 So, and we're a couple of minutes behind schedule. So, we might as well get started. So, hello again, everyone. My name is Nick Kramer. I work with Jenna and Paul and Margaret and John at the Council on Rural Development. I'm really excited to be part of this conversation. I think rethinking employment is one of the more intriguing and innovative titles we've had in these sessions. So, really looking forward to seeing where the conversation goes and also just looking around the room to see some really deep expertise and and diverse representation on in this group. So, I'm excited to hear everybody's reflections and yeah, see where things go. So, I will just reiterate for the sake of drilling it to death what Jenna said a little bit in the opening. This really is not a top-down process, right? We are here as neutral conveners. We're lucky enough to have a number of really deeply expert members of the visiting team with us tonight. Some really expert participants but this forum is primarily about you guys, the participants and hearing the challenges on the ground in Washington County, what's actually going on. We're not here in any way to kind of dictate the shape of recovery and really much more to gather ideas and leverage the grit and ingenuity of Vermonters, which is what makes this place such a great place to live. So, really want to just thank you all again for being here. That being said, I'll take a minute to introduce or at least acknowledge the members of the visiting team we have with us tonight. I'll let them do a more in-depth introduction for themselves when they speak. But briefly, we're fortunate to have with us tonight Ted Brady, the Deputy Commissioner for the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. So, thanks Ted for being here. Really looking forward to Ted's going to actually kick off the conversation for us in a couple of minutes here with some of the things that they've been seeing from the agency's perspective over the last couple of months within this arena and get things going. So, thank you, Ted. We also have with us Jamie Stewart from the Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation. Thank you, Jamie, for being here and looking forward to hearing some of your reflections towards the end of the call and on the conversation. I'm just scanning. I don't have my glasses on. So, I'm sort of a blurred outlook. I think is Diane? Yeah, there's Diane. Diane Derby from Senator Leahy's office is with us tonight. So, thank you, Diane, for being here. We're definitely looking to hearing some of what's up in Washington and what might trickle up in this arena our way. So, looking forward to that. And finally, I want to acknowledge Claire Rock from the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission. Claire has graciously agreed to be note taker tonight. So, she'll be instrumental in helping us capture all of the innovative and creative ideas. And so, thank you, Claire, for being here. And it's good to see you again. Claire and I used to work together. So, I'll get into a little bit more Zoom housekeeping stuff in a second, but I think I've probably talked for long enough at this point. And so, I'd like to turn it over to Ted to get us started with some of what they're seeing from the agency's perspective in this arena. And Ted, you have the floor. Well, thanks so much, Nick. And looking through this Zoom call, I see people with as much experience and more in responding to this crisis than I have. So, please forgive me if anything I say is repetitive or redundant, but perhaps it'll simply be reaffirming to say, oh, yeah, I agree. But I wanted to just talk about kind of, I don't know, the stages of grief that our economy has gone through. And it's not your typical stages of grief that you're familiar with. I frame it in kind of a four-part process. One is shock. Two is adaptation. Three is response. And then four is resilient planning. And I think right now, at any time, much like the scale of grief that a counselor might talk to you about, they don't come in order, and you can go backwards or forwards and ping pong all around. But I wanted to share a few observations that we've made. One big, huge picture, right? We think that this pandemic has about a billion-dollar impact on our economy every month. That number has certainly shrank a bit since we've been able to reopen considerably, but not that much, because our billion-dollar number was conservative. And recognize we have a 30s plus billion-dollar state domestic product. So it's not about $30 billion of our GDP is gone. It's about a billion dollars of economic activity that's gone. And that's different, right? There's a lot more than $30 billion of economic activity that happens in the state of Vermont, and that's why we all get to claim that we're all worth doing $2 billion worth of work. But when you look through these four stages, we had shock at first. And we had this crisis where that billion dollars happened. People had no idea what to do. And then the first five days after Friday the 13th, or really March 17th, when the executive order kind of became very clear that it was happening and then 20-something, the agency of commerce received more than 5,000 inquiries from businesses about what they're supposed to do. And it shows that suddenly people were back on their heels. And you had businesses that just shut down. They closed. They didn't take the time. They didn't have the time to say, oh, how can I adapt? How can I respond? They're like, whoa, okay, I need some time off. And you still see this shock happen occasionally. Maybe you read in the news two weeks ago or a week ago when the farmhouse closed, right? The farmhouse restaurant had to close because they had an exposure at the restaurant. They made that decision in shock, like, okay, we don't know what to do. We need to stop. It wasn't because they had to do it. The government didn't tell them to shut down for a couple of days. They made that decision. You still see people slipping into shock. But then quickly after that, within days, we saw adaptation. We saw people moving to curbside delivery. You saw people moving to online services that they never did online before. You saw people doing phone orders and doing delivery to people's homes. It was really an amazing piece of ingenuity that people all of a sudden came up with. And then adaptation is that immediate thing, okay, how do we just survive? And we saw pizza places delivering pizzas to cars in their driveway. We saw things like chicken barbecues at the Fourth of July or Memorial Day convert to take out chicken barbecues. Really interesting, quick thinking, okay, we can do this still, but it's not going to make money. And this is a really important thing. All these changes generally haven't made businesses money. Because a restaurant needs a certain number of people to eat there. A hotel needs more than 50%. So no matter how much of one of these places adapts, they can't make a go of it. When you look at a hotel adapting, it doesn't work. You're still at 50% of your numbers currently. So then I think I go into this response thing, because I think every business has said, okay, how can I make a buck off of this crisis? Because you say, I wonder, what do people want different? And what might habits change going forward? And you see up in Burlington, an internet of things incubator kind of popped up. And these people are making technology solutions. So as an example, a counter of people that go into a space tied to software, tied to a capacity restriction, so that in real time, a business owner could say, oh, I've reached my capacity, I need to wait, or even better, they can broadcast that capacity out to the world to say, don't come right now, wait 15 minutes until my capacity goes down. And you see businesses doing things, really interesting things like that. And that's kind of that response. And then we get to resiliency. And you see some good resilient planning going forward. And that's what a small business development center, they have this great disaster planning series that started out with disaster planning 101. I think they're up to disaster response like 1900. Maybe Curtis knows the exact number, but they've issued like 19 policy papers or technical assistance papers on how to respond to the disaster. And you see things like the first place I saw it was in Montpelier, where the Downtown Association said, and this is in maybe week three or four of this crisis, they got to their resiliency planning almost immediately, we're going to close down our streets in Montpelier, and we're going to have a drive-in theater. That was happening three or four weeks into this, those crazy ideas. You see a place like Thunder Road, which in all, Candor is constantly pushing the boundaries, but they're doing it in a way that says, we can do this safely. Does this make sense? Can we put up these ropes? We have these separate groups of people