 And welcome. This is May 8th, the education committee in the Vermont House of Representatives and this morning this afternoon we are going to be starting with information on the capital bill related to an extension of a sunset related to school construction. This is a bill that's not in our committee. It's not coming to our committee at this point, but this is an opportunity for us to better understand the status there and that I think they'd like to have a nod from us in an informal way. So Becky, could you tell us about this part of the county? Sure. Becky Wasserman, legislative counsel. I had sent to Avery the section of law that I'm going to talk about. I don't know if it might be helpful to bring it up on the screen. So just for some context, as we've all discussed before in this committee, the school construction aid program is, there's a moratorium on it right now. So the state is not offering state aid for school construction through the capital bill at this time. However, for school districts that did receive aid in the past, there is a provision in this section of law that created the school construction aid program, which is 3448 subsection B. So we'll just need to scroll down a little bit. And that provision of law basically says that if a school received state aid for school construction, if that school building is then sold, there has to be a percentage, I think we've maybe passed it. I can stop you if you scroll down just a little bit more. There's a provision that basically says a portion of the cost of the sale price needs to be paid back to the state. And that percentage of the sale price is based on the percentage of award that the school was originally given. Okay, we're getting to it now. Here it is if you stop here. So it's subsection B and it's the refund upon sale provision. When Act 46 passed, there was some language in there that said that for the schools that were consolidating for union school districts and for the joint schools that they would be exempt from this position. And then in 2016, the legislature decided to to repeal this provision for all schools for a four-year period. So from July 1st, 2016 to July 1st, 2020, if a district sold a school building and that building had received state construction aid, the district had to repay back to the state a percentage of that sale price equal to the percentage of aid they received. And that's a little confusing to understand because it's not a lot of the percentage that schools receive, as you may recall. The sort of normal was 30%, but in some cases it could have gone up to 90% for energy efficiency improvements. So, you know, if a school building, which has happened, I think a couple times has been sold to a municipality for a very small amount of money. And they had only received 30% aid for the cost of the project. They would only have to pay back 30% of that sale price. So let's say it was, you know, $10 they sold it for, it would only be $3 that they had to pay back to the state. So, but this provision is repealed until July 1st of this year. And house institutions has put in the latest version of their, the capital bill to extend this until July 1st of 2021. So, Becky, this is getting into things like, is this repealing a sunset or this is extending a sunset? It's extending a sunset. Extending a sunset. Okay. Questions from the committee. So, indeed, if a school was sold back to a community for a dollar, then it's just 30% of that. Right. So, I think there had, in discussions that I've had on this provision in the past, there was confusion that it's, you know, 30% of the award that was provided to the school. But it's actually of the law reads that it's of the sale price. So, this, is this basically sort of a holding pattern while they're thinking about it more extensively next year? Is that part of the question here? I think the idea of the July 1st 2020 date was that the legislature would have perhaps come up with a plan for school construction at this time. And since I know, I know this committee and house institutions have been discussing that prior to everything changing a couple of months ago. So, without that happening, I think the idea is to give a little more time to make those decisions. Larry Coopley, did you have a question? Unmute. Have to unmute. I'm sorry about that. I'm not sure that anyone can answer this. But have we sold any schools since Act 46 became law? Dead silence. That's to be you, Becky. I don't know the answer to that. I know the institutions committee has looked into this question in the past and found that it's also there's some difficulty tracking which schools received aid and whether or not if, you know, they had sold their building, you know, a while ago that this provision was even followed. So I think there's just not a lot of tracking of the impact of this provision. And no aid has been given for 12 years, 13 years? Yeah, the moratorium's been in place since 2007. Thank you. Hi, Becky. Thank you. I'm just wondering, is it 30% of the, let's say, accrued sale price, like in terms of if the real estate had accrued over 10 or 15 years? Is it 30% of the sale price of that building or 30% of the amount the state gave for the construction? It's just 30% of the sale price. Okay. So if the state gave a million dollars for the construction, it's not 30% of that. It's just 30% of whatever the building is sold for. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So any concerns? I'm going to tip a hat to the committee. Lynn Batchelor, you are... No concerns. I'm glad they're going to at least push it out another year. I know they didn't want to take care of it to begin with, but they got to reprieve. Okay. So if I could just get some blue hands, if you're comfortable just giving them the nod. This is what we would call a straw poll. It looks like everybody's comfortable. Okay. Thank you very much. I will let the chair know that we have an opportunity to listen, and thank you very much for including us. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. The next... Maybe, Avery, you could move all of the hands so that I will know. Are there other questions? Thank you. So the next thing on our agenda is we're continuing our conversation related to the 19 districts without a budget, school districts without a budget. And one of the concerns that we have been most, we have been addressing is the one related to the ability to vote. And I know that we have concerns that there might be some issues making this difficult. We know that there are challenges in gathering related to health concerns. There are town clerk concerns we've heard about. And then there's also the concern that financially strained voters will just automatically vote down a budget. These are some of the things that have come into our committee and does not express the concern of everybody in the committee. So we were looking today to get an update from you on what is your... What are we hearing from the communities in relation to their ability to plan for a vote? And also just an update on the law from the secretary and the readiness of communities to actually be able to vote. So shall we start with Will? Sure. I'm happy to rep web if everybody can hear me. And I wasn't sure exactly what you were going to ask me to speak about, but I had a sense of it of course. And I could certainly do what you just described. I also had a chance to look at the bill I believe that you have in front of you about this. You're breaking up a little bit. At least you are for me. Yeah. A question that will help me if I stop my video. Can you all hear me still now? Yeah, that's better. Thank you. So start again. I think that will help. And sometimes I get those 10 or 15 second breaks, but typically they stop after one. I just was saying that I also have had a chance to look at the bill that you have in front of you addressing this issue. And so I have one question about that that would help me provide guidance on it and understand it. I know it's not in any kind of final version at this point. Everyone's still here in me. Just check. Yes. We kind of have three versions in front of us at the moment. So I can't say that we have one that we've... So what was your question? Will? Okay. I back up to your question first and we'll get there if that works for you. I didn't quite get that. Could you say that again? Why don't I back up to your general question first and we'll get there. Thank you. That'd be great. We're not hearing you. Sure. And what I can tell you is since about mid-March when... I tell you what, Will, maybe... I'm going to call in. That would be great because we're not getting anything. Yep. Sure. Sorry. So Dylan, did you have something? Yeah. Just to fill a little time here. Since we last met, I want to let you know that in our community, both our municipality and the village, which votes its municipal budget in April, typically, and our school district, which is district-wide between Essex and Westford voters, has authorized a vote-by-mail process. And so we will actually... I'll be working next week with my fellow Justices of the Peace and our Board of Civil Authority to work together to stuff a bunch of ballots. We've got about 17,000 that will go to registered voters. So if I have paper cuts next week, you know why. We'll be stuffing ballots and we have to get them in and count it for June 2nd. So just so you know, in our community with our very significant school budget, we are proceeding with a vote-by-mail process. Right. Great. So that's due by June 2nd. Okay. Correct. It's before June 30th, which is great. Will, are you back again or shall we maybe go to Karen? I'm here. Okay. And this will be better. I'm on my landline. I apologize for the problem. And what I was saying, I'll back up and just answer your question, Rep Webb, and then get to what I was seeing in the bill, too. And I was able to hear thanks, Rep Gimbatista, for giving them the update on your home district. What I can tell you all is that since we all got sent home in the middle of March and the COVID-19 epidemic really erupted, I believe I've talked to at least most, if not all, of these 19 school districts that still need to hold budget votes. They've been, you know, in addition to the town and village clerks who are facing upcoming elections, sort of my most pressing immediate need, of course, as we all think forward to August and November as well. But answering questions and figuring out what to do with these school districts and other towns and cities that are facing votes has been a real big challenge. Basically, the school boards are put in a position at this point of weighing the health and safety of voters, poll workers, town clerks against the very real need for them to adopt these budgets. And that's just a very difficult challenge in front of them, making them choose between the democratic process that everybody wants to have occur in an ideal situation. And again, trying to do that in the midst of this really dangerous and contagious virus is very difficult. So the stress is real and I've been doing my best to help them through that position. The Secretary of State's office got some authority in early legislation Act 92 that was passed in the first couple weeks of the crisis to implement, to order or permit election procedures to help people deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. And that applied down to local election level as well. And over the last month or however long it's been, five weeks, we've issued two directives, directives around local elections. Both of them were entirely permissive for the municipalities to follow or not. The first really simply just allowed them to cancel and postpone upcoming votes, which many of the school districts in question have done or did. And then the second directive, which we had said was a reason we were asking folks to cancel one just because we were, you know, at the peak of the virus at