 Well, let's start in so maybe just quickly run around the room and say who you are and what if you're the business you can say that but we don't have a lot of time so follow my lead. Paul Castello, Council on Rural Development. Kevin. And please dagger two rivers. Sorry. Just say please meet yourself if you haven't already. That'll be great. Thank you. Michelle. Michelle Cooper Smith Vermont Employee Ownership Center. Marty. Marty Manahan, City of St. Albans. Rebecca. Rebecca Bailey vital community is also from the town of Stratford. Perry. Mary Richter Randolph Economic Development Council chair. Thank you. Did I say Perry already? No, Perry Armstrong Select Board. Or Winderstein tent company, Louise Martin Harrison of Go House Chamber of Commerce and Bradford business association. Good to see you. Casey, Casey, Bob Haines. Josh, Josh Drom, Tyler Randolph, Chris, Chris Anders with Senator Patrick Leahy's office, Kelsey, Kelsey with the Wells River Wellness Hall and the Newberry United Group. I'm also running for the House of Representatives. Great, Gary Randolph, Regent, re-energized leader for energy. Thanks, Mary. Oh, Mary, Mary Richter, Randolph Economic Development Council. I thought you said Mary before and you said Perry. Sorry about that. It's okay. Monique. This is based on Maine and Center for Women and Enterprise. Bob, you're muted, Bob. Bob, the green guy, and my name's Bob Farnham. Hey, Curtis. This is Ursula Vermontek. Justin Will. Yeah, Justin Will, small business owner in Berkshire. Callie. Callie Hastings, Fat Toad Farm and president of the Vermont Specialty Food Association. John. East Randolph, White River Investment Club. And then someone named Huff. Yes, Bill Huff from Thetford, I'm a Senate candidate. Oh, great. Thank you for being with us. And then Gary. Yeah, thanks, Paul. Gary Holloway with Department of Housing and Community Development. Thank you, Gary, for being here with us. So we want to go through a process where we first have some sharing of some best practices from outside the county, and then we think about what we want for supporting Orange County businesses and buying local. What are the pieces of work that could happen? What's holding the county back around buying local? What are the barriers to economic activity right now? Are there promising practices, strategies, or programs that you're doing now that are starting to emerge in Orange County that could have lessons for other parts of Vermont? And then what other ideas do you have for action that's needed locally, regionally, or at the state level? And here's where we can gather some of your thinking to contribute in addition to what we hear elsewhere to bearing to the governor. So I want to start by introducing Marty Maneheim, who's from St. Albans and has been leading some of the downtown work in the creative effort that they're doing over in Franklin County. So Marty, you take maybe five to eight minutes to overview some of the neat things that are going on over there. Sure. Thank you, Paul, and thank you for inviting me tonight. We have a very strong organization, a downtown organization called SAF, St. Albans for the Future, that's made up of business people within downtown St. Albans City and residents at large. And we've been doing a number of things. It's modeled after the Main Street program, and we have the four core organizations stemming from that. But we have done a lot of things leading up to this with community involvement, such as summer concert series, classic car shows, sidewalk sales, supporting them. We support them through holiday advertising as the downtown as a whole. And then throughout the COVID time period here, we've obviously offered them the support that they need to get online and enlist the programs and whatnot. One of the things that we are looking for was trying to come up with a program that supported our downtown businesses. We've looked at a number of different programs over the years that we had a program probably 10 years ago where they would get a gift certificate from a local bank and they could cash it in and then the business would bring it back to the bank. And it was very cumbersome and it was just a lot of work, a lot of paperwork and everything. And we actually stole an idea from, I think, Newport, which was downtown dollars. And we ended up supporting it ourselves through the SAP program. We contracted with a local business here in town Main Street Graphics and they produced a credit card with a $10 value and you can use any kind of, any numerical value on it whatsoever. We chose $10 and it has to be used as a whole entity when they go to cash it in at the store. They're not going to get changed back on it. And they, as part of the program, the business can cash it in with SAP the first Monday and the third Monday of the month. We will cut them a check back out of our account. And so the way it works is if someone wants to support downtown businesses that are potentially closed now or limited hours, they can come and buy this card from the SAP program and then go use it at one of the businesses. We sold 200 cards initially to the Fellows Free Academy Tech Center and they distributed, gave each graduate a card as part of a package that they put together for the graduating seniors. We sold 100 to Northwest Medical Center that handed them out to their employees as just kind of a goodwill gesture and we've had other businesses come forward since then that have purchased 25 and 30 and again handing them out to their employees. So it's a real simple program. We staff buys the cards and then we sell them back to the individual that wants to buy them for the face value for $10. They cash them in at the business. The business then turns them back into us and rewrite them at check for the cards that they hand in. So it seemed to work well. We've had a lot of positive response on it and I think it also is something that the businesses can do to show appreciation for their employees while at the same time knowing that they're supporting their downtown businesses. That's terrific. Thank you so much for sharing that story. It's a starting point for the conversation. The governor's action team is going to be sponsoring a major phone zoom call on the 28th at 9 o'clock in the morning, no excuse me, at 12 noon on buy local models that are being done statewide and I'm sure that St. Albans will be in that mix but really good work that you folks are doing. So now we want to turn to Orange County and in all of its diversity and it's great to see folks who we know are leading efforts in different parts of the of the Orange County community and it seems like lots of parts of the of the county are represented so great to have you all on. We thought it would be really useful to start with you know when you look at economic recovery and you look at buy local and you look at the support for businesses what are some of the things that you'd like to see as signs of recovery what are some of the things that you'd hope for over the next six months or so and if you want to raise your hand in the participant box that would be really handy or you can raise right on the screen and I'll I'll keep an eye out for you. Who'd like to go first? Like Barry has his hand raised? Go ahead Barry. Okay so I'm frustrated. You know there was no money put to the down town villages. I personally put up a bunch of tents for the restaurants in town helped organize some parklets and you know I've done that all at cost not even I'm not even getting paid for this okay I just gave them to the businesses so we can get them open all right and so far that's been successful. I'm really disappointed and if you want to you know relay that to the legislature I'm really disappointed they didn't fund some programs for this I know Gary was you know we talked there was a discussion about putting some money into the downtowns and it didn't happen and on top of that I'm frustrated with you know the fact that I'm getting phone calls from organizations that you know don't feel that they should pay my fair share they should pay a fair rate to what I want for a tent rental so you know an example a one-day tent rental for a 20 by 20 is 500 bucks and you know we thought a fair rate would be 1500 for the month and I'm still getting pushed back in resistance to that so you know I don't know where the money's coming from to help these things but you know I'm not going to take on and do stuff in other communities I'm doing it for Randolph but that's all I can do and you know buying local isn't helping me because for all of you who don't understand what's going on in the events industry but we're totally devastated my company's lost $1.2 million in sales this year and I'm going to get a check from the state of Vermont for $50,000 my counterparts in New Hampshire one of them was exactly the same size as me got a check for $240,000 so apparently New Hampshire values their businesses more than Vermont does and I'm pretty frustrated about that so that's all I want to say I can't help you with what else to do to recover in the area but for me it's a devastating situation I'm now jumping through hoops to try to find a way to park debt and get myself into some SBA program yesterday I was rejected by one bank and maybe I'm going to be successful in getting another bank but right now I don't have much of a path forward past September so that's my situation can't help you with