in four or five different sets of people now outside socially distanced with private, with their own bathroom, their own concession area, really trying to build something that can last through the summer and through the winter. You see a ski area that came forward to us and said, we recognize our lodging will not, we're not going to be able to make a buck in lodging this year because unless we can get Manhattan and Cambridge coming to our ski area, we're not going to fill up rooms. They said, we're going to convert our entire hotel into ski cabanas that people can come and use for the day. It has this great dual purpose of putting money in their pockets for using that space, but also they're seeing that we're probably going to have to restrict the number of people in a ski lodge at a base area lodge. How can we make this work to our advantage and hopefully get our bottom line so it's near black? Again, it's maybe not in black. That's the really horrible thing. These four stages, we see people bouncing through them constantly. That's on the economic development side. What I wanted to also talk about was the labor side. We're talking about both employment and economic development tonight. We're all thinking the same thing you're thinking. Will we ever go back to what we were before? When we look at, we still have tens of thousands of people on unemployment in Vermont, mostly in the hospitality and restaurant sector, but certainly scattered throughout. When you say, will we ever go back and will we build our economy back to a point where we can get back to 3% unemployment, 2% unemployment? We obviously are trying everything we can. We just launched this great consumer stimulus program that sold out in a day that shows that people have an appetite to get back out into the service industry and use the service industry. We need to give them permission to do that. But we also wonder what does at-home work look like? Will we ever go back to full occupation of our office buildings? If we don't, what does it mean for our downtowns? What does it mean for the future of every downtown in Vermont that has a state office building? Currently, those state workers are mostly working from home. Even when we go back to normal, are we at 100%? Are we at 80%? Are we at 50%? What change does that have on the sandwich shop in town? All of these things need to be planned for and we need to start doing some work to figure out what the future looks like. That's it in a nutshell. I just wanted to get people realizing that we're all, I see everybody on this call, has been involved in the COVID response to a level that probably has made them sacrifice time from their families, from their friends, from their hobbies, from sleep, from God knows what. What I'm surprised about is that any business owner is possibly still healthy and alive after doing what I've been doing 10 times, what you've been doing 10 times over. I did want to end it with what we're doing about it and what we're trying to do and what we need your help doing. One, I mentioned this consumer stimulus idea. Vermonters want to participate in our recovery. What can Washington County do? I know that we just launched a regional marketing campaign where Waterbury once again and Montpelier once again came with great ideas about how they would spark some innovative stimulus ideas in their town with downtown bucks and things along those lines. We launched the stimulus program that could potentially put $50 million of stimulus into our downtowns, put hundreds of dollars into the hands of every remuner so they can go and invest in their local economies. We're recognizing there's tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of additional need out there that if we don't provide grants to businesses to survive in the hospitality sector they'll disappear and we're not talking about those that were on the fringe before. We're talking about big regional players that won't exist. And we are about to launch a big technical assistance program with Jamie and Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation and others where businesses will be able to get help building websites, getting on QuickBooks, you name it, to a level they've never had access to before. We've got a good technical assistance network in the state but we're trying to boost it. So we need your help doing all those things. Always end with a call to action and the call to action is to Senator Cummings and Representative Reed and others on the phone. We're firing all cylinders with you and we need more help to keep all this going into the downtown organizations, bring the creativity, challenge us to do things you've never done before, challenge us to think about problems the way we've never done before and to use state and federal money the way we've never used it before. Thank you, Diane Derby. I'll stop there. That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Ted. I think there's obviously so much to unpack in that and that's I think a really great starting point for the conversation. So really looking forward to getting into more detail on all of that and thankfully we have 70 minutes to do it. So before we launch into the conversation I want to just as promised go over a couple little zoom housekeeping things. I'll start with a disclaimer. I think I'm having the surreal experience of looking at like half black squares and then everybody else is frozen. Usually I try to make it into Montpelier to either the office or a friend's house with better internet for these calls and I tried. I was feeling brave tonight. I'm zooming from Corinth where I live and we are not in the broadband highway. So if I have any sort of weird social faux power, I'm not acknowledging somebody who's waving a hand. Just know it's a connectivity issue. So that being said, a couple of things. I think we're doing so far a really great job. I will just ask everybody please try to stay muted when you're not talking that just helps minimize the unforeseen barking dogs and crying babies and everything else we all have come to know and love in this virtual era. And then the other thing I think since we're a medium-sized group what might be helpful is if we do try to raise hands just if you want to speak. Like I say, I will do my best to observe flesh and blood hands but everybody is frozen. So no guarantees on that. I will propose a slightly higher tech alternative if everybody if you for anybody on the computer you scroll over the bottom of your screen you should see a little icon that says participants. If you click that a little sidebar should pop up or a floating window and then somewhere next to your name or maybe at the bottom of the list there should be an option that says raise hand and if you click that what will happen is a little blue virtual hand will pop up next to your picture and that will just really help me to see sort of who's in queue and make sure we don't lose anybody's voice in the conversation. So silent, frozen faces if there's no pressing questions on that I'd say let's get right into it. Just to give kind of an overview of where the conversation is going we have a loose script of about four questions. We're going to start by talking about challenges that the real conditions that you're seeing on the ground in this arena what are the challenges to businesses and employment then moving into well what where would we like to be what is the dream how do we leverage this moment forward and and we all know that we're not going to go back to where we were so where are we headed kind of a vision setting moment and then thinking about what are some of the emerging best practices and I think Ted did a great job starting to outline some of them but what are folks doing to respond to the pandemic and what have they been doing and are there solutions that are replicable and scalable and we're really keen to capture those and finally we'll wind up with the sky's the limit other big ideas for local regional state action anything that could help drive us forward to that vision that we want to see so that's a little bit hopefully the narrative arc of where we're going I just wanted to lay that out in advance I will encourage us to loosely stick to that order I will do my best to be a gentle and respectful shepherd but again in advance if I'm ever cutting anybody off or trying to move us along I have just the messenger on this one so with that let's let's get into it I'll open it up to whoever whatever brave soul would like to start identifying what are some of the challenges in Washington County around employment workforce recovery business support and what are what are we seeing this is Liz Sharpe I can start I raised my hand but I'm not sure if you saw it because I might be frozen um do you hear me okay yeah so I work great I work at capstone community action um in Barry Vermont and I'm the director of community economic development um and food security and we have