 My name is Willie Docto. I'm serving as moderator this evening. I want to welcome all of you here tonight. It's great to see lots of neighbors and friends here. I know we have members of select boards and school boards here and former select board members and a lot of concerned citizens, so thank you for being here this evening. My husband Greg Trostin and I have had the privilege of living in Duxbury on Crosshead Hill for the past 28 years and I can't believe it's been 28 years main. I'm very honored to serve as your moderator this evening. A couple of housekeeping things. We are being recorded by Orca Media, which we'll be broadcasting at some point. There is a sign up list. The legislators would love to keep in touch with you. So if you would like to add your name and your email address, that would be great. So let's get started here. So this is an opportunity for us to come together as a community and engage in a meaningful conversation with our local elected officials. I'm confident that we'll have a productive and insightful discussion. Our panelists have not only a wealth of expertise, but also the ability to affect change in mobiliar. Every day they work tirelessly on issues that include Vermont's workforce needs, climate funding, the environment, flood recovery and resilience, education funding, housing, public safety, appropriations, agriculture and a lot more. They'll have each an opportunity to introduce themselves, but I just want to take this moment to welcome them individually. So we'll start with Senator Ann Cummings right there. Raise your hands. Thank you for being here. Welcome to Senator Andrew Perchlich. Senator Ann Watson was unable to attend this evening. And then our representatives are Representative Ella Chapin, Representative Tom Stevens, Representative Teresa Wood, Representative Kerry Dolan, and the person guilty of putting me in a suit this evening is Representative Dara Tori. So welcome to all of you. Our legislators are here tonight because they understand the importance of connecting with community members like you. They're committed to listening to your concerns, communicating progress and challenges, and helping to connect the dots on issues that are interrelated. As moderator, I'll do my best to manage diverse perspectives and ensure that we have a fruitful dialogue. I encourage you to keep the discussion focused on issues and avoid personal remarks. In a couple of months, we'll have enough mud to sling, okay? Remember, we're all here to learn, listen and share solutions. So the agenda is very simple. We'll spend a few minutes having each of the legislators introduce themselves and their scope of work. They each have two minutes. So help me on the timer, okay? And then we'll spend most of the evening with a question and answer session. Some questions have come in by email. There are others here who have informed us that they have questions to ask. And we'll try to get through as many topics as possible. So to ensure a productive conversation, I kindly request the audience to pose concise questions and urge the legislators to provide succinct yet comprehensive responses. I'm sure we'll run out of time before we run out of things to talk about, so let's get started. Let's start with a Senator and Cummings, if you would not mind handling this phone. So Senator Cummings, just tell us how long have you been in the legislature and what keeps you up at night? It's on. You have to talk really close. Okay, eat the mic. My man Cummings, I have been in the Senate representing Washington County, which is now Washington District, because we picked up towns in Orange County and LaMoyle County during the last reorganization. I have been in the Senate for, I think it's 23 years, this I believe is my 24th. In the morning I serve on economic development and housing, and in the afternoon I chair finance, which is the tax committee. So between housing and taxes, the consensus here is I'm going to be on the hot seat tonight. You want me to go? Yeah, I'm Andrew Purchlich also as State Senator from the Washington District, which is those towns that Anne mentioned are Orange, Braintree and Stowe. One time I forgot to mention Stowe, and I was reminded that we are also representing Stowe now. I've been, this is my sixth year, and I've been on transportation that whole time. I was on education first two terms, and now I'm on appropriations. And I live in Marshfield. Good evening, everyone. I'm Dara Tory. I live in Moortown, and this is my first term, second year of the biennium, and represent Watesfield, Warren, Fiston, Moortown and Duxbury. I've been on the Environment and Energy Committee, which is a really fascinating committee, a lot of ambitious and scientific things going on there. And I look forward to hearing all your questions tonight. Hi, everyone. Ella Chapin. I live in East Montpelier and represent East Montpelier and Middlesex. I am also the first term representative, and so it's my second year. And while my background is more in environmental science and agriculture, I sit on the Judiciary Committee in the House, so it's a fairly new topic area for me, but it's been fascinating. I'm Kerry Dolan. I am Dara's seatmate. We share the representation for the five communities she mentioned, Warren, Watesfield, Fiston, Moortown and Duxbury. This is my sixth year. My first four years I served in the Natural Resources Committee before it became the Environment and Energy Committee. And now I'm on appropriations. And as you know, the state government executes their programs, but they need spending authority for their budget. So our job is to craft the budget for the future, the next fiscal year, state fiscal year. But in the time being, we've been working on the budget adjustment, which is basically the rearranging of deck chairs in the current fiscal year. Good evening, everyone. My name is Teresa Wood. I am Chair of the House Human Services Committee. I also serve on the Joint Justice Oversight Committee, the Joint Fiscal Committee, the Health Care Oversight Committee and the Joint Legislative Management Committee. So I have been in the legislature. This is my ninth year. And I appreciate everyone being here this evening and look forward to having a dialogue with you. Thank you. Representative Tom Stevens, live in Waterbury. We represent the Washington Chittenden District. This is formerly our district before redistricting, so sorry. We represent Huntington Bolton and Buells Gore. So this is my 16th year of serving in the legislature. I am currently the Chair of Housing and General, General and Housing in the House. And Housing speaks for itself. There's been such a big push in trying to find out, find a way to do better. It's a global problem. It's not just Vermont. And then under the general rubric, I cover subjects like social equity issues, like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or the, or labor minimum wage, paid family leave. And we've been doing, I've been doing that for on the same committee for 16 years. Great. No. So, if you want to just hold on to the mic because you'll be passing out, they only gave us one mic. I'm sorry. This is for the audience and me. Let's start off with an easy question, or a good news question. This week, the legislature's economist, Tom Cabot, came out with a report that, for Fiscal Year 2024, we're going to see a surplus of $33.9 million. General funding revenues are going up. Education funding revenues are going up. Transportation is going down, which is, I guess, expected. And they also expect next year to be less robust, but to see a surplus. So we need to worry that the transportation budget is going down for the next couple of years. Who would like to go first? I'm on the transportation committee. So, yes, we should be worried because it's projected to go down and continue to go down more and more each year. And we're, but our expenses are going up. We had a report, you know, testimony just this last week that some bridges and road paving and other just kind of transportation infrastructure projects like that. Some of them are up 80% costs from when we were doing our budgets. The transportation project goes, you know, several years in advance. We start this year for projects that we're going