the rest of the county but you know if we're concerned about helping businesses you know maybe you all hadn't heard the conversation but you know there's seven to eight tent companies in the Vermont are responsible for $400 million with the economic activity here and if you lose any of us that number goes down the tubes I apparently that conversation fell on deaf ears in the legislature yeah so I'm done that's my rant thanks thanks thanks we really appreciate it let's hope that conversation isn't done I think we're we're not done with recovery and there could be further resources and the legislature will come back the governor is listening and we will we'll keep we'll keep plugging um do other folks have thoughts about what you're looking towards as you look towards recovery what are some of your hopes and we'll certainly have room for other folks to share the challenges that their businesses are facing but what are we aiming at when we look at recovery it's like bob has his bob the green guy yeah bob go ahead hi Paul thanks for doing this you won't be surprised that my interest is in the area of connectivity and even some of the downtown areas we don't have cell service like in Bradford for me I have no cell service in my apartment and I am able to get Wi-Fi and decent connectivity speeds through my internet service provider there but yeah I would make a big difference for all businesses to figure out how to be hybrid businesses both in real life businesses as well as being connected online so it's you know we're not going back to just the way it used to be yeah that that seems to be a strong theme that we can't go back to what the challenges we had before loss of youth economic gold rooms we have to be working towards a better economy for the future and that from your point of view is we're going to require cell service both cell service and and adequate cable service for for a route for Wi-Fi so ethernet or however you want to hook up but it's really critical that people have connectivity to the internet both for education for kids and education for adults so that's thank you thank you bob other other ideas on what recovery looks like or where we should be heading Mary why don't you tell them about the Randolph in motion program so what we did is on the economic development council in Randolph is in the beginning of course we were in reactionary mode like everybody else and as the governor was opening up the state a small group of us took the initiative of letting folks know that it's safe to come downtown and we created a small core team and we focused on restaurants events recreation and retail and put together a 16 page booklet but because we had no funding from the state our first release was on social media so we used Facebook front porch forum the town website and other places so we've launched that back on July 8th and we've got a tremendous response from people and it gave information links to both the business's Facebook and their own personal website locations so that they could follow like for instance restaurants menus that changed weekly so they could follow the change of the restaurants or the outdoor seating or takeout and so forth so that seems to have worked pretty nicely and then we are in the process of printing that booklet however the funds are coming from a local residence and business it's not coming anywhere else so this was our first release it's a pilot we want to be able to do it seasonally but the concern is resources funding and so forth and then in addition to that the guys in town Terry and Josh Jerome walked around town to look at the different restaurants and worked with the town crew to put up parklets so that at least a couple of our restaurants can expand with outdoor seating and social distancing to expand that indoor capacity limit and then as Perry excuse me Perry said earlier he's put up tents throughout the town so that has helped also and we could see folks coming in venturing out of their homes a little bit but again the concern is you know where are we going to get funding and the resources to continue this initiative promoting the town itself and then expanding it also to services and agricultural sector which will be coming up shortly boy what a lot of good work Mary thank you so much for sharing that thank you your comment on that which is while we've done you know physically an important thing but it's kind of minimal but it's not minimal to the business owners in town so they have to be getting the message if there are a lot of people trying to really help them out we've only started at this point but I know in talking to some of the business owners they really appreciate it yeah it's a it's still tough a tough role but uh that's great that you're doing it Kelsey could you uh you want to share a story of something good or a point of perspective on the future so we did something in Newberry similar to what Mary was just describing and we just printed a business booklet it was actually just released this week um so our COVID-19 task force Newberry United came together and contacted dozens of local businesses I want to say we have over 120 just in the town of Newberry including the little you know sole proprietors who you know the ladies who make yarn and their barns and um to our larger brick and mortar businesses um and we created this booklet and then we're working on putting it online so we can also then move forward and having maybe a Newberry business association so it's our way we've been promoting it on listservs and social media um letting everyone know about all these businesses and how we can have them you know how we can support them and we're lucky enough we have a local print shop so all of the printing was done right here in the town of Newberry um for that business and it's also including resources for our local food banks and some of the other regional food and security places that they people can access those sorts of things as well as we have a phone number that people can call if they need rides or volunteer services um picking up groceries all those sorts of things so that's what we've spent the last little while doing so again similar to Mary but we were able to get a grant funding to get those printed um and then we had a few private donors that helped with some of the rest um here in Newberry we have a lot of connectivity issues one out of every three households does not have internet um which we discovered when the schools were forced to shut down so that's one of those things we're working on so we can support those local businesses because myself as a business owner who's a sole proprietor who's not eligible for most of the government funding both um at the state level or the federal level having something like this has made a big impact and I work with a lot of sole proprietors who were not eligible for ending any funding other than more loans yeah uh there was money for sole proprietors that didn't make it to the legislature in the end of in in rather confusing circumstances so that's very unfortunate and hopefully they'll they'll be some more support um thank you very much Kelsey and who would have thought before you did that search that there were actually 120 businesses in the town of Newberry how many people live in Newberry? A little over 2,000 about that I'm looking at Marvin he might know better than me but I brought about 2,000 give or take yeah terrific thank you Callie Hastings hi um I just wanted to share well two things one is um I keep thinking about winter and how many of these things stop being useful in winter mainly the outdoor space and the restaurants and stuff and what's that going to look like when we have to go into um into that mode um but I guess just in terms of the business perspective and supporting local businesses um I I just want to share that for us like we've seen an increase from local farm stores with our products selling which has been great but by no means has helped us get through this period um overall we saw like a 50 drop in stores purchasing from us selling direct to stores across the country that has dropped 50 percent and 25 percent drop with our distributors um the only thing that has gotten us through is online sales and Amazon um so I think a lot of and I've spoken with a lot of companies that experienced a similar thing that trend has been on the uptick while the other trend has been going down um I'm not sure if that will continue or not but that has like literally saved us so um I don't know if there's other ways to support local businesses I mean it's awesome to shop locally of course that's the best but um a lot of us can't survive off of just those dollars so accessing people across the US who are at home and who are shifting to a lot more purchasing from their computer um it takes a lot to get a website running and to get set up on Amazon um and not all businesses have that know-how um and could probably use a fair amount of support to get going on that especially if these trends are going to continue in that direction and kenland you're from fat toad farm in witchtown brookfield brookfield yeah great thank you for sharing that sure um other perspectives from businesses or from people in different towns around the state that are around the county that are doing some creative work or trying to step up and look at what's next for recovery in their town or region katie or kasey hi um so I