 The business is to review the minutes of the July meeting. I think we do a technical snafu. We were not able to post them online, but you should have a hard copy. It's very brief document. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. And then I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes that's presented before us. Thank you. Any second? Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Any other corrections? All right, I'll let some members say aye. Aye. I'll let them say no. All right, motion carries. They are approved. Let's move on. Then a main order of business today is the policy changes to the federal staff program and the impact that they will have on providers. So I'd like to ask Sean Brown to come in and see if. There is a lot of info to be on. Great. Of course, yes. Thank you. For the record, my name is Sean Brown, Deputy Commissioner for the Department for Children and Families Economic Services Division. Appreciate the opportunity this afternoon to come and present before the committee. Back in July, late July, the Trump administration issued a proposed rule that impacts. The Trump administration issued a proposed rule that will impact the Three Squares Vermont program in Vermont and it will have a large impact. Currently, the last 20 year states were able to use two categories of eligibility to determine eligibility for Vermonters or anyone seeking supplemental food benefits. I'm in Vermont, we call that program Three Squares Vermont at the federal level. It's known as the Supplemental Detection Assistance Program referred to as SNAP. We could first look at a family if they were eligible under the standard income-based eligibility, standard categorical eligibility, and then there was additional flexibility to use this broad-based categorical eligibility which allowed us to place certain families who met certain characteristics into the program. And then also, we were able to do it in a more simplified manner by not having to look at some other assets and some other areas of their eligibility. Vermont, for at least the last 15 years, has taken a damage of the broad-based categorical eligibility provisions in the rule as do currently about 41 other states in the country. The language being used to support this proposed rule at the federal level is that this has been a loophole in the federal rules for the last 20 years that really been a grained part of the eligibility rules and a lot of the polls that the majority of the states in this country avail themselves of this so it will have a dramatic impact across the country. When it was rolled out, the administration indicated that it would affect about 8% of the SNAP households across the country. We analyzed the caseload in Vermont and we believe it'll impact about 13% of Vermonters currently receiving the program right now in the documents. We submitted beforehand, we believe about 5,200 cases right now, our households will lose their eligibility for Three Squares Vermont, thank you. If this proposed rule is passed and it comes final in its current form, we believe that that will mean about 4,600 kids will lose eligibility for the program as well and when we look at those cases currently and the benefits they receive, that will, Vermont will lose for those households about $7.5 million a year in Three Squares Vermont benefits for those households. As you'll hear from other testimony today from other departments in state government and other community partners, the impacts go beyond the Three Squares Vermont program. We provide regularly a certification list to the agency of education of all of the children receiving Three Squares Vermont benefits in Vermont and then they are automatically eligible for free and reduced lunch in the state. So that means 4,600 kids will no longer be automatically and categorically eligible for free and reduced lunches. Their parents or a caretaker will have to apply to the school for that benefit and as a former school board member and chair, that's a difficult thing to have families do because they're sharing their personal financial information directly with the school and we find that many kids who are eligible don't enroll just for that reason alone and so we believe that and I believe someone here from the agency of education that can talk about the broader implications for the agency in terms of additional funding that is tied to the number of kids receiving free and reduced lunch in the state. So the impact will be quite broad beyond just the Three Squares Vermont program as well. So we've submitted some additional documents. With this, we've got a couple of things going out. To give you a sample of some of the households who will be impacted by this proposed rule just so that you understand the demographics of some of the Vermonters receiving their benefit and how does it impact that? So Sean, on this document that you're gonna put up, so I take it that you have added all of these columns to come up with 4,600? Yes, if you look at the memo that we were just reviewing, we break out the different categories of impact of households and then we show the numbers to each of those and the number of children in those households and then the average benefit that those households receive as well. And so this is from the first, this is a scenario from the first category you will see on that memo. And so this is a household with at least one member who is over age 60 or disabled and not eligible for the standard category eligibility provision. So they will use eligibility after this proposed rule. This is from an actual household that's been identified from our case load just to give you an example. So the household gross income from this household of two members is almost 1,600 a month. They have a mortgage of $405 a month. The property taxes are $54 a month. They're out-of-pocket expenses that medical expenses are $64 a month and they have a savings account just over $5,000. Under the proposed rule, we will now have to look at assets and the savings account is accountable asset. And so any assets or a certain dollar amount or just two? 3,500 if you have an elderly disabled person in the household and 2,250 if there's not anyone elderly disabled in those. So. Could you say that again? It's 3,500 if there is an elderly or disabled person in the household and 2,250 without. Thank you. And so this household currently receives a benefit of $212 a month. Under the proposed rule, they would lose all of their benefit and they would receive zero and they would no longer be eligible for the program. Question. What's accounted as an asset? Is it just cash or a free car? You can get to that. We provided a list of accountable resources under the SNAP program as well as on the table. So you'll see the different assets that we do mention. And there's a whole long list that we can provide as well of assets that are not counted. And then in scenario two, if you look, this is a household of over 60 and disabled again. And here we have a grandmother who is 71 living with her grandson aged 10. So it's a caretaker case. So the net income after deductions would not be able to exceed 100% the federal poverty level for a household that's two at $16,900 a year. So this household has an income of 20, just over $2,500 a month. They have a mortgage of 350. They have property taxes of 71. They have homeowners insurance of 45. They have a savings account of $2,125. This household currently receives a minimum allotment allowance a month, which is $15 per month. However, the grandson would be eligible for free and reduced lunch. Automatically we would provide that information to the agency of education through our data exchange. Here under the proposed rule, they would lose their eligibility and that they would need to apply directly through the school to continue to be eligible if they met the criteria are different for free and reduced lunch when they are for the SNAP program. So not everyone, it's not a complete comparison. There are different requirements. And so some households that might be eligible for SNAP might not be eligible and vice versa. So it's a really fact-based determination. They have to get each household individually. Then the child may change and apply. Yes, the family would actually have to apply directly through the school to continue that benefit of free and reduced lunch. And Sean, just so that we have a scope of what that could mean for this household, the free and reduced lunch, if say it's totally gone, like say the grandmother does not get any assistance for lunch for this child, what will that expense be like monthly for that child? I have a sense of it for my whole child, but I don't know if you've had like a figure for that. My sense is it could be up to $50 a month, if not a little more, based on the prices of meals in the schools. My date is a little dated from when I was on the school board. It's been a few years. Mine's a 75 a month. Yeah, correct. Daily, for daily lunch. I think that when Rosie Cooper speaks, she probably speaks. Yeah, that's great. But the actual estimate probably in her head. Yes, that's great. Great, thank you. Yes. Sean, I may need you to get to this later, but my recollection is that some folks who receive a nominal amount of SNAP benefits also by virtue of that receive additional fuel assistance benefits, that there being a connection between fuel assistance and SNAP, but heat of heat. Yes, there is a, is that in here somewhere? Are those folks in here somewhere? Because then what I'm assuming is that if those folks lose their SNAP benefits, they will then be eligible for lower fuel assistance benefits. So there's another ripple effect on this in another program. Yeah, for households that receive SNAP, there's a provision in the federal SNAP rules that if someone receives LIHEAP, they can receive the full standard utility allowance off their income, which is about $730 a month, even if their costs don't rise to that level. So if someone, so they receive more SNAP benefits