 Good morning and welcome to the Vermont Legislature's House Committee on Environment and Energy. This morning we're going to take up H126 and act relating to community resilience and biodiversity protection. And our first witness is Ed Larson with the Vermont Forest Products Association. Welcome Mr. Larson. It's been a few years. In person be here in person. Take it in for a second. Wow. I think it was here last year. I didn't testify. Okay. Guys that already made up your minds and I wasn't going to try to change. There you go. I think you testified in my form. I'm sorry. I think you testified in my former committee. And the energy. Yes, I did. I'm right. And a couple other things. Good morning. I'm Ed Larson. I'm here representing the Vermont Forest Products Association. It's we're in our 46th year. And started 1979 with the name of the Vermont Timber Truckers and Produces Association. And their whole mission was to try to fix challenges with workers comp and trucking. And Ed Larson with those two issues today, but they weren't brought them together. Right around 1991. We broaden our membership was brought into sawmills and porters, landowners and all kinds of groups. So we changed the name to the Vermont Forest Products Association to be more inclusive. And I've been their lobbyist for the better part of 25 years. And I have been lobbying in this building for 32 years. So something that that was a nice couldn't get it. Anyways, I'm going to be the skunk at your party here on this bill. But thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Vermont Forest Products Association. In addition to being a lobbyist, I'm also licensed as a consulting forester. I live here in Montpelier and operating such a remark. I also teach forestry at Vermont Tech College. And that's a thrill working with young people that are interested in our industry. So, before I get into the bill, I want to just make a few comments and statements. Mostly your response to some of the things that you have heard in the last couple of weeks. Forest management. It protects and enhances tree health, forest health, biological diversity. You protect water quality and we prove it every year. Wildlife habitat, carbon storage and sequestration and resiliency to climate change. And to boot the landowner can get a return on their investment in addition to all the other benefits they've received by owning a piece of Vermont. Now forest management and logging does not cause forest fragmentation. Logging does not exacerbate flooding. But we do it right. And we do it better every year. And we do not degrade water quality or water quantity. I'll make another statement. Probably not heard this one before. More carbon is stored and sequestered in sustainably managed forest than in any old growth forest, unmanaged for timber over time. I'll say it again. A different way. More carbon is stored and sequestered for the long term on managed forest than any wilderness forever wild easement forest reserve or core area. You can prove it. Our civil culture is the science that foresters use. That's what we were trained at. It's a science of understanding for succession and how forest respond to disturbances. It has a bit of an artful flair because of the variability in our forest. There's no two acres alike on this planet. Every acre you encounter, you're seeing different things. So you need to have some flexibility in civil culture as far as understanding what you got, what you want, and how to get there. Forestry profession has always been evolving as we learn we adapt. What we're trying to see for yourself, Vermont has lots of forests that are healthy, strong and vibrant. And it's that way because of us, not in spite of us. Currently, there are 238 licensed foresters operating in Vermont. That amounts to about one forester for every 20,000 acres. Now, if you just go to the 2 million acres that are enrolled in current use, which for most of us are are spending most of our time. You're looking at about 8500 acres. Okay, now my little business I'm very part time as consulting forestry because I spend more time doing this work. I'm doing more than 10,000 acres. So, I challenge. I mean, I would be surprised if there's any other state or any other jurisdiction worldwide that has that kind of concentration of professional trained foresters managing force. So I'm going to now show you a slide here. I want to share. What you're looking at here is a graph. It's a line graph pictures just make it a lot easier to tell the story. This is a line graph depicting for succession. And the lines that go through that kind of describe what is happening during the various stages of succession. You'll see the bottom line there is the number of years. And just above it is some letters. G is a gap. Those are the number of years that forest is kind of recovering from some kind of a disturbance could be a forest fires, could be a clear cut, could be any kind of activity could be a civil cultural activity or could be a natural disaster. R is regeneration. So after a few years, so I'll stabilize. See, it starts to develop, and you have trees growing. He is early successional. He always leaves with optimum in this graph. That's early optimum. M is middle optimum, and then L is late optimum. And you can see that we're right about 100 years now with our forest between 80 and 100 years so we're still in the early optimum stage for the bulk of our forests. But we're moving quickly into MO. Okay, that's a funny word. It's planter. Latin word, and it kind of talks about this into the, and I'm not an expert on this, but it gets into equalization. It's at that point where the trees are just too old, we start to die. And they start to decay. And then you get into T where you're looking at now possible transitions, and then D is decay. You come in that there's no disturbances along that whole timeline. So if you look at the lines, you can see timber stock and leaf area, how that grows with has a tree's bro larger, you would increase timber stock. The other one sunlight on floor and deadwood volume is just kind of the opposite. One because as a tree's bro and they fill up the upper canopy you have shade. And by the shade you lose then those types of species that are sun loving and cannot tolerate shade. So you see how the mix types of diversity changes over time. Now if you go to the bottom graph producers consumers shop afflicted and I don't want to get into all the details of these organisms, but those are organisms that prey on dead matter. And then the other one, Stafford traps, those are organisms that that feed on living matter. So you can see how they change over time. Okay, so the timber stock and leaf area could also be your carbon graph. Okay, how it loads up carbon over the years, and then it goes into decline. Now I am arguing that if we manage it for us we enter that forest every 20 or 30 years, thin out trees, get more sunlight into the trees, doing improve growing stock on the remaining trees. So we can stimulate new regeneration and start a new new generation keeps the forest healthy, much longer. And we're adding carbon stock. We're in other words if we didn't enter those stands every 2530 years. When you get to the end of the life cycle of a forest, you're losing your car. We can continue to keep storing carbon over time, we can manage an old forest. We just feel that they should be managed. This is a little bit more of a description of it, maybe even look clear, but I got it so close. Yeah, Representative Sackowitz has a question. Yeah, can we go back to the last slide some questions about it. So on the on the top graph, we have sunlight on floor and deadwood vine. And you're showing how it changes over time. It's showing that after 300 years that it's just going up. It's just going to keep going up forever that we're going to get to a point where eventually there's the sunlight is 100%. That's what the graph seems to imply. It does involve the spectrum. Yes. So, so, so, so eventually the forest is just completely gone. There's no more forest there at all. Well, we just leave it alone. That's the challenge. If you leave it alone, it will come back. Okay, but it will take a longer time because if you look at the R, the species in there, and maybe I can show you another graph really quickly that would tell you about it. These are the different tree species that we manage in Vermont that have different tolerance to sunlight shape. Okay, you can see that the intolerant trees. The red pine, we don't have much walnut, but all the other species in there. We don't have a lot of jack pine either. But all those are early successional tree species. They come in first, and they grow faster, but they're shortly. So if you, if you were to go to the 300 to 500 years, those trees would not be there. Okay, so that seed would not be there. And the intermediate and the taller trees take longer to germinate, take longer to establish themselves in a wide open forest. When we do a clear cut, we're managing for those intolerant species. When we do selective thinning, just take out a tree here or there, we keep the stocking fairly, fairly tight. We're really favoring the shade tolerant trees. Okay, that's part of civil culture. She got to know what you got to know what you're going to do to maintain the health of that forest. So there's a lot fewer trees that are shade tolerant. So I can also argue biodiversity is enhanced in a managed forest, better than it is an old growth force. You're hearing that we want biodiversity even having to know your in your bill and you find you know that increased biodiversity. We do that. We do that. There aren't. There's nothing in the old growth force that we haven't that we don't have in managed force, nothing. We may have more of lichens in a real force, but we haven't been managed force to and we can manage for that. That answer your question. Not completely. I'm just, I'm just still puzzled because I know there are, there are very old forests around still not very many but there are some right that are more than 300 years old. And there are, there are trees. There's a canopy. I mean, there's, there's not, there's not huge amounts of light getting to a forest floor but your graph here seems to suggest that that wouldn't be the case. Well this graph shows 300 years as a life of the forest. This is not a New England force that is being depicted here. It's a valid representative of a forest's successional situation. Our forest, those trees you're talking about could be 300 400 years old, but at about 450 years old, they're going to rapidly go into decline. There aren't many species that can live 500 years. Sugar maple hemlock can do that but all the other trees don't live that long they just die away. So if you're lucky and they can get some seed on the ground before they go on. Usually at that age they're not even seen well. So that's why you're going to have a period of time of decay where it's hard to get that force restarted unless we intervene and put something there. That's, but I mean seeds seeds travel long distances. When trees fall they create openings that are right if it's a tree you can create a big opening. So you have all of a sudden you have that's when you get more sunlight to the floor but then you have this regeneration you're talking about that that happens in old forest that happens in all force. Yeah, so I guess I still don't. I just feel like that that that the graph at the end there is really not giving us an accurate picture of what really happens in old forest. Well, I don't know these scientists that have made the study but their names are in there and I understand they've been at this for quite a while and they're quite credible so I would argue that it is an accurate representation of how force is close to succession and what happens. I'm trying to make the argument that we can manage that. I understand and benefit from that you're trying to make I just, I just feel like these graphs are really misrepresenting especially at the old and what what is my understanding really happens in forests. So, um, can I just ask if you can mute your device trying I don't know how to do with the echo. That's what I'm trying to get this thing. Oh, you don't have to really focus. Yeah. Oh, here it is. I just got this and his face is not beautiful still doing it. It is. Yeah, if you could give us the reference where this graph came from that would be great. Well, I use it in my lecture. You said this, this was published somewhere that you got this from some scientists. This was a put together slide by group of scientists, and I believe a professor out of Ohio State University. I have to go back and find. Yeah, if you can get that reference. So, you've been hearing from Jamie fight out bless his heart for many years coming in talking about loss of force. And he's using some 11 to 12,000 acre per year volume. We don't believe it. I think it's wrong. If we were losing 1112,000 acres a year, we would take note. We aren't talking about that. We don't see that. Now, I, you know, do see subdivisions take place. You know, in my little world. I had one farmer actually subdivide and break up his land. It happens. And it turned into three different pieces of land, but all three of them are still being managed. And we're losing that loss of force. Maybe a new house shows up. I lost two, three acres. We didn't lose force. I think the numbers more like 2,02500 a year at this point that we're losing which is where the Forest Service is with their numbers. But if you want to talk about loss of force. The last two years we lost well over 15,000 acres to our industry through easements, the public ownership. In the county, we don't see fragmentation. We don't see losses for us. We actually see new force coming. But, you know, with these forever wild easements. We don't see the amount of national forest, national wildlife refuge, agency of natural resources, and the nature conservancy keep buying up land. And it far exceeds the amount of land that the state is losing. We're losing. So, but you combine these three things, a loss of access to manage high quality high valuable trees with these set aside instruments. And we're hearing from some pretty outrageous folks coming here to disparage this industry with misinformation. And the narrative that's underscored in this legislation. It's no wonder this industry is less optimistic about our future. This industry is being forced to right size for the available timber base. So, my last slide. Representative Smith. Thank you. What are your thoughts on the management of coffee and sliding. Are they being managed. Correctly according to. How about the word analysis paralysis. They spend so much time thinking about what they want to do. Planning planning planning and not implementing. So now, public lands are not well managed. We're getting crowded. I understand that. I want to say congratulations in 2020 University of Vermont did a study and has declared that has conserved one third of the land needed for ecologically. Future. We're there. 