 All right, good afternoon and welcome back to the House Amendment Energy Committee. This afternoon, we are going to take up work last week with the Transportation Committee. We were unable to hear from all of the agency and natural resources witnesses. We're grateful that Marion Wolts, the Resilience and Adaptation Coordinator with A&R, could join us again today. Sorry for the delay. And welcome. I mean, our mute itself is a bit different. Oh, you know, thanks. I thought I did that. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Thanks. But again, welcome to the House Environment and Energy Committee. We are picking up where we left off last week with the Agency of Transportation testimony that we were, excuse me. Wow, I did a good job when we were muted. Nailed it. Nailed it. Third time's a charm. We are welcoming with us Marion Wolts, the Resilience and Adaptation Coordinator for the Agency of Natural Resources, who we were unable to hear from last week when we had our joint hearing with Transportation Committee. Welcome, Ms. Wolts. Great. Well, thanks, everyone, for having us back. I appreciate being with you here this afternoon. Mr. Fulton said my name is Marion Wolts, and I'm the Resilience and Adaptation Coordinator at A&R's Climate Action Office. Here to share with you today some of the work we're doing in the Climate Action Office as it relates to building resilience to climate change impacts for Vermont and our communities. All right, so let's put the press here. So as you all are well aware, the Global Warming Solutions Act was enacted in September of 2020, and it established the Vermont Climate Council and charged it with writing a climate action plan that, among other requirements, must identify strategies that build resilience to prepare the state's communities, infrastructure, and economy to adapt to the current and anticipated effects of climate change. That climate action plan was adopted in December of 2021 and includes recommendations to reduce emissions, build resilience and adaptation, and sequester carbon. The cap also included a recommendation to establish a body within the executive branch to ensure coordinated climate action across state government. About six months after the climate action plan was adopted, a climate action office was established with the FY23 budget, charged with working collaboratively within and outside A&R to seek climate vision and to lead and coordinate and track climate action. The Climate Action Office has staff with expertise in greenhouse gas mitigation, adaptation and resilience, carbon sequestration, communications, and data analysis. We're setting up a system to monitor and track climate work across state agencies. We're establishing public access to an understanding of climate action and are working very closely with the Environmental Justice Unit at A&R, which supports the implementation of Act 154 to ensure that we're centering frontline and impact with communities and all of the work we're doing to address the change. As the Climate Action Office was established to support a state vision for climate action, an Interagency Advisory Board was also established to provide a space for proactive coordination on climate action across state government. This Interagency Advisory Board, or IAAB, as we say, includes representation from the Public Service Department, Agency of Transportation, Agency of Natural Resources for Modern Emergency Management, with Stephanie Smith, Agency of Agriculture, Buildings to General Services, Human Services, Commerce and Community Development, as well as the Vermont State Climatologist, who you heard from at your last joint testimony with the transportation. How many staff are in the climate office? We currently have one, two, three, four, five, six, and we'll be soon hiring. So I mentioned we have three folks that are really focused on greenhouse gas mitigation. Myself with adaptation resilience, we have a communications and community engagement coordinator, and we'll be soon hiring someone with a focus on carbon sequestration and natural working lands. And then all led by Jane Belzer-Cech, who will be here soon. I'm sure you're in front. So there will eventually be a staff of seven or at six right now. So specific to resilience and adaptation, which is really the focus of my work, I'll be sharing with you all today the ongoing and planned work in the Climate Action Office as it relates to resilience and adaptation coordination across state government and with partners within and outside A&R. I'll speak to technical analysis and tools in just a moment and get into a bit more detail on the work we're doing there. In the strategy and program development space, we're really focused on resilience strategies and programs that are supporting work across state government on incorporating a climate resilience lens into existing work. Thank you all have heard from folks and we'll continue to hear. There's a lot of work happening on adaptation and resilience across communities within state government. This isn't a new space. And the Climate Action Office is really providing that platform to help coordinate that work and speak to how we pull that into sort of our day-to-day conversations about the impacts of climate change on all of our work. A few examples of the strategy and program development. We granted to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development additional funds to add a focus to their designation and evaluation reform study to add capacity to dig further into climate resilience research, so targeted engagement and additional recommendations specifically around climate solutions in our downtown areas. ACCD or the Department of Housing and Community Development will be, I believe has come out with the report, the Design and Evaluation Reform Report just last week, I believe. And the report for the climate recommendations will be coming out at the end of January. So we're looking forward to partnering with ACCD on that and sharing that report that really includes recommendations of how to build climate resilience strategies into the designation programs. Excuse me, can you say it one more time? You asked them to add something to their other designation study and one more summary of what you asked them to do. Yeah, so we, following the flooding in July, ACCD had already taken on and had under contract Smart Growth America to do this evaluation of the designation programs that are run out of the Department of Housing and Community Development. There was a small focus within that initial scope of work on climate resilience and really better incorporate actions and supports for communities that are in the designation program or interested in being in designation program for climate resilience, but acknowledging sort of the impacts of flooding, there was interest in sort of expanding that scope of work. And so we granted funds from our climate action budget to the DHCV to sort of expand that scope of work within their existing contract with Smart Growth America. And so what it looked like was pulling in additional expertise in climate resilience, sort of in compact settlements and what Smart Growth America, they did an analysis or really a look at both within state programs and external state programs best practices on incorporating climate resilience into supporting downtown and economic community development centers and are going to be producing again at the end of January, sort of an addendum to that designation reform study that really speaks to how recommendations for incorporating climate resilience into the designation programs. Thank you. As I noted earlier, the Climate Action Office is also building a tool to measure and track climate action. Building that tool includes also establishing metrics for climate resilience and we're embarking on that process with partners within the agency, inter-agency advisory board and then specifically for modern emergency management, public service department, agency of transportation and DEC. I'm sure we both know what we can track and ensure that we're building this tool, thinking about long-term what we should be tracking to better understand outcomes and impacts of our work on building climate resilience. So that's the measuring and assessing progress tool that the Climate Action Office is currently working through the RFP and responses to the RFP and a big component of that will be establishing a process and building metrics for climate resilience so we can get a better sense of our work in the climate resilience space and really the impacts that's happening on communities. We're also coordinating closely with from our emergency management with Stephanie here on how the Climate Action Plan and the State Hazard Mitigation Plan can better iterate off each other when it comes to climate resilience with the goal of using those plans and others to articulate a statewide vision for resilience as well as being able to iterate off the actions needed to implement that vision across multiple planning efforts. So those are ongoing conversations we're having to really speak to how can the State Hazard Mitigation Plan and the Climate Action Plan that both have focuses on climate resilience better iterate off each other and build off each other for the actions that are included there. You all may have also seen the recent announcement from the Governor and the Treasurer's Office to build a resilience implementation strategy. The Climate Action Office will be partnering in that effort with the Treasurer's Office and the Governor's Office. We began meeting with them just this week to start to discuss the framework to develop that strategy and much of it will build off existing work plans within the Climate Action Office. And then broadly in the communication space the Climate Action Office is working on communication support for climate action both within A&R and external. Thinking about how we communicate out the results of the work we're doing to track climate work and state government as well as communicate out program coordination for various audiences and partners. So taking a step back, you all heard from A&R colleagues at the testimony last week as well as Dr. Duping Yijiru, the State Climateatologist about the impacts of the July flooding. What we've learned and how agencies, our agency programs are really addressing these gaps. The events from this summer, early droughts, poor air quality due to wildfires, frosts, fogging and seasonably warm weather and the flooding from the summer and winter all heighten the importance and urgency of cross-sector and cross-agency coordination to support communities and people who are feeling the impacts of climate change every day. And conversations and stakeholder engagement on tools that I'll get to in just a moment what we've been hearing as needed supports is really more urgent following all of the events of this summer and winter. I will note the Climate Action Office wasn't involved in immediate flood response or recovery that really lasted through September, but our office and the Interagency Advisory