 Welcome folks. This is House Gretchenston Institution. It's going to be in just Tuesday, January 9th. And let's first stay back for a week of the work. And we're going to start out with Ben of Ogroski. Ben is going to quickly walk through us. We have this on our webpage. And this is Perfomo, however you pronounce it. Every year there are reports that. It's mostly it's a House government has government operations committees, the one that really looks they do the review of a lot of reports that are out there. And they have those the respective committees look at those reports that are in that that committee's purview on whether or not we continue receiving these reports. Or we say, no, we don't need it anymore. And then government operations will take it off the books. So assist a way of cleaning things up every year for that. So Ben is offered to help a little bit because there may be some overlap here on the judiciary committee on some of these reports. So I'm going to turn it over to you, Ben, and if you could just when you do have a memo or you don't, there's. This came from this came from gobs. Yeah. Well, for the record, my name has been overdraft skin from the office of legislative council. So to expand on what chair Emmons just said, so this is done really as a cleanup. For some reports that basically the key question for all of you today is whether a legislative required work required report is necessary to continue on for your legislative work. So when we're kind of going through this, just ask yourselves, have we use this? How will we use this? Will we need to use this in the future? So I've sort of done a quick look at some of the reports that have that overlap with the judiciary committees. There are only four of them. And there are a few more facing the committee. But if you look at the spreadsheet that I believe you all have on our webpage and we have paper. This is one side. This is the other. You're talking more about the green side, right? Well, both sides. Yeah, I mean, so we just need to kind of go through all these because I think that there was a little bit of lag in doing this in the past. That's why there are some that are beyond the five year mark. But going through this is we just need to the committee needs to notate. Do we want to repeal the requirement? Do we want to basically reinstitute it for another five year term or do we want to retain it permanently? Because by default, unless the report through legislation is exempted from to VSA 20 D all reports expire after five years. So this is sort of to take a look at that. So any questions about sort of the task before the committee? So why would the 2017 months not have expired? Well, they're still on the books, but that's why we're sort of doing this is to clean them up to take them off the books unless we work on five years. Right. I think there's a little bit of a lag. Yeah, why some of these are still still on there. So the ones that I took a look at as far as average reports been filed or what they are is bear with me a minute. So one is the evaluation of goals and performance of pre trial services report, which is required to be submitted by DOC. So I believe that is on the top of the second page that expired last year or two years ago. Excuse me. And it was filed annually between 2015 or no, I'm sorry. The third of this report has been filed though. Did file a report in 2016, but it didn't come from DOC so wasn't sure if it was the same. There are annual reports from the Attorney General's office on court diversion and pre trial services beginning in 2017, but nothing that came from DOC. So never got anything ever from DOC. Not that I could find. I did not do an extensive search though. What you found of some reporting from the AG's office. Yeah, but whether or not it's under the same requirement is have an open question. So the pre trial services, while we first put that in place was administered through DOC and report was required to be through DOC because it was administered. The pre trial services were administered through DOC when we put that in place must have been back. 17. And then it was we're finding. I don't know how long after that we found that it really should be housed in the Attorney General's office. So that might be it out of DOC. That might explain that explains why there's nothing from DOC because they no longer have jurisdiction of the pre trial services. Would we have had to change the language? Then what designated them to do it? Probably and that would have been whenever that change happened. And I do know that the Attorney General's office in the diversion statutes ever reporting requirement. And so a lot of times trial services, all those sort of. You know, community supports and diversion are sort of collectively dealt with together. So perhaps they were all. So we don't know if there's any evaluation, the pre trial services at all. So, I guess the question is, do you still want to keep the requirement on DOC to submit it? Or do you want to make it permanent or do you want to repeal it? Oh, if they never did. Yeah, I mean, if they're not in charge of it, then we ought to repeal the report. The question is, I then go to the next question. Is it important to have an evaluation of the pre trial service? And the pre trial services for folks, this for folks who weren't here. It says sequential intercept model where a person is prior to being going to trial. They have some opportunities with the courts that can work with their community justice centers that can work with a person to slip them into some slots into treatment or substance use disorder treatment or mental health treatment. They can do that work prior to going towards trial and be successful. Then it really helps in their sense have a lower sense. They may not be incarcerated. Maybe on the path of recovery. Just curious if the bill that Rick Doren came in here with has any reporting requirements. It does. It's right here. That's my bill. Yeah. We're going to be living with this. It does have reporting. Yes, evaluations. Not. I don't know if it's the same exact requirements as this bill, but it does have reported requirements. So one of the issues that came up when pre trial services were first put in place. Was that from a defense perspective, we were concerned about lack of confidentiality when we're asking criminal defendants to share information with someone who doesn't hold any kind of confidentiality measures. So we really had a hard time with that. I think it did get worked out in a way that was acceptable and it was put into place. But that was one of the early issues that we saw that involved. These people would go into an arraignment going to meet with a criminal defendant who was there for possibly the first time. Didn't know the ropes and could very definitely have confessed or made statements that would have been counter to their interest in a criminal case. So that was, you know, again, I think it got worked out, but I don't know the issues. At least in diversion. I do know that there's an exception that they disclose and that is not be used. Yeah, right in diversion. Yes, but I wasn't sure in pre trial services. Someone was meeting with a defendant before they got a chance to speak to an attorney. So we've got 15 minutes before Doug comes in. We got more reports. So Wayne and then Mary. So. Sounds like they could have been statute teams that assigned it to the office. If that's the case. We can. But if the attorney general's office is already submitting the report, there's definitely a statutory requirement to do that. The question is, so we've got to ask DOC to continue doing the report or something they don't have. No, because they never said. We have more time. So we repeal it. Okay. So Doug is in at 230. Sorry. Okay, next one. So again, I'm just kind of starting with the ones that had the crops over and then we can go. So the next one is the second one on this on the second page. Pre charge program report. Again, state's attorneys was required to submit it. No record of any report filed, but again, the AG's office has submitted reports. So further evidence that they're, they're handling these reports now. So that's all part of that. Pre charge. Yeah, it was pre trial. Fox, I think had her bill. So who checks. Oh, so who actually checks to see if these reports are filed as they are in statute to do. And then they're not. That is later. It's us. And, and where is this? And there is a list that came out. Let's just set up council all the reports. That are due with the statutes. So we can go through this. So people are interested. Let's see. What's the site of council? Sometimes they go directly to a committee. It depends how the language is written in the bill. Paper. I'm electronic. Most of them are submitted electronically. If you do on the website has. The general assembly's website does have a link to. And then you can find legislative reports either through keyword or. They're chronological, but it's not comprehensive because it doesn't go all the way back in time. And these are reports that are due to our committee. Some is just to our committee summons to our committee with a lot of other committees. That's the same. So we have a lot of pages here reports. So people want to look at this. You're more than welcome. So quite often in legislation, we want to report back. And then the question is, we get the report back. Do we even know we're getting the report? Do we look at it? Did we even get it? Did we even get it? So the pre-charge program is very similar to the pre-trial. Hasn't been filed. Do we keep it? Just what you wanted to give one somewhere. Will you give it another year or two? I can, I can say that in age 645. There are reporting requirements to do with pre-charge in that. So. This is repealed to potentially. We'll come back. He reinstituted just in a different form and. Different obligations, but. Any folks want to suggest we repeal it? Sure. Being that there's. Well, those were the two overlapping reports that I had. Put together. Otherwise. We're all looking at this fresh. As far as fresh. But. I could suggest that. You know, as we go through them, I can try and pull them up. Give a brief description of what they do. I just bear. A little bit of patience as I. Get everything. Okay. Well, let's continue down on this. This page. Okay. So. We have from BHCB. Reports that are due. Okay. It's activities and finances of the preceding. That. We do get those reports. Because we get them as we take testimony from BHCB. They always submit a report. And we hear some of that. Well, we hear their testimony when they come in for their. Capital bill appropriation. This is something we want to retain. This seems really relevant. Retain or make permanent. Or you do another, you would do this in five years again. If you didn't make it permanent. Retain it because with all the changes in housing. Yeah. May want to readjust. So maybe. That's just my. That's just my opinion. Okay. Next. The next one is. Submitted by DOC about temporary employees employed at the department. Ever get a report. Boy, this is. Really. Yes. You know, this was a big issue years in here. And this is all part of Act 154. Well, this is 163. This one. Yeah, but it came. 54. It says that on 54. Oh, though it's amended. Looking at the initial one. We would be able to see that was the report. That was the report. The issue was we. There were. It's a time that there were a lot of temps. They were hired. Over. Full time employees because they don't get the bennies. And corrections was hiring an awful lot of temps. And that was a real issue in this building and a real issue. The VSE. And a real issue for folks working. Corrections. They were under practice of. Hiring temps instead of full. FTEs. And that. You'd find one report from 2015. About it. Eight years. But it was a big issue back then. I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I don't think it was. But it was a big issue back then. I don't think it's such. Such an issue now. Hasn't come out. Especially with the. Stop market. Folks like to do. How hard is it to put together? It's just a workforce report. She kind of likes to. This one's 119 pages. Quarterly I was supposed to be here. Yeah. Yeah. I explain why there's only one. One. I feel like it gives you one less thing. I would say repeal. I'd say. I think they have bigger fish to fry than us at this point. During the. Yeah. It's not much of an issue. Given the appropriations or whatever. If they're looking at positions that are. Show up. Asking. Those kinds of things for the permanent employees or. Capitalism. Term. They repeal it. Yes. Ten year capital. Construction program. That's important. We make that permanent. Yes. Or do we extend. If you retain does that. That makes it permanent for the 10 year program. It does updated every year. Yeah. I think it's provided alongside the. Right. Binder. Essentially. I think it's a useful. Very useful document. To extend or retain. Retain. Just do it. That's part of our budgeting process. You need to know what's in the pipeline. What is this one? 2018. Next one. Let me. Notice of any grants awarded to chairs from public safety. With that. Is an 18. Just. Give me a moment. I'll. Event occurs. Sure. It might not be. It might not happen every year or something. Was a committee bill. A what bill. It was a cap. This was through the capital bill in 2018. With the schools. Section 26. In 18. Here's. Here's what. Institutions committee. Committees. We do that. And it was in the capital. It's not the correct citation. I said the schools. What you know we had some. Security issues that we beefed up. Safety and security. Program. That's what it is. Starting. I think that was. Right. That was the year we started to. Put. Some. Money and. Things in. Safety. Yeah. School safety. Right. It was to enhance school safety and security. Through grants. 