10 years early. You're all here in 28% 27%. I don't know. These are pretty smart people over there at UVM. I don't know. Maybe you ought to get their people talking to your people and figure out who's right and who's wrong. But we see that. You're there. We don't need this bill. We have another question from representatives that quits. They're saying that we have. One third of the land needed for an ecologically functional future. One third of the land there. We're still two thirds missing. Well, no, it says that you have 1.3 million acres under. Under conservation easements. I'm just going to try the headline. Yeah. It says that we have concerned one third. So we're. But maybe the first sentence. We have a long ways to go is what that. We have a long way to go. But if you want 100%, but no, your bill says 30%. This says you're 33. We want to preserve 30% of the land. But this is saying that if we want an ecologically functional future, there are only one third of the way there. Well, that headline does say that. Yes. Yeah. But I'm guessing that the article says that the article says that. That the state has already protected 33% or 1.3 million acres of highest priority targeted lands needed to protect and connect valuable wildlife habitats. Right. So we're one third of the way there. If you want 100% of our forest. Yes. No. No. If we want 100% of what we need to have a ecologically functional future. Okay. Well, let's move on representative Clifford. Thank you manager. So I guess I'm just, we've had. A couple of foresters. Actually. I kind of understand what the conflict is. You know, Oh, you're talking about Charlie Hancock. Well, he was in here last week for one, but. Well, as I go through the test marks, because now I'm going to get into age 126. I have an assembly of thought from my association and my leadership. Okay. For sure you listen to last week speaks for himself. He doesn't speak for the association representing an industry. Okay. I like Charlie. I like him a lot. It's a great guy. But he does that represent a consensus of the industry. We are on opposite sides of this particular bill and sometimes on other issues too. He supports working for us like we do. But he doesn't agree with some things that we don't agree on. So I just want to point out that he represents himself. He's not representing any, you know, group of folks. And as I go through this testimony, you'll see that I'm bringing in several minds because some of the language is not my language, kind of what other people have telling me too, which we go through this in their concerns. Representative Stevens has a question. Thanks manager. It's a question so you can tell me to be quiet. I guess I just want to flag it, you know, as someone who is a co-sponsor on this bill, I very much value silver culture and the practice of our foresters. And I just for the record, I don't, the intent here was not to be disparaging as I think you put it to your industry. If anything, I think your industry. If anything, I think your industry, you know, is incredibly critical to maintaining the Vermont that we know. So I just want to put that out there that I, I don't think the intent is to be attacking your industry. And I, I'm sensing that you're feeling that. And I personally, that was not my intent by signing on to this bill. And, and my concern about the grant that we're hearing. Is that coming from you or the general? Okay. So that's, you know, But that does put under pressure. See, Silver culture is influenced by three major influences. It's the ecology. It's the economy. And then it's society. And we find that equilibrium as we manage. And we are pulled at pressure. Okay. So society has. A way of putting a lot of pressure on us. And if it's too much pressure, then. The economy suffers. Or, and the ecology suffers. If there's a real problem in the economy. And we have one right now. We can't find markets for. A pulp grade software. Okay. All we have are two biomass plants that we can go to. And a two pellet mills. And they're kind of far away. And. And there's no paper anymore, although we can go to Ticonderoga. And we do go all the way to Rumpford. But because. The economy is so affected. We are so affected by that. The ecological balance is in, in at risk. Because now we are leaving trees in the woods that we otherwise would take out. And that could have a genetic effect. For the next generation. Things like that. So as a civil culturalist, we try to find those sweet spots that balance. So that everything is kind of functioning. But it does get out of whack quite a, quite a few times. And I'm trying to prevent that. On the social side. I just also need to do a little bit of time check because we do have other witnesses scheduled for the morning. I want to hear you. I just want to give the room a heads up. Okay. Well, this legislation is unnecessary. As I said, it sets random artificial goals for conservation. If you look at the already existing conservation accomplishments. We're good for another eight years. Permanent conservation measures are not necessary. There is well over 50% of our forest. Under some conservation plan. The use value appraisal program is the most important conservation program we have. With our rules for an enrollment. Participation. Compared to other stats. States. With their similar current use programs. UVA is very robust. And not all that easy to leave. Therefore, we argue that longer range horizons for sustainable forestry. Naturally occur on those lands. And I don't see a lot of land coming out. When you go into the current use program, you're really committed. And you don't want to take anything out. And but they should be able to if they need to. And I usually see when they fix them out. So they need to, they have a financial hardship. Or they want to provide a financial hardship. Or they want to provide a financial hardship. And so. I don't see people jumping out and moving straight into development. I know what happens. I haven't experienced that myself. But for the most part, I would argue current use. Lands. Is concerned. And should meet the definition of conservation. Doesn't need to be permanent. But it's real. And there's a lot of it. And I don't see people jumping out and moving straight into development. I know what happens. I haven't experienced that myself. But I don't see people jumping out and moving straight into development. And there's a lot of it. And it's well managed. So the concept of the legislature setting a predetermined percentage of the landscape will be counterproductive to well planned and coordinated land conservation. This is especially true. What it includes a predetermined management philosophy for those targets. No, Vermont is don't take too well to top down planning. I don't know if you remit. Some of you might remember back in the 1990s, when we talked about the regional commission. And we talked about the regional commission. And we talked about the regional commission. Court. Governor Howard Dean abolished court. And Vermont is cheered. Don't like statewide top down plan. They want to wrestle and argue and fight over conservation. In their towns. And they tolerate the regional commissions. Because they do some reasonable things to put things together. Township. But they don't want to go any further than that. So they're not going to be really happy when they see that. They're not going to be happy when they see that. They're not going to be happy when they see that. And how things are going to look. In their backyard. So just consider that. I have 10 years as a commissioner representing my pillar of regional planning commission. So. Well aware of the mindset of its planning community. And I support what they do. I like it local like they do. So think about that. Land conservation is presently accomplished to careful coordination of multiple state federal private nonprofit projects. And so. It's important to complicate and hinder. Those current efforts. Good planning and public participation and involvement has been a cornerstone of remote land conservation and management for many decades. The separate will circumvent that established process. Question. How will a and R determine what lands are allocated to what category of conservation. Based on the existing and our public process. They will need a front load. Of all the planning. That is done. After acquisition. Not before. So there have to. Totally change your mindset as to how they're going to. Write a plan. Things change land conservation takes many forms and involves with social, economic and ecological circumstances of the time. Again, those three circles. Affecting civil culture. All is an approach to change of land use change. We presently are in a time. A significant change due to the global pandemic. A post pandemic lifestyle adjustment. And worldwide economic and political instability. Setting goals and predetermined outcomes based on political desires. It's not responsive to a responsible approach. The bill seeks to allocate parcels in the three types of conserved land based on Vermont conservation design. Vermont conservation design has not gone through any broad public discussion. In other words, how will it affect the town tax base, state tax income, school funding, affordable housing. And our industry, the sustainable working force based industries. And all land owners will be impacted by these initiatives. Now. You've heard in the past from commissioners and the secretary. That conservation. Vermont conservation design is a tool. internally to help guide their work. They have asked to not make it a rule or a law or to build public policy around that. So I think we need to be careful there. Again, we've had no opportunity to understand it. The public does not know about it, only what they've heard. And I think the goal of 50% by 2050 will be much more difficult. And what's going to happen if you don't make that goal? 80% of the land is privately held, easements are usually granted through by a willing seller and a willing buyer. What are you going to do? I defend property rights. I'm one of the few that comes back to this building and defends property rights anymore. When I started, they were like five or six of us working together. It's only me now. I have to work on that and I defend property rights. Are you going to force a willing seller? I don't know yet. I think you need to hear from other people that could be affected by this, the League of Citizens Towns. Planning Commission, I know Peter's here. That's good. I hope you represent the broad spectrum and try to explain to us why there are some planning commissions that don't like this bill. Since public lands are included, I'd like to know more from the secretary on how they're going to do it. You haven't heard from the Forest Service yet. The U.S. Forest Service is guided by federal law. They don't have to follow state law. How are they going to respond to this? I know that the provider works hard to respect state law, but they could legally ignore it. Timeline, just because a presidential executive order dictates 30 by 30, we are so close now. Why can't we take a breath, flush out the concerns that I've been talking about, and really do a good policy on how we can conserve? We're doing a good job the way we're going. Teach us. Don't dictate to us. So our industry is your only hope to keep forest to forest, to keep it strong, vibrant, and healthy. We do not support this bill or its underlying policies. We'd rather you focus your attention to the essential needs of the forest products industry. Imagine how we can capitalize on the unique situation we find ourselves in. We're one of four places on the planet with northern temperate type forests, and our forests are at a mature stage where we can really capitalize, become a wood metham, and still show that we are storing carbon, sequestering carbon, and that we are working on a long-term horizon, and we have a viable, healthy forest products industry who can and will keep our forest healthy, strong, and vibrant. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I have one more thing. I'm sorry. I just want to pass out a letter. It just came to me about two weeks ago. It's a letter signed by over 500, and if you pass this down to the Chair, I didn't copy all the signatures. There's over 500 scientists that have signed on to this letter. It's basically the same exact same thing I just told you. Two here? Two little letters, and then the thick ones, just send that to the Chair. Oh, you have two thick ones. You have them both. So these are professors and research scientists from Europe with a letter that goes to the European Commission President, the European Parliament President, and the European Council President, basically describing what we do. We are a circular bioeconomist, one of the few circular bioeconomists, and they're making the point, just like I did, that the standard we manage forest is carbon neutral, and management did enhance the biodiversity in forest over time, and it definitely talks about, please do not create more wilderness. It is not climate smart, so don't believe me. Challenge these 500 scientists from Europe and Canada. Representative Smith. Well, I've got a question right, but also a statement. Say this the right way. I don't want to single out the Northeast Kingdom, but we talked about this the other day. We're 43% already, 43 by 23. We're closer to 50 by 30 than anybody else. The rest of the state, Chittenden County, 8% right now, this bill is going to include the Northeast Kingdom, and I don't think these set of rules in here should pertain to an area of the state that's already existing and has met the requirements or requests, however you want to say it, but should we have companies like maybe Colleen Goodrich from Goodrich Lumber and Justin Taff from Charleston testify as to what they do to protect the property in the Northeast Kingdom so that the rest of the state could learn by it? So I just need to actually correct the record here. So this is a plan. I feel like it actually will help address some of the concerns that you just brought before us. If you feel like you're losing access to viable tracks of forest land because of easements, this is going to clear that up. This is a plan that includes an inventory that actually potentially picks up where the UVM study that you have cited leaves off and says like, actually, we do need more information. We need to know where the lands are and how they're conserved. This is not telling anyone to do anything other than telling the agency to assess the state of conservation in Vermont today and come back to the legislature and tell us what's happened out there. We've been doing conservation for 30 years and we have learned a lot in those 30 years. We've done a lot of great work but it's been potentially leaning towards one region of the state over another. We may be prioritizing and losing opportunities that we may be prioritizing in one place. We may be finished doing conservation in one part of the state. We may need to do more in another. It's really just a plan to do that. I understand that. I'm not arguing. But if I look at the priorities just in here, it looks scary from the industry point of view. It doesn't look like you're out to foster and enhance our abilities and opportunities. It looks like it's just the opposite. And maybe we need more understanding of that in a better meeting of the minds. But I read the words and it's not telling me that. Now the ANR staff is already engaged in the process you described what this plan to do. They are already out there looking at what's available and what's out there and finding ways to finding tools to help this industry and to accomplish their mission. I think we're already doing all that. Representative, were you finished? I'm good, yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for your testimony. I apologize for coming in late. I have reviewed the materials that you brought in. I just want to make sure that I'm clear on I think kind of the biggest concern that you have and that is that permanent conservation would take lands that are permanently conserved would not be available for the forced products industry. Is that? Sometimes, not always. I mean a lot of these easements do allow for management. Is that that? There are some of these that's like the forever wild easements that literally take us out of that picture. So would you say that that's your largest concern? I just want to make sure that I'm hearing correctly and what I think I'm hearing you say is that you are worried that if we permanently conserve these lands, there will be less lands available for the forced products industry and law. What the only caveat is is it depends on what kind of easement it is. Okay, and so for someone like me who really is a strong supporter of the forced products industry as well as wanting to retain a healthy state for all of us, it's important to me that I understand the nature of the problem that you have so that you know if and when we pass this bill out we can try to make sure that we address them. So that's why I'm asking my question. So your concern is making sure that permanent conservation does not mean we can't we can't access those lands largely, generally. If this bill passes, yeah, and I imagine it will. I'm not fearful that our issue is just going to wither away, okay, but the direction we're going now, okay, the priorities I'm seeing coming from the General Assembly is not looking at the trajectory we see and it's not doesn't seem willing to address that. You have different priorities and we love conservation. We're not afraid of nine percent old growth, but we think it's stupid to have only three percent early successional. We do and I hope that Bob Zane is listening right now and will explain to you why they have a political number for early successional acreage. When all these biologists we talk to say we need about 15 percent early successional habitats in order to maintain a healthy forest over the long term. So we're not arguing the 9 percent, we're arguing the 3 percent, okay. And the trajectory we see is our forests are getting older and are getting more crowded. We're only harvesting at half the growth rate. We've been doing that for 40 years now, falling way behind and the priorities we think is misplaced. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you. Right, members, we're going to pivot. I think we have David Snedeker, yes, on the Zoom director of the Northeast Vermont Development Association. Good morning, can you hear me? We can. Okay, thank you chair Sheldon and committee members. My name is David Snedeker. I'm the director of the Northeastern Vermont Development Association and we serve the three rural counties of Northeastern Vermont, Caledonia, Essex and Orleans as both the Regional Planning and the Regional Economic Development Corporation. So I think I have the ability to, I also have a, I guess back in the early 2000s I was also the administrator for what were then the unorganized towns and goers of Essex County. That was six municipal entities and my role was to kind of help adjust after the champion land sales happened there many years ago. So I can speak to that a bit and I'm going to try and share my slide. Can everybody see that? Yes. Okay. So there's the greetings and I'll just jump down. So well, thank you for inviting me and to speak on H126. It's obviously a bill that would be important to the Northeast Kingdom region as you'll kind of demonstrate why, but if the legislature decides to move forward with the goals of 30% of Vermont's land by 2030 and 50% by 2050, I would like to offer the following comments for the community's consideration if land conservation or additional land conservation is the way we want to move forward. So I would suggest that the Regional Planning Commission which were outlined in the bill be heavily involved in this process because each region of the state has its own regional plan that's adopted by the communities within our respective regions and they would likely have some information that would inform a statewide plan as would local communities be able to help with that information as well. And our plans usually address things like land use over the required to address land use natural resources and other related topics such as transportation, community and economic development and energy. So we also see a role for regional planning commissions in the review with the three conservation categories that were outlined in section 2801 of this proposed bill. Again, NVDA is a region that serves the three most rural counties in Vermont and there's a very long history of serving our communities and businesses that very much continue to rely on the working landscape for both community and economic development and we would certainly have an interest in seeing this continue and those uses would include hunting, logging, maple production, increasingly recreation and more recently we're seeing the desire to develop a mass timber industry in Vermont which would help address the region's housing shortage. So I think I totally agree with the earlier remarks of having a managed forest. I do have a background in parks recreation management as my bachelor's degree from West Virginia University many years ago. But again, managed forest I believe are the healthy forests. And I would say that NVDA and the other regional planning commissions have significant experience in data collection, conducting inventories and developing comprehensive land use plans that can certainly inform a statewide conservation plan such as the one being proposed and we're also very experienced at gathering public input at the local level and believe it's very important for any statewide conservation plan to be informed with significant local input. I did talk with my GIS staff earlier and they were able to pull from available statewide data that shows the percentages of land use in Vermont, federally owned lands, 8% statewide, 2% of the federal lands in the Northeast Kingdom that would mainly be the Silvio Conte National Wildlife Refuge. State owned lands, the total for the state is 9%. That would be 16% of state owned lands in the Northeast Kingdom, municipally owned lands in Vermont, 1% statewide, 1% in the Northeast Kingdom and this would include town, forest, some of which are actively managed as well. Land trust and other conserved lands in Vermont, the total is about 10% statewide and that number is 15% in the Northeast Kingdom. Land use or land enrollment current use program in Vermont, total is 36% and that would include agricultural land not just forest land. NEK data I didn't have available at the time but I know it's more heavily weighted toward the forest side so I'm guessing the percentage is going to be enrolled or higher than 36% for forest lands. So looking at the total of the above lands for Vermont, if you want to look at these lands for possible conservation, we're already at 64% statewide and NEK were over 34% but again that did not include the current use lands that are enrolled in forestry in our region. So I would suggest that we may be, as the earlier speaker did, suggest that we may be closer to the goals that we're trying to achieve here so just something to consider. And I guess before I jump to my next attachments I would just say that from my experience with working with the unified or unorganized towns and goers back then when the champion lands were sold, so US Fish and Wildlife took a large percentage of that land. The state of Vermont did for the West Mountain Wildlife Management Area and then some land was remaining with the Essex Timber Company but Essex Timber was the only group that was in my opinion actively managing the land as it should have been. I would say that the US Fish and Wildlife lands, the money that was given to the towns for the federal government owning that land was based on federal revenue sharing and it never achieved the level that they were supposed to when it was initially sold because the revenues from the Fish and Wildlife makes, maybe it was dimes on the dollar as to what the towns should have received and then state pilot payments often lag behind what the actual value would have been and both of these have an impact on municipal budgets so that's something to consider as well. And I would add that the conservation initiatives from groups like the Vermont Land Trust, the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund often seek local and regional support before they move forward. These were almost always voluntary initiatives and I think conservation should be voluntary and not mandated by the state or the federal government so that's my comment there. Thank you for your testimony. I do have one more attachment. I just wanted to show a little bit about what regional plans look like and how they could probably be helpful to a conservation plan. All right. So each regional plan would have an analysis of different types of land use. Here I just put the forest land for an example but we'd be using available data resources that are available statewide. The same is done for agriculture or natural resources and developed lands as well. So there's usually a