Board with respect to climate resilience play a role in coordinating efforts to really think about how we enhance our program delivery for folks regarding disasters exacerbated by climate change. So getting to those tools I said I was going to get to, much of my focus over the last year has been to develop tools in terms of climate resilience into the lexicon of data and municipal planning and project implementation. So it's easier for communities across the state to adapt to climate change and build that into their existing work. I have a slide each for two tools would welcome separate conversations to get into more detail on them as I know we don't have a whole lot of time today. So these will remain at a fairly high level but happy to answer questions or come back for another time. So the first tool you'll see a mockup on the screen here is what we're calling the municipal climate toolkit. It's a key recommendation that comes from the Global Warming Solutions Act requirement to recommend tools for municipalities to assess their climate resilience. This toolkit's being developed and led with ANR through a partnership with the Vermont Climate Council. The goal of this toolkit is to provide a centralized hub for information relevant for designing and implementing climate action measures or strategies as well as information on financial resources and technical assistance for municipalities. We're intending it to be a one-stop shop or perhaps two-stop shop for municipalities looking to incorporate climate change into their municipal planning and processes. Currently tools and resources and technical assistance that address various aspects of climate change exist across state government but there's not one location that links all those resources together and provides an avenue for folks to ultimately see how their work fits into this broader lens of climate change action. So the mockup here on the screen shows a sample of what resources could look like. We're intending to have them grouped both by topic area and resource type. Each topic area will include an overview of the topic and how that relates to and is impacted by climate change. We've been working on this toolkit for a while. We're having delays due to IT issues but hope to roll it out later this spring. I'm so excited to share that with municipalities and really think about how we can continue to build out this toolkit to better connect to grants, data, financial resources and case studies for communities to incorporate climate change into their work. We have a question from Representative Stebbins. Hi, thank you, good afternoon. Are you coordinating with the RPCs or with VAPTA on this? Yes, yeah. So we've had extensive stakeholder engagement with municipalities and RPCs on the toolkit and intend to, and I'll get to it with the next tool and resource that are really thinking about how we build out a partnership, sort of codified partnership with RPCs to help roll out a lot of these resources. Yeah. Because it's definitely not a one-stop shop if you don't have all there. Yeah, great. Yes. So the next tool, again, just one slide for each but happy to come back and speak to it in more detail. This is a resource we also expect to have completed later this spring that we're calling the Municipal Vulnerability Index Tool. This is also a requirement of the Glamoring Solutions Act. And again, it's being developed in partnership with the Climate Council. The Municipal Vulnerability Index or MVI is will be a user-guided geospatial mapping tool intended to help municipalities understand and explore their vulnerabilities to climate change across a range of social, economic, and biophysical factors. The MVI will help Vermont communities identify where climate change is placing pressures on various sectors and will help inform planning priorities and work on hazard mitigation plans, local energy plans, emergency response plans, et cetera. What you see on the slide here, the five bullets are domains or groupings of potential vulnerability indicators that will be displayed again in a geospatial form in this mapping tool. We're using Vermont-specific data where possible and are aligning with other existing tools like the Social Vulnerability Index, BioFinder, the Flood Ready Atlas, and others. We will be also including geospatial data on climate hazards, where we have it, and are aligning those hazards in the tool with the hazards that are identified in the State Hazard Mitigation Plan. The MVI will use climate hazard data where we have it from local datasets and those with climate projections, whatever possible, and then we will also, of course, be incorporating regional and national datasets as needed. Vermont's not alone in lacking authoritative sort of peer-reviewed climate, local and state data for climate projections, particularly in a geospatial form. So we are building this tool with a mind towards future incorporation of climate projections as they become more readily available. So again, this is intended to be sort of a flexible user-guided approach. If folks are familiar with using BioFinder where you can turn layers on and off and sort of see overlays of particular factors, that will be what this tool will look like. It's not gonna spit out a single vulnerability score, but will rather provide a way for municipalities and other partners to see factors in the social and physical environment, natural hazards and overlays with natural environment and overlays with natural hazards where we have it. And we'll also include a system of flagging so that we can better indicate the presence and scale of vulnerability for particular factors that will be in this tool. I just received a draft of this tool on Monday of this week. We'll be beta testing the tool with a handful of municipalities as well as our task group made up of members of the Vermont Climate Council later this month with the, again, the intent to have the tool ready to go in April of this year. To your question, Rep Stevens on working with regional planning commissions, we are also hoping and working to partner with RPCs to help us train on the tool with municipalities and other local partners once complete. This will look both like trainings with municipalities and partners as well as working with RPCs to develop profiles or municipal guides that will really show how the tool can be used to connect to existing planning and project implementation work that municipalities or RPCs will be looking forward to that collaboration. So wrapping up, as I said earlier, the Climate Action Office was established to support a state vision for climate action. And there are a number of projects on our horizon that we see as instrumental to helping us better understand the impact of the work we're doing in state government to better and more efficiently provide resources and technical assistance on climate resilience to municipalities and other partners and to provide information and communication support to decision makers as we grapple with the more severe impacts of climate change on our state. I've highlighted some of the upcoming work on the slide here. I don't think we have time to go through all of them, but we'll note that we see all of this work as well as our coordination with the Interagency Advisory Board as both important standalone tools or resources but also building blocks to get to a better understanding of what it takes for our communities in our state to be more resilient to climate change. So, in closing, the Climate Action Office has been around for a little over a year. We have a lot of work ahead of us with partners and are excited about providing a space to speak collectively about state climate resilience vision. It gets us to a place of a more resilient environment. So with that, happy to take questions. Thank you. Thanks for your presentation. Do members have questions? Hello. Hi, I'm Morris. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for coming. I see planning on here as part of your office responsibility. It's your first one on the slide by the way. So I'm wondering, when we talk about planning for municipalities or pinch points where we have problems, are you going to get into mitigation or possibilities or what we can do to mitigate some of these hazard points or offer suggestions or to look at how we could do that. Can I reference sediment removal in certain areas, which we're not allowed now, or burming in certain areas? Or I know we're doing things with oversized culverts or removing them and putting in the full span arch, creature type thing. So is it going to include that? Or am I looking at too high of a level or low of a level detail? No, it's a good question. I think so a lot of people have been asking about the planning work that municipalities take on. What I think Stephanie will be able to speak to happens through their writing of their local hazard mitigation plans, which really allows them to do an analysis of what hazards they're facing and then what actions they can take to mitigate the impacts of those hazards as you're speaking to. And that's really that planning that happens at a local level. I think the Climate Action Office, our role, particularly in the kind of teaching space, is helping to coordinate within state governments with the work that's happening and provide those resources to our other partners. We'll say in planning, there's, again, the work that municipalities do with local hazard mitigation planning. Some municipalities also take on energy planning work. There's sort of a lot of planning that happens in the municipal space and the municipal space as well. And you'll see on the slide here, one of the things we're working on is thinking about providing a framework or sort of a guide for communities to think through. What would a climate action plan look like? Understanding the work we're already doing in the hazard mitigation, emergency management, energy planning space, and sort of connecting those pieces into a kind of planning framework. So that's a sort of a space where we're looking to provide some additional assistance. It's not specifically in the, like, you know, speaking to development of burns or. Right. But I think our connection and our work with the river's program at A&R and Stephanie's office at the EM provides that connection and framework for, for communities to have those conversations and be able to connect with technical assistance partners who really have that expertise. Thank you. Yeah. So your office have an inventory of all of the programs for climate action planning. Not in your department, but we have a lot of bills trying to address problems and understanding what's already happening that really doesn't need to be reinvented. It would be incredibly helpful. And so do you maintain that? We don't have a full picture of that, but I will say prior to the climate council, there was an inventory of what programs exist across state government for greenhouse gas mitigation and climate adaptation. So, yeah, that's really important to understand, not in your department, but we have a lot of bills