us today. So everyone should have the minutes of the last meeting in front of them. And I think they were sent out a while ago. Any comments or changes? Yes. Kind of a little change. Sure. There's voices from a lot's children. Who just needs an across group, who does? Indy. Yes. OK, great. That's in the other members present. Is that anywhere else? Just there. OK. Oh. I'd say no to this. Yeah. OK. Great. OK. All right. I would accept a motion to move. So moved. Thank you. I'll speak up. Thank you. Any further discussion? Just that one change. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say no. OK. Motion carries. The minutes are approved. And we're going to start off this morning talking about housing and homelessness. And Air Heard Monkey is going to kick us off. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the time on the Council's agenda for housing and homelessness. And just for Council members, it's going to be a slight change in the schedule. Because one of our witnesses was unable to make it. I asked Commissioner Sean Brown to come talk about the situation with Vermont 211 and the after-hours changes. And in his place, it's going to be Karen Bastin. She has some time on the screen. So after some brief comments from me, I was going to ask Karen to speak. And then we'll come back to 211 a little bit later. Because Mary Ellen Mendel from Vermont 211 is here to speak about the impact and what it means for her agency. And then also, if you have any other chance to look at the agenda, Emily Higgins is here from the Vermont Office of Economic Opportunities. She's going to talk about a couple of programs that are out of their office that help alleviate homelessness and provide homelessness prevention resources that be housing opportunities grant program and family support housing. We also have Ellen Hender, who's with the Upper Valley Haven. And she's going to delve somewhat deeply into a particular case of someone that she's working with as a case manager at the Upper Valley Haven to help folks kind of understand what some of the successes and challenges are and the benefits of the family support housing program. So with all that said, just I wanted to just mention a couple of things. First of all, I didn't want to focus a lot on weed. I'm sort of assuming that everyone understands at this point that it's fairly well established that we have an ongoing housing, affordable housing shortage, and affordable housing, really chronic crisis in the state of Vermont. And it's really not just in the state of Vermont. It's region-wide and it's national. I did, though, want to give you a couple of quick data points that have just come out since the legislature adjourned. So for lawmakers, especially, I wanted to highlight one of the things, one of the barometers that we use for housing affordability for rental housing in the state of Vermont and nationally is through a report by our National Local Housing Coalition which annually puts together the out-of-reach report and publishes the housing wage, which basically says how much you have to earn to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in every jurisdiction in the country. And the housing wage in 2019, average housing wage in the state of Vermont is now $22.78 an hour. So $22.78 is what you've got to earn if you're not paying more than 30% of your income for your shelter costs. If you're paying more than 30%, you don't have enough left over for other basic life necessities, and at some point an unexpected emergency major car payment can land you in the spiral of homelessness. That equates to about $46,500 a year in terms of annual salary. It's worse than the Great Burlington area. There you need just under $30 an hour. So if you only have one wage earner in the household you're basically in rough shape on the rental market. All this is documented. I have a number of handouts. They're online, so you can download eCopy if you want. And we also have hard copy. This is the sheet that we put out around that with a whole bunch of data points around affordability in Vermont. They're all over here on the table. I can pass them out later for folks who might not know how to copy. And then another data sheet that we get from our National Association is a Vermont Housing Profile, which gives you a very quick look at just how bad our affordability crisis is. We have just over 18,000 rental households that are extremely low-income in Vermont. That's extremely low income is defined as making 24,600 a year. We have a shortage of rental homes that are both affordable and available to extremely low-income renters of almost 12,000 rental units in state. And the annual house, approximately 68% of those extremely low-income rental households have a severe cost burden, meaning that they pay more than 50% of their income for their shelter costs. If they're simply cost burdened, they pay more than 30%, and 87% of extremely low-income renters, again, with household incomes of less than 24,60 a year, 87% of ELI through low-income renters are cost burdened, meaning that they pay more than 30%. Also, a handout on the table here and on the committee webpage is just a very truncated version of the annual point in time count of homelessness. This is an annual barometer of homelessness. It's imperfect, like many of the other measures. It's a one-day, one-night snapshot and just a quick highlight. We've actually made some progress there. There's a 15% decrease in overall homelessness. 1,089 individuals were homeless back in January of 2019. Of those, however, 251 or 23% were children under 18. That was just about unchanged level to 2018. However, the number of unsheltered individuals went up by 39% to 114 individuals. Of those 1,089 homeless, 133 were fleeing domestic homeless. That was a 12% increase. Homelessness. Even in Vermont, you know where the second white state in the country, homelessness disproportionately affects African-Americans and Hispanic presidents. I also had a couple of other handouts that I'm not going to really go into at all. There's a lot of research that's being done, especially on the impact of homelessness and housing security on children, on children's health, and on children's outcomes. I'll just mention this one from the Children's Health Watch, which has done incredible pioneer research on the connection between health, housing, and homelessness, and talks about all the different ways in which both housing conditions, homelessness, and housing instability affect children's health in a number of different ways. Their recommendations are very similar to ours. They're basically that you need three things. You need additional affordable housing, and for that you need more capital dollars through, for instance, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. You need more rental assistance so that folks at the low end of the economic spectrum who can't afford market rents have federal or state assistance to help make up the difference between what they can afford and what's available on the market so they're not cost burdened. Finally, for folks with multiple challenges, they will need supportive services because affordable housing and rental assistance voucher alone are not going to help them succeed in housing. They may have multiple barriers to success in housing and will need, in many instances, ongoing supportive services in order for them to succeed. And that's the thing that we're actually going to focus a fair amount on today through the testimony. So we're focusing on family homelessness and its impact on children and the programs that help alleviate that. So with that, oh, I should just also mention I had hope that we could get an update from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board on their 2017 housing revenue bond, which is just about spent out or out fully allocated and has helped us make a lot of headway, but it's just about done. And so we're going to, VHCD is going to need another major infusion of funds that is not to continue to fall further and further behind. The housing revenue bond really helped us catch up in the affordable housing sector. Obviously not all the way, but it has made a significant difference over the last three years, but with it just about coming to an end. If we don't either fully fund VHCD or get a new housing bond or a new infusion, we're going to continue to fall behind again. The other thing I should mention is that there is an active work group that the Agents and Services has put together in response to language in the budget last year, which I know represent land fears very rare around the underutilization of Federal Section 8 vouchers as a result of insufficient supportive services to pair with those. And that report is due shortly, next month. And so hoping that maybe there might be some time in the future when we build the housing agenda to A, hear from VHCD, and B, hopefully hear from Allison Hart in the Secretary's office, who has been the primary author of that report. I'm going to stop there. I would just interject if I may. You know that we did try to, in the Senate, we were proposing a bond, another housing bond. But I have spoken to Frazier-Piers, and I know that she was reluctant to have this state took on more data, but she's looking into that. She's sure that she will come up with some kind of proposal for other ways to fund housing. Thank you, Senator. We've been talking to Frazier-Piers. Also, Senator Rockins' committee is on the road. They're going to be in St. Alvin's next Tuesday in the third of their series of recent hearings on housing. Can I ask a quick question? Sure. I don't know if you have an answer to this, but are you tracking in any way the impact of the increasing number of short-term rentals being, you know, transitioned away from long-term apartment rentals? Do you quantify that? I mean, we hear a lot of anecdotes, but we don't have any sort of quantification of that. In a word, no. And yeah, there's no quantification. I think the only way to kind of quantify that is through the tax department, because short-term rentals are now as a result of the General Assembly's action two years ago are all required to pay rooms and meals tax. And so that is really the only potential quantification. I think that towards marketing tourism from a remembering right was going to be doing a study on Airbnb and the other platforms. I'm not sure if that study is out, but I will add that there is a rental housing advisory board that the General Assembly impaneled and provided further instructions to this year. I sit on that board, and one of the things that we're going to be coming back to you with is a request to actually create a rental housing database, a rental housing database that includes conversions from rental housing to short-term rentals so that we can track that, because right now the only way to track that is through the tax department and registration for rooms and meals tax. And that doesn't even really tell you whether that goes previously. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. So the first witness was Karen, excuse me. Not this Karen. Karen Besky. Karen Besky. Karen Besky. That's okay. Right. So Karen. So you've known that Karen is not on the original list. Yeah. You were. Okay. I just want to make sure you can call her. Yes. Please. Join us. And will I mess up all of your technology if I close this? I don't know. The laptop? I don't want to do anything about it. Close it almost all the way. Okay. I just wanted to have room for all my papers. There you go. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. So good morning everybody. I'm Karen Besky and I'm the senior advisor to the commissioner of the department for children and families. And I just wanted to say thank you to Erhard for giving us a minute this morning just to brief you on what we're doing with respect to mitigating the impact of the after hours 211 referral service not being in existence. So Erhard actually very kindly printed one of our handouts. And I'm actually just going to give these back to you Erhard if that's all right. So I will be highlighting some of the points in that. So a lot of my help you have that in front of you. So just to take a step back I think that I would be remiss if I didn't start this conversation by saying how much the Agency of Human Services and speaking on behalf of BCF in particular how much we've appreciated our incredibly collaborative working partnership with Vermont 211 and I'm really glad that you all have a chance to hear from Mary Ellen Nundle today. We consider her a very important partner and we of course appreciate all the services that they provide and a lot of those end up connecting folks to our services. So I guess you all might be aware connecting people to BCF's General Assistance Emergency Housing Program after hours was a small but integral part of the 211 contract that was managed by the overall Agency of Human Services. So the services provided by 211 from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. have been subcontracted out of state actually for a number of years and the provider informed us that due to increasing costs and increasing needs by the emergency housing piece that it would be significantly more expensive to fund that contract. And so despite numerous efforts and conversations to find a solution the rates sought by potential subcontractors for that services made this cost prohibitive for us. And so the good news is that if there is good news in this is that for those seeking emergency housing through Vermont 211 that there was a number of factors that helped offset this potential impact on Vermont's needing crisis housing. So I thought I'd just lay this out for you and these are also included in your memo in front of you. So as you all are aware Vermont 211 will actually still provide those services until 8 p.m. So there are hours to be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and I'll let Mary Ellen Nundle speak to those details and that most people access emergency housing either during business hours and then the second largest cohort of people accessing emergency housing are before 8 p.m. So DCF will, in addition to those pieces DCF will continue its practice for those of you who weren't aware we will continue our practice of approving housing over weekends and holidays. This is something that we started doing anyway for folks who are seeking emergency housing through one of the two other buckets known as vulnerable and catastrophic categories. So depending on what their need is we can approve housing for a number of days so that they're not missing a gap in that assistance. But we also do that for those folks who are seeking emergency housing during our adverse weather conditions as well. So we will continue to do that practice which we hope will offset this quite a bit. As you might imagine one of our biggest concerns then in terms of a gap here is with respect to folks who are fleeing domestic violence or have experienced sexual assault who need crisis housing. And so for that piece and as Erhard highlighted in terms of his overall numbers there that we have seen a 12% increase in those seeking crisis housing who have experienced domestic violence. So we've actually been working very closely with the Vermont network programs. We really appreciate their wisdom and their experience of actually also keeping up and running for many years now many decades actually a 24 hour hotline crisis service. So we have been working with them to come up with a plan that would allow for folks to seek emergency housing through our partnership. And we're still working out those details but I at least wanted to signal to you that we're very appreciative of the work that we've been able to get through with them so far that I think will provide that necessary support. And I think the other piece that's worth highlighting for this committee because I know this is something that would be of interest to you is that really since 2015 the DCF Housing Team comprised of the commissioner's office the Economic Services Division as well as the Office of Economic Opportunity so it's really that synergy between providing the safety nets through the Economic Services Division and then the OEO the Office of Economic Opportunity as you'll hear from Emily later today on some of the programs that they're managing that their role is to support and monitor the homelessness service providers for whom we provide a lot of grants to. So we've been, since 2015 these entities have been working to reinvest general assistance funding in community-based strategies. I think that all of us would agree that just sending somebody to a motel without services is not the best approach for getting folks out of homelessness. And so currently in all of the AHS districts there's at least one program that is serving people with reinvested GA funding and with respect to the network program several of their programs have actually started to take on managing the motel pool in their area and we're expecting that more programs will be starting to do that as well. So this is really helping to absorb this potential problem and frankly it's getting victims out of homelessness faster and getting them better services so we will continue to do that and really I think helps to mitigate the impact of this quite a bit. So that's what I have for you in terms of an update on that and we do appreciate you know, Eric Hart giving us this time but also the concern of this committee on this topic. Yes. Thank you for being here Karen. You said it made it cost-prohibitive can you quantify that for us? So what I can give you is and I, Mary Ellen Mandel will probably need to give you more details but so the general assistance program has contributed was budgeted to contribute $117,000 to 211 of that 40,000 was for the after hours work. As I understand it the out-of-state provider who came in with the lowest cost estimate would have been seven times that amount so it was a significant increase and I will, I don't want to steal Mary Ellen's thunder I think that she's in the best position to explain why those costs have changed. So and then I just wanted to say that I've been to two meetings in the last week we were both one at Washington County Mental Health and one at Circle the Domestic Violence, one of the domestic violence programs and both of them identified this as a significant issue and I'm not sure that they're feeling comforted by the things that you've laid out and you know that you're trying to respond to. Yes, well I appreciate that. Thank you. I work in a homeless shelter in Addison County and I just wanted to mention that we do receive a number of calls after 8 p.m. and our course of action has always been to direct them to 211 so just want to mention that we do receive a number and I've worked in two shelters one in Chittin County and one in Addison but my question is are you guys looking at next year or other years in terms of is this something we can find another avenue for that might be less cost prohibitive or is there is that on the table to look at moving forward is this kind of a short term? We are hoping that this is going to be a short term issue and I would say the conversations are very much ongoing and I appreciate your points about the after hours calls. Yesterday at the Caledonia Southern Essex COC meeting we were wondering speaking for the collective did the department kind of consider maybe staggering the times because at 8 a.m. service providers are open and we are available to house people and be in the community level servicing folks so is there any conversation about shifting these hours maybe in some 8 a.m. like noon to midnight? I appreciate that suggestion and I would actually say that would be something that we could have as part of our ongoing discussion it's a great idea, thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you again for giving me the time. I think if we could just switch back to our regular schedule testimony and then have Marielle a bit later to talk about the impact on 211 and for perspective I appreciate that. I'll also say that we've talked to a number, we've gotten a lot of alarms, a lot of alarm bells have gone off in our network around this which is one of the reasons that I asked Marielle to come in and talk today because I think this is just kind of an emerging crisis in a homeless service provider community and one of the things that we're considering is possibly asking if the legislature could address this during budget adjustment. All right, thank you. So then we'll go on with Emily Hegan. Hi. I would like to use the computer if it's possible to pull up the presentations. I have hard copy of Emily's PowerPoint presentation for anyone who wants hard copies. Is it going to be up on the monitor? It's going to be up on the monitor as soon as Hegan's got it lined up and it's certainly on the council's website but some people like our copy. Okay. Which one would you like? I've got two pieces here. Which one? I've got a hat on. Which one? They don't just get bright enough from you, right? Yeah. That's why I never heard from you. If you know anything close it and we'll go back to the other slide please. You're welcome. It was, yeah. Yeah, this one. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about these two programs with the council this morning. My name is Emily Higgins. I am the Community Services Program Manager at the Office of Economic Opportunity which is part of the State Department for Children and Families which is an agency for services. I've been there about four years at this point and prior to that I worked for 12 years at Champaign Housing Trust which is one of our affordable housing partners and I managed the homeownership center there. So I've been working in affordable housing and homelessness for quite a few years. So I'm going to start by giving just a quick overview. I'm going to be very respectful of your time. I could spend hours going over these reports but I'll spend about 10 minutes on each and I'm going to start with the Family Support Housing Program and I'll stop after each report and answer questions. So the Family Support Housing operated through our office is specifically tailored for families with complex needs who have experience homelessness. And this is not a statewide program currently. There are seven community providers. One of them is on the council NECA hosts a Family Support Housing Program and they're listed there for your reference. We would love to expand this program to become statewide if possible because we've seen and have great success with families who are in very difficult circumstances. To be clear the housing through the Family Support Housing Program is not funded directly with Family Support Housing. It's actually permanent housing operated with partners and there's an MOU between the Family Support Housing Provider and the affordable housing provider. So it's all about partnership in terms of offering that housing and also those providers work hard to match families with Family Unification Program vouchers through the Vermont State Housing Authority. And the focus of the program is intensive home-based case management so case loads are very small 12 to 15 families per case manager and there's a lot of effort to work on financial empowerment and strengthening families and using a two-generation approach. In terms of prioritization and eligibility households do need to meet the H.S. and HUD definition of homelessness and do please stop being if I'm using acronyms that you're not familiar with. I swim in acronyms. And there is a prioritization process to focus on families with the most complex needs those with multiple episodes of homelessness families who have an open case an active case with Family Services Division in the Department for Children and Families or families with at least one child under the age of six. These are some of the things that we've been working on with the program. Again, I'm going to keep moving really quickly. We do track and report on a number of outcomes around these different categories, housing stability, family engagement, child safety, job training and education and employment, health and wellness and housing affordability. There is a link also on your website to the full report which is on the Office of Economic Opportunities website and available for download at PDF and that goes into even more detail about all of these measures. But just a snapshot here is even with this small program we served 238 children under the age of six. So that's a significant proportion of the households had multiple children under the age of six because there were 210 families served and 484 individuals. We track things like how long the families were homeless prior to entering in the program. As you can see it fluctuates a bit. We track housing stability. The good news is that over 70% of the households consistently and sometimes as much as 90 have had very good housing stability while in the program. Can I ask a question? Yes. So just back on the length of homelessness the jump from 17 to 18 was significant. What happened? We were a little bit surprised by that as well. We can point to a specific factor there. We did we have always prioritized families with the greatest need and there was a shortage of housing vouchers. I don't know if other people have any insight to this. Is this the average? Sorry. Do you know? Yes, it is. I wonder if there was a particularly outlining case that was reported? I know that in Chittenden County that was 17 to 18 there were some big changes at COTS in terms of how they were they went from case managers to family navigators which was a huge change for families and I think the support that you got in the families I'm a consumer from the family supportive housing to be a friend and there was a pretty significant change in the services that were being provided so I think there were a number of families that maybe were not getting their needs totally being met through COTS that were not in the program at the time that we're then learning of the program. Some it may have to do with have, especially in Chittenden County in the upper valley it may have to do with housing availability as well so folks may be stacked up in shelters and there's no place to go shelters are full there's no housing available even if you have a voucher you may not use that voucher in a very low vacancy rental market like the greater Burlington area and like the upper Canary Valley and so that often determines there's been a lot of construction in Chittenden County just over the last two years and so that those are factors and I can't specifically speak to those spikes but those are clearly factors in the length of people the average length of people stay. Great question. Thank you. So additionally we delved into this issue of housing stability a little deeper this year and in addition to the 76% of households in the program who were stably housed they were in a 15% on top of that who actually had a voucher and were actively searching for housing so over 90% of the households in a place to be in stable housing just had quite the apartment to be in and then successful program excess keep in mind these are families with very, very complex needs often substance issues mental illness you know there's a lot going on there and over let's see over 70% in each year we've tracked it were able of households in the program were able to exit in a positive manner meaning they were still in stable housing and their lives were getting to a better place make sure we have a little bit of time for questions here so I just want to whip through the rest of this but want to be clear that we're tracking community connections so families who have access and relationships with organizations self-help groups advocacy groups coalitions involved in their community development efforts and families within a community engagement plan because we know that connection is very important and job training again we have yeah we have a question behind you sorry about that I mean most of the community connections set a different question and I realized it has to be a game issue I'd like to introduce folks in your program to connect with students at 264 groups so at 264 mandates that students actually have a cohesive case management approach and so I know in education we are increasingly tracking homelessness and making sure that students get the resources they need but if that's not happening I want to chat with folks after we actually have some of these conversations and are you going to act and make sure that but I would say yes the families who are having case managers are involved in a ton of different training to make sure they're aware of all the resources and connections available we have talked about education and connection with the schools and the case management and I can't testify to that that's happening in every community yeah because I just worry that not that it's not happening it's a critical part of students lives that is then not you know potentially by the education system and I have the agency education so that's why that's what I'm trying to do I mean I think that's a good systems conversation to have around like who is the lead agency in terms of holding that meeting it's still at the school should it be the families who support housing work I don't know the answer to that but I think that's a good thing to bring back and think about with the role of this we did see some really impressive gains in financial empowerment for these households so 27 percent of families had savings at enrollment and when this is the number of households at the end of the year we're still in the program 50 percent of them had savings so we did see an increase there and we do have a leverage program to help people increase their savings and their financial capability score increased substantially over the three years which is sort of a survey that households take talking about how they feel about their own finances so it's really a measure of them feeling more financially capable and secure and then child safety we can say that 84 percent of the families with children in the home so the majority even if there was DCF involvement the child was still in the home living with the household and only 7 percent last year and 9 percent this year of households lost custody of a child during their participation with the family support housing program and we did do a deep dive into the data around family services division and involvement 49 percent had a history of FSD involvement and 67 percent of those families closed their case and did not have a new one had no new case open while involved with family support housing and no new cases after exit so we did implement their after participation are working and tracking on substance use and recovery you can see the percent of adults in recovery has been increasing slowly and there's also tracking around health and well-being children up to date with their pediatric visits has increased and kids receiving mental health services has increased I was just wondering so when you talk about child health and well-being I don't do you have any supports for parents who may be living with a disability who you know cause with insurance when you're shopping for insurance you don't get counted as having five people in your household you only get counted as having two cause children don't count as household for people who are qualifying for disability for insurances for families who are living with a parent who has a disability who is trying to support their child or is there any supports or numbers of the people in the program that might be in that category understanding your question do you have any numbers or do you have any idea if there's any increase in supports for people who are living with a disability who have children through this program so is there any the adults the adults not the child family are they given any prioritization do you keep any data on how they're doing in terms of being able to access their own health care we do we I would say the full report on our website would go into that and a little bit more detail and I'm happy to answer any questions as well great thank you I don't don't know that I have statistics about that in this presentation today but we do certainly track information about disabilities of households and making sure they're connected to all the services and questions that I can thank you we'll get you okay I was just wondering in response to that question maybe Katie when you the slide you have on substance use recovery and treatment is that the adults in the household it is okay so I mean that's a little piece of information at least about what that is I'm wondering when you said successful you know back one of your earlier slides how do you define successful meaning they're still stably housed they're not at risk of losing that housing they have good connections and supports and are moving toward their goals in a positive way so for a specific period of time do you do you do any after you know after services always possible to keep in touch with households after they accept the program but we don't have sort of an end date for services anywhere at a certain point it was considered to be a two-year program and now it's just ongoing that's needed based on the household I just want to clarify was your the follow-up so that wouldn't be specific to disability and substance use you were just asking about okay yeah I get that different it was to figure out what types of vouchers people were accessing in the family support housing program and you can see that the family unification voucher was a huge percentage 26% of all households and rapid rehousing vouchers that's either through the Vermont State Housing Authority and local providers or there's also assistance through the housing opportunity grant program that I'm going to talk about next and surprisingly 17% had an apartment with market rent without a voucher can I ask a question? yes, sir so I, well yes I I know we've got two presenters before 1035 so your connection with correction so you've got a family support housing so many you know being released or coming out of prison has a child do you work