um so we oversee um or one of the programs I oversee is our micro business development program um which works with the more disadvantaged um micro entrepreneurs so those who are lower income folks who are primarily sole sole sole proprietors um who didn't necessarily benefit from um a lot of the you know original um cares responses for for small businesses and actually Ted Brady knows well of the project that the community action agencies have been working on but um throw it out there that we do have this um this it's not a lot of money it's a million dollars for the state statewide um which we're giving out grants uh between $2,500 and $5,000 to businesses micro businesses who have five or fewer employees and who meet our income guidelines which are 80% of uh median income or lower um and we do have we we haven't used um I think we've used up not quite half the money so there still is around $500,000 that's still available for these businesses to access money to help them um with uh you know purchasing supplies paying back taxes things that that that can kind of still keep them keep them afloat it's called embrace and if you were to google um any one of the community action websites um the link to applying for those grants are on there um or anyone could personal message me and I could could send that link to them um so that's sort of one of our responses for you know sort of the more the the very small businesses um who weren't able to benefit from some of the um the the federal um programs that were out there initially um we do also have a workforce development program and and that's been a real challenge for us because it's training very sort of underemployed and unemployed people uh to work in the restaurant industry so we've really had to um change our program um to focus on um you know workforce development skills in general not just how to you know cook and and work in a restaurant because we know that finding jobs for these folks is is not going to be the easiest thing because one a lot of them have never had experience working in a kitchen so they're not going to be the first people to be hired um when restaurants are hiring um so we're really trying to focus on what are some skills that we can you know um offer that will allow them to get a job any place you know not just in in the restaurant um and so that's you know that's a real challenge for us because this is a huge program for us and to suddenly you know be in a place where you know we're offering a service that doesn't exist right now um has been challenging so we're really sort of focusing on either training people for jobs outside of the kitchen but also the social enterprise like can they do something on their own can they create a food truck um and or can they do something that is you know in the food industry but isn't necessarily restaurant related so that's kind of what's going on in the in the pulse of the the low income uh community in in central vermont in in terms of employment that's great yeah thank you liz i um some of the things that i'm hearing just in terms of framing specific challenges loud and clear or that some of these smaller businesses or sole proprietors really weren't able to access some of the federal programs support programs that came out in the same way as larger businesses the ongoing need for workforce development skills um and so on so yeah thank you for that so i'm seeing a lot of virtual hands pop up so i want to go to liz and then lori and then i see representative read after that thanks leish legel from the alchemist foundation um i guess one thing that rests is to mind for me as a question um uh for the work of the group is how have you been intentional about the nonprofit community right they are of course a huge business sector in this state um dwarfing most other sectors and um you know the they have been hammered right both um for human service organizations um likely sharks right the demand for services has increased dramatically and the um funding is uh uh scant and so and arts organizations are you know dying and all these other organizations right like it's a huge challenge and i've been talking to lots and lots of the organizations that i work with um people are terrified right like we're um we're sad if our restaurant goes away but you know we're kind of screwed if the theater or the um humane society goes away you know let alone the food shelf right so it's just i'm curious about what um the group is doing to um identify that as a sector that needs to be included in these conversations sorry liz if if i'm the only one you just cut out a little bit so i'm not sure if i'm just starting to talk over you this is a little bit like facilitating in the dark um i'm hearing that that question loud and clear yet about um how are we specifically thinking about nonprofits i think the figure i've run with in my daily life is that one in ten vermoners work in nonprofits right so clearly a significant sector and just to sort of stick with this framing of challenges um thinking about yeah the ways in which this is is maybe not cutting across sectors equally or that different sectors may have particular challenges so um i'm looking at the time i do want to sort of be starting to transition into like the what is the dream where where would we like to go but i'd see a lot of raised hands so i i want to go to lori and then representative read um and then if we can sort of be transitioning i think that will keep us on track so lori hi it was going to be a specific business question but liz you just reminded me of something um around the not-for-profit piece all of the assistance that's been available so far has only been available to not-for-profits who have employees and so there's this whole other sector of arts and not-for-profit organizations that have a volunteer board and maybe only a volunteer and no volunteer staff or excuse me no paid staff and i'm not sure what future rollouts will look like um but how do we help support that sector who are providing services um and and uh lots of great services in our communities but they haven't qualified for help and they've had to suspend um their services which is where their income comes from right so one one group that i think of as a theater group that didn't do theater this summer so they've had no ticket sales but they still tried to do some programming for youth um but that particular group does not have paid staff so they couldn't apply for um the paycheck protection program or any of the other assistance that's been offered so far um so we should think about that for lots of the other not-for-profits in the state um who are in a similar situation um but the initial reason why i raised my hand um and again this isn't i don't have an answer for anything um but i know cabot creamery struggled to find employees and is still struggling right now they were determined an essential employer early on all of their office staff has been deployed into the plant to do um increased production and i just wonder if there was a way or would be a way to help direct employees who lost their jobs in other sectors to those sectors who've needed work or needed workers um so i just kind of put that out there that there was a better way for us to coordinate that so that um folks who needed work were easily directed to where there were places that needed workers thank you laura yeah i think that's that's great and a an astute point and kind of a natural segue um so thinking about kind of what what would we like to see ideally but i know some people have been waiting i guess i will challenge us for the sake of sticking with with our time frame here to to maybe start thinking about what would we like to see in in this area i mean there's clearly we could talk for the next 60 minutes about the challenges i mean clearly this has been months of uh trauma real trauma in some cases to to this community and so i don't want us to get too too bogged down in it but i do i do want to give space for folks to vocalize if there are other things you're seeing on the ground representative reed i know you've been waiting for a while and then i think i have brian robert and maybe diana after that so representative sure thanks um just i i'm i'm from the randolph area and roxbury is in my area so that's why i've got the little bit of washington county but i missed the orange county presentation but um i think we've we've to some extent missed an opportunity in our downtowns to provide some support for um just keeping businesses going especially the restaurants and i mean one of the ideas we have we've got a big tent and event company in town and they were really advocating for uh you know putting up getting funding from the state to be able to put up tents and other other sort of covering for people to continue their businesses outdoors uh the window on that's obviously closing but um it was it was a little frustrating because i think there