 Hey, welcome to the first joint Zoom meeting of the House Education and House Ways and Means Committee. And with our mutual interest in the funding of education, the Ways and Means Chair and I thought a joint meeting might be more efficient use of time and resources, particularly of those that we've invited to provide testimony. I know the House Education Committee has an interest in better understanding how COVID-19 disruption is affecting the funding of education. And that's for the remainder of 2020, as well as building budgets and setting the tax rates for 2021. Senator Ansel, you wanna say anything? Thank you, Kate. So, and thank you for working with me and setting this up. This is the first joint meeting that we've done on Zoom. And it'll be interesting because we've got 31 participants. It's a little more than we usually have. But as we've been working through the education finance issues, the needs of the schools and the way this pandemic is affecting students and affecting schools, which is really the expertise and jurisdiction of the Education Committee is so closely related to the finance issues, which we generally do on Ways and Means that it made sense to have some understanding in common and some testimony in common. So that's why we're doing this. And we're gonna start unless anybody, and just be aware for the committee members, we're gonna try to recognize you, raise your hand when you have a question and we'll pause every so often to give people a chance to jump in. And we will start this with Mark Perrault who has been in our committee several times on this issue. And welcome to our Zoom meeting here, Mark. Well, thank you. Can everybody hear me? Yes. Okay, so earlier today, I sent over three documents to Sorcia and Avery. I think those are gonna be posted on the committee web pages. I'm mentioning it now because on the amount of time we have, I'm gonna basically hit the highlights here as I go through this presentation. If you want more detailed information, you can start looking there or you can always reach out to either Chloe Lexler or me with any questions you might have. So I think the best way for this to work efficiently might be for, I'm not sure who's controlling the screen, but if the Education Fund Outlook I sent over could be posted for people to take a look at, I think it would facilitate this presentation if people were looking at that, is that possible? Avery can pull that up. I'm going to pull that up, just give me one moment. Okay, what I'll do, while Avery's pulling that up, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you where we think we're gonna be ending up 2020 in and then talk a little bit about the issues that the House Ways and Means Committee is having to wrestle with in terms of setting the property tax parameters for FY21. So great. So can everybody see this? Yes? Okay, so on this balance sheet, if you take a look at the middle column, which is labeled FY2020 January forecast, that's pretty much where we were prior to this COVID-19 outbreak rolling through. So in order just to cut to the chase, if you could scroll down to the bottom, Avery on the street. And what I'm gonna just show you here is that prior to this crisis erupting, the Education Fund was actually in pretty good shape fiscally. If you take a look at line 26, or I'm sorry, line 27, you can see that we had a full stabilization reserve of about $36.4 million. That was a full 5% reserve. And then on top of that, if you look down on line 31, you can see we were anticipating that we were gonna close FY2020 with a $12.9 million surplus. So there was about $50 million in the fund that wasn't being used to support education services in 2020. Now, however, if you move over to the next column over, can you roll to the top of that, Avery? And maybe more of it on there. Yeah, I guess that's far enough. You can see on line nine, and this will be the only change to the sources and uses portions of this outlook. You can see that there's negative $40 million showing up on line nine. Now the current forecast for the consumption taxes that are paid into the education fund, which includes the sales and use tax, the purchasing use tax, and the meals and rooms tax collectively are now expected to be from $35 to $45 million below where we thought they were gonna be back when the forecast was done in January. So that's a significant drop. It's understandable consumption taxes are the first to go down when something like this happens. That's a pretty broad range. That's because it's very difficult, even in 2020, to estimate what the revenue impact is gonna be. So for the purpose of the balance sheet, we picked $40 million, which is the midpoint of the revenue estimate for the losses. So that's the only difference that's showing up there on sources. Can you, Avery, can you scroll down to the bottom of the sheet? So you can see here again on line 21, total education fund uses. We've assumed that there's no change there. I can come back and talk a little bit about that if we have time, but for this purpose, just assume no changes in spending, a $35 to $45 million loss in education fund revenues due to this downturn. And then if you go to the bottom of the sheet and the lines that I just went to, you can see what the consequence is. On line 27, you can see that the stabilization reserve that was full at 5% has now dropped from 36 million down to about 9.3. Given the range of the estimates, that could be $5 million higher, or it could be $5 million lower. But what it tells me is that under any scenario, we're gonna be going into FY21 with an education fund that has a very diminished stabilization reserve. We're going in with a covered empty, basically, that $9.3 million reserve estimate is only 1.3% of prior year appropriations. That number should be about 5%, so around something around $38 million. So we've taken a pretty good hit. And then just to wrap up on this, if you look down on line 31, you can see that that $12.9 million surplus we were anticipating is just gone. So that's the situation we're looking at right now in FY2020. Keep in mind that the non-property tax revenues only a couple, one-third of the total revenues and the remaining two-thirds are education property tax revenues. We're not too worried about those revenues at this point because at this point in the year, most of those monies have already been collected by municipalities and they're in the bank. Now, there's a handful of communities that still have half of the amount of education tax revenue that they need to collect for 2020 still outstanding. So for those individual communities, it may be an issue, but overall, it's not really an education fund issue. And then more detailed analysis that will be available online, you can see a table that indicates that about $132 million in education property tax money is still outstanding for 2020, but that's spread out over a lot of towns and it's not a significant amount of money for most of them, but there are 25 municipalities that bill twice a year, still on half outstanding. All right, why don't I pause and see if members have questions because I'm scrolling through the list here and I don't see anybody. Okay. Yep, go ahead. Okay, so going into FY 2021, the loss of non-property tax revenues due to those consumption taxes is expected to be even more severe and we don't know how long it's gonna go on for. In addition, timely collection of property tax revenues is uncertain because we're gonna have employees are gonna be out of work, businesses are gonna have closed down, employers are gonna be reining in on discretionary spending. So we just expect more of a downturn than non-property tax revenues, but that may also spill over into the collection of the education property taxes. If you're unemployed and your property tax becomes due in July or August, you may not be able to pay it. At this point in time, we're just basically in the dark, we have no reliable estimates as to what revenues are gonna look like next year. As we speak, Tom Kovet, Jeff Carr and some other people are working on revenue forecasts for next year. They're taking into account evolving epidemiological studies that are gonna try to give them some sense of how long and how deep any recession that's gonna arise from this crisis will take to roll out. Until we know that, trying to do an FY21 education fund outlook is highly speculative. So we just haven't done it. And that's why on the shoot that I just presented to you for the first time, FY21 is not on there. Now we do know a lot about what's going on in FY21 otherwise. We know that at town meeting an additional $73 million in education spending for FY21 was approved by voters. So there's a significant amount of money in there. Now, even if it were possible to do something to try to constrain costs next year, it's gonna be very difficult because school spending is primarily salaries and benefits. It's about 80% of the total. And those benefits and salaries are under contract with the teachers unions and the school boards. So it would be very difficult for them to find savings in the appropriations that they've already made for FY21 without going to a reduction in force or something like that, which is not a desirable outcome in the middle of a recession. So in terms of the amount of money we need next year, there's not a whole lot of flexibility. So normally the legislature sets the property tax yields prior to adjournment. And prior to this COVID-19 pandemic, and that's what House Ways and Means was working