thought I'd just share something that we're doing at CAD models and prototypes in east randolph vermont um uh we were part of a larger group with btc discussing um ideas about what could be done to help prevent the shutdown or the potential shutdown of btc and randolph which fortunately has been taken off the table as far as I understand at this point um but what what we have decided to do is to start a Kickstarter so we created a product or reward um and all of the profits will be going to the vtc advanced manufacturing program in randolph so I just thought I'd share that um we haven't got to the point to launching yet but that will be um september first what's the name of your business again kasey add models and prototypes and what is what do you make yeah so we make prototypes um a lot of our clients range from uh big companies like apple tesla medtronic um test uh sorry something on interjust um but so it's it's anything from electronic devices medical devices automotive devices to just anyone who has a design or an idea and and wants to create the prototype wants us to cool thanks for letting me share thank you um bob hains yeah let me jump in kasey is from sunbridge and brian kippen uh and she have a thriving um technology business in california and they are purchasing the former greenwoods tractor supply company 114 so a lot of people have spent some time with them but they're ready to really uh do some great stuff and hopefully make this their home base in california their annex but um it's kad models and prototypes and they make everything from little tiny widgets to big stuff so they will employ some uh bright people um with very good salaries and um and great um viability and survivability so it's going to be terrific for uh east randolph village and uh it's going to be great for vtc and it's going to be great for the state so very cool there's a whole there's a whole cluster of prototyping engineering firms around that that randolph corridor there kasey did you want to add something uh yeah i was just going to add that um just to share uh our first two hires our vtc students well one's currently finishing up his last year and then one is the recent grad so um we're excited to already start providing jobs to um now three people that are from randolph or either vtc or randolph great so we're going to go to marvin harrison and then curtis and we're really looking to hear your ideas on on creative recovery strategies that are working in orange county and later we'll get to what else needs to needs to happen what else do people need that so we can be cataloging some of that but marvin go ahead gary you have to wait it's marvin's turn i'm sorry paul but louise has been waiting a while too paul sorry we at the bradford merchants association uh paul um talked about doing a directory like newberry was doing and we decided that first we would do a a weekly newsletter so a couple of the people in the association have taken it upon themselves to you know solicit a lot of uh business information you know what's going on with the business like randolph was mentioning also passing along events that are going on in town uh things that are going on with the select board the organizations the the committees and things in town so if anybody wants to have a look at that just go look at the facebook page right monique there's a facebook page bradford business association that um that you could see what what they're putting out every week and it's a pretty good piece of work terrific um curtis yeah nothing really i i didn't i just wanted to say thanks to kc and k ad for their support so i put that in the comments i didn't want to take up any time with the discussion at this point okay others who'd like to share a story about the way that their town is responding or some of the work that they've been doing to try to advance recovery or a story from their business that they'd like to share so that we get more of a picture of what's going on in orange county all okay kevin yeah um so i'm just writing so i'm trying to stand the site uh but given uh kelsey's comment earlier i wanted everybody to know that sole proprietors are now eligible for grants and they should go to the two rivers website trorc.org featured project you'll find out everything you need and i noticed that you have to go this week yeah gary actually posted something in the chat about the limited funds that are available um and that people should be paying attention to those i'll post i'll go ahead and post that two rivers website in a minute here thank you okay um other thoughts on current work that you all are doing and i know that there's more happening in in bradford i know there's work happening in bethol and other um communities on the border of orange county but um well represented by rebecca stone um other folks want to share stories of what they're doing money previously yeah i think along the same lines is what marvin was mentioning um with um just trying to boost like newsletters and things uh our town's facebook we had started a facebook group just before covid um but definitely kind of advantage of trying to get everybody talking um together and supporting each other to really um boost like all of the businesses there's a few of us that we follow like all the businesses in town so as soon as we see a post we should share it on that group um and it's been great because even businesses that are well i know lost their um their jobs and people have started businesses out of their home like doing home cooked meals that are now doing curbside um even they've um been selling out every weekend just from sharing on facebook um so it's yeah i guess taking advantage of that if you're not how many people follow that facebook it's not very many it's like 250 but like i shared a post a couple weeks ago about hannah furdening at 20 000 views and 300 yeah so i don't know i don't know but it's getting out there i guess wow that's that's awesome me um rebecca stone hi everybody i'm the interloper from windsor county i actually live in bethle um but i am a consultant and working one on one of the current better connections projects over in fairly so i thought i'd share just an orange county tidbit from there um i think fairly is actually orange and anyway they are in the midst of planning and executing a really quick fast what we're calling a community makeover which is partly related to the original better connections project for those of you don't know that program it's a v-trans and accd program to really fund communities efforts to link improvements in transportation mobility economic development and connections so the original plan had been to take some of these longer term recommendations around economic development and do a pop-up demo this summer on aspects that really are related to mobility and placemaking and creating an attractive vibrant downtown given covid that has transformed from a weekend demo into a quick makeover of the community to put into practice as many of the solutions as we possibly can so we're in the midst of this three week process they've just spent a week gathering community input on the projects that they want to do we now have a set of eight projects and by the end of july they will be in place and done and it includes a range of things that are not directly business development but hopefully really can support local businesses in continuing to reopen in attracting patrons safely over the next few months and in being flexible around covid so some of the example projects are things like creating what they're calling social stations along the main street so this is outdoor seating on the depot green on the library lawn and on the common that will allow people extra overflow seating from restaurants it'll give them somewhere to go with takeout it will let remote workers sit and have a place to access free wi-fi from the library if they need to work from home things like that um several activities like really emphasizing a bike loop around lake moray and wayfinding signage that can point to local businesses and can point to activities and destinations that people can safely do outside so it's a way to sort of tease out how we can continue to attract visitors there and support local businesses but in a very safe way that isn't about events and bringing people together so just a snapshot if any of you are local to the area and want to get involved in this they'll be looking for a lot of volunteers to help make these projects happen in the next 10 days amazing work you do rebecca good on you um justin uh you've been waiting and then michelle coopersmith justin thanks thanks paul um so my uh my main business is a coffee trader um so i import coffee and sell it um but the point i wanted to suggest was for my side project which is that we usually host uh guests in an airbnb on our property um and that obviously has been a crazy market lately but one of the things i've started doing uh is documenting some of the places to visit in the area on the google maps like adding them to the either adding them at a place on a map if it doesn't exist or especially businesses but either hidden waterfalls or trails things like that things to do things that are outside keeps people separate um and i save it on a saved map on google so that i can share it with guests now i don't have guests right now but um yeah i'm sort of building it out for future guests and it's