that time in middle of March. So it was one because we wanted to see if conditions got any better by June. And number two, to give us the time to think about and allow for certain more creative processes at the local level to do this more safely. Right in that initial election legislation, actually not pursuant to the directives issued under the General Authority, but a separate section of the initial legislation let these municipalities, including these school districts, that had any business that would typically be conducted from the floor at a floor meeting to move those articles, those questions to Australian ballot. And so with the rescheduled meetings, I think that's sort of the most common, almost done by everybody at this point, is any of them that would decide these questions from a floor meeting have now decided to do it by Australian ballot. And that's, of course, in an effort to encourage as many of the voters in any district to vote and return their ballot by mail, thereby relieving traffic and in-person voting on election day. The second directive that followed that, so I think these districts have in general canceled any of the votes that were happening during the height of the pandemic and are now looking to adopt some of the procedures that have been allowed, the first of which, like I said, they've transferred any of these votes from the floor to an Australian ballot. And now they have the option under the most recent directive to mail a ballot to every registered voter in the district or active voter, to operate drive-thru polling places on election day, to operate polling places outside, and a few other more detailed provisions. And there's language in the directive too that's important that says the polling places in whatever manner they're conducted, be it outside, drive-up, or in the standard fashion, should be conducted in accordance with any of the standing orders from the governor and Department of Health guidance and CDC guidance. And so it's important for you guys to understand they do, even if the district were to mail a ballot to every voter, which is commonly referred to as a vote-by-mail system, that they do still need to operate in-person polling places. That's just a matter of law. Any election where somebody did not provide an in-person option would be challenged and overturned. So again, the goal is to get as few people to vote in person on the actual polling day as possible and to have them vote early by mail in most of these situations. They're not required to mail a ballot to all voters, and my guidance so far has been for the school boards to the extent possible to work with the school clerks in the district and through them, the DCA members in the district to figure out how to re-op. I want to make sure I heard you correctly. Did you say that they were not required to send a ballot to everybody or they were required? Not. It's an option that they can choose to do, but do not have to. They're taking different approaches, and that's what I was saying. I really encourage them to try and work together as a district to figure out what approach makes the most sense. All happening fast, as is everything these days. My current advice to them that's not written down anywhere has been as much as possible. I think if your absentee voting procedures can be standard throughout the district across the various towns, that should be the goal and is ideal. So you're either mailing a ballot to every voter in all towns or you're not doing that in all towns. A sort of one step back, common one step back from that approach is to mail a request form to every voter, and you would also want that ideally to happen in all towns or none. But I've said that I think it does make sense that the in-person polling place procedures for election day may need to vary from town to town, and that's really a function of physical locations of polling places and numbers of voters that can vary widely. So in essence, I think it would be okay if one town were to adopt a drive-up procedure and another weren't within the same district, as long as the voters in all the towns had an in-person option on election day also. So that was to provide you all the detail sort of what we have provided for them so far. I'm really just here to answer any more questions you've got about the process in the context of this bill, but I did want to, if I am looking at the right version, I have one from 427 Draft 7.1, and the way I understand this, and so I guess before I say that, though, I think this is an important conversation that your committee is having as to are there any ways when we can relieve the need overall to even have these elections, because everything that I've been talking about is sort of how we do our best in the midst of this very deadly, very dangerous virus to protect all the voters and poll workers. Clearly, the strongest measure we could take is for the elections not to have to happen at all. I think that's a policy choice, obviously, that your committee and the legislature has to make. My job kicks in when they decide that they will have an election and then helping them how to do that as safely as possible. But I think it's an important conversation to at least consider as you are whether you can relieve them of even having to be put in that position. That was part of our Draft 6.1. I think they could choose an option where the school board would actually approve the budget on its own was one of the options. Could that be in line with what you're saying here to relieve the need for election? I mean, that would be actually, that would be giving the school boards the actual authority to pass a budget on their own. Clearly, that would accomplish the goal of not having to have an election. But the obvious question there is whether it makes sense to take that decision-making authority out of the motor sands at the time. I really think that it's not my position to weigh in on whether that should or shouldn't