for this as well. And if these households, you know, lose this, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna receive more LIHEAP benefits per se. So that they could be, you know, depending on what happens, there could be an impact for those households as well. And is there, is there, I'm trying to pull back my memory, but is there a connection also between you receiving a minimal SNAP benefit and childcare financial assistance program? I don't believe there's a direct correlation with that. There is a more direct correlation for the reach-up program. Okay. Moving to the third scenario, just to highlight, just kind of want to give you any sense of how this will impact your household. We have a matter that's 37, they rent a room and a home. The savings account will make them ineligible for the program under the proposed rule. They have gross income of just over 1,100 a month. The room rent of $360, and they have $3,300 in the bank. They currently receive a benefit of $139 a month, and they would, would no longer be eligible for the program, and they would receive $0 a month, even though they have a lower income that might make them eligible. In this scenario, their asset would make, their savings account or bank account would make them ineligible for the program, whereas I have current rules that would be eligible. In the fourth scenario we have, we have a member, two members who married couple, who are both 59 years old. The net income after deductions cannot exceed 100% of the federal poverty level. For, as we indicated before, that would be $16,910. In this household, they have gross income of $1,725. They pay a room rent of $300. They have a savings account of $9.57. Their current benefit is $15 a month, and they would lose their eligibility to promote the rule, and they, and the impact for this household would be much smaller than in the other examples, but there's an impact nonetheless. I will say we're coming to the time of the year where every year there's a co-lock change for the SNAP benefits. They go in effect for October 1st. Several years ago, because of the way the economy and the cost of living index benefits actually went down several dollars for households per month across the state, and we received a tremendous number of calls from distress for monitors on the program about how that little difference and benefit stretched their ability to make ends meet, whether it's paying for prescription drugs or being able to purchase food or other things in their household that they needed resources for. Fortunately, for the benefits that are going changing this October, the benefits are going back up to what they were several years ago. They're going up by a dollar or two, so that's good news for Vermont, while this proposal comes to pass for the 5,200 households that will be losing their benefits will be a large impact. Sean, can you say a little bit more about the, maybe somebody else is gonna cover this, but the process, the federal process in terms of it's a proposed rule. Sure. What's the length of time between proposed public comment period, enactment changes. I know at different points, different things get proposed and then they get changed and sometimes chronic periods extend out. So right now, this proposed rule was issued on July 24th. It's open for public comment until September 23rd. And then at that point, the administration needs to review and respond to all of the comments it receives. And then it's able to, after that point, to finalize and publish its rule. That also in the news lately, there was a final rule just issued that takes effect in several months the public charge regarding immigration was published. And that was put out for comment probably nine months ago, I believe, and they received over 300,000 comments. So it took them about nine months to review, respond, and respond to those comments and then issue a final rule. So that, depending on, I think some of the time frame depends on the kind of comments we've seen for the administration to review and respond. John, on this document, I'm just trying to reconcile, for instance, you say in this scenario four, you have an average monthly benefit lost of 13197, but then you pick out a particular couple and their benefit for loss would only be 15. So that's true for some of them. Yes, some of them are lower, yes. But that average has been calculated by using everybody in that category. Yes, for those 665 households in the category, that would be the average benefit. So that's what I would do, some people would blow that and some will blow that. Just to kind of know what John is talking about as well as on the day change, and Representative Wood definitely has some other comments and good to get the dates. I notice that those, this will happen for the legislature's backing session. So I don't know if there's any, there's, I'm looking to ask you a question of what is Vermont's response in this common period as a state, are we taking any official response? Yes, we as a department and an agency, our human services are drafting our comments right now. We respond sharing how negatively this will impact, urge them not to finalize this rule, just to leave the program as it is currently. So with anticipation, it's not like you didn't have enough to do it. So thank you for working around this. And we discussed with this committee if there's a role for this committee to take in response to that. One thing I would point out, the Farm Bill was finalized in the last year or so, and it had been due to be re-upped for a while. There was a house tax version of the Senate version and a compromise. And the initial house version of the Farm Bill, that's now in effect, a similar change to what this rule does was proposed to actually change the program through that process, through the legislative process with Denver, but it required a little change as well to comply with the rule. The version that came out of the Senate didn't include this, the court's change in it, and actually the final version did not as well. And so if the legislative intent was to keep the program at the federal level as it was, so this rule kind of conflicts with what the Farm Bill did. So just follow up with one and then I'll let you continue. And we've got a lot, there's a lot that everybody needs to respond to is, I think what deepens my concern is that this is a proposed rule change and it's not like a part of the budget proposal that's going to go through the Congress. This is not going to, we have to go through the US Congress and which for me carries a much more higher success rate but this rule change is passing. So it's been, so we're hearing today and we're so happy for us to understand the impacts of the rule. Thanks for your hard work. I'll let you finish that. Okay. In the final scenario, scenario five, we have a long and then a bit shorter. Their gross income did not exceed 130% at the federal party level, but also the two, 130% of the FPL is just under 22,000. For this household, they have a gross income of 2,286. Their rent is 514, so they receive some sort of rental subsidy. They have a dependent care cost of $336 a month and they have $80 in a savings account. They currently receive $127 a month. This family would no longer be eligible. It would be over income. So Sean, this type of resources that are accountable, you currently ask all of these questions? Yes. So you ask people to have a snowmobile or to verify that and to verify it. So do you anticipate having to make any changes in questioning or how do you redo this? Do you go back and redo the stuff or will everyone have to, you'll have to re-look at the information that you already have? Our processes will have to change because currently under the current, we don't need to look at assets. And so for the broad-based category we'll have eligibility households and so for moving forward we'll have to consider assets. We'll have to collect all that at any time as well. But you said you already collect this information. So I said we do because we're required to. Others we don't because of the broad-based category. So thank you for this really discerning information. Couple of questions and then also just a comment. One is on the list of types of counted resources at the bottom it says vehicles unless excluded. And I know you've got a different list of what might be excluded but can we assume that somebody's vehicle that's needed for work that may be over the asset limit is excluded? So the asset test for vehicles is we allow one vehicle per household. Unless you've got youth that's also working. Under this test it's one vehicle per household unless it's only used as a work vehicle. So if you've had a second vehicle that was a work vehicle or a farm vehicle that could also be excluded but primarily it's one vehicle per household is excluded. And do you folks have, you've got numbers of households affected and the average monthly benefit lost. You have a tally for let's just say the legislature's had plenty of money going around how much would it cost to replace the federal dollars? When we looked at the households here on this on this that would fall into this proposed rule and would lose their benefits for the prior month that we had data available it was $7.5 million. If you calculated it out for the annualized yes it would be $7.5 million. But that doesn't go on in the School of Administrative for instance. That's right, it has some of the ripple effects like how the school watch is. Well also we receive an administrative match to administer the program from the federal government and it's at 50% match. So for every dollar we spend we get 50 cents back as we reversed it from the federal government and the benefit is all 100% federal benefit. That's the other thing I would stress. And for the admin piece we get 50 cents on the dollar if we were to run a state based program we would have to cost allocate our time differently and track it and so there would be an expense to administer a state based