making me wonder if there shouldn't be either a city wide or townwide as county wide statewide um google map with all these hidden gems of locations for people to to spread out and see the great sites what a cool idea it would be fun to do what you said at one point you're adding places that don't exist and it would be really cool to add things that don't that aren't even there for people to go look for just kidding um but uh what what an interesting thought justin thanks for sharing that uh michelle cooper smith are you with all yep um i i'm with the for my employee ownership center and you hear about us talking about selling businesses but what i want to suggest and what we're we're seeing a growing interest in during covet is how to grow the team of owners you don't sell a business you just bring in new owners and that is a perspective that would truly help a lot of businesses in this tough time be more resilient carry the load together with the group so i plant that seed and we are the experts we're happy to help anybody who even wants to begin that conversation thank you thanks michelle other folks have stories of interesting work that's been going on in their community or of how their business is trying to adapt to this this really tough tough situation are there other best practices that sounds like there's amazing stuff going on in in bradford fairly randolph newberry are there other communities that are doing interesting things maybe i'm gonna come back then if you if you think of a really good practice or an interesting story feel free to share it but i want to go back a little bit to you know what what are some of the goals that you ought to have for recovery in your town or in the region and are there barriers that your town or orange county is facing that are preventing progress other than the fact that covet is out there that we have to practice safe protocols and so forth are there other things that you're seeing as deep challenges to moving forward in your community or with your business paul this is julie hi julie hi thanks for doing this um so i think um probably this is shared by others but obviously the combination of the uncertainty about the programs that are coming and when they're going to be available and also the just the onslaught of information has been i think a little paralyzing on a lot of levels perry mentioned the frustration you know about sort of hearing about a bunch of things but things not happening quite as as we had hoped or expected and the difficulty in planning um with a lot of urgency so um you know we got the the manna fairy mutual aids uh network up and running pretty quickly and that you know helped feel like we weren't you know we were completely ineffective but now i share what callie said before i'm looking you know more into the fall and winter and you know we've talked been talking about this on the downtown calls um because it's going to be a whole lot harder to get people out of those small um businesses especially restaurants and you know clothing stores or whatever or the agricultural sector um if if there isn't an inviting safe socially distanced place um so we've been thinking about vacant spaces in the downtown and whether again if there's program money coming or some help that can uh be afforded to us to reach out to owners of vacant you know spaces in the downtown and see if we can't you know they can't be sort of our winter tents and and in the meantime really trying to find a way to help uh perry you know like get some money to these folks you know like something because um i think that help is is really needed and uh you know there's been a lot of generosity in a lot in a lot of fronts uh but um we have to you know try to support each other now so that that my concern and my hope well thank you julie and so well put the difficulty in planning accompanied by terrific terrific and terrible urgency you know that paralysis we all hoped that we were going to see a v curve to this thing and it's turned into a u that isn't climbing back up yet and that's really tough and and it and it's nerve wracking because no one knows what's happening next and then the frustration when things aren't coming through for you um so this is a huge social and cultural challenge and on top of the economic one kurtis i'd be glad of your perspective thanks for raising your hand yeah just kind of commenting on the same that's just said but uh i think for too long well from when this started we were all planning for the short term um it seemed pretty obvious to me that sorry the one more next door uh it seemed obvious to me that this this is not a short term thing you know we're talking about somebody saying oh there's maybe a vaccine in the in the late spring but if you even think of the numbers if you look at this uh if you can produce a million doses a day it still takes a year basically to just inoculate the united states so we really need to start planning for the long term and i just see too many people being short-sighted so what we're doing in vermont tech uh a year ago year and a half ago we made it we created a strategic plan knowing that education is changing and looking at five years ahead saying what are we going to be in five years well in march that five-year plan became a six-month plan um simply because we need to act now but also be planning for not just this semester and this coming year but what are we going to be like in the future i think this is going to change us tremendously as a culture and i don't have an answer for it but we really need to start looking at this long term yeah thank you very much for that Curtis other perspectives on uh on our hopes towards recovery or the explicit challenges that we face today as we look to what's within our power Curtis bob the green guy agrees with you um kelsey sorry to keep talking um my one thought would be to move business you know give some training for business owners to move some things online someone mentioned that before but i know a lot of the businesses here in newberry have zero online presence and that's for a variety of reasons but have some sort of training where we can get those folks online so it's easier to access and able to access in a safe and more remote way thank you kelsey are some of the businesses it sounds like um bat toad farm is doing that are some of the 120 businesses in newberry doing that i mean i would say that more businesses are starting to understand the importance of online businesses i'll say one of like one of my businesses is the yoga studio so we were able to do a hybrid model of while we were shut down stream all of our classes online and now we're doing a hybrid of having in person with limited occupancy and stream but we already had a website but a lot of other businesses are starting to at least think about maybe a facebook page or a website um but it can be really daunting for people who are just not very tech inclined so we heard the story um that cali shared a little bit about bat toad with with jasper hill where they saw sort of a cascading set of falls in the way their marketplace worked that looked like it was going to be extremely destructive of them as a business and then within a couple of weeks they saw a similar cascade building up for online sales which they were in no way prepared for they weren't too shocked that prepared for online sales at scale and so they've had to transform their whole market and it's interesting how this is hitting the ground for different people i'll go to cali and then to monique um yeah i guess i just i wanted to chime in on that because i think it's it is a good opportunity for those who can sell things online for sure and it is a huge learning curve if you're not already doing it and so i think it's like i guess i want to put it out there as potentially a really good thing for businesses to do but also understanding the resources and education that goes with doing it successfully from figuring out shipping to like i mean that in of itself literally is a business no kidding um to figuring out how do you get no i mean facebook is great but how do you actually get noticed on facebook and translate it to sales and it's like starting a whole new business and like for the specialty food association what we've been doing is offering free webinars on amazon e-commerce email campaigning setting up an online store because we know our membership needs that but i think anyone who's trying to launch into that it's no you're not going to like have sales overnight and so if if people are going to do that in their communities or help support businesses that way it needs like serious support to get there it's a huge undertaking for jasper hill it meant seeing a line a new line item in their budget in terms of cost which was fedex a million two hundred thousand dollars a year they're projecting yeah yeah you keep fedex and business for sure yeah uh money yeah i guess going off both of those um just even um i guess training for people who have never had a business before who are now unemployed probably can't get a job um with all the hiring freezes and now need to figure out how to employ themselves but they may not know the basics of how to do a business um and also trying i guess training for people on how to pivot what they are doing like cali side you may not be able to actually just start selling a product where you're doing um you know curbside or you