 Good morning and welcome to the Vermont Legislature's House Committee on Environment and Energy. This morning we're going to continue our discussions about the budget with Secretary Julie Moore from the Agency of Natural Resources. Welcome. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I'm going to endeavor to share my screen that now I'll take a look. So I have some slides this morning that are focused really for the part of the Secretary's office on climate action, but that also dovetails into our work around civil rights and environmental justice. And then we'll turn it over to Commissioner Bealing, who's prepared to speak to you about the significant one-time initiatives that are in the Department of Environmental Conservation budget. I sort of look at the governor's recommend as having kind of four prongs that reach into the climate space, and we'll talk about each of those, a climate office true up, some proposed one-time funding initiatives, role federal funding plays in this, and then a few words about our civil rights and environmental justice unit. Just by way of context, I think it's important to keep in mind there were really significant climate investments made by the governor and the general assembly as part of the final FY23 budget that total more than $200 million. There's about $160 million worth of ARPA money that we are working to help deploy between now and the end of calendar year 24, as well as $40 million worth of general funding. And it touches on a lot of different agencies of state government, from the public service department to the agency of transportation, the Office of Economic Opportunity within the Department of Children and Families, Department of Buildings and General Services, along with Vermont Emergency Management and ANR. We are in various stages, but this is just to give you a sense for what those dollar figures were that were included as part of the FY23 budget, and make clear we'll meet all of the time available to us through the end of calendar year 24 to fully deploy and commit these dollars. So can I pause there and just ask about the various stages, because there's certainly been some feedback on getting money out the door concerns. And so what are the various stages of that? Right. So there's a multi-step process for the ARPA funds in particular where they need to be reviewed and approved or assigned a risk level by Guide House, which is the contractor, the agency of administration is retained to make sure we're complying with federal treasury guidance. Several of these initiatives, the expanded weatherization most notable among them were determined to be moderate risk, as well as the municipal energy resilience proposal. And so the In risk? It's risk. So they don't want to tell you absolutely this complies with federal guidance for no complete violation of federal guidance, instead they provide feedback to us on risk. This is a low risk activity. It appears to fully comply with federal guidance. This is a moderate risk activity and explain modifications we may wish to consider to the program in order to lower the risk level or leave it as moderate risk and things that they see as high risk. One high risk would mean ultimately federal auditors may say that was not an eligible expense. You charge to these ARPA accounts, we'd like our money back please. So have other states run into getting kind of dinged on this and finding them not in compliance? Not under ARPA, but under past federal funding programs. There have been instances of being dinged for spending money on ineligible projects and programs that were determined ultimately to be ineligible. So weather station is low risk and so I'm going to let you finish your sentence. I'm assuming that means we get it out the door for you. So the part that went through GCF, Office of Economic Opportunity was low risk. The part that was going through BHFA for middle income Vermonters was determined to be moderate risk. Another example of a moderate risk was the municipal energy resilience program where it didn't appear to fully comply with the federal ARPA guidance. In those instances, we've gone through a secondary process to convert these to revenue replacement, which is just that we are allowed to assume so much of the work state government did in response to the COVID pandemic wouldn't have been done, but for the pandemic. And we're able to essentially treat those money as we're able to reimburse ourselves through ARPA and then direct it into these programs, which gets rid of the need to comply with the Treasury guidance. That said, that's a several month process to sort of work through that. So we've done revenue replacement in places where we thought where the feedback we received from Guidehouse on our initial program design was that these were moderate or high risk programs and we're now in the process of putting those dollars on the ground. Many of these initiatives are being run as requests for proposals where we put out a solicitation and then are reviewing and ranking projects based on the request for funding that we receive. Some of them we are administering directly. Probably the most notable among that is some of the investments in working natural and working lands are trying to accelerate adoption of some of our the most climate friendly agronomic practices cover cropping changes in tillage practices, et cetera. And so that's really a dramatic expansion of work that was being done in service of water quality and sort of is a double win from my perspective and that we're gaining climate resilience benefits as well as well as benefits through that work. Can you tell us on this list that you have did all of them have to go through the process of kind of rebranding the money or so. Many of them, the weatherization work at the highest level, any program that really can be demonstrated to be in service of low-income Vermonters is broadly eligible for. So things like low-income weatherization, mitigating flood hazards where we're targeting low-income neighborhoods or communities, providing the electric system upgrades again that benefit low, disproportionately benefit low-income Vermonters are low-risk. If it's not a program that's specifically targeting low-risk communities, oftentimes it needed to look at revenue placement to give ourselves that greater flexibility. Deputy Secretary Farnham is unbelievably conversant in all of this and would encourage you to potentially hear from him because it is it's an art as well as a science and he is very good at it. Okay so on this list though the expanded weatherization was high risk. I was broken into two. So there's a I believe it was $35 million at that $80 million was for low-income Vermonters and was going to be administered by DCF. $45 million was going to VHFA for moderate middle-income Vermonters. The $45 million needed to be go through revenue replacement. The $35 million was fully eligible for ARPA under the Treasury Guides determined to be low-risk. I was just looking for kind of a high level on the list. I can bring that to you. I've also mixed some apples and oranges there and that some of the for example the EV related funding isn't all ARPA funding. Some of that is the the for it comes out of the $40 million of state general fund that I know as well. It was just trying to give a sense that there is in an ordinate amount of work going on right now in this space too and not to lose sight of it. So in terms of the base budget I'm calling this a part of what's in the FY24 budget is what I would refer to as a climate office truck. As I'm sure you recall the climate action office is created in the FY23 budget. It includes eight positions in total to date. Four of those positions are filled three are under recruitment as we speak and the FY24 budget adjusts base funding to meet actual staff salaries. There was also sort of a I think an accounting glitch in the final budget that reduced the climate office budget by $100,000 in FY23 as opposed to our environmental justice budget which I think was what was intended but that's also restored in the FY24 budget. So all told it's about a $280,000 increase in the base budget for the climate office in the A&R budget this year. Representative Sibilia has a question. Yes, thank you Madam Chair. I apologize Secretary Moore on the previous slide. Sure. Have we done any analysis on the $80 million in weatherization and particularly the funding that has been converted to revenue replacement on that availability to the clean heat standards of that past to be used in the credit market? Do we have a sense of limitations on that? I think that is entirely within the general assembly's control the way S5 is currently drafted it would give credit for it's a date stamp or a time stamp that drives eligibility clean heat credits. I believe the time stamp in S5 is past Senate natural was January 1st of this year. So there are some some of this work did start last year but the vast majority I couldn't say exactly how much of the $80 million but the vast majority of it would be eligible as to earn clean heat credits. And just one more question. Should the clean heat standard pass and that sizable $80 million in public funds be available to seed that clean heat credit market what would the effect be on credits? That's a complicated question. In the analysis I did I assume there was $600 million worth of federal and state incentives or cost share provided and so to my mind that $80 million would be part of a larger federal cost share package. We know that we are anticipating for example an additional $58 million to help with weatherization coming into the Department of Public Service as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. There are competitive grant programs that we are tracking and will be applying for later this year so but in in general it helps reduce the overall cost of the program. So then there are also a series of one-time appropriations related to the climate office. You want me to go backwards? Representative Stevens. Good morning I apologize I'm late. I just have to leave it at that. You mentioned environmental justice positions in this slide. Does that start like climate action office? It doesn't directly but there is a strong connection between the work of our environmental justice unit and the work of the climate office. The Just Transitions Committee in particular the climate council did work that I think is really foundational to the agency's overall approach to environmental justice and we know that it's going to be sort of a fairly constant need to make sure that those two efforts remain integrated. In addition as part of the climate office we have a community engagement and communications coordinator. We also have two environmental justice coordinators who are in the process of hiring that are also a lot of their work will be community engagement and recognizing that you know oftentimes we feel very particular about the information we're trying to take out to the public. The public on the other hand sort of looks at the monoliths of state government and so know that we need to be coordinated to make sure that we're speaking with one voice and providing broad based information that's truly useful to the public. So anticipating that that work will proceed in fairly close lockstep as we move forward. I appreciate the coordination. Thank you because I know that the climate council spent a lot of time trying to talk through a lot of items from that environmental justice case and I mean passed an additional law last year but if I recall correctly there are three positions in that in the EJ unit yeah yeah are those are those runtime funded or are they there I actually have a slide on that at the end if you okay a lot of weight but yes and that there's some challenges which I just want to flag for this this committee okay around that thank you you're welcome in terms of one time appropriations to the climate office there are three one of which is a nine hundred thousand dollar line item for but I've badged technical analysis tools and training this is sort of the continued work the general assembly is previously appropriated more than a million dollars to support this sort of technical analysis works being done by the climate office specifically the the tasks that are called out our work related to the thermal sector are measuring and assessing progress tool which we are in the process of issuing an RFP for right now the municipal vulnerability index which we have a contractor working on right now this would allow us to do the outreach and engagement to municipalities as the tool is complete to help them apply it and review their own risk and then developing a cost abatement curve for resilience and adaptation and this is a first step representative Sabilia I think you'd be particularly interested in and trying to get us to a better apples to apples comparison between what we know for cost abatement and greenhouse gas mitigation to resilience and adaptation work so each one of these would likely take the form of an RFP and we would be looking for contractor support for these services the next one time appropriation that's currently shown in the climate office although I think it probably better belongs to the public service department no we have a question sorry thank you this is the sector and more just on the thermal sector program can you share with us how that work can complement if we pass S5 or a similar bill to share how that would help inform absolutely so what we have go we have the sort of first step in that work that's being done right now and that is a first up qualitative evaluation of kind of the entire universe of options for looking at the thermal sector so includes a clean heat standard it includes an all fuels cap and invest thermal fuels cap and invest regulatory programs so work that my agency would do to potentially ban the sale of fossil fuel burning appliances but it would look like to dramatically expand existing programs like the low income weatherization program etc that qualitative review has been completed we've identified five scenarios that we're going to evaluate in more detail this additional funding would allow us to either build out a program design if S5 doesn't come to pass or look at pieces that might be appended to the edges of S5 or it to pass including things like expanding some of the existing programs and looking at phasing out the sale of fossil fuel appliances in particular so recognizing the time and you're where we are I'm extremely interested in the five where would I find that I will get that too so the clean heat homes program this is there's an eight and a half million dollar congressionally directed spending award that was secured by senator lehi that will go to the EIC and be administered in partnership with the hfa and vermont gas so we're having a echo all right um and the governor's budget proposes to further expand that by an additional five million dollars the clean heat homes program is a single point program to help promuners do whole home climate improvements and couples that with on bill financing um so this we're talking about things like weatherization clean heat systems electric panel upgrades sort of everything that that's needed to support that transition to beneficial electrification representative torii thank you on the on bill financing that you both I don't know the answer to that I can ask and get back to you live in more detail representative logan thank you um and um does does the clean heat program do you know if it includes safety upgrades for things like lead based paint and asbestos remediation it doesn't unless that's somehow implicated in the weather a weatherization project I think that does if it does I think well within reason I was going to say the the place we see the most nexus between some of the remedial efforts and weatherization is with vermiculite where there's if that's the asbestos you're referring to um yes that that that is intended it is intended that that could be dealt with as part of a weatherization project I know a lot of our weatherization programs right now tend to avoid homes with vermiculite insulation um and we know we've got to get over that hurdle so okay thank you welcome I actually have a question on that like on the weatherization piece um it's not necessarily a budget related question but since we're talking about it I'm curious uh someone just said to me something about the weatherization programs potentially promoting like foam without an awareness of the larger greenhouse gas implications of that have you heard any of that feedback I have not okay I'll follow up offline thanks representative