supplemental food program that we don't have now running a solely federal based program. So the $7.5 million is literally to replace the benefits. The benefits that doesn't take into a cost the other administrative costs and system costs we would need to reprogram our eligibility system to run a separate I'm assuming parallel system but those details would have to be worked out. So in that chair I guess also to Sean's point about comments and what happened with the other regulatory change that you were referring to is I believe the public charge issue for immigrant families which there were literally I think several hundred thousand comments in. So this is a situation where quantity of comments is very, very important because it delays because as Sean pointed out the benefits have to read all of those and respond to all of those the more comments that go in the longer it takes them to do that so I'll be prepared to offer a motion at some appropriate point today that the council submit, that we ask the Ledge Council to submit our draft of comments on our behalf but I would also individually say that each of us individually for the organizations that we represent and possibly even as individual citizens should be submitting comments. They can be the same comments. It doesn't have to be a lot of different quantity matters in the situation. Yes, thank you, I'll take it. So I think of the interest of time your finish will move on. Thank you so much. Thank you. So Cassie, what are some of the remarks at school? They'd be pretty short from here and I didn't supply any handouts or there's a testimony in advance so just gonna summarize a few of our comments from Vermont after school. My name is Cassie. I am the communications coordinator at Vermont after school and we are a statewide nonprofit working to increase access and quality of programs during the out of school time hours for kids and youth across Vermont. My executive director, Holly Morehouse couldn't be here today so she sends her regrets and I'm hearing her post. So, Vermont after school is deeply opposed to the Trump administration's proposed cuts to SNAP or three squares NT. It's clear it's a key strategy in addressing hunger and food insecurity in Vermont and we are particularly focused on the impacts that the cuts will have on children and youth both in school and during out of school time hours and as Deputy Commissioner Brown mentioned it's the potential impact on the free and reduced rate in schools that I think is kind of triggering some alarm bells for us. When you potentially, well, about a little bit. As he mentioned, over 4,600 children live in households in Vermont that are expected to lose benefits under this proposal. And that means that those children are at risk of losing access to free meals at school because three squares makes families automatically eligible for free breakfast and lunch at school. So if they lose three square benefits and they'll have to apply for school as he mentioned and that's a real headache. It's for families, it can be a barrier to fill out the application. They also might not be fully eligible anymore. It's also a huge headache for school administration to have to have more applications. But really if the school, so if we're seeing potentially free and reduced rate, free and reduced rates of lunch at schools going down so less kids are qualifying, that means less kids are getting access to healthy snacks and meals at school and it also means that there's some implications for some federal funding sources for out of school time meals. So this is really concerning or problematic from our organization's viewpoint. The first is after school snacks and I'm sure broadly with the agency of education can speak a little bit more about these funding sources as well because they are federal funding sources that come through, I think it's called the child and adult care food program. So to qualify programs for these after school snack reimbursements, they have to be 50% free reduced lunch or higher. Same with summer meals. So we have a lot of awesome free summer meal sites that aren't just at schools around the month or at libraries, rec centers, summer learning programs. Any nonprofit can apply and hopefully get funding but they have to demonstrate again that 50% free and reduced free or higher in their specific area where they're gonna serve their meals. And then another really concerning one that would be just pretty devastating is the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant eligibility, 21st Century Community Learning Center grant is a federal funding source for after school and summer learning programs. It is our biggest source of funding for after school and summer programs from on about $5 million a year. Communities and schools have to be 40% free reduced rate or higher and often we've seen is in small communities, it doesn't take a lot of kids to change that number. It can be 10 kids in a school can drop that number below the 40% and then they're no longer eligible for that after school and summer learning funding source. In some, this cut would have a really really negative impact on our Vermont kids and youth particularly during out of school time hours. We often say these after school snacks and meals and summer snacks and meals are so crucial because that can be the last chance that a kid might have access to healthy food before they go home and then before they come back to school in the morning for a healthy breakfast and the same in summer. That's a whole day that they might be counting on for a healthy snack, a healthy meal like lunch and supper. So I really greatly appreciate you considering how this would impact kids during out of school time hours when they're not at home, when they're at after school programs, summer learning programs, when they're at camp, when they're at before school programs, et cetera. Teen centers, libraries, all of these are places where kids get food in our communities and really depend on that access. Any questions? Just to put on, in follow up to what Eric was mentioning earlier in terms of volume matters, so your organization anticipating and submitting written comments. Absolutely. And also sending out on our a humble, social media world, sharing it through that as well. Hunger-free is the last standing partner of ours and really supporting this work as best we can. And that was a great thank you for reminding us all of that as individuals and as organizations. Thank you very much. Thank you for waiting for all. You can dance a little bit. David. So to answer that question, sorry, I'm Rosie Krugerman, State Director of Child Nutrition Programs at the Agency of Education. To answer that question that was asked earlier about the benefit that that family might lose in terms of the free and reduced meals that they get at school, the average lunch cost in Vermont or the price charged to students is about $3 per day and the average breakfast charge is about $1.50. So in total that's $4.50 per day, $90 per month that school is in session or about $810 per school year per student. So I think you've heard that the Agency of Education gets information from the Department of Children and Families about those 4,000 summer students or children who are in families. We get information from DCF about the children who are in families receiving three squares Vermont and we actually get information on about 17,750 students that way. Those are school age students that we're getting that information on and DCF's numbers are on students age of 0 to 18. So it's a little bit tricky to parse out exactly what the impact is gonna be. But we know that of those 17, that 4,600 students who are gonna be no longer receiving benefits, it's a big impact. 3,000, damn, I'm sorry, I'm so nervous today. This is a really important issue. So you've got some numbers in front of you. We get information from DCF and we use that information to directly certify kids for free meals. We send an information to the schools and the schools instead of requesting families apply for those free and reduced meal benefits, the school tells the family you're unqualified so it reduces that paperwork burden as you've heard already. When families are directly certified, we're able to, we don't have to, I'm really sorry, we're all together for a second. So when families are directly certified, they're counted in the number of kids who are qualified for free and reduced meals. In Vermont, we have about 33,600 students who qualify for free and reduced meals. Now the kids who get the information from DCF who are directly certified by DCF, those kids count towards the identified student percentage that a school can use to participate in the community eligibility provision. The community eligibility provision is a provision that allows for universal school meals. So all the meals in the school are provided to all students at no charge. If a school has 40% or more of their students who are directly certified, then they're eligible to participate in the community eligibility provision. And that the total of kids who are directly certified, many, most of them are directly certified because of the prescription through squares for Vermont. We get some additional kids who are directly certified for other reasons, such as they're participating in TANF or reach out to Vermont, or their families are state-based foster, or they're receiving services in the migrant education program or homeless runaway youth act or some other other reasons. But the vast majority are because they're receiving SNAP benefits or through squares for Vermont. When a school has at least 40% of their kids who are directly certified, not a free and reduced rate of 40%, then they can offer the community eligibility provision. And under that provision, we take their percentage of directly certified students, so say 40%, and we multiply that by 1.6 and we allow them to claim that number of meals, that percentage of meals for free and the federal government pays for all those