 Good morning. Before turning to today's topic, I want to take a moment to address the horrific shooting of three young Palestinian men in Burlington over the weekend. First, I want to extend my sincere sympathy to the victims and their families. I know thousands of homeowners join me in offering our condolences and support during this difficult time. This act of violence is both sad and baffling and has caused much harm and heartache in our communities. I reached out to the president of the Islamic Society of Vermont over the weekend to offer my and the state's support. I also want to thank Mayor Weinberger, the Burlington Police Department, our federal partners, first responders and medical professionals for their quick response, this despicable shooting. While there is more work to do to seek justice for these young men, we must also work to curtail these violent acts in the future. I urge for monitors to unite to help the community heal and not let this incident incite more hate or divisiveness. It's important we come together in these difficult times and put a stop to the violence we're seeing. Now on to today's topic. Today we're joined by treasurer P check. Secretary Moore, Ted Brady from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and Michael gone from the municipal bond bank to talk about a strategy that will save Vermont towns a substantial amount of money as they rebuild following this summer's flooding. Treasure P check will cover the details of the program and how it will work. But we know communities started repairing infrastructure immediately after the damage this summer and now have bills to pay. And as we saw after Irene rebuilding could take years and sometimes the reimbursements from FEMA take some time. But the repairs are needed immediately. This program will help towns get access to capital at a much lower rate to move projects forward and save taxpayers money. My team will continue to work with our local and federal partners to fill the gaps when needed. And I want to thank pressure P check and his team for working to identify and fill this need. So with that, I'll turn it over to pressure P check. Thank you very much, Governor. And good morning, everybody. Thank you first governor for your remarks about the shooting over the weekend in Burlington. Thank you for your leadership and for your administration's leadership as well on that very tragic situation. So the program that we're here to announce today is part of the treasurer's office expansion of the 10% in Vermont program. We announced this program earlier in the year designed to focus on housing on climate resiliency and infrastructure and on social equity. Now we announced the program prior to the flooding of July 2023. And when the flooding occurred, we rethought what are the highest and best uses for this money. We did announce 55 and a half million dollars in housing investments a few months ago. And now today we're announcing $15 million of low interest loans through the municipal bond bank for communities that were impacted by the flooding in July. So after the flooding, a lot of the communities had to go to banks. They had to go to their lenders. They had to get loans. We did work with the governor and his administration and secretary Flynn to advance payments to town so that they had more cash on hand and had to have the ability to avoid going to a bank in this high interest rate environment. But many of them had to and they have bank loans on their books for eight or 9%. So that's gonna cost their taxpayers money. That's gonna delay their rebuilding efforts and their recovery efforts as they await this payment from FEMA or other sources. So this program is really designed to be a bridge for communities to get from where they are now to the FEMA reimbursement that will come maybe six a year 18 months from now. It'll also provide the opportunity for some additional planning and recovery as they look ahead to larger infrastructure projects that have to occur. And I know secretary Moore will talk about that, but being able to work through the bond bank and being able to structure this program in the way that we have, we're able to offer 1% loans for those loans that are less than five years and 1.5% loans for those that are less than seven years, which is the extent of the program. So we believe within that five to seven year period, most of these communities will have their reimbursements or they'll have longer term funding in place to solve their infrastructure needs going forward. So again, the expectation is that that will save communities over the life of the program over three and a half million dollars in taxpayer money. So we're we're appreciative of that. We're excited to be able to implement this program, save taxpayer money, allow municipalities to continue to recover and rebuild and really I'm appreciative of the partnership both with the bond bank and the league and also the administration to be able to bring this forward today and implemented successfully. So with that, I'd like to turn the podium over to secretary Julie Moore. Good morning. I wanted to take just a couple of minutes to provide a little bit of additional context for the importance of this funding. Not only to continue to aid flood impacted municipalities in meeting their short term cash flow needs, but also in providing much needed breathing room that will enable planning, not just to build back, but to truly build back better. I'm going to focus specifically on known needs related to Vermont's wastewater facilities, which were particularly hard hit by the summer floods. For context, Vermont has 92 wastewater facilities that together serve about half of all Vermonters. More than one third of these facilities, 33 in total saw some amount of damage during the floods and three facilities in particular in Johnson, Hardwick and Ludlow experienced what could rightly be considered catastrophic damage that will require either