718. We did that. It was that long ago. Yeah. That's one of those. All the. Fire. I was later than I was. I mean that's no longer. In effect. And there was. There was big bump there for two years. And that's why we wanted to know what was going on. And I think the reason why it's called on condition. Is that it's only providing notice. The committee whenever they're awarded. The grant. The grant. The grant. The grant. The grant. The grant. And it's only providing notice to the committee whenever they're awarded the grants themselves. So. It's as. We don't do it anymore. I'm not doing it anymore. I was just short period of time. Then we kill. Because it's not a line item anymore in our capital budget. And it's beyond the two year reallocations. We're going to know. Yeah. Yeah. It's session law. Yeah. I would repeat on. Because that was a little because we're really concerned. What those capital dollars are going to be used for. In the schools. And this was all new to the schools. And it was a department of public safety that was administering the dollars. And it went on for about two or three years. Yeah. It doesn't. I'm not seeing a time. Limit on this. Right. But we don't have a line item in our capital bill anymore for them. So I'd repeal it. Okay. First page. Orphan systems. I think we keep this because that's all part of our. Capital bill appropriation when we deal with the clean water revolving loan fund. And orphan systems revolving long. My favorite words. My favorite words. I would say extend. Extend. Just got moved. So the next one is. Have you ever get any reports? I can check. On what the orphan. Yeah. We probably do during our capital budgeting time. That. The next one I think goes. Report. Telecommunication authority. We don't do that. We don't do that. We just put in capital dollars into expanding our broadband. And we went to the. Telecommunications authority. And that authority is now. The funk does not. Didn't get. Move someplace. I think it got moved somewhere. I would say repeal it because it doesn't exist. We used to fund a lot of broadband through the capital. So. Okay. The next one is the implementation of potable water and wastewater rules. Number and type of alternative innovative systems. That are approved for general use pilot project or experimental use. That's all part of our clean water revolving loan fund stuff. So I would say extend. Yes. We have. Shoppers. Yep. We funded those through the capital bill in the past. This time this year. Yeah. We have in the past. What really has replaced this a little bit maybe has been. Transitional more transitional housing beds. And also. Shifting with justice reinvestment to to really work with. In the past. We've had a lot of. Victim as well as the offender. Domestic violence. But this was a request from certain parts of the state. For domestic violence shelters and I. I don't know if the money came through VHCB. I think the money came through VHCB for this. That was before. This is quite a while ago. And by improvements, you mean. I'm sorry about that. I'll check. 2010. It was way back. We did this. Remember the last time we funded such a shelter. And years. And years. Tax in my memory. Try. Those are private. Yes. That was listed twice. That was listed twice. It's listed at the bottom, too. Was amended in 2017. And postponed to 2020. So we extended it right. And 17 we extended it. Seeing any. On the start. TV fatality review commission reports, but it's from a different entity. I agree. Steps we don't fund anymore. Repeal both of them. From there. That one and the one at the very bottom. The same thing. So then the next one. From DOC implementation of notice of community placements. During the preceding 12 months. And that. By statute. So. What is one of four. One of four goes through like the commissioner's duties. But I'm going to double check that for you. I mean, it's, it's, it's really entitled notification community placement. So. Provide notice one appropriate and at the department's sole discretion. You affected state, county and local criminal justice entities into all to local legislative bodies. For the purposes of public input, enhance the offender reintegration into the community of the criminal justice entities. And then you'll see that a number of cases where an offender is released under furlough. After serving a sentence of incarceration in a correctional facility. Notice may include the offender's name and any aliases, a recent photograph and physical description, community placement address. Criminal history, current offense or offenses. Home address. Plus a description and license plate number of any motor vehicle used by the offender. Any offender. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But does that report come just to us? Does annually. HCI and Senate institutions. We know implementation of this section during the previous 12 months. We've never received a report. Maybe we have. We don't look at it. Do a quick search. Do a quick search and just say. I think some of this may have all come about. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Where people were concerned that folks who are convicted of sex offenses. And being. Re-entering into the communities being placed near schools being placed near childcare centers. And just looking at those community placements. I have a hunch that maybe where this. Came from initially. It's my hunch because some people wanted. To put out publicly the name of the person. To address where they were residing. And the legislature said no to that. So I'm just wondering if this is. As a result of trying to address those concerns. Not seeing it. Should we repeal it. Extend it. Retain it. Extend it. What use would you have for heads up. One of the problems. This program was. And we had some issues in my community. They never they were supposed to by law. Notify the police. Didn't have to notify neighbors or that. But they had to notify the police. They never did that. And then the activities were off the charts. That were going on. And. I mean that was a number of years ago. Yeah, that was in the late 90s early to. When they had apartment buildings. Right. And they just crammed with no supervision or that kept saying. They were supervised. With just, you know, the parole folks going around once a week. It's not pretty. So I'm sure this is an extension of that, but I think. Possibly to extend it maybe to see. And there's another subsection in this. It says department. Again, just more notice to the relevant entities in the area. For public input. At the point at which the department has made arrangements to house in any apartment duplex or other kind of housing. Three or more offenders. If the housing concern was not previously used to house offenders, such note shall be given at least 15 days prior to placing any offender in such housing. And if the housing concern had previously housed one or two offenders. That's where such notice shall be given at least 15 days prior. To cram 10 into an apartment. Should have only had seven. Are these properties that are just run by DOC? Is that what that's referring to? Just apartments anywhere. Yeah, because the purpose of everything is grounded in, you know, enhancing reintegration into the community. You want to do that, but you need to. Some knowledge of what's going on. Instead of getting calls from a gazillion constituents going, what's going on in that house? You know, and the police didn't even know. That information would actually potentially be useful to know, but we haven't been getting it. I mean, I can think of several group housing situations where people are released, but I've never been notified of anything as a legislator about any of those in my county. So I haven't either. Though I know of some. I mean, there's sort of contingent language, but the contingency should have gone into effect at this point. So we could ask. All right, we can ask, but the question right now, do we repeal it, extend it or retain it? Extend it? And then we can ask. See is coming in. These answers only need to be submitted on by the 19th. So you do have a few days if you want to do some investigation. So we are having corrections in tomorrow. And. This is it said tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow afternoon. And so it's a check in with questions. So those could be something. So should we kind of hold up, like put a pen in that one? Until tomorrow. Yep. BGS condition and property management revolving fund. We should have that. I would just say retain that one permanently. That's all part of understanding BGS and. All of that. And they're budgeting. And then the next one County requests received and court administrators. REC requirements. Recommendations recommendations. That we need. Oh, so that's a go. What's out there? Yes. It's weird. Can't do this. I don't like this. Well, I would come for. County requests that's coming from your county or side judges. Yeah. For their courts. Because sometimes we picked up from the county courts. That's separate from what their regular. Or administrator putting in their proposed capital budget. Why is that coming to us? Oh, because we. It's all capital budget. Oh, capital budget. So it's not. Divide up the per county. We used to have county courts. And we would not pay. We shouldn't be paying for county court construction. Because we don't own the bill. But there was little spots here and there where we did. For county courts. Just to review the statute quickly. You know, it's any county requests and capital funds for its courthouse court operation or court operation. It's not a county court. It's not a county court. It's not a county court. So submit a request to the court administrator. Administrator evaluates based on various criteria. And then the court administrator. Advises this committee. Every year on those requests. So we're trying to get a cohesive cohesiveness. To the process where. Prior to that, it was coming in depending which. Party set where and which legislators that where. And we want to take the politics out of it. When's the last time you got one of those? The courts have reconfigured since then. So when the courts reconfigured into criminal court. And civil court before it used to be. Superior court. And district court. Family court. And your superior court. The district courts dealt with. Most of your