trying to address problems and understanding what's already happening that really doesn't need to be reinvented. It would be incredibly helpful. And so do you maintain that? We. of what programs exist across state government for greenhouse gas mitigation and climate adaptation resilience. And that's, I don't know if it's an extensive list, but it's a good starting point to get a sense of where there are programs and sort of, it's just an Excel document, but programs that address climate adaptation resilience. The second part to answer a question is that analysis of where programs exist within state government for climate adaptation and resilience, and also an understanding of where there are gaps is something we're really interested in and are pursuing a sort of a future work project. And we'll actually connect closely with the resilience implementation strategy that the governor and treasurer's office just announced recently is really doing an audit. It might not be the right word, but an analysis of existing state programs and projects and where there's overlapping gaps in the adaptation of resilient space. So sort of two parts to your question. One, it's not something we currently maintain, but are interested in doing soon, but there was a list created prior to the climate council being set up that we could share its resource. That'd be great if you could send us that. And then it strikes me that perhaps is it in the climate action plan and inventory of these programs? Not directly in the plan. No, it was created for the council to sort of reference and the subcommittees to reference as they developed actions in the climate action plan, but it's not included in the plan currently. Thanks, and thanks in advance for sending that. And thank you again for your presentation. We will shift gears and welcome Stephanie Smith from Hermont Emergency Management. Thank you all so much for having us back. I'm sorry we got cut off at the last meeting, but I appreciate the opportunity to come back. Let me just make this full screen. All right, so hi, I'm Stephanie Smith. I'm the State Hazard Mitigation Officer at Hermont Emergency Management. So I manage our hazard mitigation program with the goal of making Vermont safer and more resilient in the face of climate change and natural hazards. So I know this session was posed as the Agency of Natural Resources and what they're doing, but incredibly grateful to Secretary Moore for letting me be a part of that party because I work incredibly closely with everyone you heard from last week and with Marianne as we advance this work, we can't do it without this entire group. So all working very collaboratively together which has been great. So I'll start briefly on the planning side within the program we have planning and grants. I'll spend most of my time on grants, but wanted to tell you about the our State Hazard Mitigation Plan, which is a document that we update every five years. And we just received approval for the 2023 plan in November. So we have a brand new version that was just FEMA approved. And the State Hazard Mitigation Plan assesses all of the natural hazards that Vermont is vulnerable to and it poses a mitigation strategy to improve resilience, reduce future risk, across state government and it cuts across state government and includes stakeholders outside of state government. So the intent really there is to figure out how do we create those synergies and that's part of what as Marianne spoke to, trying to figure out how to make sure that's connected with the Climate Action Plan and that they're speaking to each other and it's all part of the set of how we propose a more resilient future for Vermont. So that's the State Hazard Mitigation Plan. And on the funding side, I'll spend most of my time on this slide. On the FEMA side, I'll focus on mainly the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program here, which is this top one. So we receive an allocation under this program whenever we have a federally declared disaster in the state. So the amount available is dependent on the scale of that disaster, but the funding can be spent anywhere in the state. So it doesn't have to be tied to the locations that were hit. It doesn't even have to be flood related. The idea is proactive future risk reduction through this program. To give you some context, following Tropical Storm Irene, we had about $34 million in this program. It's still a little early to know final numbers, but we're looking at probably 75 million or more following the July flood. So it's by far the largest pot of this FEMA round that we've ever had. And with this pot, we can do a variety of different things. So that includes property buyouts, which I'll speak a little more to you in a minute. Project scoping activities, which is what allows us to develop projects, floodplain restoration work, infrastructure projects, such as upsizing culverts or bridges, or we've done a couple of dam removals as well. Residential property elevations and flood proofing projects for commercial or municipal buildings. So all that's within the realm of possible here. And we can also do utility resilience projects. So things that protect against ice and wind, vulnerability, so it doesn't necessarily have to be tied to flooding, although that is the bulk of what we fund. FEMA funding under this program requires a 25% local match. We have a one-time general fund allocation right now, which will allow us to cover match for property buyouts specifically. We have 5 million left in that pot, which will get us to the first 20 million worth of buyouts under the $75 million. So it gets us to about 50 properties. One other FEMA program that I'll note, so flood mitigation assistance, Swift Current is on here. This is a relatively new program from FEMA. So we just got a new announcement of it last fall. Nationally, there's $300 million available. It's specifically four states that have recent disaster declarations. So Vermont is eligible for up to 40 million under this pot following the July flood. This is a, it's a brand new program for us. So we're learning very quickly and trying to make sure we get an application so we can utilize those dollars. And the funding is specifically intended to reduce risk to the national flood insurance pool. So the requirements are a little bit more narrow here. So it's four properties that have flood insurance and they're either a repetitive loss property, a severe repetitive loss property, or they were considered substantially damaged within this last flood. So if they meet one of those three definitions, which are specifically defined by FEMA, then this pot can be used for those property buyouts of those structures, elevations or potentially relocation projects. So we're lifting up a house and moving it to a different safer location. So the deadline for applications under this pot is May 15th. So it's coming up really fast, but we're starting to work with communities on getting those applications in. And then at the top of the screen here, we also have state ARPA funding, which is our program called the Flood Resilient Communities Fund. This was one of the top priorities in the 2018 state hazard mitigation plan to create a program that fills gaps in what we can't fund with FEMA dollars. So it allows us to be creative, it allows us to take away some of the administrative burden for towns to try and make it easier. That's been this plot for us. It's been a really phenomenal opportunity to build that program over the last few years. And the main focus there is on, you can fund other things as well, but the focus is projects including buyouts that are not eligible for FEMA funding. One of the main reasons properties are ineligible for FEMA funding is that they're outside of the FEMA map special flood hazard area, which is a line that denotes inundation risk, which is water coming up and spilling out onto a floodplain, where in Vermont's are, within the state hazard mitigation plan, that's our second ranked hazard. Our first highest ranked hazard is fully erosion risk, which is water coming off of mountains, cutting around corners. Rob Evans spoke a little bit to this last week. So really trying to capture risk in that area, which is broader than just the FEMA map that we're looking at. So that's one of the biggest things we've been able to do through this program. And we had about 20 million total from ARPA funding and we just obligated the final three million of this program in December. So we're currently implementing those projects, but we don't have any additional funding to obligate under that program. And a little bit more on buyouts. So since Tropical Storm Irene, our program has completed about 170 buyouts across the state, across various funding programs. Property buyouts are voluntary for the property owner as well as the community. The community generally ends up owning the parcel following the buyout and are required to maintain it as it's based on perpetuity. So the idea is nothing else will be there, that's vulnerable, that's gonna fly in the future. The majority have been residential, but commercial properties are eligible as well. And we've done a few of those and we have a few more that I think we'll be doing following July. One of the nice things about these programs is that we're able to do day before the storm values for properties that flooded during this event. So the property appraisals are based on the value as of July 9th, as though nothing had happened. And then with the match funding, we're able to offer 100% of that value to property owners. And if they weren't flooded, we can also do a current market appraisal. So it's not required that they have past flooding, it's required that they have flood risk. And directly following the July flood, one of the first things we did was to set up an intake form for property owners that were interested because we were starting to hear from people very quickly following that event. We have well over 250 responses on that form now and it's still open. My team and I have been meeting with communities over the last few months to have initial conversations to start developing applications. So if we have a town that's very motivated and property owners that are motivated, we're able to start pulling those applications together and answering questions for towns that are unsure and helping them figure out a path forward. So so far we've submitted a couple of applications on the FEMA side. So one for a landslide buyout in Ripton. So one of, when you heard from Ben D'Yong last week, he talked about the landslides and doing assessments for FEMA buyouts. One of the requirements for that program is that we have a letter from the state geologists saying that it's at imminent risk of failure. So we worked very closely on quite a few potential landslide buyouts following the July flood. And then we've also submitted two buyouts in Hartwick. So that's what's gone to FEMA so far. But we have about 10 million worth of property buyouts that we're getting ready to submit that we'll go to next month or two. So we're not