 Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Vermonter and all the canoes on the Connecticut River. This is the Vermont State Senate's Committee on Institutions. Today is the third day of February 2021. I am Joe Benning, the Chair of the Institutions Committee and your host for this afternoon's events. We also have Senators Mazza from Grand Isle County, Senator Ingalls from Essex Orleans, Senator Parrot from Franklin County and Senator McCormick from Windsor County. The topic of discussion today is the Woodside Replacement, also now known as Covered Bridges, I understand it. We have a lot of folks who are on tap for potential conversations this afternoon and I'm going to try to do my best for the benefit of our new committee members as well as anybody who may be not a policy committee. There are several stakeholders who are on tap here that would be normally more oriented to a policy discussion. I'm going to remind everybody that we're here to talk about the actual brick and mortar, so if you were coming to try to give us some conversation about the policy discussion, I may need to steer you back in the direction of understanding that we're technically not that committee in the Senate, that would be the Senate Judiciary Committee who is having that conversation, as well as to some extent the Committee on Health and Welfare. In order to try to organize this in some fashion, I'm going to begin with the Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families. Sean Brown is here with us, I also understand that Judy Rex, the Policy and Planning Director for that Division of Government, is also with us and I'm going to start with them, branch off into Morning Fox, who I understand is here from Mental Health, and then we're going to talk to some folks from BGS before we get deeper into the weeds, but immediately after that, we would like to hear from Jeff Karen and Jay Walter from the Beckett School, which is actually going to be presenting a more specific construct for brick and mortar purposes and then we'll see where we can go from there with the time that we have this afternoon and possibly get into as many stakeholders as we can. So with that, Commissioner Brown, I'm going to first suggest that you introduce yourself for the purpose of the new committee members who are here as well as the public on YouTube and with respect to each witness following thereafter, a brief introduction of who you are and how you fit into state government would be very helpful. With that, Commissioner Brown, are you ready to proceed? I am. Thank you, Chair. For the record, my name is Sean Brown, Commissioner for the Vermont Department for Children and Families. Up until October, we had operated the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, which was closed legislatively in the restatement budget at the end of September, effective into October. We did close that facility. As a part of that work, we were asked to submit a plan to the legislature for consideration in terms of a replacement service for justice-involved youth that needs a higher level of treatment and care. We submitted a proposal to the legislature to move forward with a treatment center in Newbury, Vermont to be in a property that's currently owned by Beckett and you have Jeff and Jay from their organization today here with us as well. And there's a couple components to that. One is there's actual treatment component of the services we'll provide to the youth in that facility, but also as a part of that was about how we would lease the facility and the upgrades that would need to occur to that facility to provide that secure level of treatment. And just for background for the committee, in our restatement budget, we had set aside $1.2 million towards the cost of renovating the Newbury facility, which is a former in, to bring it up into the standards to provide that level of treatment and care for justice-involved youth. It's contemplated to be a six-bed facility. And so we presented that plan to the Joint Justice Oversight and the Child Protection Committees. They voted unanimously to approve it with some conditions and then make the recommendation to the Joint Fiscal Committee, which at the end of November around November 20th voted to approve the plan. And so we've been moving forward since then with our partners, which include mental health, Beckett, Buildings and General Services, and also Beckett been working and connecting with the community of Newbury as well to move forward with the design to finalize the design for that plan and also begin negotiating the lease agreement for that facility and how that would interact with the investment we're making in that property. I believe we just finalized come to an agreement on the finalizing of a design for that plan. And so we shared those with the committee today by email, the kind of the floor plans of what that will look like for the committee. And that's the brick and mortar piece. We've not provided any information regarding the treatment services. As you indicated at the beginning, we're focusing on the bricks and mortar. And I'm sure today, I think BGS is with us as well here today, and they can speak to the work they're doing negotiating the lease with Beckett and how we're moving forward to protect the state's investment that we're going to make in that building to make it available as a use for it to provide that level of treatment, you know, because in our budget adjustment that's currently I believe past the house or soon to pass and is now in the Senate, there's an additional $2 million in our budget adjustment one time funding for the remainder of what we project to be the renovation costs for that facility were projected to be around 3.2 to 3.4 right now, based on the work we're doing with an architect to make the design of that facility. And so we're really approaching this to make sure the state's investment is protected in the lease through a long-term lease arrangement, like a 10-year lease with possibly renewable for another 10-year lease of Beckett concert. I mean, BGS can certainly speak to that in a little bit more detail, but also part of that other might be a buyout clause where we could purchase the facility in the future if the state chose to do so. And the reason we're looking at this in two agreements like an operating agreement and a lease agreement is we recognize there may have come a time where Beckett doesn't want to operate the facility or we may want to move in a new direction and we want to be able to maintain access and use of that facility long-term, even if it's a new provider providing the care to the youth in that facility. I would also say as one of the conditions that it was passed through joint fiscal committee based on the recommendation of those joint committees was that there be community engagement. And right now we're working to have a community forum with the community of Newberry on February 11th at 6 a.m. and Jay, Walter from Beckett could speak more to that format, but we will DCF leadership myself will be there as well as Beckett to kind of outline the program that we're going to be providing to youth, the design of the building and the renovations that will occur, the investments that we're making in that community and hopefully will be hiring staff from the neighboring their town and neighboring towns to run the facility at all different levels of positions. And so that's the work and information we'll share with the community and also get their feedback and so that if there's things we need to incorporate into the design or how it's going to be operated, we want to be sensitive to the community's concerns. Sean, can I just stop you? Can you tell me the date of that again, please? February 11th, I believe, and Jay, Walter from Beckett can confirm that, but my understanding is that February 11th at 6 o'clock. Not 6 a.m. 6 p.m. I was going to say, I thought I heard 6 a.m. I get up early because I don't sleep. We've also scheduled a second meeting on March 4th for the community. We don't anticipate having a single forum. We figure the first meeting may trigger some additional questions. So we set a follow-up for March 4th with Alma from the town. And then there will also be further opportunities for the community to participate through the DRB process, which will focus more on the site plan aspects of this. Jay, is that going to be a Zoom meeting? It's Alma and our IT person are working out the details. Apparently, they've had some struggles with the Zoom and so they're looking at a slightly different format that I'm supposed to get an update on tomorrow as to how they do their local meetings, but it's a Zoom-like meeting. But it might be like a Webex or something like that. I just want to make sure that the area legislators get an invitation to that meeting should they choose to go. So if Alma is running the operation, I would ask you to slip her a note and say that Senator Kitchell and I and Joe Parsons probably ought to be invited to that. Sean, I'm coming back to you. I'll cut you off. Sorry about that. No, no, that's fine. I think it was appropriate to let Jay jump in there. Yeah, so I think we are moving forward with our work with Beckett. I think we're making good progress where we are at the point where we hoped we would be at this point in time. You know, our goal is to have the facility up and running by the end of this year at the end of December. But obviously there's a lot of planning still to do. Once we get the final approvals from the town to move forward with this, you know, we'll need to go out to bid for a contractor and then do the work and then and so there's a lot to happen in the meantime. You know, and we certainly want to be sensitive to, you know, in the engagement with the community that we're receiving their feedback and where appropriate, incorporating that into, you know, the work we're doing on the building, if there's concerns that the town has or in the programming where we run the facility, we certainly want to be responsive to the community and make sure we're meeting everyone's needs. Sean, you brought Judith Rex with you today. I'm not sure whether she wants to add anything to the conversation. Yeah, I think Judy's been very involved in the planning and the work with the architects and the consultants we brought in from the Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators who've been working with us on expertise building these type of facilities around the country and then also working with BGS. And so she could give us a high level of the work that's been going on and the feedback we've been