appeals and your. Municipal. The district courts dealt not quite so much. They had criminal, but they had a lot more. And the courts reconfigured their operation. And they divided it up between civil and criminal. They never addressed. The buildings. I mean, in lieu of county executives. You know, the court was a state court. It was a state court. And you know, they were not consistent judges. They're essentially the county. So your superior court buildings. Or run and owned by the county. So your superior court. Your county courts were not on the state nickel. That was on your. County budget that's funded by your municipal budget. But the side judges were coming before the legislature. some of the courts. The first one we did was Addison County. We combined the state function and a county function. We did that. Then Loyal County, when that came through, we consolidated because what was happening was a hodgepodge. Some were sharing space but the county wasn't paying lease to the state. The state wasn't paying for use of space in the county courthouse. The county courthouse may be using space in the state courthouse and the state wasn't charging a lease payment but they had some internal agreements that oh we'll take care of all the maintenance or we'll take care of all your printing needs. So we were trying to break through that to have some cohesiveness and some structure that was uniform across the state. And that's why if there's a county request, construction in a county court that has to go through the court administrator. So when they did the reconfiguration of the operation of the courts, they never resolved really who was building of the superior court. But as Ben says, it's a state function so by default, state building. But that's never been clear. And we dealt with that way back in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012. Does it resolve? No. Some courts still have both courts in the same building. In the court, you see the two courts next to each other, two courthouses. In St. Johnsbury, they're both in the same building. Right. While in the same building, Brollington and two different buildings. I remember there were two different buildings. There are two different buildings. Yeah, our superior or the civil court is a Woodstock because that's our county seat. Mostly your superior courts are in the town that your county seat. Usually. New fame. New fame. St. Johnsbury. So do we keep this? I just, I don't know. If you're going to continue to try to resolve the issue, just be informative to keep having a report and extend, at least extend. Like if it's, it may come up and we should just be as well if it came up. So to extend. Extend. Extend. Someday we'll resolve the issue. So the only one that we really need to ask for the question about is the implementation, the notice of community placements. So if we want to send that one or do away with it for retirement. Anything else? We finished the second page. Yeah, we started with this. We started with this. So so far we are getting rid of one, two, three, four, five, six of them. Production. We never had any paper because they didn't do it. That's comforting. Reducing. I'd seven because of the two DB reports that were on that list. To what? The two DB shelter reports. So I have repeal of trial services, repeal of pre-charge programs, appeal of the temp employees at DOC, repeal of the notice of any grants awarded to chairs, then a repeal of the telecom authority report, repeal of both DV shelter, the grants. Wait a minute. One, two. You're counting the domestic violence as one report, right? Well, I was counting it as two, but yeah. So that's two. One, two, three, four, five, six. You came up with seven. Or six. Seven. So let's go start on the first page. You got seven. What did I miss here? First page you've got the second one, the fourth one, then the bottom one. Good. I got one on the second page. You've got the top one, one next to it, skip and then the next and then the last one. Oh, I have that one. Okay, I put it in the wrong one. I put it in the right chain. Okay. You got me. I'll never live that one down. She said that from number two. Yes, I know. I had the wrong art. Yeah, I was right for it. So, Chairman's, do you want, once you get the question on that outstanding report tomorrow, whenever do you want to report to me and then I can, I mean, this is supposed to go to the government operations committee. So I don't know if you want to just handle that. I can handle it with the govots, but the ones that go through Judiciary Committee, you might want to indicate to them what we are suggesting. Yeah. And that's, I plan to do that, but I just. I can give this to the govots. Okay. And it takes it off your plate. You don't have to worry about it. As long as I have the check marks in the right column. That's why you have rows on it, Norsey. For extended, just to make sure we got it right, I got one, two. Three, three, possibly four. Extend, yes. Extend. And then the remainders are all. And then retain, I only have three. I only have two. I have three. Well. Norsey, I have one that's coming. No, how many do you have then? Three. I have three. Uh-oh. Mary, we're good even. Not zero. I have one on the first page. So do I. And then I have two on the back page. Which two? The ten-year rule. The third one down. And the next little, last one. I have that as a, maybe a short-term extension. Oh, you have that one. But we might have said something else after. Court activities and finances, the preceding year for BHCB. Did we do that as an extension or a retain? I have it down as a retain. Okay. I have it as a retain. I'll just slide that. You have it right over. Mary, we got even. I stand correct. I stand correct. I'm not sure. Go for now, or is that people on the front? There we go. We retained it. We're double-checking the reports that we never received. But if anyone's interested, you can go through all of the things. Oh, no, this was a fun experience. Obviously, we should. Obviously, we're so irritated to have to do all those reports in that and sit on the shelf. No, I know. I know. I mean, we've got five pages here of reports to us. That would be really worth it to go through. We should do some really... Well, implementation of portable water and wastewater rules. Yep, that's a good one. Update on planning process for the Waterbury State complex. I think that one's old. That was Irene. Purchase of land from public field station sites. Sustainable jobs fund corporation activities, which includes farm-to-play program. Mental health facilities conditions. Some of these... Mary, are you getting excited about it? Those ones aren't necessarily subject to this. Right, but these are all reports that we get. Right. Some of those might already be permanent reports. Maybe that's why they're listed on the review sheet. Orphan stormwater system implementation. We'll just get rid of that. What was that? Orphan stormwater. Kept it, I don't remember. Impact of Act 179 of 2008 on corrections costs. Community re-integration accuracy of sex-offended registry. Improvements of domestic violence shelters funded by capital appropriations. Update on Waterbury reuse and Vermont State hospital replacement projects. There's a lot I should... Evaluate goals and performances of pre-charge services, pre-charge programs. Energy efficiency. Sounds like we have a lot more to do. I think we've got stuff to go through. Anything that you see has to be submitted by the Office of Legislative Council. We're not doing it unilaterally. We'll probably find out better than other reports sometimes. We're not doing it unilaterally. No, no, no. I'm going to check the facility. You say, Ben, where's your report? It's repealed. That's an easy way to start off the week, Flores. Anything else? Thank you, Ben. So what happens if one committee, like these... There's a couple there for us in Judiciary. What if Judiciary wants it and we don't? That's a good question. I don't know. Half a report. Would they adopt you if we wouldn't? I mean, I can... Do you want to, Connor? Pure speculation on my part is that if one committee says, yeah, and the other says no, maybe government operations kind of makes the final call, since they're the one putting together the language on it. Yeah. But I don't know for sure. He's the one that sort of is the... Did we get first steps in deciding? I don't know. You're the first committee that I know that's actually scheduled time for this. Yeah, we scheduled because of you. We came in Friday afternoon. So they will just have to follow in our footsteps. First in time, first in right. There you go. Anything else for Ben? Thank you, Ben. My pleasure. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Yeah, you'll see us when we said... You're going to have to stand before... What a wonderful day to start your day. There are a few statutes. A few statutes for saying yes. And rules. Yeah, I remember right in those things. Have a good night. See you later. So, Doug, you're due at 2.30. Is anyone else coming in with you? Tristan. Can you hold on? Just for a few minutes. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm not here for a little update. So on Friday with the appropriations BAA, Eric and... Your name, Tristan. What's the name? Went in. There was a couple things that pertain to our committee of jurisdiction. In corrections, the big piece is there's about $11 million for the side letter that was negotiated with the ASCA. About increased in salary shift differentials and benefits. And that side letter expires at the end of... It was March. It was a June. I don't remember which one it is. If it's end of March or end of June. I don't remember which. But there was an $11 million request for that. Contracted well path came in at $2.2 million over what they had anticipated when they put the budget together last May. Last May... $2.2 million? Does that go to $35.2 million? It may go to $33 million. Depends what was budgeted because they had not. We were still with the old contract. Well path then come on until July. So it was an anticipation in terms of what that contract would cost. I think it's $33. So maybe they budgeted $31. That's the two. And then there's something in there and this is Trevor's looking at this that's moving money with JR2 there's a global commitment carry forward money of half a million dollars that they're putting that towards maybe putting that towards transitional beds but there's some movement elsewhere in DOC's budget too. Trevor's going to track that one for us. So that's what's there for DOC. Again with what we feel for that. The other part that doesn't deal with DOC deals with the cash fund. They're proposing that the portion of the cash fund that's paying for capital projects that we only do capital projects that are in the capital bill of the cash fund. If you remember we're going to be talking about some of this on Friday. If you remember there are portions of other projects that don't come through the capital bill that are part of that cash fund because it's all within the appropriations world because it's general fund dollars. There's a formula only general fund it's not the whole budget it's only the general fund portion would go towards capital projects. So what the administration is proposing that that is only put in the capital bill it doesn't have to go through appropriations. So that's what they're suggesting for FY 24. Was it three cash funds we ended up with? Three or two? We didn't want any, right? It's three different ones and then I think that two and three got consolidated. And is one transportation focused? Yes. We're going to get that burnt down. So that's part of BAA and Doug is being very good about because you were deputy secretary of the administration. So that's what's before us. Make sure this is outside. I'm going to send her a picture of it. So that's what I know did I miss anything Tristan on the purpose? That's all we had. You need more information on this JR2 thing, whatever that is. You might want to be in contact with Trevor. Yeah. Anything else on that one? You're an echo. Let's shift gears. What's your title now, Doug? It's like, you're the FEMA recovery person. Chief recovery officer. Chief recovery officer. Okay. So we've kind of looked at this a little bit. I know we had you in in October and I know that I've been asking for like a cheat sheet in terms of all these moving finance piece for when we start figuring out what to do with the capital complex. And before we get that I think it would be really, really important to talk about what we're involved in right now with our capital complex, what we're seeing for insurance, what we're seeing for FEMA and the layers that need to be applied. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. We're back to being preliminary, back to like October, but with a little bit more understanding. So for the record, Douglas Farnham, Chief Recovery Officer for the State of Vermont. And one thing to throw out there for the committee is elements of my role that have kind of stayed the same. For both the pandemic and the flood. We are reaching almost a critical mass from the pandemic recovery, which it seems like a decade ago, but it was actually last May that the federal disaster for the pandemic actually ended. So our economy, our municipal structures hadn't really fully recovered from the pandemic when the flood hit us. So I think the ARPA, State Fiscal Recovery, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Programs, Inflation Reduction Act and the FEMA programs, part of my charge is to try to line all of those things up and make sure we're pursuing all the opportunities we can. We're kind of making sense of those things as best as we can. Federal operating environment is massively confusing, so we can only do so much. We are still in the phases of working through investments with FEMA, but starting with insurance. We're closer to clarity. We're not at a final state yet with insurance, but we do have $31 million, just over $31 million that we've received, that was like $31.6 million that we've received in advance payments and in settled claims to this point. There was a spreadsheet that was under development that tracks the insurance. It was very confusing. It managed to confuse even me and this is what I do all the time. I've asked for that spreadsheet to be reworked to be more understandable and to kind of make it so that as we receive more payments and as we update it, we will understand the insurance. We've essentially received funds from our insurance company related to all of our NFIP, buildings, and contents. All of our buildings were $500,000 and then there was a business decision on each location about how much contents were in there and how much we paid for contents coverage. In most cases, we got it right. In a couple cases, not as much right like someone put something in a building that hadn't been there when the insurance was designed and blew over the coverage limit and that will go on our FEMA claim. For each building, yes. Just to clarify, did that also cover the contents? $500,000 for contents and I think our highest for contents may have been $250,000, but it might have been $100,000. $500,000 for building, $250,000 for contents? At the most. I do have, back at the office, I have the spreadsheet that breaks out. We had down to like $50,000 for contents in some cases, I believe, where it was scaled to $50,000. In some cases, they weren't keeping anything in there that would be damaged by water, so they didn't pay very much for contents insurance. But it was variable. So every single structure had a different level of contents coverage, but the building coverage was always the same, the $500,000. $500,000 and then the contents kind of varied. Yes. I can try to pull that up, actually. So our cleanup cost, came in at $22 million is what our cleanup cost came in. Yes, our immediate cleaning and protective measures, yes. So is insurance picking up that cost or is some of that also going to be FEMA? So that's our insurance coverage. Allocation of our insurance will be extremely important, because category A and category B, from a FEMA perspective, that's debris is category A and emergency protective measures are category B. That cleaning effort and that moisture mediation and bolder mediation makes sure that the building didn't get any worse. That can qualify as category B, which President Biden signed an allowance for us, for Vermont to claim 100% reimbursement for category A and B costs in a 30-day window. So we have this amount from insurance and we don't necessarily want to have insurance pay for things that FEMA would reimburse for at 100%. We'd rather have them pay for the best we can get from FEMA is a 90-10 cost share for the rest of our building's work. So we do have to take our insurance payments and directly allocate them against all of our different line item costs and unless FEMA forces our hand or the insurance company forces our insurance company would, we're going to try to allocate them against the cost of the buildings and the cost of the contents, not the cost of the emergency protective measures. Theoretically, we should be able to get that entire amount back. Now, some of it drifted over that 30-day window potentially, but it'd still be at the then go down to a 90-10 cost split. So we should be able to get most of that 22 million covered by FEMA. We should be able to do that with the emergency protective measures. It's a very boring example for buildings, but our SWIFT broader rescue team, you know, spending money protecting a property or lodge, essentially. But remediation would be included, isn't that right? Yes, and it was also necessary because if we didn't remediate, then our insurance claims could have been denied because the state of the building from the disaster itself. So what you're saying is for category A and category B, FEMA picks that up at 100%. If those two items category A and category B were all done within 30 days, that's following that 30-day window. The governor gets to pick a 30-day window and when we get all of our invoices in, we'll advise the 30-day window. And what's the most ideal 30-day window? The goal is to give reimburse that 22 million. Yes, that would be the biggest chunk of it. The activation of the state emergency operation center also falls under that category B, but that pales in comparison to the protective measures we had to do on 109 and 133. Does FEMA have a cap of what they will pay out for category A and category B? No, Madam Chair. So this is in hopes of that 22 million that we paid CERVPRO to clean up. The hope is that FEMA will pay 100% of that and not have to go into our insurance. That's my goal, Madam Chair. Yes. Can I just ask what he was again specific? Debris. So the spending in debris that I think this is probably wrong, but I'll throw it out anyway. It was in the range of somewhere around 5 million or so, I think. Historically, municipalities are responsible for the debris cleanup within their boards. This time around, we created a state contract that municipalities could sign on to and we consolidated that into the state claim. It was much more efficient. It took us a little bit to stand it up, but it was extremely effective. And it helped us find a vendor that had more scale and capacity than most municipalities can find on their own. And then agency transportation did some debris cleanup, but their bill was much lower mostly only related to their staff time. As I thought, the coverage limits on contents are completely customized and they range from $38,000 up to $500,000. So they're all over the place. Many, many, many numbers in between those two amounts. What do they mean by customized? So, in a particular building, let's say 126, hopefully I'm just trying to make sure I'm lining it up properly on my phone, 126 State Street, I believe. We only paid for 75,000 of contents coverage. That's your insurance? Yes, through insurance. And I'm guessing based on what risk management saw as the exposure there, whereas the Berlin Central Garage, the main garage for AOT, paid for 500,000 contents coverage on that main building because there's a very large building with a lot of expensive equipment in it. A significant amount of which was destroyed. So one about there's a situation where you've got a building that would say you're insured for 75,000 contents. And like you said, in some of these buildings, there's more contents that came in after what you insured it for. So say the contents are now 100,000 but you're only insured to 75. Who picks up that 25,000? It has a chance of going on. It can be put on the FEMA claim. But I know that the federal assistance, FEMA doesn't cover all types of contents. So I'm fairly certainly apply the same type of filtering to public assistance contents. It has to be necessary equipment. So there's a it will go on our FEMA claim and we'll kind of argue it out with FEMA. I think contents, it could be touch and go whether they're willing to cover all of those contents or not. So could you give an example what contents would be? Laptops furniture. The heavy automotive lift in the AOT central garage. That was circuitry and that was destroyed. So that was an extensive piece of equipment that wasn't part of the building. So let's look at 109 the pavilion. So the contents would be the auditorium. I'm assuming you get the chairs in there. You get the stage. Is that considered contents or is that considered more infrastructure of the building? That's a great question, Madam Chair. The affixed chairs, I would probably consider those part of the building itself. But projectors and things like that, like the water went up to the ceiling. They tend to can move. Yes. Your mechanical system is not considered contents. So in terms of the pavilion, because those seats are adhered to the floor, that would be considered under the $500,000 for the building. Yes. And all of our contents are being consolidated. All of our non-IT contents are being consolidated on the BGS FEMA claim, so that we have them all in one place. And then we'll look at what contents we have to take off of that with you from the insurance payments. The related contents are going to go on the ADS claim, but it may make sense for us to apply our insurance payment for contents to that ADS computer equipment. Just to simplify the process. We had some legislative items contents in 133 and we had some IT contents. We want a lot of iPads and all of that that were under literature. Does that get considered as part of the contents in that building, even though it's a different branch of government? Yes, absolutely. From FEMA's perspective, the state of Vermont is the state of Vermont. They treat each agency as a subclaimant, but we're doing the building by building. Now, the insurance payments, they all go into the insurance special fund and then the emergency board to transfer those payments out. So for instance Can you explain some members of the emergency board may be new? The emergency board has some limited authorities to transfer general funds to move some money around. Yes. In relation to insurance payments, they have authority without a limit normally they can only transfer up to I think it's 2% or something like that of general funds. But with the insurance special fund there's a specific section for their authority there where they can transfer those funds out to pay for repairs and to pay for replacement of contents, things that were destroyed. The secretary of administration can do transfers but only up to $10,000 from the emergency board are chairs of your appropriations committees chairs of your ways and means and finance committee and the government. That's your emergency board. So and of course we had like a $25,000 deductible for building and contents side. So in the event we had less than $25,000 of contents would just be included on our FEMA claim as uncovered losses. So things that were inside our deductible are able to be put on our FEMA claim. They only will not pay us for things that we received reimbursement for from insurance. So we're currently at $31 million of what we've received related to our national floodplain insurance payments our CNA policy