meals. But the school has to pay for the remaining share of meals from non-federal funds. When a school's percentage of directly certified students gets up to about 62%, then all of the meals that they serve to students are reimbursed at the free rate and there's no low funds that have to be contributed. Usually the local fund, they're general funds, but there could be other sources of funding such as private donations for all of our sales or profits from other activities that they're doing. So we're very concerned because we know that there is going to be a drop in the number of kids who are directly certified for free meals. We don't know if it's going to be that whole 4,600 number because, again, that's zero to 18 when we look at school-age children, but it will be some amount of those kids who are no longer directly certified and there's no way to directly certify them. So there are going to be a number of schools who are no longer even eligible to participate in the program, they're not going to hit that 40% threshold, and there will be other schools who would have been eligible at a higher rate there. Directly certifying rate might be up around 62%. And as that drops, their local funds that are going to have to contribute are going to increase. This year, this past school year, we had 63 Vermont schools who are participating in the community eligibility provision. And even without this change, 14 of them had to drop this upcoming year because they either no longer hit that 40% threshold, or they were right at the threshold and it was just going to be too much of a local contribution and it wasn't going to make any sense for the school. So even without this impact, we're already seeing folks having to drop off that program. So we know that there will be an impact on the community eligibility provision and that's going to be, we're not sure of the extent that we will certainly see an impact there whether it's schools having to drop off the program completely or an increase in required local contributions. So we're sure of that. Where we're not sure what the impact will be, where we suspect there'll be an impact is on our overall free and reduced percentages. And so those directed certified students, again, the families don't need to submit an application. In looking at the numbers, it seems like if those families do submit an application, many of them will qualify for reduced price meals, which in Vermont, the state pays for the reduced price share of the meals. We pay 40 cents for the lunches and 30 cents for the breakfast which would have, in other states, that is charged to the families. So those families that still qualify for reduced price meals, they themselves won't necessarily see a bill, but the state will see a bill for those students. And this is not in your written testimony. I looked through the numbers. It looked like about 2,000 of those students were somewhere between 130% federal poverty and 135% federal poverty. And those are the students who will qualify at the reduced rate and the state would need to pay for their share. If all of those kids are school-aged, and again, they're probably not, but if all of them were school-aged and we multiply, we say 70 cents a day, so 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch, for 180 school days, that's a state level contribution of a little under $300,000. So there is some impact there to the state as well. That's kind of the best case scenario that all those families say, oh, I'm not getting the SNAP benefits anymore. I'm gonna go ahead and apply for free or reduced meals and I'm gonna get the benefits. And in that case, we might not see it, but we'll get to the free or reduced rates statewide, even though we will see that that hit to schools who can participate in the community and get a disability contribution. But we suspect that many families won't apply for some of the reasons that were stated earlier. Their family doesn't feel comfortable submitting that application. Often it's just to the school administrator in their local school, they know them, they might feel uncomfortable submitting information. Maybe they would have felt more comfortable submitting it to the more anonymous case worker through DCF. So if those families don't apply, then we're gonna see it hit to our free or reduced numbers statewide. And that number, we use that as a metric for student poverty and all kinds of programs. So we use it within the child nutrition programs. You've heard already that after school meals through the Chotland World Carefully Program in order to offer those meals to all, or in order to offer that program, which offers after school snacks and after school suppers, the school has to have a free and reduced rate of at least 50%. In order to offer that open meal site for the summer meals program, again the school or the community needs to have free and reduced percentage of at least 50%. So those are programs where our communities just will not be eligible if there's a drop in our free and reduced rates. And in our small little towns, it could just be a couple of kids who change that percentage. If you have an under the student school, we're just talking to a few kids. So it could have a big impact on our ability to offer those school meals programs and those child nutrition programs. And then it could have an impact on our amount in the education sphere generally. Again, use those free and reduced rates as a proxy for student poverty throughout. And it's everything from the e-rate program, which provides technology grants. Those are the amount of money that schools get is based on their free and reduced percentage. Eligibility to participate in the low, the teacher loan free payment program for low income schools. Again, that's based on your community free and reduced percentage. And we also use free and reduced percentages as a metric for student poverty when we're comparing how schools are doing under ASSA, the Ever Student Succeeds Act. That's one of the things that we've taken into account. And folks at AOE are pretty concerned about how we're gonna compare education data year over year and see improvements if there's suddenly this weird, fluky piece of, something that has nothing to do with what's actually going on in the school. It's just about eligibility. And so your free and reduced information across years will jump and it won't reflect the natural change that happened on the ground. So it's gonna make that data pretty difficult to use and to be useful. So again, we're not sure, best case scenario, all these families apply and the state just has to pay a few hundred thousand dollars more here in reduced meal costs. But worst case scenario, these families don't apply or for some reason they might not qualify. And then we're seeing a hit not only to the Child Nutrition Programs and not just to those families within the Child Nutrition Programs, but again, all those other kids to attend those schools who benefit from those programs. But also throughout our time. That's right, just to call on you. It's insult for the kids, right? So thank you for coming. Because we've come off on summer and it's, but you're the front line, there's a woman's feeling it every day. And so we start to feel it's, don't feel like the emotional part is there. Trust me, we've got enough senators and House members that go cry in the co-room often enough because we are a part of the communities as well. When you see the front line and the impacts it has, it's very personal. So let me just, let me ask another question. Sure. And that was a good question. Sometimes, some people say, what if we just had free breakfast and lunch in schools all in the month? Just do it. Do we have an idea of what that would? We do. Unfortunately, it's not a good answer for you. So we went through this, with the Senate agriculture committee, this spring I was actually really interested in this. We would make the assumption that if meals were free for all kids, that families would not be inclined to submit those income applications. Just, you know, well, so the way that we could pay for those, the only way that we have at the federal level to pay for those meals is by following the federal child nutrition programs. And so, you know, we get a significant amount of federal funding to pay for those programs based on kids submitting those income applications. So we made the calculation that if we offer meals for free to all the kids under the federal child nutrition programs, we need to come up with the share of non-federal funding. It's allowed, but we have to come up with non-federal funding to pay for those paid meals. And we could still directly certify kids so that, you know, the kids who are directly certified through SNAP, through those other means, they, we still be able to claim them as free, but assuming that no family has submitted income applications, we kind of did the numbers based on that and it would cost the state about $50 million of every kid ate every day. So it's- It's five-zero? Five-zero. So it's- And that's breakfast and lunch? Yeah. So it's a big number. It's something to work towards, but it's- There are bigger numbers than this number. Yeah. And the other thing, there again, we're concerned that if those families are no longer applying, then again, our free and free streets are gonna drop, we're gonna drop just to the kids who are directly certified through their participation. And so we need to come up with some other way of getting that income information. And that's sort of, I think, where the Senate Committee ended up directing our resources to try and figure out, is there a way to get tax data or is there a way to get some other data so that we can have replacement income information to use for this? So referencing the 15 schools that have to drop out- 14. Or 14, what's the population? I don't have that on the top of my head. In locations? All over the state. A lot of them are in the state. Okay, thank you. But there are some all over the state. I do, I