on. Given the level of uncertainty that I've described now in terms of how we're leaving FY20 and what's the shape we'll be in there, plus the revenue uncertainty looking forward to FY21, it's almost impossible at this point to figure out where those yields ought to be set. There is a default if the yields aren't set in current law. There's also been some talk about just staying with the January yields that were announced. I mean, the December yields that were announced by the tax commissioner earlier this year, both of those have problems associated with them. The latter one may be a little better because when school boards were putting together their budgets and when voters went to tell me to vote, those are the tax rate parameters they had in mind. But there's no constraint on where the legislature can set those. But at this point, given that we just don't know what the bottom line would look like, it's really difficult to talk about how you might do that. Mark. Mark, I've got a couple of people with questions. Let me let them jump in. Scott and then George. Hey, Mark, does GFO or anybody else have any kind of analysis as to what percentage of these homestead or non homestead property taxpayers that their payments are made through escrow? I believe that the Joe Remek attack at the property valuation review probably knows that. I can check in with her and get back to you. Okay, thank you, because that can make a big difference as far as whether they get paid or not. Yeah, I think she does know that because she was raising the issue about the timing of the bills and everything like that. She was afraid it was gonna cause a problem with banks. So I'll follow up on that. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Mike, no too. George. Yeah, hi, Mark, is there any way to know what that Ed's fund outlook page would look like if we were successful in finding a way to use the federal money, the secondary education emergency fund relief? Yes, I'm gonna get to that now. That was my next topic. And there's an issue there about, is that money FY 2020 money? Is it FY 21 money? Is it split? There are a lot of unanswered questions. So maybe if I go through what the money we have, we can touch on that a little bit after I get through how much we do have because you're right. And is that all the questions? That's all the questions that I've got. So yes, go ahead. So the one bright spot, the federal stimulus bill passed on the 27th and Vermont's allocation of the $30.7 billion for elementary and secondary education is $13.1 million. So it's a big chunk of change. And if it was used in FY 2020, it would go some way towards closing some of that gap. Mark, it was 30, right? I heard 13, 30. Whoa, it is 13, right? Well, hold on a second. I might have a question. It's 30. I'm sorry, thank you. Okay, it made me nervous. Yes, me too, all right. It's a typo. It's $31 million. Thank you. And that would go a long way towards closing the gap in 2020. The 13 million would not. But anyway, so we're anticipating $31.1 million. We have a month to apply for it. They have a month to give it back to us. So it's coming relatively soon. The way that works, however, is that money is paid to the agency of education and then sent directly out to school districts. So it bypasses the education fund entirely. We had a similar issue back in 2010 and 2011 when we were receiving error money from the Great Recession. We got $18 million each of two years, money that went directly to school districts. The way we addressed it then was we reduced the general fund transfer to the education fund by the same amount. We no longer have a general fund transferred to the education fund. We have dedicated revenues. So I'm not sure even if that was, even if we wanted to go that route, exactly how you do it. The other possibilities, you could let this, we're not gonna get this money. We possibly may not receive this money until late May or I guess, no, at late June, I guess. So it could be up to two months. We're getting really close to the end of the fiscal year anyways. If that money were held and distributed to schools entirely in FY21, it would show up as an offsetting revenue. And what that means is that schools would set, well, they've already set them. They have budgets. They could reduce those budgets by the amount of offsetting revenue this federal aid that comes in. And that would lower education spending and work its way back to the education fund. These are all questions that this is me spitballing. I haven't talked to anybody about this and I have no idea where people wanna go on it, but we're just trying to figure out how to wrestle with this issue that we've got coming forward without having any idea whether we've got a gigantic problem or something that's more manageable. So I think the last thing I wanted to talk about was, in the memo, and I won't go over them today unless you want me to given the amount of time we have, but the issues that I've discussed raise a number of other issues. One is potential cash flow concerns, not just for the education fund, but for municipalities and school districts as well. You'll remember that municipalities essentially act as agents for the state and collect both the municipal property tax and the education property tax. A lot of complications arise around that. Most of them we're working through with the tax department. Nothing, no showstoppers that we found at least at this point. Another problem that was mentioned earlier, I think is the scheduling of votes or revotes for school budgets that haven't yet passed them. I noted that South Burlington that failed to pass their budget initially had scheduled a revote, which is now postponed indefinitely. So there's not a whole lot of towns out there. I think nine towns failed to pass their budgets and there was probably another half a dozen that were scheduled to go to the later date, but I don't know how they're gonna be able to vote given we have a stay at home order in place. The impact of moving the personal income tax fund from July 15th, I mean, from April 15th to July 15th impacts the homestead declaration, the property tax credit claim, those kinds of things. But again, we're working with the tax department. It may be, the solution may be as simple as asking towns to move back their billing dates to August 1st. Then towns could choose, issue your bills per normal and know you're gonna have to re-issue bills at some point or wait until after August 1st when you have all the information and send them out then. That's a decision that could be left to the towns, not necessarily have to have the legislature get involved. And the last thing, and this is an important one, but it's sort of a catch, it doesn't fit into any of my other categories is the property tax adjustment for, it's gonna be paid to tax payers in FY 21. That property tax adjustment is not gonna reflect people's income in 2020. So any income related, any COVID-19 related loss of income is gonna reduce your household income, but you're only gonna be compensated for that on the education tax in FY 22. In FY 21, you're gonna get, it's already been basically calculated, we know what it is, and it was determined based on your situation prior to COVID-19 hitting. That'll have a ripple effect out in 22 when people who have lost their jobs, lost income and are entitled to a much bigger adjustment will be able to claim it at that point. One thing that may mitigate that a little bit is to the extent that people are getting unemployment benefits, checks from the federal government in order to help them through this, all that's counted as household income, we define household income really broadly, so that would be included. So unless you have any questions I wanna get into any more detail, I think I stopped there. I've got one here, Peter, come on. Thanks, Mark, the $31 million in the federal aid that goes directly to LEAs, is that contingent on the school districts showing that they've got unexpected higher than normal expenses? No, that raises a good issue that I sort of blighted over. We have very little control over that money other than when it goes out the door, it goes out to individual, and it goes out to not districts, but it goes out to supervisor unions, and the amount that goes out to supervisor unions is determined by a federal formula. So we'll be able to know exactly how much is going out, but my understanding is that that money is intended to deal with COVID-19 related costs, but the way the uses is defined, and we did go over this a little more detail in House Ways and Means yesterday, the allowable uses of that money is very, very broad. I think they can use it for pretty much almost anything. Apart from COVID-19, the first line of legislation says you can use it for anything that you can use education and secondary money flow for. So I think it's pretty broad. Did that answer your question to get sidetracked? Yeah, he says it's okay. It's okay. Okay. Good. Did you have anything else, Mark, that you wanted to go over? No, not at this point. If you wanna see the detail on the federal aid, that's one of the documents that I sent over to Sorcha and Avery, so you can take a look at that. It's a little bit more complicated than I've described, Karen. There's a little bit more money available, but I haven't discussed it because it's basically an emergency fund that the governor has discretion over as to how it's used, but there is that money in there. It's for severe problems, I think. And there is higher aid money