 Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for being here. Since we're in the town meeting break and most school budgets were voted out this week, I wanted to talk a little bit more about education. As you know, yesterday we saw about a third of school budgets get voted down. And while some delayed votes who are already seeing far more voted down, and then we typically see, I know going back to the drawing board won't be easy for school boards and administrators. And identifying tools for help has proven to be not that easy for legislative members either. But given how rare these no votes are, this should be a wake up call for everyone. We won't know the exact impact on tax rates and bills until later this spring. But our most recent projection show on average for monitors will see a 19% increase in their property taxes. Again, it will take some time to see the exact impact of the final school budgets. But at the start this year, we projected education spending to increase by about $230 million over last year. And keep in mind, we already spend $2.1 billion on pre-K through 12 education today. With fewer than 83,000 kids, that's about $25,000 per student among the very highest in the country. And that's before this year's increase. Now, some may think that spending more than nearly every other state on education is a good thing. And in many cases it would be. But there are a few reasons why this spending is concerning. First, despite spending a lot more per student than most other states, when it comes to student performance in several areas, we're in the middle of the pack, according to the U.S. Department of Education. And state and national tests show less than half of our 3rd and 4th graders are reading at grade level. And the results are similar when it comes to math. As I've said before, this is not a critique of students, teachers, or parents. But it does tell us that not enough of the $2.1 billion in the increases we see every year is making it to our kids. Second, we simply don't have enough kids in Vermont. Yet school budgets and property taxes continue to grow this year by a record amount. And third, we don't have enough taxpayers to support this level of spending. One of the only states spending more per student in Vermont is New York, with a population that's 30 times larger and a more vibrant economy. Most furbunners can't afford a double-digit increase in their property taxes, or any increases in anything, for that matter. Take my hometown of Berlin, for example, where the proposed increase would mean almost $1,000 more for a $200,000 home. The average family is going to have to make some difficult decisions over the next year if that holds true, as they contemplate what they can do without. Not to mention those with higher incomes. And more flexibility, who also know there are more affordable options out there, other states they could move to. I'm concerned this could put our education system further at risk. So I know it's uncomfortable to talk about money and spending, especially when it comes to our kids' education. But the fact is, we have to be realistic about what people can afford. If we want any chance of continuing to offer quality education in Vermont. We also have to be honest about what we're getting for what we're spending. As I've said before, if we were just given a check for $2.1 billion to educate 83,000 students, I dare say that we designed something totally different than we're seeing today. This is why I propose major cost containment proposals that would reinvest savings in things like childcare and early learning, STEM, career training, and higher education, helping us improve outcomes for kids and keep property taxes in check. With the kind of cradle to career approach I've been advocating for since 2017, we could give kids a better start and open up more career opportunities. At the same time, a stronger education system at a price the average person can afford would attract more working families, which means more taxpayers, not more taxes. But you can't attract more working families or keep the ones you have if you can't afford to live here, which is again why my team has focused on finding ways to achieve this vision without a payroll tax for childcare, without new or higher taxes for the general fund, and without exploding property tax bills. Here's a few things I propose in the past that I believe would have helped. Moved school budget votes so we have a better view of statewide spending. Save money on school employee health care without reducing benefits. Increase the staff to student ratio through natural attrition, still keeping us among the lowest in the nation. Adjust the income sensitivity formula to target those who need it. Added guardrails for towns that can afford to overspend at the expense of those who can't. I vetoed three budgets to get some buy-in on some of these proposals, but nearly all of them were ignored, and the few that were taken up were changed significantly enough to make them ineffective. More recently, when Act 127 passed, I asked the legislature to address the cost pressures it created before it went into effect, which they didn't do. Although they did finally address the cap issue a few weeks ago, but it's likely too late to make a difference. Even calls for greater transparency on spending increases and more voting by mail has fallen on deaf ears. On top of cost containment, my team has made growing our workforce and creating more housing top priorities. Both are essential to showing up our