might be doing like food but i've seen some businesses like a bar switch from doing cocktails in person to do like bottling their cocktails so like how to can you how can businesses transform just something that can actually continue selling rather than having to close for folks who don't know when money runs the space on main in bradford a co-working space let me ask you a particular question money you know given the fact that covid is much more aggressive in states surrounding bramon and um out west and and the fact that your co-working space and the network of co-working spaces statewide are sort of helping people who might otherwise be working from home working for a firm in san francisco or asia um do business online and is there an opportunity for growth in that digital economy as part of what's going on with this restructuring of the economy yeah definitely um so i think one uh the co-working spaces that are open have to be able to make it through so support for co-working spaces um but definitely i mean i've heard from multiple people especially as i've been talking about like i don't know if we're gonna make it through i'm saying i really hope you do because our business just decided that real estate is too expensive and everybody is more productive at home and they're not going to go back to offices um and so we've been trying to convince people that that's a thing for a decade um so it there's definitely going to be a need for the thing with co-working spaces for anybody who's not familiar it's a space um really offering internet but really offering people to work around so if you're working remotely from home you want to get away from your wife your husband or your kids screaming in the background or your pets or your refrigerator um and you want to still be around people um when you don't have like that co-working family that you would at an office that's that's really what we're selling and providing um and we're non-profit but um so yeah there's definitely going to be way more need for that as soon as we come onto this and as soon as people feel comfortable being around each other again i never heard that expression co-working family yeah something elbows with other creative totally creative folks that's cool um other perspectives on either long-term goals or um promising strategies or work that's going on connected to your business or other businesses um i see bob's got his hand up bob hains yeah um gary just circulated something on the chat that i was going to mention as well um there is uh going to be support for business navigators or specialists in marketing and email not email but e-commerce um shipping um scheduling those kinds of things uh the small business development centers have some very skilled business counselors and educators so there will be some um some programs that will be accelerating through that support the rdcs are going to be part of that and as gary suggested there'll be some announcements coming out you know hopefully early next week but there's there's a fair amount of money that's um been established um there's also a partnership with vermont law school and spdc and the rdcs around the state to support business owners um and startups with legal counseling um they won't stay with somebody forever for nothing but they are bringing in a number of um very well known experienced law firms who will provide some pro bono or low bono support in addition so um i think we sense there is a lot of um uh difficulty that's coming our way people have been able to hang on for a while who who may find it tougher and tougher as time goes on so um there will be there'll be more money coming from the legislature when they reconvene i think in four weeks um they know there's a lot of pressure uh perry's a good example of some business people who feel like they you know they they weren't ignored in terms of making a pitch but they didn't get really much to feel for it so um yeah i think there'll be some more support bob have you as the regional development corporation director you see a lot of the work that businesses are doing both their struggles and some of the creative things that they're doing do you have other stories about businesses that are doing particularly interesting or creative things to answer the challenge well we are finding that we can work remotely to a great extent we're also finding that a lot of people are getting tired of it and really look forward to being around other people to stimulate them and to um you know when you're when you're off when you're at work but you're really offline and you're at the water cooler or you know you're having lunch or you're getting somebody arrived there's a lot of synthesis that happens then and there's really no substitute for that so yeah um i think it's i think it's tough and i think as the as the fall proceeds um it's going to be very difficult especially if we have trouble maintaining schools um i'm i'm somewhat skeptical personally that we're going to be able to get through a fall semester with colleges with thousands of kids coming back to vermont from all over the country and internationally you know it's an issue at dartmouth it's an issue at ubs an issue everywhere um and i think with uh with the public system public schools it's going to be difficult too and if they're not um you know if they're not maintaining their programs it's going to have a huge effect on the workforce you know because if your kids don't have a place to go you got to be somebody's got to be home alone um so i don't want to sound um like dr doomsday but um i think it's going to be a long time as kurtis said earlier that we need to make some long-range plans and have some very some alternative scenarios in case they don't work okay thanks pretty much for that we've been wrestling with our budget for the past week and we're just making some assumptions but we need to be able to um you know to to move in different directions if they don't if they don't pan out to be accurate yeah thanks kurtis doskler yeah just to agree with what bob was saying about you know we have serious concerns at vermont tech about what the fall is going to bring um but we made the decision to not just open fully as if nothing is wrong because i think that's going to be the worst thing we can do much of our programming really is uh it's hands-on learning you have to be in labs nurses have to be in clinical settings manufacturing have to be labs most of our work is hands-on but we've come up with a hybrid model so we're teaching most of our classes online which you can do from home and then you're coming in between two and three weeks out of the semester for a uh what we call low residency you come in from monday night through thursday night and just with a bag as if you're checking into a hotel we do a thorough cleaning everything's masked everyone's you know all the safety procedures everyone's checked etc but it's for that very reason you know we're taking a huge hit because we're losing a lot of room and board revenue because of that but we also know that if mid-october if suddenly there's a huge crisis we send everyone home we have to refund the money anyway and so even though it's financially stressful and you know that's what we're making the decision to do now is to see how we can minimize the effects of this um the other thing you'd mentioned about working from home how you know for some people it works for some people it doesn't and we've found that uh for instance i have two co-workers that we each had an office and three of us um decided that we actually are effective working from home plus i do a lot of road work going to different campuses so we've consolidated to share an office you know one day a week or in the office and then the rest of the time we're working from home or remotely and we're finding more and more employees can do that effectively although not everyone can and not every job can be done that way but that gives us an opportunity to possibly consolidate a little bit and save some money even on heating and air conditioning in fact this summer we closed a couple of buildings pushed everyone into smaller spaces who happen to be there so making whatever cuts whatever changes we can to accommodate that yeah thanks very much i want to turn a corner and ask a somewhat formal question and see if you have ideas that we could build into a list for us to think about on the action team as we look at reporting so what are your ideas for additional action still needed locally regionally or at the state level to address these challenges and work towards equitable economic recovery and renewal you have ideas on next things that should be done in your town across the county or statewide that would help recovery move forward effectively yes cali um this is kind of not a specific idea but i was thinking about this in terms of education in classrooms um but how do you how to take advantage of but i think it could apply to businesses and co-working spaces and such how to take advantage of rural schools that um have been really under populated and have extra classrooms um and help and like spaces and downtowns that have been that are empty at this point like main street stores that are empty is there a way that we can take advantage of these vacant spaces at this point to help spread out whether it's kids in schools or whether it's people who want to go to work in a space that's