data collection and analysis phase and we do often recognize or we do have an awareness of regional land use issues and in our region there was a period where we were looking at the loss of forest cover probably more toward the developed areas of our region. And then we do, this is to help our communities, we do identify preservation tools. Excuse me, David, are you, we're seeing the same memo. Were you going to walk us through your other document? Oh, I'm sorry, I'll close that. I usually have my staff do the screen sharing stuff. Okay, we're there. Not yet. Yeah, you. Which is, we also have access to your submission online. So we could, if you want, we do have it up on our devices or we can. Okay, if that's okay, I'll just speak to that. So from the experts from the regional plan, I did talk about the forest land and we talked about the awareness of the issues and the data collection and analysis phase, but we also have maps that talk about the different land use. So that I included an attachment that shows the public lands already in Vermont, publicly on lands already in Vermont for our region. And then on the next slide, it talked about current land use and this is not current use. This is land use as our plan was written in 2018, which we are in the process of updating. But as you can see, it's a dark green map and the dark green shows that much of our region is forest lands, with the exception of quite a bit of agricultural land in Orleans County. The next map would show natural resource constraints. So we are aware of known development constraints that showed factor into conservation decisions. Ground truthing is always important as well, but the resource restrictions shows areas above 2000 feet, slopes above 20% in grade, threatened or endangered wildlife species habitats, and deer wintering areas, etc. And in our regional plan, we did identify habitat connectors, which closely align with what the forested lands are in our area as well. And a lot of those lands are still used for hunting and timber management today. And then the habitat walks very similar to the habitat connectors. And you'll note that some of these blocks vary in the value of their importance as far as habitat. So another thing to consider. And again, all this is just to show that regional planning commissions are well positioned to help with any kind of development of a statewide plan, if that's the way we go. And then the very last map I have shows the conserved lands. And again, this was as of 2018. Many areas have already been conserved in our region, as you can tell by the map. And it would be important to evaluate the allowed uses and restrictions on those easements and limitations that are already in place. So that's essentially all I have for my presentations. Thank you. That was very helpful. I encourage members to check out that second handout of the excerpts from that regional plan. Members have questions. Representative Sebelia. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks, Dave, for your testimony. I have five questions. Four of them are really quick. First of all, how many towns does the NVDA represent? It's 55 municipalities and there's 50 legislative bodies. So one of the biggest region by far. And how many staff do you have? We have 11. And three of those are admin staff. The rest are planners. Thank you. On table 1.1 of your second document, this was really great. Table 1.1, can you just explain to me the definitions of the column titles? What they mean? Oh, okay. I see starting for Forestland. This was all related to the Vermont Wood fuel supply study. And I guess I'm not going to be able to speak to that 100% accurately, but yeah. Great. And I will get an answer for you that on that. That would be really helpful. Thank you, Dave. How can we know the number, how much land is in current use in the kingdom? So I was surprised to see that that was not something that was known. How could we know that? We can track it down. I think our GIS staff, I kind of gave them this assignment on very short notice. And now we have the statewide numbers, but we do have it at a regional level. So I can also get that as well. And I could even get the breakdown between Forestland and Agricultural. I would really appreciate that. And then my last question is around VHCB. So we've heard from them and that they're doing a tremendous amount of work in this area. Can you just describe how the regional commissions are interacting with VHCB in that work? And if that's consistent throughout the state to the effect that you're aware? I'm not sure exactly what specific work VHCB is doing right now. We've not really been interacting with them on any kind of a conservation initiative at this point. We do work with them on housing and land conservation, and they do reach out when they are seeking support from both the locality and the municipality and the region. I haven't started reaching out yet. Okay, great. That's it. Thank you, Ma'am. The other group we do work with is the Northern Forest Center, and that's an organization that works across the northern tiers of forest states. So Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York. And it's about actively working with our forest landowners and for both economy development, community development, and at times conservation. So thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you. All right, members. We'll come back at seven and a break. We'll come back five past the hour. We are continuing to take testimony on H126, and we're going to welcome Deb Brighton, who's a consultant with the Joint Fiscal Office, to answer our questions on potential tax implications of conserving land. Welcome. Are you ready? We're ready. So I'm Deb Brighton, and I'm leaving the Joint Fiscal Office handing over my tax work to someone else, but this part I hadn't, I've sort of forgotten about, so I'm here. Okay, and I'm trying to answer the questions from Representative Sebelia about the effect of land conservation on municipal tax rules and on municipal taxes. And I think that it depends on the type of conservation that you do. So basically I was going to run through the different types of conservation and the provisions that each one has separately and then look at where we are now. And Representative Sebelia asked about municipal and not school taxes, and that's appropriate because now if land is taken off the tax rules or if you change the grant list or whatever, it doesn't affect the host town's school tax, which is now based on the spending for people. And it does mean that less money goes into the Ed fund, so the state as a whole is affected under school tax rates. Okay, but so we're going to focus just on the municipal. And that's normally about less than a third of the total tax rate. Okay, I will just say you've just piqued my interest on that non-residential, so. Okay. Okay. So basically what happens when land is conserved, some value is removed from the municipal grant list. And when value is removed from the grant list, assuming the budget stays the same, the municipal tax rate would have to go up to cover that. In less, there's also other revenues that comes in because of that conservation purchase or acquisition. And so that's where it sort of differs in what type of conservation that you do. So you want to start with federal land and federal land isn't taxed by the municipality. And so land is owned in fee sample, but here it's mostly the Greenland National Forest, the Forest Service, but it could also be the National Park Service Army Corps of Engineers. So it's totally exempt. It has to be removed from the municipal grant list, but they make a payment. And it's called the PILT. Not to be confused with the state payment, which is pilot, but they both stand for payment in lieu of taxes. And the PILT is a straight per acre. It doesn't matter the value of the land across the whole U.S. There's an application every year. This year it's $2.94 an acre. In some cases, towns do better with that. And in most cases, they don't. It's less than they would have gotten with the municipal tax rate. But it varies from town to town, depending on what their tax rate is now, whether that raises or lowers their municipal tax rate. There's also a federal payment that goes to school districts. And I'm not going to discuss that now, but just so that you know that the federal government does make two payments on their land. State land owned by the agency of natural resources makes a payment in lieu of taxes also, but it's called PILOTS. And this has changed a lot over, say, 30 or 40 years. When we started out making this payment, a state acquisition of land would make the town lose both the school taxes and the municipal taxes. So it was substantial. So we were paying 1% of the value of the land to the municipality. And then after Act 60, we took away that school portion of the tax loss. And so PILOT went down to a lower percentage. But the town's complained because they didn't exactly understand what was going on. So then it was moved back up again. But they also allowed land to go in either as regular value, it's fair market value, or it's use value. And there was some land at use value and some land at fair market value. It didn't seem right. So in 2016, we took another look at it and set up another system for PILOT. And so all of the land was valued, all of the state land was valued in 2016. And then that land, PILOT payment is about that value times 60 cents, basically a tax rate of 60 cents. So it would be for a municipality that has a municipal weight, but within that it would be a big deal for municipality with a higher rate. It's less. And then 60 cents was chosen to be about in the middle of the municipal tax rates at that time. And then if land is acquired after that point, it is the payment is the value at the time that is acquired times the town's municipal tax rate. And so that payment is frozen. And it suggests all the the agency reviews every five years reviews the payments and may ask for an adjustment. And they just may ask for their first adjustment last year. It just says that they should consider in order to make the adjustment they should look at municipal tax rates and other data. And the last time they only looked at municipal tax rates. And so they municipal tax rates were going up slightly. So they increased the payment slightly. That won't make sense in an inflationary period like we're in now. Because if you think about it, if our land values went up 10% and our budgets went up, say 3%, we could actually lower the tax, the municipal tax rate and bring in the same amount of money. So if we find that we're lowering the municipal tax rates and we adjust our pilot payment by that, it would go down in the time when we needed to go up. So it's there. But there's, I think something needs to be changed before the next five year looks at the adjustment. But I think the intention is to make it fairly close to an average municipal tax burden. And let's see. If land, the next would be land owned by a qualified conservation organization in fee simple. And there isn't very much of that. In general, land conservation organizations are dealing with easements. So there are, let's see, only 38,000 acres owned in fee by land conservation organizations that are allowed to put it into the current use program. So they, it's appraised at its value as conservation land. And it's taxed, but the conservation organization can enroll it in the current use program so that it pays taxes, but the same as a private parcel would in current use. So the bulk of the property that's conserved by an easement comes under title 10. Actually, I should point out that I have attached a document that has the sites so that you can find out more about any of these. But it's title 10, chapter 155, that talks about land, subject conservation easements. And it says that the rights that the state or the rights of the state or a qualified organization owned, which would be the easement itself or exempt from taxation, and that the underlying rights that the owner holds, so that's the parcel subject to the easement, is taxed based only on those remaining rights. So it's clear that something's been removed from the parcel and that the value that goes on the grand list is only the remaining rights. But the question then is, how do you value those remaining rights? How much has been lost? And this is where there's really no answer, no good answer. If the land, the highest and best use of the land had been, say, timber land and the easement, and most easements allow timber management to continue, there's really no change in value. People may feel there's just a change in value that you have that option removed that you had before. And so they may change the value. But in some cases, they don't because it was already appraised as if it was timberland and would always be timberland. In other cases, particularly if there's a house and say, I don't know, 75 acres, and there's a house with it, people may feel that the highest and best use of that property is as an estate. And so in that case, they wouldn't lower it. I've never seen it increased. And I can't see the any logic for increasing the value. However, I've been at conferences with the Lincoln Institute where they were dealing with this sort of in the early days with a lot of municipal officials who were raising the value of land subject to easements. And apparently, I