education system, but as yet, I haven't seen the House or Senate pass a single housing bill out of their respective chambers. Unfortunately, because the legislature didn't act on the things that I proposed to them in the past, it's going to be very difficult to bring this year's increase down to anything close to reasonable. So it's a bit frustrating when I hear the legislature demanding I come up with some new ideas. Despite all the ideas I put on the table in the past, which they rejected. And especially when many legislators said I was just fear mongering about this increase back in December. And they would get it down to 2%. So I'd love to hear their ideas on how to do that. And I totally understand. The ideas I put forward in the past would be difficult and take a lot of work to implement. But if we acted on any one of them, we'd be in a better place today where the decisions and changes needed will be much harder or urgent and much, much more painful. So it's important we learn from our mistakes because we've got to get serious about structural changes to make sure more of the money we spend is getting to the 83,000 kids we serve. And the people who live, work and invest in Vermont can afford it. If we don't, if we just pull the money out of another pocket to close the gap or just raise another tax, we'll be right back in the position next year. And the next year after that and the year after that. Our kids and our taxpayers deserve better. So with that, I'm sure you might have a couple of questions. A lot of the ideas you've proposed have come from recommendations in 2017 and 2018. I'm wondering what, you know, hasn't the system changed a lot since then COVID, you know, new burdens on schools? Why might it not be time for new ideas? Because we have just basic structural ideas that we think are still relevant today. And as I said, we believe that we put some of those in place over time that we'd be in a better position today. They're still relevant. They don't have to be new ideas. And I'm more than willing to listen to what their ideas are as well. Because, and I've said that, you know, we have our ideas that we believe that can be tested off and at least discussed. But they must have ideas as well. And there's probably studies out there somewhere that have been done over the last decade or two that could be relevant, I would think. Because this isn't a new problem. This has been evolving over ever since Act 60 passed. It's been evolving. And I know they've tried to put some fixes in there. I think Governor Douglas tried to fix it with Act 68, maybe. But it hasn't fixed the structural problems we face. I think we're going to have to be bold. We're going to make some tough decisions. It won't help anything today in this budget. But it'll help in future budgets. And we have to look forward. Is it time to look at our, just reforming the education funding formula from the bottom? I mean, it's property taxes now, but like funding it fundamentally in some other way? I think so. I think it's time. There's an evolution of all of these funding formulas. And this might have reached its life expectancy. So I think we should contemplate that. But at this point in time, I've heard many say, well, we should just go to some sort of an income tax as well. Add to that to get ourselves out of this. And that's just taking money out of another pocket. That's just going to burden Vermonters further. It's not going to help the situation. So I think it is time. But it's just adding another tax isn't the answer. Did Act 46 district sort of consolidation law back in 2015-16, do you think that went far enough? And if not, I mean, is there more of that stake in doing proactively with school consolidation? I do think consolidation is part of the answer. When we have the reduction of the number of students we serve at this point in time and that keeps dropping. There comes a time when you have an infrastructure that is too expensive and too large to serve the number of kids you have. So that means closing schools, small schools, and combining efforts with schools. I've always looked at here in this region. I mean, you have up to your high school right here. You have U32 about four or five miles from here. You have Spalding about eight miles from here. I mean, it seems like there's something more we could do to consolidate fine efficiencies within the system and be able to have a quality education as a result. And I guess when these decisions right now are made for a local level, I think it was, is it a cap? Is the one that the town meeting, the voters voted to keep it open again. You know, these are our community hubs. You know, they're the heartbeat, if you will, of your community. So how do you bridge that gap? You've got these local decisions that are made but like big statewide challenges. Yeah, these are difficult decisions. I think it was Shapp Smith who said, when he was speaker, he said everyone wants us to save money. Everyone wants us to close some of these schools, but no one wants it to be their own. And I think that says it all, that we have to make those for here now. I mean, a 20% increase in property taxes would lead us, most people, to believe we have to make some choices. We have to make some decisions. And I think we're going to have to help on the state level as well to force those decisions. I know at one point when I was in the Senate, we had, after the moratorium was put into place in school construction, we left in place an incentive to combine schools to consolidate. In fact, we