extensive rebuilding or possible relocation. And in the interim, there are costs to the temporary solutions that are needed to keep these facilities operational and providing their important public health and environmental outcomes. Things like generators, especially going into winter. And the towns don't necessarily have the capital on hand right now to rent or buy this equipment. In addition, over the last two months and are partnered with 10 towns to complete camera inspections of sewer pipes in areas that were inundated by floodwaters. This work identified further immediate repairs that are also needed. And unfortunately, as with generators, these communities have little capital to make these repairs within their current year's budget. In total statewide, we estimate that there's more than $75 million worth of damage incurred to wastewater facilities when you consider both treatment plants and the supporting sewer pipe networks. And while as the governor and treasurer P check indicated much of the costs of these projects will ultimately be covered by insurance and FEMA reimbursement. There is an upfront cost to this work, which can be significant. It includes things like planning, engineering design and procuring needed supplies. Given all this, it is clear the important role the funding being announced today will play in supporting municipalities in their ongoing recovering effort. Further, this funding helps ensure communities are able to make decisions around recovery and reinvestment in corn infrastructure based on what will serve them best in the long term as opposed to being limited to by what they can afford in the short term. And with that, I will turn it over to Ted Brady from the League of Cities and Towns. Thanks so much, Julie. So the Vermont League of Cities and Towns represents all 247 cities and towns in Vermont. We're also servers, they're insurer. So we've been in the trenches with the state with FEMA and trying to help towns put themselves back together and make sure they have funding to do that. Within days after the July flooding, the treasurer, Michael from the bond bank, the governor's office, and believe it or not, the Vermont Bankers Association came together and said, we have a problem. The lending environment after this flood is a lot different than the lending environment after Irene. It's going to cost towns millions of dollars in interest alone to recover. And the bankers, the treasurer, the bond bank, the administration came together and said, how do we how do we stop that? How do we fix that? And they came up with a pretty selfless idea. You know, the bankers were willing to do some work to get money out the door immediately. The treasurer's office and the bond bank were willing to come up with some ideas to find some low cost loans, the administration's been working with towns to try to make sure they can put themselves back together and have payments accelerated. A lot of things have happened. Put simply, this program is going to allow towns to pay for government services and pay for things like the salaries of plow workers and water workers and cops instead of paying interest to the tune of, you know, several million dollars. It's going to impact the most impacted towns in Vermont, which is here at the league. In addition to that, we're going to subsidize the interest for about 35 communities up to 35 communities that were the worst impacted by the flooding and that have uninsured losses that they need to finance while they wait for FEMA payments. And the league anticipates that to be about a million dollars. Towns are trying to put themselves back together. This is budget season. So it's the perfect time. Believe it or not, this is when they have to put that budget together that you vote on a town meeting. And this is the perfect time to say, oh, maybe we have an alternative to a high interest loan product or really a market rate into a loan product right now and we can look to the bond bank and look to the Treasurer's Office. So this is a welcome piece of relief during budget season. And I think municipalities are going to be able to rebuild faster and stronger thanks to this without hopefully without cutting budgets, laying people off or raising taxes. Thanks so much. I think I'm supposed to turn it over to the bond bank, to Michael. Michael Gahn, to the bond bank. Michael Gahn, Executive Director of the Vermont Bond Bank. Thank you, Treasurer Pichek and Governor Scott for allowing us to create the Municipal Climate Recovery Fund, through which we will pass along the rate of the 10% in Vermont program without alteration for Vermont's cities, towns, and villages to recover from the summer's flooding. At a time when the state is facing many overlapping and tragic challenges, the 10% of Vermont program is a great example of leveraging existing resources to make a meaningful impact. The purpose of the MCRF is to provide budgetary relief while awaiting FEMA reimbursements by lowering interest rate and extending the term of the loans taken out for those purposes. Our Vermont banking community has done a great job in stepping in to fill the need. But there's no escaping the fact that rates are currently at 20-year highs and this program will provide timely savings to while also allowing banks to redeploy that capital. As Mike mentioned, the program will save taxpayers an estimated three and a half million dollars over the life of the program and as Ted just described, the subsidy provided by Passif will allow another million, up to another million dollars, bring the total to four and a half million dollars through this program. The MCRF will provide loans for seven years at a blended interest rate of 1.3%. The first two years of the loan will be interest only, as we believe this is when the majority of the FEMA reimbursements will occur. However, we structured the program with a longer term to ensure that communities have breathing room for unexpected delays or the