stevens thanks well sure um I really support this I think it's uh critical uh and I really appreciate you highlighting this I will say we've been studying how to help thermoners heat their homes for centuries I mean the first time I started in on I think it was the thermal efficiency task force in like 2012 um and one of the key points was a single point program so my question is uh great that we're seeing this my question is um do you know how this will flow into the energy coaches that um some of the uh like cdo eos like capstone are um providing basically they're supposed to help folks understand because for a lot of folks it's completely overwhelming and contrasting and because of regulatory structures you know efficiency vermont does this between mountain power does this and so and it's too much it is uh I I don't know specifically um I had just a very high level conversation with folks from efficiency vermont to to understand sort of the benefits of a single point program but I I don't know what their exact plans are for dovetailing that with the existing coaches other than potentially expending it because part of this is really trying to get at folks all the way up to who are in less than 120 percent of mhi and that's I think a more expansive universe than capstone generally serves and can you clarify is is are the weatherization agencies are they 60 percent and below or where do they I believe it's either 60 or 80 percent I'd have to confirm but it's it's significantly lower than what's envisioned through this clean heat homes program thank you um another one time appropriation in the governor's budget is $700,000 for refrigerant management this would allow us to leverage an additional $350,000 of funding that's available through veic and this is to work with about 75 stores we're estimating the focus is really going to be on general stores and small convenience stores not not chains individually owned and help those stores phase out their use of refrigerants with high global warming potential this is anticipated to support things like leak detection systems actually replacing condensing units and then working with store owners who own package walk-in units to replace those as well this is you know in overall in our greenhouse gas budget this is a relatively small sliver that said on the sort of poor square foot of store basis these are some really intensive emitters or potential emitters um and the ability to to take advantage of funding available to veic seemed like a a wise opportunity of resources representative sabilia yes uh thanks madam chair just quickly what was the outreach for this program that is envisioned it will be done through veic they've initiated some of this work they have a general stores initiative is my understanding right now and this is intended to expand upon it and then finally back to the environmental justice so the the governor's budget includes funding for environmental justice some of it is one-time money and some of it is base these were all things that we had identified as part of the book of work of environmental justice um there's three hundred thousand dollars in one-time general fund to provide an additional year of support for the three staff positions at a and r as you may recall um in passing act 154 last year the general assembly uh moved sort of transferred or moved our existing ej coordinator um into this particular area of the budget um added to supporting positions but unfortunately provided only one time money to pay for those three positions um so it and it's unclear what the the intention was that wasn't the way it had been described to us when we testified on our budget last year uh in addition we had identified significant needs around the translation of vital documents um believe this work is best suited to the office of racial equity and so the governor's budget includes um 2.3 million dollars to help us as a state government catch up um in providing translated documents to vermanders and then a seven hundred thousand dollar increase in the base general fund to the office of racial equity to continue to support language access on an ongoing basis um i know from our my agency's perspective we've estimated we probably will have about a hundred thousand dollars a year worth of needs in terms of language access on an ongoing basis um to give you a sense for for what the needs may be statewide and can you if you know give us just a sense so we we understand like how many languages are we talking about and how do you select those languages so it's the the most common language most prevalent languages that are spoken in vermont um so they've been identified by the office of racial equity and what we do we've also identified a subset of our documents that are determined to be vital and are working to translate that that said there is an opportunity for any vermont to request translation of a document that we haven't translated um on an sort of on-demand or on a call basis necessarily a quantification of how you determine what vital is based on like other like in english as their primary language maybe they're those are the documents most looked at or how do you oh john i don't know if you're able to help answer that question how we determined what vital is vital documents um there is a definition okay yeah i don't have that at the top of my time so we'll get back to you on that representable thank you um i have a couple questions uh so the um i need to catch up on this this is my first year in the legislature i was following the environmental justice bill last year but not that closely i'm curious the um the ej positions with an r are they solely focused on environmental justice work in their roles uh the the coordinator position which is the position that exists existed within the agency prior to the passage of act 154 well we we had proposed in our budget last year to expand it to full-time the governor's recommend included that uh is a civil rights and environmental justice coordinator position we also have some some um work we're doing to improve our compliance with the federal civil rights policy the the two additional positions that were included as part of act 154 are really focused on environmental justice and community engagement and outreach um that said i you know become very convinced that uh the civil rights work is really the foundation for a lot of what we need to do in the environmental justice space and so i don't think it would be accurate to suggest they won't have any role in our civil rights work at any or either and why um why would the governor only recommend um one one time funds here in this budget so this is a tough one we spend a lot of time with this committee as well as the appropriations committees last year talking about act 154 and had left the legislature with the impression that we would that the funding for the staff positions to support implementation of act 154 would be base funding that's not the way the budget arrived to us we received it as a we called a one-time debt ID meaning that that is the type of money um and as a result aren't particularly sure what the legislature's intention was for funding this work and felt like it was a place for conversation the governor provided one-time money in his budget um so that we could go about recruiting the positions as limited service positions that would extend past the current fiscal year um but i think that there is need for a larger conversation about the how this work will be funded in perpetuity because there is a large scope of work including the other items i've listed here and no budget provided for it at the current time and for new members this committee recommended on that it be in base funding ongoing just to be clear so i don't i don't know what happened out for a left here but that was in our our recommendation there's significant turnover in appropriations committee this year right so may not be well i think well we can remind them and we're happy i'm happy to help flesh um any of these items out if that would be a view of some of interest to the committee it will be representative logan's we may be interrupted i don't know oh right we're at the we're at the long-awaited hour right um really quickly so is there an additional request for the other costs related to the ej work i'm happy to put one together if that would be of help to you um it would thank you yeah thank you representative seven thanks i'm sure are there other areas besides what you've presented and i appreciate the transparency that are one time only yeah so the the complete the completing the mapping tool i would argue is one time only the general assembly appropriated five hundred thousand dollars our best estimate 750 000 that said we haven't put the rfp out yet to have a firm number for you and then there's an ongoing cost of maintaining that mapping tool um the advisory the the next two items on the list i think are things that are ready for discussion by the general assembly the advisory council having facilitation contracted facilitation support similar to what we had for the climate council um i think would is advisable we have uh worked with the vermont council on world development who's agreed to facilitate our first advisory council meeting which i think is scheduled march 10th um but it it puts carla remondy who's our environmental justice and civil rights coordinator in a tough position asking her to both be part of the advisory council and facilitate it we're going to reconvene our meeting with agency of natural resources secretary moore the budget and i believe the presentation was completed before we took our break for the drill and that representative stubbins had a question thank you madam chair um so i know we haven't had a fee bill in a while uh and i'm curious how that's impacting i would assume it's impacted um if it's not i would i would assume it is because i keep hearing from folks who work in in our book um there being asked to do more and more but less and less so wondering if you can shed some light on that sure so uh by a and r i'm going to assume you mean dc and made defer to john bielling i would note that we uh had a significant increase in park gate fees uh that took effect earlier this year this or no excuse me last calendar year um i think about june time frame um which was is predicted to raise about a million and a half dollars of new revenue per year into the park's fund so i don't know that it's accurate to say that that's a separate process i guess it's it's done through rulemaking as opposed to a fee bill but just know that we have addressed fees in that way in the agency so assuming it's specific to dc um and appreciating staff are under uh a lot of pressure right now the agency's budget has roughly doubled during my tenure largely due to federal grants and past due funds that we are administering many of those programs have come with additional staff limited service positions we've added more than 50 limited service visit or been given uh ability to add more than 50 limited service positions to support the administration of these federal funds we are not immune to the workforce challenges most notably in our business offices i think the technical positions have generally been easier to fill um in that i think people are attracted to the mission of the agency versus grants and contracts administrators our financial managers are needed in every facet of modern business um and it's a little harder to pull those people into state service when they can command a higher salary elsewhere so we are struggling in that regard i would actually say um unlike in past times i think our biggest staff challenge is finding people to do the work as opposed to having positions available like the positions need it right we um and john may be able to speak to this in terms of the ARPA funding i think at this point we've filled the vast majority of the technical positions but less than half of the business positions and it's really an issue um in terms of the fee bill happy to walk you through our environmental permitting fund um but we continue to run a positive balance in it um and so it it's hard maybe hard to know when is the right time to raise fees but as long as we're kind of making ends meet um i think the the argument would be this is not yet the right time to to raise fees um all that said i don't want to diminish the stress that staff feel at A&R right now it is an incredible amount of work um that we're endeavoring to to take on climate office and environmental justice unit being new components of work both of which came with staff but starting new things is always hard and i really do think it's a reflection of the absolutely enormous amount of federal funds um we are working to to administer right now you know related to that um so if someone retires if you would be saying do you do you are you able to post that immediately and i i'm asking from a perspective of whether i worked in state government like sometimes we had any months of deferral and just wondering what that process is um you know when someone retires the person i worked for had a very focused effort she said whenever something goes empty the budget is taken away so i'm just wanting to make sure that when someone retires does that position go away is that they can see are you posting that immediately so when someone retires generally the expectation is the commissioners and division directors will review the position and make sure it it's the best use to meet current needs um and uh complete in our request for reclassification if needs have changed some of that is also you know people who've spent who have been career civil servants might retire at say an environmental analyst nine and in reality we may be best served by recruiting for a more entry-level position of somebody who could once again progress through the civil service system um that is something that's left to to commissioners and division directors to to work through our budget always contains a reasonable amount of vacancy savings rarely if ever if we had resources to double fill positions and so you do actually have to wait for the position to become vacant in order to recruit for the next person I want to say that on average we're looking at eight to 12 weeks between when someone departs and the position is is filled so there's there is time in there where we're crewing vacancy savings there were years in the past where particularly in the early stages of COVID where we used vacancy savings as a budget tool because there was so much uncertainty but it moved away from that and our FY 24 budget reflects the I guess I would say the an amount of vacancy savings that reflects sort of standard hiring procedures within the agency just the normal delay between when somebody leaves and when we're through the other end of the recruitment process some of those recruitments are are more extended now than they've been in the past we've had a number of positions recently that have had to go out more than one time for recruitment for want of good candidates again particularly in our business offices so it there's workforce issues bound up in an answer to that question too thank you but to be to be clear like a past practice during COVID of holding the vacancy to sort of depress the budget that's not happening anymore not at my direction I don't want to say that that there aren't individual division directors or program managers that are making decisions in that regard as in order to manage their own budgets but it is at the beginning stages of COVID I absolutely put out a memo and said no hiring without my explicit approval and that's been rescinded and so now to the extent that's occurring it's it's occurring at the program and division thank you so actually I have a follow-on I think so the I'm hearing like I understand there's a lot of money going out it's one-time money but at the same time our permit programs are under increased stress because of just increased development pressure that's happened and I guess I'm wanting to know or get at like what's at the staffing levels in those programs change I mean if there's you're saying there's a surplus in the permitting fund where is that coming from or there's I wouldn't describe it as a surplus I just say we're not running it into the red yet so we're still living within our means there were administrative so-called administrative positions that were created as part of ARPA many of those have gone into permitting programs so for example the drinking water and groundwater protection program has added staff in anticipation of increased numbers of applications coming out of the healthy homes program