think they felt well, if people can put an easement on their land, then they can afford it. I don't know what the logic is. I don't think we do that. I would say we do not increase values when you put an easement on it. But I have seen situations where I've been out with an appraiser on land where they had already done septic surveys for three laws. And the appraiser said, like Champlain, the appraiser said, no, the highest and best use is that you would get the most money as one lot for one house. So we do have a question from Representative Sebelia. Just around making sure that I understand who is making this determination about the value. And it's the municipal officials, assessors that are making this. Yes, just confirming that for myself. Those who are making a determination about the value of the remaining rights. In the case of the A&R land, that was valued by the state. Okay. And property valuation has, in your little handout, property valuation put together on how to replace land subject to easements. Sorry, we got distracted. Mind saying that again, we had a phone ringing that was quite lovely but distracted. We can hear the kitchen. So anyway, it's an issue for towns. They don't know how to go about it. And property valuation has put together this document that is on your website to help them figure out how to do it. And there's also a section in the Lister's Handbook. But essentially it says there are these different things that you should consider, but essentially you have to look at the highest and best use. And so there's nothing, people kept wanting there to be something like, it's a decrease of 20%. But it just doesn't work that way. It's just the same way as replacing a parcel of land. And you have to consider all the context and all the pieces. So anyway, the bottom line is that most acquisitions of conservation land or rights in land remove value from the grand list. And if nothing else changes, that would mean the municipal rate would go up. But in some cases, there are these other payments that come in that offset that so that the municipal rate may not actually go up. And in a lot of cases, the value on the surrounding parcels goes up because it's protection to them and they don't have to buy it. So that value goes up. So that may offset some of the loss as well. And that would be more likely in areas where there's more development potential. So what I wanted to show you is sort of where we are now in terms of the conservation land and taxes. So I'm going to get this top part out of the way to do this. Is that a PowerPoint? Yeah, but it's got something's blocked. You're down in the lower right. Maybe you could do a slideshow. Let's see the map. This is based on Jens Helge did this just last week. And I'm sure you know him. Yes, he's been in here before. He's great. So he took all the conserved lands from the GIS and made this map so that you can see where the towns are, where it is within the town boundaries. And so he also created a file for me that had the acreage in each town that has been conserved. And this isn't all any way that it's conserved. And it ends up being slightly more. I know you've heard a lot of numbers about how much is conserved. He said he came in last year and said that there was 22 plus or minus percent of the land that's currently conserved. This shows more like 26 percent. And he thinks the difference is, well, there may have been more land added and mapped, but also part of the difference is this shows municipal land, which may, it could be turned into a landfill. You know, it's not necessarily conserved. Yes, so just clarifying actually, this is part of my consternation of this bill right now, is just understanding what we mean. So this is conserved land, which is not necessarily permanently conserved land. It includes current use. No, no, it doesn't, current use land does not consider it. This is just permanently conserved land? Permanently conserved, including municipal land that's owned by the by the public, but not necessarily subject to consurgation easement. So the municipal land could be used for something else. Okay. And this is just the same. Just to clarify that, you're really talking about the difference between the 22 percent that's actually permanently conserved and this 26 percent is conserved. So that's where that municipal land might fall, right? Within that. And that's four percent. Yeah. Yeah, okay. And they're also, this is even doing this map, there were, they found issues of like overlapping polygons and some parcels that go across state lines. There was an issue with land dial and the land between the lake essentially being, but anyway, so that, so it's not totally a hundred percent there yet. But I just wanted to show you the basis for the numbers that I'm going to use later. Okay. And this is just where he's colored in the town to give you an idea of where the towns are, the darker towns where they have the highest percentages probably have already met their 30 percent. Well, yeah, I go ahead. Just about the minute. Could you just, do you know which one of those is more appealing? Which one? Which one of those towns is more appealing? Just to orient me to them. Do you have a good spatial sense? Which one's more appealing? Which one? Which one? I can only tell. Somebody tell me. Somebody tell me. Somebody tell me. It's what I mean multiple. It's 12.4. 2.4. We can get you that map representative, Tori. Sorry, I thought if it was on top of anyone's mind. Okay. So what I did was I took his numbers of acres in every town and looked at the municipal tax rates and lined all the towns up by their conserved acres and then took the median municipal rate in each of those, divided them into five groups into quintiles. So they're 49 in all of the groups. I dropped the unorganized towns and goers because those have a lot of conserved land and really low rates. It would skew everything. So I have 49 in each of my quintiles. Okay. And so what it's showing you is that here, it's going this way. You have number of acres that are conserved is the least here and it's the most here. So in other words, as you have more and more conserved land, it tends to drop the municipal. You tend to have lower municipal effective tax rates. And these are the municipal rates all adjusted by the CLA. So they're all brought up to market value so they can be compared. Okay. And then the other way of looking at the taxes is to look at the tax bill on the average value house. And you see the same pattern over here, which is that the towns that have the most conserved land have the lowest tax bills on the average value house. Representative Sebelia. The other thing that we looked at was the percentage of land because you may have a very small, you know, small acreage and 100% conserved or whatever. But you see that it's the same pattern of both of those. Representative Sebelia has a question. This is really helpful. And I don't know if you can answer this now and maybe just a pin for follow up. So when we look at, you know, higher percentages of conserved, it does seem to be along areas where there are a lot of ski areas or second homes. And so I wonder about that skewing the municipal rate because you've got so much, such a higher grand list to start from. Okay. Yeah. I mean, these are the things I would love to check into. Yeah. So if that's a good one, just because, yeah. Coming from those areas where there are a tremendous amount of second homes, you know, so you have a much larger tax base. And so, you know, is that, and you also have a lot more conservation. So, you know, I don't know if conservation is causing the decreased tax rate or just a much larger grand list. Yeah. So we'll, all right. Interesting. This is really, really helpful. Okay. Just in terms of framing. So thank you. So what I wanted to do was just show you what is. Yes. And because that is sort of your starting point for where we are now, and give you some idea of where we're going in the future. But this absolutely doesn't tell you that conservation is the key to lowering your taxes. Because, well, I'll show you the next slide. And then, all right, this is the opposite. This is population. Okay. So this is the same idea. All the towns put them into printouts. So you've got like 49 towns in each group. And we've got the population. And as the population goes up, the municipal tax rate goes up. Okay. And same with the tax bill. As the population goes up, the tax bill goes up. And this is even more steep, I would say, because as the population goes up, the house values go up too. So you've got sort of the double effect of that. And that would be attributed to an increased demand and services and need for police and whatever the municipality's taken on. Exactly. The reason that we raise taxes is to provide services for people. And so it's not to say that the towns with the highest taxes are losers. They may have the best communities. I mean, they have things that other communities don't. So anyway, and it doesn't mean that if you want to solve your tax problems, you should just conserve your land. You know, it's really, you've got to find that balance. But I think that, and I know I'm just telling you what is and what you really want to know is what will be. And that's where I, you know, isn't going to tell us that. Exactly. But it will give us a starting point. And I think that sometimes a lot of, there are a lot of misconceptions about what makes your tax bill go up or down. Or sometimes people only look at the first thing. Something goes off or comes on the tax law. So if they don't look at the budget changes, you know, so that they don't, you know, put the pieces together to truly understand what's going to happen with the decision. Thank you so much for this. This was great. I would also ask, I have a question, which is frequently I feel like when we have JFO and we talk a lot about costs, we don't account for benefits very well. And personally, you just, you said one, people like to live near conserved land. Why is that? Because it's an amenity that people really enjoy for a lot of reasons, different people for different reasons. And there's a benefit to that community of that open, available public land too. And so how is it that we could start to account for those benefits in dollars as opposed to always just the costs? I'd like to answer that question. And then add something that I would welcome at Representative Stevens. I think one other point also is that sometimes we look at conservation as precluding something that would increase your tax base, you know. So it's sort of, it's lacking about, and we could have something that would bring in more taxes and would also cost more. But we generally talk of just look at like the first step. I think that in a lot of cases, conserving one piece of land doesn't really preclude that development in your town. It goes someplace else. And that may be part of the planning process here is that you are precluding the development where you're wanting and helping to direct it someplace else. But I don't really think that it's usually a sort of like development won't happen because you've conserved that piece of land. I think it just moves someplace else. Do you have any thoughts on my benefits calculation for JFO? No. I know that you, has Kate Monter been in and talked about the study? I think she was going to come in. But anyway, they did sort of a return on investment. But they looked at more of the ecosystem benefits. She's with trust for public land. She's with trust for public land. Yeah. I just, some people might not know that. Yes. So they did a report on that. And maybe Peter will follow up on sort of the what makes the best communities. Well, thank you for the work you've done. Are there further questions? Great. Okay. I'll check the second homes to see if I can figure anything out there. But if you have any other ideas, I missed the second home point that you made. Yeah. So if you look on the map, yeah, if you, if we look at the conserved, I got your point. A lot of the concern land is where there might be more second homes. Yes. And so when you have more second homes, you have much, that's a much larger grand list. Yeah. So the cost of providing services in that town is much less for the residents oftentimes. So I live in a town which is one fifth residents, four fifths second homes. And, you know, that allows us to provide a lot of services at a much lower rate than, you know, a town, you know, to the east of me that does not have that kind of second home tax base. So and and also those towns pay for education throughout the state, which is another, but my question was, it's, I think, not question, my, yes, my question was, when we looked at one of the charts that Deb had shown was that conserved was resulting at a lower rate. But when I look at conserved, it's in a lot of areas with, I think, where there are a lot of second home where there are much more valuable grand lists already because there's a lot of development. And so I don't know if conserved equals lower taxes or conserved is happening in places where there's a lot of second homes, maybe, or what that relationship might be. I would say it's both. I did run the, I should say one thing that all of those charts that I showed you with the lines that I ran the statistics on the correlations first, and they're all significant at the zero one level. Another one that's significant is the