was a lot of discussion about the downtown and whenever it came to funding that seemed to be sort of the last thing that they got considered um i am seeing some some interesting um approaches to the arts again with outdoor events uh the channeler center just did a kind of virtual concert recently that exceeded their expectations so that that was nice but it was a big program that they weren't able to offer i would echo the the issue on nonprofits the the nonprofits in our area have really stepped up and they're doing a great job they've they've sort of done what they always do and organize the community and try to provide mutual support so so that's been a great reaction and i have to say the the citizens in general have been pretty amazing about stepping forward and and supporting the local businesses the restaurants things like that to uh kind of go above and beyond what they might normally do those that can afford it but um we still have the the challenge of you know child care and some of those other things that are coming along now that we're getting back to school and and work i mean one the workforce question i think is is important and and one where i think there's an option for some creativity that i think the child care hubs is one example which was a great idea that was thrown out but nobody knows how to staff it and one of my constituents suggested uh we have all these college students that aren't able to go back to college because there are ways we can sort of retrofit them into doing uh child care and helping kids with after-school programs but it's it's been a huge undertaking just finding space and things like that so i guess that focuses a little more on the challenges than where we're we're going um but i think uh there there's definitely some good energy everywhere and i i'm feeling that so with a little bit of uh catalyst i think we can we can probably make some things happen thanks representative yeah i mean i think within what you just said though there are definitely some some nuggets of of possible direction right i don't want to get too far that's our last kind of topic is what are our big ideas um i think it's great this the idea of pairing college students with in some sort of child care role um but yeah so i guess now i will turn it if we can to what does the best case scenario look like in this arena um both in the immediate future and kind of the long term coming out of covet i mean covet is this transitional moment we're seeing a lot of really innovative adaptation um where would we like to be and i guess i'll just like remind the title of this forum uh both supporting business and workforce recovery and rethinking employment i mean that's a bold uh phrase so i i'm curious and i'm i'm sure there's a quite a number of deep thinkers on this call so what what is the dream what's the long term vision what would we like to see in washington county and i see some virtual hands but i'm not sure if they're old so not to put you on the spot robert would you like to speak to that yeah thank you very much um my name is rob lambert and for the last three years i have been working to set up um a development of a business in vermont that is designed to take advantage of the fact that there is a high demand for carbon sequestration worldwide that companies like microsoft apple amazon virtually all the airlines all the shipping companies are voluntarily buying carbon that is auditable that is verified that is permanent that is additional they're fairly strict standards but one thing that i am planning to do at any rate is to support the climate change solutions bill which calls for up to 20 percent of the emissions reductions to come from this type of source i am looking i would really like to start a metal metal fabrication business that would use welders and and other people engineers and build precision kilns that would reduce biomass to carbon that can be then sold on the international market and i'm attempting to put something together and we know what we've got to do it's a matter of getting organized but i'm i'm trying to establish something that could be could fill a variety of roles for people who finished high school and had a good attitude all the way up to i'm working with people that are really exceptional prototype designers and i'm working internationally because this type of business is an international business but it's something that vermont can do and this is a very good time to get started on that type of thing so anyway i'm in the process of looking for capital and and moving forward i'm also running for state representative so until the election is over i'm going to be a little bit out of pocket there are a couple of other things that that i would just throw out and and these are these are sort of longer term types of things when when the health situation is stable enough to allow for an improvement in tourism for example the quarries in berry i don't know if you've ever heard of a place in connecticut called brownstone park it's an old brownstone quarry and it's been made into a very marvelous water park and i'd urge you if it's if it's something that you'd like to check out brownstone quarry in connecticut and but they've got i mean it's it's a full blown water park it would be a wonderful tourist attraction something that one of the ski areas could operate during during the summer that could bring a lot of business into berry that's something else i was also curious and i wanted to explore just for just quickly what's going on with daycare i think that you know the mentioning that that there are workers needed at cab it well that is terrific news i'm glad that that you know there's work for them to do how do they get there can we take people um and and transport them around trip to cab it do their work and then you know come back on sort of a regular schedule provide them transportation can we can we take unused office space someplace and and provide college students to watch the children to make this as easy as possible for people to step into these roles um so anyway that's that's a quick overview of of of of my thinking my uninformed thinking on this matter thanks no that's it's clearly somewhat informed i think that's it's great there's a lot to that i if i can take the liberty of sort of reflecting back some of the things i'm hearing the opportunity to capitalize on existing assets the quarries being one of them the like blossoming market externalities of carbon being one potential way to pivot into the climate economy if that's an okay phrasing of some of what you were starting to say and then just this idea that you can't support workforce in a sort of economic or financial vacuum but that child care and transportation and all of these other sort of staple issues in vermont are of course going to come into play and we really should be thinking holistically about those so thank you very much for your comments um brian i think you've been waiting for a while yes hello everyone i'm brian okowski i am the superintendent in the washington central unified union school district that's a pleasure to be here today i uh was very interested in hearing about the vermont council on rural development and uh was very excited to talking about the idea of rethinking employment and some of the things is i can just talk about some of my personal experiences uh coming just coming to vermont i moved up here from a connecticut several months ago uh the uh so i've done my quarantine i've done my quarantine already so many months ago but uh i will say that uh one of the uh interesting things is i i think when i look at the challenges and the big ideas uh labor i think is one of the biggest things that i've been seeing right now we reopen schools in my school district we're one of uh i think five school districts in the entire state that have uh been able to reopen a full full uh full in-person instruction uh for our for young children from a pre-k to sixth grade um so we're pretty proud of that and one of the uh reasons we're able to do that we have uh we have a lot of space in our buildings or we have a we have a lot of um we have lots of rooms in our buildings and we can spread out much uh much better than probably some other districts but i've heard that uh over the years that the number of children are also getting lower uh in uh in the uh state of vermont and so i think about the the labor some of the labor issues and so i have 12 openings right now none of them are teachers thankfully but they still looking for custodians looking for power educators uh and we're also looking for other types of positions along those lines so when lori said that you know she's talking about cabin i hear that on the radio every day they're definitely looking for workers you drive down route two people are looking for workers and i my big question is uh i think about my wife my wife uh was a is a registered nurse uh when we and she uh is