with them? do you consider that one of your putting them in the category of this very high needs? you can clap Monday through Friday because we have other contractual obligations with the Department of Environmental Conservation we're doing intake behind PFA calls the Department of Health with the land project and the schools and such and drinking water so we have we have to stay open to late we want to stay open to late we want to be open 24 we wanted to say how's it going? who would we call the agency AHS after hours no I meant to find out how this transition plan is oh I believe that would be ESD with Sean Brown Sean Brown thanks we also just quickly just have we have set up our system we've done this for 14 years so we've really streamlined the system and made it very efficient and I think the agency is a great thing as well as the district offices and there's this adverse weather condition that we've all heard about so when the weather drops and that formula comes into play and the moons are aligned and da da da da we had over 11,000 calls just going into what we call a weather line for people to find out if there are if there is an adverse weather condition in their district and if there is they can hit five and then get a 211 information or referral specialist and go through the intake and usually just hang up now we're going to continue that line but there's not going to be anybody there to do the intake alright well thank you so much thank you very much thanks manager just appreciate again especially going over a little bit we weren't anticipating administration being able to come testify I hope folks got a good slice of what's happening in the housing and business world and you know this is not rocket science it's a matter of resources a matter of resources for building more formal housing more rental assistance and more support services because we've got some very challenging families and you know the impacts over the course of you know those two generations you know ultimately they're being affected by family homelessness is going to ripple throughout other areas of the state budget and we'll continue to do that for decades I just want to make a comment I was going to ask Marie if I wonder about the opportunity to offset some of that upfront in state cost building on her you know desire and the push of all of us the Vermonters would be helping other Vermonters working at 211 but versus outsourcing if other regions who all need this after hours and we can cover certainly in New England where the calls aren't as great during those times for the Vermont 211 to be the hub a regional hub and take money in from other states to offset that cost of that program so I yeah I think that would be a great business model and certainly the Health Department relies on 211 for lots of things and I think substance use cessation hotlines are key and so we don't want to do RFAs with other you know entities because 211 for sure is has something no one else in the state has with their resource database all right you're up help me well she's moving so I'm feeling a an anxiousness around some things need more immediate attention than others and I know that we all work in our own circles but it's there and I'm just throwing this out there is there a role for this council to respond to or keep track of what is going on with this how did we get to the point where it got caught off on October 1 I mean I don't think I don't know what happened that all of a sudden that there wasn't enough warning that we couldn't have prepared for plan B so something happened so I don't know about everybody else but I'm sure that it's on my list now Mr. Brown where are you what's going on how are we doing yeah but yeah and I don't yeah I'm having a hard time believing that it's going to cost $240,000 to continue a service that everybody in AHS utilizes and that we've worked so hard to advertise to get people to get it in their mindset to call this feels like there's alternative alternative and then there's the family the family that has three weeks but yeah anyone okay well thank you for letting me say that that's the transition at AHS but I'll I mean certainly the um okay folks we're going on I'm Janet Kilburn I'm a child development coordinator at the health department and also the point person in Vermont for the Center for Disease and Control CDC program called Learning Science Act Early and we're passing out folders inside are some wonderful parent friendly materials on developmental milestones so really these little brochures there's a little booklet that talks about all of the developmental milestones two months through five years and also help me grow literature and materials we encourage you to look through that as we speak there's our 2018 annual report card in there as well it looks like this so please feel free to look at our materials as we're sharing the story and help me go with you and we're here today to just make sure everybody's important who knows about this resource alright so help me grow here's our objectives we want to tell you the story of early childhood and really help you understand how important this critical period is and how it's all our responsibility to ensure that all kids have positive experiences so we can really support their health growth learning and behavior we're going to explore how help me grow tips to scale really helps ensure positive child outcomes so that all children can realize their full capability and contribute to our communities because capable children are the basis of the sustainable and prosperous community society and we all benefit when all children can realize their full potential and contribute their talents and brain architecture this early childhood period is a key time that we can establish this foundation for all of life for all of long-term health outcomes development outcomes learning school outcomes and health mental health happiness and success it's the emergency emerging cognitive abilities are really supported by social and emotional capabilities as well that's key for kindergarten readiness the negative effects of early exposure to adversity can be mitigated so not all kids have positive experiences in early childhood internal depression parental substance abuse homelessness poverty rural isolation even can really make an impact and even disrupt cognitive development so universal developmental screening across all these domains of development including screening for social contributors of health those are social determinants of health or social risk factors can really make a difference in ensuring that young kids get connected with their families and services as soon as possible and we want to do it early because that's when it has the greatest long-term impact alright so help me grow our vision is that again all children will reach their full potential and we really want to strengthen families and their capacity to support children in this work and our mission is to align all early childhood partners who are working on the same vision so here's some of our strategies and we're going to just focus on a few today to let you really know our work number three to plug in all communities and families to a resource group to a resource hub if you will all early childhood and family supports and resources across the state and we're trying to support them to connect not just to tell them about a resource but make sure they really get connected and that service starts the home visitor comes the family was able to appeal economic service decision whatever it is so we're going to help them make sure they got connected so we develop the on going care coordination follow up and we do a lot of training of all kinds of providers across the state in development monitoring and screening to again make sure we're catching kids as soon as possible and getting them to the right service okay so what is healthy development so again mentioned that the brain architecture if you will or this construction process 95% of the brain is developed in the first year of life 95% by age 3 so even though we can develop and our brains are plastic it's a dynamic process that goes on throughout our lives really matters if we get it right for the first time it's much more efficient and cost effective if we can support healthy brain development from the get go and so one of the ways we do this is trying to support kids with positive experiences and support families with positive experiences so that if people experience hardships we're offsetting it and mitigating that effect so we're going to watch a little video here I can pull it up there it is this is a 4 minute video that really tells the story of early childhood things I've been talking about in a much more a more comprehensive way that is somebody tells us the experiences we have in the first years of our lives actually affect the physical architecture of this healthy brain this means that brains are just born they're also built over time based on our experiences just as a house means a journey foundation to support the wall and roof a brain needs to support all future development positive interactions between young children and their kids about this healthy brain building a sturdy foundation in the earliest years provides good days for a lifetime with good mental function and better overall health so just have this a solid brain foundation built and maintained in a developing child one way is through what brain experts call serve and return interactions imagine a tense match between a caregiver and a child but instead of hitting the wall back and forth across the net various forms from eye contact to touch from the same simple games like peek-a-boo these interactions repeated throughout a young person's developing years are the bricks that build a healthy foundation for all future development but another kind of child's experience shapes the brain development too and that stress good kinds of stress like meeting people or studying for tests are healthy for development kids can prepare kids to cope with future challenges another kind of stress called toxic stress is bad for brain development if a child is exposed to serious unknown hardships like abuse and neglect and he has no other caregiver in his life to provide support the basic structures of his developing brain may be damaged without a sturdy foundation to properly support future development he is at risk for a lifetime of health problems development issues even addiction it's possible to fix some of the damage of toxic stress later on but it's easier more effective and less expensive to build solid brain architecture in the first place one of the things that sturdy brain architectures support is the development of basic or emotional and social skills and important groups of skills which sizes call executive function and stop regulation can be thought of like air traffic control in the child's natural airspace taking the young child's brain designing and taking off development support systems on the ground simultaneously demand the child's attention to avoid a crash it's the same with the young child who needs to pay attention plan ahead and remember and solve a lot of the rules like all of us kids have to react with things happening in the world around them while also dealing with worries temptations and obligations on their minds that takes demand for attention pilot up air traffic control helps the child with