size of the municipal equalized grant list. And so it tends to be lower where there's more conservation, but mixed in there are the higher ones. What tends to be lower municipal grand list tends to be lower where there's more towns with more conserved land. That's a list. I would love to see that. Okay, I'll do that because there is an odd combination. That would just be, I mean, I would just, your point is probably well taken representative, but there's not that many towns that are like yours. Okay. But I was going back to the point at the beginning where you said that's a whole other conversation. And I missed what that that was in the introduction of your presentation. You said I didn't look at this because that's a whole nother. Wait, say that again. I missed it. Okay. Never mind. I missed it. It's okay. Well, this was a great presentation. And you noted it at the beginning. That's the thing that you think that I missed. It's not that I can't remember it. I was distracted and you said, oh yeah, that's a whole other conversation. Yes. And I was curious what the whole other conversation was that we are not having. Yes. At the beginning. Thank you. It was non homestead. Okay, I thought it was this effect on state-wide. Yes, non homesteads. Yes. Okay. Yes. What is the cost? To the phone. Yes. And then on the non risk side. So what I heard you say is it does not cost the residents, which is great, but it is costing businesses and second home owners. And so do we know what the cost is on the non risk side? On the education side? Yeah. On the municipal side. Education side. Education. No, it costs both rates go up at the same time. The way we set the education tax rate is we figure out how much we need to raise from property taxes. And then if we need more, because all this land's been taken off the tax rolls, we increase both the non residential and the homestead rates proportionately. And so I think what I heard you say was that the residential we're making whole in our tax, like current use and other things. You did not say that. So we are having an effect on the statewide tax. So that number would be cumulative. We take land off the tax rolls for conservation purposes. It doesn't pay school taxes. Yeah. Okay. So that amount has to be made up. And so it's made up by raising the property tax rates. Okay. I must go to school. I misheard you at your presentation and I thought you said there's no effect on the residential. I know what you I know why you're saying what you're saying. What I think what's going on is that you've been given municipality with a conservation. There's not a direct correlation on the school tax side because it spreads statewide. Yeah. And it's not that it's not that it doesn't have some impact, but you could say it has very little impact on the community in question because it gets spread against such a large extent. So you were doesn't have an effect. And I understand why that happened. I don't remember what you said. So on the municipal side, municipal side, it's direct. On the education side, it's indirect or it's spread over a much, much larger base. Yeah. That's right. Okay. Yeah. So it's the host town that gets just the municipal effect. And then the whole state deals with the rest. Yeah. Representative Smith. Thank you. Talk about pilot tax, pilot payments. If a town receives a pilot payment, does that pilot payment, is there a portion of it that goes to the education funding is like like property taxes or does that go into a town's general fund? Yeah. It does. Yeah. And same with the federal money goes to the town. And the A&R money, yeah, both go to the town. Representative Tory. Thank you. We used to have to go to the school district too, but not anymore. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. The federal payment that goes to the school district is called the 25% fund. And it comes differently, separately. From the treasurer's office here to the school district, so you don't get it out of the town. Thank you. And one of the things I wanted to point out is that that pilot payment is ours, something that the legislature created. So if something you can change, you know, so it's if one of the things that you look at when you go through this process is sometimes being overburdened or whatever, that's your ability to deal with it. And Representative Tory. Oh, yes, thank you. I just had a question about analysis you can do around that Ed fund impact. Like, it seems like that would be a monkey thing to be able to track. Is it, is it something that you could fair it out? How, how that's changed as conservation has increased in the state, but that kind of the impact that could be visible or not in terms of statistics. We'd have to figure out how to value the amount that's lost. Right. We can do something sort of back of the envelope, you know, just by the number of acres and then. Yeah, I'm just a compared to what part is the hard part. I mean, I get my head around, but yeah, I'm sure. Okay, let me think about that one. Yeah, I'm just curious about what we go into it. Okay. Representative Sebelia. Yes, pilot just remind me the source of funds for that program. The source of funds for pilot payments. So I know a local option. The source like for the pilot payment for the pilot program, like funds come from for that. It just goes in the budget. It's there's no special. Must be a source. I think it's well, okay. So, so I local option tax, I know there's a portion of that that's retained by the state does not actually. Oh, correct. Goes for pilot, but I'm wondering, I think that goes for pilot on state buildings. And this is this is in the same chapter pilot on land. But that the that special fund that was set up with the part of the local option tax goes to the state building part. So they're two, they're, they have the same name, I guess, but they're two separate payments. And so, for example, the pilot payment for buildings was prorated. And the pilot payment for in our land was not it was a separate line in the budget. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Right committee. Next up, we have Lauren Oates. There's two accountants for parents. That was like a bit of tile. Morning, everyone, for afternoon, maybe not morning still for the record. I'm Lauren Oates. I'm the director of government relations and policy with the nature of conservancy in Vermont. Just a bit of background on TNC here. The nature of conservancy in Vermont has helped conserve more than 300,000 acres in Vermont currently owns and manages a little bit more than 25,000 acres. And 23% of all Vermont publicly owned lands were originally acquired by and then transferred to the state by TNC. Conservation is quite literally in our name. And as an international organization focused on conserving and restoring our natural resources for all people, TNC Vermont is excited to support the goals of H-126. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. As we consider our changing climate alongside the developmental needs and pressures in the decade ahead that you've heard a lot about on this bill, both last session and this, planning for biodiversity protection is an essential part of our survivability equation and has deeply rooted concerns regarding our equity. A couple of points to make there. Ecosystem conversion and resultant biodiversity collapse is a leading cause of pandemics. Biodiversity loss threatens food security, which is already a pressing need in Vermont. Loss of biodiversity and species abundance threatens our economic prosperity. Land conversion that reduces biodiversity also threatens our climate resilience collectively for our communities. And the list of ramifications goes on and on, but those are just a couple of highlights I wanted to make. And yet we know of climate change and biodiversity loss that are currently happening. There are a couple statistics that I want to share as well for Vermont. First globally we've seen a decline in 68% of our vertebrate populations in the last 50 years. The rate of species extinction is at least tens to hundreds of times greater than average over the past 10 million years. So we're seeing a significant increase in biodiversity loss and abundance loss. In Vermont alone we've seen a 14% abundance loss in our forested bird species. The picture is even more dire when we look at our freshwater populations. Our freshwater vertebrate populations have declined 84% since 1970, which is twice the rate of terrestrial and marine biome loss. Our species are moving northward 11 miles and 36 feet up slope each decade. So there is a significant move in elevation as well as latitude to continue to follow climates that will support current habitats. And we also know from the 2021 Vermont climate assessment that Vermont is getting warmer to the tune of about two degrees Fahrenheit and wetter about 7.5 inches, which has major implications on our landscape, our communities, our collective public health, and our economic sectors. Recognizing these current impacts and worsening models, I just wanted to point out rather time sensitively that the COP 15 just held a biodiversity conference in Montreal. That was in December to address the growing crisis of biodiversity collapse, where the 188 participating governments to include the United States adopted a global biodiversity framework, which includes a 30% conservation target for 2030. Similarly, H126 offers Vermont the opportunity to develop a thoughtful statewide conservation plan centered on both biodiversity and human community resilience. Connectivity of habitat is essential to supporting our biodiversity. True for both terrestrial and aquatic species. Earlier this week, John Austin with Vermont Fish and Wildlife came in and talked a little bit about Vermont conservation design. I hope that you'll be hearing from Bob Zano too, who has profound information and science to share with you all on that. But John Austin did mention also the resilient and connected landscape science with the Nature Conservancy. Our Dr. Mark Anderson coupled with a great deal of scientists in the eastern region worked on developing this and found that Vermont actually holds a keystone geography to connecting the southern Appalachian area to internationally up to Quebec. And without that piece, that species migration that I talked about earlier is kind of cut off in the center. That science was created one as a regional corridor and two with climate change and climate models in mind. So really identifying those spaces that we know are most climate resilient and the most climate vulnerable. Finally, it recognizes that although 57% of Vermont falls within this critical resilient and connected corridor, only 28% of the network has been conserved and we're using USGS gaps one through three to identify that conserved plan. I know there's been a lot of conversation of what we'll consider conserved and what we will not and I'll talk a bit about that later. Can you just repeat that last bit? Yes. 57% of the Nature Conservancy's resilient and connected network identified lands in Vermont. Only 28% of that network has been conserved here. And there's a high level of overlap between the Vermont Conservation Design and TNC's resilient connected network. Since 28 has been conserved. Yes. Using USGS gaps one through three as how we identify conserved. Which lines up with our definitions of the bill. Yes. Yes. And using that, I know that numbers have been floating. Our estimate at TNC is that the current number of conserved, the average of conserved is 23 to 24, which I think mirrors, I think the previous testimony giver said Jens Hilka said 22-ish, 26. So I want to just rewind since we've interrupted you. You said at COP 15 in Montreal, they adopted 30 by 30 as a goal internationally. So is that number based in science? It is based in science. It's been a global priority or framework rather for the last couple of decades and I think that we're getting more and more governments to sign on. Obviously, some places need to conserve more than that. Some already have a lot of conserved lands, but as a global framework, 30% has been identified by scientists as a critical need to meet both climate mitigation goals and climate adaptation goals in this decade. Representative Smith. Okay. Kind of a odd question, which might surprise everybody. The warmest January on record was in 1906. Would that have been global warming back in 1906? The way that I've heard climate scientists describe the difference between climate and weather is that weather is kind of your mood and climate is your personality. Your moods can change regularly. Your personality takes longer to develop over time. So while we might see somewhat aberrant temperatures like over a century ago, the trend is still significantly warming at an increasing rate. So not only increasing temperatures, but also increasing rate of increase. Yeah. Good personality. That's your analogy. Good. Where was I? All right. In addition to the need to identify and conserve our terrestrial resources, some of you all who are in this community last year know that I was kind of really harping on aquatic and water-based conservation. So I'm going to do just a little bit of that again today. I want to commend H-126 for acknowledging the need for a comprehensive statewide conservation plan to truly consider the importance of what conservation of our aquatic systems could and should look like. Importantly, as mentioned