outside of their home like how can we use the things that have been liabilities for us as rural areas to become what helps us get through covid i guess so i don't have a clear plan or anything around that but just like something to think about yeah i like the way julie put it that you could use empty downtown buildings as the hints of the winter for dining and everything else to use the broad spatial areas so cali thank you thank you for that other folks have thoughts on what's next that's going to be needed for recovery and even beyond recovering to the past is there recovery to a future harry so in regards to the school situation every tent company over the last week has been slammed with requests for classroom space and so what we're hearing is is the schools want classroom space that can get them through possibly into december but most of them realize that's not a reality because you're going to have to heat them and then you got a snow load situation and the biggest challenge there is is none of them seem to have any money to be able to afford the spaces so i don't know how that's going to be funded whether that's on the taxpayers back or or some other mechanism but right now there seems to be i don't know what the school's got you know the educational component what they got in the covid relief funds but we're not hearing anybody's got any extra money to spend on classroom space so i'm not as the god you know from hot tent called me this morning and said okay we got requests yesterday and we can fill 25 percent of it what have you got well i got the same thing and you know right now there's not enough there's not enough capacity and so you know when it comes to paying for that stuff and even if we were to buy it and bring it in here it's going to be a challenge to recoup enough money to make it with our wild to take that on yeah of course thanks for sharing that justin thanks uh two suggestions actually um a quick follow-up on the idea of what to do with the like town hall spaces or community center spaces that are going unused um just connecting back to what we were talking about earlier and uh getting businesses to be able to sell online i'm thinking maybe those spaces could be set up as temporary fulfillment centers i don't know if there's some sort of uh maybe the makerspace can lead it or um you know businesses that already deal with logistics such as myself who does the coffee trading could help set it up um to try and get some of the local makers and artisans uh to get their stuff sent out um it could include workshops to set up online e-commerce sites but also just getting things boxed and shipped out as a task on its own and you need space so that's something you can do justin are you a are you a roaster or are you a broker or how did what part of i'm more along the lines of a broker i import coffee beans and coffee cherries and then sell them wholesale mostly um at some point i hope to be roasting but that's do they ever come to you or do they get dispersed by internet do you ever see do you ever see tons of coffee i mean sometimes i try not to get it here i don't have the space for that um so i there's a bigger warehouse in boston that i usually leave it at but i do have some here and then you know but some like town hall would be great for uh people who have a variety or multiple businesses or makers that have a bunch of different inventories intriguing idea of a multi-business fulfillment space for digital sales yeah and it could be a multi-owner equity uh business similar to what uh was it michelle that was talking about earlier um anyway uh the other idea um this is a little bit more far out but i know uh bob the green guy was talking about connectivity and that's been a huge thing about me uh getting set up here i was lucky to get ec fiber uh like a month before the pandemic went down um so i was ready to to shift a lot more stuff to online communications but um one idea that i started to see lately is that um SpaceX has been working on the star link like many sat technologies for communications and they're looking for individuals to test out the new program in northern altitude northern latitude sorry um so i'm thinking maybe not sit down on our community county level but the state could approach SpaceX and ask for vermont to be a test case for for that and satellite internet would would be great it would be great if it was great um other uh other thoughts or comments all right correct this is julie i i can't raise the hand for some reason but um glad to hear from you julie so i was uh i know that folks have been bob and others have been working on uh child care you know trying to get more in our in our area and clearly we don't have enough but i'm wondering you know when you think about when you you ask the question about what sort of what would be a game changer or what do we need to sort of leapfrog over the way we do things now to the way we need to do things in the future and if we are really going to be in a situation where people are working from home magnitudes more and where um you know maybe the schools are uh you know like alternating days or you know who knows for how long but it's going to change the way we live and i'm i'm wondering if this isn't an opportunity for a fairly game changing investment in the way that we do child care um you know wages are abysmally low um and yet unaffordable uh to most people and um we will break the backs and the morale and and families if we continue to try to shove everything into the living room if you know what i mean and i'm just wondering you know like if you had to put you know put a couple of really big investments maybe even on a national scale into some test cases of how to do it differently um you know as as one of my favorite people you know says uh vermont is a you know is a great test lab um and um and and i think we are going to be in trouble pretty soon people are are fraying uh if we don't uh figure something out on that front that's all i wanted to add thanks thank you julie i saw a couple of thumbs in the air for you julie just to report that that's that idea of a game changing investment for families um um would make a significant difference for people um do other people have ideas on you know if you were speaking to the legislature or governor and you had to put a mark on the wall for something that you thought was a cornerstone priority for vermont's recovery and the recovery of your county what might it be paul i think one thing we've discussed in the city of sin albins and trying to come up with some funding for is rent subsidy for these businesses when we talk about going into the vacant space uh those landlords are still going to require some rent for that space and if there's a way whether it's funneled through the downtown programs or some other whether it's through regional planning or something but to put some funding in place for rent subsidy that uh tenants can apply commercial tenants can apply for yeah you haven't tried to find the money locally to do it have you we haven't we've we've we've got some redevelopment funds that we've used for some other projects in the city for commercial buildings and stuff the sod grants and stuff like that we've talked about uh tapping into that for for something like this great thanks for sharing that um bob hains did you have your hand up i'm going to go i'm going to jump on what julie said because um she knows we've been working hard on it josh your own is on with us he's the director of development and in uh randolph they got a planning grant to to determine the extent of the need for childcare and you know i've become a true believer in in um concept that um childcare ought to be available to everybody the way public education is with everybody you shouldn't have to wait until the kid is six or seven years old to go to school or to be taken care of i feel the same way about health care frankly but um we need to change it because it would be the biggest game changer i can think of the first two ways a business owner who's recruiting people to come to work loses a potential employee is where am i going to live and what's the childcare situation um they you know which one is more important depends on on your perspective who you are they're both enormously important would make a huge difference in in everybody's life in our economy's um status and the welfare and viability of our communities yeah thanks josh josh Jerome do you want to add anything to that just just to second that childcare is definitely um one of the if not the most important um business support systems out there we we need to do childcare differently um and i think through the work that we're doing with our municipal planning grant um hopefully it can lead to a pilot program um that can make it accessible to a lot of people and and certainly businesses have to be a huge stakeholder in that system thank you kurtis yeah again just to agree with it bob and then josh was saying uh at vermont attack actually about a year ago we got a we got a grant to look at a pilot program to expand support for not just scholarships but childcare was a big component of that because we have so many students that are let's say single mothers maybe even with a place they need housing and they can't just drop everything and go to school so it's something we were looking at but then that money was diverted during uh what seems covid hit two