have a list that I can supply. So most of the 14 are from the Northeast Kingdom who are no longer eligible? Yeah, so it's done on a four-year cycle. And so their numbers four years ago were high and how they're not. So some of them are no longer eligible to participate at all. Some of them could participate but the share of local funding would just be so high that it's not doable. Is it safe to say that that's where the greatest thing is in some of these schools? I mean, the way CEP is supposed to work is that it's available to the schools where there's the greatest need. But. Hi, Janet Hilbert from the Health Department. And I just have a question about, and first thank you so much for talking to me. They have got to quantify the hate will in packs of kids who are hungry and aren't able to attend or listen as well because they're hungry. Absolutely. Is there a way to figure out or do you have the fund, the dollar amount for if we got the federal fund share, if there were a way to get the family to have applications completed? Do you know what that figure is? So we have 15 million at the cost of our money. What are we able to retain? Ideally that federal subsidy, we're getting that paper completed. So if the families who currently qualify through applications, if we're able to convince them to distill some of the applications. I don't know offhand. So our free and reduced rate statewide is about 41%. So we would need to come up with a paid share of the 39, sorry, map, 59% of those meals. So it's a lot still. It's still a lot. Yeah. And just another question. Is there a way to require that application be completed for them? No. The federal regulations specifically say that we cannot require families to complete the application. But it has to be filled out every year correctly, correct? And not everybody comes to school with their child the first day to fill out that application. Well, it doesn't have to, it can be done at any point throughout the year. Even if you send it home, it doesn't always have to be asked. But yes, of course. Typically it does not come back. So it would be time and cost-permitive to go around trying to find every family that didn't fill out an application. Well, they can yearly, because it has to be done every year. Well, thank you so much for the question. Sure. So we want to, Mary, give her a front-end. That's great. So Mary, this testimony is written here, and it's also a follow-up on to the community website. I'll hand it on. Before you do this also. I'm Mary Reverth, and I'm from the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, and I'm the state, you know, non-aging operations team leader. And I'm here on behalf of my director, Angela Smith-Jane, who's taking a well-deserved vacation. And I hope she's doing something fun today. Although I know she'd really enjoy being here because she's very passionate about older remoders and individuals with disabilities. I manage food and nutrition programs at Dale, and those include the nutrition programs through the Older Americans Act, which is federally funded, through our state-funded home delivery meals program for individuals with disabilities under age 60, and our federally funded commodity supplement food program and senior farmers market nutrition program. And I work with really talented community partners, VCIL, the Area Agencies on Aging, the Vermont Food Bank, and Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont. We work very closely with DCF as well and use a lot of the data that they've provided to you and to us to increase outreach for three squares so that more older remoders and individuals with disabilities can take advantage of this benefit. The current three-square-tumont caseload is nearly 50% of older adults and individuals with disabilities. And this proposal will impact, according to DCF, an estimated 2,385 households. And those are households that have at least one member, that's over 60. And when I refer to older remoders or older adults, that's somebody that's over 60, or that's a household with somebody that has a disability. And it will impact nearly 5,000 individuals. So when you look at the average benefits for older remoders and individuals with disabilities, the monthly benefit ranges from $141 to $186 a month. And this is a big benefit. This provides them with the funds they need to eat the food they need to manage their health, to pay for medicine, heat, rent, transportation. The benefit for older remoders comes through as cash as well. So they have that opportunity to spend the benefit on what they need to stay healthy and well. And we see this proposal rippling through the other services and supports that our partners and that we provide and impacting the healthcare system, the economy, our communities. We've also seen in the last few years a growing number of grandparents that care for grandchildren. And so this would be a double whammy for those people. They'd lose the three squares benefit as well as the loss of school meals. And these are grandparents that are living on fixed incomes and wouldn't have the room to find how to make up for this loss of benefit. Within the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, we have a division of vocational rehab. And in that division, they've done a lot of work in recent years to help high school students transition to the work world. These students too would be impacted through the loss of school meals and they face already a number of barriers in becoming successfully employed in our state. The real impact will be at the local level for our providers in the Aging Services Network that take calls, that provide referral to other resources and services, that provide community and home delivery meals and case management. And they're already stressed. And we see that there's no place within our department to fill this gap that will be created and that our partners will see increased stress on their resources and staff. I think that DCF provided us a really great data to help us paint this picture. But the real impact certainly won't be seen until if and when this proposal goes into effect. Any questions? I did want to ask a general question and I see Sean's gone, but maybe somebody else can ask this. Is the state, has the state sent out some kind of a link for being able to respond or for public comment or if that could be circulated along those that would be great if we could get it out to our organizations as well. Yeah, I don't know where the state would be going on that. Okay. Does the DCF have a public comment? Yeah, if you scroll ahead to Hunger Free's materials, they have a whole array of information. Yeah, we're going to hear from them next. So, I'll go that way. Yes. So I'm just curious, this is I guess both for DCF and for Dale. Has there been any sort of, I guess, help preliminary notification to current recipients of this pending potential benefit change? I'll defer to Nicole. DCF has not done that. It is still just a proposed comment and this is our spoke rule and we would be afraid of households not applying if they don't meet those asset thresholds and we don't want that to happen prematurely. Yeah. I guess I'm talking about the people who are already receiving. So, they've already applied and they are receiving. I'm just thinking about more is better. Trying to prepare people but also trying to get their active voices being heard as they advance. Yeah, sometimes what happens for older remoners is any discussion of a rule, whether it will be good or bad, sometimes just keeps people away from applying because they don't know exactly what it is. It's the unknown and that will keep people from reaching out for that help. And that also makes confusion on the service provision level is having outreach workers be able to clearly understand and be able to explain to potential applicants exactly what will happen. So, this is more directed at Dale as you do your work through community partners. So, what kind of information you provided to community partners like the AAAs and adult days? They were invited to a meeting convened by DCF to talk about the proposal and to hear firsthand about what DCF is doing and we plan to continue to discuss this especially with the area agencies on aging. So, I'm going to have a Norm Horton and Drake Turner. For the record, I'm a Norm Horton, the executive director of Hunger Free Vermont. And my name is Drake Turner. I'm the food security advocacy manager at Hunger Free Vermont. I'm just a guy trying to get a computer. Well, I want to thank the council for convening this really important meeting on this very distressing topic but it is really critical for all of us to gather the knowledge and data that we can to really get clear about what the impacts of this devastating proposed rule change would be for Vermonters and we certainly have been getting devastated by that information for the last hour. So, we're here to talk about the campaign and resources that we need all Vermonters to get involved in and also our state government. So, first I want to thank the agency Human Services, the agency of education, our federal delegation, all of our state legislators and our community partners. Everyone's been mobilizing very quickly and shown real commitment to communication and collaboration around this rule. We've been working with Representative Anne Pugh in addition to get data out to all legislators about the situation. And we've been hearing from many legislators and we know that our state government is working hard to try to address this threat to Three Squares Vermont. So, we're really grateful for everyone's concern and quick action. I want to underline just a couple of things that were mentioned by other people who spoke and then I'm going to turn it over to Drake to give you a really quick tour of our public comment submission campaign webpage and the resources that we have and then we'll of course also any questions along the way we're happy to take. I think it's important to really underline the chilling