we added staff capacity in the office of planning which is part of the secretary's office anticipating additional projects through act 250 I believe there's a staff person that's been added in the wetlands program as well as one in the stormwater program so we have in addition to the team providing direct technical assistance related to the implementation of the dollars the federal dollars that are available we have also added administrative isn't the right word but regulatory staff capacity so that we're we maintain our ability to to work through permit applications in a reasonable amount of time I didn't hear you mention this the onsite program that's the drinking water and groundwater protection program it's part of that division okay thank you representative civilian bongart yeah the overall vacancy rate to the agency right now I don't know but I can get that and get back to you okay and I also noted the positive balance as a result of fees and I think we're looking at a fee bill being reviewed this year and so I would I would actually like more information on the positive balance in fees what that means kind of counting or the opportunity to follow this agency yeah if someone may actually be seated immediately here to my left um commissioner belling can speak to that and and I think perhaps um and I apologize chair sheldon if this was the part of the presentation you were looking for today I was just going to try to pull up a little bit of our budget overview so I say that that has kind of the the funding picture for the agency and I just I think it's important to keep in mind part of the problem is none of our programs maybe I don't believe any of our programs want to be a little circumspect rely fully on fee revenue right and so there are questions that the general assembly I put to the department of finance and management about which programs don't pay for themselves it's a really hard question for us to answer because there are almost no programs that pay for themselves within the agency of natural resources we rely on a combination of permit fees general funds and federal funds we are increasingly challenged by flat federal funding it has been flat throughout my tenure and I think at this point it's been flat for more than 10 years which means that the two places that make up the effectively declining federal funds as a result of inflationary pressure are permit fees and general funds and our permit fund continues to remain in the black I think reasonable people could look at different approaches for how you would determine when a fee bill was needed but certainly the administration's review is that it isn't timely at this point given the balance we maintain in that fund I'm not going to be able to quickly pull this oh I know where it is just I have a chart that may sorry I can't talk in it's fine our point it's your little space to find it because I know that is you're not seeing my screen all right um your screen just you have your screen yeah I think I do I think I just have to make this bigger first and I can share my screen share this um so this is the presentation we're working on for house appropriations for next week this is just the governor's budget high level but for the agency but I think this is the figure that may actually you know this paints that this is a complicated picture right this is the different types flavors of money that fund the work of the agency we get about we get more than 90 million dollars in federal funds that's across all three departments we get about 36 million dollars in general funds and then the the rest of these funds over here are what would be considered permit funds special funds things that come into us through tax revenue like the gas tax so it's it's a pretty complicated stew and I just I don't want you to feel like I'm avoiding answering your question but it's not there isn't a linear response to to what's being asked and it's how all of these sources sort of level level out over time that determines whether or not we sort of meet our budget target and our first objective is to maximize our ability to draw down and fully deploy federal funds and then we look to kind of backfill against that with our special funds and general funds to make our budget whole good night bond arts hold off representative sorry especially has some how has been I believe the trend is pause sorry john veal I hear when things are bad and I don't hear so anecdotally and in speaking with my directors I think harmony is going well I think one thing that's really helped us as we moved many of the permits to online application and especially during code that was very challenging when people mailing things we don't have people in the office all the time that causes some large jams but since then I think things go smoothly and in the expectation is really everything's going to be online eventually we're getting there there's a few that that because of federal requirements we actually can't do that strangely enough but other than those I predict probably the next couple of years first way more efficient and we can get pretty quickly and we've enjoyed really strong support and partnership with the general assembly and making that transition over the last three years with resources provided we have we refer to it as an hour online and it's sort of our tool for allowing accepting online payments and applications and we've been able to make some significant investments in improving and expanding that system since the onset of covid which is then a gift to the agency that will keep paying dividends long past our ability to back at the office one more question I know you need to go representative stevens thanks I recall hearing actually maybe this is for mr there have been times where different areas of a and r like one must say it's okay and that everyone won't be able to get to it but because of the way that huge structure that projects can be delayed and delayed and delayed or think that they're fine and then it comes back and they have to redo everything can you guys touch on that again so so we have come up with a system it's called permit navigator it's an online system and it's designed to really help people a lot of those times someone will come in and they'll get a stormwater permit and they'll find out after the fact a lot of something about so that that's really the problem we we you know we're not really set up and then there are there are you know folks you can call to help you out with permitting so we have live you know people you call to say I'm doing this in my career what one of the permits I need there's still folks who do have that job but we also have an online capability so we're trying our best to make sure people know the whole landscape or they really want to put forward some kind of project that they put in applications at the same time a lot of times it's staggering so they'll start on something when they realize oh i got to do this kind of current oh i got that kind of current and so you know each one takes a certain amount of time if we get them on the door at the same time they should move forward pretty consistently some permits frankly are less complicated than others some take a lot more work a lot more engineering a lot more it's just they're just harder some permits are pretty straightforward just like show us this and we could but so that's that's the effort is to try to make sure people come in as comprehensively as possible so we can and we do also through the office of planning that's billy costar's team and the secretary's office offer what i would sort of refer to as a concierge service from larger really complex projects particularly ones that go beyond dc and also implicate some of the interests of fish and wildlife or other agencies of state government and do quite a bit of outreach to folks encouraging them you know for example regular meetings with ski areas presentations at renewable energy vermont working with housing developers working with the electricity utilities to encourage them to come in early when they have big projects in the offing like even before they're kind of fully developed to give us a heads up so that we can start to work through the process with them it's a learning experience for all of us but i think in general people are taking us up on that offer more and more and it is not only to their benefit i think it's to our benefit too thank you for coming in welcome we we may very well ask you to join us again oh i am always happy to do we get thank you slide so you do have it we have it i actually emailed it out to everyone tonight that's what i said that we reached out to our appropriations oh and it got the budget book yeah okay so i i highly recommend members review those documents and then see if you have further questions on the budget yeah i apologize for the misunderstanding and i'm happy to come back yeah um me too uh let us take a five minute break and speak in transition to our next witness meeting and welcome commissioner john biling from the department of environmental conservation to continue our look at the budget good morning thanks for having me here again for the record john biling dc commissioner um there's three uh topics i'd like to go over this morning one is our our healthy homes initiative the second is some additional brownfield funding and the third is some more funding for pfast i know when i came to the budget adjustment act we talked a little bit about initiation of the pfast private well sampling this is really just a continuation of that um the healthy homes initiative has been really one of the most successful programs i've ever been around um we when we started it up we really had no idea the need out there you know we just faced upon data that we had with you know known failures investigations like we we thought we'd get you know a few hundred and the the response when we announced the program was overwhelmed we had people getting i think one one at that point we had one phone number i think she got three 300 emails with 300 voicemails in one weekend um just to give you a sense so there's there's a ton of data there and so there's really there's two components uh to the program the first is the um so it was started just to go back we started it with some arpa funds um and then we were fortunate enough to get some more funding from this body to keep it going arpa kind of got us off the ground we just again had no idea what we were looking at so you know what what it focuses on for individuals it's called the onsite program that's for wastewater systems and drinking water supplies um a lot of the the need is in the wastewater sector um as many of you may know unfortunately it's very expensive to replace the septic system because something like $30,000 and there's just so many people in Vermont who cannot afford that and they just weren't fixing their systems and so some of the stories I've heard are kind of heartbreaking you know people who are living in in really you know substandard very substantiated conditions a lot of them had kids and so um it really it's it's a direct impact to people a lot of things that that we do the impacts are more long term and they're less visible on the short run this is short term impacts and we've seen just you know a great response and it's been it's been a tremendous success um this is the onsite program this is just to kind of give you an overview how it works um it's it's income based there's a couple of tier setup based upon income um a lot of folks that are coming in are very low income they easily meet these criteria and so you know we go out we figure out whether they've a failed system work with them we help them on the assessment and then we provide uh monies to the contractors to actually replace the systems um just to kind of give you a sense of what I'm talking about 54 percent reported house of income less than 30,000 per year 89 percent reported house of income less than 50,000 per year okay so these are the vulnerable people we're talking about um representative house of like four it's household however many people live there usually it's usually two people or one person okay thank you um but this just to kind of give you a sense so so the benefits that we've already been able to achieve we've approximately 625 remanters 145 seniors over 150 children um we've kept the funding going we have enough money to keep going for a bit um but it's going to run out I mean this is something this isn't going away right the we're not going to be in a situation where we could just like declare victory and move on these things keep failing and this this is something that's going to be with us for a long time and I could tell you having been a lawyer for the department it's one of the most frustrating things you bring an enforcement case well how do you bring enforcement case against someone with these kinds of resources what are you going to do right if they can't afford to fix it they certainly can't afford a penalty and so it's just it's a waste of time you know so this is so much better this is so much better use of government resources and then taking kind of the the top down period it just doesn't work it works for individuals and you know commercial enterprises that have money but for people like this this is how to do it and it's been really a tremendous success um so that that's really help you know on-site healthy home so what we've asked for an additional 10 million um we'll use it um we'll use it so um I think it's something that we really should keep going as long as we can um this is a new question of the alms I have a question for you um I'm just curious in terms of changing climate more water more rain is there any as practices that have changed as a result in terms of subject but should we be when we invest in new ones should they be thicker I don't know if climate change I could ask that question of folks who would know I I've not heard that um I do know that standards keep improving you know a system that you've put in today would look a lot different that's something you put in you know 34 so they are designed to have a longer lasting life now I think that's one area I do think technology has really so they should last longer these should last longer I'm hoping we don't have to come back and fix these in 20 years but you know some do fail because of other conditions but most of these are pretty old you know these are from older housing a lot of older housing stock and they've been in use for a long time and eventually they fail you know represent seven things I'm trying um what's the geographic spread of this uh one of the statewide which is statewide but one of the things I often hear being from Burlington is that you know there are rural communities that are really hurting me and I'm just curious how much this is like how much this is really reaching out to folks that may not know about it um and uh could really use it so we've done a lot of outreach I can get you some data in terms of where where there's they've been installed I just know because I've worked on a few sometimes some issues come up so I've worked on some way up in the kingdom I've worked on a bunch in rural areas so I know that there's a lot of rural getting to folks is another issue that's that's something we're really trying to to be aggressive about and get the word out I would encourage all of you to reach out to your constituents I mean that that's what we need we need people to find out because a lot of our a lot of our communications are online a lot of these folks are they're not using it you know or they're using it for very limited things so that's a good point and it's something that that this division it's called the environmental compliance division they're the ones um it's a compliance assistance office they're really working hard to make sure we get to as many people as possible a lot of it's getting out by word of mouth you know I know that that you know someone will get their system fixed they'll tell their neighbor who tell a neighbor and then we'll get these clusters of people said geez I can get it I can get a new system I don't have to pay for it and so it's working but you're right I mean the more people we can reach with this information the better representative Clifford and thank you manager and does that include does the funding include average on like mount systems or pumps systems if they need just the typical I hope I don't you know that's a good question I can find out the answer specifically but I I don't know that we I think as long as enough it's an approved system I don't think we're dictating it if a designer will come in and say here's this