 So, good morning folks, you're almost sunshining day for February 6th, and this is a simple agricultural committee, and this morning we had the honor of having Doug Farnham with us, Chief Flood Recovery Individuals work through the Agency of Administration in South Georgia. We've got the person to come in behind you that actually does the current use program now that you use years back. I think you handle that. So, Jill run and have you in and talk a little bit about the what issue and and dealing with the farmland and cropland and all that, just to give us an overview of how that's working out. And we'll introduce ourselves and Brian Cole, I'm a representative of the Ruffin District, but we'll see you in a couple. I mean, we're in a different place. Brian Campion Bank, I'm Rich Wesson, and I'm from Warren's County. So, good morning and welcome, welcome to the ag committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Doug's farm chief recovery officer. One, you know, we're never satisfied with with one or two paths in the state government. We're small, but fierce organization, right? So I'm the flood recovery. I also am still we're seeing the pandemic recovery efforts and the spending of the our state fiscal recovery funds. So for reference, the reason to how those programs are going, if you don't know the right person to connect with, I'm a good central point of contact for anything. Our state fiscal bipartisan infrastructure law, inflation about connect. If it's new, one time federal funds, you can check with me and I can at least find the right person for you to talk to, even if I if I don't know the answer. They generally stay at a higher level. And then if it's, if it's really problematic, we have to do a referral, but some questions, I can answer myself. And yes, every once in a while, you feel good about something that you accomplish and say government and hire Jill Remig years ago, if you might as assistant director, I think was a really nice benefit to the state because she's done a great job as a director of PBR after I transitioned in other roles. So it's nice to see a steady hand on the on the rubber there. One reason I mentioned the ARPA, I did share a current status update of the ARPA state fiscal recovery for the just for the committee's reference in case you end up having any questions about where we are in progress. For ARPA, I would say most of that portfolio does not directly impact agriculture, but there are some strong indirect impacts on on the agriculture industry in that in that spending portfolio. The biggest things I would say are related to the water investment section because an issue I continually have relates me in many contexts is just workforce housing and agricultural workforce housing is equally challenged. And in many cases to to build that housing are our older water systems. We either have a community considering a water system or operating the water system. So over the last couple of years, I've really found that those investments and water systems are kind of foundational to to growing our housing stock to maintain our current housing stock in an environment in a friendly way. Because obviously if we were a different state than we are, we could slap housing up and not care about what happens with the with the customers, but that's not the state we live in, right? So we do have still over $100 million flowing through our water programs. And over the next 24 already, yeah, over the next three years, we will be seeing a lot of those water improvements go active and that will help facilitate the housing investments that we need to make as well. So that's the main problem. I've earned money. It's good for three more years. It's all for just under three years. So 1231, 2026, when we have to have it spent by we have to have it. Oh, shoot, we have to have it obligated by the end of this year. So by December 31st of this year, however, we are making really positive strides on getting those obligations made. And one thing that we included in the reports, and this is on the third slide in the information I shared is there's an awarded status now that we're tracking where we formally committed to a project. We've set someone an award letter saying, yes, we're going to we're going to fund that project. But we haven't crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's to meet the federal definition of a full formal obligation. And that's why there was a gap on our previous reports. So it's making it look like more money was undirected than it really was. One hundred and seventy million dollars in that award. And so Doug, I'm just wondering, does most of that money flow through and are or is there some in the agency of agriculture as well? You know, so the agency of agriculture's are for investments were relatively modest. They were in the working lands programs. There was six million dollars that was transferred over through the King Water Board process that is directed towards agricultural best practices. So there's definitely been some benefit. So I apologize if I get a little blase about the numbers. It's I think it's roughly one million dollars of our out of the billion dollar portfolio. So I think it's fair to say that, you know, as a state, we didn't we didn't directly are funds for the agriculture and history as a major sector. But we guess there was 11 million dollars of our but that is primarily flowing through the agency of agriculture. And it has been helping farmers adjust to best practices and time to resilience. And we're both the agency of natural resources. So agency natural resources is where the vast majority of that water money is flowing through and most of it having to do with. You know, there was a tiered system of, you know, a smaller program that's designed to help with designed to help with villages that are just looking to get a water system or like right on that edge of needing a water system. And then other programs that are helping people upgrade or fix the combined sewer overflow, trying to help those larger municipalities generally are the ones that that need to utilize that program. And then one of the interesting programs that was launched during the pandemic that we my knowledge didn't have in the month before was the healthy homes initiative, and that does a lot of wastewater system replacement for manufactured home communities, low income home communities. It really we're finding a lot more opportunity in that area than we had than we had thought the program quickly became oversubscribed and was kind of plus up. So as far as you can know, if one had a village that was having water issues, I have a village that had leaky pipes and they've had water issues and they try to build some supplemental water to cast in this pasture, it didn't. And they put moratorium on any development within the village. Is there any money left for them to apply like over the summer? I think at this point, there's a possibility that they would. But most of the programs have pulled in their applications and have made awards at this point. So I'd say that a lot of the a lot of the opportunity there has narrowed for office specifically. However, the bipartisan infrastructure law really augmented the in actually in just a significant or more significant way than of an argument in our water programs. And we should see increased opportunity for those village water system repairs over the next several years. That those bipartisan search law programs are going to run for another three to four years and then have a four year panel on them. In this particular case, they have fixed the leaks that they have agencies now said to them and they went out and they drilled over the summer to try to give themselves more capacity. They hit nothing. So they're in the process of reevaluating and thinking because they need some more capacity, the village of about five, six hundred people. And they and they are now scrambling to figure out what they can do. They thought last year by generally they would get extra capacity. They didn't. So they're stuck and was just wondering what they might talk to. If they're a village of five or six hundred people, odds are they'd be eligible for the municipal technical assistance program. Yeah. And and that's where they should be able to get additional assistance with planning and problem solving project management. So I would definitely recommend. And that program I'm still overseeing as well. So can you give me contact information? Yes, I'll see. So does that program also take in relation, water treatment facilities or just drinking water coming in? So the the municipal technical assistance program is chair. No, I mean the efforts. Oh, yes. The the the slated programs we have running right now does address all of the different, you know, tiers of a drinking water system, wastewater system and the the bipartisan infrastructure law funding was brought as well. So it kind of raised the level of funding in all of our programs pretty significantly, because I know like Rotland has got miles of old, old, old pipe in. So I wouldn't. And I would expect Arlington probably isn't any better. Matter of fact, I think I heard you on the way down they're starting a big project this morning because we do some piping and upgrades. And I don't know if Rotland's in on that or not. I don't know either. I know the federal push for. To speed up the replacement of lead pipes. And that certainly has the opportunity to benefit Vermont. I'm mostly a layperson in that one. But that's about as much as I know about how it interacts with our programs. I just know they're they're pushing. But, you know, they've also been saying they're pushing for the last 20 years in Michigan to replace pipes. That still has an option. So I should think about healthy doses, skepticism. If Rotland would dig out those wooden pipes, they could probably sell out to Michigan Museum or something. I know. It's kind of crazy, isn't it? I mean, amazing. We we dug some out at home. We did. Are they hollowed out for a while? Yeah. Here, I mean, 10, yeah, 15 years. It's still pretty cool. Well, that's the pellets that I'm talking about. These are all plates that were put in in the 20s. Well, they wouldn't have logs. No, they didn't have logs. But I mean, you know, it's the same issue with Rotland. You know, we have a lot of villages that did stuff a hundred years ago at home. Yeah. I would say one one kind of note I've made myself on where our money was directed with ARPA where some of our programs just tend to exist at the state and federal level is that the largest gap for us is in those smaller communities where it's so much harder to start that system or to maintain a small system. Many of the federal programs there in our state programs as well, they run off of calculation of return on investment and economy of scale that is a very difficult bar for many smaller communities to meet. So I would say that's not necessarily something that's easily within our control or the control of the general