effect that these changes should they be implemented and even the media around them are having and will have on people choosing to take the step of identifying themselves as being in need of food assistance and applying for Three Squares Vermont and school meals, you know, this applies to as well. Because part of the, I believe that part of the entire agenda behind this proposed rule change and it's one in a series as others have already noted of threats to SNAP that have been taking place under this federal administration is to make the programs so stigmatized and make them so confusing and make them so difficult to use that people stop using them. And we certainly have already seen that this has been happening even though the change around public charge has not actually been implemented yet. Families that fear that they might be might face consequences under this might have their opportunity to apply for citizenship threatened are simply pulling out of all of the federal programs already. And of course this is then having devastating impacts on their children who are U.S. citizens already in most cases and on their ability to continue to thrive in this country and contribute and establish themselves here. So that's, I predict that that will happen again should these rule changes go into effect and that in fact even the media attention around the rule changes which is necessary and yet it produces a chilling effect and it's probably producing a chilling effect already in who is applying. So we've got to both fight the rule change and fight against the stigma that is being attached to these programs which are after all programs that we all may need and programs that everyone's tax dollars have paid for. So I'll just say that. And then I think that everyone else who's come before in this hearing has ably spoken about the data and the consequences and the ripple effects. So without further ado I'm going to turn it over to Drake and let's talk about what we can do because this fight is nowhere near over yet. So Drake, take it away. Thanks, Noor. Thank you, everyone. So again, Noor has mentioned a lot and other folks in the room have really spoken to the impact that this rule could have on people in our communities. Hunger-free Vermont has been working on getting our arms around what this rule could mean since it was announced. I mean, we've been lucky enough to work with our partners at the state to figure out exactly what that impact is. So this week we're officially launching our advocacy campaign to encourage folks to speak out as well. As folks have mentioned, this is a public comment period before the administration can make any changes. All Americans have a right to have their voice heard and although it can be a little bit frustrating to think that perhaps this could go into effect even amidst a lot of opposition, we really want to get the word out as strongly as possible. So we have two main goals of this advocacy campaign. One is really to get the word out to folks that if they qualify for this program to continue to apply and to continue to participate. You know, it really remains to be seen how long this process can take and Noor really highlighted the fact that there's a lot of confusion out there. A lot of folks are really uncertain as to whether or not they're eligible, whether or not their benefits are going to be taken away. I've heard from community partners and directly from Vermonters who are just feeling a lot of uncertainty. So we want to be sure to get the word out that this is still a program, that nothing has changed yet. Folks can still apply and remain on the program and that they have the right to make that decision for themselves and their families. You know, likely if there is a change to be made, it will not happen for many months, as others have mentioned. I'm hopeful that we can prevent this from happening in the first place. So we want folks to still have confidence in 3Score's Vermont as a resource for themselves. And the other main goal of this advocacy campaign is to make sure that Vermont has a strong voice as possible in submitting comments. So you have in your packets an action alert that we've created. This is so that folks can share this with as many people out in the community as possible. And we also have on our website here a lot of resources to help folks share comments. So without... Thank you, Enor. The public comment period, as we mentioned, goes through September 23rd. Folks can submit comments as individuals. Erhard was mentioning this before, as individuals and on behalf of organizations, coalitions, committees, there are a lot of different ways that Vermonters group together on different issues. So there really is a lot of potential for really strong comments from our community. And we've done a lot and we'll continue to do a lot to share resources with folks to make that as easy a task as possible. So we, on our website, as of this week, have some template language for folks. So we have a template that's for individual comments as well as for organizational comments that folks can adapt. One thing I do want to mention is that we really are committed to having, as volume is really important, so the more comments, the better. But they also need to be in your own voice for a comment to count as unique. It needs to be... The general thinking is at least 30% distinct. So in our template language, we have different sections where folks can add. You know, their own thoughts about the impact, the impact on their clients, what folks do. It doesn't need to take, you know, a super long amount of time, but it is important to have your comments listed as much as possible. And we also have a lot of outreach language on the website that we're providing to folks to help spread the word through social media, through emails, from Orch Forum, all the different ways that we communicate with one another. And I also just want to share a couple of reasons that we want as many comments as possible. The first, I think, as folks have mentioned, is that, you know, a large volume of comments expresses a lot of opposition to rules like this. The public charge proposal that has been finalized now, there was significant opposition to that rule and in the final rule, the Department of Homeland Security had to concede that there was strong opposition to that rule in the final ruling. And I think partially as a result of having hundreds of thousands of comments, there are now a lot of legal challenges to this rule. So again, this is a rule that is not in effect yet. It's scheduled to go into effect in October, but Vermont is part of a lawsuit. And there are many other states that are suing to stay the implementation of that rule. So it's important right now to voice your opposition to rules like this. The more comments there are, the longer it takes to sift through them. And it's also a really strong voice on the other side of things. I think it helps focus public attention on an issue like this. And it also may be helpful in the future to have as many voices as possible. Is it time for questions? Sure. Could you go over the legalities and procedure? This is an administrative procedure stuff, right? Yes. Okay. So how do these comments apply? We're not likely to change the administration's mind. I doubt that any of your President will rinse. Oh gee, I never thought of that. They're right. But neither do our comments fail. Do they have administrative discretion? Do the comments affect court cases? Or how does this work? I'm not so familiar with the legalities around that and how the comment periods work. I don't know if you have any. Yeah. So you're right. So the comments don't compel and we certainly aren't going to change we aren't going to cause reform among the members of the Trump administration who've been gunning for SNAP since the very beginning of their time in office. But we might cause them to decide that there's so much political opposition, including among their own base, that they choose not to implement. So that has happened with some other proposed administrative rule changes. So, you know, that's a possibility. Are we making our hopes on that? No. But the volume of comments does have significance in the court cases that certainly will follow, in particular in convincing whatever federal judge gets this challenge to stay the implementation until the court case is decided. And that's all we need to do, I hope. Because delay is the name of the game in terms of keeping this rule from getting implemented. That's my next question. What is the game plan? What do we do with that person? How long are we likely to be able to delay implementation? It's very, it's impossible for me to answer that question because it depends on whether the judges hearing the lawsuits that will certainly be brought choose to stay the implementation while the lawsuits are being heard. I just can't answer that question. But because administrative rule change does not go through any kind of legislative process, this is the only avenue that we have, well, in addition to going into the streets and perhaps that will be the next thing we propose. But for now this is the strategy that has the best chance of slowing down implementation long enough to make it irrelevant. To make it what? To make it that implementation will never happen. So you're talking about delaying until after the next election. Correct. I think it's also important to note that this rule in particular, as folks mentioned earlier, was considered and then left out of the farm bill that was voted on by Congress. So there is you know this has been decided on by a body that was elected by, you know, Americans. And so the fact that the administration is trying to enact it through administrative action, there's a very strong case we made that that's subverting the will of Congress who's a democratically elected body which I think also is something that would come into play if and when this proceeds. I think our ask for the council and for other folks here and