appropriate system for this house I don't think we're holding up we're not saying it has to be due to these facts I think as long as it's you know license these are licensed folks right so they they've got their licensure and they'll say to us this is the appropriate system so I don't believe we're saying no you can't we're saying if it works and it's approvalable we're good thanks yeah representative morris thank you madam chair thanks commissioner for coming in on the marketing side of this and you just mentioned that we could reach out to our constituents and our advertisements do we reach out to the community health officers as a possibility to I don't know the answer to that or septic company yeah I don't I don't I know I don't believe we've been working with the accepted companies because if that gets a little tricky yeah yeah um but I could find out whether there's been outreach to the health officers might be a yeah that's a good question oh I gotta find that out thank you representative bondards so um why were the 600 rolled over to this year's because of not enough funding to the last year not enough staff we just couldn't get to them just couldn't get to them just couldn't get to them because of staff thing it worked yeah just you know there's only they take a little while to process so so um but we're we're we're going for we're not stopping we've got some funding we're not like we're not we haven't run out how do you find the who finds the contractors to do this I believe you know it's up to the homeowner but I I'm pretty sure we're permitted you have to be very careful about you know picking and choosing I think we can provide lists like basically let's hear here are folks who can do this okay yeah we can't say go to go to Belling septic right that's okay so another aspect of healthy homes is uh relates to manufacturing homes housing communities you know that's manufactured housing communities in Vermont are um they tend to have a lot of problems around wastewater drinking water they're often not particularly well funded some are privately owned some are owned by co-ops um but traditionally they've been very difficult like I was saying with the homeowner it's the same thing with the manufactured housing community we come in we find problems and they just can't pull it together it's it's the residents typically right it's going to either come out of their rent or a lot of times they're old it's a co-op system so there's just not enough money to improve these systems and and they are I don't know I think I might have mentioned this at the last time I was here but I believe it was 40 percent or maybe even more of the property damage caused by tropical storm Irene were in manufactured housing communities they're vulnerable and so they they bear the brunt and and there's a lot of lower income folks living in these communities and so again this is a great way to improve their quality of life their their health you know safe drinking water safe wastewater disposal um so there's there's a and this is this is really kind of not this isn't unique but I think it's a really uh it's a very positive feature we helped them you know one of the problems you see in Vermont is you know even if there's like now there's a lot of funding available a lot of folks aren't really they're not that focused on getting it or they don't really have the means to get to it so we're helping them helping them figure out what their needs are so that's that's one of the the first item here it's a needs assessment services so we will pay for an environmental engineer to go out and take a look at the MHC and figure out what it is that they need is otherwise usually someone has to do that up front before they apply for a grant they've got to go out get a consultant so here's what we need here's your grant application so the more sophisticated operations they're ahead of this game these are folks who aren't there right so we're trying to help them so they can come to us and help them figure out what they need same thing with technical assistance and permitting permitting can be confusing because everybody is recognizing so we're helping them with the whole permitting process you know these are much bigger projects than just installing a septic system or a drinking water well right these are these can be pretty large some of these manufactured house units are pretty big and so you've got to go through a whole design and permitting and get to get it ready for construction and then the last piece is we will help them up to one four two five million dollars uh fund build build out the water this is water construction that includes wastewater representative Clifford thank you madam chair so john the the needs assessment services 40k i mean is this something you guys do in house or is this something that you know we pay someone oh you do it in house no we pay you pay 48 you know i mean you talk on engineering service yeah well if you got to kind of break it up between these and then technical assistance so so when you combine the two we can go up to about 115 thousand but that's you know i'm not in that business so i don't tell you specifically whether it's enough i don't think we've had a lot of problems with people telling us that's not enough money i haven't heard that so it seems like it's working i mean i've dealt with engineers before i mean yeah it can get expensive yeah i agree that's why i have that's my question yeah so i but you know i think you know we tried to base upon you know past experience you know we do deal with these folks a lot and you know we consult with them so i think i haven't had anyone come back and say look this isn't enough you need to up these numbers so that's that's what i'm basing it on thank you yeah so on so just to give you a sense in the 2022 funding cycle we had 39 applications over 90 projects 36 were selected put out 12.6 million in funding to address 48 projects 11 of them were needs assessments before 40 000 26 technical assistance you see that that's where it gets big 1.27 and then 19 construction grants almost 11 million dollars so these projects will benefit 4 000 residents 1 000 seniors over 800 children so again we're getting to like this is this is environmental justice to me this is how it should work you know we're getting to the people who really need it who wouldn't get it otherwise i mean these things just they're really hard to get and it's really hard to set them up and it's hard to get to granting so it's been a tremendous success so i i think it's something that we should really just keep working on because it's talking about it do you have a sense of the need that's out there we must know how many these communities there are you know i i can get you that i i know that we we do know how many mhc's there are out there so i can find out kind of our estimates going forward that would be great yeah representative tori you mentioned um the devastation from tropical spring i mean are these types of investments hardly enough for i mean to you mean for like um resilience yeah i mean that that needs to be part of an engineer in design nowadays you know there's a recognition in any professional engineer will tell you that if you're if you're building in a flood plain you've got to take certain steps to make it more resilient can you completely prevent what happens when an i-vein happens no but you can try to make it as resilient as possible my screen has frozen so i'm uh i think i've pretty much helped the other two the slides were very brief you can tell this was put together by my division director i put the other slides together i mean the quality is there's a appreciable decline so i i use that you know i didn't the last couple slides were weren't even i'm going to send you the the whole slide deck but then these are they're frankly a little more straightforward this is a more complex process the other two any more questions on on healthy homes so either we have slides up on our webpage are they different from what you i added a couple slides okay they're very brief okay i can do it just off the top my head it's not you know it's really just on the p-fast and brown fields and so on p-fast you know we've talked last time about the initiation of this process to get out there and sample 500 wells i think we're up to over 100 volunteers at this point last i heard so we're getting there we'll start sampling pretty soon so sorry i've missed the beginning because i was a little distracted um say the numbers again so so for p-fast um we you know this was something we had to do anyway so we were we were in the process of getting ready to do it this litigation against three haven't do part kind of pushed us because this the experts in that case need five they they're saying they need well 500's idea to statistically significant sampling so they can model and say how many private wells are impacted so that's that's where that is then we step in there's the regulators and so what we're proposing is to fund certainly for the first you know we're estimating about 75 of the first 500 will be contaminated based upon what we've seen other parts of the state then you've got to kind of draw a circle around impact your water supplies and figure out how many additional wells will lead remediation and we're estimating about 650 just just based on that effort right that's not counting someone who takes a water sample on their own that's just us going out you know doing the 500 doing the circle so we're thinking we're we're expecting to find up to 650 wells that will need remediation and so the cost for that i think that we talked about it last time the installation of the poet system it's about $3,500 that's a one-time cost but operation and maintenance of a poet system is about $2,500 per year which is expensive for a lot of people so our our proposal is to put in the system to deal with the first 500 and then expand it beyond so we think we're going to have around 650 and so the money we're seeking is to pay for poets in a couple years of all in that it's going to depend upon how many wells does positive if we have enough we'll keep on going as long as we can but you know realistically if you if you cost it out completely it's it's over $20 million if you did it for like 20 or 30 years so it's there's a significant cost associated really with the operation made investigations not cheap i'm just i'm curious about about uptake you sent the letters out last time we heard from you and then i did the work we had members of this committee were interested and maybe concerned even about it so just you send out how many letters and then what's been the response 150 letters gone out 100 last i heard was 100 but that was last week there a lot came in right away and now we seem to be getting you know i want to say around 10 or so per week so was there a sort of an rsvp opt out also or just people who want in this is completely voluntary no i know but are you only hearing from people who want in or okay okay i mean i think some people have contacted us with questions and then decided not to opt in there's a number they can call they could ask like what does this mean and so i think some people i rather i know that's that's the way some people think and that's fine that's why it's voluntary um so that's that's where the the 10 billion for the peak fast comes from you know again you know it's kind of like healthy homes it's not going away so we put in how much did we put in the budget adjustment though and then how much three million and now we're asking for 10 more and is 10 is kind of tick us past that that's really just the first 500 and then associated investigation in Poland so that's to get us off the ground so when people come to us we say you're above 20 parts per trillion for these compounds we can act and then you know it gradually we're going to get to more and more and then you know where you know where there's a deficit or a hole right now it's for people who do it on their own this is only set up for when we're doing the investigation if someone does it on their own there's there's no there's really nothing in resources there's been a lot of press on this kind of nationally i know in massachusetts there's a lot of problems with people testing their wells and then there's no funding available for them so i think that's another issue for down the road yeah um legitimate if someone wanted to opt in but didn't get a letter could they call that's yeah i mean i i think because we did it we needed to be very mindful kind of geographic you know uh distribution i mean i guess it's conceivable if we don't get to the 500 we can reconsider that um that that's that's a that's a good question actually i i don't you know we'll have to see if that's where we end up representative thank you manager can you speak to the work there's the ongoing uh and the budget line item um related to uh folks that just opt in to test themselves and that there's no funds i'm presuming that the agency is thinking about how we're going to deal with that in the future developing some planning for that where would we see that in your budget that is not in this budget so i i think that is i think this will really help inform us about what we're working at right so once we get through this process we're going to have experts telling us we think like you know 10% whatever some percent of your private wells at that point we can say okay we dealt with probably that point 1% right so we'll be able to get some numbers together it's okay here's where we think we're going to be so we're basically this upon you know 575 and then up to 650 you know so that's the numbers for now if they come back and tell us you know we think the number is again it's very hard to predict you know i think the hampshire has seen some very high numbers certainly southern hampshire very high percentages if we're like new hampshire that's going to be a giant number if if we're smaller than that then i think we'll be prepared but you know my own view is that this is something this is not a traditional you know i've been doing this a long time so that the old manfrills make the polluter pay well to me somebody who washes their clothes and p-fast comes off their clothes against a dorseptic tank they're not a polluter to me right even though technically they caused it so under the old you know system you said you got to pay for it's coming from your septic system it's not something i'm really excited about promoting it is the way the law works right now it is and so it's a very draconian statue and so you know and it's a good statute overall i just think there's certain situations where it makes sense and you know ultimately you know my hope is not good that from this case we can get a lot of money to fund this and that's that's ultimately where i really hope we could end up we have a fund dedicated to this fund administrator and basically people test voluntarily and they go to the fund that's that's the great uh that's where we're all that's where we all want to see this thing at there's no guarantee so it could end up being us um but just the dynamic that's you understand it's technically someone tests it all well they're they're on the hook or cleaning it up that's the way this the law works uh two questions so one uh i mean one is around federal let me go back to on the hook so you test them well you find pifas are you obligated to address that at that point you under on the state law right you're the owner of a property owner is a property problem which there's no reason that is materials are strictly liable for the cleanup of that material that's the way the law what's the way the laws work for 40 years so being obligated to pay for it is one thing being obligated to do it is another thing so are you obligated to you're obligated to address it i don't think anybody would would force someone to install a public system right it's their own house but technically at that point you come into the system and you've got it you've got to figure out you know you're supposed to determine where it came from etc right what we're dealing with this i mean we're we're not ready we're not i don't believe any i don't believe this has happened yet okay i don't think anybody has come to us as i tested my own well here's what happened they're not you know i don't believe that's happened so i don't want to raise any alarms here i'm just saying this this is the big picture here so as part of this program we were going to pay for it down the road we're going to need to figure some things out so so i i heard you say we're dealing with it perhaps to the concern you're seeing up here we're dealing with with