to build four or five years in the future. So expenses are going way up, but basically the gas tax and other revenue is going down. So we're trying to figure out what to do about that. There's some money that we, you know, used to be in the transportation. That's not in the transportation fund. So there's questions about that. But also, which is a small part, but a lot of people bring this up. So I'll just mention it is about electric cars. We, about 10% of new sales are electric cars, but as total cars, it's still a very small amount. It's only a few hundred thousand dollars of lost tax revenue. But that's still, it's going to add up. We're expecting more and more electric cars. I drive electric cars, I saw several other electric cars out there. But we do need to find a way for them to pay our fair share. So we're, this year we asked for a report from the administration. We're going to be looking at that, how to start getting more money from electric cars. So they can at least pay their share, but that's not going to solve the problem of the transportation fund as we want to have a good infrastructure. And things like public transportation. Just paying for our infrastructure is going to be a problem. But if we want to do things like public transportation and incentivizing more electric vehicles in the future, that's going to be even more of a problem as we go forward. We also know that municipalities rely on a healthy transportation fund. We give every year, there's formula grants that go directly to towns. We know their costs are going up as well. And I worry about that. In fact, I worry about some of the impacts in Duxbury where there's logging taking place or plan to take place on Duxbury steep roads that happen to be gravel. So they're vulnerable for impacts. And yet we don't, those types of externalities are being borne by Duxbury. And so those are the types of concerns I have. I've sent notes about this particular concern to our senators and to those on our committees that oversee the forest management, hoping that we can all put our heads together and determine how we can best support our municipalities moving forward. So these are some of the challenges that we face. And I see how important it is from the municipality's perspective on having a healthy transportation fund. Great. Since you brought up Duxbury and Campbell Sump Road, I'd like to invite Alan Pierce to ask a question about where he lives and the challenges of living on Campbell Sump Road. Alan, make sure you hold it close to your mouth. Thank you. Yes, I'm Alan Pierce from Duxbury, North Duxbury. We will be the epicenter of 12 logging jobs over the next two decades. My question is about the pilot program. We currently get about $50,000 from the state, a little bit less than that, compared to what the damage is going to be from the logging trucks and from the increased number of tourists to the park. I'm wondering if you folks can help us get a higher pilot contribution from A&R. Thank you. Who would like to address that? I'll be happy to start. Yes, as I mentioned, I'm aware of the challenges. Duxbury may not be alone, but they are certainly representing some of those impacts where state-endorsed, state-funded projects are having an impact on municipal roads. And I've also raised this concern to the Vermont League of Cities and Towns as well, so that they can begin to help identify other communities that are also facing these types of impacts. Obviously we want to support our working landscape, our forests, our agricultural lands, those employed in those industries. We are excited about the importance of outdoor recreation in Vermont, really poised to be quite a destination area for our neighbors, but really a global destination for outdoor recreation. But yet these are the impacts that we're concerned about and share that concern with Duxbury. There are, on top of that, all our municipalities need to maintain a certain level of standard for drainage of our roads, for public safety, but also for water quality. And these types of impacts could in fact result in a greater financial burden on towns like Duxbury. So I'm hopeful as we talk about this in the legislature, we put our heads together in the various committees that include transportation. As I mentioned on the House side, the House Committee on Agriculture, Food, Sustainability, and Forestry, Natural Resources, as well as the Money Committees, we can begin to think about how do we establish or stand up some sort of supports for communities, funding for those communities. When we talk about pilot, I know that that, as I understand, I could be wrong. There's some statutory language about pilot, and pilot is the term for payments in lieu of taxes. And it's when there are state-owned properties, they don't pay taxes, and so there's a mechanism to reimburse communities for those loss of revenues that would normally be taxed if it was in private ownership. And we tend, as I understand, in statute, if it has a building on it, the payment is higher than if it's on land. And I don't believe those payments have changed in quite some time. But I'm going to turn it over to one of our Money Committee chairs. Senator, coming. Actually, I know this because I was there at the birth of pilot starting when I was mayor in Montpelier, and Montpelier got nothing from the state. So we've worked it up for payment in lieu of taxes. If Duxbury is a state forest, then the town was always paid a payment in lieu of taxes for state forest. But you weren't for anything. If you're getting an increased problem with the state forest, if it's impacting your roads or something, then the town should contact the state and let them know that your pilot should be adjusted. And I'll just say that we've heard this on transportation from other communities, like up at Coventry with the landfill, because all the trucks go through Coventry. So Coventry says, like, hey, we're taking all your trash, and all the trucks are driving on our roads. We want some more support from the state, or for gens as all the trucks going right through downtown that bring all the goods to Burlington. So we've heard this problem before, and we do have a program where the agency of transportation supports towns for local roads. And I can look into it, but I think there is a mechanism to have the state support local roads more. I don't know if we've ever done one time for a specific project, but it's a possibility, or at least I can commit to looking into that. Anyone else want to add to that? Oh, Lars and then Dick. Senator Cummings, you stated that the towns should contact the state in regard to this, but that isn't clear enough. It's my understanding that the legislature disperses the funds. It creates the taxes and disperses the funds to state departments. Is that correct? So when you say contact the state, what do you mean? I would say the reason I asked the question, was this a state forest or was it a town expense? Because they're two different programs. And if, you know, those will go through the appropriations process. There is a line for appropriations, and I'm sure that Cary can get you a hearing in there. The discussion we're talking about revolves around Camelshump Road, which services Camelshump Park. And it's going to see increased use because of the logging operations over the next, what, 20 years. The more immediate problem is the traffic that goes up there every day, almost every week. Okay, people traveling to the park gets busier during the summer, spring, fall. But I was up there three weeks ago, okay, at the end of the year, surveying the road because of the storm, the rain and whatever. And we were in the winter mud season. And as I'm up at the top of Camelshump near the parking area, I'm watching cars. Now, it took me some time to get up there because of the number of holes and mud problems. People are coming in, going up to the park, and this is going on on a daily basis. And we cannot afford to maintain that road. But first of all, we just went through a scoping study to try and figure out where, we all pretty much know where it needs work, okay. But the out-of-town people coming in, going to the park, all right, we can't afford to do it. So you raise the point of, well, go to the