before, our freshwater biodiversity loss vastly outweighs that in terrestrial and marine biomes with one in three species threatened with extinction today. This is especially critical in Vermont where 75% of all of our assessed river miles are detached or disconnected from their flood plains. That's indicating a level of degradation that is exacerbated by freshwater biodiversity loss and climate change. And it also significantly increases our community vulnerability to flooding. So it's a dual-edged sword. And finally, explicit conservation of freshwater systems is imperative. The Nature Conservancy is grateful for its inclusion in H-126. Investing in strategic conservation to increase the pace of permanent conservation towards a 30 by 30 goal is one of the key recommendations of the Vermont Climate Action Plan. And doing so will not only support biodiversity, which I mentioned before is essential to human survivability, but will also have measurable human and related benefits. Of note, improved flood resilience through headwater storage and connected flood plains. Increased carbon sequestration and storage that is necessary to meet our carbon reduction requirements in the Global Warming Solutions Act. Increased access to outdoors and natural spaces for all Vermonters. Increased revenue and outdoor recreation sectors. And the previous testimony we talked, you asked a bit, Chair, about the benefits and the Trust Republic Land Study was noted. I know that you've heard that from Charlie Hancock and a couple of others, but I did want to really put a fine point on that. There is a nine to one return on investment for towns, for the state, and for every dollar they spend in conservation they receive nine back. That's really, really, really significant return on investment that I don't want to be lost in the cost conversation. Also improved air and water quality aiding on our collective public health and support for our natural and working lands economy, which is the spine of this state. The decade ahead of us is critical to meeting the existential states of our dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss through higher ambitions for the protection, management, and restoration of nature. Getting here is going to require robust support and investment in land and water conservation. It's going to require philanthropic and public funding. It's going to require us identifying new sources and innovative financing mechanisms, leveraging incentives, as well as implementing strategic policies, all of which should be considered during a statewide conservation planning process that's outlined in H-126. It's also essential that we collectively work towards these targets, that we are not solely focused on the how much, but the where. We must consider the essential factor of connectivity focused on a patch corridor network approach and prioritizing investment in those areas. Ensuring that investments in conservation are statewide to improve equitable access to nature and outdoor recreation. And then aquatic systems conservation essential to biodiversity, water quality, and recreation. A statewide conservation plan targeting 30% conservation by 2030 must include explicit support of these critical systems too. We'll need to be clear about our collective definition of conservation. I know that this committee has heard a lot from different folks and there's the question that's kind of outstanding. What will we consider conservation? What does count for permanent? What is more ephemeral? Acknowledging these different categories which increase wildlands and old growth forests alongside those that are allowed for sustainable management practices that support our natural and working lands while also having real measurable biodiversity gains. H-126 recognizes the need for these thoughtful conversations to be had in the development of a conservation plan with a list of key partners ranging from indigenous groups to private landowners to the regional planning commissions and beyond. That diverse engagement and planning is essential to providing a critical plan that prioritizes both biodiversity and community resilience. We can identify those areas that we know that we need to be protecting and conserving for both nature and people while also identifying those areas that are suitable for human growth and development. To that end, last week, Trey Martin testified on the work that the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is doing alongside several agency and conservation partners that they've been working to advance around the statewide conservation planning process. The nature conservancy has been involved in those conversations and we are supportive of modifying the bill to recognize the role and resources that BHCB is offering to assist with the implementation of these bills goals, this bill's goals. To close, creating clear targets for meeting 30% conserved lands and waters by 2030 initiative is going to take the collective efforts of the members of this body. Federal and state, local and regional governments, the NGO community, state and regional planners, private landowners and managers and beyond. The nature conservancy is supportive, exceptionally supportive of supporting a 30% of our lands and waters by 2030 approach and thus is happy to support H-126. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you for allowing me to provide testimony to that. Thank you for your testimony. Will you be able to provide us that written testimony? Yes, I will. I finished it last night. It's a sick baby at two hours of sleep. So yes, it's coming, but there are typos, so I was too embarrassed to say. Don't worry, it would be great to get it though. There was a lot of good information in there. Do members have questions? Representative Sebelia? Yes, thank you for your testimony. It would be helpful to have that. So the goals work on the Global Warwick Solutions Act. Yes, I'm a climate counselor. And I did work on passing that. I think it was a very important piece of legislation. I think about that. If I could go back to when we passed that legislation, there was, I think we did not include enough of a focus and a mandate on ensuring adaptation. And I think we've talked about this. So the Global Warwick Solutions Act puts our emissions goals into statute and has us create a plan that drives us towards those emissions goals. For me, there are pieces in that plan that really required us to look at adaptation in rural life and for Vermonters so that we really had a focus on that. But that was not part of our goals, the adaptation to climate change for Vermonters. And so when I think about this, I'm thinking with that lens. So this has goals for conservation, which I agree with. But it is it is a concern, not concerned. I wonder, I'm wondering about how we can include some of the things that we're hearing, some of the opposition to this bill is around concerns about people's livelihoods or their land. And so how we can include more centered goals, some goals in here around Vermonters way of life and adaptation. This is not coming out very well. But we've spoken about this issue that I had, not issue, concern that I have about GWSA. So I'm bringing that forward. So I want to make sure that when and if we pass this that we have done that for this that we've said to Vermonters, okay, and here's where you are. So this is macro about our bio diversity, which of course benefits all of us. But we're hearing from people who are afraid that their way of life is going to be impacted. And so just recognizing that in this and speaking to it, maybe reassuring folks in it. So just putting that on the table as someone who has been engaged in this work for a long time and who I have worked with before, that that is something that I'm thinking about. Was that clear? It was clear. I don't know that I heard a question, but I have a response anyway. Great. So I was appointed by the Senate to represent strategic, I have like the longest title technically in the GWSA, but it's essentially expertise and resilience. So this is near and dear to my heart. I do think that it was not a fatal flaw, but a flaw with the Warring Solutions Act that there wasn't more focus and attention to strategic planning around adaptation for climate change for our Vermont communities. That said, the reason that I was appointed to that position and the efforts that I tried to navigate with partners and other counselors was to really understand or to explain so that there could be group consensus or understanding around how important natural system conservation and restoration is for our community resilience. And that's why I think that this bill, I think the shorthand is like a biodiversity and community resilience bill that protecting land is like the most land and water is one of the things that we can do that meets climate mitigation requirements. So sea orchestration and storage in Vermont is huge. We can probably get around 27 to 30% of the way to our climate mitigation goals just through carbon sequestration and storage of our forests. Headwater storage, like I said before, is significant and profound to reducing downstream community flooding, which we know flooding is the number one hazard that faces Vermonters. And then beyond that, just having the access to natural outdoor spaces proved huge EVM study during the early COVID days found that public health and public mental health significantly improved with people who had access to the outdoors. So it's a silver bullet as far as I'm concerned in the climate conversation. I think that I would have a hard time understanding necessarily how this would have a significant impact on Vermonters and their way of life. I believe that through a really well-facilitated planning process that really only like benefit can be had through understanding what conservation of our land will look like and all the benefits that might be realized through it. I mean, I would agree with you. And I still believe that the Global Warming Solutions Act was the right thing to do. Yeah, it's a bill on our wall to repeal it. And so, our ability to really bring this down to my sixth grade neighbor, I mean, I invite folks to help us bring it to that level in reassurance and explanation. There's some of the things that I have been trying to gather I'm new to this. Many members of this committee have done this a couple times. Just the terminology being really consistent. I find it myself that we're a little loose with some of the words or it feels like it to me. It's hard for me to kind of say, okay, what specifically do we mean here? So the more that we can bring this to the sixth grade or neighbor level, the faster and easier it will be to get this passed, I think. So I think the goals are really important. Let's just explain here. I'd rather happily don't have a jurist doctor. But my understanding of the current version of this bill is that there are three defined conservation categories. And then there's a clause in there that should there be through the development of this plan with key partners and stakeholders of interest in changing or adopting new conservation categories that might come to light. I think there's enough leeway or movement in there to make sure that that conversation doesn't have to necessarily be hashed out over years and years in this committee, that it can be had with the people who are closest to it and recommend the best available science and data to inform a statewide conservation plan. Would you support putting in here in the findings or maybe in the findings statement about the importance of maintaining working lands? I don't think that that's specifically in here. We're working for us. The Vermont, maybe we put a 40 by 40 in here, 40,000 homes by 2040, you know, that all of these things can exist together, which is I would like to be telling my folks that we can do all of these things. Yes, I'm not in competition. Yes, they are not in competition. I don't think that we spell that out as well as we could. Okay, I don't have to see the language before I could say whether or not I would support its inclusion or not. But other questions? Thank you for your testimony. It will take another seven minute break and read at quarter past 11 for our final witness of the morning. All right, we're reconvening our meeting and continuing the conversation on H126 and we're going to welcome Peter Gregory from the two University Regional Commission. Welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate being invited in to talk about this bill. For the record, my name is Peter Gregory. I'm Executive Director of the Two Rivers Aduquici Regional Commission. We serve 30 towns in Northern Windsor County and most of Orange County. I'm testifying for two rivers. I'm not necessarily VAPTA, the Association of All Regional Planet Commissions, although VAPTA has discussed the bill and its position as much like that from David Snedeker in his testimony. So in short, Two Rivers supports this bill and we ask that this bill be passed out and adopted and put into law. We're very, very excited about the planning process that's contained in the bill. I think the planning process will help answer some of the questions that people have had will help with the education that's necessary and will kind of hash out some of the concerns and potential fears you've heard in the past weeks that you've had testimony on this. Two Rivers supports