 We're going on to age 556. This is an act relating to accepting property owned by Vermont, recognized Native American tribes from property tax. And we did the initial walkthrough of this bill last week, I believe maybe it was the start of this week. And so we're getting further testimony today. And we're going to start with the bench. People are just Sunday coming. Okay. This is faith. I've just let them know they should sign in and they should be joining us shortly. Okay. If. If you want to take testimony, testimony from chief Menard, he's here with us. Okay. I can do that. I just don't have my agenda. He is the second from the bottom. I found it. Yes. All right. I guess getting stuck above that. Okay. Chief Menard. I apologize. That's quite all right. Thank you. You hear me all right. We can hear you perfectly. Great. Okay. I'm chief Menard. I'm a still square. I've been chief since 2019. And, uh, going back to the property tax, how important it is to us is very important. When I first took over in 2019. October. In the last part of November, we got a tax bill that we're going to foreclose on our building because of back taxes. We had no money to pay the thing. And to be a nonprofit. We had no money to pay the tax bill. We had no money to pay the tax bill. But like you say, we realized strictly on donations or grant money and stuff. So I personally dug in my pocket and paid our tax bill. Which was over at that time with the fees and stuff was over $6,000. I donated half of it back to the, to the tribe. But going on the other side of it. We had to pay a $6,000 for the fees. We had to pay the tax bill to the tribal headquarters. We have a very active food shelf. Which requires money for our, um, refrigeration and stuff of this nature. You know, we're feeding any worse from. Six hundred to seven hundred and fifty people a month. And, uh, we run three days a week. So our tax. bills, our taxes are a big burden on us, a big burden. Plus, we have, you know, we have other problems, which called Brunswick Springs, where just the taxes on that are like $300 a year, less than $300 a year. So certainly, but going back to our food shop, we don't run it just to the Avanakis, we run it to anybody that comes to the door in need. So a good percentage is our Avanaki families, but also we have, like I said, a lot in the neighborhood from Franklin County. We also run health care clinics. We run four last year for for the shop clinics, for the community. And this year, we plan on having a health clinic in June. So we got people from the hospitals and stuff coming talking about diabetes and going to be issuing shots of people around them and stuff. So so what I'm asking is, please support or, you know, this bill, it's very important to us. And it's like I say, that that I realize it's a lot of money. But it's sure is hard on us. I know that trying to raise that money every year. I mean, last year, we raised the money by having donation sales and to help pay our taxes. And so I think we run five sales last year. So I'm looking for your support. Okay, thank you. Questions. And now Senator Pearson. Thank you, ma'am, Chair. Chief, thank you for your testimony. To me, this bill is not very complicated and something I support. But I'm trying to understand, because you, you were commenting that you're a nonprofit. And it's my understanding that some tribal lands have been shifted into a nonprofit ownership in order to alleviate some of the tax burden. And that this bill, part of the impetus for this bill is to sort of stop tribes from having to go through those hoops. And I wonder if you can just help us understand any of that because because it's sort of at least for me, it's a new area of understanding. And I appreciate, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is, if if it's wondering if it's a big tax change, or if part of it is not a huge change, but stopping you all from having to go through a bunch of bureaucratic headaches, which bear some cost, I would think, and only to get to the same place that this bill would, would mean, could you help me understand that a little bit? Yeah. Here, I did get to spend a lengthy process to get the deed changed over to our nonprofit. Right now, our deeds have been all changed over by Quombay, which is our 501 no C3. And about up to I worked on that putting a year, year and a half getting that changed over. And, but like I say, that has been finalized, as well as the Brunswick Springs have been finalized. And presently, the rain, the Quombay's nonprofit part of it. I guess the there is a process you can go through through the town. And the way that's done for what I was informed was that you have to get it on the on the on their budget, I guess, to bring it up for vote for the township. And it has to be done like 90 days or so prior to that. And you have to have X number of signatures supporting that. And then you submit it from there. But that I was kind of hoping this way, if we can't do it this way, then we'll have to try to go the other way, I guess, which I understand sometimes it goes through sometimes it don't. So I think that I already did I see I have the same question as Senator Pearson. Okay, so if there aren't any other questions, I'm