information prioritized tasks and above all find ways to manage stress and avoid mental collisions along the way with having the ability and the necessity for positive and loving personal help developing effective air traffic control overcoming toxic stress and building solid-brained architecture are things kids can't do on their own and since strong societies are made up of healthy contributing individuals it's up to us as a community to make sure that we are behind and nurturing and creating the same need for positive development and build better teaching we need to build better brand just right it was the steel cookie balloon was it? not at all it's in her training her newly developed training everyone is on-state employees to take right? but thanks for watching that and I hope that gave you a little bit more understanding that we can influence it it's not just the family's responsibility to make sure their kid turns out okay so if you think of child development like the scale the resilience scale positive factors positive experiences get stacked on one side and negative things like what we've been talking about poverty, homelessness violence, trauma maternal depression substance use are on the other side and so our job is to address the negative factors but really trying to front-load and await the scale of the positive factors so nurturing care-giving relationships like child care schools parent child centers community settings positive experiences for families like recreation programs skill building developmental play groups pre-K all these things really weight that scale and again it's not an inborn trait it's not something that an individual has resilience is an outcome and it's when that scale is tipped toward the positive even when there's negative factors on the scale so how does Help Me Grow help communities tip that scale so in a partnership with the building bright futures regional councils we put on fun family events throughout the years and all sorts of venues across Vermont to really engage all parents the whole community in learning more about early childhood development and completing developmental screening questionnaires and we're really working to expand child find efforts here these are federal mandates under the individual disabilities act part B and part C to find all kids with developmental concerns or developmental delays make sure they get into intervention and needed services so we're really trying to expand that capacity birth to three and for all families and some examples some really cool examples are we have a moms group in Springfield and one of the moms came and spoke to our early childhood action plan some of you were there and we had heard her with her little six week old baby we hold events in laundromats laundry and learn we get a free bag of books and free laundry for the day in a laundromat libraries we have movies and we talk about social emotional development with certain movies that illustrate that like upside down I think was the movie so we have free childcare and what was it? inside out inside out but really innovative ideas free new day the museum and we after develop little screen we do lots of family friendly materials and books again so just to let you know we had 42 events last year and this year alone we reached almost 4,000 families with that work and then the other thing we do to connect families to resources is we operate a resource hub and this is what Elizabeth is going to share more with you about but again we're really trying to connect all families to good learning opportunities and environments recreation supportive relationships and social opportunities and of course specialized services like children's integrated services and this really helps tip that scale and improve development of outcomes which is just yes which we have a question so when I when you're talking about activities and things like that what I tend to see at least in my community is that families that are already connected are the ones who are getting who are sort of getting sort of getting plugged in to those kinds of activities so they've already they've gone in my community to the children's room they're reaching out to other resources they're already connected I'm trying to figure out how do you folks reach the people who are not connected who are struggling at home if they have a home or in somebody else's home couch surfing or whatever how are you touching those what's the relationship that you have with DCF in terms of referrals from families at risk there and I'm just trying to figure out how are you really reaching those families who are really at risk absolutely well you just hold let's hold on to that question yes I think the resource hub is one of the key ways we reach families at risk so let's listen and then we'll make sure we got that okay thank you thanks Janet thank you everyone for having us today so as Janet mentioned on the manager of the resource hub we're housed at United Ways of the Month in 1, 2, 1, 1 I'm going to talk a little bit about that partnership in a minute but I want to kind of explain what it is that our role is there at the resource hub so when Janet mentioned that you know we want to tip the scale in terms of resilience and well-being the resource hub is that centralized place where families and providers can call and help families get connected to resources in their communities to developmental child development little screenings and information about child development how to connect with services and help connecting to those services so one of the nice things about the resource hub is we are a whole population so we do serve all families regardless of income or whether or not your child has a delay or percentage of a delay which we serve all or not families with children ate or under and prenatal parents so when you have a system that is talking to each other all the players and just have networks so to speak families can kind of connect in a way where there's no wrong way into that system and it creates a system where there's no delays of getting children connected to services especially when it's a case of development where a family that's struggling with some major issues like food and housing and security we do rely on our community partners to do this obviously so we want to take those systems that are siloed and talk with them and have them be part of that connection to families to kind of help me to be to those connection to services with our family I just want to ask so I would consider at least in my mind the connection is that the parent child centers are one of your strongest yes absolutely yeah so some of our partners are folks like the parent child centers there's some early care educators that work a lot with and hug providers designated agencies DCF those are all agencies that we want to maybe take systems that may be difficult to access and maybe we'll siloed into the base third and kind of be that connection for families and for them to connect to resources for those providers to connect you know it's kind of that two way street that we want to support that bigger system and then homes after yes absolutely and children's integrated services as well so I'm sorry I just I look over at Heather and I think there's this whole section of you know AOE so you must connect yeah yes yeah and I'm going to actually give a little example of a family that we help navigates and that essential early ed piece with a service provider the other piece I want to mention in terms of the resource hub is it's not just care coordination follow up so we want to support that family as they're connecting to as they're working with and once they're connected to those resources and services because we know that when we offer that follow up care they're going to stay connected or stay connected or maybe not stop the first barrier to care so we want to really help them brainstorm and navigate that so that they can really plug so as I mentioned we have to kind of work with our community partners to really do this it's an effort to support families in Vermont some of our partners that we work with is the Building Bright Futures Regional Coordinators who populate a database full of playgroups and develop little playgroups for families that were able to share with the service providers when they reach out to us obviously a database which includes over 1,000 agencies and over 3,000 programs in Vermont that potentially could serve a family and help support them in their needs and then we also work with stamp and you can read it's a terrible afternoon but it's really doing that work with perinatal moms who are dealing with some depression anxiety and potentially substance use disorders and so in this opportunity we were able to create a resource of mental health professionals that really have that expertise in training and serving those families and are able to help connect providers and those parents with those services again with that care for them to make sure they're making that connection at a very high risk time for them and their child so again it's that two-generation approach and there are other stressors in that parents' life might be food might be childcare access and might be some other issues and the depth of that we really spend some time thinking about what would be most helpful in giving that information to a parent what are issues that might stop a parent from accessing services when they're dealing with some of those mental health issues and so around are they on the bus line do they tell the health that this is a parent who lives in maybe a rural community and doesn't have access to transportation do they have specialized training and substance abuse and maybe could address both issues with that parent what insurance do they take to kind of limit that number of doors you knock on to get the services you need because we know that's when you lose families so it's a little bit about the impact we had so in 2019 you can see we made over 1800 referrals for families their families and two agencies in more than state life agencies that included talking about what came here doing screening for food and security and the social determinants of health that Janet mentioned who did a lot of work with kinship care providers that were connecting with us because they were taking on children of their families that were dealing with part of the opioid abuse that was happening in their community and helping them navigate those difficult systems again because that's what we need to do to keep them connected so this is what Janet's talking about we're talking about front loading those negative effects and trying to help too with how we do that is to give an example and talk a little bit about being a weed because maybe we are a partner at our table so we we received a referral from a mental health provider who was working with a mom who has addiction disorder she also has tremendous depression and anxiety she's had a lot negative experiences with social service systems she is at DCF intervention in the task and is pretty suspicious of statewide systems and has a three-year-old daughter who was showing concerns and delays she was voicing concerns about her daughter's development the childcare provider was voicing concerns and mom finally agreed to take a step to start the process to get that child connected to some early education services through the local school district and that had