complexities of building back smarter. This program really grew out of our experiences after Irene, when as recently as 2020 we observed communities that were still working to resolve related costs. It became apparent that in responding to climate disasters, a structured financing with a longed with a medium term and a low interest rate was ideal for sustainable and flexible recovery. The program is also an extension of our work to help municipalities with resources after the summer's flooding. We have provided legal guidance on how to borrow on a tax and basis post disaster, as well as refinancing and restructuring existing loans to provide immediate debt service savings for flood impacted communities. We talked to dozens of communities to evaluate the need for this program over the course of the last several months. On that note, I want to thank my staff at the bond bank and our loan officer Ken Lingey for doing the hard work of understanding conditions on the ground as they exist. We will review details of the program with potential borrowers in the public through a webinar on Tuesday, December 12th at noon. Registration details as well as more information about the program are available on our website at vtbondbank.org backslash MCRF. However, with this moment in the press here, we want to ask that all towns that may be interested in this program reach out to us as soon as possible so that we don't leave anyone behind and allow everyone to benefit from this great program. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. We'll now open up to questions. If it really takes a year and a half for people to send money, why is that? I don't know if it's all the money. You know, it comes when projects are moved forward. There has to be design and so forth and then the dollars associated with that. So sometimes it takes a while for the projects to be completed and the money to come as well. So I think we've mentioned this before in the last month or so, but it wasn't until this past year that we finished the last project for Irene. So some of that money, you know, flows with the project as they come forward. So you don't get paid until the project's done yet? Yeah, not every time. And that's why there's no consistent flow of money. And this gives us some consistency. Something that the Tows can get behind and have some security to know they can complete the project and they can move forward. They can get the design working in the engineering and permanent and so forth. So we use Johnson for an example. And it wasn't long. I was there right after the damage to their sewer system. And they were just concerned about the ability to do anything because they didn't have the money. They didn't have the tax capacity and anything. And they weren't sure FEMA was going to supply that need. So getting them up and going in the meantime, and then developing plans to move forward to mitigate future damage is going to be part of this whole package. But having the money to design and permit is essential. But anything else that I missed on that? Does anybody up here know how much blood recovery related to death municipalities have incurred? We don't have a great understanding of that. Oh, sorry. We don't have a great understanding of that. But in our conversations with communities, things are changing rapidly. And only, I think, the most recently, if they completed their final FEMA discussions, but it was estimated to be, you know, up to 35 million. But, you know, we aren't talking to every single person and every single loan. But clearly, there's a need. So sounds like there has been more debt incurred and is going to be available to refinance that debt. How are you going to decide who gets what? Yeah, great question. So one, that number that I cited was, you know, as we were developing the program was a bit of an estimate because folks were trying to figure out what the actual costs are. But to the extent we have oversubscription for the program, we'll use something we're calling a disaster impact ratio, where we will take the, you know, the losses, less insurance payouts, plus own source revenue loss divided by their last year's budget to develop an understanding and help prioritize funding. But we're hopeful that this should provide enough for everybody, in particular, because as we refinance loans from banks, the banks will then be able to turn around and relend while staying within their single name limits for individual borrowers. So municipalities have lots of debt, and they refinance existing debt that's not flood related or is it restricted? This particular program is just for flood related short term interim loans. And then when homeowners hear interest only loans, they sometimes little red flags go up like maybe that's not a great thing or they're not going to hang on the principal, but I presume it's interest only to make it easier for the municipality to repay in the first couple years. That's right. In the first two years, as I mentioned, when we expect those FEMA reimbursements to occur, so rather than amortizing debt or paying down principal on loan amounts that will then be reimbursed by FEMA, we wanted to provide sufficient time to receive those reimbursements. But then after two years, starting in year three, they would begin to pay down principal if it's not already paid off. This is more of a broader question about the program, so I don't know if Commissioner Pitchick wants to answer it, but when you made the initial announcement about shifting the focus of the 10% to housing, I remember that that shifted some of those resources away from others who had been hoping they were going to maybe benefit from that program like Burlington, as I recall, was considering and hoping to get funding for this McNeil district energy program. So can you speak to, in any way, who's the loser here? If you're going to take this $15 million in spirit for the flood recovery? Yeah, so, you know, we still have