going back to Doug, then who we have let in, I believe I see Doug up on the screen. And there you are. Okay, welcome. And Doug, just introduce yourself who you represent and for the record, then the floor is yours. Yes. Thank you for inviting me. I'm Doug Bent, member of the Kawasaki, the Coas tribe. Also on a commission for the Native American Affairs as a representative for the Kawasaki tribe. And also in the director of the White Pine Association, which has the 501c3 for the tribe. At this time, the tribe doesn't own any property. We do have a tribal garden that's on private property that someone is letting us use. And we use that property to grow vegetables, and to have our tribal meetings and cultural events. And on that property, we have a couple of homage sheds. One's 12 by 20 and the other's 12 by 16. I also, we have a greenhouse as well. And we, we raise our own seedlings and the majority of those are abanaki plants. And we use the buildings for teaching and growing, you know, the food and preserving it. And it, we don't just teach it to their abanaki members, but also community members who are interested in the abanaki ways. And they're all, you know, the public is invited a lot of the time. Our hope is to get a piece of property in the Connecticut River Valley, Central Vermont, where the tribe was historically located. And like Chief Menard was saying, we, we don't have, we don't generate income. We really eye on grant money. And so, yeah, in the future, if we did get a piece of property, we would hope that we, it would be tax-examined. Would, it would sure be a great help to us financially. Because like I say, all we do is for income and grant money. And, you know, there's, there's plenty of tax-exempt properties in Vermont already. I mean, it's over 2,000 churches, hospitals, VFWs, animal shelters, YMCA's, and, and, and they, and I don't believe any of those have any limitations on them. So and, you know, last year, the legislation apologized for the eugenics movement and promised restitution. And I think this would be a good way to do that is to have the tribes have this property tax exemption. And, you know, I just, you know, this land that we call Vermont and the United States of America was all once native land. And I don't think it's too much to ask her to have a little bit of land so that we can, you know, have our culture presented and preserve the way it once was for people to see people now. So I guess I just, you know, I'll just keep it short. You know, we really would like to see this bill passed. And it would be very helpful to tribes. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Any questions for Mr. Fett? Okay, I'm not seeing any. So I'm going on to Don Stevens. Don, there you are in your car. And just once I'm live. Yes. Hi. Okay. Hopefully, hopefully, you can hear me and see me. That's good. Except you're frozen. I don't think he's driving. Okay, great. So if I happen, if I happen, I'm not driving. No, my wife is. So I just wanted to be aware. I'm in a past. I'm in a passenger side. Yeah, no, I wouldn't do that. So if I happen to blink at it out, I'll do my best. So I want to thank you for hearing this and asking for a testimony. I really, really appreciate it. Along with Chief Bernard and Doug, I hope you support this bill. And to explain a little bit from one of the questions before about the tribes are a government. And as you know, a government, we don't charge our citizens taxes or any of those things. So we have to have a nonprofit to be the fiscal agent of that holds our beads, our properties, and be able to accept donations and grants. So that's where most of the tribes have their 501c3s to be able to do that. But as a Dick Chief Bernard mentioned that just because we're a nonprofit doesn't mean that we can get tax exemptions. No Hegan is in current use for our property. We have 68 acres and Barton Vermont. I had to put it in current use to reduce the tax burden. Because as they said, we don't generate revenue. We rely on taxes and donations and those kind of things. So the town doesn't have to accept the request to be tax exempt. And that's what we found ourselves in and Barton that we, you know, they didn't want to lose the $1,600 in revenue, which isn't that much, but that's just the way it is. So we, we really need this kind of bill. And the reason, at least no Hegan speaking for ourselves, we have a huge food security program. We have 24 head of bison that's on somebody else's land. If they told us to pull our bison out tomorrow, we wouldn't have a place to put it. We'd have to either kill them all or, or we would have to try to sell them. Same thing with our food programs. They're all on other people's lands. Can you guys hear me? Okay, okay. So we rely on other people's lands to grow our foods. We deal with three colleges and 40 growers from NOFA. We also have a food shelf in the Northeast kingdom that we feed the community and ourselves. So we need to be able to continue to get land. We need to continue to be able to be secure for food programs. And, and so not just the forest that we have, but we can't grow food on it. It's also acquiring other land when we have the ability. And the reason I sent you three emails, one