assembly. Right. It's just an unfortunate dynamic in the way our governments work right now. But everyone wants to be able to answer the question of did you spend government money efficiently and want to be able to say yes. And that leads to a disadvantage for smaller communities, quite naturally. Well, I'd hate to be the auditor that audited some of the federal programs to be of that much to be patient. Yeah, such as housing, that will not. But, and so Mr. Chair, I would like to say the ARPA effort has some indirect impact on agriculture and the main impact it would have is that as part of the governor's recommended budget, we proposed an ARPA contingency process where because we have to have those funds obligated before the end of the year for programs that have run their force, which some of them have truly run their force as they were designed by the legislature or it appears that they are not going to be able to reasonably expend or safely expend their funds within the 2026 timeframe that after September 30th, we would revert those funds leaving, in this case, a finance and management and reappropriate them to want to a pre-confused by the legislature of 90 percent going to PMO match and hazard mitigation and then 10 percent being retained for administrative costs and audit events with the spike in federal monies flowing through with the spike in new program creation. We've seen a spike in the audits done by the state auditor and some of those are very deep involving more than 100 questions. And it just is difficult to pay staff to to answer all those questions and all that scrutiny. So the 36 million, though, I think has a massively strong overlap with agriculture, and that's one thing I want to talk about today. So we have roughly the other document I shared focusing on more of the flood and the impact of the flood talks about the direct damages, direct financial impacts of the flood. And all together, we think that this will be a where we're right now, actually, the current estimated damage is just over 600 million with FEMA. And that is only state and municipal damage. Not federal highway damage, which was 150 million as well. But the the the portions that are eligible for the FEMA public assistance program. It doesn't count individual damage. It doesn't count business or agricultural damage, which I know agriculture is estimated about a 70 million dollar damage right now. But the reason that 600 million dollar numbers is important is that FEMA gives us 15 percent of whatever that number ends up being for hazard mitigation. And that can cover buyouts, elevations and flood plan restoration work. General hazard reduction work. One thing that we have that we didn't have after Irene is that there's a swift current program FEMA calls it. We got a separate amount of money to do buyouts and elevations. After after Irene, we had to use over a third of our hazard mitigation money to support buyouts. And in this, we're trying to utilize in this event, we're trying to use that swift current appropriation for as much buyout and elevations as possible. So the hazard mitigation funding can go towards the flood plan restoration and the other risk reduction activities. Now, approach a certain way, flood plan mitigation and hazard reduction can be antagonistic to agriculture. If you if you approach it with the mindset of, well, we're just going to, you know, drop this down, we're going to conserve the land. Nothing could be done on the land. It's now stored purely storage for the water. And I've been involved in the discussions. I will be involved in the regional discussions around what we're taking on for hazard mitigation projects. I think we need to be we need to be creative about, you know, living with our agricultural landscape, reducing the risk to our agricultural industry wherever possible. And then some trying to find those situations that could be for the win-win situation, where we could be reducing flood risk and still utilizing the land for agricultural purposes. I think it's it gets tricky, right, because we had some crop losses. Well, do you buy must be they buy flood plain land from individuals so that if the water goes above a certain level, it runs out onto this land that the state has purchased so that it doesn't flood homes or and they is that is that what you're talking about? I mean, the most far-billed neighbors. Mr. Chair, the most, you know, the most traditional version, right, is for the state to buy the land for the land to be fully conserved. Yeah, right. For fill to be taken out so that more water can spread out in that area and some areas upstream of Middlebury, wetlands frustration were very successful in this flooding event, stored massive amounts of water, prevented it from doing more damage to Middlebury, Brownville. A lot of the projects that we've done since I trouble to store my rain showed their value in the summer floods. And yes, that state purchase, that conservation is is the most traditional model of it. I think that will still certainly happen where it's appropriate and where everyone agrees. I think the trickiest part with hazard mitigation is getting the individual owners in line and agreeing with the community about what needs to happen. I would say the administration is not interested in ignoring people's property rights, and we really want to find solutions that that everyone can get on board with. The other way to approach this and one reason when we asked for that contingency money, we asked for FEMA match and hazard mitigation, not specifically just hazard mitigation match, but the ability to use those funds for match for FEMA, but also to find creative solutions where if if we need to make sure that if there's a situation where a farmer can theoretically continue using that land, reducing agriculturally when there is no flooding and they could be compensated for the water storage that they're taking on, I think that could be a win-win. It could help insulate some of the farmers against the economic harm of flooding. So I think that's the lane we need to explore is more creative agreements, more creative approaches to balancing how to continue to use the land for agriculture and not just drawing on a map, but well, these look like great floodplains. Let's buy from the farmers and drop the land and move on. Yeah, so now the river, what they call the river road at home. They, you know, years back, they, we had some money set up. They bought a whole fire and tore the buildings down and I'll tell you now when, like when we have the big rains, it's all flooded. They're not going to have to build a road up higher because the road even floods today. But that, that area helps save flooding down in North Troy Village and in high water and Duncan. So who's doing the assessment for that? In my area, most of the floodplain now is it's farmland and most of it is farmland. Most of it has the development rights code. And yeah, and it's in the floodplain in the community. They're discouraging development there. So what are you proposing to buy? So yeah, the way we're approaching that, Senator, is that well, we had one fortunate element of timing recently where last year I was involved in an effort to update our LiDAR data with some, there was the technology around LiDAR and I wish I could actually say what LiDAR stands for. I was just going to ask you. I know that it is, it's a process where they do, they fly over and they have pretty advanced technology to really read elevation levels, right? So they created a digital map of the state. We hadn't, we had collected that over the course of 2023, but we hadn't put it through a full suite of hydrological analysis yet. So that's what we're doing right now and we're working with some partners, some active external partners to help us with that analysis because with all the other work we're doing, it's a little bit tough to do all of that. But what our hope is, is we're going to have that analysis done, that river forward or watershed base and all of the levels of elevation level that will identify areas where the water's going, where we have opportunities for mitigation. So we'll identify those parcels that we want to focus on as far as potential projects. We're lining up, so we have to sprint right now to utilize the Swift Current Program because the deadline for those biots and elevations applications is in April. Then in July, we have to send a list of our hazard mitigation projects to FEMA. And that, so we need to identify those hazard mitigation, those floodplain projects before July. And the way we're approaching that is the regional recovery officers, Pat Moulton, Central Vermont, and Todd Eaton, Holly Hayden have been redirected from agency transportation to help me in that role. They're going to be organizing regional conversations that spring that will help us generate that list of $100 million of hazard mitigation projects. So that's how we're trying to come up with the exact, what parcels, what pieces of land can we work with? I think the thing we struggle with is that we can identify an opportunity for mitigation, but if the owner's not on board, it can kill the entire project. So what we'll have to do is, we'll develop this, we'll have multiple town regional sessions and discussions about the projects because often a project in one town doesn't benefit that town, it benefits the next town, three towns down in the next town. And so we need to get those community groups, those regional support and see if they can permit some of those landowners that it's in the best interest of that region to go along with the plan and also come up with creative ways to try to make it worth that landowner's time in proper, right? I read that, Mr. Chair, I keep hearing the word FEMA, I have a county that was not designated a disaster area, so I have people who are stuck not getting a penny from FEMA, will you be going to those areas and can you spend money there by now at mitigating or are we stuck with just the designated FEMA areas and we'll buy town, they got flooded as well because it's downward work from everything else that flooded. Once again, we left high direct and out of money that stops out of their apartment. Right, so the hazard mitigation projects that is a statewide approach, there's no limitation to spend those monies on declared counties. And yes, I mean, some of the towns in Addison which did not get declared for individual assistance actually had the most rain, had the most water and had very concentrated pockets of damage which didn't hit FEMA's calculations. I would say that for individual assistance, I've been pushing this for a while, that there have been limited progress here, but the Vermont Disaster Recovery Fund is intended to be the path to help people if they have exhausted all their other options. And unfortunately, if you don't get FEMA assistance or SBA, Small Business Administration Assistance, your options are exhausted very, very quickly. So we're still staying connected with that BDRF and encouraging them