state. Last year I made a phone call to one of the people at the top of the administration. And I described the situation to them, and he said, I know what you're talking about. But you know what, if we did it for Duxbury, we'd have to do it for other towns. And I said, you know what, if they've got the same problems that Duxbury has, yes. Okay, because the towns can't afford it. I will just finish this because I was planning on dealing with this question. The town of Duxbury has started, okay. We've contacted the surrounding towns. We have a problem that's not immediate, okay. But it is coming very quickly. And that problem is gravel, all right. And everybody shakes their head, and I'm not casting aspersions. And everybody says, oh, yeah, we don't know we got a problem. We can't find out how we can get this coordinated. All right, we're hauling gravel in from Lowell. All right, to deal with this, 90% of our roads are gravel roads. And it's something that we've got to find a way to get addressed. So, thank you. Thank you, Dick. Obviously, Duxbury has some unique circumstances that need attention. That's not similar to other places in Vermont. So, Teresa. I was just going to say they actually are pretty similar to some of our other towns. We, Tom and I dealt with this in Huntington. Same thing on the other side of Camelshump. And a similar narrow winding road that goes up to the public parking area. And the Agency in Natural Resources Department of Forest Parks and Recreation was the one who actually responded, not really transportation. It was A&R that responded. From my perspective, I'm not sure it was the response that the community was actually totally looking for. But what they did was to create additional parking. So that actually provided more space for people to come and accommodate it more traffic. So it's almost kind of like I'll be careful what you ask for because you might get a bigger parking lot at the top of the hill. You did already. Yeah. The gravel issue is something I've heard from Stowe. It's something I've heard from Waterbury. And I don't have an answer for that, to be honest with you. I recognize that. That's why my head was nodding because I have heard it before. And I don't really have an answer for that. But I agree it's something that we need to pay attention to. And I can certainly bring that back to our Transportation Committee and our Environment and Energy Committee to see if it's something that they're actually even working on. And I'll just add, I mean, I've been up to the top of Camel's Hump with you, Dick, on after the May storm in 2012 where half of a chunk of the road washed down into the gully. And I think it's too easy to say, well, climate change is a big deal with this. Climate change is a big deal with this because those roads weren't built for the amount of traffic that we're asking them to bear. And most of the traffic that we're asking them to bear is not just the people who live there, but from the people that we're advertising and asking people to come to our state. And there's all good things in that. But if the communities like Huntington and Duxbury, just in our district or our area, are putting up with that, then there is a question of saying, well, shouldn't there be special treatment? To hear that you heard that come out of an administration or a bureaucracy person's mouth at this point in our world is kind of sad. And I'm sorry that you heard that, but that should not have to be. If we give it to one person, we have to give it to everybody. It makes me feel like I'm four years old again. And that's not appropriate. So for those of you who don't know, Dick Charlotte is the select board chair here in Duxbury. So he knows all about the roads. There's a related question to the agency of natural resources. This is Jamie Ervison. And she's on the select board here in Duxbury as well. Great. Thanks so much. Yeah, James and Irvin. And thank you so much for coming out tonight and for your service. Really grateful. So I have a little bit of a prelude before my question. I hope you'll bear with me. And we are in a crisis of accountability with the state. And let me explain why. First, the agency of natural resources, Forest Parks and Rec and Department of Fish and Wildlife is showing complete disregard for climate solutions. When we think about the mature trees that provide the climate solutions that we need, they are our best solution. Neither the Camelshump State Park nor the Worcester Range Management Plan show any accountability for climate and the value of older forests. In fact, they target logging old forest and mature forests. Second, complete disregard for the 30 by 30 act that was passed last year. Congratulations. There are no references to this in either of the management plans for the Worcester Range or Camelshump Park, the two largest areas in the state. We have no chance of achieving those. That law or the conservation design without including public lands is the first line. Third, complete disregard for flood control. When I think about Wrightsville Dam and what could have happened in Montpelier and now I think about logging in the Worcester Range that's going to put stress on that dam. I can't tell you how annoyed I am, but it's worse than that. The state buried its own report by David Brin that showed that logging practices as they currently stand are a problem for flooding. And through a public records act, we saw what the Forest Parks and Recreation thinks about that. Quote, if we were to take this report seriously, we'd have to fundamentally change the way we do business and they bury the report. Fourth, complete disregard for wildlife and endangered species. Norther Longneard Bat recently identified as endangered in Vermont as habitat in area that is being logged right now in Camelshump State Park. There have been no surveys provided. There has been no habitat assessment. They're building logging roads for $500,000 in Duxbury Loan and they're spending $5,000 for beaver wildlife conflicts throughout the state. Fifth, and bear with me just a few more, disregard for public opinion. The most recent impact of 70 to 80% of Vermonters do not support leg hold traps or hunting with hounds of bear and coyote. There are 310 trappers in Vermont. The vast majority of people don't accept this, but the most recent decision by Fish and Wildlife moved forward in disregard of the Senate Committee about leg hold traps and hound hunting. Disregard for the Senate. Again, ignore the Senate Committee requirements regarding leg hold traps. And then finally disregard for the laws of Vermont. My husband and I, along with 25 other residents of Duxbury, duly submitted a request to the force and public and recreation to undergo rulemaking. This is a Vermont law that holds agencies in check. Not only do they ignore our five requests with our lawyer, we sued them. The judge dismissed it not on grounds, but on grounds of standing, saying that we had to wait until the logging occurred and showed damage. Julie Moore has not responded and has not undertaken rulemaking in two years. This is a requirement that she must have done but has not. Forest Parks and Recreation, Agency of Natural Resources and Fish and Wildlife are willfully and wholly acting unaccountably to you and to the people of Vermont. It's operating without control and oversight or any kind of order. So my question is really simple. Given this, given the longstanding disregard that these three agencies have shown, what are you planning to do to hold Julie Moore, Chris Herrick, and Daniel Fitsco accountable? Thank you. I've got the microphone, so I'll start. Not on natural resources, it's one of the committees I've never been on. But I think you've bumped up against one of the fundamental tenets of democracy, the separation of powers. We make the law, but the executive, the governor, is responsible for how that bill is carried out. And the governor is the one that is supposed to make sure that the government does follow the law. And it's pretty difficult. And I think what you'll find also is that if what you want is going to cost money, that makes it that much more likely that things will slide. And we've run up against this time, you know, time and again. And it's just one of