barely started when the childcare closed very properly so mom didn't have childcare but also that process stopped she did not feel comfortable or confident to reach out to the school on her own and this was coming up a lot in her sessions with her mental health provider who really had to focus on supporting mom that's really her role and that's her real house and didn't really know a lot about early education she trusted she had a relationship with you know one of the things we tried to do is not make her family repeat their stories over and over and over again it'd be very traumatizing for a family and this is a lot of financial struggles so her phone doesn't always work so the mental health provider was the guaranteed way you could get connection to mom and we reached out to the school education talked to the special educator and really helped to connect that mom with the health of her mental health provider to her local elementary school special educator to get her daughter assessed and get her into pre-k so that she was also having that structure that healthy safe place where she's building up her learning and her other opportunities and that's the true kind of breaking down a silo or helping a provider who maybe feels stuck and a mom who feels stuck and then you know helping girls role is to leave that door open so in the future if mom needs support with that mental health provider who's in another family needs some support with we're happy to help and I think this next slide I just want to add to what you said when people have either the pregnant or they have an eight-year-old or older they get preferred right to help me grow because we offer that in-depth care coordination and so if somebody's very early isolated not connected to community supports they may call 211 for something that's one way we can get connected they can not tell us a thing about themselves and we will help them we partner closely with home visiting and then we also partner with early care and education providers 70% I think so let's grow kids just to stick with working parents who have some form of childcare and so childcare providers can really be these front you know milestones what is social and emotional development how do they support emerging skills as parents and so we've trained almost half Vermont's childcare workforce to date and we are partnering with Let's Grow Kids to train the remaining amount and we have pre-school development renewal funds hopefully coming to help us in that work continue to work but we have prepared 70 classrooms of kids now we'll be better prepared to go to kindergarten that's the classrooms in the state so we hope that all kids and all parents will be partners in this work of making sure their kids are ready socially emotionally and developmentally for kindergarten or have the extra support and practice skills get connected to early prevention before kindergarten for sure and so this is a great statistic too we have trained almost 700 children for their evaluation services and as a result from our baseline here we've seen an average age of referral to early intervention which is special education birth to three dropped by almost half so at 26 months in 2014 now 14 months which is a fabulous thing because kids get services longer and at an earlier age oh yes we've seen on that one of our key partners improvement program they've done years decades worth of quality improvement work in medical homes so we do train pediatricians to connect them with the resource hub and we partner very closely as they're referring to Elizabeth the certain way for addressing social information on the work we've done so everyone's on the same page any other questions or thank you so much for your time thank you can you answer my question okay so I think that Auburn has been kind enough to say that she would postpone her presentation and I think I'm going to talk to you about that yes thank you is this your guess from the presentation are here and are they and the agency for resources so please come up good morning for the record I'm Peter Walk secretary of the agency of natural resources I'm Dan Dutcher I'm the environmental policy manager with the Monk agency of transportation so we're working on a topic that isn't interesting how it relates to work and so I just want to describe what we're doing in general one of the main drivers for our issues with dealing with the impacts of climate change is to address emissions from the transportation sector emissions from trans gas emissions from the transportation sector represent 43% of our emissions statewide it is the hardest not to crack because Vermonters live in primarily rural areas with long ways to travel and it is a major driver we're good at trying to figure out solutions to complicated public policy issues that's why we all do this right but we try we hope we're good at it so one of the things that we've been working on to try to address this challenge is to work across a regional group of states to come up with a way that creates a larger market and a drive and force across the country so the region that we're talking about is every state including the District of Columbia from Virginia kind of north along the along the Eastern Sea Ward so it ends up being 12 states and District of Columbia we call ourselves the jurisdictions because DC's makes things complicated doesn't let us just say states about how to work together on this topic it builds off a program that was launched at the end of the 2000s notice the regional greenhouse gas initiative which is a cap and invest program for emissions from the power production sector so all of our electric utilities the idea was could we do something similar as soon as we got into the work we realized how much hard it was when you're talking about large electricity generators it's large single point sources that have the ability to make huge changes to their operations in one file swoop we are all the emissions generators for the transportation center that's fundamentally what it comes down to we need opportunities for us all to be able to have different choices and make different choices so what we've been looking at is trying to figure out exactly how that might work and doing the research necessary to sort of back up what the program looked like and so last December nine of those states plus the District Columbia agreed to start a process to evaluate a cap and invest program for transportation emissions across the region from that statement all of those states have been actively at the table part of the discussion so it really is the whole region the idea was that we would this was started as a executive branch function but we certainly understand that the legislature will be engaged in this process to come back to teach state to let them then decide whether they wanted to participate the way cap and invest program works is that typically in any sort of production scheme say you're all the emitters of whatever it happened to be I would ask each one of you to reduce your inclusion content by 25% whatever the number might be regardless of your ability to meet that you would have to in the way cap and invest works is I tell the group that you need to reduce your emissions by 25% and you figure out amongst yourselves effectively so we get the same level of reduction at the most cost effective method what we do in Reggie is add the invest component of it where the way you sort of work that trading is to buy allowances essentially what the term of art is essentially your your amount of carbon pollution that you're purchasing in an auction and then we re-invest those proceeds in things that are going to further reduce emissions the Reggie program the legislature determined that those should go towards weatherization so much of the work efficiency Vermont that goes towards weather additions and Vermont gas and Burlington Electric is coming from the Reggie proceeds in the that decision was made in part because we had an existing electric efficiency program and so they have punched most of their proceeds back into those sorts of efforts the the benefit of the investment is that it then reduces the pressure so the demand pressure for you know so already your all of your emissions would then be lowered by the amount of efficiency that we can't so you would have less work to do and therefore the price the market price would be lower we would envision doing something like up and we are working with stakeholders to figure out exactly where that point of regulation should be because it's really easy in the power producte world to put it at the power plant itself that's where the generator is where changes can easily happen not easily but efficiently happen for transportation because we're all the generators we're not going to make every Vermont to go into an auction somewhere online to figure out and buy their associated office fluid work. We'd spend more in compliance and enforcement than we would in the revenue from the program. So we're looking upstream in the fuel supply network to try to understand where it could best be placed. Then the idea is then we take those proceeds and invest them in programs that help for monitors and that can come in a number of forms. The region isn't gonna dictate how that money gets spent. That will be a decision that the legislature takes on and chooses for itself with obviously, we'll provide you with some advice on how we might think we might invest through that. So there'll always be a balance between how many, how are those investments leading to reduced emissions and therefore lowering our price impact overall and what are the other public policy goals that we want to achieve at the same time that could be beneficial. Every time we have a new source of revenue in government we all get excited about the potential for what it could be. But we want to make sure that there's good balance back and forth when we can think about everything from supporting electric vehicle charging networks and helping people get into electric vehicles and lower emissions vehicles generally. We could be thinking about increasing alternative transportation methods whether that be public transportation or van pooling or any bike head stuff. Could be things like how do we support communities to create that sort of vision of the future where they are sort of sustainable within their own communities. They have the village store and the community gathering place that isn't anchored so that people are in their cars less anyways. There's all sorts of ways we could go about thinking about how those revenues could be used that meet our greenhouse gas emissions goals. So we gave ourselves a year to do this. If you can imagine negotiating, so each state has a representative from their transportation, their environmental, their energy agency at the table. So 13 times 3D, you get 39 people around the room and you have to convince them all to agree on something. It's 113 people. I know by the way, none of them actually speak for their ultimate decision maker. And so it's a complicated process where we're trying to work through it and we gave ourselves probably less time than we should have, but we all understand the urgency of the challenge we face. So we're doing our best to get to an answer quickly. The current timeline is we just put out the beginning of October kind of framework for the program, what it might look like, what it might mean. I can