strongly to have a process for those counties, those individuals that weren't eligible for FEMA assistance so we can give them some support. And I think they do grants up to 25,000 which is helpful, but in some cases people lost two, $300,000 or more. Thank you. Hi, nice to have you. So Doug, you mentioned in the, I know it's a white paper, just this presentation that in terms of the Swift Current Program, 90 million because it's a FEMA match situation, correct? So there's 50 million I think in state matching funds and then 10 million in municipal match. And I realized that spread out over the whole state. So one community is not gonna be facing a $10 million match. How does a local community match it with an issuance of a bond or how do they pay that? Generally speaking, Senator, and that $10 million because well, at least some of the governor's recommended construct, the state would take on the burden of all of the hazard mitigation match so that the towns didn't have to contribute any. So that 10 million is exclusively limited to damage and repair and direct mitigation from the storm like outsizing culverts or putting in a larger bridge with a more modern configuration that can stand up to the weather. We do sometimes see like in Cabot, for instance, they massively outside of some culverts, they still fail through the debris coming down the mountain and that same section of their downtown was still blasted, just carved out. So I think that 10 million, and I know there have been conversations around. So right now that 10 million is the towns paying 5% of the total damages. So we're assuming that this disaster is gonna go to a 90%, 10% cost share between FEMA and state local because their trigger is 111 million and we've got 600 million that exists, right? There is the potential because that 50-50 cost share is set through the Emergency Relief Assistance Fund rule of relieving some of the additional burden for municipalities for that match. And I think the main reason we didn't put that forward in the governor's recommendation budget is that even to secure all the funding for hazard mitigation, that was a difficult balancing act. So we prioritized investing fully in the mitigation efforts to try to make sure that the next time we get this much water, there's less damage. If we hadn't had Irene and been prompted to take on so much mitigation work, this event would have been much more and definitely worse. Can't do it. Well, plus they've dug in the river and made them channels wider and deeper. So the water down through is that from that whole over across to 100, they cleaned that river out. So the dam water would stay in the river and not clean everything out in its path. Is that what you're saying? After Irene needed that? Yeah. No, during Irene. During Irene, as it was done. Well, I'd say because you could hire a contractor and go ahead and do a work. Yeah. That's right. So a lot of the work that you're talking about in the flood relief reform. So because most of the flood playing down through the wild and down through Johnson, Cambridge, Fairfax, all the way down through most of the farmland, the development rights have been purchased by the state. It's going to remain undeveloped farming. The conservation districts have been the most successful in dealing with my farmers and putting up repairing buffers and all of that stuff. And we've had trouble funding and getting money out there for the conservation district. Is any of that 100 million, would it be available for the conservation districts and some of the work that they do? Senator, possibly some of the work that they're doing, I would think, yes. But it would have to theme us relatively rigid in that we have to frame it up as specific projects. Yeah. And we have to present a list of those projects by the end of this calendar year. Because so that actually we've all had some problems. I would just say they've been the most successful at dealing with farmers doing riparian buffers and doing all of that sort of work. And I would think that the people that already have relationship would be the best people to work with the farmers to do stuff. Right. Well, and I think for the example of a large agricultural parcel that is already, the development right is already conserved, there's not gonna be any developments there, right? But depending on how the farmer is using that land, if it could be lowered so that there could be more storage there for floodplain storage, but the farmer could be compensated for the initial risk that's gonna place on them and the additional potential for crop loss, then that could be an approach in some spaces. I do think we're gonna, when we look at the river port oars and our watersheds, we are gonna see areas where there is no, there is no easy answer, right? Where we're not able to mitigate the risks. And I think that'll be a big part of the discussion this spring and summer is what do we do when we run into situations where, okay, well, we know Johnson has a really high risk of flooding, but we don't see any upper opportunities. So how do we go about creating those opportunities and while we're expecting people to rise? Well, yeah, I would just say, you can take Rank Fear's coin field up above Johnson, dig that down 20 feet. Well, I don't want to run an amateur, you're gonna lose that for good growing. Yeah, but what you talk about in that is a lot of the problem below Johnson is that some of them, until they started putting riparian buffers and doing all that you've had runoff, that is created gravel that is ended up in the middle of the river downstream and you can't go get it. So my thinking is if I've got conservation districts that have already had relationships with these farmers, if I could get it, so I didn't get the runoff that created any more get in the river, the problem is let's keep that gravel and stuff out of the river, because once it gets in there, they won't let us do anything. Well, see Doug, common sense doesn't have there's no room for that. Jesus. I mean, you could go out and buy the field that I just mentioned. You could dig, you can go in and dig that, that sort of growing turf out of there, say 20 feet deep and do whatever you want with it. But if you dug the river 10 feet out of the river, which you can't do because of something, you know, you'd have good usable gravel that could be used on back roads and to build them up. But for some reason, we have laws, I guess, that you can't. The only time you can dig in a river is right after the flood when the governor declared an emergency, you have about 30 days to even go in there and play in the water and have a dry-growing dig. But I mean, it doesn't make any sense to waste good growing ground to catch water in and let the rivers fill up with gravel from upstream that basically what's a water run shallower. So all that gets warmer, you know, shallow water warm up from the sun in the summer. So then it gets to the lake and then the algae foam takes off in the lake because the lake temperatures come up. I mean, it just makes no sense to me why we don't keep the water. We're supposed to be in the rivers. When I was young and growing up, you know, small, the town, all we just had our guy with Marshall George with a contractor had a big drag lump and he would take the sand and the gravel out of the, that builds up in the rivers. The town would take it and put it in the stockpile, let it dry out some, and then they'd use it on their town roads and on the farm. I mean, now we had five miles of farmland. And I mean, we did ditching my dad and my uncle, and my uncle, my dad and his dad would have ditching done every year on different plots of that land to keep even the runoff from the fields to stay in the ditches rather than running out into the hayfields or cornfields. I don't know why we don't do that anymore. Somebody a lot way too smart figured that out. Well, let's say, Mr. Chair, that I, you know, I have had conversations with A&R about, you know, why they don't recommend dredging whites only used in certain locations. And I think, you know, I think one of the goals of the regional discussions and the outreach this spring and summer will be to talk through and really for them to show their math and show their modeling and kind of prove their case on why it's not the right solution, right? I do think it's... I hope you're in the meeting in question. Yes. I think that, you know, we can't afford to just apply one lens to this. It's too complex of a problem, right? So we do need to not just have an environmental lens and not just have an industrial lens. We do need to try to balance our approaches to hazard mitigation. I do think, you know, there'll be... If you have a stretch of river where, you know, for 50 miles it's just all agricultural land around it, you know, your options are going to be limited. So I do know that for every community that we're going to go talk to, I know that dredging, why don't we take material out of the river, it is going to be a topic at every single one of those conversations. Well, especially if you get anybody there that's over 30 years old. I mean, you let the kids run the show and they don't know what dredging you miss, you know, other than what they've read in books. You get some of those old guys that ran the town for, you know, for 25, 30 years ago. They'd show up. I know, you know, I can still remember, you know, some New York years ago, I told my dad when they were doing that. And we had some flooding back then, but nothing like we've experienced here in the last 20 years. Right. So you've been probably against this, I think there's going to be an intersection with federal law and state law too, in terms of the ability to do what the chair is suggesting. Isn't it a rule that if that body of water empties into something else and empties into the ocean, that it becomes a federal situation or am I way off base there? You may be right, Senator, but in my discussions with FEMA and with agency natural resources, talking about what we can and can't do. A&R really has the ability to regulate the river corridors in Vermont and to do most things within those river corridors. Lake Champlain, I think you're right about the aspect because the EPA, because of Lake Champlain's position, the EPA has more control over Lake Champlain and that's where we saw it in water problem where we had findings from that, et cetera. But most of our river work, we have less risk of that with what it came down to shortly after the disaster and debris removal from the river, which I think we're still navigating. Actually, just on Friday, there were some more dumpsters and things pulled out of the river and there's still a massive amount of debris in the river that needs to be addressed. FEMA will only pay for debris removal if it's endangering an existing structure. So if you have a debris pile up that looks like it's about to take out a bridge or something like that, if it's just sitting in the river, taking up space that water should be in and