the drawbacks of democracy. And one thing that we're, well, Lisa, I'm hoping for on the trapping rule where Elkar, the legislative committee on rule, said, hey, you didn't follow our intent. And so folks have filed a lawsuit on that. And that's where we hope that the courts will enforce it, because we don't have the ability to do that. We could try to, like, cut their budget or something, but we might be, you know, hurting our other efforts if we try to do that. So the best thing you can do that is elect a new governor. But that takes time, obviously. But I hear you, and I'm glad you're working on it. And I support a lot of things you say, but I don't have a good answer about what we can do with it right away. But I think folks on the Natural Resources Committee, and we can talk to the chair and the senate about what they're planning on doing, but I think at least holding hearings and trying to speak to those that are in charge of those departments, those commissioners, to have them come in and try to explain themselves would be the first step. Yes, thank you very much for your question, Jamie. And all of your leadership and showing up in my committee. This is top of mind in our committee, the Environment and Energy Committee. There is just a lot on our plate. And I feel like wildlife kind of gets short shrift. But I also feel hopeful. I mean, certainly accountability and working closely, monitoring A&R is definitely high on the list. I'm wondering if we could be successful with getting some actual climate funding from, you know, big oil. I think money talks, and as we have more money to really invest in conservation and protection, I think we can make 30 by 30 come to life and a lot of the other things that we need to do to be a resilient Vermont. And it's my hope that we start down that road of really finding and financing the natural infrastructure that we need, as well as the roads that we're all suffering with as our climate changes. The writings on the wall, we've got a huge tab to pay. You hit on many, many points. And I think we've tried to address some of them. And I wanted to mention, in particular, when we look at the type of impacts we're experiencing from severe weather, climate resilience or resilience from extreme weather is something that has to be a major priority. We, time and time again, we're experiencing somewhere in Vermont a community that is suffering from flooding at such a magnitude that it triggers a federal declaration every year. This past year, we had horrible, devastating flooding in July, other places that didn't trigger the federal declaration, but in Addison County was in August and then the rain on snow events. And when you look at what we can do, the research shows that nature-based solutions are the first line of defense for communities. That smart ways of investing in the type of conservation, whether it be wetlands to serve as a sponge, flood plains to dissipate some of that erosive energy upstream of communities, the restoration of those flood plains, those types of actions are low-cost and work. And communities around the country, states around the country, are leveraging their state dollars to attract federal dollars to build greater resilience of our community, looking specifically at these natural resource-based solutions because of their being relatively low-cost and huge benefit. The issue, fundamentally, is that you can't just rely on the small area on either side of a river to hold back all that flooding or to absorb all that extreme weather, all that rainfall coming down over one, two years, excuse me, one or two days. You really do need to have healthy soils, healthy agricultural soils, healthy farm soils, forest soils, healthy forests to be able to absorb that water. So there has to be, in addition to the most vulnerable lands along our flooding rivers, we also have to improve the way we can hold water within that watershed. And those are the types of somewhat complex but valuable approaches that we need to take. And we in the legislature are looking at ways to stand up climate resilience funding to be able to support communities in helping themselves become more resilient to those types of impacts. And those are some of the discussions we will be taking up across our committees to look at how we can help communities build their resilience to future flooding. Okay, great. Tom, and then we have to move on to other topics. I just want to follow up what Senator Purchick was saying a little bit about accountability because accountability has been, Representative Wood and I have been talking about housing, whether it's for emergency housing or for developing new housing. And the thing that we talked about every single week with our leadership was accountability or the lack of accountability with the administration. We can be as smart as we can be. I mean, it carries expertise. Anybody's separate expertise in any of these issues is really important. It helps shapes bills that have been vetoed. And then we've overridden those vetoes. And so we're talking about the difference here between two things, one of which is the accountability of saying we passed this law but why are they not doing it is a core value issue. We've developed these policies through our legislative and democratic process and they're either being ignored or they're not being under the guise of it costs too much money or there's not enough capacity, buzzwords, but the lack of accountability that when we stand in our rooms, in our conversations and say we can't hold the administration accountable to the way that the law is written, there's really only one answer left. And that is we have, we're a democratic society and there are elections and you choose who runs the state. We can do our job here but it's the execution of the laws that we pass. There's up to the executive branch and the people that they hire to do that. And what you're running up against is what we run up against in our own separate issues. But it really is ask the question why and it gets answered by itself. So thank you for the civics lesson. That was a great question. We went from transportation and climate and environment to how our government is set up and who creates the laws and who should enforce those laws, right? So this has been a great, robust discussion but there are other topics and other concerns that people have in the audience. One is education and the other one is housing. We want to get to those subjects. So let's talk about education. We have the chair of the Harwood Union School District here as well as the superintendent of schools. Now in the news this week, Senator Cummings, glad you got the microphone, you sent what a friend of mine would call a nasty gram to school districts who have taken advantage of a loophole in Act 127 which was passed in 2022 to limit tax increases by 5% to 5%, right? You have found that some districts are taking advantage of that. So if you could just explain to us what Act 127 was supposed to do and what's happening now. Okay. As well as I can. Act 127 adjusted the weighting of pupils. Pupils that for whatever reason are considered harder to educate, the state weights them so maybe a child out of severe poverty or with severe disabilities, you get one and a half students. It amounts to you get paid for more students than you actually have and it's to recognize that some students are more costly. The big one that came up this time and caused a lot of changing was English as a second language. I think there are between 30 and 40 different languages in the Burlington School District. Winooski has a lot and there was a whole summer committee, there was a whole bill that went through and everybody I've talked to has said, yes, it needs to be done. When that bill came to my committee, my understanding was and we passed it out that there were schools that were going to have huge gains and huge losses and we knew no school budget could sustain that kind of a huge loss or gain in one year. So as I understood it, the impact of the weighting was not allowed to have more than 5% on your tax rate. Not your whole budget wasn't limited to 5%. It went through the house and apparently there was some tinkering with the language and I've always said if you were