this but you know we're dealing you know basically at this point we are only having you know we're paying for all the cleanup it for things that we test if somebody comes in the door says i've got a PFAS sample we're going to need to figure that out it hasn't happened yet to my knowledge so that was really my original question so where so what is the kind of what is the size of figuring it out that is going on right now is there a person thinking about this is there a planning process is it about this a lot of people thinking about this so that would be me that would be my division director that would be my general counsel so we're all thinking about this this this is a really challenging area it just is because you know fundamentally this is the way these statutes work right this is the way they're set up so somebody you know someone buys a property doesn't perform property diligence and they buy it it's got contamination on it they they're required to clean it up it's not a happy thing to go through i had to go through it many times but it's the way the law works you know so you're we're talking about kind of a new you know a new dynamic here and so you know we're going to need to manage this and figure it out but like i said i i'm not aware of anybody coming in and saying i have PFAS in my well well you know i don't i don't believe anybody has got much call the first letter which tells them that they've got to do x y and z i i don't i don't think that's happy are any Vermont property owners required to test for PFAS so child care centers hospitals schools public yeah i'm talking privately for any kind of public drinking water supply yes everyone has been ever we that's that's a requirement yes and then by large they're paying for it they're paying for the installation of the public systems so child care a private yeah child care system yeah what i'm hearing is disincentivized testing to find out if it's a public drinking water supply they're required that's private but if it's if it serves 25 more people it's by definition a public drinking water supply whether it's privately on the public deal so anybody who's running a child care center that serves more than 25 people it's already required to test for PFAS and we have found it and if you're serving 20 they're not required and so what's is there a liability on that um they have to address it anybody who you know mean to the state or just overall liability they don't well they don't if they she's not to test the most PFAS in their water i mean i can't really give you a legal opinion but i would think there'd be people who upset if their kids were going there and somebody decided not to test them there was a problem so my second question going down that rabbit hole which is really satisfactory that's really concerning is around where we could expect the answers to come from will they be at the federal level at the state level is there federal work on this are you waiting for federal programming and funding no it's waiting for Godot no we're not waiting for the feds we have that they're getting there they're they're pretty far behind us you know states have been led on PFAS Vermont's one of the Vermont Massachusetts Minnesota Michigan a bunch of states that are way out of the feds so the feds are catching up but you know if you're talking funding i'm not expecting that the feds are going to come through i mean i shouldn't say that there is there is there are some federal funds designed to address emerging contaminants and so that that's another possibility going forward is to draw those funds and use those for for the types of situations and the litigation that the private well testing has brought us um would it would it also get to what Representative Sibili is talking about the um the commercial the public water supplies we're only looking at private wells are already i understand the testing is only looking at it but if the litigation comes through yeah what could the fund be for the funding men also be used for those other i guess it really is going to depend on how big the funds yeah now if there's enough money certainly but if it's limited then i think we were directed to based on need and that's something we thought about here it's really complicated to to base this on need because it's not like healthy homes where someone applies you can take a snapshot of their living situation and a supply grant because you have ongoing operation maintenance people circumstances change and you're really setting up a whole program that we're really not staffed to do we're just that's not how we operate so that we thought about that like what it's doing based on need that way we could stress the money out a little bit longer but that gets very complicated in this kind of situation so we're just saying we're estimating we could probably pay for a couple years let's see where we're at litigation representative Clifford i think thank you madam chair um the program if you best volunteer program you're sent out to let us say 700 letters 750 okay so is that based on the three million dollars that was in the budget or the ten million dollar ask so that's the that's the starting point so the 750 the three million is what we're estimating that's where it will cost to do the uh poet installation for the the houses the initial houses additional investigation based upon like i said if you if you have a positive result here you're gonna you know basically bus circle around that and test waters you know drinking water wells around there that's a fair amount of money and then we're estimating we're gonna what we're thinking is that is so that's that's the three just just getting to that initial phase get the sampling right but we're expecting is that you know as things kind of expand outward it's like geometry that we'll we'll get up to like 650 we started so the 10 million is really for the 650 total really 575 right because we're already paying 75 with the initial three million so that's that's yeah this is this is just based on our our efforts and so that's why we're saying like if people are going to volunteer we're initiating investigation we're going to pay for the poet system in a couple years of our day and then you know based upon those results we'll know you know we'll have a good sense what we what we believe the problem the problem it's and then you know and we'll have to figure out how to go about doing that it could just be voluntary at that point it's a if we have a fund say Chester well but that's getting too far down the road i don't want to jinx okay thank you representative sevens it's from here um it's actually more of a process question i have i don't know if you have more slides or more things yeah i'm the only ones were p-fast which we talked about in the brownfield so there's not really i don't know what's going on with this thing yeah well yeah probably so i do too what i can i just lost your presentation he's not found did you take it down that's so funny i'm there and though it's gone i had it i'm trying to log off and get back on so anyway i had the same problem at any rate at any rate no i'm in i don't even have our committee up so back to last year for some reason now i'm distracted but you had a couple more slides actually under healthy homes that were into the budget request for this year that we missed i think you probably just forgot that they were there but they were the last couple okay i think they would be important to revisit if we could okay i'm trying to actively get back to me see if i can see if we really gets us the magic reboot see if that gets us back very strange try i got it back up here so it's getting a will of death yours is not maybe representative Clifford you have yours just so it's a couple yeah i could thank you just that you might have to keep pressing okay just the currency i think the current status funding staffing and then that's so i can so you have these slides so the so basically yeah this is how the 10 million breaks down so so eight million for healthy homes grants again this applies to both the onsite and the factory housing community program wait wait oh yeah okay additional funding request numbers yeah yeah so that's i didn't know if we should go through the current status slides before that 16 million total budget now five fte's raise in the back five 12 yeah i'm gonna scream like stay down you just gotta tap it'll come back to you so yeah so it's eight million for those grants contracts and beneficiary awards going forward the manufacturer to home communities technical assistance contract we'd like to bring on a contractor that can work with mhc's that lack technical knowledge and skills to to basically get into the program so again this is this is i would say this is unique but i think this is where i think we should be having for a lot of these types of projects across the state is trying to help folks get to the money because you know where we sit we typically see the same communities over and over because they're sophisticated and they have either have onsite staff or their own staff or they hire really good consultants to get grant applications that and so we're not serving a lot of people and i think we need to work on that so i think this is a good model for how we can how we can help communities get the funding that's out there um we need we need to extend a couple of our so a lot a lot of the staff we need to meet by our performance which are going to expire so we need we need more people so one billion is for extending a couple of existing fte's for two years and then another 500,000 to bring an additional fte for three years so yeah we like i said i think someone asked them what you know why didn't we get to all of them we need bodies you know we need some yeah so is this these are is this a one time or is this in the base oh okay and just i mean i do think it's important maybe you did this but for me going back to the current status funding slide number 12 16 million total budget you're asking for more on top of that or it's in it's in these two numbers that the mhc program is 24.75 million total budget so the so this is the existing budget the current status funding is happening so 16 million dollars five fte's that's for the onsite program you can see the breakdown two and a half fte for program administration's two permitting the one for permitting clients and then the manufactured housing community program is a 24.7 mine 75 million total budget and we need a one and a half if we have a one and a half fte's for programming so that's our existing budget and what's your total staffing in the onsite program i can get that for you i don't know if tell my head that would be good yeah so the next one was me that we kind of ran through this a little bit but we you know there's me that this is not you know i mean i don't i i hope that this program keeps going well beyond my tenure i really do i think this is a great program and we're helping a ton of support i think it's money well spent because it's it's everything right i mean hard to have you know a good life without having these basic fees back so great thanks so now we'd love to hear about brown fields before we run out of time but we don't have slides for them again these were very basic these were drawing the only productions they're not here this is a good looking at this brown fields you know we we have experienced a pretty significant uptick in brown fields funding requests over the last couple years we estimate we could we could spend about eight million and looking at both assessments and remediation so the two and a half million just just to break it down we've asked for one million for assessment and one and a half million for remediation you know i think it's a reasonable request there there's other monies coming in there's federal monies coming in eccd has some money for this it's kind of a triangular approach it's both economic development and environmental protection again these these are great programs i think of all the things i've worked on for healthy homes i think brown fields provide the most bang for their buck you know you get you know you get properties cleaned up you get them back in the commerce you can provide housing for people jobs for people and so you have these holes you know lying around the state we've got a lot of old new towns and a lot of those properties are really ripe for me to build i think you can provide a lot of benefits to them off so it's this is money very well spent this is one time money that will come through through dc yeah and in addition to what did we put in the baa brown fields well i'm trusting my memory i i think it was a million i thought it was more i thought it was more you know you're right i just don't remember yeah that's okay we can find that too i can i can find that representative bongards is this additional funding on top of base or is this yeah so this and then the there there is already there is already money yeah okay that's why this is additional there is a pretty much right now i think between a lot of things that are going on the housing side and just in economic development in general to try to get a lot of city centers revitalized so there's there's a lot of interest you know seeing a lot of seeing a lot of folks are coming to us and asking and i should just mention the rpcs are very uh integral to this whole process they do a lot of they help us an awful lot presents civilian i'm not sure if you didn't just answer my question but i heard you say there's increased interest in these funds and my question was around why and i think you just said um just in housing pro problem one area i i wonder if you know the more money there is more interest there is i mean if if you know the yeah i mean just to give i get to have some examples here there's a couple of housing projects in rutherland which will create combined total of 46 units of affordable housing uh assessment costs at the two projects with respect to the upwards of $50,000 each so we can help them to fund the assessment part and then then there's also funding to help with the cleanup give you the cleanup accd helps with with other costs related to the development so we're we're on the environmental side we're on the the development side sure so just uh new to this committee uh does the brownfields work up pfas just the brown world brownfields funding cleanup pfas potentially you know pfas is i mean it really depends there there could be pfas contamination at brownfields like pfas is a is a weird containment it's you know brownfield sites you typically associate with kind of industrial uses so you have more like solvents pcb's led phs things of that nature there can be pfas but pfas is this weird chemical that's everywhere and it's distributed aerial deposition that's what happened in bennington bennington that came from a smokestack they got on the ground into the groundwater it's not your typical in my whole career i you basically find a site it's contaminated you trace it upstream you find you know a manufacturing facility where gas station it's okay a to be that's where it came from pfas is very bizarre but if there is pfas or brownfields i'm sure this would cover cleanup for it but it's just the typical brownfield site if like an old mill or an old machine shop or something that has you know the more traditional suite of contaminants and that's that's using what the focus is but you couldn't have pfas can brownfields money be used to clean up a absolute yeah yeah it can't it can't i'm just saying that that so let's just take a scenario you've got an old build building and you find pfas and the soils you would certainly clean up the building and get the pfas out of the soils that's kind of unusual right that would be like that would be like sanctobane right that would be like the old you know manufacturer and plant that actually made things with pfas it's just it's if it happens yes if we find it out of sight we'll clean up whatever's there but i'm just saying what we would expect to find would be kind of what we traditionally see at these old manufacturers that would be a kind of a classic brownfield so i just found our response to the baa and it was a million um into the brownfield so yeah and committee we uh identified areas that we need to follow up on so we'll be talking about those as this budget moves forward representative stevens thanks for your you mentioned um pcb's and i know um that house education is taking testimony in terms of what the status is for testing in schools i wonder what anr's or department house plan means for what we find because i i mean there's three schools that have found lepros thus far