waiting for the end of the funding round for the buyouts. As soon as we have applications that everything's signed in from communities, we're sending them to FEMA so that they can get into their review queue. Yeah, we have a question from Representative Bob. I was just kind of like something that you should assist that just think about as we go along. Cause one of the challenges with the buyouts, which I think are great in the next follow sense in the world, but I did have what I was talking with one flooded owner group and we had John Booker Campbell there for a bit and our residents leaned over to me and said, so I get 400,000 and what? So we have to be thinking about where do they go? Cause that's got to be part of this equation. So I put that out there. As we think about this, but the buyouts are great and better available. Absolutely. And I think that's, we're hearing this time and following our rein buyouts were the biggest solution that we did. We did a couple of elevation projects as well, but I think we're getting a lot more interest in elevating and if it is in that inundation risk area, elevation might make sense. Or it's, I've been getting questions this week about relocation, which is possible, but it's something we've never actually done with FEMA funding. I think for properties where it, I think it'll depend a lot on the structure whether that makes sense or not. So if it's a double wide mobile home that we can lift up more easily and move or something like that, something that's manufactured or something on a slab, I think that's all within the possible, as long as we have a site to put it on. So I think there are other opportunities. And then it's also why we're looking at these larger projects as well, like are there large restoration projects? I'll show you a couple of examples in a minute. We've been able to do larger projects that reduce risk more broadly and if that allows us to keep people in place. So yeah, it's all part of the, it's part of this net for sure. Thank you. Representative Clifford. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you for your presentation. What is your anticipated turn around time, you know, in this FEMA? Yes, so I get that question a lot. The, we're getting it to FEMA as quickly as we can because it is going to take a little while to go through the FEMA review queue. So they, they're a little low on staff right now, but we've been working with them over the last few years between Irene and now where we have a really good application that we're putting together that speaks to what they need. And so we're trying to make it as quickly as streamlined as we can through the process, but it could easily take six months or more within FEMA review once it gets there. Thank you. Would you say that the 250 people who are registered is the demand or is the demand significantly different from this? It's a great question. I think it's hard to tell at this point for a couple of reasons. I think that initial list will see some attrition. There will be people that they were interested or they wanted to know more if they're not going to end up doing it. But then once we start working in a community, we're sitting down with the town, we're talking to them, we're working with the property owners and then their neighbors are seeing, oh, this is real and this is happening. What's, I want, I'm interested now too. So I think we'll see more coming in as we start to do projects as well. So I think we'll see some attrition, but I think we'll see more interest as well. So it's, it's hard to tell right now where we'll land, but I think I'll have a better sense in six months. And are they getting easier? You've done 170 since Irene, which is- Ray, but you have 250 now. Yes, so one of the things that we're doing this round that we've never done before is we're implementing a state run bioprogram for communities that are interested. And everyone, every community I've talked to so far has been very interested, which looks like Vermont emergency management submitting the application to FEMA and then having a signed MOU in it with the town saying that they'll still end up owning the parcel. They'll still be required to maintain it as open space and meet those requirements, but we're going to manage the money. So that allows us to hire one entity to do all of the appraisals, which again, the significant hope is that makes it a lot faster. Because once we have that person hired, we get the FEMA award and we can say, go do the appraisal and we don't have to wait for the town to have a sub grant agreement and for the town to then go procure someone. And so I think that will take a lot of the administrative burden off of the towns and then also make it a lot faster because we'll already have someone to do the legal work lined out who can start pulling the title of developing closing documents, someone lined up to do demo as soon as it's ready. So that's one way that we're trying to make it a lot easier for our towns. And I think honestly, it'll make it easier for us too because we're right now providing a lot of customer support to our towns through that process. And if we're managing the funding, we won't need to be doing that piece. So the scale has gone up a lot. And I think we're working very hard to find what are those opportunities to make it easier for everybody all around. I know you have more slides to get to, but I was gonna ask how are you working with the no staff communities because it can be very complicated for them. And that's great. I hear what you've just done for this program. Are there other ways you're able to do that to support towns that don't have any staff? Yeah, we're trying to the best of our ability to focus on our capacity. I was also talking to Sarah Waring from USDA World Development yesterday who's working on building a new technical assistance program that I'm hoping can fill some of that gap as well, especially for the communities that have less ability to even contemplate managing a FEMA grant. But again, with this bio model, they won't have to manage the grants. So then it's really meeting with the select board and making sure they understand and are okay with the property being vacant, which is another really hard conversation to have with towns, especially given the housing market and the grand list and all of that. So we're having those conversations and we're trying to talk them through the process. I've traveled just a little bit more. The other, well, under the flood resilient communities fund, I just wanted to note that we, there are a couple of buyouts that have already gone into that program for that last three million following July. So that's buyouts in Hardwick, Marshfield, Middlebury, Wolkett, Cambridge and Montpelier. So we're starting to get those projects in. And then one other project type that I'll talk about and then I want to show you just a couple of examples. So directly following the flooding in July, one other thing that we did was submit a scoping application to FEMA. So it allows us to, this project will allow us to work with some of the hardest hit communities to develop potential projects that can lower flood elevations within their downtowns. It's a collaborative effort with the DEC rivers team, with ACCD, with the regional planning commissions and two rivers out of Crete Regional Planning Commission is gonna manage the engineering contract for us. And they'll be partnering with the other RPCs to work in their regions. So that's very exciting. It's just getting off the ground now. And it includes some funding from Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to pay the RPCs to help provide that community outreach and support. So it's, I think it's probably gonna be like a two, two and a half million dollar project to start working in some of the hardest hit towns and develop projects that we can submit under that 75 million that I talked about. So that's, we're just at the beginning of that project. But looking forward to being able to tell you more about it soon. And then we're also accepting scoping projects from communities. So Cambridge has already submitted one that's already gone to FEMA. So communities can be, that's open for communities to be submitting projects right now to help them figure out what they should do to go forward. Okay, so that's all I had on the funding. And I'd love to show you a couple of examples of projects that were completed following Irene that were incredibly successful in July. So one of those is in Northfields. There's this beautiful Dog River Park in Northfield. So everything in green with a number, that's a property that was a buyout. And they were able to create this beautiful community park, do a floodplain restoration project to lower flood elevations within this neighborhood. So most of the time it's this nice asset for the community. And then in July, it filled up with floodwaters and it lowered flood elevations in the surrounding neighborhood. So this is a really successful project. And we're looking to be able to do more of this type of thing following the July flood. And then a couple of large floodplain restoration projects that I'll talk about. And again, the focus here is very much on how do we give the river space where we can? So we slow it down before it gets into our downtowns. So these are two projects just upstream on the wetstone of Brattleboro, which was, these were in the black as we're senior housing facility buildings. Those residents were relocated. We were able to demolish those buildings, do another large floodplain restoration project, but in an overflow culvert, lower flood elevations in the surrounding neighborhood. And that's seven, sorry. So that map, can you go back? Yes. So the blue is where the river flooded. The blue is where we did the restoration work. Okay. Yes. And I'll show you a picture. The river actually, like they're not actually in the river. No, but they were in the floodway. Yes. There was a very high risk area and they were evacuated during Irene. Yes, so it was really being able to move this vulnerable population. And then this view might help. So this was the December 2022 flood, which looked a lot like the December 2023 flood that we just had. But if you see the snow line there, that's where the water was on that site. And there, this building in the middle is, this one is their office space for proud of our housing authority, but the homes were all around here. I was able to access that floodplain, nothing flooded, and it lowered flood elevations for the surrounding neighborhoods. And then Stevin's then Smith. So one of my concerns always is that we do these projects where we resize a culvert and it's not to like the 1,000-year storm. It's to like the 250-year storm or the 500-year storm. And it's like the 1,000-year storm is gonna be here soon. It's not gonna be 1,000 years. What storm evaluation are you putting these on? Because to be honest, like the snow line doesn't look that far from the building that's still there. From the structure. Yeah, it's a little bit higher, thankfully, but you're absolutely