looking hideous, they're not gonna pay for that. Up in Wilcox, it was stuffed all along as if they're there, dumpsters and trees all made. Wilcox? Yeah, they had a good dunking ground up there. They were just knee-up down from other... Yeah, from up above in the bucket. And there was probably a little more. Yeah, there was a little bit, the Route 15 up down through the river. I've always been up to the opinion that we did some of our best work and Governor Shumlin was in charge at the time, right after Irene, that you got guys all the regulations and all that stuff was just gone. And you went and saw people just in the rivers, pulling stuff out and repairing roads. And it was done quickly and efficiently and expertly. The sections of Route four, which were gone, literally they were just gone. When they were back with it a few weeks to a month maybe and they're still there and everything worked out. So I think it's a testament that we can do a lot of stuff if you remove the restrictions when you need to. I'm not saying we need to do that every Saturday or Sunday, but it was really amazing to watch that happen. You know, the restrictions may be removed because it was federal disaster, labeled as a federal disaster or something. Because I know... The governor called it... Right. That... The statutes... Right. And then because I know the Army Corps of Engineers came in, they did a lot of work, I know. In my area. Yeah, there were some private contractors, too. Yeah. We're just amazing. It's getting people's lives. They had some equipment in the back of it. We weren't afraid to use it. Something made us wait. Yeah, thanks. But... Yeah. Anyhow, I'm glad that you're aware of it. You know, with the rest of the time. You know, during a good job, you'll continue. And we're sort of running out of time. Yeah. But we, you know, we'll do some more of work on this. And, you know, if we need, we'll invite you back. And use a lot of... You'll find out we're on a crop, something that should thankfully be interested in. You know, we'll probably give me a call. I'm going to start with you. Absolutely, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having me. Thanks, by the way. Yeah, thanks a lot. So we got to find out how we can get all of that script churned in the old... I can't hear best. I heard 15% of script churned in the old. Thanks again, Mr. Chair. Yep. Hi. Hi, how are you? So, I'm going to start with you. Charlotte. Come on up. So, good morning and welcome to the ag and dig. Thank you. And we'll do a quick run around, introduce ourselves. And if I could. Brian Collelmore representing the Ruffin District. I read writers, I don't know if Richard Middler who's a good service. Thank you. This is Brian Campy, the Senator from Bannington. I'm Richard Westman, the Senator from... And I'm Bobby Sharp from Fort Wayne's College, Suffolk. Again, welcome. And so Doug was saying that you kind of took his place at current youths when he and then Donna, some other job in. And so, and of course, we had thousands of acres of current land and forest land and current youths and wanted to invite you in to see how that was all going. And you were still getting requests or gone and all from there. OK, thanks for having me. I'm Jill Remick. I'm the Director of Property Evaluation and Review at the Tax Department. And I did send... I have a PowerPoint and I also have some... I know we're trying to be good with paper, but we do have our PBR annual report. I brought you each copy. It's just kind of a nice snapshot, not only for current youths, but just property tax pieces in general. If you'd like one, if you don't, I won't be offended. I'm going to take one and pass that. And then I also brought along... This is also on our website, but this is the current youths, the 2023 sort of summary of current youth implications by town, number of parcels, homestead, non-homestead, forest agriculture and rural farm building. And so I'm so happy to hear it. If you'd like to know those as well. So Linda, why open a Zoom? Or should I... Do you have a site to do it or you can... Oh, OK, yeah, if you wouldn't mind that. I'll have you put the link on the screen now. Sure, thank you. And tell me this is the right... The PowerPoint? Yes, perfect. Thank you. All right, so I was asked to come in to give you folks sort of a current state of current youths and just start from... Just really provide a little bit of the basics. A lot of information obviously about current youths and anything you want to get in further depth, I would strongly suggest you talk with folks in agriculture and also forest parks. I think you should too if you want to get into the forest. The vast majority of the land is in forestry. Still the vast majority? Yeah, there's a table in here that breaks it out. I mean, it's probably 60% at least for in forest. Yeah. We can keep getting more forestry. Great, thank you, Linda. So just to start from the beginning, just as a refresher, the current statutory purpose of the current youths program, which has been in place since the 80s in some form or another, is to encourage and assist the maintenance of Vermont's productive agriculture and forest land. So that's sort of a key component. This is for productive agriculture and forest land use. It's also to encourage and assist in the conservation for future use and also protecting natural ecological systems. At the time of language also addressed, and this is still what it says in statute, to prevent the accelerated conversion of the lands into more intense use, right? So rather than folks feeling like they have no choice because their property taxes are going up, but to sell off their land at least the parks, this could help retain those larger parcels of ag or forest land. It's also designed to be more equitable for undeveloped land, also of course, to encourage Vermont's scenic natural resources. Once you have this job, we're in anywhere while the current UC channel, but as you drive around the state can sort of picture the parcel map and go, oh, there, that's in front of you, sign up please. And then also of course, to have Vermonters put a plan for orderly growth. So it's helpful to revisit the general purpose. So then like I said, thanks. So I just grabbed the last couple of years just to show, currently there's about 19,600 parcels in a program. It takes up each year, but certainly it's sort of, that's trajectory slowing as there's only so many acres that are eligible, but it does make up over one third of Vermont's total acreage. And as you can see the number of parcels has continued to go up. The number of owners has ticked up slightly. So there's about a little over 540,000 acres that are only hybrid culture. And then there's a little over two million acres of forest and keep in mind a lot of qualified farmers can also have sun-landed forest as well. Yeah. Do you think that the parcels have increased but also the owners have increased? So is that because big bulk of land, maybe the original and bad, and mom passed away in the way and it's had to get split up and with the stairs, do you see that happening? Yeah, I would say most of the processes we're doing are more transfers or partial transfers, absolutely, yeah. Family members, LLCs, but the farm is forming LLC or forestry. So yeah, it's the same, a lot of the same acres but getting sort of divvied up or shared differently. Yeah. So I think you added that kind of information about that in the breakup, the per person size, be clear it's open down, you know. If I go back just 10 or 15 years ago, we saw a huge number of parcels we broke up to 27 acres to, yeah, keeping the weekend in current use of the 25 and they have a house a lot of 20, it's a lot of 20 to 30 pieces. Do you have any background information on that? I think we have that data somewhere. I don't have it today, but yeah. And I think that might have slowed down somewhat because there's only so many ways to split up pieces of parts. And just so folks are aware the 27 acres is because you could have a two acre house site and then 25 acres or more. So there are a lot of those 27. Well, you know, quite a long period of time and some of that is aggressive, it kept pushing up because they appraised land in the first acre. So it pushed the cost of the program up dramatically. And so it would be interesting to keep that in here in operation. You look right at that, but in 21, which is the bottom line, it's 547 and then you've got to 20 of that. And then it drops to 543. Yeah, but the number of parcels goes up. But the number of parcels is up. You can see it right in that. But what that does is because we appraised land, first acre is the most expensive. If you have 120 acres, they do break it up into four lots. You have four first acres now. So the whole thing's worth of costs more money in taxes and costs program more money, but you're covering the same land that you probably have four houses. She was saying if you read the forest acres, yeah, that's gone up 30,000, 30,000, 100,000. Yep, you're making, yep. So ag land is going down and forest land is going up. And it's smaller parcels. And I did that little snapshot just to fit it on the slide, but on page 21 of that annual report, it goes back to 2012, so you can see it from larger. We have data further back than that, of course, but the last 10 acres just took back that. Yeah, I think we've kept every annual report since, in fact, at least, like, 39,000. We've got 2,000 parcels of seaward. When you were here, when the debt currently was stopped, at first it was basically set up, 10 and cash set it up for portion. And we, the Aggies, got in. All right, we can always come back to this if we need to. I just want to make sure I get through these and answer any questions you have. So farm buildings is interesting. It has been used just because an eligible farm building is actually taxed at zero percent value. So in 2023, those values range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over 7 million. So those like super industrial, maybe a sugaring operation or something like that. But if they're eligible farm buildings that are part of the operations of the farm, then they can be enrolled in the program and can be taxed at zero value. And there's, I think, the annual report. There's also a breakdown of farm building data if you were looking for more on that. And then, like I said, we do have it by value and number of parcels on that other sheet that I get down. The farm buildings, you have to be actively using that building to be able to farm. Yeah, it has to be part of the operations of the farm. Of that first. Yeah. What about if you were, you're sold account, but you were using the environment for drawing cannabis in or hemp in, that would be an active use? Still active, if it qualifies, you know, if there's other, if that cannabis operation is qualified farmers. Really gold. Yeah. So the example that Blinbeth Hunt, who oversees this program for our team, gives me is, you know, if you're using it to store your hanging