in here as well, which I didn't talk at all about, but other than that, I think that's it. Good, thank you. Let me pause for a second and see if anyone has questions. Let's see anybody. So, Brad, welcome to our joint meeting. And a couple of things that I was hoping you would address. One is a very sort of general question about what you're hearing from school boards, just sort of generally, is it likely they're gonna spend more money, less money, what is happening, particularly with the school boards that have an adopted budgets. And the other question, and I don't know that you have this information, but I think we would find really helpful is to know this federal money that's gonna be allocated according to the ESEA formula, if it's possible to know what that actually means in terms of dollars to different districts. I think we would find that useful to see. So I don't know that you came prepared with that, but if you could tell us if that's something we could get, that would be good. Yes, I mean, basically what the allocation is to us from the fed, or from, once we get the money from the feds that roughly 31 million, we still don't know exactly what the number is. Once we get that, it gets allocated out to the school district. Well, I shouldn't say the school district. It gets allocated out to the supervisor unions who in turn will push it out to the school district based on the current year Title I allocation. So we're basically, we're looking at that. I'm off the top of my head. I think our Title I is around maybe 34 million this year. So we're talking about 31 million roughly from the feds. There's a 10% that the agency can withhold to use for emergencies, well, they call it emergency situations in the language of CARES Act, but for whatever we think it needs to be used for. So that, if you say that's around 28 million, my guess would be probably they're going to get about 80% of what they're getting currently for the Title I allocation just as a rough ballpark figure so they can start thinking about it. Okay. That's kind of about as far as I've gotten with that. Again, without knowing exactly what we're going to get that can't do the calculations. I don't want to jump ahead of where Secretary of French is either because I don't know everything that he said about this, but that's my understanding from it. Just a few things from what Mark said about what the money can be used for. I do agree. I think it's pretty broad. I'm not sure if you've all looked at the CARES Act itself or not. It lists 12 things that money can be used for. Some of them are fairly broad. The ones Mark was talking about the ESEA and the IDA. Those are actually pretty specific cost centers that those can be used for, but other things do allow much more flexibility. Some of the other things that they listed in the language that they put out there. In terms of what the school districts are doing, more money, less money. At this point, we can break them into two things. I was talking to education and health and welfare earlier today. They were kind of asking some of the same questions about that. And in terms of the districts who have not passed budgets yet or who have not voted a budget yet, there's a lot of concern among business managers. I've been talking to business managers, not the school boards directly. There's a lot of worry from those business managers to whether or not they're going to be able to pass it or not. An example would be the one in Slate Valley, which used to be Fairhaven Union High School in that Addison-Rutland district. They're pretty certain that their budget went down because of the bond. I think Bill, you mentioned this one, I was in ways of means last. You agreed with that. But their education spending for people was up just under 3% and they're not sure that will pass anymore with what's going on now. So again, there's a lot of concern, both with people who have not had a budget vote yet and those who did fail. There's also some talk that I've heard more questions than serious consideration and maybe other people have more than I do about this. But I've been asked the question a couple of times if a district has already voted its budget, can it re-vote that budget? The answer is yes, they can. The school board can bring that back under current statute if they so choose. I think they would have to be very careful about that because I think it could go south pretty fast. Grab, no time limit. In terms of the school board, no. There's a, this is that reconsideration language in title 17, title 17, 2661 subsection A. It says that the voters can have 30 days to bring it back after the budget is approved, but the board can warn a special meeting whenever they so choose. So I think, I mean, I think let's counselors look at that and make sure that I'm interpreting that correctly, but the language is pretty clear to me as I read it. And Asu's right there too, so I don't know if he's looking at us as a class. So I think that's one thing that people might wanna look at. In terms of what's happening this year for everybody, it looks like their costs are going up. I was kind of canvassing business managers yesterday and a couple of the handouts that I got quite belatedly to Sorosha and Avery are kind of just a quick compilation of what the business managers were telling me. They're not in any particular order. There's a lot of redundancy, especially the first one, but it's kind of saying some of the issues that they're running into. And very few of them are talking about, well, we're saving money here. Some of them think there might be a little bit of savings because they're not running buses for students. They are, most of them running buses sounds like for meals. So they're still paying. A lot of them have busing contracts that even though they're not using the buses, they're still paying the contract. So they're, it's kind of all over the place, but nobody sounds like they're saving a lot of money. I think a lot of people are spending more money. It varies from place to place. Some of the place they said that said they weren't spending a lot of additional funds on this right now, are looking at thinking that if this keeps going on, then they will be spending a lot of money. So it's starting to ramp up for them too. So it is kind of all over the place right now. In terms of next year, there's a lot of concern. There hasn't been much conversation with me about it. I've been trying to leave them alone as much as possible knowing how busy they are. But I know that there is concern about next year because, well, there's also concern, a little bit, let me come swing back to this year for a second. There's also some concern from some districts in terms of getting that last payment from the town. As Mark said, a lot of towns have collected that money, but not all. They're the towns that collect twice a year. They're the towns that collect four times a year. I still have one more tax payment to make that will be going to the school district. And I know there are, I think about 70 towns that collect four times a year. So there's some concern that the towns will not have the money to pay them current statute says that if a town does not collect all the education funds and by the end of the fiscal year, considering where we are right now, by the end of the fiscal year, they have to borrow money to make the school district whole. So that's still in statute, that's not changed. So there's a hard stop for them. So the school districts theoretically should be okay in terms of education property tax that they have yet to receive. But again, some are concerned about that. Again, now jumping back to the following, this coming year, FY21, again, I haven't heard a lot about it, as I said, but it sounds like it's going to be an issue depending on how this gets and how long it goes on. In terms of both the Ed fund, people coming out of work. I heard from a number of business managers that I shouldn't say a number, but I heard several business managers that a lot of spouses of their employees are losing their jobs and they are coming on to their school district health insurance. That's going to push costs up. So there are things like that happening too. What else do I have a big picture of? I have a quick question about childcare that were this childcare for essential persons. How is that being paid for and what's the impact on schools? Right now, they're basically paying that out of their general fund. They're having, what I'm hearing is, they're initially, when this information came out, they were mandated to provide it. And one of Governor Scott's memos said that they will likely be reimbursed. It wasn't guaranteed, but they'll likely be reimbursed. People are concerned about that. It's cost them, in some places, it's cost them quite a bit of money. They're having trouble getting people to volunteer because, subsequently, it became a voluntary provision of childcare for essential persons. So they're having some place to have people, having trouble getting people to volunteer to do it. But they are incurring costs for it. In the CARES Act, there is money that will be allowed as I think, maybe confused conversations. I think maybe Mark said that we're not sure when that money is going to get here. One of the things we're not certain about with that money is, when it does get here, how far back can it be used? Federal money usually has some type of provision that it can only go back so far. Though I'm not sure that the money, whenever it does come, can be pushed