be done. But I will say, Rep Web, I also read this current version to do that in a few ways. That's what I want to make sure I'm understanding. Yes. It does allow for the ability to continue to vote. It does. But if I am reading this right, it says that for any of the districts that haven't voted on it, so that those that had an annual meeting that they never got to, they haven't taken a budget vote this year, that they could revert to the school district's proposed fiscal year 2021 budget that was most recently warned. Yes. And so that would say that in those districts that, like I just said, didn't get to hold even the initial annual meeting, they could go back and put into place what they had warned for that meeting. Am I reading that right? Yes, you are. Okay. And that would just be to give that guidance. And then the next clause says provided that if they warned it and it failed, so they did get to their annual meeting vote and their budget was voted down, that then the school board shall honor before June 30th, 2020, warn another budget that is less than the amount of the budget that was defeated. From a real technical elections perspective, that's just posting the warning. And I wonder if that was meant to say that they needed to hold that vote. So did you intend that to read the school board shall honor before June 30th, 2020, hold a vote on another budget? Or was the idea really that they would just warn one and not necessarily hold the election and go with the warned number? The committee has not spent a significant amount of time on that. It just came through as a thought form. But I think that what it was to say is that if you can't get to a vote, here's a budget. But if you want to take another chance to see if you can vote on it, go ahead. But here's your default. Is that everybody's understanding of what we were doing? In that particular budget, 6.1 was different. So it would provide the option that if they wanted to, I mean, that was the intent. Jim is here. If they wanted to try to get to a vote, like let's say maybe they were able to get to a vote on July 15th, they'd have that default unless they put forth a budget and pass something different. Is that your, is that the way we, that was the intention in the draft, correct, Jim? Is that what you understand? So to Will's question, yes. It's no requirement to have a vote before June 30th. But if your budget was defeated, you have to be warned a new budget with a lower amount. But you still have the option of going after voters before or after June 30. All of those districts have newly warned budgets. And I believe that they were all warned. No, wait a minute. They all have revised budgets. I don't know where they stand in terms of whether those have been warned. Some of them have. Questions? Comments? Cereed Austin? So I may be missing something here. What would be helpful for me to understand is in the timeline of voting and the, now because of COVID-19, the cutback on staffing or personnel, is there any timeframe where voting could, could not occur due to the fact that the clerks would need to be preparing for the primary? Could they, could voting coexist with the primary work that was going on? Or is there a time that they just won't have the ability to, to take care of two votes? And the other question is, and I have no idea what the laws are, could a school vote be on the same ballot or the same time, day as the primary? School vote could be on the same day as the primary, not on the same ballot. But you can hold a, you can hold a concurrent school election on that day. And your first question is a good one. There's no specific timeframe, but I certainly appreciate that you're thinking about how busy the clerks will be preparing for the primary. But you think they, they could do that. It wouldn't matter when schools, if they kept coming back with a budget, did the capacity would be there to have that voting? It's humanly possible. We have Karen Horne, too. So she will bring that question to her as well. Okay. Thank you. How, how prepared do you, how, what's your sense of how prepared districts are? Oh, Emily, Cornhouse, did you have a question or comment? I just wanted to clarify the timeline, because my understanding was that most districts need budgets before July 1st, and the primary happens in August. Is that correct or am I, have I lost track of things? Okay. I see nodding. I don't know who I was addressing my question at, so I guess nodding works. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's like, even though the primary is in August, I would imagine they're getting ready for that six weeks ahead of time or four weeks ahead of time. So I just, I just, I don't know how things work. And I know there's, you know, there are less people working. I believe there are less people available now because of the COVID-19. So it just, I just want to make sure the capacity is there. Well, if you can stay in the capacity, I would say as a general matter, in terms of poll workers, the capacity right now is a very big issue. There are a lot of poll workers who are in the most vulnerable populations, and clerks are already hearing from their standard poll workers and BCA members that they do not want to work elections this year. It's one of the next things on my plate. Our plate is a statewide push to do poll worker recruitment. People are getting really creative in other states. And as I talk to these districts, I encourage their board members to think about serving as poll workers in these instances and to find staff in the school district who are willing to serve as poll workers. It's a really big issue. Well, if you could stay in the room, that would be helpful. The room, you know, metaphor, we're here. And if we could hear from Karen Horne from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, that would be great to give us just an idea on how districts are coming along with this concept in particular for our interest, these 