equipment and things like that, that's fine. If you're using it to store an anti-tractor that sits there for 10 years, that's not active. Right. So as we know from every season is short. So stuff might sit in there for a while, but as long as it's part of the active use of that, that whatever's inside of it, it can be eligible. And then next slide. The way that current use works is if it adjusts the property tax bill for enrolled parcels. So when you enroll in the program, you get a contingent lien put on your, on the enrolled portion of your parcel. The Lister or Assessor in your town provides a value for both the enrolled and what's called the excluded. So right that house, say two acres, or if you have other land adjacent, that's not eligible to be in the program. And then there are impacts, both for the municipal taxation and the education fund. So the way the statute works is that every year the municipalities get what's called a whole harmless payment from the general fund that basically makes up the difference of what they were losing out on for municipal tax revenue for the moment. That way it's not incentivizing or disincentivizing municipalities to help us administer the program. They are going to be made full. They're not impacted by parcels getting the program on. And then the education tax revenue is about $50 million in this most recent year, meaning that that was the tax savings to enrolled current use parcels in June 23. Do you have a slide in here of which town's got that much of that? Yeah, I think that is one of the call. Yeah, so that would be in this table. Would you also have this in Excel on our website if you want to just sort through and sit and cut through? But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we're looking up right there. You send it to us, Jim. Yeah. And I think to Senator Wesson's point, as with everything we have seen at the tax department about the COVID impact on their work day, current use was not exact from that either, right? There was a lot of property changing hands, for higher value. If you do break up a parcel, the list there is required to value on my house site if that's appropriate. And so that would be a higher value. So you do see that overall value of the enrollment increasing over these past few years in part on par with everything else for same with property transfer, tax returns and the grand list. So is that a total payout of $50 million rather than the $69 million? Right. So it is $69 million in total tax savings to landowners, right? So the $50 million of non-collected education taxes just simply not collected. It's not collected revenue. Whereas the municipal savings, the general fund actually pays that to municipalities. Yeah. Great. We can go to the next. If you like. Okay. We did have another slide here of this piece. All right. And this was the piece we were just discussing, right? So, and you can see it changed somewhat each year. Those asterisks just mean that we updated those numbers for prior years. But so there's the municipal savings of enrollment. And that's what our whole harmless payment is that we send out to the towns every year. There's the education tax savings to enroll landowners. And then there's just that, the total of those two pieces. So it's ticking up. It's not extreme, but obviously the value of property has been going up. And that shows up in the land use change price as well. And again, we have this table in the report too. So we all, usually all of us go to our town names or city name. We hardly ever get any thank yous because of the policies and things. That $70 million up there. You never hear a word about that. You know, it's helped the whole community. And actually those dollars, if they are paid out or actually spent within the community for economic purposes and now we don't, yeah, we don't hear much about it. Let's see, and I did want to just walk through. It's complicated to administer current use because it involves landowners, involves real estate attorneys in a lot of instances. Any forest lands, they often have a consultant forester to help them with their forest management plan. They do have to follow a forest management plan that is approved and monitored by forest parks and recreation. So any parcel that is coming through our hand or approval or transfer or things like that, that has any forest then associated with it goes also through forest parks and recreation because county foresters and they actually review those and let us know when they're ready. We also do have a small but mighty team with folks at the tax department at PBR that are processing applications, processing transfers, checking various eligibility, looking at maps. There's a lot of components to processing fees. There also is a current use advisory board that is the statutory board. I'm one of the positions that's on that board. It's also made up of folks from agriculture, forest parks and recreation appointees such as municipal official agriculture representative, forest representative and so on. So that it's a good mix of folks and they actually set the use values which I'll get to in a minute. The listeners and assessors play a huge role in this. Well, because they have to value each of those individual pieces, they have to double check their grant list and make sure that the acreage that we have for that parcel lends up with their grant list. If there are any other deans of the lanes or anything else on the property. And then once we have approved an application and an entity or a parcel is enrolled in the program, there's a contingent lien that goes into the land records. So town clerks also have to report that into land records. The idea being that if at any point it comes out of the program, it's not eligible for enrollment anymore, then a land use change tax is set at that time. And if you want the lean removed, you pay the land use change tax. That also, and I have to think I have a couple of slides on that as well. That's also it's developed or no longer eligible. We do have a lot of transfers where maybe one larger piece remaining is still eligible, but then the piece that came out is now too small to be enrolled or otherwise not eligible or the individual owns it is not a qualified farmer. So then those folks would pay that an industry change tax to have the lean removed. So a lot of logistics involved with. Yeah, if a landowner applies for a current use ad going, do they have to have a contract with somebody to keep that active in use or how does that work? Yeah, so you're going to have to be a qualified farmer, which there's a few different ways I can happen. Before they can be leasing, have some sort of a lease with a qualified farmer. There's also an income based requirement that if you are generating at least 50% of your income from the business department, that's one of the ways you can be a qualified farmer. So we do actually collect all those leases too and keep track of the dates. Some of them are 100 year leases and we don't have to say worry about that some of them are for a dollar, but they do need to be either used by or at least to qualify farmer or originality farmer. How do you qualify through leases? Well, that gets into a whole problem that going forward that I don't think the tax department where anybody has talked about. I had leases and the organic firm that I had with the lease, they went out for me in June. And I'm required to have a lease for the agricultural land or at least for any last five years. And the problem now is that the nearest farmer now looking for me is at least 15 miles away. 15 miles away? Yeah. And the question is how do I need an 18 piece with an active farm on that land and now scrambling to figure out how I can keep a land in produce? I'm going to leave that on you up to go forward to 20 farms in reality. And as we've seen the shrinking of the number of farms it's harder to get leases to do that. How do I do that? In the end of the day, I think I'm done. Wow. You could lease that to somebody to say that it helps have for someone. I can, but I'm in the scramble trying to figure out what we're going to do. So I don't have your options. There, my options are going down like this. And I think it's another room for people with aglint on my forest side because as I have to be completely honest we have like more farmers more forest than them to do aglint training. If you're an aglint farmer, you know. But it's only by aglint that I'm now scrambling to figure out what to do. But if you're lucky you'll make it through the aglint listening. So you've got to be there to be able to do that. Well, you know, the organic farm that was next door was the last dairy herd in the valley and living. Could he rent that land out or should I maybe help her for someone? Yes, you could do that. I think you're not alone in that challenge, right? Just to see what folks are doing genuine farming or it's not time for financially effective for them to do aglint. I don't think that's a common problem for folks for these cases. We're talking like so many folks. Do you know that there is not a financial problem for me as you think that I rent out and I start to pay myself? It's hard for me to say that 50% of my income came from agriculture. So I can quit my jobs and I can go to work on this. And you can stop eating. Well, yeah, but I do think I do think that it is an issue for many people. You know, we've gone from how many dairy farms in the state down to less than 500 in terms of what we're going to do. Well, the small ones, the real deal is the small ones are the ones we really care about. You know, big plants will look out in themselves be small farmers, people are getting older and sad to see all those solar off because you don't know who I am. See, see, they're big farmers. or some of them from down the country are in the house. So, we have in the summer place, sorry. Yeah, and a lot of folks, and I should mention there's another way which is to add at least our $2,000 to things from the sample of some sort of product. That's another way that folks can have that. And then the program. But yeah, and then income one is tough too because right now a lot of families maybe one of them is there being body of work, but maybe one of them has a job in the state or something like that. A lot of young couples, one works off the farm, and one works again. So if I have to reproduce that, if they persistent under it, it's a high bar. I think I've got a point about how long it is in here that it's long as one that works off the farm. And before we're at this area, I mean, I'm into the farm. I can't take the farm that's going, that you should still follow. Well, I guess it's in this. We have a lot of areas, there's statutory language, there's regulatory administrative rules, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of your office decision. So I don't want to spend the entire time, but the idea being that I think that is catching a lot of farm workers around now, and it's not, it's not me to catch that, but