back to, say, mid-March. I don't know. That's yet to be determined by the feds and they'll let us know. But if it can go back to mid-March, then that federal money should go a long way towards mitigating some of the things that are long. On the other hand, we were thinking of using it for fiscal 21. Right. And so, if that was to happen, then that would just mean that everybody is incurring deficit at this point, unless they are saving money. But my understanding is very few people, if anybody have really laid off anyone or cut back on their hours, most people are doing their best to keep the people fully employed. Again, there's language in the CARES Act that says that some of the money is to keep people employed for existing employees in employment. But they're, so far, they're making things work, but their costs are adding up. My other question. Who was that? That was Kate. It was Kate. You should have him too. Because I'm posting, I don't have a little hand. I don't know how to do the hand. Go ahead. Mark wanted to jump in too. Yeah. Just a concern going forward, giving that we have children who are not receiving education for a significant number of weeks. We're anticipating some requests for compensatory education. We have teachers that are being paid right now because they're actually teaching. Is there thought at this point of how this will affect the Ed Fund in terms of providing compensatory education for students, for the large number of students who there's the fear of regression and recruitment of learning? I think what it will be will be an additional hit to the Ed Fund because the school districts are required to do this by the federal folks. Everything that's come out of the federal guidance is said that they can provide special education services at a distance whenever possible as best they can. It's obviously more nuanced than that. But it does say that they will have to look at compensatory education afterwards and if it's required, they will provide. So it will be an additional cost quite likely. Mark? Yeah, I don't have the information in front of me and I can get it to you, but Stephanie Barrett let me know yesterday that she has identified $4.3 million of federal money that should be available for childcare. So there is some money. Okay, is that separate from the K-12 Money in the Cares Act? I don't know, that's why I don't have it. But while I was doing this presentation, I got an email from Stephanie yesterday just alerting me to the fact that she thought that there was some money available to deal with this. I'll email you. Okay, thanks. I guess in sort of this conversation highlights the fact that we've got a troubled fiscal 20 to get through and then we've got a really, really difficult fiscal 21. And this conversation really underscores that. So we're gonna have a few bumps in the road on just getting through 20. Other, let me see, nobody else there. Okay, Brad, did you have more that you wanted to? I was gonna, I just wanna take a quick look at, again, I sent you two handouts. One was just something I really was throwing together this afternoon, about five minutes before this started. And it was a lot of the comments of what business managers had said were some of their costs with their drive and what they were doing and so I think that like 43 of them, some of them repeats. It's just, I just kind of cut and paste it as what I did. They're not in any particular order, but if you wanna skim to the second one, I just wanna take a quick look at, I don't think you need to pull it up at the moment, but it was, I'm gonna stop looking at you guys and look at this for a moment. It was concerns that were raised by business managers when I was talking to them yesterday and the last evening and some of the comments were coming back to me. And if you don't mind, I'll just kind of read through those, there are eight of them and maybe you could pull it up, Avery, and throw that out there so they can see that too. So that might be more logical instead of me just strictly reading and then I'll paraphrase them. Do you have the maverick here? Yep, sorry. Which document was it? That would be the second one, the business manager concerns, please. Okay, I'll pull it up in just a moment. Thank you. Yeah, I didn't find it on the education site, but I found it on the ways to mean site. So if anybody's looking for it. Yeah, I'll talk about the first one because I kind of know what I thought in my head. Nope, next one, Avery, not that one, if you don't mind. The first one is talking about do districts have to continue paying tuition? And that's a good question. Yeah, thank you, that's the right one. And if everything continues, it will work out the way people expect because that's how they built their budgets. But in this example that I was given about Echo Valley and Payne Mountain, which you're in Washington, but used to be, what did they used to be called? Washington, I forgot, I forgot who everybody used to be called because all the change is from Act 46. But this is Washington and Orange and Northfield and Williamstown. One of them is probably, I sold O's $500,000 in tuition, another one is owed $250,000. If something happens, people don't have to pay tuition, that's gonna create cash flow problems for one. They're not getting 500,000 Echo Valley. So that was one of the questions. To my knowledge, nothing is changing in terms of paying tuition, but it was a concern. That was not the only concern. That was not the only person that had the concern. I just put that up there because he had numbers on that one. I thought it'd be interesting to see the numbers. There was question number two or concern number two was about if they're not going to be receiving, well, let me rephrase that, because we're not speaking clearly. Question number two is, people are using their buses now to deliver food. Those type costs are not eligible for reimbursement. They're not eligible transportation costs. That's currently written in statute and state board rule. So that means that in two years, when they're getting transportation aid, it'll be based on costs this year. They're not gonna have that money coming in. Plus they're incurring the cost right now. So one of the questions was if they're not gonna receive for reimbursement for transporting meals and they ask the legislature to allow aid on the transportation costs of delivering those meals currently. So I think that's a valid point for them and for some to think about because they are incurring these costs. They've got busing contracts quite often who does the folks doing the driving, they've got their own bus drivers, they've got other people helping out. So they are running into costs that currently are not allowed, will not be counted for eligible transportation costs. Just something to think about. Third, when I kind of mentioned municipal taxes, there's concern about whether they're gonna come in. Number four is special education reimbursement. It's unclear how this is all going to work. Right now we still have to follow the federal requirements and they haven't changed yet. There's some concern that some of the paraprofessionals who are one-on-one are not spending all their time doing special education right now. There's some concern that some of the staff are not spending full seven, eight hours or whatever it is per day on those things. So we're anticipating that we will get some guidance from the federal folks to answer this question. But again, it's concern for the business management right now. Child nutrition, they have an in-house program. So they're sending a lot more food out than before, but they're not having any money coming in. So that's an issue for them coming in. They are getting federal monies on the per meal basis, but it's not covering their expenses by any means. Number six, contract offenders. This is about transportation. Some people have contract, there's only one contractor around. If they terminate their contract because they're no longer busing kids and the bus and service releases their employees, will they be back next year when they do need that service again? Again, a concern for next year. Seven, oh, this is an interesting statement somebody came up with. Just to paraphrase it, what number seven is saying is that there's currently no requirement for a school district to carry a certain amount of reserves. And this is a situation where the situation people find themselves could have been somewhat mitigated had they had to carry reserves. So the question is, should that be looked at and should that length, should that be considered as a possible statutory change that a school district carries a specific percentage of their budget as a reserve on an annual basis? Brad, Peter's got a question. Thanks, I was actually, you got a call to me at the end because my question is back up to number two, concerns about transportation reimbursement. That's something that we could fix in statute. Yes. Okay. Thank you. If we had money, yes. This will be two years down the road. I'm sure it'll be fine then. Yeah. And then, so that was number seven. And so the last one, would you jump down to eight please, Avery? Thank you very much. Again, another tax revenue one coming in, people to bathe property taxes due to lack of income. It's just general question, what's gonna do the education fund and special education reimbursement? I have to, this is the one that keeps me up at night. Yes, it's starting to keep me up at night too. And I know it's keeping the business managers