other unrestricted funds so we're looking to redo that in the future but if there's some kind of you know childcare i agree it should be just like public education it should just be available somehow and uh then there are so many more opportunities for people especially in education you know so that that waitress who wants to get like a real career but has a child at home can't just say i can't do it because i don't have any childcare would it be great if she can get to school and and become a nurse or what have you yeah that's what we see a lot of yeah i'm i'm permanently stuck in this situation instead of i have an opportunity to move on with my career and contribute and better to like my family um we've just got like one minute left for comments and then we're going to go to some reflections from members of the visiting team and i'm going to ask them to keep the reflections to a minute or so but is there anyone uh from orange county that would like to share a reflection before we go perry so if you're asking what would be really valuable i think there's a lot of businesses out there right now as my own okay where we need some form a loan program this is a struggle okay some of us need to figure out how to park our debt we need some breathing room okay and we're not getting it from the local financial institutions because the fdic regulations you know only gave them six months to defer interest and principal so there's a lot of businesses i know that are capital intensive and they're struggling and we tried to lobby for this cause and we were hoping that vita could help with that and they're willing to help with that but they need the funding to be able to help us with that program so there's that i think is something statewide that's needed yeah maybe people didn't realize how long this was going to go but thank you for putting that on the table perry um i'm going to go around and ask people on the team to share their reflections and i'm hoping that kevin geiger from the regional planning commission could go first are you with us kevin yeah so i can uh so first off i'm i'm always enthused uh the best part of my work is when i get out to work with you all and uh so i'm always enthused at looking at the individual things that are coming out i think it's important that we share those so um that the work monika is doing or rebecca is doing or kelsey is doing so that those things can cross pollinate so that we're you know not inventing the wheel over and over again um this is going to take a lot of resources i agree with you all i i spend most of my life in emergency management this is not a short-term event and our emergency muscles are not built for long events we have hurricanes and they're over fires are over uh this is going to happen for a long time um and potentially um a long long time and the earlier we get used to that situation like any situation that changes us the earlier we move through that process and adapt the better we will be and so i see a lot of good work going on out there um i do think that we have pluses we have a clean safe brand in vermont and people want things that are clean and safe right now we as people mentioned we have some underutilized resources because we're rural so we have some empty um schools we have some empty downtown storefronts uh how can we use those the biggest thing that i am seeing uh really coming to happen is that what we're private discussions now are becoming public discussions what might have been a one business problem really is becoming town leaders thinking about how can we do this in a coordinated public fashion and i think that that's that's just great thanks kevin um bob hains the uh head of remount and economic development corporation you want to share some reflections bob based on the conversation and what you're seeing well i agree with kevin and one of the comment i i i make often and think about every day is um that this situation is awful but there are some good things that are happening and i think we're taking the covers off everything and we're asking you know can we afford to keep going the way we're going should we go the way should we keep doing it um what's going to happen if we don't change the way we're doing it you know the farming industries having awful issues with their markets drying up um retailers um are you know struggling restaurants are struggling abysmally so um i think that the good thing is as kevin said private discussions are now becoming public you know um with larger audiences and i think we need to support that encourage that and just you know keep it going great thank you bob um gary follow away the head of the vermont downtown program and we have a little extra time gary if you want to have a little longer reflection of course i have some thoughts at the end too i'll be careful paul not too long i'll be brief um you know just just first off just want to thank everyone for you know participating in the community and trying to do the you know everything you can to make your communities better i think that's what makes vermont so special is that we have a lot of people who really care uh deeply you know about what we have and we don't want to lose it um and it is a really scary time for you know for all of us as we know venture into uncharted waters but i have some faith in knowing that um we have some really smart people and people who care a lot about you know about the future of our communities um a few points i just wanted to kind of uh just mention um and obviously none of this is enough um you know in terms of you know funding and i hear you loud and clear you know in terms of those who are you know really struggling and not checking the boxes for some of the funding that's available um but i didn't want to just mention a couple things that you know we're working on at the state to try to help businesses the legislature did approve some funding uh to support uh consumer stimulus and marketing programs uh you know both for vermonters and as well as you know eventually out of estates um which we really depend on for our local economies um so you'll be seeing in the coming weeks here some um some some plans uh you know both at a statewide and local regional level that will provide some funding to support efforts that are happening on the ground right now perhaps uh to kind of help enhance what you're already doing as well as some new stimulus money that's really designed to kind of drive uh consumers uh into vermont businesses so be on the be on the lookout for that um you know one of the conversations that we've been starting to have um on our weekly meetings with downtown directors is you know we've been dealing so much with um what's on our plate right now and here we are in july but really we need to start thinking about what's what's going to happen in december and january and some of you all have alluded to that um you know in your conversations and it's you know outdoor seating is great in july but it's not so great in in december um you know and parry you talked about the schools and yeah we can probably do some outside things in the fall but what are we going to do in the winter and taking a look at some of those vacant spaces that we may have in indoor spaces and transitioning them um is going to be really important for us to to figure out because uh you know there's a good chance this this doesn't go away anytime soon um so i don't have an answer for that but i think as a community as communities we need to you know have those hard conversations and figure out what we're going to do um as we prepare for winter and then just finally i just want to you know can't reiterate enough just you know you know supporting our local businesses i know you do all you know do already but as we start looking at you know local distribution and and local delivery and how we can start to create these systems for change um that go you know maybe not head-to-head with amazon but create our own ver you know version of vermont you know consumer spending that can be sustainable i think we need to start taking a deep look at how we can support those kind of systems so anyway thanks paul um for facilitating this important discussion and um you know happy to connect with any of you all one-on-one to you know support whatever it is that you're doing so thank thank you thank you very much gary marty manahan based on your experience in franklin county any reflections on the conversation that folks have had yeah again i i thank you paul for doing a good job facilitating it and inviting me on i think um you know when we talk about shop local i think we ought to look at fund local uh if we can find a way to get the money uh to a local organization to then distribute to the local businesses and everything what works in san abans may not work in randolph and vice versa but i think those local organizations know the businesses and know the community and know how to get the funding in the right place to keep everything going this is like people had mentioned this is going to be a long haul and i think we've got to be prepared for it i don't think businesses are looking for nor can afford any more loans i think we got to figure out a way to get these grants in place and get them in as quickly as possible thanks so much so uh chris saunders is here from senator's lehi's office chris they're talking about three trillion dollars down there aren't they yeah