if it's an important part of ourselves or something like that, he'd keep farm on waiting. We've had a lot of farm workers over the years, and they'll say the white man is a school teacher. Yep. They may bring money home, he can find one going. You know, I mean, they have to do that. He can find one. So I'm not sure about that. But they may bring farm, if it was a man around here, the wife works as a earner, and at the medical center, and the husband, they now are shifting, they have a big sugar rush, but they've got rid of it in the house. So what happens? They've got agricultural land, and then how do they need it, and it's hard to know. Nothing else is going down right now, so our amendment and gas and all those things. So if these were all from 2012, what do you mean by that? Correct. I'm just just going down, they don't know your business, or a little problem with gas. The highest-in-unit requirements should be so, it's over $2 million to them. Woodstock and mama requirements are too inquiry. I think, quickly, we don't need to defend this agricultural land. Well, they must have a lot of land selling out there. I'm not going to say there's a lot of 117 acres. It's no way to get this guy out of the comfort. You gotta have it broken down all around the size of the house. They're each town. Yeah, that's the problem. No number of parcels in each town. But I don't know about that. We're broken out by 144s versus 148s. I think we have the number of acres over on this sheet. We're broken out by 148s. So the number of parcels in the big camps feels a lot harder. The number of acres in Baker's Field in the second half of this week should be no 15,000 or 40 acres in 2400 agriculture, that's just for example. So you could start to have some like 6,000 a little bit, but we could certainly board out a number of parcels. Woodstock has a number in the 90s. I don't need it to be. Yeah, and again, that extension is just to be clear about that the million that is not charged to the right-wing parcels is still made up of. So when you have, you'll notice too that some of the communities may not have a lower crop value because of what we may not have in this final moment. It's not necessarily putting a contingent on our land. But for that use value, it's not going to be substantial in California. But if you have a higher value crop value, then they're more and more likely to get a higher value crop value. All right. All right. All right. No, this is good. This is why I'm here, right? I'm happy to come out. And like I said, if you really want to get into UT, I don't have great visuals for the animals. That's not my forte. But of course, part of our creation has really great maps to show where the different great use moments are. And I'm also certainly I'm sure that maybe you have to send some of them as well. And we also come back with any data or to test if we have any correct use value items. So just for context, I just thought it's helpful for you folks to know for this past year, we reviewed you in about 1,700 applications. And then the majority of those were hand transfers. There's just so much link to around people who might be doing hand transfer or entire hand transfer. And if a parcel is currently rolled in for use, and it changes hands, we have to show that on our free hand transfer tax return, then the new owner of that parcel has a window of time where they can apply to continue to roll. And then they would have to pay a link to change tax or anything like that as long as they with our property are still eligible. It could be the first person you're selling it to is just going to continue to maintain it for use and continue to be eligible. They can continue to get that uninterrupted. So, if I had a parcel and I wanted to send it to the owner and just pull it and the daughter would be in California no longer wanting her half. So, she would all want any hand transfer tax. If she wanted the removed, so the lady would then stay on there indefinitely and tell someone to pass that link to change tax. Yeah. Yeah. We just had a request by last week. They do have an administrative role where the process is trying to update. They haven't been fully updated since 1985. So, they come up with the use value. So, essentially, when you roll, it's all based on the average, right? Other than the farm building component. So, when you all have agriculture land and then use value that you taxed on for 2024 is going to be $483 a acre or for our property. So, the third category is value that forest that's where you live on the road. So, forest parks and immigration and agriculture actually come to you and you can use this really high risk sort of calculations that come up. They use back to at least 10 years. You can see what these values are. So, this is the answer. I got it last year. For 70 years. It didn't go a whole lot. I hope you know about this. It's a I don't think it's going on anything. I don't think it's going on. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's going on. It's it's going on. I don't think it's going on. It's going on. It's going on. I don't think it's going on. I think so. We got a lot of data from like USDA to talk about that. That's very interesting. I was I think so. Yeah. Yeah. We got a lot of data from like USDA to talk about that. So, then for the 24 years those But, you know, some of the reasons for rolling, right, is that you would see a pretty significant property tax savings in the back of a rural district. So that's just an example to show that. But then the next slide is kind of like, why wouldn't you want to raise it in a contingency? Once that's on, that would go to the land. So until it's up, and then when the exchange tax is paid, until it's no longer eligible, maybe there was a contract, and then of course our acceleration where you want to move, then that would be the main thing on the land. There's definitely a cost to burn out the application materials, the maps, the forest management plans. I like to think that agriculture is not quite as expensive, but you still need to be kind of like, mapping and the overworking sense that I think the application should be, including the reporting fee that goes to the town, or is $90. But again, like I mentioned earlier, your property value is low, for whatever reason, then you'd be necessarily trying to enroll in the program and not have that being on alien. And the land exchange tax can't work, actually, as far as this can end, the land exchange tax is pretty difficult to administer and also for our property in order to understand. You don't know what that penalty will be until you made that commitment to remove the land. So because it's basically the way the statute works right now, is the land exchange tax is required as the list or assessor to value that a creature coming out of it has a standalone parcel. And then the land exchange tax is 10 cents out of that. So, so it can be very unpredictable. You kind of feel there's a real process, but so if you're considering going into the program, but you think you might want to take it out, then maybe for 10 years, you don't really have a sense of what that land exchange tax is going to be. Can you move the, you know, usually that two-waker is expected can you move that two-waker is, you know, to a different spawn? Right, possibly. I know a couple of years ago that the statute changed so you could have more than one dwelling within a two-waker site, for example. So folks are sort of moving around whether that is, but they think it might depend on the situation, you know, it's moving from one category into a one-way land exchange. I think it is, you have a role to take it to the woods. So once you get to the woods, you know, and then you have just a wood truck, you decide to take that wood truck and they make it all the way over into the woods. So if you want your two-waker is up into the woods further, could you move it from the edge of the woods to the new spot of the new stuff, maybe more subsequently or whatever reason you're excited to do something like that. Yeah, I think it will be how probably a new map showing what the exclusive entrance is and it will just have to set whatever that value that it has to say. That's good, I guess. There's a summary on the STD, just some of the enrollment, there's a lot to it. A lot of this is mapped out in the statute about what is called by its course enrollment. And then the last year, the legislature did add to a possible is that reserve forest land, that's a new new category now. So this will be the first year of actually seeing how applications that have reserve forest land. It's very intricate qualifications and measurement of what qualifies for that and that would definitely be for KTR. It's the percentage of census areas, that's the percentage of proportionate to the overall average and so on. That should change last year. But do they, you know, do they just try to get out of the car and go for it? Because if they can't get in, they can't get in since they can't. Well, I think the theory is they can stay in, they still have to have a forest management plan. It would be assessed as if it was reserve forest land. That would change last year's assessment and definitely not at KTR government, but that's... I knew all of it. It was just a real hard one. And then when one piece of it... There's some help, people don't have to die, get 58 years and grow old trees and then we're gonna have them pay the tax on them and you know, when the tree gets to the end of its life, it's like us, you'll be all right. And you have to die in the forest and anything else, if you want to help, you need to go to the forest. No, it doesn't, it's not a good idea to get in there. So the last bullet on there that's helpful for this committee is just if an owner is a qualified farmer, then they can have unlimited non-productive forest land or up to 25 acres of productive forest involved. So Aglent and Buildings, right? There's, again, it's pretty clearly spelled out in statute and we have a combination of the statutory language, the administrative rules from the currently surprised report and then like Supreme Court appearing officer decisions. But in general, it's active agriculture use. So pasturing livestock, growing some sort of crop or hay, apple orchards, maple products, things like that, that you're producing something from that. So not to go down the rabbit hole of horses, but if you're capturing horses and you're raising horses to sell horses, you're breeding horses to sell horses, that's active. If I'm boarding my horse on Channel Road, for him to, you know, that's boarding it, I'm not, it's not active agricultural. Sure, can I ask if, this is a question that you face, if we sell hay, the horses to people in Southern New York, is that active agriculture? If you're a Vermont farmer that's producing that hay and selling it? If I take 50 acre meadow and we're not doing other things but we're doing that and some, is that agriculture selling hay to someone in Southern