writing taxes we need to write them so the average person can understand them and apparently we didn't on this one. So there seems to be an understanding from some schools and we've had at least one letter sent out to that effect that says our budget and it says residential tax rate. So our residential tax rate can't go, your taxes can't go up more than 5% even if we spend 25% more. So they've seen that as free money or as a way to do some things they would like to do. First, one of the interpretations was that that only meant residential, not people that paid based on their income which would leave out the poorest among us and we will make that clear because that was never the intention. But if budgets go up and they're capped at 5%, that means that your businesses and non-homestead properties, your second homes, your dear camps, whatever will pay out that remainder of the tax increase and that's where the figure of the 18% projected increase is coming from and from those of us that live in towns that were flood damaged and have lost a lot of revenue and grand list, we're probably looking at 20% increase in our property taxes. I personally don't think I can afford that. I'm sure most people don't think they can afford that. So, and this is the house ways and means the Senate Finance have been working with our joint fiscal office who crunches all our numbers. We knew this was going to be a perfect storm for schools. The ESSER money, which was the COVID federal money to help schools combat the needs they found from COVID. Has gone away, but the needs haven't always gone away. We still have kids struggling academically. We still have kids struggling with mental health issues and the schools really don't want to let the people that are helping them go. They're there. We saw a huge rise in property values over the last three or four years. It's settled down now, but huge rises in many towns. And so that's put everybody under the CLA, which further impacts your tax rate. So the way the system works is the schools, the people in the town vote their school budget. We take all the school budgets and we have to equalize them because of the Supreme Court decision, which says every child has equal access to the education money. So it's equalized. And there's a formula, which is beyond my math skills. And then we subtract all the state money, which right now is the entire sales tax revenue is going in and then some smaller percentage of taxes. And whatever's left, we set the yield or the tax rate to raise that amount of money. We don't control what gets spent. We just get to raise it and everybody is unhappy with us. But right now we're trying to figure out what is driving it, how much impact this misinterpretation has, how many school budgets will go down and what schools will do. So we're having a public hearing. We're just trying to, at this point, fact find to put things in perspective because you talked about we had $30 million surplus. Well, I asked what would it cost to bring down the tax, the projected tax rate from 18% to 10, $120 million. So that's the $30 million in the state budget is nice, but it's not enough. Yeah, it's not a lot of money in the whole scheme of things. So let's get the perspective of a local school district. We have Kristen here, who is the chair of a Harwood school. Hi, my name is Kristen Rogers. I am not only a resident of Moortown, I am also chair of the HUSD school board. I had a couple of questions relating to the letter sender Cummings and representative Kornheiser sent out to the school board members, to all school board members and superintendents on Friday, January 19th. Are you aware of what the majority of school budgets are made up of? In our case, more than 71% of our budget goes towards wages and benefits. Then you add in fixed costs, which accounts for what I believe is another 20%. So in the case of HUSD, 91% of the budget is fixed costs. Our district has followed the rules set out by Act 127. Our costs per pupil did not exceed the 10% threshold, which would require our budget to be automatically reviewed. What the HUSD school board is offering is a level service budget and what the board feels is the right thing for the students of our district. Then we receive the letter informing districts who utilized the 5% threshold will have their budget reviewed by a new committee. Despite following the rules set forth by Act 127, by saying you hope more extreme measures are not needed this year, what exactly does that mean? Might districts be penalized or punished for following the rules of Act 127? Now, when you change the rules? Our school board understands what Act 127 is trying to accomplish. I hope you understand what drastic measures districts will have to take to accomplish this. Staff will have to be cut in a time when it is difficult to hire people. Programs may have to be cut because there isn't the staff and districts will not be able to offer the same level of education. Thus putting our students, communities, and state at a disadvantage. To change the rules at the 11th hour when many districts have already voted on their budget is ethically wrong. And quite honestly, would put districts an unprecedented hardship. Thank you. Okay. I apologize for the harsh language and for sending the letters to the schools that were playing by the rules. I think whatever came out in that final bill, I haven't found anyone in the state house who thinks that we put a 5% cap on an entire budget. I think we can all agree that an 18 we're now told could be higher. 20% increase in the property taxes is something that most people could accept, you know, financially. And so we're trying to find a way. We have a basic problem in our school system and that is we do not have enough kids in our schools. We've got schools with 34, you know, 60 kids. We tried force mergers. The Valley, Harwood, you did your job. And you've got good schools. I have a second nephew who is in Harwood now. And the schools are struggling. And we have the highest per pupil cost in the country. Used to be second. And the reason is we get no economies of scale. You pay the teacher the same if she's teaching five kids or 15 kids. And so we have to, and that gets us into the housing issue. They're all intertwined. We need to have housing that working people can afford in this state. We need to have a competitive market and a competitive vacancy rate. We're hearing stories of people who have the landlord from hell and they can't move out because there's no place else to go. And so we just have a perfect storm this year and the schools are sitting on it. People, a lot of people in the legislature and the people in the administration. Remember, the governor's first act, the first year he was in office was to require that schools go back and undo their budgets that had already been published and reduce them. I think it was 10%. We spent some long times battling that. We went to the school statewide school health insurance plan. I believe you went up 16% this year. Not very helpful. So we know you're struggling. I think when you don't understand, you know, there's always this, we are the legislature and you are the towns and you are the school districts and you're, you know, you're just not as responsible as we are. And that's a very unfortunate attitude, but it's there. I think schools are trying as hard as they can. We've had schools in. This is a perfect storm, but we all need to work together because I don't know how many budgets if they're coming in at 18% are going to go down. You know, and we don't, we don't want people thinking that they can vote for a 12% budget increase and then their taxes aren't going to go up because they're capped because somebody's taxes will go up. And after those five years, their taxes are going to go up a whole lot. There'll be some real surprises. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're kind of easing into the next topic, which is housing. But before we do that, were there any other responses to Kristen's remarks? Okay. I was on the summer committee for the waiting study and there was, we were getting the information about the concerns about what the taxes have changed. But everybody was supportive of the bill. We had a hard time. Some of us on the committee were concerned and wanted to switch to a categorical aid system because we felt the formula was so complicated. We didn't really know what the unintended consequences like these things that we're experiencing now. But we didn't get support. There was really a lot of momentum just to pass it because of the equity which I supported. And I hope that we get there. The issue, I haven't read the letter, but the issue with that was with the schools that are saying, the cap was to prevent, it's like if you're level funding, but yet your taxes go over 5%. So schools like, hey, we have this 5% cap, let's build a new track or do something like that. That is what it was to prevent to somebody of going way higher. So it was to prevent the schools that were just being harmed to ease them in. And it only goes for five years. So that was what my understanding was. It was just to protect those towns that don't add spending that's out of the control like you pointed out. I was at a school board for Spalding this morning at 7 o'clock in the morning hearing from that school board and all the problems they're having. So I definitely understand that perspective. But that's just a little perspective that I had on the issue. But I understand how difficult it is. Thank you very much. Maureen, this is education related? Yeah, it's related to that. You need to speak to the microphone for the recording. Maureen McCracken, Waterbury. And I sent you all an email last night, but I would just say that whoever created the formula, it's broken. It's not doing what it's supposed to do. These boards are doing what they should be doing. And it dismayed me to hear you talk about wanting the communities to vote down the budgets that their school boards put together. Honestly, that feels incredibly unfair. What if our district votes it down but the next one doesn't? I mean, the formula is broken. I can just tell you that the way that the new counting is happening. I looked at four districts last night. Everybody, even a very wealthy district, increased their student count by like 36%. So the numbers are apples and oranges, and the 5% is actually put on per pupil spending. So when you do that math, I'd be surprised that any district anywhere even came close to the 5%. So somebody put that measure in the wrong place, but it's not the school board's fault. And I feel like it's really, because how can they have view on what's happening all across the state? That's something that got broken somewhere else. And I feel like I'm not sure what the solution is. I do think it's a problem. And I can see even our board, you know, we have some stuff in our budget that might not otherwise be there. But why wouldn't we do that? Anyway. Okay. Yes. We don't want your schools to vote down your budgets. But I think if it comes out that there's going to be an 18% property tax increase that a lot of budgets will go down. And there were a few, seemed to be a few wrongdoers. And we're trying to get the message out so that we can get a better idea of what is being spent. But it is, it's very expensive. And it's not because we're giving, you know, an Ivy League education to our kids. We're just trying to keep them in the 21st century. So. Great. Dr. Mike Licklider is here. He's the superintendent of Harwood. Thank you. And I'll try to give you a transition comment between education and housing. I'm Mike Licklider. I'm the superintendent of Harwood. This is my second year. I moved to Harwood and to Vermont from another state where I spent a career as an educator 13 years as a superintendent. So what I can say is I understand the comparison. I lived in a county with 550,000 people. So I understand the nature of providing a rural education and some of the challenges that we face. I will say that our per pupil costs are estimated to be about 8% higher. So I have a question and then I also have a comment. My question is it's very hard to explain to my neighbors why our per pupil cost is going up 8%. Yet the projected tax increase is 18.5% because I think our board has been very responsible. We have no fund balance. We have a capital reserve of $3 million. We have a bond that failed in 2021 that attempted to do some consolidation as part of that that failed. We have been working with architects. The board is getting input on having another bond potentially next November. Just the repair costs to bring the building up to standards is $64 million. This board has $3 million in their capital reserve. So I think that we have been very frugal with taxpayer money and they are some challenges we have to face. What keeps me up late at night as a superintendent and Senator Cummings, I really appreciate the offer and seeking to understand why our costs are going up. And I think you really kind of nailed all the costs, all those mandated costs, contractual costs that have gone up significantly. But what really keeps me up at night is the thought that I would have to lay off teachers at a time. I was just in our counseling office last week and this is Vermont's most promising jobs put out by the Vermont Department of Labor. And if you look at it, the highest anticipated need in the next 10 years is K-12 teachers including special education teachers and crew and technical education teachers, 7,850. So for a district to have to lay off teachers, the trim budgets at a time when we have a hard time getting teachers is a real challenge. And that keeps me up late at night. And just as one quick example, we hired two teachers for two of our Valley schools, their husband and wife. We hired them last summer. And they had to withdraw that offer because they could not find housing in the Valley. So when you look at salaries not keeping up in the demands of housing, I think that's one of the other things that concerns me as a superintendent. Great. That's a great segue to housing. Thank you, Mike. So the Vermont Futures Project has developed an economic plan for Vermont. In it, they call for an increase in the population to 802,000 people and up to 350,000 non-seasonal housing. This is to meet the needs and requirements of communities. Broken down by county, it seems like a big number, but broken down by county, it's actually a little more doable. If I can just get the statistic here real quick. Yeah, so Washington County, we would have to attract 1200 people and build 640 non-seasonal housing units per year. In your work and your committees, are you discussing this increase? The increase of what? In housing. Yes. Every day. Residents. Every hour of every day. As far as the futures of Vermont, and I haven't seen all of the data, I think it's really not helpful to say that with 802,000 people that we can be sustainable or that we can have an economy. We have 647,000 people. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that's an awful lot of people moving into the state in 11 years. That's an awful lot of breeding and having children and filling up the schools. Having children in this state right now has gone way down since 1990. It's a difficult number to work with and it's a difficult number to understand. That said, the problem of housing is huge. We are not having children. We are not having people move to the state like this kind of project would have asked us to. And we're not building. And the reason we're not building is because it's expensive. It's gotten more expensive in the last five years. And with interest rates where they are, it's going to stay expensive for somebody to try to get a mortgage and to find a home that's going to be affordable to them, whether they have two or four jobs. It is just, and this is a universal problem or an international problem. I've read this. This is happening in Europe. This is happening across the country. We're not alone in trying to untie the knot of not enough housing that's affordable. Never mind not having enough housing that's affordable for people who make $60,000 or less. And we're talking about teachers here. We're talking about nurses. We're talking about teachers' aides in particular. We're talking about service industry folks. We're talking about 200,000 or more income taxpayers in the state of Vermont who file taxes, whether it's individual or family, for less than $60,000 a year. That's the pressure we're under to try to find housing. And we have just spent between rental subsidies and building subsidies. We have spent over half a billion dollars, probably closer to a billion dollars, of mostly federal money that has come to us since the pandemic. And so this idea that 800,000 people will solve the problem at a time when every state is saying that there's not enough people who are living in the state and not enough housing. There's no state anywhere near us that has a surplus of individuals who would move here and who would be able to move here. So the idea of creating 600 houses a year, we've had a target of creating 3,000 affordable houses a year for over a course of time. And we can't match that target because it's too expensive or we have not enough infrastructure. We have not enough construction people. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why it can't happen that doesn't stop us from saying it must happen in some way. Or else we just give up the dream of what it is to live here in this state. And so we are working on it. We are trying to figure out ways to fit in more housing into areas that have infrastructure. Infrastructure equals water and sewer. We have issues with being able to get up Camelsump Road. Can we continue to build up Camelsump Road if the roads are being tested? So there's a lot to it. And I didn't mean to sound flip at the beginning of this, but it is really a difficult thing to imagine. 150,000 new Vermonters in the next 11 years. So my goal is to change the conversation a little bit when we have these conversations in the State House and to say what is it that we can do on an individual town or county basis? Because every town and county is going to have a different sense of what they can build downtown. Who has water and sewer capacity? Where do they build it? Who owns the land? Will they build it? Will they allow we had an issue downtown Waterbury where we had the town say, we want a building right downtown that will have affordable housing in it. And then we had a design review board that put it in danger of happening. That's the battle that we're fighting every day. You bring up some really great points. There's a lot of variables involved with trying to fix housing and trying to attract workforce and increase our population. I think the point of the economic plan is to set some numerical goals so that we can have a sense of success. How will you define success if you're just saying, let's figure out what a town needs and let's build when we can? It's a great aspiration, but I think having concrete numbers helps us get there. I don't disagree, Willie. And I think that one of the things that is important, as Tom just said, we've laid out a lot of money in the last four or five years. And some of the things that we haven't done, though, are to focus on affordable housing for the very, very low-income individuals, people who are really sustaining themselves on SSI. They have a disability payment and that's it. I don't know if people understand this right now, but we have 1,630 households, which is over 3,000 people who are homeless right now in Vermont. And that is nearly 500 children. It's individuals who are age 60 and above. It's individuals, the highest category is individuals with disabilities. And so the challenge of housing isn't just for, you know, we talk about middle income where you've heard the term missing middle before and frankly that's where a lot of the focus has been. And, you know, reimagining the focus where, you know, we have a state that works for everyone is, I think, very important. And I think that some of the things that, you know, we kind of nibble around the edges sometimes and we are living in a different time in a different place with hundreds and hundreds, thousands, hundreds and hundreds right in our own school district here, thousands across the state of fewer students. And yet in some respects it feels like we're, you know, trying to sort of operate things in the way we've always done them. And I think that we need to be thinking differently in lots of different areas. Housing is one of them. Homelessness is another area. Education is a huge one. So I think that some of the things that, you know, we're, I'm dealing with right now in my committee and in the budget adjustment act is trying to keep people who are homeless right now with shelter and fighting against some issues where not everybody wants to do that. But I'm not going to have, you know, people dying in the cold on my conscience. I'm going to do whatever I can to not have that happen. And so I think that, you know, understanding that we're not living in the same place and time as we were even just 10 years ago is important and we need to strategize in different ways. Yeah, I'm not sure my house judiciary topics are going to come up this evening. So I'll just add a few cents on housing. I just want to add and underscore that sort of paradigm shift and thinking about things, you know, we're building housing as much as sort of the system can do. But we do need more infrastructure. We need to change Act 250 and modernize that land use law. We need to think about things like are we incentivizing multi-generational living or are we creating things in our culture and our system or in our tax structure that make that hard so that, you know, my parents live a mile down the road and I live, you know, in another house and then, you know, my teenager might end up living in this, like, maybe we should all be in the same space and we don't have to build 600 new units every year. Maybe we just really need to be housing people differently, you know, of all the neighbors that I have that raise their kids in their house and don't have a place in our community where they feel good about living in their retired years, but they really don't need a three- or four-bedroom house anymore. You know, how do we shift some of these? So that's that nibbling around the edges. I mean, I think that we are, we work really hard at our level to not just, okay, we're just going to put more money towards housing. We're trying to look at a lot of different pieces and I just want to underscore that complexity and that, like, ideas that come from the community can end up in a bill. So don't be afraid to come and talk to us about ideas you have that you think could get at this issue from a different perspective. We need paradigm shift. We are not going to solve our opioid crisis and our housing crisis and all of these humongous issues by just trying to do the same kinds of things we've been doing for the last generation. So I'm hoping that... Thank you. That was a great... I just want to add also short-term rentals. That's an issue I know that's going through a couple of bills right now and how do you regulate them? Home sharing. Yeah, there's, I mean, homelessness, fighting housing for the middle income, you know, increasing the workforce. It's a big job, but let's keep nibbling. And one thing I wanted to add from wearing my appropriations hat is that, yes, over the last number of years we've been putting more and more resources into housing, addressing the whole suite of housing needs from shelter to missing middle to rentals to accessory dwellings. With the... And also funding for water, wastewater to support housing in more condensed areas. So we make sure we have housing where we have the resources and the infrastructure. And so this is a whole package. Also supports for municipalities to look at their zoning and updating the zoning bylaws to accommodate that. But over the past number of years, as far as I can remember anyway, my six years at the legislature, is that we've been repurposing funding that is already in our budget to support housing via the Housing and Conservation Board. It's something that Tom and I have championed for a number of years, is full funding with funding that's already there, not to be repurposed for other state priorities, but to have it dedicated towards housing and through the Housing and Conservation Board. And we know that we can continue to make a difference. COVID, with the COVID money, we're able to swap out state dollars with federal, but it is our responsibility as at the state, is to continue putting