i'm really worried that we're going to have like 80 plus schools and we don't have plans right there is a plan in place and i can share that with you i can have uh either matt or trish coppola you know get you there we have an approach to to deal with them it's kind of phased and it's very very site-specific now there are times when you know burlington's kind of worst-case scenario right if you've got a situation where it's just infused throughout the building that's that's one thing i will tell you what what what i'm hearing we meet every week on this so what i'm hearing is that what they're finding it it's typically where they find above action levels it's typically in sort of confined spaces sometimes kitchens closets things of that nature we haven't found a lot of it where the kids are which is great you know there there's been a couple and that's that's where it gets very challenging but if it's just confined to one area you can do you know you can you can still go to school safely and and address the p fat the pcb contamination uh in an orderly fashion it's just if we have a situation where it's you know endemic throughout the school that's a problem and we're going to need to obviously the health health of the children comes first and we need to address it but there is there we do have an approach we're in constant contact with the health department with with education um so you know we're prepared and we are dealing with the schools where we found it and trying to help them all off but there is there is a plan in place to get these things done can i ask a question that we switched gears to oh we have a brownfields question from representative morris does that switch gears to water and then we'll take a break thank you madam pier yes my question is referencing brown fields and thank you commissioner again this is a another very valuable program for the communities that are blessed with the industrial sites that raffa mentioned earlier and uh including some in burlington with the school the pcbs that were found in the school the we have several industrial sites in ruttland that we all have them and but traditionally the cleanup for um for those sites runs millions and so when we when we are only putting 1.5 for the 1 million for the assessment 1.5 for the mitigation and we have another million that's in the budget adjustment that's not even approaching a single site for a cleanup and so i'm wondering what the thought process around brown fields and how do we how do we engage with their communities get these sites back online for the economic development or housing that we're talking about so the state funding is not exclusive there's a lot of federal funding for brown fields and so that that is a big part of the puzzle honestly um that's actually what my wife does for the epa so she helps direct brown fields funding to you know sites that qualify so that's a lot of it we we help out you know we kind of chip in where we can there's certain things we can do we have a little more flexibility than they do in terms of things that we can pay for so we're really kind of a supplement to the federal program and as i mentioned accg has you know significant amount of funding in this area um you know it'd be great if we had unlimited resources that we could pay for all of it but i we think this is kind of a reasonable approach kind of given where we are right now i mean just so you understand there's 155 sites enrolled in the program right now right and so that that represents a pretty significant increase over the last couple years we expect that's going to keep rolling so we just feel like on the balance we can we can make this work you know now going forward and then you know hopefully continue some momentum but i do think these are really good projects but you get a lot out of them you know communities get a lot out of them everyone gets a lot of we get the contamination out we get productive use again when your child's we get housing you know so they're the great projects but i feel like this is kind of where you know where we are right now but i think you're right going forward i don't think this is the end so it's kind of like there's a lot of brownshirts out there you know i'm going to need to keep doing it incrementally and in my last advocacy would be that uh blessed with the pcbe and the coolant contaminations and the coals our oils and et cetera et cetera and now we're introducing the PFAS contamination around the state that the emphasis will shift in the ones that are the older ones will get left behind so yeah i don't i don't have that much fear of that you know i because i that's why i kind of just conceptually i kind of see brownfields and PFAS as two separate issues there would be brownfields that have PFAS problems but to me PFAS is kind of a whole different animal it's a really challenging animal brownfields go there you do the testing you do the assessment you find out what you got come up with a plan you figure how you're going to clean up and then you figure out how you're going to redevelop it that's that's it boom boom you know it's a good collaboration between private and public spending and so i i it's my hope i don't see PFAS is going all of a sudden different from brownfields brownfields a separate train it's been going a long time it's a long-standing program and i think it's it's going to get stronger now i think hopefully it'll stay that way so i have one more question myself and then i know get representative steven says to um secretary indicated that um vision directors are potentially holding positions open um but not at her direction and i guess i i'm the disconnect there i mean are you are you as leadership indicating to your division directors not to hold those positions open because they work for you they do work for me and the buck stops me so i have not directed them not to do that have you directed to fill them i there are times when i have directed directors to fill but not consistently that's not a i had i directed a director i directed an employee to fill two positions so i do it uh i'm it's it's challenging and i'll tell you the reason they do it in some of them is they're afraid of risks and they feel like this is the best way they can protect existing personnel that may not be the best strategy i'm not defending it but if you've ever been through something like that you'll understand right they don't want to fire people so it's it is a challenge um and like i said if it gets acute then i step in so far i have chosen not to do it i think it's only two things i'm talking about here um but you know i think julie does a better job of kind of explaining this big picture but i'm just telling you as as their boss i've chosen not to say you have to do this you know um they're becoming time you know when i make that decision i made that decision late last year and so they're out for recruitment so i can do it um i have not done it to date and part of it is i try to give them a lot of autonomy and i and i respect them you know i'm i'm ephemeral right i'm gone so these are people these are career staff you know and they're protecting their people so i i'm somewhat hesitant to come in and say you do what i say um even if it's counter to their instincts and counter to what they think the best interests of their program are but it's challenging or is it counter to what you think should be happening i think there's pluses and minuses to both you know um you know i it's it's yeah i struggle with it i struggle with it you know and i kind of try to be measured in in how i manage these folks and something that i'm struggling with right now you know it's creating some questions um those aren't the only you know vacancies i mean there are other i believe there's six uh six big six positions represent vacancy savings throughout the department so we're only talking about two out of six so it's it's not just the next part of that is how this budgeting stuff works again this is you know i know a lot about the substance list of this this part of it's not really where i've resided so i i i rely on um my people and my people tell me this is how we do it so we're not talking about a huge amount of positions there there was a time but at that list got too long and my predecessor said we know we got a you got a village and that happened so it's it's at a much smaller level now that it's been in the past but it's yeah it's a difficult position to begin yeah representative severely i think wants to follow up on us yes i do um so what is the measure of acute or too long in terms of so those were you always said that that's when you step in i i i had serious there was a fear that they were they're gonna lose those positions permanently that's that's what created the real what what does what does when does that happen that the there's a process called sweeps where the position is open too long you lose the position so i was in dire fear that that was about to happen and so i made my direction okay um i want to thank you for your testimony this morning and your work um pressure on in vermont um but i have to take the exception um with what i've just heard um about career employees um being the front line for determining the level of staffing and their understand and appreciate their desire to protect their colleagues and the workforce my question would be who's protecting vermonters and that question is answered every two years in our election and the governor is elected and then appoints officials to ensure that vermonters are being protected and i believe that that is secretary's job in your job to ensure that adequate staff is happening and and uh you know again this is new to me um but have been on the receiving end in my communities of uh not enough staffing or uh you know in my region a permit that took a thousand days to be issued what kind of permit uh an act 250 permit um a thousand days for an individual who's single when he applied and was married with two children when the permit came through and so uh i would just take exception with um with what you're describing here is the process for ensuring um that these positions are filled i work in economic and community development and workforce development i'm acutely aware of the shortages that we have in personnel in our state and you know that to me requires not a sitting back that requires a leaning in um for this so thank you madam chair i mean i as i indicated the fuck does stop so it's appropriate that that you express your disposal to me i'm just telling you that in my position i try to balance a lot of things and it's not easy it's not an easy call to make but i appreciate your concern i mean madam chair i'm sorry i am if i might just continue i mean i'm i am really distressed i can see this part but this is something that we are talking about in terms of our budget letter um and any other means that we have to affect us i mean it's not appropriate as far as i'm concerned so with that i'm sorry we really need to break i i mean we need to transition to our next witnesses i mean i think that yeah because we didn't touch on water at all and we heard like campaign for like an hour and a half on all the funding that's disappearing and the staff that isn't there yes so we don't have time to do that right the second i'm sorry thank you for joining us so thank you for your testimony yeah members let's take a three minute break please we're going to reconvene our meeting and continue talking about the budget with conservation districts and i believe Jill arachi will start welcome good morning thank you i'm Jill arachi the executive director of the vermont association of conservation districts and i have two colleagues district managers with me i think it would be good for them to introduce themselves hello my name is jennifer burn i'm the district manager of the white river conservation district um down in orange and part of winsor county and good morning i'm lauren weston i'm the district manager for the franklin county natural resources conservation district welcome thank you our district managers will be doing most of the talking so i'd like to invite jennifer to start and i'll be here to help answer questions lauren has a power point which she'll be sharing with you great thank you so much so um we'll be doing a very brief introduction to the conservation districts and our current appropriations request uh that we are here today to request be included in your in your budget memo uh you can go ahead to the next slide so conservation districts were really created out of the dust bowl era um back in the 30s uh the usda the department of agriculture then the soil conservation service which is now the natural resource conservation service we're out on on the landscape and they quickly realize that in order to extend conservation assistance to more landowners and land stewards and farmers they believe that the solution was to establish democratically organized soil conservation districts to lead the conservation planning effort at the local level um so that's really where we come from we are subdivisions of state government we are run by an elected board of five residents of our districts so across the country there's over 3 000 conservation districts here in vermont there are 14 um one for every county but some of us are watershed based um so we are really rooted in the communities we cover all of vermont and we have over 60 staff right now across all the districts and the vermont association of districts and we work with landowners and land stewards to make management and conservation decisions we we also work with towns and conservation commissions um and and help provide we work right at the juncture of private state and federal money and try to really piece everything together to move projects along um we connect people and organizations and resources and we cover a whole the gambit of natural resources so soil water air plants animal humans and the energy um you go to the next slide so this is believe it or not the easiest way we can explain our structure um we are overseen if you see at the bottom you know the landowners came together back in the 30s to form the actual district um and it it maintains you know that level of leadership today uh so we're overseen at the local level by our elected supervisors and then at the state level uh the vermont natural resources conservation council the nrcc is really our state agency uh it is considered an agency of the state i should say and uh on that council sits a designee from anr a designee from agency of ag the director of the state extension and then four of our elected supervisors also sit on the council so um i believe you can go to the next slide this year the 14 conservation districts are requesting a base appropriation of three million dollars for fiscal year 24 to cover ongoing operational costs that are necessary to meet our statutory obligations this year alone we wrote 168 grants to fund our work and so this core funding is really going to be crucial for us um to continue to provide service and in the community and next slide please so increasing the nrcc's budget to three million dollars um would be able to allow for the coverage of the district managers salaries and providing benefits to us and our staff um really retention of uh our agricultural and conservation specialists and uh and recruitment and training of new staff members we do a lot of community engagement um and so uh being able to you know provide prudiums and reimbursements for speakers and and participants to as we conduct our outreach and and community assessments that are uh part of our legislative mandates as well as some technology needs and software upgrades and administrative and grant management capacity support um we leverage a lot of funding for federal uh match this this appropriations would really uh help us to uh access the federal money that's coming there's there's quite a great deal of funding out there that we don't want to leave on the table um so we are here today to request that we're we being included in your budget memo um our current request is through the agency of ag's budget since nrcc is is currently embedded under the agriculture budget in many years past we were under an ars budget um so uh and we continue to work very closely with an r and and access and and distribute a lot of their their funds their grants in our communities um so we also have submitted info onto your website regarding this ask that gives a little bit more background and information on this next slide and i think i hand it over to chelle just wanted to recap thank you very much last year the legislature gave us an additional 