soliciting on the renovations of the building particularly for this committee. You know, in the feedback we've been soliciting from like disability rights Vermont, we've been sharing the plan with them to make sure any feedback they have and concerns based on their expertise of working with youth that were in Woodside, we wanted to make sure we were incorporating their concerns as well into the design. But Judy, I didn't know if you wanted to jump in and provide some additional information. Judith, before you do, I saw a hand from Senator Mazza. I'd like to interject a question. Yeah, two things. One, why was the location chosen and who owns the building? If we're putting three million dollars, is it our building or is it the contractor that's going to provide the services? So the Senator, good questions. First, the building is owned by Beckett. And so we are going to be entering into a long-term lease with them to secure our investment that we're making into this facility through the lease arrangement and BGS gets picked a little bit more detail of how they're approaching that in the lease. You know, normally when the state leases a private facility for its use, the cost of the renovations are rolled into the terms of the lease and the payment increases due to the borrowing cost and the profit that's built into that work. Here the state's choosing to make that investment on the front and to make sure it's meeting the needs of the youth and the program, but also to make sure it happens as quickly as we can. But also to secure our long-term interest in that building. If we want to bring in another provider to run it in the future, we'll still have access through that investment in lease long-term to that building and with the possibility of purchasing it. For just six people, six youth, right? He said six. Yes, it's going to be a six-bed facility. When we had gone out and worked with BGS on a woodside replacement over the last couple of years, the replacement was going to be quite expensive as well for a similarly sized facility. I think we had looked also worked with BGS about finding another location in the state in a facility that could be renovated and BGS wasn't able to secure that. Beckett purchased this property in the past and had run similar type programs there already. Most recently it was an assessment center serving young boys and they wound that down in September and started working with us to convert it to use here. So this property has been used for a similar purpose since Beckett purchased it and I'd let Jay share the date with the committee. Before we go any farther and I don't know whether Sean or Judith, you want to talk about this. I do understand you sent us a report earlier but unfortunately all of us on the committee have been out flat in other Zoom meetings. I would be shocked if any of the committee members actually had the time to read the report. So if you could give us a high-level overview of what the plans are from the state's perspective for brick and mortar, that would be most appreciated. Judy, do you want to jump in here given your involvement? Sure, sure. So for the record I'm Judy Rex. I'm the director of policy and planning for DCF. So I've been involved in this project from the get-go. The design plans for the building have involved a quite a diverse group of people. We've had three members from BGS. We've had Jay and Jeff and Loray Coburn who's their treatment clinician. We've had FS family services division staff involved. We've had licensing staff involved. We've had legal AAGs and our legal council involved in the process and so it's been a big group of people who have has a lot of collective experience of running a secure facility and I feel like we've done a good job addressing the merit of issues you have to address when you're trying to build a secure facility for juveniles especially for boys. I don't know if some of you remember but Woodside had a lot of acting out behavior and a lot of damage done to the facility and so we want to avoid that by both the design plan and also on the building materials and I think we're very close to a design plan. I think I'm going to let Jay or Jeff really present it because it's their building but I feel that we're really on track to build a state-of-the-art six-bed secure facility that will have really good programming for the some of the most difficult kids in Vermont. I see that Denise is now screen-sharing. Are you going to be referring to this report? So in my earlier presentation I kind of walked through what's in this PowerPoint. I think what might be helpful is if we pull up the architectural drawings I think that would be of interest to the committee and then we could have BGS and Jay and Jeff from Beckett kind of walk us through given it's their facility and they understand the way it's laid out now and kind of the changes we're proposing here and how it's really going to meet the needs of the building but also the program that they're going to be running for us. Okay who's got those drawings? I believe we sent them to your committee along with the PowerPoint. So there was two documents there that we pulled up. Alright Denise do you have those available? We'll be finding out momentarily. While we're waiting I'm sort of trying to figure out who would be better going first. I've got a lot of witnesses from BGS here. Jay I've also got you on the line with Jeff Caron and I'm trying to figure out what makes the most sense to present this case at the moment. I'm still waiting to see if Denise has the drawings. Well while we wait for the drawings to come in Morning Fox I had asked you to step into this picture for a little bit and explain how things went from where we were to where we want to go with this conversation at least from mental health's perspective. Maybe you can weigh in while we're waiting to see if we can get the drawings put up. For the record Morning Fox deputy commissioner department of mental health. I can pause now that you have the screens up if you want. Yeah I see they're up and maybe we'll go with the drawing as it's now presented up on the screen. No worries. Is there a possibility to hit the plus button on this a couple times to see if we can get that brought up to something I don't have to read without my binoculars. I don't know if that will come up anymore it doesn't look like it. Okay you may have to scroll back and forth Denise as we're looking but turning back to you Sean I don't know whether you want to take the lead on this conversation or have the Beckett folks do that. Well I think it would be helpful if either Jay or Jeff gave a little bit of a background on the property when they acquired it their uses of it today and and kind of the projected you know the use that we're anticipating now and and then kind of how we're the renovations and then walk us through the renovations of the building and how it's going to meet our needs. Okay Jay Jay as you enter into that conversation I'd like to have you begin by identifying who you are what sort of services Beckett has provided in the past and then connect us to this diagram we're now looking for and how that works going forward. Okay my name is Jay Walter I'm the Chief Administrative Officer of the Beckett family of services came to Beckett in 1993 as a Reformed Lawyer. I've been a health care lawyer in Connecticut on a small non-profit board up in Pike, New Hampshire which is in the Haverhill Bradford, Vermont region and took over what was then known as the Pike school and later became known as the Beckett school which was a small residential treatment program at the time that served only New Hampshire children. One of my first tires was a young man by the name of Jeff Karen who's been with me in the last 27 years. You know Beckett has evolved from that small program to a rather large alliance of four or different companies in multiple states including Vermont Permanency Initiative which is technically the owner of this building and I know it's confusing but we've tried to keep our businesses aligned somewhat by state lines. Vermont Permanency is a non-profit corporation that we established in 2013 I believe when the former Bennington school ran into some difficulties and DCF approached us at the time, Marion Paris some of you may recall Marion, looking for someone to rescue that program and keep it from shutting down because it served a pretty critical need for the adolescent females in particular in the state. Jeff led that effort and over the last seven years we're quite proud of the effort we've put in down in Bennington to take what had become a fairly dilapidated program in need of a lot of investment under a very difficult rate system to transform that campus, renovate the facilities and create what we think is a really strong program. One of the things that happened involved with the Vermont Permanency program was it had a few boys down there at the time and we didn't think that was really good considering the traumatized female population and some of the issues we were dealing with in terms of the intermixing. So we made a decision to get the boys off site and purchased this particular facility in 2014 in Newberry so that we could move those young men off that campus and that program over the years evolved into sort of an assessment program focusing on a shorter-term length of stay at this site. It was a beautiful former inn, it was sprinklered, it was spacious, it was ideal for a small population of young men at the time, but we did not make significant renovations because it was a non-secure facility. It's what they call a staff secure program, which means we had good staffing patterns, they kept an eye on the kids if the kids alone followed them as best as possible, but you couldn't really prevent elopement without inappropriate physical contact at times so it was what they call a staff secure, which has limitations. That program for reasons maybe we don't want to get into, we made a decision that we would be shutting it down last summer and began to look at repurposing the program. While we were doing that, Shawn became involved and we somehow, and I can't tell you exactly how the dialogue began with maybe this would be a good site for a secure program, we said, well, we're going to probably sell it if not, so yeah, we're open to that. Which led to further discussion is whether, in fact it would be interested in managing or somehow helping to collaborate to get that program off the ground. So what really began as a lot of unknowns has evolved to this point now. I think our engagement, our involvement has been watching this concept