up at night. Yeah. I mean, we can look at all the tax rates we want, but if people can't pay it, they can't pay it. Right. So I just wanted you to be aware that these are some of the things that I had heard that were overriding concerns from people. So I just tried to put, they're a little more organized than the other one. Yeah. Thank you, Beth. It's actually really helpful that, especially for our committee, we don't hear from school administrators as much as the education committee does. And it's really useful to get some sense of what people are worried about. I think I don't see questions. So I think, Kate, are you gonna introduce the next two or three speakers? You have to unmute yourself. Let me mute. I have to get back to the page that has my face on it. Okay, thank you. We thought it would be helpful to bring in the Vermont School Board Association, as well as a couple of member, member boards who are currently do not have a budget. So perhaps, Sue, you could help to introduce the problem to us. And then we will hear from the two chairs of school boards. Beth, can everyone hear me? Yeah, yeah. Wonderful, thank you. I wanted to, first of all, introduce myself, Sue Siglowski, Vermont School Board Association, Executive Director, and wanted to let both of your committees know about some elections guidance that we received yesterday from the Secretary of State's office. I wasn't sure if you were already aware of it or not, but it does affect these school budget votes that either have not occurred yet or that were defeated on town meeting day. So the elections bulletin that we received, it was sent to municipal clerks, but also sent to the BSBA to be distributed. It was requested to be distributed widely to school districts and their attorneys, which we did. I can give you a summary of that bulletin. It states that the Secretary of State reached an agreement with the governor earlier this week to allow cancellation of municipal elections mandated to be held on or before a certain date. And for those who have elections coming up in April or May, the Secretary of State's guidance in this bulletin was to cancel those meetings if at all possible. Quoting here, it says whether they are votes from the floor or Australian ballot votes that require processing and counting, the processes required at this time to conduct the election put voters and election workers at too much risk from this highly contagious virus. On the topic of budget revotes, it states that there is no timeframe in election law in which a budget revote must be held for votes that are by charter, article of agreement or by law are required to be held on or before a certain date. It says that the governor has agreed under the authority granted to the Secretary of State in section three of H 681, which was just signed into law on Monday to allow those elections to be canceled as well. The stated objective of this bulletin was to see if votes can be conducted safely in late spring or early summer. And if that is not possible to provide time for the Secretary of State's office to devise and implement appropriate procedures to allow local elections to take place safely. So BSBA has communicated this guidance to school boards. You are going to hear today from two school board chairs about how their boards plan to proceed. I know that there's also been a question about what happens if a school district does not have an approved budget by July one. I'm not sure if your committees have discussed both discuss that yet, but just a little bit of information about that. 16 VSA section 566 authorizes the school district to borrow up to 87% of the previous year's budget. If a budget has not been approved by June 30th, and this statute is not intended to penalize, it's to ensure that a district has funds, access to funds in order to begin operations on July one. Once the electorate approves the budget, the district will have access to the full amount of the budget for that fiscal year. I do have 87% is borrowing from the local bank, correct? Yes. I do have some information on how many budgets we're talking about that haven't been voted on yet or haven't been approved yet. There are nine that were defeated on town meeting day and many of these nine had set dates to hold a second vote, but have since canceled those votes due to the pandemic. And then there are nine that have not voted yet at all. And many of those votes were scheduled for April and May, don't have a clear picture on what's happening with all of those. But as I said, they just received this elections bulletin yesterday from the secretary of state's office. That's the information I have prepared for the committee today, happy to answer any questions if there are any. Are you hearing from any of the districts with past budgets that are considering we votes? I have not heard that that is happening. Are districts aware of that? That's a good question. I don't know if they are aware of that. I think that they're just with the change in the temporary changes in the open meeting law, I think they're just starting now to have their remote meetings. That law was signed into effect on Monday. So they're starting to have remote meetings now and starting to deal with the new reality caused by the pandemic. So there are nine that do not hold their votes related to town meeting. The rest are town meeting votes. Is that correct? I believe there are a few that even hold their votes earlier than town meeting, but most of them are on town meeting day. Do you know what their reasoning is for holding them as late as they do? I don't know what the reasoning is, no. Well, we do have the chair of one of them here. So we can ask her. Are there questions for Sue, screwing back and forth between these windows? I don't see any questions. So shall we go on to Martha Heath who you have not held your vote yet? That's correct. I lost my video connection, so I am on the phone. So should I just go ahead with my testimony? That would be great. And welcome, Martha Heath, former chair of appropriations and member of this body. Thank you. We're all waving. We're waving to you, Martha. This is Janet. Yeah. Yeah, I wish I'm still on video. I got disconnected. So, well, my name is Martha Heath and I chair of the S6 Western School District Board. Thank you for inviting me to testify. As Kate said, our district is one that hasn't yet been focused on the school budget. Our vote was to have taken place on April 14th with our annual meeting and budget information session scheduled for April 13th. We probably haven't identified all of our concerns, but I thought I would go through the things that have come up so far. First, obviously, a challenge that's created by needing to vote after the onset of this pandemic given the financial challenges as the general unease factors are experiencing. We're concerned about the possible ramifications for our students that will be different from, perhaps, from those where budgets have already passed. A second issue is what are their provisions in law for accessing money if the school budget is not passed by July 1st? And this is obviously preferable to have one in place. As you've heard, the latest guidance from the Secretary of State's office is not to hold votes of any kind in April or May. This may make it difficult to have a budget in place by July 1st. Third, we're wondering if we should continue to use the yield projections that came out in December to project tax rates as seen with the proposed budget. It's not, well, when will the final yield for FY21 be set? It would seem unfair for us to have to use different numbers that notice that, so did on town meeting day. Yet, we don't know if the projections are realistic at this point and our taxpayers could question them. So we're curious as to whether the state will be giving us guidance. The fourth issue for us is that in our particular district the vast majority of our projected tax increase comes from a significant drop in CLA's for our communities. We're concerned about folks, how folks react to their houses being deemed to be much more valuable under our dramatically changed fiscal circumstances. I don't know that that's a problem that has any solution to it, but it's certainly out there for us. In Westford, for instance, the tax rate, projected tax rate increase is 8% for those who pay both certainly fixed on property, but our budget is only up 1.3%. My fifth issue is also one that I don't think the legislature can help with, but it's on our minds. Much of our school budget is made up of personnel class, risk notices are due on April 15th. It feels like it would be very detrimental to send risk notices at this time. Our teachers are doing extraordinary work and it would feel like a slap in the face, I think. I have three other issues that are probably more for Govots than these two committees, but I thought I would make you aware of them. Just as I said, as what's said here, the Secretary of State's office is recommending we not hold their annual meeting or budget so in April or May. When we do have a meeting, it cannot take place for 30 to 40 days from the date of the morning, we're wondering if the morning period should be shortened in the extraordinary time. Also, we're wondering if it would be possible to hold the annual meeting and the budget information session by some teleconferencing application. We think it's gonna be hard to gather people to meet those, that requirement. Most of the annual meeting business can be converted to Australian ballot items and we