19 districts that have a number of towns. Yeah, so this is Karen Horne at the League of Cities and Towns. And I do know that there are districts that have delayed their votes on, excuse me, I do know that there are towns that have delayed their votes. And there are towns that, as Will Sonning said, are looking at their other options. It is the case pretty frequently that you have more than one item on an election. So frequently a select board or a school board will actually look for a meeting that's already happening. So they don't have to duplicate those costs and they'll put two questions before the voters at that time. So I think just the issue of having two printed ballots, ones for the primary and ones for a school budget question, that might not be very difficult to achieve. I haven't really heard much about the poll worker issue, although I have to say I'm not particularly surprised. And Will spoke much better to that. We do have a few towns and villages that are also looking at what can they do in terms of adopting budgets because they hadn't had a budget vote before the COVID-19 really kicked in, the emergency orders and so forth. So I think this is workable the way it's proposed here. I do think that, you know, and again, I may be misunderstanding a little bit, but if you have a budget that is adopted by the school board, say, or the agency of education that was the budget that was warned, I don't particularly know what incentive you would have to hold an election after that. That's kind of a question. It's a good question. We are grappling with the complexity of this issue, the challenge in voting. The Senate has put forth an idea, the Senate version would, if a district was unable to pass a budget by June 30th, that they could just use their default budget would be last year's budget. Right. Which is still progress from what the current statute says, right? That's subjective, actually. It's a subjective answer. Given voter anxiety in terms of the economy, it's something that the voter, the voter pre COVID-19 is a different voter from the one post COVID-19. So there is a challenge of equity for these 19 districts that, and this is why this is we're subjective. We don't have, we don't have fact here, but we have concern that they would be left kind of in the dust with voters saying few, at least my taxes won't be going up and they've got a budget not realizing that this means, you know, loss of 20 teachers here, 45 peer educators, your entire, your entire athletic program. So the number of losses that we've heard should those budgets, should voters prefer not to move? So that's a concern related to equity that we're grappling with. Well, that's an absolutely valid concern. I mean, we're hearing that tax payers are really in a world of hurt. And if you've been following some of the other legislation that's going through, we're really trying to address ways that towns could help property tax payers with when their payments are due and how much they're going to have to pay and putting them on schedules if they're not able to pay. It's a, it's a big issue this current fiscal year. It's a huge issue next year. And probably the year following. I do think that the way you have it written right now that that if there's actually been a budget that was defeated, then the, the new proposal needs to be below the amount that was defeated makes sense. And if the budget has was never actually voted on, that's a different category. As, as you said, Madam Chair, there's an equity issue there. We do, we did just get, I think it passed. I'm losing track, but we did get a provision in, in place from the government operations committee that allows a town to actually set a tax rate on the municipal side that is less than what their budget might have required. Because now they're not spending dollars the way they thought they were going to be spending them back in March. And it, they may be spending less than, than they had originally budgeted for. I see. You had to say something. Thanks. I'm really fully participating in this committee. That's not mine. Thank you. No, we're very happy to have you because I know that ways and means has been looking up this issue that that that Karen just brought up. So, yeah. So my community is one of the communities that doesn't have a town budget or a school budget and the bill that we passed today on the house floor unanimously and put in all stages of passage allows a select board to basically pass a budget. The similar to how we're proposing that a school board would be able to pass a budget. And when I talk to my town and when I talk to my town manager about that, the select board on the town manager towards what Karen was saying, fully intend to have a vote with the voters as soon as they can do that reasonably and safely. They just want this as sort of a part time measure while they're figuring that out. So they don't have to worry as much, but they still do feel an ethical social obligation to bring it to the voters as soon as they can. They just want to have sort of that midterm provision. And when I talk to school boards in my area about this same issue, they have a similar feeling that they want this so that they can make sure that they have something stable for schools and for towns to be operating from both tax wise and budget wise, but that they're interested in warning and eventually voting on budgets just not before, you know, just not like quickly within the next three weeks, because that's very stressful, both from an equity perspective and just from a logistics perspective. So 7.1 would give them that. Others, what is your sense of how prepared these towns are getting Karen? You're in touch with these towns and no, we've got 19 districts, but I don't know how many towns this is. It must be about 40 towns. I don't know on how many towns it is, but we could get that number for you easily enough. How prepared are they for elections? They're looking at it, clerks