grow into something more visually apparent now, but there's obviously a lot of issues involved in both community and other issues to work through over the course of the next several months. But one thing we have accomplished is working with Judy and Jennifer Micah at DCF taking a big lead working with us to bring other stakeholders to the table to come up with a plan for this program, which is driven by the concept of having the facility serve six kids and having it be secure, which obviously triggers a lot of changes. So just if I could jump in, Jay, first let me say I've never heard of a reformed lawyer, that was an interesting comment. Being a lawyer, I wasn't sure that was even possible. Probably isn't. But you use the terminology, I'm just trying to be mindful of people who have never been experienced to this conversation before, you use the term a staff secure facility. The difference between a staff secure facility and a secure facility? It's really the egress from the building in a staff secure facility. You know, you really, unless there's imminent health and safety risks of harm, you really can't prevent a child from exiting or leaving the facility or the area. And, you know, you would only do that if you really felt the child might exit through a window with their head first, which would obviously be a concern in a secure facility, you know, the doors are locked and controlled. And so the student is maintained in the building. And it's still staff secure. It's still staff intensive, but they can't sort of escape and elope the building. So we had Woodside in place, which is now closed. And you entered into conversations with the state about turning this locality into a facility that basically replaced Woodside. Is that the easy way of saying it? I think that's accurate. And Sean or Judy may want to add something if they feel I'm confusing people, but I think that's accurate. Yes. Okay. Please continue. Okay. So again, the facility basically is a three-store facility, three-storey facility. You know, one issue is when you undertake significant renovations to a building, it triggers updated code reviews, et cetera, et cetera. And certainly there's some driving force in terms of... Let me ask Senator McCormick to mute himself. I apologize. I thought I was muted. I'm sorry. I'm worried about him. Yeah. When did you have a COVID test last? So there's three stories to the building. The bottom floor is in the front side of this picture towards where it says Covered Bridge Treatment Center, I guess the bottom of it, which is the front of the building on the bottom floor, which is what... This is the second floor shown here. This is all that grade and all above ground. If you go to the first floor, which probably is... Yes. Perfect. The front wall towards where it says Covered Bridge Treatment Center at the bottom of the page is underground. And the other side at the top of the page is walkout. So there's a grade that goes from the front to the building to the back of the building. So at the back of the building, it's above ground in the front of the building. It's at... There's no windows in the front of the building. So that lack of light on the front of the building certainly drove some of this design. Denise, can you increase that screen for us some? There we go. So the bathrooms and the staircase and those areas are not lit by... Do not have natural light. So we certainly took steps to move the bedrooms towards the area where there's light as well as the rooms that will be used significantly during the daytime hours, which were the academic room and the multipurpose room, which all have natural light. We wanted a... If you look to the middle of that photo, there's an operational office. You'll see that it's not dark because there's a lot of glass that can't be broken type glass to allow for staff to be in that office and support other staff working on the site and be able to have good lines of site or as best as possible lines of site throughout the building area where the children reside. That's the purpose of sort of that centralized operational office so that it's kind of right in the middle of most of the bedrooms so that we don't have staff kind of out of visual contact as much as possible. Now, in this diagram are the exterior walls, the windows on each of the bedrooms, are they barred or are they built with some kind of a strong glass? They're built with a very expensive glass. For instance, if you were to go down to the facility in New Hampshire, the Sununu Center, there's glass windows there but they're indestructible, meaning you could take a sledgehammer to them and they will not break. So, I guess the best way to describe it is indestructible glass. It would take a very, very, very resourceful child to break through that glass. So, hence the security of the building. There was a lot of back and forth and we, Jeff Caron and I are very sensitive to the concept of isolation and the need for program staff not to isolate children. On the other side of the coin, we're also very sensitive to the question of we have a likelihood of having several highly traumatized children in this facility of different age groups and we feel there's a need to be able to have some separation of living environments just because six highly traumatized adolescents in a row may not be a good match and may not be a healthy match and indeed there are situations where you, you know, for better or for worse the safety of the community becomes more important than the immediate needs of a particular child to have access to all the other children. So, we tried to come up with a creative way to, without creating a huge sense of isolation, also create an ability to do a little dividing conquering if we had two younger kids to be able, you know, who were very three or four years apart from other kids to be able to have them have an area that was a little bit separated, you know, and those discussions, you know, there's pros and cons and there's people on both sides of, you know, where the line should be drawn and we settled on this plan to try to find a balance between all those issues of how do you properly segment a population of people who are coming from all over the state with various issues and needs and it led to trying to create multiple spaces where, you know, staff can work with children, children can voluntarily go when they're struggling in the group setting, have some ability to divide and conquer the population when it was appropriate and frankly sometimes when the population wants to be divided and conquered, but yet they're all in a house that they can't leave, so how do you create a design that allows for that kind of flow? So, you know, what this gives you, you know, if you have six kids and a lot of them are having a rough day, you could be working with one child in the sitting area and, you know, not have them in their room but yet have them in a sitting area, you know, tutoring them one-to-one whereas you might have another kid in another environment being tutored one-on-one because neither of those children were feeling up to that day dealing with the group, so to speak, whereas the rest of the group might be on task or feeling okay and be working in the multi-purpose and academic rooms or upstairs in the gym, etc. So, a big driving force of this design was to create multiple spaces but not isolated spaces and, you know, this is the result this floor. If you go upstairs to the second slide number two, so this is the primary living and educational environment downstairs. The upstairs area is more the, what I'll call the, you know, the supportive functions that go into that living environment. At the top, I guess at the what I'm calling the bottom of the page which is closer to the language covered bridges treatment center is an intake area which is designed to have a nurse's station, a place for, you know, a child to be brought in by the sheriff's typically and have access to a bathroom, you know, the theory that they might even want to take a shower and clean up before they head downstairs, so we created that shower room, the shower area, you know, because because, you know, if a kid comes in the middle of the night, you don't know really what's going on all night and they may need to change the clothing and all those different things. We're trying to create a private area for the kid to start before we and to get settled and acclimated and get a medical review, etc. before they head into the milieu. They enter there's a large four-year or fairly large four-year that we kept because it's a high traffic area. We didn't want to have the corridor too tight because people could be moving in different directions in that corridor, so the four-year is an area of transition which allows access to the dining room, what we call a family room, which really is a multi-purpose room because it's not going to be just used for say a family meeting. That'll probably have a lot of IT support of things for things like Zoom calls. It might be a conference area for a treatment team conference or a judge date, a court date with a child that may be done by Zoom, which was discussed at a recent hearing. I think you were part of that, Senator Benning. Do you have video conferencing capability with the court system? You know, we will about it. I mean, I guess right now we would have Zoom and that kind of conferencing, but I think that the, you know, as we plan through this, I think that that is wise because I do agree with a lot of the points that were made at that prior hearing, that it's an awful lot to put a kid in handcuffs and take them down to a hearing in southern part of the state and bring them back and for what might be a five-minute discussion that, you know, a lot of resources and a lot of efforts being made. On the flip side, we don't want to discount that that can happen too because it also gives a child time away from the facility that might be good. So trying to create a flexible, modern environment for meetings and efficiencies is certainly something that will be incorporated into what I call the IT plan, when we get to that level of detail and the IT folks put this together. But, you know, I'm not trying to be evasive, but I don't really understand or know the requirements of the judicial system for video conferencing, but I'm sure the IT folks can work and figure that out. There's a fairly large gym space there. Again, there's been some discussion about making that bigger. The only, you know, we don't have that solution within this physical plant unless we expand the secure area further, which is going to add