will likely do that, but school districts have to hold budget information sessions, so we're curious about that. And finally, the legislation that was just signed allows for conducting a vote entirely by an Australian ballot. That would be quite expensive, where can I ask of us if it would be possible to conduct a vote entirely by Australian ballot but still require voters to request ballots. The last thing that I wanna bring up is not specifically related to the fact that we haven't voted on the budget yet, but we wondered if you were starting to think about the impact of learning from home for the remainder of the school year and what that may require and additional resources to get some students ready for starting school again. Next fall, I assume that school can start here too. So I'll just close by saying thank you so much for helping us to consider the issues that are raised for our school district and districts like us and I'm happy to answer questions. Okay, if I could jump in on the question about what the state might do and when just to respond to that, we have no information, we have as little information as you do. We also have issues about how we're able to vote, when it is that the legislature is gonna be able to actually take a formal action and you probably know we're sort of working our way along through that, our committee hasn't talked about it and it's something that we should talk about about whether there are different rules that apply to districts that haven't adopted their budgets than the rules that were in place for those that did. But I think my sort of starting place is that you should assume the same rules are in place for you as they were for everybody else just because I'm not sure that we're gonna be in a position to change them. And if particularly with respect to the CLA, I'm not sure that it would be equitable to change them. So that's just off the top of my head, other committee members may have other thoughts about it and I'm happy to have them weigh in if they do but you raised really good questions and something that our committee will continue to look at. Thanks. Looking to see if there's anybody else at the moment. We'll probably wanna be keeping in touch with you, Martha, as we go forward. We are in, you may have noticed some rather unusual times. That's pretty, that's pretty. And I think that you're probably correct in saying using the December forecast probably is no longer accurate. So thank you. We also here, we also have Tim Smith who's chair of the Slate Valley Unified School District Board. Tim, welcome. Yes, thank you. Can everyone hear me okay? Yeah. Okay. Again, I was invited to testify today because unfortunately I am one of the nine districts who doesn't have a school budget currently because our vote did go down on town meeting day. I've got a set list of talking points here. Some of these have already been touched on by Brad and Mark. Feel free to interrupt me with questions during the way or you can hold your questions to the end but quickly just to introduce myself again, my name is Tim Smith. I'm a CPA. I work for a public accounting firm in Rutland, Vermont. My wife is a teacher. Fortunately for us, we're both able to work from home. We do have two boys ages 12 and nine. And like everyone else out there, we're adjusting to this new normal of both working from home and teaching from home. Before our district consolidated, I served on the Castleton School Board for six years. Two of those were as chair. And this is my second year as a board member on the unified Slate Valley Union School Board. Just so everyone is familiar where we're located in the state. We're in Western Rutland County along the Route 4 corridor. We're made up of six towns, Castleton, Hubbardton, Fairhaven, Westhaven, Benson and Orwell. We service 1,261 kids, 364 of which attend our district high school in Fairhaven. So again, as I mentioned previously, our budget went down on town meeting day. It was a close vote, 52% no, 48% yes. I think the problem that we experienced was our vote was held in conjunction with a very large construction bond for $59.5 million. So as you can expect, that was certainly a hot topic of debate in our community. And certainly there was some negative backlash from the bond vote that affected our school budget vote. Just to put things in context, the school bond vote went down 78 points to 22 points. So around 904 voters or 36% who voted no on the bond did support our school budget. So if you had asked me two or three weeks ago, if I felt confident that a re-vote would be successful, I would certainly say yes, we weren't that far off to begin with, but now given the development and the situation at hand, no one can be sure what the pulse of the electorate is. Everyone's really concerned about just putting food on the table and keeping themselves and their families safe in these times. So I've got a few concerns I wanted to address today. Some of them are just general COVID related concerns and some of them are concerns related to the logistics of our budget re-vote. So why don't I start with the budget re-vote concerns? And again, some of those have already been spoken to. I do realize that there was some new legislation signed into law here just in the past couple of days. So some of our concerns might be alleviated, but nonetheless, our concerns would be, is it reasonable for us to expect to be able to have an in-person votes along with the required public meeting in advance of the end of June? I think we'd all agree, probably not likely at this point. And if that's the case, what's required for us to have a mail-in ballot? Now I know according to the legislation here that the governor now has the power to designate the Secretary of State to allow that to happen. And I guess we would just wanna know when they might choose to make that designation to allow that to happen, because certainly there's a lot of logistics that would have to take place between now and then to put that mail-in process in place, both for representatives of the school district and the town clerks in our various towns. So we wanna get a budget passed. That's priority number one. I think we're in pretty good shape cashflow-wise through the rest of this year, but certainly if we had a budget for 21, that would take a lot of the stress off the table for myself and certainly administration and business managers. So if we could have guidance from the governor or Secretary of State sooner or later, whether or not we're gonna do a mail-in ballot, so we can put that in place, because it certainly is still our intent to pass a school budget by that June 30 deadline. A couple of concerns with the revote, and this was spoken to previously by Brad, I believe, or actually it was Mark, but per terms of our master agreement with the NEA, we would have to give reduction and forced notices to our employees by March 15th. That deadline has already passed. So certainly if we are in a position where we have to make drastic cuts to our budget, one of the tools that we would have, reducing staff, we don't have that tool anymore. We don't wanna reduce staff for obvious reasons. I don't really think we have the room to reduce staff any further than we already have over the past several years. But in any event, that's not a tool. Someone had spoken previously that 80% of our costs are personnel and healthcare. So if we're forced to make big cuts and we can't make cuts to personnel, where else do we have to cut? Really nowhere. It would be dramatic cuts that would have a significant impact on student programming and the quality of our education. Pause, any questions? Any questions? All right, hearing none then, just some general COVID related concerns. Again, number one cash flow. I think we're gonna be okay, but after speaking with our business manager this morning, Cheryl Scarzello, certainly we are expecting that last payment from the Education Fund sometime this spring. And I believe our share for that is gonna be around $2.6 million. That's a concern. And then transportation reimbursement, this has been talked about previously. We were expecting $159,000 transportation reimbursement this spring, but of course, there are no activities. There's no people of students. We're using our buses right now to deliver meals, but someone had mentioned previously that those are not gonna be reimbursable expenses. So that would be a concern at least, the transportation piece of our reimbursement. Another concern is our bus contractor. Brad, you must have spoken to Cheryl recently, but the viability of any business right now is in question and with our particular bus contractor, there's not a lot of competition. They're one of the few providers in our area at least, maybe the state. If their future viability is in question, then we could be in a world of hurt, not only the remainder of this year, but certainly next year with student transportation. Brad mentioned healthcare transition costs. In particular, in Rotland County, obviously we've heard GE aviation is laying off 60% of its workforce at the Rotland plants. Per Vermont Digger, that's approximately 1,400 jobs total before the reduction, but they're certainly a huge employer for our area in Rotland County. And this idea of healthcare transition, people who previously were under the coverage of a spouse, that employer is now laid them off, are they gonna transition themselves, their family members to the healthcare policy of the school, which is certainly a very generous policy, as you