trillions upon trillions uh trillions uh it's i think uh a message that senator lehi here is loud and clear what many folks on the call have articulated that um a lot of this stems from just needing more resources to address the the core needs whether that's excuse me uh connectivity or whether it's assistance for businesses um these are themes that come out through every community gathering that he participates in and he's been doing those um you know multiple times a day over the last three months he um you know we are in a position finally where where congress is having a real conversation about a follow on response bill um we expect that there will be more resources for for businesses um we expect that there will be a strong push and hopefully success in getting more aid to states and local communities for innovative ideas like these uh i you know we likewise had worked closely with vita on the on the concept that perry had mentioned and others have been been following on in the chat unfortunately the rules that the treasury department had put out about how the state aid that senator lehi secured for vermont uh were written how the treasury department wrote those rules it made it hard if not impossible for vita to implement that program so one of the things he's pushing for is flexibility both in how those funds can be used as well as the length of time on the existing funds uh as well as well as new funds so um you know i won't go back and and respond to every piece but we've been taking notes and and understand just kind of the breadth and depth of the need uh that's been articulated requires a response from the federal government it you know i think there's a lot local communities can do but the the federal government needs to be stepping up to the plate um i think it's um if i've been doing this job for 18 years with senator lehi and you know i feel like my heart breaks daily talking with communities that feel like they are never going to look the same and are facing really uncertain futures and and a lot of the things we all love about this state are at risk and um you know we talk to senator lehi about that every day about this is this is what our communities need uh go go fight for it and and he's trying to do that chris could you just tell folks what your job title is in senator lehi's office yeah i'm a field representative which means i uh my my particular area focus is economic development transportation and telecom uh so i'm responsible for for being a local liaison to communities and i know a lot of you uh seen you at various forums or or in meetings and um so we we are out there right now in a different way because we can't see everybody in person but gathering the the stories and and the ideas of what is what is needed both in terms of resources as well as policy to help folks get get through this pandemic well it's awesome work you're doing chris and and really appreciate all that you do in in the appropriation process because it seems like you are often the guy who's out there paying attention to things and then trying to drag things back that are doable um at the federal level it's a it's a piece of work so that thank you for everything you do for all of us um gary i'm wondering if you for folks that don't know gary running the downtown program he's working with john copans from vcrd on a bilocal platform it's it's a bit of a symposium that's going to share some best practices from different towns around the state it might be an interesting follow-up for this conversation especially for people who are looking for specifics um that's going to be a 12 noon on the 28th and i'm not sure gary if you have a link for that that you could put in the chat room um we'll get one i don't know that john has shared the link with me we have the date though do i can grab the date for you if you'd like or did you already just say that i already did we'll dig up that and make sure that everyone on the call gets the bilocal invitation um strikes me that we're looking you know again everyone was hoping for a v a v of this process covid hit covid response covid recovery and we're in a a longer slew and we're tested and it's testing businesses it's testing our patients it's testing our our faith in government sometimes sometimes our faith in each other and the thing that strikes me is how vermoners are pulling together um every call that i'm on like this people are looking very serious these days but they're also looking very determined and they're on the line and they're not giving up the battle um but let's face it we're in a battle for the long-term sustainability viability and resilience of this place including of individual businesses and we're going to have to be team players in a way that we may not have been called upon before this crisis so it's an honor to be part of the conversation with you um i hear in this conversation the need for much deeper connectivity broadband cell service um that additional resources federal resources state resources that can hit the ground support small enterprises support those businesses that are most affected by the social distancing struggle um support businesses like parries that are also helping to build solutions in terms of those distancing vehicles in a time of crisis the idea of the the power of loan dollars that can hold allow us to hold on longer through tough times and obviously with very low or no interest and with um and grants also that can help people hold to when the bottom line is not there to support the future of the businesses it's interesting to me that in the conversation on economic development there was almost no talk of the the thing that we're hearing elsewhere all across the state which is the pressures of immigrants that the real estate market in the means of the middle of all this is booming with people in new york and boston and down south who want to be in a state that has situated itself because of its discipline as the state with the fewest new cases and the fewest the only state without deaths within a 30 day period and so we're hearing in franklin county that things are coming on the market and being snatched people are bidding over the price the asking price for property and these obviously aren't low income people from down south they're people of means some of them with entrepreneurial energy potentially um but there's concerns expressed in other forums about the tension between newcomers maybe newcomers with greater wealth than the the average folks in a community and the the the challenge of preventing polarization within communities as people work together uh towards a common future and it's interesting we haven't really heard that in this conversation and it'd be interesting to reflect with with you some of you later about that i thought that the stories that we heard town to town and the stories of businesses and some of your ideas about um ways to move forward were really creative and really thoughtful and some of them very powerful and so um we'll be looking to categorize some of these ideas and bring them together to to other communities as we go around the state and and uh also put them on a website which we've developed to share best practices and potentially to share some of these with the governor as he's thinking about some of the steps that he would be advocating for moving forward we're a couple minutes early but maybe it's that's a good thing and we could do our shift to the closing session and gary you want to describe did you just post something in the chat for us yeah so in just a couple moments here i think officially it starts at 8 10 but we i copied a link to so essentially we're going to do is close out of this session but before you do that the link and then you can paste that in your browser and then close out and then open that back up so you we can we can join in the closing session which will be about 20 minutes long we'll finish up at 8 30 that makes sense to everybody paul can i just make one comment to chris from senator lehi's office yes i think that impacts i think the whole state of rama but specifically franklin county in st albins is the potential furlough of these in s employees and ice employees and they've come up with a plan to pay back any funding that congress would give them so if you can pass line no senator lehi is on it but the fact that they would even consider furloughing these employees and collect unemployment of which they will not collect a sent back versus uh not furloughing them giving them the loan and allowing them to pay back through fees is kind of a no-brainer but thanks marty um and that's a rapidly developing story including one that um where they actually have enough money to pay the employees throughout the rest of the fiscal year but for some reason are not pulling back on the furlough so more to come we'll be at the event with the congressman tomorrow senator lehi's in dc but yeah it's a it's an active and quickly moving topic so everyone in line with what gary said we'll go to the chat we'll copy the link we'll leave this we'll drop that link in our browser and we'll be all back in the regular meeting together um and if you do get confused you can go to the email that you would have gotten earlier for the forum and you'll find that that closing session link there but hopefully this will work seamlessly for everybody so i'll i'll say goodbye and we'll see you all in a in a minute or so