costs. But with six children and the realities, I don't think all six children are going to be there at the same time in terms of our programming. You know, we typically would program in smaller groups that are, you know, kids of the same age or kids who might be better suited to be in a group of three. So, you know, we probably would divide and conquer again, you know, not isolating, but, you know, using common sense of six boys together at times can be a challenge, particularly if two or three even don't like one another. That gym area exits out into a gated area that is changing in size by the day, but is generally speaking of the magnitude of 60 by 120 feet. I don't think that you provided the slight plan, Sean, but there's, that's being finalized. It took some time because of some wet land type issues and trying to keep and some topography issues, but it's pretty far along after discussion yesterday, and it will certainly be available by the public meeting next week. But outside that gym area is, you know, you can exit from the gym into the open space. The latest incarnation of that flight plan, the earlier site plans just showed like a basketball court 60 by 120, but we're trying to integrate into that space a non-basketball court area that is more of what I would call a casual sitting patio type area so that there probably would be a transition through that to the court area so that, you know, a child who wants to sit down outside on a nice day and read and not be running around a court would have the ability to do that. And I think that looks like we have a plan to accomplish that. To the right side of the floor two is non-secure space. The security stops through the right side is not secure, and that would be an area for secondary support and usage, including an IT room area, stuff that you don't want downstairs, as well as maybe the program director's office and some, we want to have good washing machines and stuff because there are an awful lot of cleaning issues associated with working with young men of this ilk, and we want to make sure that we have good laundry facilities, et cetera, good storage facilities for sheets and whatnot. Certainly we envision and anticipate that some of the students may evolve to where they have time spent outside the secure area, but the reality is, I think the vision is if they're really at that point, we hopefully be transitioning them on. But I could see down the line, you know, some students doing really well and being able to go into this area and hang out in the large room out there. That's some programming stuff that, you know, I'm not the expert anymore in that, and I defer to Ray Baker and DCF, clinical folks and other stakeholders as to what those parameters are ultimately going to be, but there is some capacity for that. That's really the meat of the facility itself and what the facility would look like from a floor plan perspective, and I guess I could probably talk for hours, but I'll open it up to any questions or further comments from Judy and Sean. I would just, you mentioned the outdoor space and we are continuing to evolve that, and we want to make sure we make it as large as possible to make sure that we have enough ample space for the boys to go outside and recreate outside. You know, that's an important part of the program as well. And I think the other piece I would point out on the first slide where the bedrooms are, and we discussed the windows and that they'll be really high impact windows, but we thought it was important to maintain one just for the natural light, but also the way this building is sited, that building from that window looks east and it looks out over an open field that slopes down, but then you can see across the valley to the white mountains, and so it really is an incredible location where this facility is, and Jay, I can't remember how many acres it is, but it's off on its own private road at the end of a private road, and how many acres is the site, Jay? I think it's 270, but it's in the 100 plus, it's in the high upper hundreds, but I think it's actually in the high upper 200s. So there's a lot of trails and a lot of there's a beautiful pond on the way in the road that holds trout, and there's space for, you know, and so I mean, one of the questions that's still, I think, from a programmatic standpoint that will be worked out, you know, is the parameters for allowing residents access to that, and, you know, my hope is that that would be allowed, you know, these kind of sites reflect a lot of our, you know, our philosophies about how to work with young men, you know, and engage them, you know, not just mentally, but physically in their surroundings as best as possible, but how far is it from Route 5? Route 5 is probably about 10 minutes. It's right off, I mean, it's very close to P&H truck stop for those of you who know P&H off 91, so it's pretty much off the 91 exit, and then you kind of cross from the old, it's a childcare facility now, but it used to be a restaurant. I forget the name of it now, but Joe, you probably, I mean, you take it right there, and it's about two minutes up the road there. Okay, so you're not really anywhere near the village of Wells River? No. Or the village of Newbury for that matter? No. Okay. No, we're about two miles up behind Route 91 into the mountains there. Okay. Senator Amazo, I think has. Just the, okay, if we're investing three million or whatever it is, there's six, the capacity is six, right? In this particular design, there is a third floor, which I haven't mentioned, because I didn't want to get sidetracked on space, that's not. But so the cost of operation, this outside firm, whether there's two people in there or six people, does that vary or it maxes at six, or how does that work? So it will be a fixed cost contract to operate the facility similar to how Woodside was operated, Senator Amazo. Woodside was approximately, my memory is it was close to six million a year to operate the Woodside facility. And here we're anticipating the annual operating expense will be in the three million, like around the three million dollar range. But that's after we put up the 3.2 million first? Correct. Correct. And the same would be with moving to a new state run facility. I think the estimates were it would be a $15 million investment, not counting land acquisition cost, but I would defer to BGS, but I have that design on my desk here. And why that location? Is it handy for services for these students or kids? Or I mean, it seems like it's way out away from all kinds of services. Why not? Why was this building chosen? Why was this site chosen? Well, it has operated in many ways as a similar type facility in the past, size-wise it met the needs. And then working with Beckett, they have a locus in this area between New Hampshire and Vermont. They've run several programs across the river New Hampshire, and this would leverage their expertise and ability to run this facility. I think your concerns are, you know, in terms of its location, Senator Mazza are well understood. And I think that's why we want to make sure we have state of the art technology there so that youth can also be able to interact in court hearings or with their attorneys or with family members electronically. Also, the other thing we've been talking about with Beckett, and I think this will be further down the road, is what you don't see in these schematics is on the other side of the parking lot on this site is a separate three-car garage with an apartment in it. And so the initial conversations are that if family want to come and visit the youth and stay overnight, that we might be able to, because we're leasing the whole property, that families, if they want to visit the youth, could stay overnight in the apartment and have visits over a series of days with the youth, if that's how they chose. I think, you know, we recognize that it is a little further out than the current facility. And so we are taking those concerns as we develop the program and the technology and how families might be able to interact with the youth here, given those concerns. And it certainly must have municipal sewer and water. No, I would defer to Jay, but it has its own permitted water and wastewater. Wow. Well, when we purchased the facility, we upgraded, we put sort of kind of a state-of-the-art chopping system that, on the septic side, for capacity much larger than this population. So the sewer system is new and it's frankly overcapacity for this population size. The water is a deep, you know, it's one of those gusher wells, we call it, that gets tested. And so we have, we really have had very little issues in terms of water and sewer capacity. Now, it does limit its future growth potential, you know, much beyond 12 residents, that it would, you know, so it's not like this can be developed into what I would call a woodside type facility over time, nor do I think that's what people want. You know, so, you know, and I know from our perspective, Senator Mazza, I mean, it's, we think it's a good location, but we also realize it's not the perfect location, and those are kind of public policy cost benefit decisions that, you know, have to be made. It's so, you know, if this works great, if it doesn't, you know, I, you know, that's, you know, that becomes more of a, you know, a public policy question. Jay, the facility is going to be taking kids from around the state, or is there other localities that will be taking what normally might be a cohort in this facility? My assumption is just for around the state, we're not developing a different facility or cohort type facility. But Sean, I think maybe is the better person answer this question. Sean, do you, geographically speaking though, this is about halfway to the northern border and the southern border. It's about equidistant. If my geography is somewhat correct. Well, it's on, it's on, it's mile 112, I think, on 93. So it's a little bit farther farther north on the half side. It is accessible to Barry, because, you know, 302 is most folks in the room probably know, you know, crosses from Newbury Bradford area over to to Barry and then can access 89 from there. It's about 40 minutes from that Hanover, White River Junction area, and probably about 30 minutes south of the St. John's Bear area. But, you know, the Burlington area is probably roughly hour and 45 minutes out. I hypothesize without having timed it, but knowing how far it is over to Barry, you know, you have St. John'sbury Hospital 30 miles away. Got Dartmouth, the level one trauma center, 40 minutes away or so? Yes. Yeah. All right. We've got to move the conversation. Is there anything else about the building, the architecture that we need to talk about? I would just point out that some of the costs for the renovation is making sure that we're using building materials that withstand the use of the type of facility that we're using for a secure facility, and those tend to be more expensive. And so that is some of the cost of the renovation is just making sure we're using, you know, the most appropriate building products that are, you know, safe for the youth and safe for the facility as well. Okay. Warner's Gallery, Jake. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, you got it. That's right. Yep. Yep. I want to turn to Mr. Chairman. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Could I ask one? I'm wondering about the adequacy of the facility. It's for six boys. Where does the number six come from? And what do we do if we have eight in need? Well, just as we do now, Senator, you know, our commitment is, and it was the commitment that was asked of us in the legislature when we closed Woodside and moved forward with this proposal, is that we serve youth in the least restrictive environment. And so this facility will be a part of a larger continuum of care. And so we use a wide variety of providers now based on the needs of the kids and where they're at. There are many youth that have unique needs that we're not able to serve in state. And so those youth now are served out of state in specialized programs. And we also have many other programs in the state that are short-term crisis programs, the more specialized programs that might address sexualized behaviors from youth or larger facilities like the program for girls that's in Bennington, but also the program that SEAL runs in Depot as well. And so we have a wide variety of services available to make sure all youth's needs are met. And over the last several years, you know, there was periods where we had no youth at Woodside. And during the pandemic, just in the beginning when, you know, the system of care locked up just in response to the health crisis of the pandemic, you know, we I think got up to five youth, but then we've been able to close the facility. And, you know, for the youth that need that highest level of care right now, we've entered into a contract with Sonunu. And, you know, while it's certainly not been without its challenges, we've only needed to place one youth who really needed to be in the Sonunu Center. Well, we've certainly asked our providers to step up and treat a higher level of youth in state than they normally would. And they would probably end, you know, you know, we don't see us exceeding the six-bed capacity based on our experience and the decrease we're seeing of justice-involved youth overall. I think this is the right-sized facility for Vermont. We had a 30-bed facility at Woodside and it was one or two kids there. And for a facility that big to just have one or two kids didn't make sense. And it was really a jail-like setting. It wasn't therapeutic. It was actually counter therapeutic. And so we believe, you know, this building will be therapeutic the way it's laid out. The programming will be therapeutic. The site is therapeutic. And we feel like it will meet the needs of the boys that will be provided care there. Thank you. Just to kick in off of Dick's question, out of state for youth that are not able to be handled in state, is Beckett currently involved in any of those out-of-state placements? Yes. And I'm just grabbing on this right now. We have youth placed in their programs out of state right now. And Jay and Jeff can probably speak to that. But we utilize their program, which is an intensive residential program for adolescent boys. We have a contract with them for their program in New Hampshire of 25 beds. Right now we have 19 youth placed in that program in New Hampshire. And so, you know, having this level of facility will allow us more flexibility of moving kids in and out of programs as their needs meet their needs. So our hope is, some of the kids that we send out of state, we might be able to serve in state now with this level of program that we're developing here in terms of the treatment. That's really one of our goals. Where is the Beckett facility in New Hampshire? I would defer to Jay and Jeff on the exact location of that. And Jeff has technical difficulties I'm hearing about right now with his computer, so I'll field that question. Our New Hampshire programs are frankly several programs. We have a fairly broad continuum in New Hampshire of programs from the Pike area, which is just, it's across to Bradford on Route 25 and heading out Route 25 towards Plymouth. We have a few other programs. So those children that Sean alluded to are really spread out amongst several different programs that we offer, depending on the particular need. We have a highly intensive program with what they call delayed egress doors in the Pike area. We also have a program in Pike that serves a really farm-like setting, a lot of vocational integrated farm activities that kind of works with a lot of kids with a kind of autism type and other issues like that intellectual type issues that have manifested along with behavioral and mental health issues. And then over in Plymouth, we have a short-term assessment program, which is often used for about 90 days to really get a comprehensive assessment and transition to kid back to the inappropriate setting, hopefully in Vermont pretty quickly. We have, I think several, I think that's used quite heavily. And we have an adventure program, which is tends to be more oppositional type kids who do well in kind of the wilderness programming type stuff. So we actually have several programs in the corridor between Pike and Plymouth that serve the kids. Plymouth on 25, that's what about an hour away from Newbury? Yeah, it's about 25 miles down from Pike, and Pike's about three or four miles in the border. So, you know, and it's, you know, while it's a fairly highly traffic corridor by east-west standards of Vermont and Hampshire, it's not a 60-mile-an-hour type highway, so it takes about an hour. No, it's actually a beautiful ride on a motorcycle. Senator Mazza, you don't have to wear your helmet on it either, just so you know. It is, at least at the present time, because this is part of the sixth northeasternmost towns in Orange County. But I understand with our new redistricting, it may be moved into Orange County. But what's your reaction to the community? Well, we're about to find out, because that's what this first community forum is all about. So far I'm receiving emails with questions, but nobody actually chomping at the bit to say yes or no. But we'll see how it goes. Okay, I'd like to, I had Morning Fox on earlier. Morning, I can't, if you, yeah, you're still here. In a real quick overview, Morning, what do you think about this in relation to the mental health division? Again, for the record, Morning Fox Deputy Commissioner and Department of Mental Health. Just having watched kind of the presentation going through, I think it's actually a fairly decent design program. Some of the pieces that they have included in the design here are actually similar to some of the concepts that we're working on in our adult secure residential program that we're still working on in the design aspects. So that coupled with the information that I have in regards to the programming, it looks like a very solid program just from this blush here. Okay. Committee, I'm going to leave it up to you. If you need to take a break, just take out your video screen. We'll expect you back whenever you can. But I'm going to try to keep going to get us through the afternoon. Let's keep going. All right. I have, I don't know whether Jay, you, or Sean, or Judith, you have anything else you want to add to the conversation at this point. Otherwise, I'm going to turn to BGS and let them weigh in. I think no, that makes sense to us. Thank you. Okay. I have a whole lot of folks on the screen, as I understand it, from BGS. And it includes Marco Grady, Jeremy Stevens, Joe Asia, Sabrina Karish, and of course, Eric Philcorn. But we see him all the time. I won't worry about him. Yes, Eric, I know you're on the screen. I'm just a bench warmer. I'm not sure who would like to take the lead in the conversation. But if, I guess, Joe, I see your mute button has disappeared all of a sudden. How about we start off with you and give us some guidance as to who wants to say what in this conversation? Thank you, Senator. Good afternoon. Joe Asia would design, director for design and construction for BGS. And it depends. If you want to talk about the lease agreement, it would be Marco Grady. And if it's construction, it would be Sabrina Karish. Well, we started construction. So how about if we start with Sabrina and then we'll work our way into the conversation about the legal part of it? Okay, great. Sabrina, welcome to Senate institutions. Hi, Sabrina Karish, project manager with BGS. What can you tell us about the construction? So I think that Jay gave a pretty good overview of the plan and the budget. So I guess I just will answer questions if anyone has them. I have toured Woodside in the past and was struck by the very prison like atmosphere. Your opinion on the presentation thus far about the difference in this building as opposed to Woodside? So Woodside is basically a correctional facility. It's a very old way of thinking about treatment of youth. This facility is basically, it's a more modern way of thinking is more of a mental health treatment rather than a correctional environment. We're focusing on trauma-free design, focusing on rehabilitation and treatment rather than just a holding cell until they become dolls. Assuming that the plan as proposed goes forward. Do you know what the timeframe would be for shoveling the ground to completion? We're looking at the permitting phase right now. That's really going to be the determining factor in when construction starts. I believe, and Jay may be able to jump in on this a little bit. I believe right now we're looking at occupancy towards the end of the year. Okay. Where's the 3.1 million coming from? Normally you would see a project of this magnitude in the capital budget but given how the state is moving forward and working with a lease facility in the way we're designing this program, the restatement budget allocated $1.2 million in our operating budget this year to help pay for the renovations understanding that once we got a better understanding of the design and the construction costs that we would come back