know, that could have big costs for our school districts. Something that hasn't been touched on, so I'll take credit for this one, is the social services. As you guys are all aware, schools continue to provide an increasing menu of social services, traditionally provided by other government agencies, and undoubtedly this situation at hand will require additional monies from a school budget for guidance counselors, therapists, behavior interventionists, and school-based clinicians. So social services, mental health, that's a big thing right now, and that's one of the things that I'm struggling with as a parent personally is, you know, it's one thing to manage the schoolwork and the school load. I think we're doing okay with that, but the untold story is really how this is gonna affect our kids' minds, how are they doing on the inside, not being able to connect with their friends and doing all the things that they're used to doing. So I've kind of impressed upon our superintendent that I hope that we prioritize the mental health aspect of things more so than the academic progress. These are extraordinary times. We're not gonna be able to check off every academic progress checkbox. I think we need to focus on the mental health of our kids. And with that said, I don't really have anything else for you. I appreciate the time and the opportunity to testify. We're all in this together and I will take any questions anyone might have. Questions? So I'm hearing a number of issues, some simple, some quite complex. Simpler things are reduction in force, notice. Transportation, fund reimbursing, voting challenges. Then there's predicting tax rates. What do you do if you don't have a budget and what are we gonna be doing going forward? We're gonna be needing your voice at the table as we look to solve, come up with solutions to some of the problems that we're facing. Yeah, I guess there's a lot of uncertainty, but for me, it's the mail-in ballot. I mean, one thing at a time, control what you can control. If we knew right now that we could not vote in person and instead we were gonna vote by mail, we could certainly put those mechanisms in place to start that process. And I know the governor has the ability to do that, so I would just like some clarity on that. That would be something that we could control right away. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Janet, I think, I don't want to go to you. What you're handing it to me is Jeff Fanon. I think it's next on my list. Jeff, are you here? I am. Hello, hello. Oh, there you are. Okay. Hi. I'm gonna start where Tim just finished off. Let me just jump in just so people know what we're doing. We're gonna listen to Jeff and then we have Karen Horn and that's it for the witnesses, for people having trouble pulling it up. That's what we're, that's the rest of our afternoon. So, Jeff, go ahead. Sorry to interrupt. No worries. For the record, Jeff Fanon, Vermont. Thank you for having me here today and listening to me and happy to answer any questions at the end. I'm going to start where Tim, that's just finished off, which is I think a great segue, which is teachers, parents, administrators, everybody's doing their level best to educate students. And that's right now. And it's not education as we might typically know it in a brick and mortar school. And so I think we need to lower our expectations as to what we can actually accomplish and look ahead to what we will need to do come next member, hopefully, when we return to a normal school setting inside the school. So we will find out that kids today are having a whole lot of host of needs that aren't being met and they will come out in weird and different and strange ways that we just can't predict right now when they return to school in September. So I think looking ahead, that is going to be a big issue. And I think Tim is absolutely right. This is something pretty unique that we've got to figure out and we'll have to figure out how to deal with come next school year. So I appreciate him raising that issue. It's something I think we need to be mindful of, no doubt. So, you know, we also, you also heard from Sue earlier talk about the school voting and Tim mentioned as well. And I think that's really important. And so I won't touch on it, but just know that we're also aware that getting schools to approve their budgets is important for them and for us and for the entire state. So we appreciate that work that the secretary has issued on in late May or June before we should do a voting and whether we do that by mail or not a good idea to get clarified. Jeff, Jeff, you've got callous broadband and you're disappearing, at least for me a little bit. Maybe if you close your video, we can hear you more clearly. Actually, I think it might be you, Janet. Good, it makes you feel better. It's still callous broadband. Yeah. All right. So... Oh, maybe not. Yeah, I'm sorry. Last time it was Jeff. Quickly, quickly, this is a real example. So I've got both to promote. Okay, it's definitely Jeff. I think he'll come back on. Yeah, better. Well, see, I mean, this is what parents are dealing with all the time and their kids in schools. Am I lost again? No, Sorsha just sent me a note that I was right. As usual, Janet. So it sounds like two budgets of finances are pretty well in hand and I'll try to speed up here a little bit. And I think we're looking ahead now to next year. And so we don't think it's advisable. We don't think it's necessary right now to be looking to make major changes to the education funding system. I know there's always a groundswell for that. But we think that given all the changes that we're encountering today, overlaid with, you've got the weighting study that was just barely being discussed in the state house a couple of weeks ago before you closed, as well as Act 173, which is the special education block grant funding law. We think there's a lot of change going on thrown in the mix, the pandemic and the results thereof. We think that we need to just slow down, take a deep breath, get our sea legs about us and the whole educational system as a whole and not look to make dramatic changes in this time of dramatic change for other reasons. So there's a lot going on. And I think that it would be critical, we think it's critical to get clarity sooner rather than later as it relates to the yield. And if you could set that before July one, I think that would be helpful. I know there's a lot of talk about what a short budget and then coming back in the fall or something, that makes, if you're gonna get into education funding then in the fall, that's changing funding strings and levers while schools are operating in that fiscal year. And I think that's really not a good thing to do. So we would recommend hope that you would make the yield known well before July one and certainly no later than because that's the start of the fiscal year for schools. Jeff, I've got a couple of questions, Peter and Caleb. Yep. Jeff, seeing as how things change day to day right now, if something as radical as the governor or the secretary of education said, something we're just gonna end school at the end of April and we'll start August 1st and have a longer school year next year in order to make up for lost education this year, how much of an obstacle will collective bargaining agreements be with something like that? Hey, I don't know. That seems highly speculative, but certainly that would have an enormous effect on people's lives and not much, the devil is in the details there, right? So in beginning when number one and start and then ending as well. So we don't know if you're gonna start at a normal time and end of August, let's say September one after Labor Day, go to that argument. And then finishing, I don't know when, so when your hypothetical is, so I'm speculating, but is there a problem? Sure, yeah, yes. Jeff, you have to turn off the video again, I'm sorry. That's fine. We're losing it again. Yeah. So Peter, Representative Collin, I think that collective bargaining has certainly will be an issue, but we've gotten through a lot of thick problems before and I think we can get through that one. I can't look at it. Yeah, Masslin. Kayla, where are you? Let me unmute. There we go. So Jeff, I'm just curious, have you heard at all from your membership, whether there, because of course, school staff have been instructed to report to work. I know they're doing a ton of very valuable work right now. At the same time, we're kind of hearing that since there is sort of broad allowance for claiming unemployment insurance because of needing to isolate in this time, we're seeing that in some private industry that individuals are electing to basically get unemployment insurance as an option at this time to isolate. And I'm just wondering if you're seeing any signs of that or anything like that within your membership where folks are saying, you know what I am going to isolate during this time and in fact essentially claim unemployment insurance. I don't know, maybe that's not allowable in this situation, but I'm just kind of curious if that's a trend at all that's developing. I have not heard of that at all being a trend. In fact, I would hear, or some of elder, I've heard the opposite. I've heard people are working day and night trying to figure out how to go online, how to teach kids, how to respond to parents. So I'm hearing from my... I lost you, Jeff. You still there? I think I got the... I think I got you there, I appreciate that. Thank you. Jim Maslin has a