more money in the facility, you know, within the 10% Vermont program to do additional lending, and we do view this program as being something that is shorter term, which is attractive to us. So there's more money available. There's hopefully more money available within the next couple of years from paybacks from this program. So I think for us, it's a matter of prioritization. We want to get to those energy projects. We wanted to be thinking about that, but we did want to prioritize housing, flood impacted communities, like we're announcing today, and housing as it relates to those that were flooded out as well. We did amend our focus a bit on the housing front to incorporate communities that were impacted by the flooding and to set aside money specific for rebuilding individuals that were impacted by the flood and VHFA is executing on that. So can you think of any other projects in the state that are not going to get funded because of the shift in focus to housing and flood recovery, or is it just too broad? So, you know, we did when we put out a request for applications, you know, we had about 85 million available. And I believe in total we had like $250 million of ask if you looked at everyone that had asked for in the application. So clearly, we won't be able to fund all of those projects at once. Some of the projects aren't great for the source of capital either. We need it to be very low risk. The bond bank is backing up this money. Municipalities are good entity to lend to and there's also the state intercepts. So we sort of have three different levels of security here. So risk is a big factor for us when we prioritize as is the impacts that we're trying to make. This will certainly have an impact on on climate resiliency as well of going forward. So it does hit that climate resiliency, you know, goal that we articulated. It's just not the kind of projects at this moment that we expected to fund from the energy field. But we're working on that and we're trying to think about ways to to get funding to those projects as well. I think I understood the $3.5 million dollars in savings, but I don't think I understood the additional million that gets us to 4.5. Absolutely. So there are 35 communities in Vermont that had losses that exceeded their insurance where they're insured the Vermont League of Cities and towns. So these are towns that in flood zones, their insurance caps out of certain dollar figure. They might have had a building damaged. Some piece of property damaged. Those 35 towns are eligible to apply for an intra subsidy down to 0%. So so we'll the Vermont League of Cities and towns are passive insurance program will actually cover the difference between that 1.3% and 0% for the life of that loan. So those 35 communities will be eligible for not having to pay any interest. Obviously they'll have to pay the loan back, but they won't have to pay any interest back. You mentioned earlier without this money, people would either see reductions in service cuts or rising taxes. Can you speak a little bit more about physically like what for monitors would feel and see if we're not for this money? Yeah, sure. Well, I think you don't need to look much past the Capitol District to see two towns that are really struggling to make their budgets. You look at Montpelier and you look at Barry. Those are two very city to look close examples of cities that have to put their budgets together. They might not have sales tax revenue coming in. They've had to abate property taxes. In addition to that, they've had to invest a little money in rebuilding roads, bridges and few million dollars worth of public buildings that they've had to put money back into those communities when they go to budget season, they have to look at their revenues. They have to look at what they need to spend. And one of those line items of most budgets is interests, you know, what debt, the cost of debt. And this is going to reduce the cost of debt so that they can put more of that money in those other places. When you go to town meeting and voting your budget, you'll see that, you know, the debt line and this allows that line to be smaller so those budgets can account for other other aspects of running the town so they don't need to raise taxes or cut services. Governor, you said you offered your support, the state support to the Islamic Society of Ramallah, and you're going to talk a little bit about what you think that support ought to look like. Well, again, I just wanted to reassure, was Dr. Ali, he's the president of the Islamic Society, and I just wanted to be sure that he knew he had our support in any way needed and that he was able to reassure the followers of the Islamic faith that we stood behind them as well. And we had a great conversation. He was going to do everything. I think we have the same mission. We don't want to incite violence. We want to tamp that down and him making some of the statements he's made as well as other fates, I think, has gone a long ways in doing that. What do you foresee in the near future is concrete actions on your part that you hope will advance the goals that you mentioned, of indeed violence, preventing this from becoming a flash point for something you don't want to see? Yeah, well, again, it's all individual as well. Different groups can have a direct impact on this, but us individuals can. The whole mode of trying to be more respectful, more civil, more understanding, I think goes a long way and that's the grounds well, grounds well, middle out, top down. We need all those approaches in order to create a more sensible civilization. And I know that that doesn't answer all that we have and they're extremists that we have to deal with and some of that will become become the responsibility of us and our our Vic being able to promote information center, intelligence center to find those flash points to be able to track where there is going to be an ember that could explode and so we'll