the bill for a number reasons and I'll just mention them briefly. We've had a long history of support and activity in outdoor recreation and trail development, the economic benefits of such, the emotional and physical health benefits of outdoor recreation. Clean water, we've been very, very active in working on clean water issues and basin planning with the Agency of Natural Resources for literally decades. Shoreland protection issues, we've been involved in those in the past. Disaster mitigation and resilience, flood storage, reduced runoff, those kinds of issues. That's certainly been a huge part of our work and all regional planning commission work even before Irene hit some a decade or more ago. Working lands, we understand the impact, the economic impact of our working lands and continue to support that in our planning. And then the climate goals and sequestration and the benefits to conservation for addressing those issues. I mean, I could just keep going, but those are all issues that we've worked on and have developed strong policy statements in our regional plan. So our regional plan was adopted most recently in 2020. They have a life of eight years, as you know, but we tend to re-adopt and improve them every few years because life is changing so fast and the issues that we face are so interconnected that we can't learn fast enough and then articulate a policy direction in eight years. It has to happen more frequently. But we have strong policy statements around forest resource areas, flood resilience, wildlife, surface water quality, hazard mitigation and resilience, scenic resources, wetlands, to name just a few. So all the benefits to conservation planning and implementation are strongly supported by policies in my adopted regional plan. So I have no hesitation in coming before you and saying, my board supports this bill. My 30 towns adopted that plan unanimously because of all the reasons I just mentioned. I mean, it's just, it's a slam dunk as far as how important this is to what we do. We were created by the legislature many years ago to address not just road development or housing, but all these issues and every couple of years there's a brand new issue that we're facing and it all seems to come together at the regional level because we are implementing state and federal policy while also working for and with our communities and trying to mesh it all together. So, you know, 126 is important because of the land use implications and what we have been enabled to do under the statutes. We've been very aggressive in fighting sprawl in our regional plan and our regional commission. As some of you know, it's been more on the retail end of things where we have identified retail only being allowed in built up settled areas, not along highways, not at interchanges, but that's just one aspect of the sprawl issue that we're dealing with. We're also dealing with residential sprawl and the fragmentation issues that come with that, the energy expenditures that come with living far from workplaces, transportation issues, all those. But this bill advances much of the work we do regionally with our municipalities. So again, that's, you know, none of our communities are surprised at all because we not only use our plan with all its policies and regulatory proceedings like active 50, but also in our approval of local plans. So having a strong regional plan that is specific, that uses mandatory language coupled with a good educational component improves local plans over time. So if you're taking your town plan approval process seriously. So we've been able to make great strides, but there's always more to do. So this is a good discussion to have and I'm really excited about being part of the planning process that's envisioned and articulated in this bill. We need that. We have housing discussions, we have flood discussions, we have transportation discussions, but we have not had these discussions as detailed as they need to be given the benefits that you've alluded to to a good robust conservation program. We've heard that BHCB will have a role in this. Vermont is incredibly fortunate to have created BHCB what they do and the talent that they have attracted to that organization. So I support that fully and look forward to working with them and this committee and all the stakeholders in the process. So with that, I'll stop and take any questions you might have. Thank you for your testimony, Representative Smith. Thank you. Thank you. When you review town plans, do most town plans address conservation of their forest lands? Is that part of a town plan? It is if they want to get approved an approved town plan by the Regional Planning Commission that was put in the statutes a few years ago, habitat blocks and forest resources and things. So we've done a pretty good map I think at the regional scale and then we go out to our communities and explain what it is, what it means, what it doesn't mean, and then help them also address that. So it's an education process because it is a new requirement. They're good discussions, but yes, the towns are addressing that and getting approval from us. Thank you. Representative Simmons. Thanks for the chair. I spoke with another executive director of another RPC. This is maybe a couple of years ago and this person said, you know, what's incredibly challenging is we do a lot of plans, but then people often only wake up when there's a permit or a proposed development project. I wonder if you have any thoughts about, first of all, do you see that too? And then second of all, if you have any thoughts in how to maybe move up that public involvement because by the time you get to the permit project phase, you've got lawyers, it becomes, you know, contentious. And these are really tricky challenges like where are we going to put the people, but we also need clean water, but we also need, you know, energy, but we also want to have woods and forests. Like, so I can only imagine that this could become more contentious if we don't have, you know, a healthy, robust discussion process from Vermonters. It's a good question. I think there'll always be, you know, robust conversations, differences of opinion. No. Yeah. But let me say I have found, at least in one small area here in Act 250 and our regional planning or plan and our regional involvement in Act 250, it's gotten much better as our plans have become more specific and less wishy-washy. When we started using mandatory language and we started actively participating in the process, we found that developers that in the past didn't know about us, didn't care about us, didn't read the plan and then got blasted in the process, that's not happening anymore. I'm seeing them come to us first. I'm seeing lawyers and engineers that have been hired by developers say you ought to look at the regional plan and our advice is that this might not be the way to go. So we're seeing a lot less, I think, the better the planning is. You see a lot of that in the housing field. A town zoning, you know, says you've got, you know, this theory can handle 12 units and stuff and the developer before he or she comes forward, you know, drops it down just to try to get through the system. That's not fair and that's not right. And there are some bills going through the legislature right now to change those kinds of things. So expectations are different and it's not just a fight at the permit stage. Oh yeah, I think there's plenty of room for improved regional planning around the state and there's definitely plenty of room for better local planning. And as we say when we work with our towns, you know, say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't say we wouldn't like to encourage this on Sunday when the sun is out and everybody's happy but that, you know, this is not right and this is what we do work. So it's a hard sell because the culture has been discussed earlier today is strong local control but let's not kid ourselves. Strong local control does not save resources of statewide value. We have gone, I think, as far as we can as far as, you know, voluntary, you know, let's all hold hands kind of process and I think the time has come on a lot of these issues, either for public safety reasons or public health reasons, we're a little more prescriptive and we recognize that there's a state role or a regional role and it's not just 256 towns going in different directions. I work for towns. Luckily, you know, my towns and officials know, you know, how I feel and you know, so this is not new to them but it's out there but I think that's what we need. Thank you. Further questions? Representative Sackiewicz? I was wondering, that brings up an interesting point that I'm wondering about, maybe she can just comment upon the relationship between local control in this context and the municipal capacity to, you know, conduct such control. Oh boy. Yes, that's a very good question. One that has been discussed quite a bit this session by the administration as well as those members of the legislature. Local capacity is very strange right now, their local official staff turnover at the local level is at a degree I've never seen before. We're being asked as an RPC to backfill municipal services and staffing quite frequently and we don't even have the capacity to respond to those townspeeds and that's a shame but there's a lot of turnover too on the volunteer boards, planning commissions and zoning boards and stuff so it's a growing problem. I'm not sure how to solve that quite frankly, you know, or we're doing all we can to help towns meet those unmet needs but even towns that have the know-how to administer grants and to do that kind of work, they're short staffed so it's not like nobody knows how to do it, they don't have the time to do it so I don't know if that answered your question but it is a problem, it is a problem and I don't have a quick solution. Thank you. Other questions? Not seeing any, thank you for your testimony. Thank you Peter. Yeah, good luck. Excuse me. All right members, why does this always happen? So we are, it'd be great to get any more thoughts. I have Kate Warner was suggested as a witness on this bill earlier on the Trust for Public Land study and a couple of other people still on our list. If you have thoughts on witnesses you want to hear from please bring them to me. That would be great. And so where we are, so yesterday we started Mark up on household hazardous waste with Michael O'Grady and he'll be coming in tomorrow afternoon at 1 15 to continue that. Hopefully we're moving towards a vote on that bill and I don't know if this is universally known but we have tomorrow morning after the floor we have a training right now. And I can't remember the title of the training right now. It's discrimination. Discrimination, thank you. So we won't have any committee time tomorrow morning but at 1 15 tomorrow we'll meet here with Michael O'Grady and we're back here this afternoon at 1 15 to get from on conservation design with Bob Zeno. So continue the H126 and so tee up your conservation design questions while you eat lunch. Representative Smith. I'd like to do they know who I could ask or someone might know. The state of Vermont and the federal government when they clear are going to a forest that they own and remove hardwood firewood. Who gets it? Is it sold or given to low income families or does it go to the state? Part of they know that larger terms they go up to bed on the federal lands. So Vermonters don't get an opportunity to buy any of it. Well I wouldn't say they don't get an opportunity to buy any of it directly from the feds. No you can get a permit to collect firewood on the forest. For sure you go again individual permit to collect firewood. But that's different from a larger scale timber harvest. I know that I'm trying to say I think it's slighted and I guess I don't know where that might be in Morgan but they're going to be logging a lot of firewood out of there. It would be nicer for a monitor to be given the opportunity to cash in on it to heat their homes. Is that federal land? I don't know what the state policy is but we could you know who to ask. I mean I would reach out to the commissioner the interim commissioner who's been in here. And on one more note for the bottle bell I would like to have our local main redemption center. His name is Butch Thompson and Thompson Redemption is in Derby. I'd like to hear what you got to say about the bottle bell. He's got the biggest facility in the area but it's not big enough. I'd like to know what his take is on the whole Did you say the name of his business? Thompson Redemption. Okay. I can get a phone number if you want. That would be great. Okay thank you. Others? So I would like to hear from the ski areas and someone on agriculture on this bell. I think we did hear from BLCT right? I think it might have been on broadband. Okay actually yeah. And noting that still waiting on the definition of permanent conservation and I just wanted to note that yesterday my comment to the traveled here. I'd use that lifelong Vermonters. He had been responded so I would be happy to share that to my friends. Did you say that anyone from Kasella will be coming in to testify? On the box. Yes. I said yes but thank you for the reminder. So we're putting that together right now. Okay thank you. Oh yeah. She's on our list. Okay. Kim Crosby. Thank you. All right. With that we will adjourn until 1.15.