and our Lloyds of London. Our arching statewide policies that will bring us up to a rough estimate for how much insurance we should collect is somewhere in the $50 million range 50 up to mid 50s of insurance payments. It really comes down to the insurance companies agreeing on certain items in certain buildings but so right now you have $31.6 million. So you're saying there's almost another $19 million that might be coming in? Yes, we're expecting to break 50 million and then we have to negotiate through our brokers and everything on certain buildings and certain categories but our aggregate policies the $10 million and the $35 million those were definitely exceeded by a very, very large margin. So I think it's partly in the floodplain insurance getting down to the details of how they valued the certain damage on some of the less damaged structures. The structures that had very, very significant damage it wasn't really a question, right? We maxed out the policies but there were a lot of smaller buildings damage that it adds up. I want to be careful here because I just don't want to lock any any decisions in based on questions that are asked here. So we've got the cleanup costs which is of the capital complex around $22 million. So the- Is it $24? $24, so $24, $22. Last year it was $24. Maybe $24, I haven't- Thank you, just $22. Yeah, so it's $24. It was $22 October. It's gone up. So the hope is that FEMA will pick that up through category A and category B depending on that 30-day window. So it would be category B and it's already part of our claim to FEMA at this point and the hope is that as much of it as possible be 100% reimbursement, yes. So then we wouldn't be touching our insurance and the money from the insurance could go- Right. What do we do with these buildings or renovations or future construction or even the construction that's occurred now? The only separation that I believe FEMA will be really strong about is the separation between building costs and insurance reimbursement and contents. So we'll make sure we get our contents separated out. So we'll have to get our items reviewed. Under Irene, FEMA allowed a portion of the blanket policy to just be allocated across all different building repair and costs to bring those back up to code. So under Irene, they were placed against the repair costs. They weren't placed against the emergency protective measures cost, which I don't believe we had to serve pro-parallel costs. No, it wasn't. It was really done internally. It really was done internally with the departments and within the agencies. They just went through all the papers and put everything out onto the lawn and that's what I want to do. And I talked with the recovery officer I've spoken with both the recovery officers from Irene but that did actually cause significant headaches with our insurance company and with others because state employees were doing their best but we weren't doing the proper insurance company approved protective measures. Like serve pro? Yes. Plus it was different. Irene didn't last for three or four days where the water just sat in the building for three or four days. Right. Some contents. Some contents worth insurance. You still have to prove what you had on that amount of value. How was that handled? Most of the stuff's been disposed of. Yes, however, that's actually one thing that serve pro was excellent for. It was part of the cleaning process when they were removing damaged contents. They photographed, they logged it and so that helped protect and one with contents because it's always tricky, right? We had that process with BGS and serve pro validating what was damaged and we're sending that damage inventory. We sent it out to every agency that occupied those structures to say, hey, is this right? Did we miss anything on this? We want to make sure we didn't overlook any of your damaged contents. So we at least generated a list of all of them. We also have a quality control check on the content side as well. The state fleet program get damaged at all. It looked like the cars would have been in the flood plain there. The fleet employees were amazing and I think perhaps even one of them may now work for the joint fiscal office. But they got down there when they prevented significant amounts of damage and as we saw in Barry, cars in the river are not easy to get out of the river. So when we had Irene, particularly on the state level, we were really focused on the Waterbury complex and that was in one spot, one building. I mean they had a lot of little buildings there but it was all interconnected. They were all interconnected either or they were all connected. So buildings were independent of each other in terms of functioning, mechanical functioning but also in terms of providing services. Providing governmental services. They're not connected. Where in the Waterbury complex it was all agency of natural resources. It was agency of human services. I mean that was the hub. It's FEMA looking at the building as a complex. Like they saw the Waterbury complex. Do you know? They are looking at it building by building. There is a small projects threshold which I should have this memorized but I know it's at least a million dollars. But projects that come in under a million dollars do not face their congressional review and they have to carry out and you still have to make sure your expenses are all proper because you might get audited. There is less burden up front to carry out those projects. Under the advisement of our disaster response contractor guide house we have been working with from pandemic recovery we structured our project workbooks at the location level allows us also because our location level building by building allows us to line up the floodplain insurance payments with those specific structures. However, we're building the cost of insurance and how much we're going to be paid for insurance. We're building our damage inventory which for those state structures just in the Montpelier complex approaches $300 million worth of damage and we are then going to present options to the legislature similar to what we did after Irene where some of them would be repair and mitigate in place some of them would involve different layouts because all of those little independent buildings some of them are massively historic in value and the entire building is historic like the Secretary of State's gorgeous building that would be very difficult to do because it's gorgeous but the Green Mountain Care Board structure that is decimated and it's not historic and it's not in a great location so that's where the we develop the list of damage that FEMA is willing to pay for and then we propose to FEMA alternate projects which means we're not rebuilding it exactly we're trying to do something different, something creative that FEMA can approve that type and that's the alternate project Irene, the water break complex was the first alternate project that FEMA did in the country so from what it likes to be first we created a whole new category of project for FEMA because other states just weren't thinking that way so I want to go back to floodplain insurance is that part of that 500,000 per building and part of the 25,000 deductible per building yes so part of that whole insurance is not on top of right so the way our kind of waterfall of insurance works the first here to hit is the floodplain insurance so we have $25,000 deductible the next 500,000 of building damage would be covered by our floodplain insurance anything above that starts to go on to our aggregate policy see that's what we need in a cheat sheet that's exactly what we need how that lays out your first part is your floodplain insurance and that goes up to half a million per building and then after that it kicks something else kicks in how does FEMA kick into that so we're going to draw all the arrows and make it a visual because the deductible from the very beginning goes down and goes into the FEMA claim so there will be kind of a bucket of what ends up in the FEMA claim and you can try to show how things pass through different layers and eventually end up in the FEMA some of them go straight there some of them have to go through some steps then whatever you left with at the end you might pay that a bucket because there's going to be state dollars going in here yes I don't remember if it happened with Irene but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some costs some damages that insurance didn't cover and FEMA isn't willing to pay for right that we haven't really identified yet nothing significant like that has jumped out to me yet but the total disaster right now over $620 million of damage assessed to it that is statewide sorry statewide the capital complex number continues to fluctuate but it's somewhere around $300 million and part of that fluctuation is determining exactly how the flood hazard area rule plays into with historic preservation and that influences what FEMA is willing to pay for on a building and we're trying our best to make sure it doesn't undercut the amount of repairs and mitigation we're going to be able to do and that flood area rule is that two feet above the base flood level yes every structure that was impacted was inside the flood hazard area 111 I believe it just barely brushed up against the front of the building but that counts so Doug as we wait for the reimbursements right it takes a long, long time to come in how does it sync up with the budgeting process right like can we bank that money because we know a certain amount is going to come like it's in the mail or do we have to operate sort of as a deficit you know and then reconcile on the budget adjustment next year? yes so the way we've been approaching it for emergency spending that the CERC Pro for example finance and management authorized excess receipts requests anticipating FEMA reimbursement for that so they spent in anticipation of that of those federal receipts so in that particular area we're running a cash deficit now luckily Vermont has an extremely high cash balance right now so it's not as much of a problem as it would have been in say when our cash balance I think was somewhere between 300 and 500 million maybe even more towards the 300 million side so right now spending in anticipation of those receipts isn't dangerous financially because of our healthy healthy cash balance as we spend down the ARPA funds that cash balance is going to get more towards the historical average and then it becomes a real question of you know should we be spending in anticipation now for the vast majority so for 270 million dollars of the capital complex costs we haven't begun any of that special spending because we would we're anticipating a process like after Irene where the legislature approves the path and then the spending authority related to that is granted you think sorry I'm trying to remember exactly what vehicles, what things are in we'll need match and the general practice is you don't grant this federal spending authority until you at least identify where your match is going to be coming from and then you spend the federal receipts in anticipation of reimbursement we're hoping to cross 100 million obligated for the disaster in the next couple of months once we cross 112 million 112.4 I believe that's when we can go officially to that 90-10 cost share with FEMA we're still technically at a 75-25 even though it's 600 million of damage reported none of us believe we'll stay at that I'm going to say us I mean within the administration sorry Dr. Lee, help the dog fix? so the goal is to get to the 90-10 within 90-10 if we got there for our capital complex would the 90-10 be applicable to all of our buildings there what would you do the work for some of it going to be 75-25 great question Madam Chair the Waterbury complex there was some that was 90-10 there was some that 75-25 it wasn't the same match with the whole system so does all this limited to the money and once you go over to the threshold for 90-10 or is it you want to get 90-10 on that amount that's above the threshold? back to $1 so it would be for the