in the budget adjustment act and ask for more dollars. There's an additional $2 million in the budget adjustment act for the renovation so combined that would be the $3.2 million for the renovations. I would add that after some testimony in the house corrections and institutions committee, they asked for some language in the budget adjustment to go along with that appropriation to make sure that BGS staff signs off on the design before we've moved forward with the renovations and then also to make sure that the state protected its interest here that we also secure a warranty bond and we were in support of both pieces of that language that the house put in the budget adjustment along with that appropriation. So the landlord will put in how much towards this building? At this point the landlord is providing the building that we are renovating. They are not putting in any cost because those would have just been built back to us through the lease if we had moved in that direction. So the total cost of construction is $3.2 million? That's our current estimate based on our design work with the architectural firm in White River that's working with us. I had heard that the initial entryway was below ground. Is that gonna fly? No, the entryway is above ground. The youth programming is on the is on the below grade level which is a walkout level and a lot of the construction costs come there's a small addition on that walkout level and on the second floor or which is the great floor which would be the first floor and in this case where there's a porch right now so that would be the rooms for the youth and programming space above. Most of your other costs come from taking this facility to the next level of ligature and tamper-resistant construction and there's also quite a bit of site work for the yard. Okay, I didn't I couldn't tell from the diagram's size is there an elevator inside? There'll be a Lula lift. Okay, where's that? It's basically an inexpensive elevator that you can go a maximum of two stories. Other questions committee? Just one more. If we put the 3.2 million into the building then what's our lease per month to the to the landmark? I would defer to the deputy commissioner from BGS. He's the one working on that lease right now. What would it cost us per month for the for the building? Not talking about services just the building. Good afternoon, Senator Mauser-Markel Grady, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Buildings General Services. That's an outstanding item. The initial proposal was was designed to cover the property owner's cost and in recouping some depreciation and a return on investment. We have decided to engage the services of a commercial real estate appraiser, develop and as is value of the property as well as to assist in what fair market rent would be for the facility. It's going to be a challenge due to scarcity of available market data on a facility like this in this location. So that is, we are currently negotiating the rate for the actual lease payments. So before we go ahead, we'll know that figure. Correct, sir. I see Catherine Bentham was on my schedule. I don't know if she's here on the screen at the moment. Quick question. Sure, Cor, go ahead. Why aren't we looking to just buy a facility like this? I mean, it doesn't make sense for me to put that kind of, I don't have it, you know, I have apartments. I don't see tenants who upgrade my apartments and then still pay me rent, you know, it, yeah, I just think it's a tough situation and, you know, it's going to be more expensive than just owning something. That's a great question, Senator Parent. And I think I'll try to answer along with Marco Grady from BGS. I know when we were originally looking to replace Woodside, we, you know, it's a commercial type property. And so we weren't able to locate an existing facility through the BGS's real estate work there. Also, you know, to build a new facility based on the designs from that came out like two years ago, there was an estimated cost. It was 10 to $15 million, I believe. You know, we are approaching this lease negotiations with the understanding that, you know, as Mark said, we want to get a value of the property because we are entering into a long-term lease one to protect our interest, but also at the end of that, the state could choose to opt to purchase the building at that point. And Mark, I don't know if you want to jump in and add to that. Sure. That's an excellent point, Senator Parent. As Commissioner Brown had indicated, as part of engaging the commercial real estate appraisers are providing with an as is value. You know, I completed a draft lease yesterday and sent it along to DCF to make sure that it captures everything that they need and included that was a purchase option to be exercised at some point. But I think once we look at what the lease rate is, that is something that should be discussed. How long, how many years of rent before we have paid for the as is value of the property? So very excellent point to be considered. And would we have a right of first refusal on the property? The last thing I would see is, you know, if it's a cash flow, some investors can come in and buy, but I'd hate to see it get sold out from underneath the state if we put that kind of money into it. Senator, this is Jay Walter, just, I mean, just to add a little perspective, you know, I think we'd be happy to sell it subject to price discussions. I mean, I think we've evolved this way, because that seems like the way DCF has in terms of not having to put, you know, trying to get the money for the renovations itself. I think we've been pretty open to understanding the issue of the state's investment. Counter, you know, counter to that is really the reality of we have a place right now that's a fairly nice facility that has alternative uses and could be sold in the marketplace right now. Once it's turned into a correctional type, well, I shouldn't use that word. Sorry. But, but, you know, once it's turned into a secure facility, it doesn't have much value to us anymore either. Like, like, you know, so we have a loan out of the property, we have investment in the property, and, you know, what we're really trying to protect is that not to sort of, you know, but we know once this facility is built, we need a plan that will allow us to lease it for a period of time to at least get our costs back. You know, with an appropriate, you know, rate of return for that, but not, you know, if the state wants to buy it, we're not going to, we're not going to stand in a way in a provision that allows you at any time, during the lease, if you want to come buy it, to buy it. But, but understand that one of the issues here is once we begin to turn this into a secure facility, it really has no value left to us. We're not going to be able to sell it. There's not a lot of people trying to buy a six-bed secure facility in Vermont. Mr. Chair, one more thing I just thought about. When we talked about this doing away with Woodside, wasn't the proposal at that time, we didn't want to own any more property. We wanted to have the youth, if you get one, you ship them to some facility that takes them for fee, or two or three, because the uncertainty of having one or four or five or six, it would be cheaper just to take that individual and go to a private place to have services done. So I'm surprised, and I guess we're in a, we're in a, this is a different decision, but we're back in the owning a building again, or having responsibility for six beds versus if you have one or two, because I understand Woodside was down to one, and that's what the cost was, was phenomenal. And we could be in the same position again, one or two, yet sharing the cost of maxing the place at six. I'm just, but that's probably the policy decision that was made by, this committee was made by somebody else. Maybe Mr. Chair, you know more about that than I do. Well, I probably know a little bit more, but suffice to say, we did have those conversations, and I'm looking at this leased building as part and parcel of where we were heading in that conversation. So when Senator Parent brings up the question of making a purchase, I get a little nervous about purchasing when we still have that ultimate question, what is it we're trying to accomplish in the long term here? And I'm not, I guess I'm not 100% convinced that owning another piece of property is the smart way to go, while we're in that continuing conversation of how many kids are we actually going to be looking at. But I appreciate bringing that up. We're going to probably have some more conversation about it. Sean, you indicated, maybe you or Jay said that the hope would be if everything went through that by the end of the year we'd have kids actually there. If we had to purchase from scratch a different building and then bring it up to snuff, am I safe in assuming it would take a great deal more time to have that happen? Yes, my understanding is if the state purchased land and was going to build its own state facility, we would be looking at a five year timeframe, probably from start to finish for that to occur. And given where we are here doing this similarly depending on the building, this building actually works well in terms of the footprint and what we're trying to do. So the renovations overall are not substantial. It's more the cost of the other buildings could be more substantial renovations. And so the timeframe would be longer. I don't have an estimate on that, but it certainly would be longer than the timeframe we're looking at here. Okay. Committee, any other questions for BGS? Let's see. Senator McCormick. Yeah, not so much a question, just a comment. I've served in this committee previously, but I've been gone for many years, so I almost feel like one of the new kids. So I've been reluctant to have too many opinions, but I find Senator Maz's comments, I'm inclined to agree. I'm leery of us putting money into property we're not going to own. I could be convinced, but I'm skeptical right now. Senator, I think we understand your concerns. And I would say anytime the state leases a facility for whatever purpose that we're leasing from a private landlord, there are costs that the state pays in terms of whether it's upfront or in upfit that then is baked into the lease that the state ultimately bears those costs. And I would defer to Mark to comment further on that, but normally the state when we're entering into a private lease, we ultimately bear the cost of whatever you said that facility upgrades are. Mark. So I'm going to pause there to both Senator McCormick and