to show that this isn't a unique request, like with the Humane Society, you know, that I sent they, you know, they you gave them 13 parcels and, and it's to help them with their so they can use the money to help with animals and things. We're asking for us to be able to use it to help us as well through our nonprofits to be able to because we don't have that renewable resource. The other the other email I sent was to show that the University of Vermont, who is a land based college or land grant college that basically was founded off taking native lands are tax exempt. There are many colleges. I think there's 131 colleges that have tax exempt parcels and 1,172 churches, which also a lot of those churches were founded off native land. So if we're losing, you know, we're able to get taxes as well. Can you can you hear me? I'm going to I'm going to turn off my video. Can you hear me? Okay, so what I was saying was is that UVM is one of these one of the 131 colleges that have parcels that are exempt from taxes in their land grant college that were based on native lands that were taken. And and also there's a lot of churches. There's 1,172 parcels of church lands that were also that are also tax exempt. And we have our own religious practices. We have our clergymen. So if and a lot of those churches were built on native lands. So if they're allowed to have tax exemption, I think it's only fair that we are. And the last email that I sent you was to show I think there's like 102 million dollars worth of tax exam properties. Right now we have I think a total of 311,000. You know, we're just a little drop in the in the bucket when it comes to tax revenue being exempt. And even if we were to acquire other pieces of property. Others don't have any restrictions on their property. And I don't think it's going to be a large drop in the bucket compared to others that already have this this ability. So I just I just hope that you can see the merit in this bill and to help us be able to have our lands so we can use to be able to have some sort of security, some sort of food security. Not it's just because it's the right thing to do. You know, because all of our lands was they were taken from us. And then when we do get them back, we shouldn't be taxed down for something that was originally ours. So we're just asking for your support. If you have any questions, I'm definitely here to answer any of those things. Any questions committee? I am not seeing any. So thank you. Have a safe trip wherever you're going. Thank you. We're going to go on to Rich Holtz, Holtz shop. I'm going to massacre it. So I don't blame you. I don't blame you. It's pronounced Holtz shoe, not a half shoe, but a whole shoe. Okay, thank you. Exactly. I want to thank Chair Cummings and the committee for having us here today to speak with you. We welcome this opportunity. I'll introduce myself so you know who you're speaking with. So I will address you in the language first. I am called Rich, and I come to you today from what you know as Brattleboro, traditionally known as one toss to gock in the southeast corner of the state. I am director of the Otwe project, which is a nonprofit for cultural outreach and and community affirmation. We're here to help whoever needs the help in the native community. I am a citizen of Elnu, a Beniki tribe here in the southeast corner. And I've been pretty active in legislature and other things like that. But I come to you today to speak to this bill, H556. Just to put a little context around this, my fellow community members here have spoken well about what's in front of you right now. I'd like to point out that the Beniki and their ancestors have been here in these homelands now called Vermont for 12,000 years. These are the homelands of these people. They are indigenous people of this state. 400 years ago, before Vermont existed before the United States existed 100% of the land here was under the purview of indigenous people. Today, in 2022, we could essentially say basically 0% of the land is under the purview of the indigenous people. The tiny, tiny little fragment that you are aware is in front of you for properties around $10,000 worth of tax valuation. That's not even a drop in the bucket. Amongst the existing exemptions in this state, which have already been mentioned, there are 2167 parcels that are worth $60 million on the tax rolls. We're not talking about a lot here. Our particular situation down here in the southeast with El New is that we are looking for this bill to pass because we need it in order to become ourselves in the fullest sense of the word. To be indigenous is to be in relationship with land. That is what it is. It's not a social group. It's not a private club. It's to be in relationship with land. And these are the homelands. We are separated from that. The little tiny piece of land down here in Brattleboro or one Tostagoc, as I know it, is sacred land. It is adjacent to the river and to petroglyphs that were placed there thousands of years ago. That land was on the market. We saw that it was under threat of development pressure. And we intervened with Vermont Land Trust and they purchased it on our behalf. It is now safe from development pressure and it is open