whole disaster the state of Vermont state municipalities would be looking at approximately $60 million of match that would have to be for the 600 million or 600 million of approved damage so yes in Irene that's at 90-10 yes at 90-10 yes that's statewide statewide yes and that's only talking about FEMA again there's FHWA and there's other things happening that I'm going to avoid getting into for the moment you're right Madam Chair after Irene FEMA only agreed to pay a certain amount of repair and mitigation on the Waterbury complex and that was because our codes and standards were not as firm and clear as they are now after Irene and our certified codes and standards and our flood hazard area rule our FARC rule let's wait close to what it calls it so we had to take hazard mitigation money 75-25 match regardless of the size of the disaster and use that towards Irene so the goal here would be to keep as much of the project or all of the project in that 90-10 range if we have to go above to achieve what the legislature feels is the right path if we have to go above that approved FEMA PA amount then yes we would start breaking into the 75-25 range so there's a couple things there with the size of this disaster roughly 600 million dollars after we reconcile insurance and everything it's going to be somewhere in that ballpark but it could go down to 570 it could stay around 600 with the size of this disaster we get 15% of that amount towards hazard mitigation proactive hazard mitigation activities that money generally stays at a 75-25 split so we'll get around 80 million we'd have to come up with around 20 million to utilize that 80 million dollars so that potentially could be used to it was in Irene to use to augment the project there is a potential for that match to be changed from 75-85 that's being the criteria for that FEMA has not done that with anyone yet the criteria being discussed at FEMA headquarters and we're in discussions with them about you know what criteria they might publish because for some of their programs there are ways we could try to get more funding from FEMA but the cure is worse than the disease because we would have to spend millions of dollars at a statewide level every year to get a more favorable rate from them in some cases and it's just not worth it so we have some questions can you just clarify with the size of this disaster at 69 million there's possibility we'll get 15% for what for hazard mitigation so proactive it's usually not used on buildings that were damaged it's used to address issues that are risk still floodplain mitigation in Irene it was necessary to use that money for buyouts in this disaster there's another 40 million dollar pot that can be used for buyouts specifically it's called the Swift Water Program and that's a 25% match as well mostly a match though because FEMA only pays 75% of fair market value for buyouts and that is not achievable for people most people can't accept 75% of their homes value and then just go buy a new house so we have programs to help bring it up to 100% of fair market sorry for the deviation but that's how the financial pieces are fitting together with this one so we is that where do you get the pot of money to bring up the match that fair market value so they're generally it's been a one time general fund appropriation to come up with that in some cases the municipality involved comes up with a portion of the match it's not really structured we deal with it as best as we can and have over the last 10 years one of my long term goals is to propose more structured ways that people can approach buyouts and hazard mitigation work like right now municipalities know if they repair something after it's damaged in a federally declared storm the state will cover 30% and 70% of their local share based on what hazard mitigation elements they have in play they have no guarantee that if they try to do a proactive floodplain mitigation project that the state will have any financial involvement in that so it's we pay people to help with repairs but we don't pay them to help them with preventing damage in the first place and to talk with the policy committees about that quite a bit one of the municipalities approach to mitigation actually is upstream so that can play into the cost any mitigation work from FEMA like Irene required a cost benefit analysis and we would have to run the cost benefit analysis and we would look at the downstream and upstream impacts of any project like that and one of the things with FEMA is that they are incorporating social benefits into some of their cost benefit analysis they are slowly modernizing the way they do cost benefit analysis and that's one reason I do this spring plan to help organize more regional watershed discussions because we need to generate whether or not we can fully fund $100 million of mitigation projects in the state to generate $100 million a list of $100 million of projects and that has to come from the communities and if the capital complex if the negotiations with FEMA don't achieve all of the funding through the regular FEMA public assistance program that we need then the capital complex could be partly hazard mitigation funded partly regular FEMA funded but ideally we would have the complex project fully funded at the 90-10 split and then identify these floodplain projects that reduce the risk to our downtowns in the 75-25 Wayne? How can we talk about the 20-10s we have flats back then too and FEMA came in with some of those projects with things that many especially for some of the bridges and look at the success because we've had flats back since the success of those mitigation details what they did, the mitigation work how much they think they saved by doing what they did So all of the infrastructure the infrastructure that was made resilient or rebuilt after Irene was a particularly large category that we looked at it all held up extremely well like the water break complex got I think $200 damage to clean up the parking lot or something like that it wasn't really what's surrounded by water but it was undamaged and many of the bridges, the culverts there was an example where Cabot had a significantly upsized culvert it's an amazingly large culvert for the size of the stream however a massive amount of debris came down the mountain and still caused the culvert to fail or the culvert but when a tree is coming down the hill there's not much a culvert can do about it AOT has implemented a new resiliency tool and they've been working on it over the last decade repetitive damage is one thing they look at and their standards on culverts now are massively ahead of where they were 10 years ago so I think it is a slow process of changing over our buildings and making them resilient the amount of property we own in the state it is going to take us decades to make our structures resilient but we do have to focus on the ones that were damaged like 109 and 133 first and figure out what we're doing with the other five buildings that were damaged first floor because they're not habitable right now correct if you go out to the bridge down here and look upstream you can see the construction right here it's going to raise the water surface on the street that's part of the mitigation things like that be put at and maybe a tool for correct yes absolutely yes the bridge abutment highway footings that are right across from the cemetery that early hydrological data showed that that created a backflow into Montpelier that it made the flood conditions in Montpelier worse so I think looking at that is going to be something I know that after Irene there's been stories about it recently the farm in Duxbury if a mitigation project could reduce water brace risk pretty significantly I think that's for most of our projects right now anything that we could have done on state land we've likely already done we might have missed some things but most mitigation projects for floodplain are going to have to happen on private land and that's always it requires a significant community conversation and then trying to get those landowners on board and someone from the state coming in and saying hey we'd like your land to do a floodplain project that's a sure way to kill it so we could try housing at Juvenile Center there I'm going through it I give him a choice and then we flood it out completely what about our dams I mean part of the problems or concerns has been the age of some of our dams and if those ever gave and maybe even thinking do we build some dams that's a long term process but what about that piece that you're talking about so for the there was a house transportation and environmental joint hearing the manager or director I didn't catch his exact title of the dam safety program gave a presentation there I think Sven Green and he gave a good presentation on the state of our dams what they did after the disaster I think we have a hard enough time keeping up with our current infrastructure so I think building more dams would be a challenge when we're really trying our best to keep up with our current load of dams I do know Secretary Moore is pushing more nature based solutions right now and I mean by nature based floodplain style projects which require less or zero maintenance once they're done but each one of those achieves less mitigation or less impact than a hard infrastructure project so it's more of a attempting to achieve the hole by chipping away at it through and I do think we tend to talk about the Dog River Park in Northfield Falls as a really good example of a mitigation effort that created something that's valuable to the community lowers the risk in that neighborhood but that was I think it was eight houses something like that and it was a huge effort to get that project done so I think the areas where we're restoring our floodplain we need to focus on that and do that wherever we can but they're going to be hard to achieve which is one reason I tell individuals right now they don't like me for this when they say what should I do do I rebuild make your decision assuming there will not be any significant floodplain mitigation make your decisions assuming the rivers are what they are right now we're going to spend this year trying to do as many projects line up as many projects as we can and reduce your risk but that will happen because they're almost all on private land so mitigate in place or make your decision on where to set your business up elsewhere it's kind of a little bit cold of a message but I think it's important to be realistic and would that be true for both Montilier and Barrie or are there more mitigations that might help Barrie more than Montilier or vice versa so the proposal that the governor made for the gateway neighborhood in the north end of Barrie that's an example of looking at that neighborhood assuming the current levels of the river this is how we would recommend it be rebuilt there's a community there's a community meeting scheduled next Wednesday we've been working with the city and with Barrie and others there are of course some people who don't like the plan there are some people who like the plan and one thing we've been very clear about is that was a starting plan however the community wants to adjust it as long as it it creates a resilient vision where we're not you know if the water levels rise to the same extent we're not having people that same level of human suffering and property destruction that's what we want for the north end in the river corridor and that's where A&R getting the river corridor data and really telling people where the opportunities are like highlighting the bridge at Buckman and highlighting the farm in Duxbury and seeing and trying to find as many opportunities as possible finding some landowners that are at least willing to talk about it and going from there I do think we don't have one reason these conversations don't happen more rapidly is that we have the local governments and then we have the state regional planning commissions aren't we don't have county government we don't have that middle piece we don't have the middle piece that