New York? Sure, so I'm going to stop it. Or you say, if we're going to generate two grand, I think that's your hand. So that's the threshold for, if you've made at least $2,000 from the sale of that crop, then that would qualify. I don't know if you would, but I think that's the threshold for that. That would qualify. I don't know if you would, you know, they'll use it one for a buck to feed. Well, I'm, you know, but the reason you would take it to Southern New England or take it to Saratoga are those, you'd go for $4 or $5 to be able to 15. Yeah. I've been told that that's not agricultural and dealing with the horse. Well, I'm done. Come on. I'm just, I'm asking the question. Yeah, I shouldn't have mentioned horses. You know, but horses, I think horses were considered a different category, but I'm not sure if, you know. Right. I think you can sell your crop to whoever and wherever you want as long as you can demonstrate on your tax that you earn at least the $2,000. Let's see, how I went. Yeah. Yeah, just about out of town. Okay. So development, like I was saying, I think we sort of covered this, right? And development is triggered by a few different ways carving out a house site. If you create a parcel, less than 25 acres, right? And again, there is this sort of exception, the cut contrary. So this is if the forest parks and recreation, when as part of the forest management plan, they do a spot check. They find a cut contrary. Here's an example of this. I just saw this morning, digger about a forest land that had a cut contrary is the person they hired is not exactly the most up and up forester. If you construct any building road or anything like that, that's not related to the farming, logging or forestry. So the example I always think of is, we found one that was like, it was a bike dirt track. That's not part of the farming or the log. But if you're using, if you're bringing a new trail reaching the field or a new trail to reach different stands, you're good. Also the agriculture enrollment has to meet the agriculture's water quality. They'll let us know if there's a violation of that. And a lot of times we'll try to work with, I think agency agriculture does as well. It's sort of trying to work with folks to mitigate that. So it doesn't come to the point of actually being removed from the program. All right, sorry, I'm rushing. There's so much to this, but I feel like I'm happy to come back. This is all on our site. So the land is changed tax. I think we've kind of already talked about that, right? That's that standalone. If you develop it, or if you want the land removed, you've got to pay the land just changed tax. It's set as a standalone parcel by the municipality and it's been 10% of that application. And the way that we did that, we collect that, land is changed tax from the taxpayer and then we send back to the municipality up to $2,000. So whatever we've collected. And then there's just a table on the next slide that's just sort of giving you some sense. And land is changed tax is a little different, right? It's not predictable. It's not necessarily linear because different ears, different person might come out, different person might come out that are a different value. So it's not necessarily going to look the same every year. But that sort of shows that trend over time of buildings coming out, acres coming out, and then the number of tolls. I think that's pretty much it. I just, I didn't want to let folks know, especially if any of you have, we are working towards modernizing our processes. We still very much are using paper maps and scanning and applications. And so we have two huge bio rooms of paper map that go back to late 70s and 80s, some of which are kind of disintegrating. So we are going to be moving our, all that we're going to digitize that's part of a larger effort in the tax department, which could also cut back on some of the costs, because right now we actually require applicants to submit three paper copies of the maps because one goes to the local officials for the land records, one is the car files, and one goes to horse cars for creation. So that's expensive when you're, some of these maps are massive and expensive. That's all I have for my PowerPoint, but I'm happy to take any of the questions or come back and then return it. Yeah, well, four, thank you very much. I appreciate it. We may add you back when we get some house bills over here. Okay. We really want to thank you for your time today. Appreciate all of that. You're welcome. Thank you. And so thank you. Thank you, nice to meet you. So committee, you have Jason Mothers, is it? Yeah. Is there more? Grab a seat if it is, and we'll be back in the morning. Yeah, I realize the time is valuable, and I appreciate it throughout the week. Well, we've been running right through, and Irene brought us some material. I believe two weeks ago, in regards to your situation, and it has been a discussion, and both directions in regards to it, whether it should be allowed or not allowed, and we just felt that it would be great to hear from you, and I don't, is Jason a constituent, you're just a close neighbor or something? Relative of the folks. Yeah. He's an extension of that. So we thought we'd have you end, and talk about the issue. Well, yeah, I was concerned because the grossly erroneous information that legislative council presented to you, and what kind of conceptions you guys reached because of it. So I'm here to address those, answer any questions, clear any misconceptions, and take them to the discussion on the table. So the first thing he said is I have a hundred ducks, and that didn't even close the truth. I currently have 26 adults that are used for breeding and egg production purposes. Now, part of my business model is seven live birds and eggs, and I have an incubator with a capacity of 50, so that means when a clutch hatches, my numbers will vary considerably. However, that would mean that the population is going to maintain those numbers. There are ducklings and juveniles that are for sale or to be. So you had roughly 26. At the moment, only six. Yes. And yeah, we were, I don't know, whoever testified to that. They were state of council, Michael Grady. Yeah, but they get their information from, you know, it could be incubator ducks, baby ducks and big ducks or something. Well, at no point if I had a hundred, or even anywhere close to it. Oh, good. Yeah. So I mean, I'm confused as to why you're even discussing not allowing small farming. I mean, this very building statue that sits at the top of that series, the growing goddess of agriculture. That's because agriculture is a foundation of Vermont, and it's part of our identity and culture. I think it should be encouraged, not a farmer shouldn't be a demon of wisdom, operations shouldn't be vilified. And part of our goal was to, you know, to protect and enhance all farms. But when you get down under an acre or an acre or salt, that's kind of a real, real small farm, and you know, especially in an area where there's residents, you know, not that far away. So there's two sides to that story, whether... Well, this extension as, you know, the representative I mentioned is small, it's 4.6 square miles. There is an agricultural district which lies directly next to a densely populated residential area. And not only that, but the city has a deal with the Wickham farm to spread tons of human biomass on those fields next to a densely populated residential area. So they're saying that one area of the same city is okay for that, but not for me to spread some duck manure on my... Are you in the agricultural... I'm in the residential district, but like as I said, the agricultural district that exists in this extension is adjacent to a very densely populated residential area. Yeah. If you were... I was assumed that you were in the agricultural district of your community, that one name being a consultant. Yeah, well, I mean, in the history of Vermont, there's only been one municipality to challenge whether farming is regulated by the state or a municipal level. And that's as extreme as what we're here today. We started there as a town. Well, this all came about because of one neighbor's complaints. To the town. To the town, to the city. There's a long, well documented history of these people sharing his deep fat nose, filing a number of different complaints for a number of different things in terms of my operation, from noise, campfires, and smell. But at no point have I been issued a single citation. I have a four year request. I can show you right now where... where we've had noses called the Fire Department and the police alleging that burning marijuana smoke was entering their home. So on the 6th of 5th of June, 2022, at approximately 11 and 30 hours, I was dispatched. This is the officer's report. I was dispatched to 8th Tap Street location, residence for burning marijuana, and the smell was going into the residence of 6th Tap Street. Upon arrival, I could not smell cannabis in the area nor see smoke. I attempted to knock on the front door twice. No answer. I continued to 6th Tap Street, spoke with the residents who stated that the mail was in the backyard and they allowed me to walk onto the lawn to get to the gate of 8th Tap Street. I was able to make contact with the resident of 8th Tap Street who appeared to be burning a small brush fire in the backyard. So in speaking with Mr. Struthers, I'm following that as the extension ordinance. The only thing that was in violation of was my fire was on the ground instead of on an approved structure. So, you know, either of these people can differentiate between normal campfire and a pile of burning marijuana or they provided false information to the police with mouths. And one thing to know is June 5th of 2022 before I had a harvest of cannabis, dog use cannabis. So how can I burn a pile of marijuana that doesn't exist? Right about hemp. I grew hemp. I grew hemp in 2020 and 2021. And had a lot of burning in 2020. But a lot of it in 2020. I had no chance. Right. It was not. Nor did the officer notice any smell of the sword in this police report. And this, this is the, not only the first time this happened, this happened the second time in 2023 in the exact same thing happened, the fire department brought the ordinance to burning any marrow on it. And how far is that neighbor from? The Jesus. Right next to him? Yes. Yeah, because those, I don't know. I saw the map of the houses and stuff. You know, I get two. Well, and I may be a small plot of half an acre, but I test that's, you know, not only does it do I fit the, but it's appropriate. I have plenty of land for both my cannabis and my ducks. And small farming should be encouraged and unbillified. I mean, acreage. 