250 000 to nrcc's uh core funding which enabled us to more than double what the base funding we give districts every year to 20 000 per year which is very valuable for districts it enables them to do things like meet landowners and communities provide services that aren't funded by a specific grant manage their board meetings things like that um conduct research next slide please in addition to that 250 000 received 248 in one time funding this was for capital equipment needs so um some trucks to enable districts to do more out in the field including their tree plantings which you see highlighted here as well as a building in poltney meadoway uh next slide please i'm handing back to lauren now hello again um so with this with this request for additional funds we hope to continue to do our great work in our communities conservation districts work in different program areas based on their community needs um so many of us work in natural resources restoration and conservation um this can look like working on lakeshores stream banks for repairing areas forests and other projects that typically have water quality and habitat benefits um this also includes tree plantings for instance um my district is planning to plant about 12 acres of trees this spring we also have about 12 000 trees and shrubs that we are planning uh to set that we are selling to private landowners for them to plant on their own lands through our annual tree sale um the photo you see in the top left is um actually of a project that we just completed at lake carmi to restore an area of the lake shore to a natural condition we also work in storm water and so the project uh the in the image shown here is from caledonia county it was designed to treat storm water that's collected in municipal drainage systems to reduce phosphorus and other contaminants before this project the water was being released untreated into the lamoil river and so we all work with towns and other landowners to help address their storm water treatment needs including long roads parking lots and other drainage systems we also work to educate people about environmental issues in ways that they can be more responsible landowners and land users this can look like hosting events with speakers on a variety of topics engaging the community through outreach at existing events such as field days and connecting one-on-one with landowners um this photo is of a camp owner who receives a lake wise certification and sign which means that they are doing a great job helping water quality and natural resources for their lake on their own property can we also work in agriculture we help farmers transition to more sustainable ag practices and help them to better understand how they can reduce nutrients from leaving their lands to improve water quality i think we have a question on this representative stevens thanks uh madam chair we heard quite a bit uh from the lake champlain i can't remember the name um the lake wise program how many staff does that have my understanding is that that uh program currently has two full-time staff and we're contracted to do the actual certification going out and working with landowners um that we get that funding through currently my district's funded through the l what the lake watershed action plan um that's how we get funding to go out and do the certifications and work with landowners thank you sure thing all right moving on um so how do we do all this great work um so we work towards improving water quality soil health economic viability in the rural economy and climate resilience we do this by building trust and long-term relationships with landowners farmers towns and other partners to help them make decisions for their lands we work with them to assess concerns and opportunities become educated uh plan and provide technical assistance design projects in-house or hire consulting engineers and implement and monitor projects with contractors and other experts and then we use these experiences and relationships to share information back out to policymakers and program designers for instance many district managers are currently providing critical leadership by serving as chairs of their respective basin water quality councils that have changed the way clean water project funding is dispersed in the lake champlain and then for maigawg watersheds this work to improve water quality soil health economic viability and climate resilience in vermont is continuous and growing due to demand conservation districts are able to help people who need assistance making these decisions and accessing resources and it's something that we love to do with that um thank you very much and we'll take any questions your members have questions for conservation district the president of sevilia the increase in base funding was two million three million for what's in the governor's recommend apologies trying to find the right slide here um we are requesting an increase to three million dollars and do you know what's in the governor's budget 3062 so we previously had 12 000 plus that 250 thousand added what three thousand to three million three three hundred yeah three hundred sixty thousand three hundred two thousand i'm sorry thank you so as of until last year the districts were only receiving about a hundred and twelve thousand dollars that we were dividing up among the fourteen districts um from the state everything else is grant uh funded last year we did get an increase to three hundred and sixty thousand um and this year we're we're asking for the the full three million we asked last year as well um we're just a little late so does anyone know what's in the budget the governor's budget recommend okay thank you uh represents sevilia yes uh the three million um where is where where are those funds do you know where the 362 uh in funding comes from is that general fund is that one time funds and do you have a sense of where the three million it would be coming from and how that would be sustained the 362 is general funds right and would be the 248 that we received this year was one time fund and we um we have not um we would like the three million to come from general fund so that it's uh continuing uh funding as base funding for conservation districts we don't at this point we don't have even one staff member funded full time uh for basic services those staff are fundamentally funded by grants so our our preference would be general funds but we've left it up to the appropriations committees to decide where those funds will come from okay so clarification is uh going to three million would eliminate the need to seek grant funding to pay for the staffing of the commissions well thank you for that question our goal is that the grant funding would be for technical assistance and projects on the ground and that this core funding would fund things that either require very small grants that are an inefficient use of time to administer uh might replace some of those very small grants and have the grant writing focus on project implementation so we're looking for management time research time community relationship building time administrative time so how much of your oh your current budget would I mean what is your current budget amongst our budget about three million so you're looking for general fund dollars to cover the totality of the 14 districts current budgets and conservation district staff significantly to meet the new challenges that are coming with additional programs so we wouldn't be seeking to replace that some of the grants we have some of the grants we have just to give you examples are we have funding from the agency of ag for ag technical assistance staff we have funding from dc for clean water project design and implementation those are two of our largest grants we have funding from dc and national fish and wildlife foundation for tree planting projects we have funding from nrcs for stream restoration projects so we would continue to have those grants but we would want the staff time to manage the district programs and grow the district staff so that we can do more basically and and not have our district managers spending a lot of time managing a bunch of smaller grants that I haven't even mentioned because there's too many Jennifer looks like you might ask yeah I would add and I wonder if we could pull up we have a breakdown of the ask and and the different uh chunks of money and how we got to the three million maybe we could share that that would be in our yeah that's important yeah that's a document called because we have it on our webpage okay good so yeah so it's in that it's highlighted uh training um community engagement board and supervisor engagement compensation equipment and facility upgrades uh leadership expenses uh management at the council right now council's essentially an unfunded state agency there used to be a staff position um that was eliminated some years ago we'd love to restore several staff positions to help districts manage all this work and be the stronger link between the the districts and the state government can you just confirm which document you're looking at we're looking at the one that says fy 2024 nrcd appropriations request okay nrcd and i would say in in regard to uh covering staff time we're really thinking of uh the the district managers time needing to be what's covered we have staff some every district is different my district has seven staff currently um so it would just be um take a lot of the burden off of our grants um if my salary was covered more you know in a standard way um as you know a subdivision of state government um and you know our positions are also listed in our statute um so you know instead of me kind of gleaning from every grant that i administer um it would be a more efficient use of our funds and our time um to just use our grant funding for the staff that are working on deliverables on those grants we had a process where we went out to all the districts and asked them to submit budgets for what they needed and that was where the three million came from we did that over the summer last summer so there's specific requests from each district according to their plans and priorities are any of the districts serving as the Clean Water Service Providers in their area uh Holtney Meadowee district is in partnership with Rutland Regional Planning Commission as the Clean Water Service Provider thank you and districts are represented on the basin water quality councils and in many cases the district manager is actually the chair or the vice chair of the basin water quality council any of them would be good for us to count that number the majority of them i would say yeah it would be good to know where you are filling in those um filling those kinds of roles for us to understand and put this request into perspective yeah i i would add there's some i'm i'm from a side of the state where we don't have the councils yet but um i know that there is hesitancy to take on the workload since we have a great deal of workload already so to actually become the council itself you know we we'd need a whole other staff position to do that great and um i just want to follow up on one more thing which is this this is in the your your base budget with the governor is in the agency of agriculture's did i get that right that's right okay and i assume you're taking this ask to the agriculture committee yes we have as well yes okay um representative stevens thanks from chair um it took me a minute to figure out you're actually not a state agency um because it sounds like you're doing a lot of work that maybe the state agencies would normally do is that a fair assumption that's a great question uh districts are technically um um local governmental entities and council is the framework the state natural resource the conservation council is the framework through which districts um were incorporated effectively and approved but we think of districts as a conservation delivery system because we're statewide and actually nationwide and we have a close partnership with the US DA US Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service many districts have offices provided by NRCS um so it does we're technically local governmental entities and NRCC is a state agency but currently unfunded with any general funds just funded with these grants that come through the agency agriculture thank you all right well thank you for joining us this morning i appreciated the question about roles we have many roles where we're facilitating basin planning regional coordinator coordination among technical assistance providers engaging landowners and providing feedback to both state and governmental entities so that's also another role that conservation districts play yeah and i'm pretty familiar with your work um but i do think that um that would help make your case if we understood all the niches that you are filling in even if it's i know it's different by district but um and it it gets complicated pretty pretty quickly but uh i think that would help help us understand this ask better so maybe you could get us something excuse me would you like something district by district maybe yeah summer i think an overview of the niche each district is filling would be very helpful to this consideration great we'd be happy to do that thank you very much and we're happy to answer any other questions yeah unfortunately we need to move on because we have another budget dive to take on thank you understood thank you very much thank you bye bye all right members we're going to um shift gears and welcome the natural resources board chair sabina haskell and uh executive director peter gill to join us rachel and rachel perhaps rachel will be the lead you all can take it from here on one start just using the introduction so sure just once again i'm sabina haskell the chair of the natural resources board and my name is rachel monaco i'm the business director for the natural resources board and pete gill executive director for the natural resources board morning so morning and we were asked to come and give a brief overview of our budget proposal current staffing levels and some of the special projects that we have ongoing at the natural resources board currently so this is a presentation that's on the screen behind me that we gave to the house appropriations committee last week we may not go through every one of these slides i you'll might be happy to hear that but it um definitely hits the highlights of what we were asked to present today and include some additional information that you can bruise at your pleasure um so just a brief overview of all the slides that are included in this presentation but we'll probably stick to the first few which really address the information that you requested that we give to you today um so just as a background i know this committee is very familiar with act 250 but for those of you who may not be um you know the primary mission of the natural resources board is to administer act 250 um we do that through reviewing applications for subdivision and development projects for compliance with the act 250 criteria we do approximately 400 application reviews every year the state is split into nine regional districts um under which there are um staff and governor appointed commissioners that are within each district that review applications that are for projects within those districts um and our natural resources staff is composed of 25 positions funded through a combination of our special fund and general fund in addition to that we have three additional limited service positions which are funded through a one-time ARBA appropriation which i'll get to maybe on the next slide um and we also have 60 citizen commissioners who are really the deliberative personnel who work with you act 250 applications in collaboration with our staff for the FY 24 budget we're requesting um just over 3.4 million dollars those are sourced 20 percent of that is sourced from the an appropriation from the general fund and 80 percent is sourced from our special fund which is related to our act 250 application fees primarily um the appropriations committee asked for us to itemize our carry forward funds how much money we carry forward from fiscal year to fiscal year last year we had a very small amount just over 15 000 dollars we anticipate the same to be true at the turn of the next fiscal year this summer um and it'll give me a segue into some of our priorities for the next year the first of which is act 182 of 2022 which directed the natural resources board to prepare a legislative report on the necessary improvements to the act 250 program that report is due to the legislature