usually organizes this type of regional watershed discussion where you're having upstream and downstream impacts where it's you're doing something in a community that's not for your community I didn't understand why the regional planning commissions aren't doing that they're helping with those discussions but reactive they're doing great job in supporting people and supporting project development but I would say they they don't necessarily have like a statutory responsibility to do that and their funding is always tied to projects and specific activities so that's probably the biggest reason is that they don't have as much general purpose funding they have do this for this program and with federal funds we have to do it that way because federal programs always say okay we'll give you this much for admin but you can't even talk about anything else you just have to work on our program and so a lot of the RPC structure is based on lining up all these different grants they are, but they are well they're not like, are they considered a municipality? they're not really taking they're not a municipality the solid waste districts are considered a municipality under state statute would planning commissions be at all? they don't get paid by the state do they? the state doesn't they're doing solid waste districts I thought they were independent organizations that were serving a function for town I'm this is where I say I'm not an attorney but my understanding is that they are not municipalities but they are we have a number of so we have some component units of the state that are part of the state part of the state but not part of the state like Vermont Housing Conservation Board they are separate from the executive branch so they're not part of the state of Vermont executive branch but they're financially intertwined with us on our financial reporting so they're a component unit the regional planning commissions are not component units of the state they're entities which have been created in the statute but they're not municipalities and they're not component units I don't know if they would be classified as instrumentalities but I'm going to look up the definition of the statute of municipalities but it encompasses a lot more than you think when you really start looking at anyway go for it I think an example of this where there was a flood resilient communities fund so money was out there I'd like to put money towards that on the select board of Halifax I said this looks like something we could use the RPC said well okay we have this report that's been sitting on the shelf of your green river corridor and identified possible mitigation projects so ultimately we didn't do anything basically because the RPC is not sort of providing leadership it's not it's reports that are going to show off on the fund over here and connecting the dots is hard, yeah it's not a mechanism for that right you're going to find that definition so that's mold issue but just curious okay go for it so is there any discussion so in my communities that got hit pretty hard in the flood 15 east to west for instance in Hardwick runs right along the river huge amount of damage weeks and weeks and I'm sure hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage so I was speaking with someone at one point and they said of course the road's been there for a hundred years well that road never should have been built there because it's in a flood plain and we find a lot of roads in Vermont are in that category is there ever any discussion about some of these roads or change it built the road up with a lot of stone on the river side and I think that probably but there's ledge on the other side so yes there's definitely moving of roads definitely has been discussed in multiple instances I think what it comes down to is in order to get FEMA to pay for moving a road you have to do the cost benefit analysis with repetitive damage to show that in order to mitigate it so that it doesn't get damaged anymore it would be so expensive that it's going to be equally expensive or less expensive to shift it out of the floodway and so it's a very challenging process to convince them of that the other thing we run into is you know it's Vermont so you've got a river you've got a road next to it and then you have a 45 degree hill all the fault everywhere I mean I do know it's something AOT considers and I think more often than not the practicalities of shifting a road just overwhelm us that's almost the same as can you move a downtown out of the downtown let's go your downtown out of the downtown can you move Barrie downtown out of the downtown you know I mean in Springfield if we didn't have that flood control dam we would have been wiped out and I read as we're a downtown right near the river a lot of our town Brattleboro is a downtown right near the river so we're going to move our downtowns you're too over there I do think in the overall event and this was one way great right because it prevented a lot of damage but also it also reduced the damage to where it didn't hit the federal thresholds of the event but in Addison County a lot of the post-Irene flood plain restoration work was very successful stored massive amounts of water that then did not you know the damage to the city and other downtowns now there was damage in certain pockets but the projects there to store a lot more water were very successful and Brattleboro actually had more than one example of a flood plain restoration project that functioned very well so both from the hard infrastructure and the nature based infrastructure I I don't even know how much damage there would have been if we hadn't had Irene and then we had this exact event it would have been worse yeah it would have been I think more than just additive I think it would have been well over a billion dollars worth of damage John has a timeline been developed for the mitigation plan I'll use the 133 is an example there's a lot of mandates over there to building operational but last I heard the plan that needed been developed so equipment could be ordered is there a timeline when that might progress because we have to get FEMA to agree to exactly what they're willing to pay for that's going to take us if we had their complete agreement before the session ended I would be ecstatic can you explain back up a little bit then I had and did some of this work what that may put us in jeopardy for FEMA reimbursement or not depends on the work not necessarily we have a pretty good idea of the things that would be safer to do with them but I think the two big examples the two biggest price tags what do we do about the mechanicals in 109 and 133 do those go on the first floor do they go in a separate structure and use the utility tunnels how we address the mechanicals we know that FEMA is likely to pay for that elevation and relocation of those mechanicals but I think so we know that's a safe relatively safe expense we need to develop the plans so that the legislature can approve the right path do we lose a four of 33 to mechanicals or do we try to build another small structure over here or do we at least four or five hypotheticals that have been thrown about but all of them kind of build off of what is the total FEMA approved scope of damage that we're addressing and then we go from there I think the fact that we have some historic buildings thrown into the mix buildings that aren't entirely historic but have certain historic elements like I think the facade of 133 I think is the historic element on that building that just has slowed down the conversation with FEMA and scoping out exactly what the plans will be I think so one thing we've done here to help with this process is the State House is helping us with the general FEMA process but we're also we brought on a hazard mitigation specialist that worked for the State of Massachusetts for many years that actually worked in Vermont during Irene and has experience directly related to the Water Raid complex rebuild and so he's helping us plan and present our case in the best possible light to FEMA and part of that is to endanger our case and make sure we make sure we're as clear as possible with FEMA because once you put something on the record and with incorrect phrasing with them that sometimes that's that be careful and if you choose not to do a project for whatever reason if the amendment is another event FEMA just says tough luck, we told you so I think the situation is still evolving but we had an appeal related to the Highgate Landfill not maybe not Landfill, sorry it's in Highgate Slide there was a landslide there, yes and there was a mitigation study that was done and identified some risks in the area and FEMA tried to say well you studied it and you didn't do anything so we're denying that cost however the land that failed and the landslide that was created was at risk during that study so we're hopeful that we can win that appeal at this point since we said look it's not on the list of high priority areas so it's not bias geology is not we do our best two of them there one with the landfill and one with the trailer we had a historic amount of landslides unfortunately well over 60 I believe it was it's all sand moving so we're going to have to make some decisions during the session on some of these buildings I'm looking at the capital complex this is our jurisdiction here in this committee's capital complex we're going to have to make some decisions somewhere along the line and hopefully like you said you may not have any information so may or June April later we're going to have to make some decisions in terms of like 133 possibly the pavilion possibly some of these other buildings we can't accept then we've got to deal with the historic buildings piece some of them are historic and some we may have to raise just not going to be salvageable I think even the parking lot is something to discuss we have parking lot over there next to the river we have temporary bank stabilization that was performed because the edge of the parking lot is failing so we did temporary bank stabilization as an emergency protective measure to stop the more parking lot from falling into the river but depending on what you do with the different structures it's a question of do we maintain a parking lot that goes right up to the river's edge or do that as a flood plan and was it filled into the flood plan with the bill can I trust them so when I was down here right after the flood meeting with UDS and you're walking through the tax department parking lot, that rear parking lot that doesn't really get a whole lot of use I looked at it and I thought why don't we build a building here because it seems to me that creating space to move all your communications gear and electronics to a first floor in some of these buildings is a use of space that maybe we can't afford that upper parking lot behind the tax department I think one of the potential designs will likely contemplate what if we put a mechanical structure that's right there because it's an L shaped building and you can tuck it there and mark there, I mean it's not very well used yeah what are the chances though is that in a 500 year flood plan I mean that if you build it so that you have all your equipment above the flood plan right see that's, I'd like for the committee at some point, a nice day a cold winter day but a nice day to just take a tour of the complex if we could just to kind of get a perspective so if we did a mechanical building there would it just be for 133 or would it be for other buildings complex so complex I mean that's where a lot of the potential designs and questions come in right the tunnel which currently is a pedestrian tunnel between 133 and 109 that completely flooded so I think there's a legitimate idea there of do you maintain that type of tunnel well it did take water in which right I mean it did take in the water although we could build expansion of all you're saying it's our mo, it's our mo it took up the extra water if that tunnel wasn't there it would have been higher water in some of these buildings I would assume I think the