question. Thanks, Jeff. Just a comment, I don't expect an answer right away with regards to remote learning, online learning, I guess you people are as well aware as much as anybody of how different people, different children in particular have different learning styles. Some are kinesthetic, some are visual, some are auditory. And I would just urge you all as you work your way through this to see what you could do to address different learning styles and children. So some who maybe used to do well in a classroom are not gonna do well at home. And I don't expect an easy answer. Just thank you for looking into it. So could not agree more. And I would also add too, that teachers likewise teach differently online versus in class. And so we're experiencing some folks who are quite dynamic online and others who are great teachers in the classroom who are struggling to get online and put their material online. So it's both. And students learn differently and we're gonna have to make up for that come next year. And Jeff, you have been participating with the agency on the continuity of education and learning, correct? Mostly yes, but it could be better and meeting with the Secretary of Education. I'll just say here, we have real concerns with the continuity of learning plan template that was issued yesterday that it lacks any creation that the parent voice and student voice in the... I think Calus has just dropped off, sorry. And this is certainly what we're hearing in our committee and in terms of the challenges for remote learning. Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't know if it's... It seems to get worse in the afternoon. We'll have to schedule you next time in the morning, man. I don't know. Jeff, thank you very much. We'll stay... Thank you and I'm sorry about the connection. That's not your fault. So are we. Yeah. So Avery tells me that she's unlocking the meeting just enough to get Karen Horne on and she's our last witness. So let me know, Avery, when she's here. We can begin. All right, Karen, go ahead. Yeah, so this is Karen Horne with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and thank you for having me to your committee. I did send in a memo to both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Education Committee this morning. And I think that you mostly wanted to talk about the Homestead Filing deadline and potential for delaying some of those deadlines. Yes, that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. So we've just had a similar conversation actually in the Senate Finance Committee not too long ago. The Homestead Filing deadline being delayed till July 15th is going to create a bit of an issue and the rest of the calendar, which I'm sure you've already been discussing. We did talk in the Finance Committee about the potential for towns delaying their tax due dates if it doesn't cause a cash flow problem for them. I think we are not thinking that separating the municipal tax bill and the education tax bill is a good idea this year because of everything else that's going on and people won't be expecting it. And one of the other proposals that was floated by Carol Dawes and the tax department is that we've perceived as we would have ordinarily with Homestead filings and just understand that as a lot of them would be coming in late, there would be a lot of corrections, corrected tax bills to be sent out during the course of the next few months. So those are all kinds of things that we have been talking about. I don't know and I should probably have a better idea, but I don't know if having a variety of some towns going with their regular July deadlines and other towns delaying them if that creates problems for the tax department. I think it doesn't, but I'm not really sure about that. So it is a continuing issue that we're trying to work on. We did have a conversation with the state treasurer in the bond bank the other day. And for those payments that would be coming to towns this year, there is some thinking that there might be funds to cover short payments for those municipalities before July one. So we're going to revisit that issue, I believe next week, Monday, but there might be some opportunity as the state did during Tropical Storm Irene to cover at least that portion in the short term. I don't know if people have questions. Or that's a little bit disjointed. No, it's fine, Karen. We're sort of keeping track of questions and we've tended to just interrupt if we see them. So I don't think there's any right this minute. Okay. If people have a chance to read the memo that I sent off this morning, it's more organized than I am right now. So that's sort of where we are at this very moment. We also just, so you are aware, we had a request from the Appropriations Committee this morning to get them some information about what municipal needs are right now as a result of the COVID crisis and the stay home, stay safe executive orders. So I'm putting that together this afternoon for that committee and we can send it to you as well if you're interested. That'd be great. Thank you. I know our committee heard from you. I can't remember what day it was, not very long ago. So some of this is repeat for us, but let me see if anyone has any questions that they wanna ask. Kate does. Go ahead. I don't have a hand, Raven, I'm sorry. Karen, thank you. Municipal taxes and education taxes obviously are quite different, one being more state focused, one being more local focused. And at the moment looking at the various differences in dates and timing and when taxes are collected and seeing that there's some districts have only given half of their contribution. Is there comfort going forward at some point, not today, but to rethink that? I mean, as we know, a crisis often points out weaknesses in the system. And I'm personally viewing this as a weakness in the system and wondering your thoughts on that matter. In terms of dividing the municipal tax and the education tax billing, is that what you're thinking about? And some consistency in dates and collection. Yes, separating it, there are a variety of ways you can separate it, but really looking at a consistent dates. Oh, so municipalities set their tax due dates either at town meeting or in their charters. A lot of them are set in their charters and you're right, they are sort of all over the map. A number of towns have installments for tax states. And the reason that you have installments really is to make it easier for people to pay throughout the year. So I don't know that we would think it's a good idea to have the same tax due dates for property taxes across the board. I don't know that it would actually have solved this problem because it sort of depends when in the year your pandemic falls. But so that's an interesting concept. I mean, we do have a lot of concerns right now about the penalties that are in law if a town ends up making a late education property tax payment. They're pretty severe. And I think they were put in place with the thinking that towns were willfully refusing to do that, to make those payments. That's entirely not the case right now. Education property taxes are usually in most smaller towns by far, the majority of the property taxes that you pay and towns would not be able to make the education fund whole. So that's a real concern for us right now. And yet this was all the current way if they are collected is pretty much pre-X 60, 68 when everything was pretty municipally defined. Well, you know, we have discussed over the years separating the education and municipal tax billing and having the municipal municipalities bill for municipal taxes and the state bill for education taxes. There's all kinds of issues with that. And it's not a change that I think we could tackle right now at all, but it's a conversation worth having again once we get on the other side of this. Yeah, thanks Karen and Kate, both of you. I agree with that. I don't think there's any way in the world we could do it now. And other things that the tax department couldn't manage it and it's too much change. And I don't think that's what Kate was suggesting, but I think she was suggesting that it was a conversation that maybe we could have when we get to the other side of this. It sounds like that's where... We're happy to do that. We are happy to do that. Good. I don't see other questions at the moment. Did you have anything else you wanted to add, Karen? No, not right now. Thank you. Great. All right, thank you. So I think we're ready to close our meeting. Just see if there are any last questions or last words. Just for my own committee, I don't know yet what the schedule is for next week. If you would, in your busy schedules, running out and doing all the kinds of things you get to do, please hold 10 o'clock. And that's what I'll aim for, but I don't know what it's gonna be next week. I need to reassess. And apparently, I think the speaker is gonna assign times to us again because of the difficulty with security on the system. So any last words, Kate? No, I thank you. I really appreciated being able to do this jointly and hear some of the questions from your committee, having a perspective a little different from what our committee brings. Trying to solve the same problem. It was great. I appreciate it and appreciate everybody's forbearance. And we will keep working at this. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. So who signs off? Everybody's waving, but I don't know who terminates, somebody does. Every terminates, I suppose. All right. All right.