are, if there's no other election coming up, at least the August primary is, we've had some questions around petitioned issues and we've been talking, not me particularly, but other the attorneys in our office have been talking to Will Sending about what if somebody wants to petition an issue onto a ballot, that could be a problem. And I wonder if Will could speak to that particular question in the context of school budget votes. What if they got petitioned for an actual vote? That's one thing that's occurring to me. Yeah, Will. Yeah, thank you. That was part of the, I'm trying to think now, there's been so much, that was part of the initial legislation No, that was part of the first directive. Sorry, thank you. That allowed the these municipalities to cancel votes. It touched on a few of the kinds of petitions that are out there, but not all of them as a practical matter. So it does allow for for cancellation and postponement of an election that would have been forced by a reconsideration petition, as those are some of the most common. That's where you vote on something and then voters file a petition to vote on that exact same article again. So those could be avoided, could be canceled and postponed. And then the ones that are sort of generally filed with the select board asking for special meetings can be postponed also. But I know like Karen said, I've been speaking to some of the MAC attorneys over at CLCT. There are other petitions related to, for instance, if a select board passes an ordinance, that then a petition can be filed to overturn that ordinance or passes a zoning by law or amendment and then the petitions that can follow after that, that weren't necessarily addressed by the law. And I wouldn't be opposed to a blanket sort of statement that helped deal with any kind of petitions that triggered votes at the municipal level and giving boards the ability to postpone those. I've been trying to deal with them on a one by one kind of human basis. And as we've all experienced from Vermonters over this crisis, generally people understand and have been holding back on filing petitions that they otherwise would have done, but you can't count on that. Do we have a sense of these 19 districts in these mad number of towns? How many actually are geared up or have the potential to be geared up to hold a vote before, to hold a vote by mid June? I think by, this is Karen Horne again, that I think by mid June that that's going to be really tricky. You know, we're, we're almost halfway through May right now. And then just putting together the logistics of a remote vote or drive by voting or whatever you call it, it is going to be tricky. Will, I'm sure, has an opinion about that as well. I just think that's going to be difficult. Will. And then Chris. Yeah, it's going to be very difficult. That's why you all are here trying to consider how you can help with the problem. I can tell you, I'm really talking to almost all of them. This is happening right now in real time. Five minutes before I jumped on this committee call, I was talking to a BCA chair trying to figure out a polling place that would accommodate drive up voting for a school district. I would say the majority right now are taking steps to hold the vote, but doing so reluctantly and nervously and with a lot of questions. Chris Betos, who represents Milton, one of these districts. Yes, so our BCA met last night and we discussed drive up voting at the choir station because there's doors on either side of the building that you can drive through. But we had concerns about security because you have to watch and make sure the person that's voting isn't influenced if there's somebody else in the vehicle and then the ballot themselves. How does it go in to the ballot box? And then on top of that, what about all the fire trucks? If there's a call, what happens then? So we cross that one off the list and we're going to end up doing a regular 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. vote in our town office. It'll obviously look different, only so many people can go in. But we're also going to push a campaign out if the school board agrees to send out postcards to everybody that allows you to send it back and request your absentee ballot or you can just come vote like we normally would in this new view. So we're looking at the beginning of June. I think we're going to have our vote in Milton in case it fails and we got to do it again. Full disclosure, it was the great Ron Hubert that I was talking to before this call. He sends his best wishes to everybody. He led the meeting last night, so he was very informative. But seriously, I had mentioned that to just say, I'm having five of those conversations a day with various districts. What is your vote, Dylan G. Batista? What day? Yeah. June 2nd. So I have been helping Rep. G. and Batista's clerk on an almost daily basis for the last week. Susan's doing a great job. The value of having a default budget versus current law is they at least have a starting tax rate. They have a starting ability to use the Ed fund, but there's still the possibility of continuing to vote and having this reconciled later in the year. This is Karen Hornigan. I mean, I do think it's important to have the possibility of a default budget. I don't know where you set what that amount needs to be, but I do think that that needs to be an option because not everybody's going to get this done before July 1. It would definitely be better at the moment. We have default budgets being current budgets, which leaves towns at a risk in a risky time, and or the one that we're looking at that I don't think is going to get much headway in the Senate. Other thoughts from the committee? Questions? This is our opportunity. This is to really have a better handle on voting. I mean, Madam Chair, you might put in the bill that the default budget is in place and specify that there does need to be a vote at some point when it's safe. I don't actually see