other folks in the legislature is to submit comments as individuals on behalf of the council as well as, you know, in any other form you can imagine. And we have a lot of resources here, we're developing more and we're happy to work with anyone who wants more talking points, more information or any assistance in submitting comments. We're linking to a comment portal that's managed by the food research action center which is a national anti-hunger organization and it's a very easy way of submission but there are other options as well. So we're here to assist anyone and thank you for caring for us and for your attention to this issue. I think Enor has another. Thank you. Just to follow up to your previous set of responses to the question. So are you aware whether there is a national hunger free plan or a concerted effort that if it gets far enough down the pipe that there would be national lawsuits filed so not just leave it at the state level. Yeah, they're organized sort of a nuclear option plan. Yeah, sorry. There are, we've been working very closely with national partners, FRAC, the Food Research Action Center and Feeding America which is the federal organization that does a lot of their charitable food work have been doing webinars. There's also a group called the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that's been doing a lot of research. So anti-hunger groups across the US are mobilizing and there is work being done on the federal level. I don't know exactly what the nuclear option is for our national partners but we've been in pretty constant communication with other anti-hunger advocacy groups as well as we've been doing for months. So there's a lot of, we've had a lot of practice I think at this the past couple of years and talking to each other and making sure we're coordinating. So a lot of the language that we're providing is in coordination with the national strategy. I mean there's absolutely no question that there will be lawsuits on multiple levels if the proposed rule gets turned into a final rule. Well I would just like to again thank the council for taking this topic and I would like to remind us all that action is the way to keep these terrible things from happening. So please all of us in this room are we're powerful people yes yes and we have lots of networks of all different kinds and so please use every single one of them to flood the federal system with comments. Thank you so much and in that vein I think now is the appropriate time to make that motion. So I would move that the council submit comments raising a profound concern about these proposed regulations and that we ask ledge council to draft that on our behalf and I would leave it to maybe the chair and the vice chair given it's a timeliness issue to approve the final draft to authorize to sign approve and sign the final draft on our behalf. I'll add a part B which is also to communicate with the attorney general's office and ask them to consider a lawsuit to stay on the implementation and to join with other attorneys general around the country that may be doing the same. Yeah, I'll begin to this. Yeah, I'll sign it. Thank you. Okay, any discussion? Any further Alright, so all speakers say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say no. Thank you. Katie is it clear? Thank you very much. Electronically, so we could recommend that second. Yep, this is on the website as well. All right. I don't mind. It's $100 for each website, so we're going to tell them some of this by day. All right. So thank you all for coming in, speaking to us, and we will do our part to try to stop this. Great. Time. I have a question. The legislators usually just write legislative reports during the session. But since we do some work outside of the session, some of our local papers may or may not be willing to publish all of that. Sure. That's right. Yeah, that's a good point. OK, well, yes. I guess I would underline also that whatever letter Katie drafts on our behalf that folks should be able to use that individually and then file. Yes. Either that or their template. So we can do that individually as well. Sure. Do you think about a press conference? We're going to do that for the 24th because our next meeting is after the session. Yeah. Yeah. So once the letter is done, we'll do it. I think that your question is not the same, but we'll do it. Yeah. OK? Or a press release? If we do take action like that, I would just suggest that we work with DCF and see what the state's administrative response is going to be and maybe we can do some combination of something. Right. Has the governor spoken on this? Sean said he's putting things together that they had a formal response that they were drafting. Yeah, we're working on a formal response. Will that be something that we would perceive prior to? Yeah. We would be more than happy to share once it's filed. Yeah. But the bullet is to follow that as under 5th and 4th. Yeah. Right. Definitely. Yeah. We'll do it. OK, once the letter is done, we'll fill it out and then we'll just schedule a press release. Could I get anything else? OK, we'll give it on to Katie, please, since the chart that did we honor this, the chart that was prepared, the recommendation of the council along with what actually took place in our discussion. Katie, we've got enough solicitors in the council. It was posted online after our last meeting and updated pressure. We don't have the same amount of solicitors today. I think we have some time to go, right, Katie? I did. OK. I did. I did. We did. Is that so? So I pulled it up from a website. I went back to last council meeting and I pulled it up under my name, so I wouldn't spell this. So I was just going to run through the changes that we discussed. So first, we had recommendations in the first row related to child care. And the change there, the only change there is if you look in the second column, there's an asterisk. There's one, and then there's two below that. That first sentence with the first asterisk is the Act 72 required that the Child Care Financial Assistance Program utilize current federal poverty guidelines. So I've added that to this document. The second row also had a change. The recommendation here was that the advisory council recommends increasing investments in after-school and summer programs to expand high-quality programs and increased statewide access. Originally it said that there was no known action. And the update is that eligible families can use this easy benefit towards after-school programming. Moving to the second page of this document, third row, there is a change in section A. So that recommendation from the council was increasing capital investments to reduce the shortage of affordable housing in Vermont. For example, by providing full statutory funding to the Vermont Housing Conservation Board, the original document could help the ups and the downs. So hopefully this language reflects that with regard to the Vermont Housing Conservation Board's budget, there was a $1 million addition in the amount of operating funds compared to the previous year. But available capital funding was lowered by a similar amount. Similarly, there was a change in subsection 7 based on our conversation. The recommendation, excuse me, subsection C, I think I said 7, the recommendation was expanding investments in supportive services to increase housing retention for families, for example, by increasing funding for family supportive housing. So the change here was that Act 72 contains a one-time appropriation for supportive housing via SASH, which benefits some families. Also, Act 72 established a specialized housing voucher working group, which is responsible for submitting a report by November of this year. There were no changes at the top of the third page of this document. There were changes starting with subsection D. So there was a recommendation in last year's report with regard to investing in workforce training and financial literacy education. And it was pointed out that Act 8 included requirements pertaining to education and training of remote workers. And that Act 72 included investments for the childcare workforce. And then more details about that in the first row across that talks specifically about childcare. There are also changes in subsection E. That recommendation had to do with the advisory council supporting transportation-related public initiatives, including increasing public transportation options, increasing access to reliable and affordable vehicles and providing license fee and fine remediation assistance. And the new language here is that Act 59 established an admissions repair program and provided incentives to promote households with low and moderate income out of below 160% of the state's prior five-year average medium household income level for electric vehicle purchases. Other initiatives include continuing examination of a commuter rail between Montpelier and Burlington. Also, Act 249 has passed the House proposed to establish a pilot to cover the costs of the motor vehicle sales and use tax of the registration fees for the first year of power ownership for each of the participants. Yep, got cut off. I went to page four. And then the other new language, you scroll all the way to the bottom of page four. There were a lot, there was a lot of brainstorming about other related legislative actions that didn't neatly fall into one of the categories that the committee had specifically issued recommendations on. So we have the restoration of the CIS funding under this kind of catch-all passage of Act 148 and act relating to adopting protections against housing discrimination for victims of domestic and sexual violence. Passage of Act 37 and act relating to repealing the statute of limitations for civil actions based on childhood sexual abuse and funding to increase payments to foster parents. That's it for that particular document. Did any comments or comments? So I'm sorry to have to quill going back to the VHCD appropriation. I just want to make sure there's no misunderstanding the way you frame this as $1 million addition in the amount of operating funds. Sounds like they're going to be insured funds. It's not operating funds. It was a general fund dollars made available through the property transfer tax. It's not operating funds in the common sense of how one would understand operating funds as adequate. So I just want to make sure there's this impression left here that the VHCD is getting all kinds of additional administrative funds, which it's not. They're not capital dollars. They were appropriated to Act 72 as a result of the increasing of property transfer tax, which is the statutory funding source for the VHCD. It's not operating funds in the common sense that one would understand this. They call it the Ogram dollars? They're programmatic dollars. Yeah. Just like the capital provided by the programmatic dollars as well. Some of them may well know the patent, but it's basically, you could also just call it general fund dollars as contrasted with capital dollar dollars. Sorry, it's wonky and complicated because the VHCD funding is to a couple different sources. Would it be possible to just switch out the word operating with programmatic? Would that address the concern? I think that would be fine. Okay. That would be no fun. Okay. I will make that change. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll accomplish some things. We're gonna do it. That's fine. Okay. I guess, a good question. Please. Yes. Is that something? Hi. So is it? Yeah. Right. Is this the middle of the day first? Yes. Yes. It's the Thursday of the 19th. That was the, and the reason for that is, I might as well have us identifying an ability that was gonna be under some reconstruction helped us determine what it might be they opt to be time-consuming. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Very good. Okay. And is it relevant to an area that we can talk about? Did you guys know about where? Well, I have spoken to calm down in New York and Toronto. They have a facility for us to be in and certainly accommodate all of these people here in New York Street, downtown, the Congress. The people for us to talk to. Is that, pardon? Yeah. He'll be the one that's right for ranging. Community members to come in and speak with us. Yes. Yes. And when you've learned that, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. With the time this, we have around 30. Okay. What time? Around 30. I'm 30. I'm just calling on my back. I don't want to talk about downtown, but I hope it's 20. Yeah, we're, what's the name of the gentleman? Tom Donahue. I'm sorry. I couldn't quite hear where we're meeting. Right. Right. Thank you. So, self-question. Thank you. We've been together a little. Do you have a little mind on that? If you don't mind, I'm not sure. Yes, we don't. I haven't known on here that Sarah Phillips questions her. Rolling. I don't know. Did you have something around the November 21st or something? I just had offered to connect with Tom and work with him on average, but it's great that the representative did. And I'm certainly happy to follow up and talk to the event last year and the work that's needed to do the outreach and promote it. And then we go to see what we can do. And then we can talk about it from to any other story we have. The what? Oh, yeah. Everybody goes by my house. Well, that's fine. Come outside and put your thumb up. Anything else we need to talk about with that? I remember, because I had it reserved and I remember somebody asking me about which might personally. I don't exactly know what time this was going to person. You said 1.30 in the afternoon? 1.30 in the afternoon. 2 hours. 2 hours. 3 hours. Same. 1.30 to 3.30. Where are the two things? Two things. One is, if we're going to be at 1.30 working folks in that area, we won't be able to be able to. I can't remember what we met at MECA last year. What was it? It was evening. It was an evening. So I guess I would have to wonder about the time of the meeting. And be kind of the joy played after you and the time. Start at 1.30. If it's 4.30, then go until evening time. I don't know what the folks' preferences, but I would probably want to be 1.40 people. I remember hard time here a year. I'm sorry. I'm just kind of randomly not sorry. I think I go to the theater. Meet in 90s, let me put it that way. You should go to the clock. Yeah, 1.30 to 5 o'clock. I'm not starting to like it. And some working people work with me. People are here. Yeah, I'm just going to. I prefer being in the day, but that's just my, especially if we're going to run. And I'm not sure if they can accommodate us at 5 o'clock or after hours. I would say that Tom Donahue would want to accommodate us. No original question. We find sometimes yesterday. Yes, yes. What if it was just lunchtime? Oh gosh, oh gosh. You know, okay. And maybe if Zero speaks to Tom about what we did before, maybe that might influence us. Thank you about how to pull it off. I don't want to do that right now. I'm not offering this, but it was like we jumped in my mind, but you can just jump all over me. Because it's like I accommodate the two times a day. Like is there an hour, 1.30 to 2.30 for people? And then we can meet at 5. 4 hours? Well, people want to meet an hour later. And that's what it was. And that's what it was. Yeah. Is this meeting supposed to be similar to the one in the middle? Yeah, okay. You know, maybe I would have commended my implying comment. If we really want a good number of the public, I thought when you said Tom was going to invite people to come speak that I didn't know whether that was specifically, you know, from some side or whether it was public involvement. So probably if that's the case, then probably we should be at a time they can come. Oh, yeah. So it sounds like people will talk to Tom. We still have a couple months to figure it out. We'll both speak at the time. I think that's a good. Yeah, I'm supposed to be. Yeah, let's go get a pot. Everybody should just come. I'll get a pot together. Just in the frame. I'll get a pot. Yes. So for the November meeting, I'm just wondering if folks have had thoughts about an October meeting agenda yet. That's a good idea. Yeah, we'll just talk about it. I guess, you know, last year we devoted one meeting to housing and homelessness among children, families of children, and so I would propose at some point that we could vote at some time. Possibly on the November agenda, because there are some things happening in Rutland County around housing and homelessness. And I'll talk to Sarah. Sarah might have some contact about that, but I don't think it would be a good feature. But I just want to put a plug for doing something. There's a whole lot of studies that are going on. A lot of stuff in the works around housing and homelessness from the voucher work group that Kate just mentioned in her report to the Treasury was doing a report on creating a thousand meetings of housing over the next five years. So there's a fair amount of room in the housing world that I would want to suggest that we have some time spent on housing and homelessness. Sure. Yes, that sounds good. Any other questions? Can I just clarify that the purpose of the meeting in Rutland is a similar purpose of the meeting of Cadets A John Spurry, which is to hear directly from. You said sounds great. But I heard October and November for housing. Which one were you thinking? Yeah, I just know the topic in general. So it's great. Thank you for calling me on. We already had one request from Voices, because some part of it is coming out. Problems as on our meeting date in October. September. Or September. OK, September. So normally, the vice chair and I do this together with Mike. So shall we just sort of see who might be available. Is September OK to do the housing and homelessness or would you rather be waiting for October? I mean, October. How should you follow up? Yeah. Yeah. Is this a study of the community? Well, the H.S. Warthroop, their report is due, both Saturday and August. It's due November 1st, but I would expect that there will be some significant findings or recommendations for the report on the diamond. Like I told you, I'm not sure about the treasure's report on housing, but I guess it should be fairly far along as well. So we could do both, then we could do the housing and homelessness, and then the poverty data that Voices won't. In October? In September. In September. September Voices, is that one of the sectors of housing? I don't know if I'll say. I was just going to add anything for future agenda and agenda topics. I would love an opportunity to update the council about how we grow the month, and what we're doing with that initiative is all about in terms of mitigating the effects of poverty on young children and families, in terms of building up a positive experience system, mitigate toxic stress, and how that really affects the welfare resiliency. And basically overall, we're streaming through. So I imagine some of you are familiar with it, and I'd love an opportunity to tell you some stories and share that, and let you know all about it. And that would be December, whenever there's space on the agenda. And what was the name of the organization? Helping the government. Well, Voices, come up, or grow on the one thing. Well, not the one thing. Yeah, the one thing. So that would be. Yeah, so maybe Jeb, could you speak to Helping the Government at the September meeting? Sure. Yeah, I think so. I'll introduce you. I think the one meeting, is it 24th or 26th? September, I think is the 26th. Yeah, I'll turn that meeting up. I'll understand it. I'm so sorry. OK. No, it's OK. We'll put it off then. Yeah. Whatever it is. I would just also point out that if we're going to be a broad number of community action and economic programs that we've supported on this council, too. If we start to get this like a little skeleton. Yeah. If we're getting these things. This is a skeleton. The agenda. That's good. Yeah, please don't.