water so the the water level kind of overflowed that to the point where I mean but you could achieve a similar effect where if it was just a utilities tunnel and you know you kind of mitigated it to the point where it was just meant to pass utilities and those utilities wouldn't be damaged in the event any water got in there anyway it wouldn't be a different animal natural drain down so what FEMA refers to as wet proofing sometimes your first floor of your structure or your basement is never going to be outside of risk so you wet proof it so that if water gets in there it has ways to escape it doesn't cause damage the materials aren't subject to mildew and mold and things like that so this is what I'm thinking these decisions can start taking those first steps so that the work can continue over this calendar yeah in Madam Chair I can connect with Guidehouse and BGS to see how much we can move up at least our timeline as far as presenting information what we can what we can lay out now what we can safely talk through now before as much as we can without having to deal with this I'll admit we tend to be a little conservative on things involving FEMA because we I'd rather be conservative than trying to you don't want to blow it I don't want to be the one that loses Vermont 30 million for you don't what is what would be things that would drive us forward to certain buildings moving forward they're all kind of on temporary permits sort of operationally hearing the most screams from tenants that we need to move fixing the building you're talking about the actual concepts yeah BGS has been dealing with the relocation effort I think extremely well there's been couple of offices that still are struggling to find the right space in the right location but one happy side effect of the degree of telework that came out of the pandemic is that it was much easier for them to find temporary space then it would have been if everyone was working in the office every day so I do think most places are keeping keeping operations running, keeping the lights on have a decent place to collect and have their collaborative time but there are one or two business units that are still not in an ideal state and BGS is trying to find them a better space they've kind of used up most of their available space for that so that could drive some of the priority for construction potentially certainly like the alternate project approach where if we we being the state of Vermont chose not to chose to not repair two or three structures then the funds that FEMA otherwise would have paid could be used towards either rebuilding that structure somewhere outside the floodplain or augmenting a different building I think that's a bad truce with us right now and maybe this is a little bit too far out of line but like our structures inside the floodplain aren't the only ones with challenges I went to look at 1416 Baldwin the other day and there's no parking there it's a strange building so yeah thanks so if we look to rebuild the building we've got to really take into consideration how many of the employees are physically going to come back to the building 10% of our employees kind of continue working remotely 20% of them what does that do to our construction costs how much does that save how that's going to have to be incorporated and what's difficult about it is that could change in 10 years where people say I don't want to work remotely anymore I want to come back into an office so and also the impact on Montpeliers downtown businesses which are already struggling quite a bit and I know that was a strong consideration after Irene and Waterbury was how many state employees are going to be staying in the downtown area and we built it for the tele workers we built it for maybe 10 or 20% maybe we'll be working at home and now when you go over there they're all working at home I wonder if we can find a post office to put someplace make your style I want to thank you for that what other questions does the committee feel or want more direction from Doug that we need to have the answer people think about it's going to be unfolding in terms of the insurance and FEMA and all of that what do you think we hear back start to hear from the UNBJS about planning scenarios for next steps of construction and the project address hopefully no sorry madam chair I think I'll have to connect with BGS on what our timelines would be there but I think one deliverable I can take away from this is you need at least a starting timeline of deliverables related to this project so that we can start to talk about what's realistic when we can deliver what and I know that there was a structure set up after Irene for you know continuation and approval of levels of the project after the session concluded I think legislative approval so I think that type of mechanism will be very important for this project but I'll circle up with them and then let you know how quickly I can get you that timeline other questions or thoughts for answers more answers and answers that is possibly going to be helpful for folks very helpful BPCs are a political self-division of the state so do you found that? there's going to be a lot of work done some of our other committees resiliency, mitigation a whole piece and I hope that we are part of those conversations too because I'm sure some of it's going to involve state lands state buildings possibly and we'll be doing our own we're going to be we're going to have to make some decisions on whether to keep some of those buildings or demolish that's going to be a difficult conversation I would think we'd be able to do that this session or is that going to harm anything and may harm with FEMA? I think there's a good chance we could at least lock in intentions maybe make final decisions yeah I think there's a really good chance that we could get that far down the road by the end of the session yes do you think we'd be at a point that there might be three options going forward which is not sure which option to take and we'd need we'd have more information like in the fall that we'd be able to make a decision between those three options or melting together epsilon? just thinking how to structure it it's like what we did for the water barrier complex same thing right is there any concern that these electrical systems and things that were flooded that were on temporary power for we'll start to flicker out and we'll just have to start throwing dumping money into it one way or another helpful we don't know I think there is a concern that we're watching those systems very closely because there's a concern not only that they'd start failing SIRPRO did an excellent job cleaning and drawing and everything like that but it doesn't take much moisture trapped in a weird space in an electrical system to cause a fire so we're trying to keep a close eye on things there I think because we do have a continuing authorization right now from FEMA to continue with category B if something failed right now and we had to repair it that'd be a pretty complicated conversation with FEMA so for most of the structures I think the conversation would be I don't know that we would automatically move into repairing that so we could keep people in the building I think like say the electronics in 109 failed I think we would pause and take a beat there was no damage being created by that failure that there was no fire or anything like that but stop before spending more money on repairs I think the immediate repairs that we conducted I feel safe that those will be FEMA approved and authorized a re-repair at this point might be an uncovered expense and I would I think we would probably stop and come to talk to the committee about that before going down that road and that permanent repair situation thanks it could depend on this but luckily there were no structures I'm aware of that were related to like 24-hour facilities you know if it were something that happened in a hospital then that would be a different story but I don't think we have any structures like that that were damaged in the flood okay another question just thinking more about and this is leaving more for a commissioner Fitch but whatever you can speak to here I was just thinking more about the loss of lots of things like historic materials under the state curators watch that really shouldn't have been in these basements and I know there's no one has had intentions or anything but even if stuff was lost yes and I want to just take a minute and just acknowledge that and ask can we expect any reporting and transparency or sort of stop taking on that aspect so Vermont emergency management is going to be conducting an after-action review of the flood event but they're conducting that process and all their intentions but they are emergency managers they're focused on the immediate response, the immediate short-term recovery I believe they're most likely to conduct that review in that context so I think there are elements that that after-action review won't cover in the storage of historic materials below the floodplain level is one of those so I do think I'll need to augment their after-action review some things that aren't as related to the immediate protection of life they don't they do protection of property but not historic property I think they would miss that nuance so potentially SOPs standard operating procedures for recommendations for such yeah potentially yeah potentially some policies for policies or SOPs I think with Waterbury built in the basement so problem solved can't store anything down there probably do or the water is concrete thanks I look forward to seeing you out in your future report I am trying to so there is there are a couple different efforts underway one is related to the work we're doing with FEMA I'm trying to make sure that's valuable and not just a very large document and I think there's a lot, there's still too many things that are preliminary or estimated and I apologize for that I think for next legislative session I do think we'll have to I am going to be working towards what kind of more robust report both for the legislature and for Vermoners can we prepare to capture a lot of this there were I think two reports issued after Irene that we're in that kind of nature and I do think they were valuable and should we have the storm like they're predicting today how well prepared are we haha kind of snow right now what's it's supposed to get much worse around 7pm tonight the wind levels are going to be particularly dangerous so I think our preparation level is rather high you know one small civil aligning of July was that in the December event we were in a good footing to respond very quickly to that event and to take actions on the downside of these cumulative events one downside among many is that our storm water our storm drain apparatus across the state we cleaned out many of them but in some cases there's still debris there's still things so these can be compounding events we should be okay if we don't get a heavy thaw but the nature of the snow we've had recently isn't heavily moisture laden so the snow that's out there right now is mostly powder if that melted there's is it the Womensack River? that's down in my tent area that is predicted to hit minor flood stage yes I know our level of readiness is good but some of the damage to our infrastructure isn't helping us right now we're still ready so anything else? Doug I'm sure you'll be coming back in yes more conversations so I appreciate you spending time with us this afternoon it was a good chunk of time two and a half hours I'll add one last thought manager the one thing I am hoping will be clear in the budget is how are we going to come up with the match for the whole event for the hazard mitigation work how are we going to balance that but with the focus of course on making sure that where's the money coming from we'll balance really at the top of it we're right here for the Waterbury complex thank you for the committee we're done for the day for YouTube so we can go off of YouTube so we're done we'll see everyone on YouTube tomorrow morning at 830