Senator Maz and suggest that somewhere in the past, the policy discussion got separated out from this committee. It still remains that way in the house. And there is great wisdom in having both conversations in one committee because it becomes problematic when you're trying to distinguish the brick and mortar from the policy conversation. And I don't know how we ever entertain getting that back into this committee, but it is a subject of conversation that we ought to be having in the future. In order to move this conversation along, I'm going to turn to the stakeholders unless anybody from BGS or Jay, you want to finish off any thoughts. I should have asked earlier, Jay, the first time that we met with Senator Kitchell, you still had concerns about whether things were moving along the way you thought they were supposed to be. And I'm just looking for a really a yes or no answer. Are things moving along now more comfortably for you? Yeah, I mean, I think maybe in our first conversation, I was sort of trying to identify that there's so many moving parts of the project like this, part of that process being what we're doing right now at multiple committee levels. Frankly, I never expected to be spending the last two weeks, four or five hours on a Zoom call with a legislature in Vermont. So there's a lot of public policy issues being sorted out still and a lot of efforts being put in by a lot of people to find the right resolution. So I don't want to convey that I felt any negativity towards it. I was trying to convey, we have a long ways to go, but I do feel stakeholders to get into the table, important dialogues happening. So yes, I think we are moving along at an appropriate pace at this point. Okay, thank you. I'm going to move on to the stakeholders and I'm going to take them in priority as I understand them to be. My normal highest ranking stakeholder on this list would be the guy that I have to call your honor in court. So Judge Grierson, if you happen to be listening and are available. With an introduction like that, how could I not? Hey, Judge Grierson, good afternoon. I realize you don't often appear in front of this committee. No, this is the first time. I was glad to see Dick and asking questions. I probably ought to at least briefly introduce yourself because we have new members of committee here. I will. Brian Grierson, Chief Superior Judge, and I do believe Senator Benning, thank you for inviting me. Thank many members for inviting me. I think it is the first time I'm here before this committee. And I think to move things along, I'm going to send Dick a little oil for the hinges on his wallet. See if we can make this project work. You know, I don't have a lot to add to this, but let me tell you what my perspective is. And it's quite simple. We need a facility of this kind, whether it's this plan or a different plan or a different location. We need this. And when I say we, I'm saying the judiciary and all of the stakeholders in this process, the juvenile process, need a facility to address the issues that this population brings. I don't have the information to say whether six is the right number or not. I know that the population at Woodside went down drastically over the years and then once in a while it'll bump up. So I can't tell you that I have any, you know, specific knowledge on the number, but there's two things I'd like to have the committee think about as they're talking with the folks from Beckett and Commissioner Brown as well as the folks that are going to have to pay for this site, site improvements. Two things. One, you already mentioned or someone did, the need for making sure that there is a video capability within this institution for a lot of the same reasons that the questions have been asked. And that is this is in a relatively remote location, which means that if a youth is required to appear in court, they're going to have to be transported usually in restraints, over long distances, sometimes good weather, sometimes bad. Sometimes when they appear in court, I've certainly been in courthouses that the only way of getting the youth into the court room is through a public setting with restraints. And then it can be for a very, very brief hearing, meaning that they're transported long distances in restraints for what could be a less than a half hour proceeding and it's taken over an hour to get to that courthouse or longer. If there has been, and I'm not suggesting there has been a silver lining in the pandemic that we've all been experiencing for the last year, it is the increased capability and the improvement in technology within the judicial system. And we continue to expand that and explore new ways of conducting hearings remotely, many of them are juvenile proceedings. I believe that when this pandemic passes, when the crisis is over, we will continue to see uses for video and audio capability, remote hearings for the type of hearing I just described. In addition, and I think it was mentioned in Senate Judiciary last week, one of the committee members mentioned, because of the geographical distances in Vermont and the difficulty in making those transports, the ability for a family caregiver to be able to communicate even with video is really important to maintain that contact and video will allow that. So that, this is whatever building there is, it has to be in that building. The other point I would make, and this, I hesitate to bring it up, but I'm going to because it's becoming more, I'm seeing more and more of this as an issue. And that is, this is a six bed facility, as I understand it, Commissioner Brown can collect. Primarily for, I'll say longer term stay, more treatment than prison is one of the witnesses mentioned. One of the concerns I have is the lack of detention space in Vermont. And by detention space as opposed to the kind of treatment that is in, that this facility envisions is the youth who is out of control, picked up by police. And particularly now, as most of the committee members know, and a lot of the folks involved in this hearing, we have now expanded the age of delinquency to 18. And in another year, we're going to go to 19. So we're now bringing 18 and 19 year olds into essentially a juvenile system. And sometimes there, we need a place for a short term detention, even if it's overnight, or very short term. And we've just had situations recently where I think that need was demonstrated. So I know that's not in these plans. And there may be very well be good reasons or maybe the commissioner and other folks have other ideas for this population. But if we're putting up a facility, I don't think we can overlook the need for a very short term detention space either in this facility or somewhere in the state. So that's all I have to offer really, Senator Benning. I've been listening to the testimony and I understand that it's a substantial project. And I'm certainly available to answer any questions anyone might have. Senator Monson. Judge Geerson, would they house, what's the age would go with this facility? Are you saying up to 18 or 19, or is it still? Would be, if I'm correct, commissioner, as we decrease the or increase the age of delinquency, this population would be served by this facility. Yeah, so we when we started working with Beckett to develop this proposal, we entered into a letter of intent. And that letter of intent indicated that we could serve 18 year olds and 19 year olds in this facility in the future if that's the decision that in the direction the state wants to go. Because I would agree with Judge Geerson that what we're seeing with the raise the age and kids coming into the DCF system that we need to account for 18 and then in July 1st to 22 19 year olds. And so we're approaching it looking at that this facility could play a role, but also not to get too far down in the weeds. We did put funding in the Budget Adjustment Act and in the base 22 budget to build out resources for raise the age 18 year olds to develop some options to serve them either through like a transitional housing program with on site support services for those youth who could come in that might come in in crisis and don't have another place that they could go safely stay. And so I agree with Judge Geerson that those are issues we need to pay attention to and we are looking to address them in a couple of different ways. But you know they are on our radar as well. So if someone goes to court and is 17 or 18 they can sentence that person to this facility? Right now you know just as judges had authority for a juvenile deemed to be delinquent and was taken into you know into placed into DCF custody they could place that youth into Woodside they will be able also to place that youth in this treatment center as well. So it's not the law that they must go there it's up the discretion of the judge? Yes in terms of sometimes the judge also sometimes DCF depending if it's a youth juvenile justice you know in the past so you know you know we will be able to use short term placements in this facility as well as the judge indicated the need for that. So if a youth comes in in the middle of the night and the judge issues a detention order I get that what if they get a sentence say they get a sentence they serve there until they're 18 and they go to the prison? Well you know we we look at serving youth and youth aren't sentenced that way in the juvenile system. What they would do is place them in our care and cut the department's care in custody and then we would serve that youth in the least restrictive setting based on where they are at that time so they might start in a facility like this once they're adjudicated by the by the family court judge and then we might then in working with the court and their and their attorney and the state's attorney step them down to other programs that are more appropriate in a least restrictive setting so it really it's a really fact specific based on on the youth and where they're at in terms of their their need for services. I didn't realize it was that age was that that high I thought we were talking about 16 year olds under. That's in part what complicates it Senator Mazza is because with the if you will raising the age of a frequency someone who is 18 there are only certain offenses that they may be involved in at 18 that they can still go to the adult or criminal court but what they can't do at 18 if they if it's not one of those offenses a lesser offense but they're 18 and for whatever reason they may need to be lodged they cannot go in I shouldn't say they can't go in a an adult correctional facility but it's extremely complicated in