over at central vermont medical center and when she uh came into applying for the job at central vermont medical center which is located in berlin uh there were over 70 plus jobs available and i just thought about that like can you imagine if they had filled all those jobs um how many people would be paying taxes you know just just uh contributing to the vermont economy and then i thought about my where i did my internship as a superintendent in east hartford east hartford canada kit east hartford high school had a special program where the um children if they wanted to could go into graduate from high school with an lpn degree and so they didn't have to pay for it it was part of their program and when they came out they were able to um they didn't have debt or anything like that they just came in and they could hit the ground running and start working and many of those kids become our ends and then they start filling a lot of the jobs that need to be filled in that area and so i thought about my wife when she graduated uh her lpn she was 60 000 dollars in debt so i thought about wow imagine if uh she where was that program when when she was uh uh growing up so what she'd be able to pay her taxes and contribute to to uh the uh the local economy i think in a much much more greater way so i think that you know i think about those types of things and i wonder how can the schools help uh our schools being asked or expected to prepare the workforce of the future um there seems to be a lot of jobs um you know even just for example at berlin in berlin in a at the central roman medical center just as an example i'm sure there's probably examples like that throughout the state and wouldn't it be great to have high schools or these types of programs offering uh our students are an opportunity to um get into a field maybe get to hit the ground running when they graduate high school uh and maybe even have a leg up in getting not having college debt to getting into um an opportunity to contribute right away and so i you know so i the way i look at it is you know are we gonna in order to keep the economy going are we gonna look at uh you know importing folks from other places other states to fill our labor needs or are we gonna try to grow our own um uh or try to take some of the folks who did lose their jobs uh and try to re redefine what they can do so thank you yeah no thank you brian definitely a perennial tension in vermont for sure um and i think you hit on a lot i definitely hearing this i mean i hear you hear everywhere this need for school integration with workforce and shorter pipelines to to um meaningful employment so yeah i really appreciate that i do i want to again i i mean we can could spend endless amounts of time talking about any one of these specific things i see elissa's hand up and i see senator comings next so i want to go to you guys but i want to open it up as you're um making observations or comments not only now where would we like to go but any uh existing promising practices or strategies that you guys are seeing on the ground um that are kind of sending us in that direction or things that can be replicated um i'd love to start capturing some of those i've been jotting down like the micro business uh program at capstone some of the stuff in the randolph area representative read was talking about the virtualization of business etc so any other things that people are seeing now would be a great time to to start airing some of those out so elissa let's go to you first thanks hi everyone my name is elissa i work in water brain doing economic development and when i think about dreams and where i want to be i would say it's interesting that i probably know or know of more than half the people on this call professionally and i think i dream of a future where we're getting input maybe from a few more people who i don't know professionally not that i don't want to hang out and have zoom calls with all of you but i do think it's really worth acknowledging the businesses that aren't being represented in this conversation and kind of what thoughts those people who don't do this all day every day um how about those issues in terms of things that work well i actually think this virtual new world is exciting as someone who spends a lot of time in municipal meetings it can be really nice to be in my kitchen and be able to comment on the latest planning commission draft and again not have to get childcare or drive to the town offices so i hope we figure out ways to have that be hybrid and keep doing it where it's important um i think another thing that's worked well and is exciting to try and continue is just being able to provide one on one support both for businesses and individuals um waterberry chooses to have a lot of capacity in this department at least in businesses by paying me um and i'm still one person for probably 200 businesses and even now we hear of folks who you know don't quite understand all the programs that are out there that months after the economic recovery grants they still thought the threshold was 75 percent so they haven't applied and until someone gives them a phone call or that extra nudge they're not there yet um so to me again not something that works for businesses and individuals and it's really about having someone sit down and understand your specific individual circumstance and be able to provide resources and follow up in a way that's more than just a referral i do a lot of referrals and sometimes it can feel kind of heartbreaking so thinking about that that could be a job for more folks to do and it's just it's being a cheerleader it's supporting folks as they're navigating these programs and following up to figure out what works and what doesn't again for individuals and businesses um keep collaborating regionally i think fortunately we do a lot of that in that region but it's been exciting to have even more of it happen and to have that hopefully keep up thinking about creative ways to integrate local food um hope that we have a lot of really awesome internet in the future definitely something to dream about and keep supporting those local initiatives that are doing that um and i hope that we have a tourism and hospitality sector so i have to say as someone who works in waterbray i'm really you know excited to hear about kind of dedicated support in that area um and the last thing i would say i think financial literacy is a really interesting tie-in um whether it's kind of educational some of what brian was talking about but i feel that it personally i've been able to navigate this because i have a really strong handle on where i stand and a lot of financial resources but both for again business owners particularly some of those sole proprietor individuals or a business as a whole um you kind of got to lay it all out so that you can figure out how to navigate the future um and then also just working to become more inclusive and welcoming so that was my wide inch deep but uh thanks all that's great thanks alissa um and i'm just noticing a couple things happening in the chat i want to highlight first since we are talking about um from existing promising practices i think liz um sharf had posted a link to no i'm not yeah i can't no list legal uh candidates that could would be interested in working with school age children there's a form through vermont after school for folks to get um in touch so that's a specific resource there's a little bit of conversation about um the career centers and hope to i see michelle's hand up so hopefully we can go there in a second um but i do i want to go to senator comings who's had her hand up for a while and um yeah keep thinking on about what are some things that we're seeing that are working i guess i i think diane derby is probably the only one that might remember the great montpelier flood in the early 90s and i was mayor and therefore was very involved in downtown recovery it's deja vu but it's not because at that time and with irine we knew what we had to do and the idea was you the police chief we had everybody in morning and evening and we said okay this is what we're doing today you take out the trash you know the but the buildings were destroyed and so it was a matter of getting money to people to rebuild to restock to clean out the trash on this one the buildings are there the inventory is there and there is no roadmap for this we have not been through this kind of we've not been through a pandemic um and so we are really rebuilding as we go and there really aren't proven strategies because we haven't done it before um i think it's important that we talk i'm not seeing at least any of the business owners who talk to me when montpelier you know development by pilia downtown had us in um because they're all working and they're home and i think we do need to talk with them i sent them all emails and asked what do you really need and they haven't gotten back to me i i think