right. And I think part of, and I talk with the river team about this a lot, too, and Rob Evans, who you guys spoke with last week, it's all of these projects, like looking at these two large restorations, those are one piece of this full set. And as water gets higher, we're gonna need to find even more opportunities. So it's not removing flood risk. It's lowering the elevation a little bit. So each one of these is incremental progress, but as we see more rain coming in, we're gonna have to keep doing more and more. So that's absolutely part of how we're thinking. What are you basing it on? What flood year for a lot of those projects? Yeah, on the FEMA side, there it depends. It depends on the local regulations. It depends if it's a state building, they'd be required to meet the DEC requirements, which are like, if it's an elevation, it's two foot above base flood elevation, which is they're encouraging communities to go that high. So it's gonna depend on the project. I don't remember the elevations on this one, Representative Smith. Thank you. Thank you. What are your thoughts on dredging? So I would point you back to Rob Evans, who we spoke with, who you guys spoke with last week, to speak to that in more detail. My understanding from talking to him many times is that it tends to exacerbate the problem further on. So making the river deeper makes it faster and it increases erosion around the stream. It makes it faster to get out. And it increases erosion, which is again, that erosion risk is our biggest hazard in the state, not the inundation risk. So it's the forces that undercut a bank and then a house falls into the river like we saw during tropical storm Irene. So it's trying to prevent that sort of dynamic where we're destabilizing a river and increasing erosion risk. So if you hadn't talked to him, would I have liked to hear your opinion? Well, we work very closely. I can see that part of the... Thank you very much. Absolutely. Okay, and this is another one. So you can see, this actually shows the building being a little bit higher at least. And then the wet stone is the other one. And then the last, I think this is the last project I had on here. Oh, there might be one more. Is this brand-in overflow culvert. So this brand-in is a community that was hit very heavily during Irene and the floodwaters from the Nishobi, they're on the top here. You can see where they're coming down and it went straight through downtown. Now this overflow culvert gives the river the opportunity to go underneath the community instead of over it. So most of the time it's empty, there's no water in there. But during a high-flow event, it gives the river a little bit space. It's like a pressure release to give the river somewhere else to go. This one's been successful many times since they installed it. And then the last one, this is a project we did in Cambridge to upside the trail bridge. So you can see the really tiny trail bridge at the beginning of this and how insized it is in the river. We were able to put in this much larger span, restore floodplain underneath and again, give the river space, slow it down before it gets into our communities. And that's all I have for you guys but I'd be happy to answer any further questions. Thank you for your presentation. Representative Stemins. Thank you, Madam Chair. The picture, two pictures ago are in Brandon. So that's normally dry. So there's no impact to like any of the various critters or species that would normally be going up and down the stream. Yeah, so that's exactly, so it's not impacting the river, it's giving it an extra space if it needs it. Absolutely. Yeah, so the water comes down here and this is the top corner in this picture. Yeah. It's the top corner, so it usually goes around the community this way but in our green it went straight, this is the downtown, it went straight through. So it gives it that opportunity so naturally the river's not gonna go around something. If it's too high, it's gonna just want to plow through. So this gives it the space to do that. It's shot right down the middle of the road. It's really cool stuff. Just a question on that, on that picture here. Thank you, Madam Chair. Is that, was that armored? To direct the water and go through there. That's actually great control there. There's actually, there's bedrock adjacent and nearby. So I'm gonna have the downstairs photo. Actually kind of worked on part of this. Both of those projects, previously at O'Barrell. But it's a ledge where you can, natural. Thank you so much for your presentation. Appreciate you all. Thank you. All right, members, we will take a five minute break and be back at 1.50 with the Natural Resources Board. We are reconvening our meeting and welcoming the Natural Resources Board, Savannah Haskell and Peter Gill to present their off-session Act 250 report. Oops, welcome. Back. Thank you Chair Sheldon. And again, I am Savannah Haskell on with the Chair of the Natural Resources Board. And with me today is Pete Gill, our Executive Director. And we had a great summer doing this report. And I, it was a good summer. It was a really a lot of work and we got it done and it feels good. I've had conversations with some of you in the committee, but what we were going to do is go ahead and do an overview and then please just jump in with questions, comments, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Thank you. Oh, are you leaving? Apologies. I think I unclicked the link, yeah. Was asking about sending things to the third party so I canceled that and then it kicked me out. Oh, you had to say yes. I'll say yes. Go to third parties. Got it. Let me know when you're ready. Okay. Oh, also, well, I won't say it quite yet. I'll say it in a minute. We've got a little bit of a while. Get rid of that. Okay, how's that look from the other side? Great. So, are we good to begin? Okay. Thank you. As I'm sure you all know, part of Act 182 of 2023 directed the Natural Resources Board. Sorry. That's okay. It's one of our own members. To do a legislative study, necessary updates to the Act 250 program. There are also two other studies that are very much integrated into this effort and that's the designation study, designation 2050 study and the, I never say it right, VAP does. Future land use mapping study as well as the municipal delegation study, but we won't touch on that one so much today. So just this morning, we heard from two of those three. We haven't heard the designation one yet, but we did hear the delegation and future land use map. Oh, great. Great. Excellent. Okay. And I wanted to be here, but we were downstairs. Yeah. So I hope it went well. Yeah. Great. So moving on to our Act 250 background, which is gonna, I can breeze through this since you all know it, but it's our land use law that was developed, passed in 1970. I said this morning in downstairs that it has become part of our DNA in Vermont and it's people love it. And we are the ones who are responsible for administering the law, the Natural Resources Board. It's a permit system to address the impacts of large development and on the environment and local government services. As you probably know, there are 10 criteria, but actually they're 32 because of self criteria, just FYI. And the original vision was compact development surrounded by open lands. So here we are in 2024 talking about compact development and open rural lands and working lands. So, but we do have current issues as you know, which is we lack affordable housing and we're need to probably beef up some protections on our rural and working lands. So that's, that's the, I feel like I'm telling you guys wrote this last year. Sorry. But when it's so our report is the topics include location based jurisdiction, the capability and development plan. And then when I'm calling operations of the NRB, which includes fees, governance, staffing, that all of those things. And we'll get into, we'll touch on that as well. Okay. The goal of this report was to provide you with sets of recommendations that are, that were based on consensus from our stakeholder group. And so what you're, what we're presenting to you today is our recommendations that were agreed to by a pretty diverse group of people who participated in the study. We had a 16 members steering committee. Two of our members are here, John Groban from VNRC and Megan Sullivan from the Vermont chamber. Pete and I were on it and others as well. And I'll tell you about that in a minute. We met probably 15, 20 times over the summer. And then the steering committee members also reached out to their like-minded, I mean, colleagues is the word I wanna use, colleagues in their areas. And they set up focus group discussions as well so that the environmental and working lands folks had one focus group and attorneys had another et cetera, et cetera. That was because we're at room capacity. Oh, okay. And we were led by a facilitation team of five people, maybe six, I'm gonna count right, right. But thanks to the legislature, we had a, we were given an appropriation to pay them. Led by Matt Strasberg of the Environmental Mediation Center right here in Montpelier, your former colleague, Maxine Grad. Yeah, Toby Berkman from Consensus Building Institute, which is like based in Boston, but he's working a lot with Vermont on agricultural issues. Tom Daniels, who was born and raised here in Vermont and is now a professor in land use law, and down in UPED, and then Jack Cartez, who's on the EMC board and has also got, I think a PhD in land use planning. So it was a great, it was a great team. And they managed the meetings, they led the process, they wrote the report. So, and then our stakeholder groups, which are also the focus groups, included environmental attorneys, engineers, and consultants, planners, municipalities, housing, economic development, and environmental justice representation from the state office. Environmental groups, working land operators, and our district coordinators. We were represented as well as our district commissions. Any questions or comments before I pass the baton? Nope? Okay, cool. All right, Pete Gill, executive director. I'll get into a little of the meat of the study and some of the recommendations that were made by the steering committee. So the first office jurisdiction, this idea of location-based jurisdiction came from this committee originally. And that, the idea there is that you have the triggers for Act 250 are based on the area that you're in, the character of that area. And the steering committee came up with three different areas that would be used for that location-based jurisdiction. And I'll get into each of those three areas in a moment here. It's important to note just kind of that last bullet there about the fact that this is really integral to have that mapping element and the planning and the designation studies to really build out what we call tiers of jurisdiction are the basis for those. It's really, the foundation of that is based on the mapping and the designation study. All right, so the first tier area is this idea of these planned growth