increased the level of participation from the state for that. There was not a single taker, as I remember. What are the concrete next steps for you as it relates to solving the problem that you've identified, as it relates to education spending? Yeah, we'll have to first of all see what the results are of the failed school budgets, but that's not going to fill the gap. We know that. As I said, well over $200 million, that's why I was surprised when legislators said we were going to be able to buy it down, which I knew we couldn't. So at this point in time, we have to do, we have to work together, try and figure out what we can push forward. And we can't use this for political wedges. That's been used against me for seven or eight years. Every time I brought something up early on about doing something with a statewide teacher contract, then I had the NEA outpicketing me on State Street. We brought up something about anything, healthcare, consolidation, anything. It was met with resistance and just to make a statement about the next election. So I think, you know, this is real. It affects people. We have to also make sure that we're not doing anything else that would burden Vermont as any further in other initiatives. I mean, I hear again, many legislators are talking about, I think they're in denial about the position we're in because they're still talking about spending more money. We don't have any more money without raising taxes. And we're at a tipping point here. And we're going to do some real harm if we don't pay attention, try and figure this out and try to keep it from getting any worse in the future. But we're not going to solve this $200 million problem this year. I don't believe there's going to be a property tax increase. In the short term for FY25, do you think buying down rates as part of the solution to this immediate issue? But I don't know how we do it. We don't have any funding to do that. So I don't know how you buy it down. So at this point? I think we have to prepare ourselves that we're going to be able to work it down. And I know, again, school boards are going to have to do a lot of work and it's not going to have a huge effect. I mean, it's not going to take care of the $200 million, but it'll have some effect on local tax rates. You had said during your last briefing that you were going to do some research before deciding which way you were going to vote. On your school board, how did you know? I voted no. And what do you, if school board members look to you and said, what do we have to do to get you to vote yes on this thing? What would you tell them? I think we have to just do the best they can to try and find efficiencies within the system. Look longer term. What is it they have for ideas? They're on the local level. What is it they think we can do that's palatable and just get it down as far as they can? I think this did send a huge message to legislators that we got a problem. National grid wants a cancellation of the total states energy limit project. Yeah, I thought that was unfortunate. I didn't see that one coming at this point in time. Hopefully I haven't had a chance to talk to our commissioner about this yet. But the TVI line comes to mind in the in the other half of the state that is still viable, I believe. And hopefully we can move forward with that if National Grid isn't an option. Because I believe, you know, New England still needs the power. I really had, when I was at the National Governors Association, the New England Governors got together and I heard our, you know, friends to the south were promoting the fact that they didn't have any renewable energy available to them. So there's a need. We just have to figure out how to get it to them. And I believe TVI could be part of the solution. I've advocated for that for six years. And with today, it's another annual flooding. We're sort of in the flood warning for some towns in Washington County. Another early wet season week, almost. Going up the heels of the disaster information that you're advocating for. Any thoughts on how you're changing and how that's impacting your waters with these? Yeah, it's a couple things. One, climate change is impacting the length of our winter or the lackluster winter we had. So we have to, again, do everything we can to acknowledge that and move away from carbon emitting vehicles, as well as getting to more renewable, carbon-less electricity sources. So that, but from the muddy roads standpoint, I think we're seeing this year because we didn't have, like, typically, as I remember over the last 20 years, we'd have a freeze for the winter. We didn't have all of these freeze-thaw scenarios that we're experiencing today. So we've been living like mud season, it seems, like, all winter. And I think that's having an impact because we always hear in the spring of the year that this is the worst mud season ever and we'll hear it again now. But I would say that it's because, you know, the duration of the mud season has been ongoing. Some of the, as all of the staff-dissume ratios in the country, as you mentioned, I believe that data comes from a study through COVID. There's also some recent research from the U.S. Department of Education that shows Vermont has lost the second highest proportion of school staff since COVID. Why have we not started to see some of the cost savings from that loss of educators? I don't know. I mean, I don't know if they're still building in those costs because they still want to fill the positions. Every sector in Vermont has been experiencing