that's the question what we've got the economy is huge if if we want to focus on downtowns we can do that the hospitality and downtown and food um we can we can focus on those and figure out what works there but i i'm not on economic development i don't know how our manufacturing or our tech or our service you know internet service kinds of industries are doing i mean 10 percent of us are unemployed but that still means 90 percent of us are employed and i i just i feel the need to have a better understanding and i i really came tonight to listen to see if i can figure out how do we target the limited resources we have at the state level which is federal money um because the state's also not in stellar financial shape um how do we target the federal money to do the most good for the most businesses and i'm i'm getting a sense that it is our downtowns our food service our hospitality um maybe we need to make the Vermont the state workers come back to Montpelier but i think that's what it's going to take to get Montpelier up and running that i mean i've been trying for years to get state workers into downtown barry so their downtown can look like Montpeliers um it's having an employer with active employees downtown and people that live downtown are crucial to having your downtowns flourish and that might be something we can talk about yeah thank you senator i i i think i'm hearing in of what you're saying a lot of kind of echoes of what elissa was pointing out this kind of insular group of um people who work within the field of economic development and sometimes we could do a better job in sort of opening channels of communication beyond and i think it speaks to what you were saying about not necessarily feeling like you always have the best pulse on what the needs are so i'm wondering i want to uh working my way through virtual hands but i'll put that out there as a standing question there may be people on this call who feel a little bit better equipped to speak to that i know certainly jamie will have some thoughts um and looking forward to hearing his reflections at the end um but let's go now to curtis uh things that you're seeing that are really working on the ground and just again guys looking at the time um also the things that we are seeing or could be seeing or ideas for the future i think it's it's wide open at this point so let's let's dream big so curtis yeah it was your answer both uh brian's and lidsharf's concerns um part of that though would be the cte's and i'll leave that to michelle because i think she's more of the she has more expertise on that but there's a there's a lot going on there but in vermont tech we're working right now with the vermont community foundation and the mclure foundation on uh best bets in and in uh career education um what vcf is looking at is what dan smith is calling how can we help the learners in transition and transition can either mean going from high school into a job maybe not college but maybe getting some career skill um but the others are those maybe those the waiters waitresses the cooks the people who are unemployed really want to get a different career so from on tech we're offering we offer quite a few of those opportunities mostly through our cwd continuing education workforce development but also through some of our certificate programs so i just wanted to say there's a there are many options there that um to look at for not necessarily the businesses themselves but for the employees who are affected or the people who are on an employment but again i'll let michelle talk about the cte's that's not my area of expertise you're muted nick thank you guys um uh yeah michelle maybe you could speak uh speak to that well so curtis you recalled it that's my old half but it's still my number one passion is workforce development but so i encourage you curtis and brian welcome brian okowski to vermont because you are a voice that can help expand high school you know k through 12 technical education in the state and coordinate it with our colleges which is really what we need in space but i now work with the vermont employee ownership center not just want to say that historically we've worked with transitions of mostly retiring employers wanting to sell to their employees but we are now heavily working in the startup space and there's huge opportunity with businesses closing and businesses transitioning to utilize the resources of existing talent and unemployed workers to get them started again and we have serious nationally recognized technical expertise at the eoc and we have both uh we have debt and capital that is available uniquely for employee ownership so i encourage people to be in touch with us the eoc.org and we are on the ground working very closely with the spdc and others so just keep that in mind when you see any opportunities or you see a a tired business owner who says i've had it it's just too much to rebuild what do i do send him or her to us we can talk to them about keeping that business going thanks curtis thanks all thank you michelle yeah and then that's great that's a very tangible um very real thing resource out there um diane has had her hand up for a long time i do uh want to go to diane i'll try to chime in while my dog's not barking thanks for having me i just wanted to give a quick federal overview and i think um you know if we're talking big ideas and challenges uh no one knows more than senator lehi what a challenge it is to try to get another major covid relief bill passed um that would be his top priority right now he's still working very hard to get it done but as i'm sure you're here you have all read it's quite a challenge in dc right now to get that over the line you know we know what works the last major covid relief bill um you know we had 1.25 billion dollars to pass along to the legislature and the governor because you know we know that the state and local people know best where these these funds should and can be spent um and what we heard loud and clear after that major 2.2 trillion dollar package was the need for more flexibility for states you know that they had to spend all of that money down by december 31st and we know the constraints that that puts on on people um businesses and nonprofits and everyone um so you know we've learned a lot of lessons from the last covid bill and you know we know that the best thing we could do at the federal level and senator lehi he's working really hard is to get another bill bill uh passed so you know he is still holding out hope uh that we that we can do it another bill soon um that said you know uh there were some real really uh effective targeted programs that chet can speak better to than i can but you know we had the five million carve out for women and minority owned businesses we had some targeted funding um oh and i'll also say that that major package did not include all of the other funding to say any a any h where money went directly from the national endowment of the arts and humanities to states to to help the uh vermont arts council and vermont humanities council put out grants now we all know that those grants didn't go far enough and and didn't pay for the lost revenues from lack of ticket sales and that kind of thing to speak to the points that were made earlier um so you know we certainly understand that so much more is needed from the federal level and senator will just keep on working to try to get something over the finish line on that front we're also still working on a fiscal year 21 budget that we haven't been able to finalize with the fiscal year ending in two weeks so um a lot of challenges at the federal at the federal level but um you know senator comings and everyone in the legislature in the governor's office did a phenomenal job of working to get you know a lot of money 1.25 billion dollars is a lot of money to get out the door to try to target that and and frankly they're much better equipped at the state and local levels to target that money than we are at the federal level so we know what works we just got to do more of it and senator lehi is really trying and i'll just say on a personal level i've lived and worked in Montpelier for 30 years and 30 plus years and it really um it's going to be a challenge we're seeing stir fronts go out regularly in downtown and it really hurts all of us who who live here personally to just on an emotional level to see that happening so you know i i'm all about hearing more as a person on a personal level as a resident um hearing about more strategies at the local level for Montpelier so thanks for having me um feel free to reach out to the office yeah your other was thanks thank you diane and and thanks for that update um i i want to highlight i'm seeing a lot going on in the chat which i'm just now catching up to um hopefully people are engaging with that as they're able um some discussion of the everyone eats program which started down in Brattleboro