areas. We've got a tier 1A and a tier 1B, and I'll start with tier 1A. These areas, you're gonna be thinking of areas that have water and sewer infrastructure. They've got permanent subdivision and zoning regulations that are of high quality, meet certain standards. And then they've got the municipal capacity to administer those effectively. And the result of that in those particular areas, there would be the commercial, residential, and industrial development would be outside of Act 250 review. So it would be exempt from Act 250, those situations. So moving on to the next sub-tier here, tier 1A. This is Village Centers with capacity to accommodate growth. So again, they would have zoning and subdivision regulations. They would have sewer and water, or they have the soils that would have capacity to handle the wastewater. And their regulations and infrastructure, administrative capacity is not quite that of those tier 1A areas. Those, in terms of how jurisdiction would be affected in those areas, it would be relatively, it would be the same as what we have now in terms of jurisdiction, but it would increase the residential units from 10 to 50 residential units that would be allowed before Act 250 would be jurisdiction would apply. And when I say Act 250 jurisdiction, I think we all know, but that just would mean that you're required to get a permit of those situations. So along here. So the next major tier is tier 2. These are these undeveloped and working lands areas, small villages, hamlets, and all the land that's not in tier one or three. And how jurisdiction would apply in those particular areas under the recommendation of the steering committee was that the jurisdictional triggers that exist now would not change for Act 250, but for the addition of an important addition here for forest fragmentation, which would be this idea of roadways that are supporting development and subdivisions that are greater than 2,000 feet would trigger Act 250 jurisdiction in those instances. Representative Smith. Thank you. Is that 2,000 foot roadway effective right now? Or is that something you're thinking about? No, this is all recommendations from the steering committee in the study. So that is not effective. Now we do not have a road jurisdictional trailer at the moment. Essentially if someone had owned a hundred acres and they wanted to build a house right in the middle of it, probably it's gonna involve more than 2,000 feet of driveway, wouldn't you think? It would depend on the facts. That would require a permit to an Act 250 review? Yeah, the concept here would be that if it is 2,000 a grader it would require an Act 250 permit for that. Okay, what kind of steps would someone have to go through? Is it a process that's gonna be a six month process or a permit that can be done in a couple of weeks? Permitting does take some time. It does vary depending on the project. Yeah, but it's anywhere from two to six months, somewhere in that range, and we have, I think we've talked about it in this committee before, but we have different processes, it's a minor review process and a major review process. So if something goes through a major review, that's where there's a hearing. Obviously those take more than the minor review process, but I will say that the vast majority of our projects do go through the minor review process. Okay, thank you. Okay, we're going from that one. Moving along to tier three areas. So by elimination, this is all that's not tier one and tier two, and these are areas that would, the idea here is to set aside these particular areas that are important natural resources areas. And I should set back two for a minute here on this tier in particular, but the idea in terms of process, in terms of designating these areas is to have a system by way that the municipality and the regional planning commissions have a voice in that. So on tier three, we'd start with the regional planning commission, they would have some consultation with the municipalities and then bring that up to a state level board that would be approving those designations. With the tier one areas, those would be, yeah. Can that be in conjunction with the future land use maps? So that would be through that process? Yes, okay. Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely integration. Again, that's very important. We're trying to outline and build the framework for what that would look like here in this and then needing to have that integration from those other studies is important. Let's see, so the tier one in terms of process, very similar to tier three, but it would kind of start with the municipality and then go to the regional planning commission for review and make sure it's consistent with the regional plan in that area and then again go up to the state board for review. So getting back to tier three here in these particular areas, it would be science-based driven, making sure that the protections are needed in those particular areas and it would rely on that mapping, making sure that that would help inform that. And then jurisdictional rule here would be the idea that it attaches like our existing 2,500 feet of elevation where if you've got development or subdivision in that tier, you would trigger Act 250 and you'd have a review. Representative Stemmins. Thanks, Mr. Chair. How much in terms of process is this really, is tier three different from the current status, meaning if we know something is a really precious natural resource area, it doesn't it kind of already go into automatic Act 250 review? Yeah. No, we don't have those types of triggers right now. Yeah, there are some parallels with the location-based jurisdiction like the 2,500 feet, but that's not really the concept that we have in Act 250 currently. Okay, so Representative Sevillea, thanks for your testimony and all your work on this. I know you worked somewhere in fall. The last, prior to that, I just want to check in on the last bit of Peter around the 2,500. Yep. Did you say if you have a development there now, we would retroactively trigger? No, sorry, currently under the statute as it exists now, there is a trigger for development above 2,500 feet. So that's not new. So you were just stating existing- Yes, exactly. Just as a parallel to- No, I knew that that existed. I thought you were saying there was something new about it, like retroactivity or something like that. Okay, yeah, no, thank you. Representative Smith. Thank you. And that 2,500 feet is not changing, that's- Yeah, that- No. Because I'd heard rumors that, probably just rumors that there was going to be reduced to 2,000 feet or something along that line. There was a discussion about that during those steering committees, but there was not consensus. So that's a good point. We are representing the views of the steering committee in this report and the recommendations that were part of a consensus that was built between the various members of that steering committee that Savannah outlined. And in that consensus, it wasn't that everybody loved everything that was in there, it was a matter of with this group that we can live with this as it's structured that way. Great, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'll move on to the next one here. So we kind of went over this already in terms of the process, but just so you have it visually there, a regional planning commission for tier three, again, because a lot of these particular important resources may go beyond one municipality. And so this idea of these are more regional and having that regional view was important for this steering committee in terms of the process for designating these tier three, but again, very science-based approach to designating those particular resources. It's a bottoms up approach that we get approved by a state board, which is something, I think, for monitors like to see. Representative Smeleland's. So I would agree that it has the potential to be a bottoms up. I think we have some work to do with the regional planning commissions in this morning, our town's ability to participate with the regional planning commissions, how much inflow is coming locally, as opposed to state into our RRPCs is something, I'm hoping that we're gonna talk about these kind of very significant changes that we're looking at across the entire state. I think that capacity and ensuring that in fact we have bottoms up is important. State board review, do you mean NRB review or a new different state? That was not decided, but I think that the general idea is that it would probably be the NRB, but it was not decided per se. And so it's written like that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that was intentional. We'll let that up to you all. All right, so the next slide here is just an overview or visual for those that learn that way best of what we just discussed in terms of the various tiers. Also may be a helpful resource as you're conceptualizing this or thinking about it going forward. Come in. Yeah, do you wanna go back to that side? Yes, go ahead. Important natural resource areas. And I know we did some work around this last year on the 30 by 30 and is it possible that my property that I own and that I have a home on that that could be designated an important natural resource area? It will all come down to the mapping and those locations. And there again, there's a process for determining that. And how would I know that that was happening and what would be the opportunities for me to engage in a proposal that you're bringing forward? I think community engagement in the process is an important aspect of this. Again, this is very broad framework of how we look at this and there's gonna be some of that not to turn it all on you all but that will need to be flushed out for sure. So hearing you say community engagement is important. Huffle feedback, I'm huff looking at it in part. Yes. Not recommendations that you're bringing to us. That's our work. Right, yeah. So just to orient the group, there's all of the things we're looking at today, the off session work that's happened kind of is a nested group of studies that fit together and we're gonna fit them together and they've coordinated among themselves to a very remarkable degree considering the amount of time and people involved. And so this is just like our first orientation to where the summer reports have come back to us on. So I guess I asked for a little bit of patience and just sort of let this wash over us, absorb it and we'll have plenty of opportunity to discuss individual reports that we need to and then also to get into bills that have been introduced. So Representative Bogarts and I worked and communicated with all of these groups all summer long and have set up a framework in a bill that's been introduced that is seeking to respect all of this work that's happened and integrated into that larger framework that will provide the structure we need to have the conversations at a deeper level. So with that, if you still have a question for these witnesses, okay, Representative Snip and then Clifford. Thank you. Thank you. Going back