our dollars where we know we'll make a difference, not just in our urbanized, more urban communities, but also in our rural communities as well. Ella, if you wouldn't mind keeping the microphone, because we have one last question on a separate, a different topic related to you that's around public safety. Thank you. So, my name is Olivia Campbell. I live in East Montpelier. And I will ask for some grace because I'm going to talk about something that is most dearest to my heart, and I know most dear to everyone here, which is the safety of our children. I want to know, you know, so I have a farm in East Montpelier, and I am concerned about public safety of our community. At U32, we had, by the grace of God, a school bus driver missed being killed while driving a load full of students on a very public road. Twinfield School has nearly had to be shut down because they have had the school board has dealt with issues of threats of the school being shot up. I have had friends and neighbors tell me they feel uncomfortable and unsafe walking on the incredible new bike path in Montpelier. My home has personally been threatened and by people, someone who wrote a mailbox saying they had a gun posted at our home and the state police kind of laughed and never did a complete investigation. So, I, and I'm one of those people that you were talking about, I am a product of the incredible education that higher education that Vermont provides. I'm a boomerang person who moved here thanks to finding a job in the renewable energy sector that enabled my family to move here and I intentionally came home because Vermont is the safest and the best place in the country to raise a child. And I know that everyone in this room wants to continue to make that. And I had to explain to my daughter who is afraid to ride the school bus after having to hear that there was this incident that occurred where her friends were on the bus and I, we now drive our daughter to school on most days. I want, I want you all to explain to a 12 year old child or actually when she started elementary school to a five year old child why she has to hide under her desk and hide in the closet because she's afraid she will be killed. No parent should have to do that and there's at least five bills that have been introduced that we have a lot more work to do around public safety to make sure the police are, have the resources they need to do their job to make sure the judiciary has the resources it needs to do its job for law enforcement and there is still work to be done to keep our students safe. So I would like to know specifically what measures you are going to support in this legislature to keep our students safe. Thank you. Thanks Olivia. I'll just jump in. So this is my area of jurisdiction on the judiciary committee and I don't think we have any senators from the Senate judiciary. You know, very empathetic. We're living in an era with a huge culture of violence and a number of factors that have come together. You know, we're talking about issues from opioid crisis and lack of affordable housing and loss of resources and under resourced areas and so many issues that converge to create some of the experiences that people are having in our communities and public safety is whether you're rural or urban it's different but it's throughout all of our communities and in the schools it's really disturbing what our children are... what they have to learn in order to hopefully be safe in school. So I'm with you. We are doing a lot of things to look at public safety. We did a number of things related to gun laws last year and over the last number of years. Right now I think our biggest push right now is to fully well resource the judiciary and that there's a lot of pieces to the judicial system and law enforcement is also a part of that. So I think that the two biggest things that help deter crimes is, you know, one is the risk of being caught and so having good police presence and having our public safety system well resourced and unfortunately that's sort of set against the last number of years of racial uprisings and communities having to come to terms with this systemic racism embedded in our public safety system and so I'm not sure this is exactly affecting Eastmont Pillar but to your experience of having the state police not willing or able, probably more likely somewhat able to really fully respond to things has to do with, you know, changes in resources to public safety and in Burlington it's a whole other matter where there's very specific changing of resources for law enforcement. So I think we're at this junction with law enforcement where we're dealing with systemic racism and issues and disparities and trying to come to terms with that at the same time that we need a fully resourced public safety system. So, you know, I think I'm hoping we're on sort of the upswing of doing a better job of resourcing that and then on the court side so the second deterrent to crime is the immediacy of consequences and that's our court system which has also been under resourced for decades and that was really beginning to be noticed before COVID and then, you know, we had no jury trials for over a year and the court backlog has, you know, significantly gone up and so people, especially around, you know, certain crimes that are not felonies but are misdemeanors, people are waiting 6, 12, 18, 24 months to have any kind of recourse and that's just really dysfunctional and it's contributing to all kinds of issues. So I don't want to go on and on. There are a number of other bills. We're looking at, you know, retail theft and this and that and some, you know, the Senate I know is working on some additional gun-related crime statutes. So, you know, we're looking at a lot of different pieces and like many of the issues we've talked about tonight, we're trying to come at best, you know, housing people will also help. I mean, the issue we had with the school bus and the U32 district, if we had more housing for people that incident might not have occurred. So I'm just, like, there are many factors that are contributing to, I'm sorry, that's my impression. Maybe I don't know all the details. Okay. All right, so I'm not up to speed on the most recent information about that and we've gotten almost no information since the incident occurred but, yeah, agreed as a parent of U32 students. So I just, you know, I guess I just want to say the public safety issue overall is definitely related to housing and our opioid crisis and all these other, and access to mental health resources and, you know, we're just, we're seeing these things just all come together and again I just want to say, you know, we're going to keep working as a legislature at all the different pieces where we can make change but we still need some really big change in our culture right now. This is a great way to, and we're 10 minutes behind schedule but you just bring the point that all these issues are interrelated. So I'm so sorry that we have to end this discussion. There was one more question but I've invited her to stay and ask it. It has to do with flooding. So unfortunately we don't have any more time. If we stick around too long, our rent may go up. So I just want to stay in closing. We are living in a period of great uncertainty. Our time is limited, I'm sorry, as we've heard tonight, the challenges we face are complex and time consuming. Laws get passed, some work, others create unexpected predicaments. The solutions may take years or even decades to take full effect. I sincerely hope that this gathering has been worth your time. I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our esteemed legislators for their presence and valuable insights and special thanks to each one of you in the audience. Your participation enriches our discussions. I encourage you to continue reaching out to local elected officials and again there's a sign-up sheet to leave your name and email so that they can contact you. We are privileged to reside in a magnificent state where a citizen legislature fosters direct engagement, blurring the lines between politicians and voters and uniting us as one cohesive community. Have a wonderful rest of the evening and stay safe. Thanks for coming tonight.