continue to do that work, step that up as much as we can, but we need everyone just to come together in this in this moment to be better human beings. Based on the evidence you've seen, the briefings that you've got, do you think that this is an alleged crime that would qualify for a hate crime? I think, you know, that I'll leave that to the courts and the prosecutor defense and so forth, but I think, I think the state's attorney, Sarah George, has said it right whether it's a hate crime or not, it was a hateful act and I think that that was that was the right the right thought. There's a high bar for a hate crime and I know the president, the White House, the Homeland Security, of all, and the U.S. attorneys as well have all said that they will be there to help if need be, but that's for them to determine. Have you thought about inquiring to Sarah George's office whether a psych about has been ordered, should be should be ordered? Any thoughts about that? I think that's a strategy. Both the defense and the prosecutor will probably work out amongst themselves, but I wouldn't be surprised, but that's something that is in their court. Any conversations with your commissioner of public safety about the viability or merits of some sort of action on law enforcement part to, I don't know, enhance surveillance of Yeah, we have and we have since some of the violence began a month or so ago and reached out to all the organizations involved to make sure that if they needed help, they wanted more assistance, they wanted more of a presence that we're there for them. So I know, I don't know if it was the commissioner, but law enforcement, BSP, the colonel and so forth, they've reached out individually to them to offer assistance if needed. And has that resulted in any increased patrols or activity in the United States police that we wouldn't see on the last night? I'm sure that it has, but Dan, do you have anything you can offer to this? I mean, we can get back to you on this as well. Dan Bates, I'm the deputy commissioner of public safety. I'll echo what the governor said. We've given assistance to the investigation. Our crime scene team was there. The Vermont State Police crime scene investigation team was there. Our warden service offered resources to the investigation as well. Our intelligence center has stepped up as the wrong word, but increased sensitivity looking for trends. We have not found any meaningful warning signs that would indicate anything more. And just offered the assistance to local law enforcement of anything that we can do. We do regularly assist Burlington on patrols. We've not had any requests that I know of. I would want to double-check that before I said for sure. We've not had any request that I know of to increase patrols in that area, but we can certainly find out and get back to it. The governor, specifically with some of the protests surrounding just the complex in general and after this shooting happened, are you concerned about the policy state planning to reactively, I don't know, more so after this happened? Yeah. Well, I would say that we're on a heightened level of response at this point in time. So when we see those events, obviously we pay attention. So our law enforcement community is working together across municipalities and state level and federal level to coordinate any efforts we see. How do you balance that kind of law enforcement prevention and protection with holding people's first amendment rights to? Yeah. I mean, first amendment comes first, right? So we just want to make sure that we, they're doing so safely and that we're not impacting any, especially those who who are innocent bystanders. So we want to make sure that we're doing all we can to protect the general public. Car, sir, you individual Kentucky died on Sunday. What are the conditions with downloads, interest, maybe I don't know if either one of them are on. Secretary Samuelson, did you just hear the question about the death of the inmate in Kentucky? I heard a statement, but I didn't hear a question of this specific question. I'm hoping you can just tell us everything you know about what happened at this stage, Secretary. So I think I would direct the folks back to the press release but essentially we had an incarcerated 72 years old incarcerated out of state in Kentucky. He was having medical situation. The staff there responded and was transported to the hospital. But unfortunately even with life saving mechanisms he would he was pronounced dead shortly there after he was serving a 30 year life sentence for kidnapping and murder and second degree in sexual assault was to be out of state. Any indication on cause of death at this point? They have initiated an investigation into the cause of death but at this point there is nothing that arises that looks suspicious in any way. What role will your agency play in reviewing the circumstances that led to this death? The Department of Corrections is working closely with officials in Kentucky and through the interstate compact and it is reviewing the policies, procedures and the circumstances of this death. Mr. Schaefer's death. Thank you. I thought all the inmates were in Mississippi. Yes, sorry, Mississippi. We did ourselves. It was Kentucky was before. Okay. Governor the defense is trying to move that into family court. Meanwhile the victims family they're starting a petition and they're ramping up calls for the state to continue to build a facility that would house young offenders charged with big 12 crimes. Where do we stand with that conversation? Yeah, we share the timing location for a stepped up facility of some sort in the future but that's not something that's going to happen overnight. So we will continue to move forward. We have a number of ideas in place but we need a site to do that. It's a long-term project. What's being done in the short-term? We're revamping in middle sex at this point in time. There's also the sheriff in Wyndham County