to what Representative Subed was saying, say she's a recluse and she's got this property and she doesn't get the community information that she wants. Can you change her property and have it with a different description with her not knowing it? Do you know what I'm getting at? Yeah, and that's not actually a very, this isn't really the group to ask that question. Okay. So this is, again, I think that goes to the more detailed conversation that we'll have later on when we get into that. Okay, okay, that's fine. Thanks for holding on to that. Thank you. I'll try to remember. So this is the Natural Resources Board who currently administers Act 250 and they're reporting back to us on their off session stakeholder group. Representative Clifford. You're going to have a better one. Thank you, President. Just a question. On the exempt from Act 250, no change, lots and units, road rule. Does that affect the three acre rule at all? That's a storm violation. Yeah, that's separate. Oh, yeah, that's an ANR permanent program. Thank you. Okay, so there's your overview to keep in mind there in terms of jurisdictional framework. That one last area, and I think I pass it over to Savannah here next, is there was discussion in this during committee as well on the forest fragmentation criterion. We currently have a 9C for forest soils and there was discussion about needing to have a revised 9C that would really look at site design, clustering, development, and living in disturbed areas. So this, again, these are criteria. So once you're in Act 250 and you're getting reviewed, this is what would apply in terms of looking at the protection of the forest within that property. So in places where we would now have automatic Act 250, this would automatically come into play. This would be one of the criteria that would be reviewed. Not jurisdiction. This is criteria for review. Once you're, if you're at the jurisdiction, this would apply. So my property may now be in automatic Act 250 jurisdiction, may also now be subject to forest. I'm not sure where you're at with this, exactly. How is your property in automatic? Do you have an Act 250 permit on your property? No, I'm asking if it's, as my question before. Okay, so. It's about it being a natural resource area. It being a tier three. Yeah, if it's being a tier three, right. And then it would potentially, yeah. Well, your home would still be allowed, if you will, because it's there. But if you wanted to build a car dealership or something, it would be probably not okay. Or like my kid wanted to build a house there. That'll, right, right. And whether it's car dealership or house, what tier three is saying is that it would, jurisdiction would apply, and so review would happen in that. And you need to meet the criteria, one of which is recommended by the steering committee to change, which is as forest fragmentation, so that that would be reviewed as well. Okay, thank you. But it wouldn't be able to do those, that development, necessarily, it would be that it would be reviewed under the Act 250 program. And I'm gonna turn it over to Savannah on. Okay, but before I start in on that part, I wanted to thank you for recognizing the amount of collaboration that went on with all the different studies this summer. And we really, we really approach you and the rest of the legislature as this is a framework. And if the three should be nested into usual and chair Sheldon and that it builds the next steps in the framework. And I'm very hopeful that we will, that you all will see that the framework is a good idea. And then as we need to implement the different tiers or whatever we end up calling it and the mapping and that type of thing, that maybe the framework goes in to statute this year and then we get 18 months to two years to implement, if you will. And move forward from there. The different agencies, the different state partners. And we were at a Vermont Planers Association meeting last month and there was a lot of strong positive feedback on this and a lot of hope, I think, is the best way to put it. It was nice. It was really nice. And before I move on, I would want to give our two steering committee members a chance if they wanted to add anything and if they thought I misrepresented anything. Ready? All right. You don't have to talk if you all want to. That's why I'm giving you the, I'm just trying to be inclusive. Do you want to finish your presentation and finish with the recommendations? I can do that and then let them, let them have an opportunity then. Okay. Sorry, I'm sorry right now, sorry. So another area of the study was about what I'm calling operations, which takes into account governance, staffing, fees, et cetera. It was universal. I don't think anybody disagreed that we need to go to a professional board. It was that there was not a total agreement on whether it should be a three-person board or a five-person board. But that the types of changes and things that are being discussed, they deserve people who have more time commitment and have a professional background that makes it easier to get into it and dig into it, the knowledge and everything. So that was one of the recommendations and we did not land on whether it should be a three-person board or a five-person board, with a full-time chair by the way, that they should be, besides the full-time chair, the others would be part-time. And that's what that means. If it's, I used, in the report, we use the PEC model and they're painted a two-thirds, but sometimes they work less and sometimes they work more, but they base the salary and the benefits on the two-thirds position, just FYI. They'll be needed to manage the new tiers process if that happens, the mapping, et cetera. And they'll also bring to the board, to the organization, a level of rulemaking and policy guidance and direction and oversight of the district offices and staff and commissions as needed. They bring, you know, one of the most popular anecdotal complaints about active 50s, it's not consistent, it's not predictable, and it takes too long. We see a professional board as being able to help on all three of those. We did not reach consensus on whether they should hear appeals or not. We did not reach consensus on whether they should hear majors or not. I know that there's a strong interest in having the board be renamed and hearing appeals. I would respectfully ask that that would happen after we stand up the board and get the tiers and get the mapping in place and then start thinking about it because it's a lot to do in a couple of years. And we had 13 appeals last year, which is out of 400 cases, it's not very many. So it's not a huge pressing issue to my point. But that's fine. Staffing, you all asked us to look at that. We are on the books, a 25-person organization, but we have three additional positions with the ARPA funds, two coordinators who support both the North Districts and the South Districts and then Pete's position. We would ask that those positions be permanent. It'll also help with timeliness. And again, with this new tier, if it's adopted, the tiers and reviewing maps and being part of that whole process, that's gonna be additional responsibilities. I'll also point out that since the permanent specialists, the permit navigator system came online five years ago now, we went from 17 jurisdictional opinions to 230 this year. What is that? 200, oh, you know what I mean, more than 100%. Yeah. I'm sorry, so you're linking an increase in jurisdictional opinions with the online tool? I am, because at the end of the day, and we'll get into this in a second, at the end of the day, people wanna talk to people when they have questions about Act 250. And it's a complicated law. And they will go through the permit navigator system, you know, do what they need to do, but then they're like, oh, I should really talk to somebody about X or Y. And we are seeing people want more and more pre-application meetings and pre-hearing meetings. It just helps people get through the process. I mean, think of something complicated in your personal life and you wanna talk to somebody, you don't wanna have to do it all online and see if you're not doing it. You just wanna be able to pick up the phone occasionally. I'm sorry, I must be misunderstanding you. I thought you said you stood up the online tool and you've got more questions. The permit navigator is part of ANR. And now we handle all these jurisdictional opinions, maybe P is in a better position to be able to. Yeah, I can jump in really quick. So, and I wasn't here for the transition period, but my understanding of it all is. So there was a permit specialist at the Agency of Natural Resources, which would help, they would start a PRS project review sheet looking for whether jurisdiction applies to a number of different programs in our programs as well as Act 250. So they would do a lot of preliminary work, outreach with the individual that was seeking the permits or that had the project in mind. And they would build up what the development was to be and get an understanding of it and then pass that along with all that information to our staff to be able to get that the jurisdictional opinion done and figured out. And with the permit navigator, that replaced a number of those positions for permit specialists. And so now folks are going through this online version and just checking boxes and not necessarily, probably understandably so, checking the box, okay, jurisdictional opinion on this or that and we are receiving many more of those, but it's requiring a lot of effort on our district coordinators to gather that information because that's not happening at the agency level. It's now happening at our level. And so we are then in the direct seat to be providing our services for jurisdictional opinions, which I think is a really good thing. Honestly, I was saying, I mean, just being able to allow that interaction between folks, I think that's really positive, but it has increased our number of jurisdictional opinions that we've had to issue substantially. Of those, how many were brought into Act under Act 250 versus said you don't need to apply for an Act 250? I don't have those statistics for something we can look up for you for sure. I should have had that ready. Representative Clifford. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Just going to get back to positions that are being paid for by our performance now. So now we have the two positions. Three altogether, two coordinators and Pete's position. So. And they're funded through December 31st, 2025. Okay, okay. But okay, so that's not, that's on top of... The 25, so we're 28 now. Right, so that's on top of the professional three to five members that's proposed. That's correct. Thank you. It was separate three to five members. Was that what you meant? Yeah, for overall personnel, right? It would be all of those combined. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I can understand the rationale that while you're transitioning through this presuming, depending on what evolves, if there is a tiered transition approach, do you have any sense of how much work, like would there be less work once you have a tiered system? Because there'd be exemptions. Yeah, we're just clear, I suppose. I think that's debatable. Okay. Because if there are exemptions, which we support by the way, that there's going to have to be some level of my choice of words, compliance, making sure municipalities are able to do it. That's going to take some kind of role in our organization to make sure that's happening. We may be asked to, I can't even, I'm speculating now, but there'll be other things that'll come up with the mapping and the tiers and that part of it. Certainly in the short term and probably in the future, I mean, there will be significant work in setting up all these projects and implementing it. A new structure will require new guidance, et cetera. And do you have a sense of how long you think a new structure would take to get up and implement it? Well, at the very back of the report, there are suggested timelines, but as my colleagues in the back, I think it was the, it may be it should be with the, we were thinking with July, July 1, 2026, end of the exemption with the Home Act, so that it would just kind of flow in, but I see that there's possibilities that there's legislation to extend that. But that, I mean, I think probably to 18 to 24 months. And I, maybe the mapping's gonna take longer. Representative Wang, I mean, did you all hear about that? Yeah, we, I would talk about the timeline as we get into it. We have a timeline in the bill that we've proposed and yeah, let's finish with this. Okay, okay, sorry. Okay, so that's the questions about staffing. I'll just, I'll just move right into fees, because how's this, you brought up the point, how's this all gonna get paid for? If the legislature moves forward with the exemptions, we are now currently, our revenues are derived 80% from fees and 20% from the general fund and our total budget is three, seven and change. I think next year it's three, that we, three, nine is what I, somewhere between three, seven and three, nine, I apologize, I'm forgetting right now. We have calculated the exemptions in the Home Act to be about $120,300, potentially, very close. 96 with the housing and the difference for coming from the utility exemptions as potential. So you can extrapolate from there that if there are further exemptions, there'll be fewer fees. So they'll need to be a, they'll need to be some decisions made about that. And we're 90%, 90% of our costs are derived from personnel. We only have a 10% operating budget, which is our district offices and that type of thing. So we're running a, we're lean, we're lean and mean. Well, not we're not mean, we're lean. Lean and nice, lean and helpful. Yes. Is that in Morris? Will there be recommendations or expectations that those fees might generate? If we have more exemptions, less fees, will there be some sort of budgetary consideration? Just submitted our fee study to the JFO. So I'm guessing that we'll be back talking about that at some point. Thank you. But as a rule of thumb, 40%, 40 plus percent of our fees come from Chittenden County, but it's not 40% of our projects. So those are some more expensive projects in that area. But you can see that that's fairly significant amount. And yeah, it's just bad time to come in here asking for a lot of money, right? Bad year. I'm going to pass it back to Pete with the capability to develop a plan. Great. So just two slides left. Keep your attention there. Capability and development plan. So the steering committee recognized that the previously developed maps related to this really needed updating, done on updated technology here. You can see the examples there. So like we said before, this is all really integrated with the future land use map process. And that would be essential to this work here, I think. And then lastly, in terms of consensus recommendations, there was a lot of discussions on working lands and one area of consensus that did emerge was this idea of allowing for reduced agricultural soils mitigation ratio for forest processing enterprises to one-to-one. This is similar to the industrial parks right now and have that same provision. Others, it's two-to-one or three-to-one. The first step, one-to-two, one-to-three. This depends on how you want to say it, but anyways. All right, thank you. That's the end of the presentation. Okay, I just wanna say one more time to appreciate your work and I really appreciate our regular meetings in the off-session. And I believe you also met with representative Bongarts regularly to keep us in the loop and following your work. So thank you for that. And you gave a shout out to your other steering committee members who are here. I don't wanna put you on the spot, but if you want to say something right now you can or there will likely be another chance for you to come back. So do you wanna add anything? And Megan, go first. If you just- I'm really prepared to say anything specific. Megan Sullivan, vice president of government affairs for the Mont Chamber of Commerce. I appreciate the opportunity to be honest in the committee and have these discussions. These are incredibly important issues starting in housing crisis is something that we constantly are hearing about from our members. You know, and I think we've all seen the climate change and impact on our natural resources. And we want changes to active 50 can work in both of these fronts and not be in conflict with each other, but be in concert as we find compromise to move forward. I think this was an incredible opportunity for organizations like the Vermont Chamber and VNRC and planners to sit down in a room together and really find our common ground and find those compromises. And so what you see before you is a package that was not anything easily arrived at. Nothing that anybody sort of flippantly said, sure, sure, sure, whatever. We all put a lot of time and effort in to make to understand where each organization is coming from and priorities to come to this. And there's still a lot of details to be worked out, but appreciate the process and appreciate the time that you're all going to want to give this and to give opportunities for the evolution of 250. Thank you. John, did you want to add any? Yeah, just from a 30,000 foot point of view, John Groveman, policy and award program director for Vermont Natural Resources Council. So I think as you go through the bill, the specific bills of the chair, I think wisely said, let this watch out for you because you're going to have specific bills with provisions to review. We came here last year. We definitely have significant housing issue in the state. We have a climate crisis, a biodiversity crisis. We're dealing with many serious issues in Vermont all over the country. What we said, our plea was last year, don't take drastic action that would gut act 250. A lot of service so well, let the study go forward and let this work go forward. And as Megan said with planners and stakeholders from different perspectives, and let us come back to you with some ideas for how to go forward in a rational reason way to both alter act 250 to address where we need housing, but also protect critical natural resources. And so I think that there's a lot in this report, there's a good job of creating that rational approach. I just scanned some of the bills that are out there. I think some of the bills I've seen don't take a rational approach. It goes back to let's just open up act 250 sort of everywhere, doesn't have the balancing part of really protecting critical habitat and natural resources and headwaters and wetlands and other resources that we need to protect. And I think what this report represents is a way to kind of go forward and do both of those things. So I encourage you to read the report and then compare it to the bills you have and I would urge you to keep that in mind. That was representative Sevillea with your, but for both representatives and representatives Smith, just as we go through this process here and your concerns, the recommendation for dealing with these critical resources through year three, the whole idea was not to basically, there'd be plenty of notice before property was designated as a critical resource area. This would be the state board would be created. There would have to be an application. There would be a review process. There would be notice, there would be an opportunity to come before the board. So I just would read the report and drill into it because that's certainly the case. There's certainly not, there's no, there was never the intent that you, and I don't, I think it would be illegal quite frankly to just adopt these sort of restrictions without any due process notice. And similarly, things like the road role and we've been grappling for years is how do we protect critical habitat and resources? And we've been around the block and trying to figure out ways to do it. And so the road role of the report is one way to do it. And you have debated that issue before, you'll debate it again, but we need to do something. We need to have a balanced approach. And that's basically, I think what the report is giving you and it had a lot of stakeholders and divergent point of view with expert planners like you heard this morning, I thought the presentation this morning was excellent. And that is the exciting part of the work because it's rational, right? It's let's do this in a plan with expert planners and analyze where we want to grow, what do we need to protect, and how do we do that? So I'm excited and scared. It's sort of represented in Vongar says, we're going to do the planning before we, before or after the fact, rather than after the fact, right? Isn't that what you said? Yeah, if that's worth, so okay, I have to say something. So it's a rather good discussion here. I think the other thing that all of this does when it's all put together, especially the future on news maps, and if it was this morning, is that it really shifts us from very often using the regulatory process for after the fact of planning to doing the planning up front, having a regulatory process, actually relatively already a much lesser part of the process because we've made those hard decisions first, not just on the basis of the permit application. And that's where all of us has the chance to really make it all and work what was moving for everybody. So it's just one part of what we have, the possibility of coming out of this process if we get it right. Yeah, great. Thank you again for your presentation and your accession. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity. We're happy to come back. Yeah. Great. Have a great morning. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. All right. Just to be clear, two words. You are still alive. Yes. I'm sorry. No. Hang on, hang on. I'm sorry. Still alive. We have not adjourned. And we can adjourn, but I want to make sure that members have a chance before we do that, if there's anything you want to ask or say on the tape before we do. Okay. Lots to say, obviously, to individuals off.