and i think is sort of migrating its way across the state that's a program to sort of partner with restaurants and increase food access uh curtis put in a thing about some more of the programming vermont tech offers for high school seniors to integrate with the vermont academy of science and technology um and so yeah just just to highlight those i do see a hand up from robert just a sort of time check i want to in about uh five to seven minutes turn to our visiting team we just heard from diane thank you diane you're ahead of the program um but i i want to give jamie a chance to to share some thoughts and reflections and resources from his uh office and and his perspective and then maybe get come back to ted and and hear ted some of your reflections so with that in mind um robert any final ideas or strategies or things you're thinking about no i'm sorry i had a leftover hand up i'll pass okay no problem then i see michelle has got a hand up or maybe that's a leftover too i thought i put it down but i must have put it back up sorry okay well that that simplifies that well then anybody else um is there any what what have we missed so far i mean are there other either uh existing programs things that are going on that seem to be really having an impact yeah i see liz's hand just popped up i guess i would just say um you you know we have to focus really hard on not going back we don't want to go back right we need to go forward we need to go to workplaces that are much more diverse that are much more flexible that are much more supportive of employees right if anything we've all learned um you know i was chatting with one of my buddies in the intro part and i was like you know this is the most stressful time any of us will ever have it's a six month Irene and we are not done anywhere close to done but we really need to encourage people not to think about going back right the combination of COVID climate and racial justice is like an extreme moment in history and so in every area we need to say what can we do differently right do we need that certificate or can we train people on the job do we need to bring people back to the office or can we let them be remote do we need to have this process work the way it's always worked right that the businesses that i'm talking to they get stuck when they think about how it was they get freed when we can talk to them about it's never going to be like that again how can you leverage this time where everything is on the table and i just want to like really make a pitch for that kind of thinking right there's no we don't want to go back we don't want to go back to the world we had it didn't work yeah thank you Liz i mean i think you just hit the nail on the head and really tapped into the whole um raison d'etre of these conversations and and i think why we're all probably here on uh at least in my neck of the woods beautiful now dark thursday evening sitting on our computers talking about development right is there really is this transformational moment and how do we seize that so thank you for highlighting that um i see representative re has a hand up i think that's probably going to be about the last uh one we have time for before i turn it over to the visiting team so representative read any concluding remarks just a quick comment i think elissa mentioned it but um as as we look at at transforming our economy broadband across the state is just a critical kind of backbone to that whole process and i think it's something we need to just continue pushing on and we've seen in the in the last six months how critical it is i i'm fortunate to live in an area that has ec fiber and that's fantastic but uh i mean we see it in our in our house the deliberations people cut out and disappear it's uh and i'm sure for those of you trying to do your work or education it's the same thing and so we're we're just not going to be able to move forward in the way we'd like until we have that totally agree as i said i i feel like i'm living the reality of that and i'm one of the fortunate ones that i can i do have some level of connectivity right i mean this is this is such a huge issue um and i have to say in every side in a lot of conversations about the future of vermont by virtue of my job and position and it's uh it's everywhere right it's really hard to talk about anything these days without without touching on broadband so thanks representative for that um so then as promised i'd like to turn now to our visiting team and maybe start with jamie you've been really patiently and quietly waiting here um would love to hear your thoughts on reflections on the conversation um maybe strategies you're seeing from your office's perspective and any resources that might be relevant um so the floor is yours all right thanks nick um number one i'm not going to give you a full sales pitch on what we have because number one there's going to be some big announcements next week and they'll have to wait till next week oh it's sure he's still gonna hate him so many choices well we're sorry to hear that um the um bottom line is that um we really uh i want to give a more positive note i think that many people have been kind of feeling and it's very typical and going out there that there's a lot of depression uh out there regarding the situation we have because it's bad and i think all right so if we just accept the fact that it's that that it's bad but then look at how we've responded to date the state has done an amazing job and it's because of the people that are here and businesses have found and shown a way to be resilient in this that is to me just been really um uplifting i've seen a lot of businesses that have really done some amazing things you find ways to adapt and adjust to what is here um at the same point sure we have a lot of businesses that are really struggling and so senator comings and i you know ten and i can tell you because we've talked to i think at this point it's how many hundreds of businesses in this region and for ten across the state that we've had direct conversations with um one of the biggest problems that we all face here is that we everybody's problems are different we don't have a single need in some industries are faring fairly well other industries are suffering um to significant extremes and every point in between so trying to decide on how to fix it what to fix uh it's very difficult and so i would tell you that that i think is our biggest struggle is trying to identify where and how people need that help because they are so varied um so i think that has got to be the challenge to everybody is to understand that we will have to take multiple approaches for the next year two years three years as we rebuild this as we restructure how we do business and yeah digital you know everybody's saying broadband but it's the broader digital world zoom six months ago none of us here were proficient at zoom now we all wish we bought stock in it six months ago because this is a new world what i'm hearing now from people is comments at meetings well you know what even after this is done we're still going to do some meetings this way because it's just so much darn convenient so what is that going to mean to our downtowns to the real estate we've really got to be thinking about how we bring a new vibrancy a new demand to the downtowns because it's not going to be the office space anymore that's just that's a past reality and i those are the terms that we want to start thinking forward on is because this is a time for systemic change whether we wanted it or not it has happened and it is here and it is going to make a lasting change for everybody so we have to relook at every piece of what we're doing and even most importantly the strategies that we've been employing to this point to find a new way forward because the old strategies it's not that they're old thinking it's that they will not work because we have changed and i think if that i'll kind of leave it at that and as more of a challenge to everybody to figure out how we can all engage in that part of the conversation nick i didn't want to go too long i didn't know how much time and i just the one thing no that's great you people if there's questions that you have i hope that there could still be a little bit of dialogue even now definitely yeah i'd like to oh sure yeah go ahead list sorry um so jay b in response to your statement that you know thinking about like the office buildings and towns um you know my i i'm thinking and i'm thinking in the bigger picture like new york city for example right like which is filled with office buildings it's like don't you see that um the future may be that landlords require businesses to rent um a certain portion of the building because we we all work fairly professional people seem to be working fairly successfully at home and it would be great for businesses not to have to pay for space when their employees can be working from home which