at the end of 2023 and i will include here that the governor's FY 24 recommended budget includes a one-time appropriation for the natural resources board hire a facilitator to help with that process um there's a 200 000 dollar one-time appropriation and the governor's recommended budget for that is adding excuse me is that included in the general fund ask or no separate separate any other questions about that before then of sabilia just um where would i find information about the process for that the process for the one-time appropriation or the study yeah um there is not anything in writing yet but there will be very shortly we're doing all the kickoff planning and um looking at the scope of work and rfp process that we'll have to go through uh the feat of if the legislature approves the funding it would not be available until july 1 so uh give a little time to just pull all of that together because it would be in the next fiscal year and that would imply then that your process would be less than six months um we're yes and no because we're i mean i'm definitely a lot of us are digging in already and getting a lot of the groundwork kind of just how we want to do it and then we'll have to hire and do all of that so yes and no i mean but i have a timeline that i think can work and get us still be on time for the report okay representative seven thanks madam chair i'm sorry i know you guys came before and explained your structure but now that we just heard some a in our budget and we're hearing your budget um can you help clarify for me your budget doesn't follow under them but how basically your board looks to them for permits or can you clarify for me how those pieces connect and yeah the natural resources board and the agency of natural resources are two different state agencies um separate purpose of budgetary considerations as well as permitting but they are probably our closest um sister agency and there are certain agency and natural resources permits that satisfy certain criteria in the act 250 process so those if an applicant receives a wastewater permit that could be evidence that is provided to under an act 250 review for compliance with certain criteria that's generally how it works they are stakeholder in our application review process so it would file comments under most applications but they're not part of our regulatory body they're a stakeholder in that process so when i hear concerns about how long are we process is that probably a mixture of both what's going on with the a and r and then also perhaps what's going on at the district it really honestly depends on the situation it could be a and r it could be something happening at the municipal level it could be something happening at the applicant level it could be it just it really each each permit is we look can see what what's missing and try to keep it moving forward but we're sort of a catchall if you will so yeah i think what's what chair haskell is trying to say is that um we rely on a on a variety of different stakeholders in the act 250 review process and their timelines become our timelines you know and there's some some of that where you know there might be constraints internally or externally in that process and each permit for each project that goes through the process has its own specific um problems that it needs to overcome thanks so i'll move on to some of the organizational improvements that we're focusing on the first is that we in 2022 we did launch an online application portal and new database system for act 250 and the natural resources board we did that in coordination with the agency of digital services all of our applications are now filed online and we eliminate the need to file any paperwork copies with our office and we have a new enhanced database that really improves our data tracking capabilities and that's something that we're very excited about in addition you asked specifically about our digitization project which is currently ongoing the natural resources board was awarded a one-time ARPA appropriation of $500,000 to digitize our permit files in two of our nine act 250 districts um really the overarching goals of those that project are to make our records readily available to the public to permanently preserve our records and to reduce our storage space long term um that $500,000 appropriation is likely to be expended in FY 24 but the governor's FY 24 budget includes a one-time appropriation of a million dollars to the natural resources board to continue with that project we have the momentum now and it's a great opportunity for us to as we've ramped up to continue that work so when you say to continue that work two districts are the two districts going to be complete with the 500 that is our hope yes that's a lot of money for digitizing and which districts were they the first two districts are district four in Chittenden county and district seven which covers the northeast kingdom okay so potentially our largest and our smallest yes okay uh and um how many more would the million cover i think two to three other districts depending on which districts we choose like as you said there's different volumes in each district um so it depends on which districts we choose but likely two to three so that would only get us to halfway through the project between the appropriation and the additional million in the governor's FY 24 budget we the approximately halfway through and the additional million is in general funds yes representatives so uh once the records are digitized we'll have access to those so there's while we will have access to a digital copy which will make available on our public database the ultimate goal is to transfer the paper versions of those records to the state archives we've laid the groundwork in our records management record schedules to be able to inventory those files and um if go off to a vendor to be scanned and eventually make it to middle sex to be uh for the final resting place to be in archives and we'll have digital copies available to the natural resources board as well as the archives so you'd be able to search those files and eat either place so it'll be available to the to the public to the consultants who need to use those files rather than traveling to the district they'll be able to access them online we'll have them available well that was going to be my question so there'll be available to the public from their home yes or place of business and now if you want to see those records where do you have to go in person you would have to go to how do you see those records if you're one of my constituents in words bro our website you would be able to access them digitally right now right now right now you would go to one of the district offices so you'd have to get in your car and go to the actual office they're in file uh you know file yeah so in right in springfield or in um the Essex office for D4 depending which office you're at which district you're talking about you go to different offices throughout the state you'd have to physically go in to to see those files is there anyone who can do that for you I mean like I guess I have to fill that part but is it literally up to you to drive to the district office to get the records okay thank you representative Bunger to how far back will this go back to 1970 so all all files is what we're everything that's in hard cocky onions green yeah yeah representative sim that's interesting um do people often reference past projects for the future projects all the time really yes so the permit history on a site can be very important when you're planning the next phase of the project so um they are referenced quite often for any of the events to a to an existing permit you go back and see previous previous files which for new members of all of us it might be helpful I mean you think you said there's something like 400 reviews of projects many of those today are amendments to existing permits they're not new projects do you have a breakdown on that different number how many new projects a year I don't have a number in front of you but look at that for you but you're correct that the vast majority of the reviews that we do every year is an amendment to an original application which can make the archive even more important yes okay so the last bullet point here um is our limited service staff positions um the natural resources board was awarded a one-time ARPA appropriation to hire three limited service positions one executive director and two district coordinators our district coordinators are our technical staff that work with the district commissions to review applications those two limited service district coordinator positions really the intent is to deploy those um deploy those two positions statewide to facilitate the review of ARPA funded projects without delay to our other applications that may not have an ARPA funding component those positions are funded through the end of 2025 very happy to have them and we're currently tracking ARPA projects to help you know fit them to position them to help our staff alleviate some of these bottlenecks that may result representative seven even the example of an ARPA funding project um many of the green school initiatives projects have an ARPA funding component there are also ARPA funding um housing projects um and there are a variety of clean water initiatives either water wastewater projects or stormwater projects those are the main type of projects that we know may have an active 50 component to them I actually don't know what a green school initiative is I think well do you want to speak to that more and I'll fill in what I know what I know is um HVAC and there might be other upgrades that relate to um school pandemic response but I think primarily what we've seen so far getting funding with HVAC kind of project I believe NRB or Act 250 and reviewing an upgrade to an HVAC at a school is what we may not need but they're on you know we devaluate a variety of different projects and many of them may not need Act 250 others may I guess I'd be surprised if a school had an Act 250 permit I mean given the municipal headache or disturbance that would be shocking to me very few do yeah some that do and some that don't right yeah and then it's a matter of material change analysis and like Rachel said it it may or may not trigger Act 250 amendment jurisdiction uh depending on what we're doing right now is making sure that we've got a master list of all the potential ARPA funded projects so we don't leave any any behind we don't leave any money on the on the table to make sure that each of those are addressed if they are than uh Act 250 projects so a school with a Act 250 permit would that be a private school is that what I mean like I just I'm having hard time with us I'd like to know how many schools might be we're talking about um subject to an Act 250 there are municipal schools that do have Act 250 permits associated it's not every school that does um and really most of those schools were in existence prior to the enactment of Act 250 so the jurisdictional trigger I'm getting into the weeds would be a substantial change to a pre-existing development rather than yeah I had a lot of disturbance in and of itself as a municipal project but I think this is a very small subset of what we would actually think might need an Act 250 permit or as Peter said you know we're looking at a master list of where the ARPA funding is being doled out by other state agencies don't want to ignore a project if it does need it but I I'm not um brain schools initiatives is going to be a very small component uh you know it would be a rarity if Act 250 would trigger on those kinds of projects but they're the ones who have been they're the ones who've gotten that are using the ARPA money first so they're showing up on our list before other projects are okay I just as follow up I'd like to know how many of those there might be right now in your world yeah but representative Sebelia on top back yeah uh uh on ARPA funded positions I think I know the answer to this but I'm going to double check the executive director is home so uh ARPA funded is um temporary so do we have a plan for keeping that going well I'll jump in we're doing the Act 250 study that is due at the end of December and certainly staffing and fees and all the makeup of the operations is all going to be a big component of that study can you remind me again Sabina when we would see the study out now the outline of what the study will contain um how we will know how we can provide yeah yeah it'll be it'll be it'll be in the next couple months I'm I've got my kitchen sink left right now it needs to be cleaned up so so well we have an opportunity to they can share the process with you if that's what that's what I'm hearing you say you are hearing me say that yeah I mean I think so why would we not do that and make sure that it's yeah no I'm hearing you say that yes yeah I mean I'm sharing yeah that's right yeah okay great I think um you covered the main highlights of our of the information that you wanted to hear from us today including our budget proposal current staffing levels the um progress report on the digitization study and progress report on the act 182 legislative report due at the end of the year is there any thank you for sharing the whole document with us and since you did um can we and we have a couple minutes I'd love to walk through the crosswalk and just look at that so the f y 23 to f y 24 crosswalk you can see that we have um some additional personnel expenses and a small amount of additional operating expenses personnel expenses are really related to increases in salaries a reduction in vacancy savings target reclassification of two existing staff positions and we have filled quite a few open positions over the last several months that resulted in some competitive hiring um what's the reclassification for our enforcement officers you have two existing enforcement officer positions they were reclassified um from pay grade 24 to pay grade 25 oh I see just good pay grade reclass because not a different okay and our operations increases are really due to rental increases as well as um some of our ads charges are moving around moving from personnel expenses to operating expenses so I'm not good to the other right not a wholesale change from f y 23 but there are some differences oh how do we understand this crosswalk I'm not but I'm I do not the top in the bottom yeah so 23 is top green line is the 23 budget at 3.2 and then the bottom is the 24 recommend at 3.4 and that's okay so we're not it's not a huge difference correct yeah that's exactly right okay so I got it maybe not the most intuitive but yeah you interpreted it correctly the members have questions or further items that they would like to ask the folks from NRV while they're here represent F7s thanks much I recognize that you have your kitchen sink uh and that you haven't even done the outline yet um you have worked there for a little while and then chair for a little while uh do you expect to see opportunities for improvements in um I don't want to say well yes efficiency but I don't mean that to say you know I don't mean to say that we should be squeezing something even further what I mean to be saying you know sometimes there are opportunities to streamline things to make things more efficient but I think that there are opportunities to be more efficient operationally I mean digitizing the files is a perfect example we have a year under our belt with the database and that those those will definitely make big big changes um the where we're going to be looking at the um the additional two staff members and what that means in terms of productivity and efficiency there's often been conversations about is is there enough staff at the NRB so that this will be a nice you know pilot look at that um there is a lot of conversation from different constituency groups different stakeholder groups about the level you know different is there a way to do different levels of review with are there things that could be exempted that's that's a conversation that everybody has to be at the table for is that the answer your question okay thank you thank you for your work and for um this really helpful detailed summary report of the budget it's great thank you and we'll we'll be back with a process document of those study yeah can you give us I don't want to but what's your approximate timeline on that I'll be able to tell you next week okay okay great um yeah all right thank you again yeah thank you yeah members have further um comments or discussion before we adjourn for that morning not seeing any so with that we will