that for the school districts that haven't voted yet. Yeah, that's true. It is kind of left open. That's true. So if we had language that this is your default, however, you do need to at some point pass a budget by, I mean, there's also just the concern about school districts spending all their time just trying to pass a budget when they have an incredible school year coming up. So is there a by when that needs to be there? Or does it just keep going? I would put a by when you could always come back and revisit it in the fall if you needed to. You're going to be back, I understand. We'll be back in August. Sweet Austin. That was what I was thinking. I didn't know, again, legally, I didn't know if we could limit the number of votes that you could have up to one or two votes by a certain amount of time, and then you would need to go to the default budget and then vote in the fall or vote when it's safe again. So I didn't know if that would be possible or not. So thoughts, committee, if we put in something that said you have to have a vote. Anybody? Chris, not us. I don't know. I was just going to respond to Sarita's point about having a maximum number of votes because wouldn't that kind of automatically make the voter approve the budget because they wouldn't want it to go to a default budget? I'm just thinking, I don't know. I'm just throwing out like ways to figure out how to manage this in terms of, you know, just how to manage doing this and the primary. I mean, maybe it will work out well. I've worked the polls before and good times and it's a lot of work and you need poll workers, you know, to do it well and legally. So that's what my concern, the difference in this vote is, you know, will there be the capacity to do, you know, unlimited number of school budget votes as well as the primary. Kathleen, did I see you? No. I'm okay. You're good. All right. So in just in terms of the towns and the readiness and the idea as to who has actually scheduled a vote, I don't have that information. Is that easy for you to get, Karen? Or is that, should I work with the school boards? We do know that Barrie Town has scheduled their vote on their municipal budget for June 1st also and they deferred it and there are some villages, but, you know, I've really been focusing on the municipal side. So I'm not particularly helpful on the school side. And Barrie's not on our list. Because it's just the municipal budget, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. That's not on our school board list. So I guess we could probably get that from the school boards or from the AOE. Larry Kublee. Yeah, I've talked about this before, but is it time to ask these towns that they vote on the first Tuesday of March, all of the school budgets, all of the towns, making it very, or at least if their budgets go down, it gives them time to continue to revote. I mean, I'm not sure what legislation would have to be done to do that. I'm sure charter changes would be needed, but we do that almost every day, every week. But, you know, this is becoming more and more challenging each year with school budgets. And maybe it's time to be concerned about some conformity to how we're asking cities and towns to vote the budgets. I think that is an excellent question. And I think that that I actually, I think that I think Emily Kornheiser, I think you're actually in conversation about that with GovOps at the moment. Is that correct? With the towns? With the concept of when voting occurs for school budgets and the concept of it being it's a statewide, statewide issue. Ways and Means is talking about how it's collected, but not necessarily how it's voted. Voting, right. Caleb, Elder. Are you able to hear me okay? I'm going to stay out of video because I've got some bandwidth issues happening today, it seems. I think that, of course, this is a really tricky issue and we had a good discussion, a difficult discussion last time we talked about it. But I'm just wondering if with the default budget, the case could be strengthened if it was more tied to some local decision making. And we had, I think, envisioned that in one draft of our bill by making sure that the local school district was involved. I wonder if there was a default budget that has essentially only been warned by the board. If it were subject to ratification in some way by all the member legislative bodies, for example, all the select boards of all the towns in that district, that would be a significantly higher bar than something we've considered, but it would also be something that would be considerably more consolidated than a general vote. If, in fact, this is just a public health and safety issue of the fact that you have to hold an in-person vote. Anyway, I just mentioned that as an idea that if we find ourselves really backed into a corner where we feel like we have to have a default budget without a public vote, which is something I have a hard time with. I know a lot of us do. I just wonder if we could explore other avenues for locally ratifying that in some fashion just to strengthen the credibility of that default budget with citizens at large. Chris, are you, is that an old hand or is that a new hand? Okay, and Larry, is that an old hand or a new hand? You're good. Okay, conversation continues. Do we want to continue to work on that draft, the 7.1? Through you, Austin. I'm just worried about time. You know, I don't, you know, I don't have a sense of, my sense is that these school districts and school boards really want something that they can act on and respond to soon. So I think I'm just wondering what's our time limited? Can it be by next week that we work to come out with some proposal that they can use to make a decision with? That's part of the legislative process and at the moment trying to get something that might be more agreeable to the other body because it's actually starting with them where the, where the response organization at this point in time, not