does a disservice overall to a business when you know you're you're not in person um but so so i sort of envision that landlords are going to um require businesses to rent out you know based on the company size if the company has a hundred employees that they require 80 percent of the that space to be rented out not two offices for a handful of people that have to be there because otherwise it's the demise of our downtown like there's there's you know no one's going to be we're all going to be holed up in our houses so that companies can save money not paying for space i mean that's my concern and i think that we really need to think about like getting back into business buildings and and working there thanks list uh yeah jamie any quick uh response reflection on on what liz was saying i yeah i just think there's an inevitability here and there's going to be a competitive market to get those uh that smaller amount of commercial demand so there's going to be a sea change whether we and there's at some level i don't think that we can stop that from happening um so rethinking and how about some of those properties that historically were housing and apartments that were converted to office space should they be going back into housing should we have a big push to create housing downtown so that we have a population that is based there that will shop there that will keep it vibrant you know i think that's the point so we just have to think differently and we've got to look at other answers because we can't change the new reality thanks jamie um just being a slave to the clock here i i do want to give a little bit of time at the end just to walk us through getting back so um i i know diane you spoke a little bit earlier do you have any quick brief reflections on the conversation any last words you'd like to add um sorry i jumped the gun on my earlier comments i forgot i'm supposed to wait till the end um i think it's the conversation we all have to be having right now so thanks for pulling us all together i think all of the people here on the call have spoken to all to the difficulty and challenges and um hats off to all of those of you in the trenches who are working so hard to to move forward and i frankly i like litch legals comment quite a bit about you know thinking forward and not back as i center a note saying building back better but i think that's been taken already so i have to be careful there but it's uh it's a challenge just we're collectively all facing but um like you know we'll just work through it all together so thanks for having me and i'll listen in that's great and thank you diane and um on that note on the conversation we all need to be having a ted you open this up maybe you could bring us home here what what do you think what have you heard and um any closing reflections well the build off of diane and liz and so many others you wonder what it means not to look back and instead look forward and to that i question what what are we trying what problems do we need to address and what problems can we address going forward by inventing the future in a different way you think about you know what were our major problems before this crisis hit hard to think back to february and say what kept you up at night i think it was the fact that our state was an unsustainable course to the future we didn't have enough from honours to keep us moving forward climate change uh that continues to exist i think both of those issues will continue to be a major force that we need to address when we come back when we build our future economy our workforce development needs continue to be despite spending so much money on workforce development not delivering for the workforce of tomorrow what a great opportunity to pause and say how can we do it differently and i i that's i hear that all the time i honestly don't know what it means and i don't mean this is an insult but when i hear it i oftentimes wonder and when i think it if i'm being too polyheneish and saying oh we can do everything perfect we can fix social racism we can fix climate change just by doing things differently after covid but then you started thinking you know each one of those problems one on our population dynamics and on our demographic dynamics um vermont has the safest place in the country period right now period before covid vermont was one of the safest places in the country that is such an authentic powerful brand that we should be using uh in a way that we never have before when you think about climate change the number one uh thing that vermont does wrong when it comes to climate emissions is transportation right you look at the two lowest uh transportation uses sorry the two biggest reductions in transportation usage in the state of vermont happened in august this year august third and august 23rd we had the greatest drop in automobile usage in the state of vermont this is six months after the pandemic started so low hanging fruit it's not polyheneish to think how can vermont solve our uh contribute to solving climate change there's a great opportunity there uh when i think about uh you know social injustice everybody's thinking about things so differently right now and we've stopped connecting with people in the same way we did before what happens when we go back to in-person conversations and bring all of the baggage that's come with us i think there is an opportunity there uh so all of these things it's it's tempting to say you you can't really go back to a new normal well yeah you can it's just you need to think about what are your assets what what what has kovat 19 given us and let's keep some of those crazy things that i i've heard a lot of that uh tonight uh and ultimately though it comes down to what senator comings was questioning is what what do people actually need i think we're finding quickly that businesses need customers it's an easy one so without customers what do we have to give them the equivalent of what customers give them money uh what do people need i think it's people need more flexibility so employers need to be more flexible going forward whenever they can be certain percentage jobs can't be but there's flexibility in how you learn flexibility and how your kids learn flexibility and how you work flexibility and what are working vermont or looks like a 10 hour a week is a real thing for some vermonters so let's use it if they're willing to do that um and think about the ultimate thing that washington county county has going for which is there's no part of vermont i think that has a stronger sense of place than washington county uh and kovat 19 hasn't begun to touch that magic that washington he has so some gibberish there i know but ultimately it comes down to yeah let's grow differently let's use what kovat gave us and use that as the building blocks of how we grow how we recover differently don't don't think that we can just reinvent everything let's use what kovat's given us and um vermont has never been stronger in a better position to lead the nation thanks ted yeah i i think that's a what a great way to wrap up um and if i can just uh jump off of some of what you were saying i mean i guess i'll just share the brief reflection before i get into technological steward mode um like i say having done a number of these and and just listening to the tone and timbre of these conversations i'm struck by how much um we as a people and we as as the small subsect of the population who come together on these these zoom calls of course acknowledging that how the conversation really always seems to follow a similar narrative arc to me of like and part of that is the structure right but really i think there's just something to be said for the collective um will to roll up sleeves and get things done and and when it i guess i'm stammering to say that it's just humbling to be a part of these conversations and see so many people who will take time out of their evening to come and talk about these issues um and i think ted just spoke to it really well i mean it's what new normal looks like is is totally reliant on capital u us and and all of you guys and and so it's what uh an honor in a way to be a part of this and um just really appreciate your all taking the time to be here and and love seeing some connections be made and affirmed and um yeah so thank you thank you all so much for that um i guess then it's a matter of getting back to the closing session we are right on schedule here so um i'm just copying and pasting to the chat it's the exact same process that brought us here so you're going to want to copy the link that i just posted into the chat leave this meeting and then uh put that link back into your browser and you should get magically whisked back to the right place um and if you're calling it on the phone which i don't think anybody is it would be different but so with that thank you guys all one more time um and i will see you in the in the closing session