provide the website information for that if it's helpful. And then in December we'll put out a draft memorandum of understanding that would essentially be the framework for the states. We agreed the sort of draft agreement between the states that would dictate what the program would actually look. And included in that will be a couple of different options for what the cap looks like. So the cap, so where we set the maximum amount of emissions to be and how it declines over time is what ultimately dictates the price impacts at the pump and what we have for investment to make changes. And so people are obviously going to be very interested in that topic. So I'm here. Yeah. Yes, yeah. It's very, okay. Is part of the conversation that you're having with this program that you're putting it out is how it affects different populations. I mean, we all know that low income people suffer and suffer the most from climate events and change and how they are able to participate in a brighter energy future is a big concern and that they're not the ones also bearing the burden of whatever choices are being made. And we've done some things in the state with low income weatherization and your transportation and climate initiative stuff in terms of trying to put efficient vehicles in the hands of low income. We know that the amount of subsidy that is helpful to especially low income families is probably greater than what we're able to do now. So I'm just wondering where that fits in the conversation of what you're trying to do and how it affects low income families. Sure, that's a great question and one I'm sorry that I didn't address on top. And that equity concerns are first and foremost in our mind because if we think about our transportation network right now, we already have our low income populations being overburdened by the amount of their resources that are spending on transportation related expenses anyways. TCI can have impacts both positive and negative on that and we need to be thoughtful about how we interact with those concerns. Certainly we are thinking about how do we be sensitive, how do we, let me be clear on one point, so that sort of the structure of the cap portion of the regulatory side of things. There isn't typically, you can't really make a distinction. Everybody would pay into it, but what you do with the resources on the backend really matter and how do you mitigate the some of the cost grabbers and effects there. They could go towards a low income rebate, that's a possibility associated with the program. It might be useful for, we're talking about this in general terms, it might be useful to think about sort of hypothetical dollar figures as a way to sort of bracket what we're talking about. So the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has been in place for 10 years now, the price, if you were to take that price for what a ton of carbon costs and translate it into the impact on a price of a gallon of gas, it would be roughly five cents. So if you think about, so if you've got a Vermonter who's driving an old pickup truck and has to drive 20,000 miles a year to get to and from their job, that's about, at current gas prices, it's about $85 extra a year on the five grand they're already spending on fuel. So it's only about a 1.6% increase in the overall price of their fuel, but it is, when you have existing burdens, we don't want to necessarily be adding onto those. Or we want to figure out ways to be able to target programs that are going to help all Vermonters be part of that sort of clean energy future. It is the hardest part of this program to figure out but it's the sort of nature of the policy that there are always going to be changes that we make that we need to figure out what the ramifications are. I just want to make sure that they are a major concern in your discussions. First and more, thank you. Thank you. My question is about transportation in general and the lack of public transportation, particularly in rural areas. And when we're talking about access to after school, but I mean, it's just, it's more than individuals driving and costs to them and gas. It's really access when we're talking about equity. And I'm just wondering how you all are thinking or planning around kind of building a public transportation system, particularly in rural areas that all families or, you know, what's your goal or plan? This is an existing issue, right? Quite apart from climate and energy. And it's something that the agency of transportation working with a lot of stakeholder groups has been into for many years. Some of you might know that VTrans, or in Vermont, we spend a larger proportion of our transportation budget on public transit than most other states. It's quite a significant sum. And we're actually, you know, we could get into a sort of ironic position where if we wanted to divert a lot of TCI funds into public transit and rural areas, we could have more funding than we could reasonably spend because you don't want to send empty buses, you know, going around. It just wouldn't be cost effective. So one of the things we're looking at at VTrans, quite apart from TCI, is how to make public transit more accessible in rural areas in a way that's both cost effective and climate effective. And some of that might involve microtransit, which we're looking into, and other forms of sort of on demand type transit. And we've gotten some interesting feedback from stakeholders. We've been talking to a lot of different groups in the TCI process. One of the ideas that came up was sort of mass transit for stuff, you know, instead of sending people around to the different places they need to go, you can have some kind of delivery service, which I thought was interesting. I don't know how that's gonna pencil out, but a lot of people are thinking about this kind of thing. And I mean, certainly transit's a very important thing on the list of potential investments, especially when we start thinking about equity. And one of the things we can do, I'm not sure how much this will move us forward on the accessibility issue, but in terms of greenhouse gas reductions converting diesel buses, both public transit and school buses, to electric would certainly do a lot to, you know, clean up both conventional air pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And one of the places to start doing that might be in rural areas, because if you look at the ridership in the more urbanized areas, you're already getting pretty good MPG per rider. Whereas, you know, out in the rural areas, not so much. So there'd be some logic to starting there with some of those programs. And we do have pilot programs underway through the BW settlement process to start converting buses. And E-Trans is also using federal bono grants to start doing that. And we are right now bringing electric buses into Vermont. And the technology is pretty good. It's pretty mature, especially in transit buses and it's probably there also in school buses. So really one of the things that TCI needs to do both in transit and in a lot of other sectors is to help bring this technology up to scale. We just need mass production and we need the infrastructure around it, charging infrastructure. Mechanics have to get used to dealing with this kind of thing. And, you know, Vermont combined with the other 12 jurisdictions in the TCI region, I think we're something like the third biggest economy in the world. So it could really have a very positive effect on bringing some of these technologies up to scale. I think the other thing to think about from our Vermont experience, right? And we've been having, trying to have these conversations with the other sort of northern and northern more rural states in the conversation because we're all dealing with the same, you know, same existing concerns and the same potentially. That's related to concerns. Is how do we improve access? And I think our public transit systems have largely been based on trying to take a dense urban model and expand it into a rural state where our world, our lives don't operate on point-to-point basis, right? We need to go from home to school to work to grocery store to the school to home. And right now that we're not set up for that sort of becomes a complete lack of convenience. And so we don't have the demand to form the basis to be able to sort of make changes within that. My hope is that some of these resources could be used to prove out some of the more sort of creative concepts around how we might address these things with the public transit for goods or whatever, or microtransit or something like capstone is working on now to sort of take these pools of resources that we have for meals on meals and bringing folks to medical appointments and using it in an effective way to make sure that we can touch more people and help make people's lives better. Two more questions. Yeah, I'm gonna just quickly make those comparisons to the economic impact of rural Vermont versus Boston, Massachusetts, or New York City. I'm not sure that, I mean, it appears to me that there's a lot of planning that has to be done to compensate for the expense in particularly dealing with school buses, for example. I mean, it's a long-distance road. A lot of drivers. Yeah, I mean, this is, it's critical. And then of course, it is about setting up charging stations and I mean, the economic impact for rural Vermont should be severe, particularly for people involved in this committee. And I'm sure there'll be a lot of questions and I know that you're working hard and so on. I'm not sure if that's part of the, really part of the discussion. It is, yeah, it's a very important part of the discussion. I think people involved in TCI have been aware of the regressive effect of increasing gas prices from day one, and it's certainly at the forefront of the conversations on how to structure the investment scenario. And one of the things we can do, other than looking at transit, is also just accepting the reality of rural Vermont and realizing that a lot of people just get around and single out the NC vehicles. That's not gonna go away anytime soon. And we have the technology today for electric vehicles in the next few years. We're gonna start seeing a wave of new models, including all-wheel drive models, full-size pickups and SUVs. You're gonna be expensive, especially at first. But one of the things we can do is to target purchase incentives and lease incentives toward lower income populations. And we're doing that now with a small scale existing incentive program that we're trying to set up. And we're gonna start seeing a growing used car market starting to see that already. So there will be options, and I would emphasize too that the cap is not gonna be draconian. It's gonna start off gently. And I think if we do this right, the economic effects will be positive for everybody involved. Because obviously climate change is gonna have devastating effects on everyone concerned. We need to wrap up. Representative Lamper has another question. Thank you for coming. So from what I understand, you're gonna be coming out in December with recommendations or policy draft. And then it's gonna come to the legislature. That's why I really wanted this committee or one of the things I wanted to invite you is because transportation and access to transportation and the cost of it disproportionately you've already heard the impact on this particular group. So they're