has a room for short-term capacity and then we have out-of-state resources. Commissioner Winters said that it might be online the middle sex facility by December one is for trouble versus dangerous. Yeah there is a difference and some of the more dangerous would not go to a facility like middle sex. Where would they go still? Out-of-state depends on the situation. Could we go back to the inmate death for a second? Does this and some other recent inmate deaths make the state think perhaps it's medical release programs for inmates, folks who may no longer be a danger to a society safe from 72? Well again I don't know I mean if you talk to the victims of that crime aggravated assault and murder they might say that that doesn't end. So from my perspective what we're seeing a lot of is our aging demographics. I mean as we're seeing it as a society here in Vermont we're aging out we have an 80% increase of those over 65 in the last 20 years. So that that tells a lot about what's happening in Vermont but also our inmates our correctional facilities are seeing the same thing we're getting older so we're going to see more natural deaths in those facilities as well and but as far as releasing them I'm not sure that that's I'm not sure that's the right approach in every situation just because of age. I guess it's a philosophical debate then in terms of what is the purpose of incarcerating people is it to remove them from society if they're in danger or is it making them pay for I'd say yes to both. To go back a couple of weeks ago when you talked about the housing crisis you said you were gathering all the principal players together to try to come up with and move forward with something that that works for everybody do you have an update on that? I don't have any update at this point in time there was a rock slide on Interstate 91 Vermont has seemed to be scraping all the potential sites for slides that was missed or scraped and didn't work I'm not sure maybe Secretary Flynn can answer this but we have over the last few decades seen a lot of slides in Vermont some of these locations it depends on what type of rock is there and the angles of the veins in the material itself so Secretary Flynn anything on this one? Thank you that was a fairly major rock slide we have the interstate down to one lane in that area it's not a matter of missing something what we do is we take a look where there have been problems and we take a look at places where we predict there will be problems but when you look at the miles of interstate and the miles of ledge we have in this state it's impractical or impossible to get all of it at one time I think a lot of what you're seeing is not only aging infrastructure in the ground but when you look at the existing freeze thought that's one of the major contributors potentially to why you're seeing some of the slides just the way the formations are thank you we've got a few folks online and then we'll come back to the room we'll start with Tim McQuiston from my business magazine Hey Governor I was wondering Michael Pichek can talk about what the cash on hand balance for making more money available through this program if there is money available yeah thanks Tim for the question so you know as of this morning our state's cash on hand balance was about two billion and 89 million so just about that two billion dollar mark of unrestricted cash balance it's sort of hovered at that mark right around two billion for the last 18 months or so so it's been pretty consistent that two billion is a significant amount of federal money that needs to be spent down in the next couple of years we also know there is more state revenue that's making up that two billion as time goes on so we really wanted to take a conservative approach to expanding this program from about 30 million to 100 million that brings us to about 5% of the state's cash deposit we'll meet again as an expert but that's really the balance there Tim is not knowing if that full two billion dollars is going to sort of be around for the next five, ten years and we're making these loans generally on longer term timelines so it's something we're considering but we thought this was a big first step we wanted to evaluate and see how it went and we'll continue to evaluate that cash balance questions today have been cost shifting some of that money that was available that factor in it all when you re-evaluate in January where some of these other programs need money that maybe didn't get it because of the flooding and the subsequent impact of that Tim I'm going to ask Mike to comment as well on where we were before we received all the federal money and where we are today because I think it's important for Vermonters to know this isn't excess money we just have I mean this is money that's committed we have to spend it somewhere we've already done that it's just going to take some time before we can put it in the ground or in the air or whatever we're doing with it from an infrastructure standpoint so it's committed money so we have to determine when that is when it's going to be needed for the purpose that is sitting there waiting for and then what it really is so I just don't want everyone to get the wrong impression here we don't have an excess of $2 billion waiting there for other purposes we are fairly restricted on that money we need to put it we have the match money as well for these infrastructure projects and so forth that's going to be needed but what we had before we received all this federal money treasure is there any risk of clawback there is always risk of clawback but once they've committed and once we have it in place I'm not sure that they can claw that back but if we don't commit it then there's a risk of clawback just that to echo the governor's point is exactly right like just a few years before the pandemic our cash balance was been appropriated or we've collected it and it's being weighted to be appropriated in the upcoming