workforce shortage and education has been one of them, state has been one of them, construction, you name it. We've all faced it. So this is an area, again, where we need to attract more people into the state. We need those workers and we need them here so that more are paying taxes as a result. Do you have a, is there a way that you would recommend we get to those staff-dissume ratios that you've recommended in the past? How could legislation make that happen? We put forward back quite some time ago a way to do it through attrition. You know, somebody retires out and then you don't lay anybody off. You just naturally do more with less, so to speak, to grow those, to make sure that the staff-to-student ratio grows in the right way. So just a marginal type of approach that wouldn't, would be seamless was our answer. But we'd be consolidating schools is, of course, the other. But in law, that sounds like a useful recommendation for our school boards, but how would it look as policy? We just put in law that we would put something in. We had something we've put forward. I mean, we'd be happy to share that with you. I'm sure you've probably, maybe you already have it. Governor, if we have school budgets, there's like 30 of them now that they have to go back to the drawing board, as you say, and they just keep failing and failing. And we can't pass budgets before the yield. I understand they have to take last year's budget, which, in this inflationary, times could mean pretty big cuts, layoffs, cuts to programming, academics. What effect, if we get to that point, I mean, how much of a concern is that for you, that budget will keep failing if you have to go to last year's budget? Well, again, I don't know as we've ever seen this level of failed school budgets. So we're in uncharted territory in some respects. So we'll have to let this play out and see where we're at. The legislature certainly could set the yield, notwithstanding, set the yield and live by it. You remarked in your speech introducing, from what Governor had on Sunday, the number of people in the room, the energy, the passion. Now that Nikki Haley has dropped out of the race, where do you want to see that go? I think, for the most part, from a national perspective, we'll be living this rematch for the next number of months. So I think people should pay attention, try and do their research, making sure that they do everything they can to prevent, my opinion, prevent Donald Trump from being president again. So doing all you can individually to make that happen. Somebody has asked you for suggestions on what that looks like. What advice would you offer them? Which? Do whatever you can to make sure... Well, don't vote for Donald Trump, number one. Number two, educate your family members. Try and do your research and homework. Hold them accountable for all the things he says and does that aren't accurate. And make sure you tell your neighbors and your friends and family and try to at least understand what the position is. Listen to them, but offer maybe some counterpoints to what's being presented because it's not all factual. And you've said you plan to do everything you can to prevent the former president from returning to the White House. What does that look like for you now? Well, again, I think I've done some here. My resistance to Donald Trump over the last four to six years. So I will continue to do so. Surrey, in your first brief, is it yourself casting a vote for President Biden again? That's always a possibility. I did it before, but we'll let things play out. We have a long ways to go before the general election. We've been about a year since we had a permanent Secretary of Education. Do you think we need to invest in the AOE in order to see some cost containment or leadership that could lead to lowering education costs? I think we live in a state where there's local control and that is different than other states. So we have to recognize that and maybe contemplate and talk about bold ideas. I know some people have talked about a single-member district in Vermont that may or may not be on the table. But we'll have new leadership soon enough and we'll go from there and we'll offer any suggestions we can to get us to a place where we're able to deliver a quality education in Vermont at a price Vermonters can afford. You mentioned the local control element. It's obviously so key here. You've also mentioned, maybe it's time to completely reimagine how we pay for education. Could that mean an approach that involves a stronger hand from the state limiting what kind of spending decisions can be made on a local level? I think it could, yes. And that's not going to be popular. I might just saying that probably isn't popular but I think it has to be on the table. And you've also said it seems like it might be impossible to get property taxes to what would be an acceptable increase. What would be acceptable? What could you, if we walk away from this budget year and taxes went up X percent, where would that line have to be to get your assets? Yeah, hard to say. You know, I vetoed budgets for going 3 percent over. So my tolerance is pretty low. This month as problem gambling or this month is how we're going to save online sports but in fact we have bigger resources available. Yeah, we want to make sure that people do so responsibly whether it's alcohol or gambling, we want people to know that there are resources there to help them if they have an issue with gambling, problem gap gambling and we'll continue to do everything