believe. Okay, well, anybody else? Will Senate? I think I just bumped my phone, but to wrap Austin's point, the sooner the better. If you are going to take action, you know, the warnings are happening and like I said, they're all thinking about the pieces to be put in place right now. And I know that's difficult with your process right now, but. Well, there's nothing, nothing here that should slow a district down in terms of warning the budget. There's nothing that we're doing that we would encourage them to slow it down. We want them to, we want them to vote. That's true. All right, I think. Yes, please tell him. Yeah, just a little bit of feedback. I got on the draft because I didn't relate it to try to get some sense. And, you know, when I first saw it, I know we're trying to find a path forward. Some of the feedback I got around it was just a lack of certainty as to whether it would discourage a board from approving a budget because there would be the default to fall back to. And so, you know, there's pros and cons to this. I appreciate that we're trying to work through it. It's just so complex and feels like everyone we talked to, we realized how complex this is. We're in an emergency situation with a election and voting process that involves local officials, our school boards, public health considerations. So I, you know, I do agree that there's a lot of urgency here, even with districts moving forward and we should continue this conversation. It's just, I'm not surprised it's been this hard. So thank you to everyone for taking it so seriously and putting in the time to be really thoughtful. I just appreciate that. And the spirit of partnership that we're finding, I think with our Secretary of State's office and our local officials, that's really encouraging to me, particularly as I prepare to go stuff ballots next week. That's what's going to get us through that, that local partnership is what we need in these tough times. So thank you, Will, if you're listening. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. That's all that I have on the agenda today. Is there anything anybody else wanted to bring up before we end for the day? I'm in conversation with Emily Simmons. She had mentioned that there might be a delay related to CTE. However, it might not be something that needs legislative action. So we're still holding our lead bill as to what's happening with that. Maybe Representative Coopley, you could give us just an update on what's happening with 173 delay. Well, I did go to appropriations this morning to present the bill. Let me just interrupt for one quick second. And just I want to thank Karen and Will, and you don't have to listen to our discussion. You're more than welcome to stay, but don't need to stay and listen to our discussion on 173 delay, but really appreciate it hearing from you today. Thank you. It's a tough one. Yes. Thank you, Rep Web. If you want to have me back, I'm happy to come back anytime. And also, if you would like me to connect at all with your Ledge Council with any drafting questions, I'm happy to help there as well. That would be great. If you have some ideas on how we might actually make this work so that we're actually helping schools and giving voters their rights, we would appreciate it from you as well, Karen. Okay, and I will try to get you the list of towns that are in those particular school districts. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Okay, Larry. Yeah, so great conversation this morning with appropriations and presenting a very difficult bill with a lot of different dates and I think pretty well receptive to the idea. Most likely, they're pondering at this point, and most likely we'll go ahead and honor our requests and pass the bill out of committee. It doesn't appear that they're anxious to do it immediately. So I'm hoping to get it to the floor at least by next Wednesday or the next time we meet. I don't think it's going to be Monday, but we'll see where it goes. So I'm going to have a talk with a couple of committee members. I'll discuss it again with Kitty. She wants to continue to debate with her committee on the appropriation and other questions they had in terms of some of the dates, but other than that, I think we're okay. And the question did come up and Representative Fagan answered it for the committee, for the Education Committee, and basically said, listen, it's got to go on the skinny bill. It's got to be done by July 1st and signed by the governor. If not, the state closes down, so I'm sure that we'll, I'm sure we'll be okay with that. Let's hope anyway that we convince them of the importance of our children getting their special education. And I did emphasize the point a few times that when these kids come back to school in the fall, if in fact we do open our schools in the fall, there's going to be a lot of need for special ed particularly. So let's hope that we can push this out at least a year and gather our thoughts and give the advisory board some time to figure it out as well. So that's about it. I'm hoping that we'll have some opportunity to use some of the CARES money to help school districts with that return with children that we know are, we know about coming back. Let's hope that we need it. Yeah, I think that that's probably money that could be specifically tied to COVID-19. Okay, that's it for now. Oh, Kathleen. Yeah, was just wondering, are we going to be doing another joint hearing with Ways and Means for an update on the ed fund or should I just be following along there? I believe Avery, did you just get something from Sorcia? She had mentioned that it was not going to be an official joint hearing, but was just going to be hearing that House Ed members were invited to. And when was that? It will be for Tuesday and I'll just grab the time just one moment. It's Tuesday at 10 a.m. Okay, great. Well, that was a timely question. Yes, that's great. So is this coming Tuesday the 12th at 10 a.m. Ways and Means Ed fund?