budget cycle so the other thing to remember Tim is that we are earning interest on this money whether through our banks or through treasuries and generally we're getting pretty good interest rate like five and a half percent in our highest bank so in a previous year where the interest that we earned as a state was less than a million dollars this year sitting there for no productive purpose that's money that then can be appropriated in the upcoming budget cycle so we're appropriating we're strategic where we can sort of use this program and we think it's a better use of money to incentivize the development of something like housing or buy down interest rates to save taxpayer money we'll definitely try to find those opportunities but as the governor said this money is accounted for so we want to be conservative with it Tom Davis thank you Chris Boyd importantly Express Governor later today there's going to be a coalition of environmental organizations that are going to be highlighting upcoming changes to the renewable energy standard from and I understand the administration has been involved with this work as well during this working group what does that work look like from your perspective well thankfully I have here in the room is that going to be more as any of you can hop in I don't know if commissioner Tierney is on the line we can actually have both of you commissioner Tierney anything you want to add to this or even begin I think there are two observations I can make one there were two exercises performed this summer looking at the renewable energy standard one of them was the one that has been alluded to in this question and the other is the work that the department of public service undertook on its own initiative and we've released that report it is on the website of the department of public service and it's worth having a look because there is a lot of very good data showing what vermonters would like to see in their renewable energy portfolio and their consumption energy and the like the work that the legislature has been doing has been driven by the legislature I believe the committee chair is senator bray the department of public service has provided some support for that work as required principally administrative and to my knowledge the work has come in on time but in terms of characterizing the report I really think it is best to defer senator bray and his colleagues on the committee I don't know secretary more would add anything to that no I think that was a good assumption question back on the demographic crisis so to speak V-SAC still send scholarship money to students out of state colleges as I understand it one of the few states that do that I think with the second highest cost for people to educate people and then we subsidize sending them out of state according to the Department of Education 50 percent of the graduates of college stay in the area in which they went to school so aren't we if all that is true isn't that something you might might be changed yeah obviously we're hoping that we can get those students back to come home at some point we find that time and time again they might be away for a while but eventually they come back they grew up here in Vermont they lived here in Vermont and went to school here in Vermont we just thought it was appropriate that we help them get the education that they deserve and want and again we can certainly we will be attempting to get them to return but I understand your point but we have a responsibility 65 percent of the kids who go to in-state school stay in state yeah I'm not sure that there's a direct correlation there but there could be I think some of these students if you didn't offer them assistance with tuition would leave anyhow and go to school somewhere else so I'm not sure that necessarily means that we'll have more kids in Vermont but it's the same goal we need to attract more people into the state it has to be affordable and we have to make sure that we're doing everything we can to create the housing and all the other infrastructure we need to get them here yes but it is a bit frustrating all the money we spend on K or pre-K through 12 and then they take that education and help out in other communities but at the same time we have a number of colleges and universities a lot of other state students have come and they stay so that's all good okay Governor when I was traveling for Thanksgiving I drove past what I think is more than a dozen housing units mobile homes sitting on the side of the highway still not in a staging area still not moving any closer as far as I can tell to being installed where people need them and living them yeah I mean it has taken longer than we had hoped but I know that they've signed the agreement Dan might be able to talk about this more but they have signed the agreement they're going to move forward FEMA believes that they'll start construction within the next two weeks and their time frame is I think 68 weeks at that point so they're going to build that you're someone who's moved around in the winter in Vermont that's not the time you really want to keep constructing anything well it can be done it just is usually a little bit slower and a little more and quite a bit more expensive but they're putting the tab for this and so I'm sure they've worked in cold climate before they have they have contractors that do this type of thing all over the country because I asked the same question okay and last question for me I spoke to the general services agency the other day about the federal building downtown and they cannot even assure I think the state or the city that they're going to be able to reopen the building there are so many problems from the flood but for other eating systems intellectual systems that so my people wondering when their post office going back in the federal building are being told we're not sure it is what's your that's a prominent building in downtown and it