0.5 to 0.5, thank you. So, I know, I know how big an acre of it is. In half acre, in the hellsong, in the dry voice. And I don't know if you have any elder, you've got a shed to keep the lawn. I have a barn. There's a whole lot of property left there. Well, it's very subjective. I find there's plenty. I could even expand substantial amounts. So you don't do many plants and? What kind of plants? Last year, I had over 150 tomato plants. Not tomato, I mean. I am a cannabis, I'm allowed up to 125. On that property? Not property. It kind of crowded, wouldn't it? On my opinion, I have plenty of room for expansion. I could, well, so in 2020 and 2021, I had 250 hemp plants. Now hemp has a higher terpene content than adult use cannabis or THC-bearing cannabis, which means it's far more smelly. Now I had double the capacity of my adult use license and no complaints were lodged, not a single one with the ADFN anywhere. So this is more of a discrimination against THC-bearing cannabis, reformativeness and taboo against a plant that is not only regulated, but allowed by every home in Vermont to grow. Three is, yeah. Whatever it is, I don't know what the, I've noticed the specifications of my commercial operation, but. Three and inside. Well, you can make a substantial amount of smell with three plants, especially if everybody has it. Yeah, I'm just trying to get a little history or whatever, you lived here before you began to grow cannabis. Yes sir, my family's on this property for 42 years. And not to pick on neighbors or anything, but there was no conflict before this. Everybody was kind of getting along in the neighborhood. Not until I started growing adult use cannabis. Okay, so you feel strong that's what triggered the. Absolutely. I mean, there's been no complaints about my hemp. In fact, the neighbors were asking me for some. And I don't know much about that industry, but it seems like it kind of smells the same. I'm smells more. I would argue it has a higher terpene content. And that's what the molecule that caused smell and taste. So wasn't the ducts they were ejected to it was the? Well, I mean, the original complaint was older. And what it was actually was that I had a compost bin in between our houses and admittedly it was smelly. And I addressed that. And when I brought that up along with a number of other ways that I've been mitigating their numerous complaints, they said that they can still smell hay. And that they don't, and they stated on a public record that they don't mind farming. They just don't want to see it here. So it's a not in my backyard, quite literally situation. But what about my backyard? Am I not allowed to do what I see fit and roll my own food and, you know, offer organic produce, fruits, vegetables and eggs to the community? So do you have a fence between the two properties? My entire property is fenced in, sir. Solid. Sir. Well, chain link, black chain link fence on three sides. And I had to change the fencing on one side. But so it's not, it's just close and wired. But that can certainly easily be remedied. I didn't know a gatter solid fence. No. And then the smell might go up over it. Well, you know, and had any of the neighbors come to me at any point, no neighbor, no member of the municipality or otherwise has come to me ever and said, we have a problem with what you're doing. Is there anything we can do about it? Can we mitigate this? Can we, is there anything we can do? Nothing. I just get noticed from the city in the mail saying that I need to cease operations. So they, they have censor a cease and desist? Well, maybe, yeah, they said that my docs were out of specification with the land development code. I said that I'm an agricultural process and section 1702 municipal code clearly says that all agricultural processes are exempt. And they said, well, you don't think what you're doing is agriculture. So I gave them the definition of agriculture. The city replied and said, well, you need to be a farm. Okay. So I contacted the Vermont Bades Agriculture Farm and Markets and I went through the process and got, and they fit the 2023, excuse me May 4th, I got official status as a farm because I produce and sell fruits, vegetables and eggs. And why, purpose, lifestyle. So what are you hoping your goal of being here today, some background on all of this, which is certainly helpful. Who are your senators? So I, you know. I don't have, I don't know about my representative for helping Karen Dolan, but I had to post the interviews legislation to provide testimony and say, okay, to try to stop my farming operations. So your goal in the legislature is to do what over the next couple of days? Stop H549. Stop H549. Sure. Do you mind reminding me what's 549? It is the regulation of outdoor campus. Got it. So my concern is that representative Houghton presented the bill as only commercial, but as it reads, it is all outdoor campus cultivation, which would affect home growing. So this is going to affect not only every campus business in the entire state, but every single person who wants to cultivate campus. And so, I mean, there's two very separate issues being conflated here, my ducks and my campus. So I'm here to provide information on both. But if there's only 20, you know, pasture, I assume the 26 adult ducks on the same property as you plant your carrots on in the summer. What happens to the 26 adult ducks once you plant your carrots? They continue to produce eggs? No, but in the same plot? Yes, sir. So you don't have to have like a different pasture or area for the ducks? No, sir. There are a pasture raised and they are free of roam within the fence there. Such is one way of doing it. Well, I mean, in August of 2011, I sustained the first fracture and my thoracic spine. Miracles of modern science were able to give me a titanium bird brain to stabilize my spinal cord injury. Part of my recovery process was growing organic produce and cannabis as a medicine. So I've been growing cannabis on this land since, I think, 2015 when I got my medical marijuana card. That are complaint zero. And then 250 plants, giant hemp plants in my backyard, not a single complaint. But the second that it became the abuse, THC bearing cannabis, it became a huge deal. Yeah, that's strange. And it was the same neighbor, correct? Yeah, we have had other complaints from other people small farms, cannabis, the earlier or not pure, but another source. But that's gone on, neighbors complaining about neighbors from the newer spreading to cows roaming loose or heifers to the owners. And it's gone on forever, but so did you grow product on your plot before you say, 15, 20, 15? Yes, sir. Did you used to have same product to that? Absolutely, massive amounts of crops. I try to grow as much as my own food as possible. So it isn't that you changed use of that land. I'm sorry. Other questions for Jason? No, thank you. Is there anyone like to just answer Brian's question? That's the Chittendon Central District. So that would be our team, John, and Ed, Bill. Oh, thank you. We're sorry to question you. Oh, thank you. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I have zero representation or I'm a single disabled person up against an entire municipality, both for representatives in my district and now the introduction of possibly new legislation. Well, appreciate it. I'm here. We only do bills that have that. It takes a lot of work to pass. No, it takes a long time. I don't know the house how they're progressing with that committee of 10, 8, 450, 549, must be an act. It's in the committee of government operations and considerate affairs. Really? I was introduced into environment and energy and I don't know why God stayed transferred. I don't know if it's because they didn't get traction or if they were cannabisists, you know, public office. To see that, Joe would have been introduced last year, I believe. Well, it's a good question. They had a little time this year to put some things in. January 3rd, according to the... Yeah, and so it did. Right, okay. And it was with Amy Sheldon at Middlebury that her committee be relieved of it sent over to us. I would expect all that to end up in May. Yeah, I would expect it has traction. I hope it doesn't. Well, it doesn't always get moved because of traction. It's jurisdiction, and I would... I don't know, I haven't read the bill, so... I don't know if it's ag or if it's... It's not. Anything else you're mentioning, then? I just want to reiterate that I understand that everybody has concerns about farming in a residential area, the impacts it has on pavers. But again, the agricultural district that is in Essex Junction is directly adjacent to a very densely populated residential area. So I'm not doing anything out of what the city's already classified as located. Except for you're not in the ag district. I'm in the R1 district, yes. And that is being challenged, actually, in Vermont Superior, I think. Okay, that... If you were sitting in the corner of the agricultural district, I don't think there would be a hella vengeance with the validity. Yes, sir. Where do you all line? If I'm going to move my operation somewhere else, I'm going to face the exact same opposition. I could be hundreds of feet away from a neighbor, and I could still be a complaint. So how far is far enough, and where's the line drawn? Well, you know, if you're in an ag district, they can put up all the red flags they want, and hollers, louds they want, and... There's a lot about it. You're stuck in a residential district and you're trying to change the use of that from strictly residential to some other form of use. You know, they do have a life to stand on. I mean, I was on the zoning board back home for years and years. And, yeah, we had burn land, but we lived near J.P. in the scary. So it was hard to change that from strictly ag to ag business, you know, ag and commercial. But because if you want just ag land, and you're on the road to J.P., when somebody comes along and wants to buy a corner or a lot to put a motel on or a hotel on, it zones strictly ag. So if you, you know, sorry, that zoning means quite a bit. If you've done it zone ag or zone residential or zone commercial. State law specifically says that municipalities may not regulate farming. Yeah, but they regulate zoning. And that must be what their app do you want is you're trying to farm in a residential area. Well, it's the ducks. It's not my farm. It's not the production of tomatoes or cucumbers. It's the ducks. So I'm trying to think of a way to get around it. Maybe if you. I would love to buy some land in the agricultural district, but the although there's one law per sale and the overwhelming amount of land is owned by one farm. And again, it's right next to a densely populated residential area. So I'm going to be facing the exact same problems. Yeah. Well, if we should happen to get that bill. Help. Well, we'll certainly not apply human. And right to it again. I appreciate that. But I guess the only thing we know is what you love. Okay. I appreciate you coming. Thank you. Coming into. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Yeah, you're here. You're here. We want to certainly hear your. You know, your size and. Thank you. Have a good day. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. All right.