gonna be very, very anxious and worried. I wanna make sure that we hear you and that you hear us that those options that come out in December have a way for us to address that population that's gonna have need. And does it get to the emissions issue? And I know you've heard public transit and access and expanded public transit is big but also the incentive. So thank you. Maybe end on this point. I think this is a really sort of important point where the direction that we've gotten from the governor is go out, work with the region, come up with the best possible setup within this kind of framework for Vermont. And then let's come back and we'll have a conversation about whether it actually makes sense. There's no word in for sure. There's a, what are the details? Because until we sort of set some, set the brightness of the cap parameters in our economic model, we don't know what the actual outcome might be. And so it's easy to have the conversation in very general terms but until we see what the results are, we can't come to you and be like, here's what it actually means and here's the good we might be able to do with those resources. And here's what the economic impact is because as people transition to lower emissions vehicles and more electric vehicles, their actual transportation burden drops drastically given the less expense of either using electricity or simply burning less gas. So those are huge factors that we need the details of to be able to come back with. And so in the idea is now in December, we're gonna have most of the pieces ironed out at the original level. But it's enough for us to start the conversation with you to say here's what we anticipate so that we can get moving in that conversation. Well, I look forward to being a partner in that. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Okay, committee, here's what I would, here I've been thinking. We have our offsite meeting in November, you know, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But one of the goals of our committee is to come up with recommendations for the legislature as a whole. And so we wanna weigh in what's gonna happen in the second part of the biennium. So I'm thinking we will need a December meeting to discuss that. In between, we can have a subcommittee, which I think would be comprised of Representative Lamper and myself and maybe two or three other people, talk about you kind of review what we've heard at our various meetings and then come up with recommendations based on what we've heard and look at what we had recommended last year as well. And then at the December meeting, we could have gotten those out to, we'll work with Katie on that of course, and then see her taking notes, that's great. And we would get that out to folks before the December meeting and then at December, we'd spend most of our time talking through them and making sure we agree on those. How does that sound? And then we'd give Auburn a little time at that meeting also to present. How does that sound to folks? Will part of that involve other committee members being able to submit things that anything should be. Absolutely, yes, yeah, definitely, that should be part of it, yeah. Okay, all right. So, well, let's just talk about December then while we're on that subject. That I think our regular date would be December 19th. We had emailed briefly about the December meeting. Yes, yes. And I was just wondering, is there any way that we can give that some time as well? Absolutely, yes, thank you for reminding me. I did, I thought of it way more important than I didn't say it just then, but thank you, yes, absolutely, we can do that, yeah. So let's see, yeah, just so December 19th would be, so 930 to 1130 on December 19th would be here, yeah, hopefully here, okay. Thank you guys for taking, what time, 930? 930, 1130. Is it 1130 again? Yeah, okay, yes. And the state house is open by then? Yeah, yeah, never 15th, so as a matter of fact, the week of the 16th, so that week house appropriations is meeting for budget adjustment that year. So I'll already be there, so no double dipping, right? I think Mike Hardy sent it out to all of us for that date, because I already had him in the house. Oh, good, okay, great, great, okay, great. All right, so who would like to join the anime in kind of something in Carlin? I mean, all right. Everybody's in, everybody's in. I'm really excited that you're all in my hands. Everybody's in, because everybody needs to submit something. Well, that's true, for sure, submitting. I envision maybe like a Zoom call or something like that in between to discuss, so Kay, even Mike. Yeah, I'm gonna do something like a Zoom call or something, maybe you can open it up to everybody. Okay, all right, so Diane and I'll kind of spearhead things and then I'll open it up to everybody who can hear her about to join in. But I'm also happy to submit anything. Well, definitely feel free or whatever. Yeah, definitely feel free by email to go ahead and submit that to me and Diane and we'll start compiling that. Sure, I'm gonna see each other in November. Yeah, we'll see each other, yeah, that's right. Do you have a structure for that meeting here? Yes, so I'm gonna turn it over to you. Do we have part of the structure? I did speak with Tom Donahue yesterday. Was it, yes, it was yesterday and he's preparing a list and then you or whatever, so speakers and the like. And I would encourage anyone who would like to have someone present to reach out perhaps to me or to Tom Donahue with rock. Can we just talk about, and I apologize, I may have missed it. So are we not doing it the same way we did it last year where it's gonna be kind of a lead discussion where we as committee members and definitely a rat for a senator sit at a table and ask questions and then kind of talk as a group? I think the program, Tom has some locals coming in to speak to us with their issues and to present to us some of those problems and issues that we have in our locale, for example, that I know are spread throughout the state. So how do people who maybe are in other parts of the state who want to be heard, because it is our public hearing, get to drink out? And does that need to go through us or is that something where, because I know I've shared this with a lot of my different affiliation groups and there's a lot of the AmeriCorps team and the VISTAs are interested and some of the people in different housing and disability areas. So I just want to make sure in special ed, how do they maybe get to be heard or included in that? I did talk to Tom myself at the last community action meeting and he did say that they will be setting up something so that the public, certainly it's open to the public and they're welcome to come. And there will be some time devoted, certainly the largest portion devoted to hearing from community members on whatever their concerns are. Whether it will be structured exactly like the one in NECA was, I'm unsure, but Tom did say he wanted to have some presenting from the poverty people providers to talk about what their concerns are when we did something like that in NECA as well. There was a lot of providers and a lot of different. I'm giving more of stakeholders, people who are experiencing poverty across the state who really have some diverse leads that maybe don't line up necessarily with service providers because I know we had a lot of service providers and I as a committee member would love to see that be more expanded. I'd love to be able to get family supportive housing participants to come in and talk about the program and their experiences in the program and special ed and housing because I think some of the conversation around the quality of interventions and services in Vermont and the amount of money we're putting into those services that maybe isn't coming across. Not translation. Yeah, the experience you're getting isn't necessarily the information that you hear when you sit in this room. And I think there are a lot of people who might be off put coming into a room if they're not on a program or if they're not necessarily representing an organization. It's really hard to come up and say, hey, I'm Katie Ballard and I live in poverty in Vermont. Let me tell you all of my most shameful moments and get your pity looks. So I just want to make sure that this is accessible for the people that this committee specifically really is here to be a voice for. And I did relate that to Tom. He did say that they would be doing some kind of a public, people would feel free to come in and talk. If there'd be a meal and that type of things that and do we have a poster or anything? I'd be happy to make one if the information came to me. I'd be happy to make one. So that can be shared on social media. I would just contact. Are you familiar with Tom down in Vermont? I can get in touch with them. I can say I maybe Karen and I. I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said you wanted to do. A poster. Like we had a poster or something for the people to send an email and everything but maybe I could get in touch with him. Get in touch with Tom. I think it would be good to be in touch with him and just be a lot of resources. Again, the need for that public in that community. I think that's really important. Yes. And we have it out to the schools now. We have it out to different shelters, et cetera, et cetera that we're going to be. I've been at like four conferences this week alone and I've been putting it out there to everybody that it was like the legal aid clinic yesterday. They were pretty interested in coming down. So we need to get you something in your hands. Yeah, no, and I know there were people from the wage. People wanted to come in and at least talk about their rights and that type of thing. So hopefully it works for everybody. And did we talk about accessibility? So if somebody doesn't have transportation to get to Rutland but wants to share, is that something where, because I know we talked about it briefly at the first council meeting, did we think anything on that? I'm sorry, can I, so are you thinking like, I'm thinking maybe here's the email address, if you have something, your statement that you want to submit? Yeah, yeah. It might be another avenue to just get more feedback from stakeholders throughout the state because I did hear from a lot of people up in Chittenden County and up in like the St. Albans area who were saying that Rutland is pretty far and they don't have a car or money to take the multiple buses. Sometimes if they just, if they can write an email. Yeah, so but an email address that we could maybe put on that poster or something saying. Probably saying it's my book. Right, exactly, that was something. Yeah, would be great. Thank you. That we can gather it all together. Poster. Yeah. Yeah, thank you very much, Kate. Thank you. It's very important. Great. Anything else we need to? We are so good. We didn't even want to. What? Somebody's got a comment. Yes. Just a quick note, I flashed through it very quickly but we do have a lot of resources that I mentioned at the very beginning of the House of Enolments testimony. Half our colleague asked me around because they were like hurry everybody in the paper. They're also all available on the committee website but if anybody does want any of those document background documents, there's copies all on the table back there. Thank you. Thank you very much. Did everybody do the seven check?