certainly is and I think I think Montpelier needs a post office in their downtown we have reached out to them as GSA and offered any state resources we can and there are some buildings that we think could work for them but at this point in time I'm not interested for the post office has been interested in what we've had to offer but will continue to make those offers as it stands now do you know if they've got a site and a plan to move forward in the temporary space I have not heard probably any more than you have what has the state offered for facilities we have some buildings in Montpelier that might help facilitate a post office and we've offered to show them some of those and see if there's something we can do to work together on that but again there has been any interest in going any further than that have they looked at them with you they haven't even taken a tour of existing buildings in Montpelier with the state to see if those are agreeable to them we've done so just by communication and the response was they have no interest at this point the federal delegation has blasted the leadership the lack of communication with the state and with the local governments do you do you agree with that criticism you know well yeah I would think that they would be doing everything they can to find temporary solution which I think we could offer or even a more permanent solution which we might be able to offer as well what about the other occupants are there USDA folks there are many FHWA I think and others yeah they've been displaced as well I don't know where they are to be honest with you but they've been displaced and when like is the state working directly with the postal service or with our reach out was just to the GSA okay and it was just it wasn't something they requested I just said to our secretary of administration why don't we reach out to them and see if there's any interest because we know the need and I think we can get creative and find a solution but they had some back and forth conversations and in the end they went to GSA went to the post office who makes the ultimate decision and they said they had no interest in moving did this they offer space for the other folks in that building too or just have not I mean it was just the post office we were talking about at that point right I got a follow-up question good we'll see poll this morning you have an 84% approval rating first in the nation among governors and I guess my real question is none of us in this room have ever been the most popular governor in the nation and I wonder what does that feel like what does it mean to you what does that feel like I keep saying this but it's it's like just this snapshot and time a small number of people being pulled and they come up with this and you know it can go the other way just as quickly as it went out so I don't take too much thought in it thanks can we go back to the little interest a little bit I think this is a question for you Michael or maybe for your paycheck one of the Michaels true more Michaels than women but can you give us an idea what interest rates would be for municipalities if not for this program like as a point of comparison yeah great question that came up in our calculation our estimate of the savings for this program so you know we've been dealing with the floods since the summer obviously and if you have followed the markets they're quite volatile at the moment but we estimate that rate we've found our guidance or otherwise found guidance on how to do their short term bar in a tax exam basis which will lower the rate but for others in the interest of speed they have not necessarily chosen that path and so the rate varies from probably about 5% we've heard even up to a little over 7% yeah so you know this might be a dumb question but how is the bond bank able to afford to offer such low interest points like if that comes out of cost to you guys yeah so the bond bank it's tough not to start at our creation we're the first bond bank in the country about 50 years ago we call ourselves the best kept secret in the state but you know in all of our loan programs we don't take a spread so we're able to do that because of some programmatic revenue we have and from some reserves we have that help our credit rating but also we can live off the interest on so we're small and nimble we have three staff and so with our pool loan program which is our bigger program it's about borrowers basically without adjustment we'll do the same thing here for the 10% of Vermont program so the rate that the Treasurer's Office and the state will give the bond bank we will then pass along to our borrowers because our sort of overhead is covered through other sources and the credit risk is low I should also mention you know these are the most part these are going to be tax-backed loans from Vermont's municipalities and clearly the bond bank believes in the future is the state going to offer really small towns that may not have staff numbers is the state going to offer any sort of resources for folks to be able to navigate this and buy we have offered resources in terms of some of those small communities that don't have anyone to move forward with any of their projects so we have offered that and we put $3 million aside for that but in this particular case for this project I'm not sure it's going to take a lot it seems as though calling one of the mics might get that done I really don't think it's a complicated process no we're going to make the application as simple as possible and actually you know in particular the added well I should say again the Addison County communities those are the ones that I think that we're not used to necessarily doing short-term borrowing and we don't have a pre-existing relationship with in some cases communities like Ripton and so in this form we'd ask that they reach out to us we will walk them through the process and make it as simple as possible thank you all very much