we can from a regulatory standpoint to make sure that people are protected. I have some color down the line. Tim from business 19. Maybe Keith from Rutland Herald. Hi. So I was talking to some folks in the logging industry earlier who were saying this sort of extended month season we've been having the past couple of years with the warm wind years all the rain. They're looking at some expenses related to having to operate in the woods in such muddy conditions and comply with Clean Water Act and all that. Whatever our thoughts on finding funding for that industry to help it sort of navigate that. Yeah, I know the loggers in particular have been suffering for the last couple of years both with the mild winters extended month season but also with the flooding. So they were hit with like three separate issues. So I'm sensitive to that. We have working lands that could be an approach and avenue as well as we've over the years have provided funding for bridges so they can get into the woods over some of the streams temporary bridges that can be utilized that we have in stock. So I'm sensitive to it but I don't have any answers that would provide them with probably the level of participation help that they're looking for but I'm sensitive. It's part of Vermont and part of who we are and we need loggers to stay in business. Chris Roy, you've already expressed. Yes, good afternoon, Governor. Just a thought as with some town is starting to gain two tax sales. What you tell the Vermonters who can pay the property taxes because it's so high up is the education system and you're about to lose the houses of tax. What should we advise them? Again, we have income sensitivity in the state. In fact, I think it's fairly generous, I believe, up to $150,000 in income or somewhere around that. So there is help in that regard. So take advantage of that. Make sure you're getting what you deserve there. But it may be too late at this point for that if their home is up for tax sale because that would have to be a long drawn-out process. But again, if they think that they've been taken advantage of in any way, Department of Financial Regulation, it could help. But if you have an issue, give us a call. We'll see what we can do to help you through it. But I'm not promising we can solve it. But we can at least look into it. Thank you. Any other questions? Governor, getting back to the property taxes for a second. Have you had a sit-down, direct one-on-one meeting with the Speaker and the Pro Tem about this? I've spoken to the Speaker about this. We meet every other week. The Pro Tem, we have missed a couple of meetings. He has canceled. So I haven't had any direct communications with him about this issue. Governor, any comment on the big and senior legislature that represented the women's senate leave when she swims to role experience? Well, congratulations to her. By the way, she ran a great race and look forward to working with her in her new role. We will do like we do with every other vacancy. We'll wait for names from the party she is a member of. She's a progressive. So the progressive party in Burlington will get together and submit three names to us and we'll consider those and make an appointment. And by the way, I've done this throughout my political life here as governor, adhered to that principle that I laid out that we would appoint based on the party affiliation. I don't have to do that, but I think it's good to give credit where credit is due. You appoint somebody from the party that they represented and not play games with it. We know that teacher health care is driving up property taxes. I've advocated for a long time for statewide health care negotiations. I know that that came to fruition not exactly how you want to see it. The makeup of that negotiating commission is a little different, but we have statewide health care negotiations. Why, you know, what's not working? Well, they took out a lot of the provisions and I can get you more details tonight, but they didn't do it the way we'd asked them to do it. I think it would have been much more constructive, much more fruitful when the way we had it, but they did it a different way and I think it's actually created more harm than good and ended up costing more. Early, any plans for the eclipse? Where you'll be, what you'll be doing? No, I've thought about that. I don't think you have to go too far, right? You can probably, if we have a clear day, see it anywhere in this area right here north, so I haven't made any specific plans on that. I mean, we've talked a lot with your commissioners and people in and out of the government, but I mean, what do you think it's going to be like? I mean, it depends on the weather, right? Darkly. With tens, maybe hundreds of thousands. You know what I mean? How does that have been way enough? Well, we've tried to prepare, you know, public safety's been involved, transportation's been involved. We go as far as where are people going to be able to stay? Are they just going to pull over on the side of I-89? When this happens, it's just all these things. We've been running different scenarios to try and prepare for this. So I just hope everyone's safe that they are prepared and we'll have signage out, alerting them to this but take it in safely with the right protection but take it all in because we won't see this again in our lifetime. I hope so. We'll see. I'm sorry? $230 million worth? Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it'll be $230 million worth, but it should be about, thank you all very much.