to the public. This is not posted. It never will be. It's for all of us to live and learn. However, they still hold it. We don't hold it yet. We need provisions like tax exemption in order to be able to hold this because we don't have the resources either. We rely on grants and personal donations. We don't have a place to grow crops for our people. We don't have it. We would like to have it. We would like to have a piece of land somewhere near the river, as is traditional, where we can practice our culture, take care of our community, and teach the larger community, everybody that's here now. What this is all about. That's the reality we have in front of us. We are all here now. What are we going to do about it? We would like to be able to be ourselves and we'd like to share that with you. And it involves land necessarily. Elnu does have a 501c3. It's sitting in the wings waiting for this to become a reality and it will require some support from the larger community who are now coming back into relationship with the indigenous people of this place, witness the eugenics apology, witness a few other things that have happened recently. We're starting to get somewhere. And we appreciate that. And we look for your support now and into the future. William and me. Thank you. Thank you. Committee. Questions. Okay, thank all of you. You have made a very strong case. It's been very good. Okay. We've Jill Remick. Jill, the floor is yours. Jill, you're muted. And I'm not. No, we cannot hear lips are moving, but no sound is coming to us. Is there anything on our end? I recommend she sign out and sign in. There's nothing else we can do. Try that. She's just giving us a hard time. I have to sign in to talk to fate. Then before we go big screen, I have come in without video without audio. Mr. Stevens, you have your hand up. Do you have something? Yes, thank you. Yeah. I just I forgot because I was on the road and I didn't want to get cut off. I am Chief Stevens. I am of the Nolhegan Band of the Kusak Abenaki Nation, and also the Executive Director of Abenaki Health and Abenaki. I just wanted to make sure that you had that I introduced myself. So I apologize for not doing that earlier. Okay, we do have your credentials here on our agenda. So we did know what we were speaking to. So thank you for putting that on the verbal record. Okay, Jill property valuation. No, I still can't hear you. Maybe you've seen what? Oh, that's you. Okay. We was printing. We have this technical difficulty with joint fiscal this morning. Everybody had difficulty this morning. So we may be having a technical glitch in the state system. Now I'm seeing a mute, Joe. You are muted. Now people you're still on mute. It's her phone. Now she's on her phone. Wait, or now she's on her phone. Now we've got two gills. Can you folks hear me now? We can hear you now. We can see you twice. So I guess you're on your phone. All right, that works. Forget the state system. Apologies, I can't explain that. My name is Jill on. We had trouble. Sandra Sirotkin said they had trouble. So there's some bug crawling around the state system today. Okay. All right. Thank you for having me. I'm Jill Remick. I'm the director of property valuation and review at the tax department. We don't have any concerns with this bill. It's written very well to be very clear and easy to administer. We agree with the tactic that that your legislative council went we're creating a separate distinct exemption rather than including it in the public price and charitable there are pros and cons to that. And this way it will be very clear and straightforward based on the ownership of the land. And also for what it's worth our understanding is that from a statewide grand list perspective, the impact on the education fund revenue would be pretty minimal. And we would be able to provide a form for towns if they needed it. These properties would be listed by ownership on the grand list. So there would take subjectivity out of any determination as you've heard from some of your witnesses by local officials as to whether it was eligible or not. So I'm happy to answer any questions anybody has. Jada that we should hear from VLCT. Is there any town that is particularly affected? Not that I know of. And I believe on the house side, VLCT provided a very brief update that the impact again on municipal revenue was also de minimis. Yeah, I think that's just one thing we need to check out. But I assumed it had been checked out. So we will do that. Okay. So this is rare. We have a well written bill that nobody opposes. So somebody did a lot of good homework. So I think thank you everyone. We will hear from VLCT that unless something unexpected arises, I will put this on for a vote. Depending on what we can get the LCT in, I usually give a bill at least 24 hour layover before we vote just to give people a chance to come forward if they want to learn what we're doing. But I think that is it. So thank everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Committee tomorrow, we're gonna have to make up for how many bills to move this today. At least two without we might be off the floor by two. I don't know when we'll be off the floor tomorrow. There's shall I end live stream now?