terms of what they have to the procedures that have to be followed so it it it's a significant change in that respect and you know this the 18 year olds only began in July so I think we are learning as we go along that that some of the implications of this so I just think it's something and I know the commissioner has that in mind I mean I'm not telling him anything he doesn't know it's a question of you know how do we address that issue but with that that's that's all I have and thank you before I turn to the next stakeholders Joe Aja, Tabrina, Karish I'm trusting that you folks are considering the IT issues in the discussions about this building I don't know which one of you would like to respond to that but I throw that to Tabrina okay Tabrina if you're still with us I am here okay the judge raised the concern about having IT available for videoconferencing and whatnot with the court system is that conversation taking place now within your bellywick we have not spoken about that in the design meetings that I have participated in however the court system works with our correctional facilities and our mental health facilities to create a video program and so I see no reason why we cannot do it in this facility as well okay I just want to make sure that that issue is not left off the plate in your conversations about how the state contracts with Beckett it is as far as I can tell from my position and I'm a trial attorney so I understand that COVID brought on our videoconferencing but after COVID has done I definitely see the wisdom in using IT to prevent kids from having to be taken with handcuffs from point A to point Z for a final or I mean a very finite hearing so I'm hoping that this issue is part of the conversations going on in building construction yeah we were moving in that direction before COVID okay thank you and senator you have our commitment that that will be a part of this facility when it goes operational and we've already looking into that we're going to have to upgrade the internet connection coming into the property and the facility to make sure that we have the bandwidth to support those uses so those initial conversations have started to make sure we have all the pieces in place for that to great I have three folks left officially I have marshal Paul AJ Reuben and john Campbell AJ I guess I'm going to start with you if you're still here yep see you down in the corner you have sent us testimony I can probably predict that most of us have not had a chance to get to it yet and keeping in mind that the discussion is really centering on the brick and mortar of the building you're coming to us from disability rights Vermont I'm anxious to hear what your thoughts are and what you've heard in the actual design of the building especially and any other comments you want to give us as well well thank you for the opportunity and the invitation I did provide the committee with a blurb about what DRVT does so any of the senators who aren't familiar with us you can look that over and I'm happy to answer questions we've been very grateful for Commissioner Brown and the team at DCF and the becket team in their willingness to collaborate with us on the program design and the physical plant my staff has been to the facility we've seen it in person and so I you know I want to give kudos to the state and becket for being open and and working with us I did send a short two page letter to the committee that outlines seven or eight different specific concerns we have with the brick and mortar issues many of those issues were discussed today and I can certainly respond to those but the big ones were mentioned you know the biggest concern we have which is a brick and mortar issue is the extent to which this is really a facility that we need another locked facility in Vermont I did provide the committee with our report name wrongly confined which is a sort of a systemic analysis of our AHS human services and the extent to which we're not funding community supports but putting too much money in these locked facilities and so a concern we have is that if you build it they will come if there there's no acknowledgement about the negative impact of putting youth in locked facilities that are hard locked once you're inside the facility it's going to look a lot like a like a correctional facility because it's going to have hard locks and it's not clear to me that there's clarity amongst the administration about what this program is for it looks like kind of it's it could be both for a place to put kids who are arrested and have to be detained quickly and a place to keep kids for three or four months in a locked facility you know if if it's only about the former then having a facility way out in the woods is not a great idea you want to have small facilities around the state if it's the latter about treatment center what kind of treatment is it I heard the commissioners say that they might be bringing folks from out of state into this program but I haven't heard that yet so so we're really you know we want to emphasize that putting a child in a locked secure facility like this has negative impacts on the kid and that's not being acknowledged and there has to be some sort of policy development to not overuse this facility but if it is going to happen our comments about the physical plant you know have been considered by beckett and zcf and we're happy to keep working with them things like the the gymnasium access to video conferencing not using the calming room as an isolation room and issues about you know sunlight in the in the common rooms and also sort of the the the fact that the upstairs rooms where staff are going to be our big comfortable rooms and the rooms where the children are going to be living are cell-like you know in the design so those are another reason why we should limit who gets put into this building and so again I think I don't want to stray on the policy stuff we are grateful for the input and and we have expressed our concerns about the actual nuts and bolts of it I don't know if you heard j welter's testimony about him being a reformed attorney have you ever heard that term before you know I work for Ed Paquin who keeps saying he's a reformed legislator but he sure does like spending time in the legislation so I assume Jay watches courtroom dramas or something but you know the legal issues are are very serious and you know it can't be understood that when you build a locked facility for children you are inviting a lot of scrutiny about how it's used okay thanks for coming and being patient I am left with Marshall Paul and John Campbell that means I've got the state's attorneys on one side the defense attorneys on the other who should I choose Marshall welcome so thank you I can go fairly quickly here my way of introduction I'm Marshall Paul I'm the deputy defender general and the chief juvenile defender for the state um and I want to say just up front that we're very supportive of the direction that this project has gone we're supportive of the direction it's gone on a policy level we're also supportive of the direction that it's gone in a in the sort of bricks and mortar operational level that we just not to say that we don't just like disability rights Vermont have concerns our concerns are you know essentially the same issues that disability rights Vermont talks about we are concerned about how the program will be used we're concerned about some of the you know there's things that we we'd love to see a larger gymnasium I understand that's not likely in the cards just given the facility itself but the you know we don't see those concerns as being problems that would interfere with our support for this project overall really those are just issues that we are watching to see how they develop as this project moves along I do think that it's very you know this project is important the timing of this project is important we you know it's really important that we get this that we get this program up to speed and on its feet so that it can be occupied as quickly as possible because we are you know sitting here we we've started the process of raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction in Vermont we've done an incredible job in Vermont of limiting the number of kids who are getting pulled into these higher level placements and I want to you know I want to make clear that that was really the first step to make this type of a project possible if we were trying to do this type of a project you know 10 years ago or even five years ago we would be sitting you know it would be it would be really an impossibility just given the number of kids who at that time were occupying the highest levels you know of our system of care who were demonstrating you know really high need and really high risk and really were being put into programs that were designed to meet that high need and high risk which meant that Woodside was you know very full and sometimes overfall it meant that programs out of state that serve those high need high risk youth were very full and really what happened is not you know it was a there we had had a system of care in Vermont for a long time that had good resources available at the very low end you know for kids who needed nothing but for example foster home to be in and we had really good or we had a really I wouldn't say good but we had a lot of beds available in that higher end of care you know the kids who were going to Woodside were going to out of state you know secure programs but what we were lacking was that middle tier the place where kids go to when they step down from Woodside I can't count you know I used to be the attorney that represented every kid at Woodside in what we call their administrative detention hearings the hearings about whether or not a kid should stay at Woodside when they had been placed at Woodside and the number of kids that we were talking about who everybody in their own DCF the defense the institution everybody agreed that they were ready to leave Woodside but there was just nowhere for them to go and that was really that was a problem that's that's why Woodside was such a you know highly populated program even when we didn't really have the need for it we didn't you know it was kids that everybody agreed didn't need to be served by that level of care didn't need to be served in a secure facility but there was nowhere for them to go and so what happened in the years that led up to this decision to close Woodside and develop a new placement was really a you know fundamental reimagining of that entire middle tier of our system of care so that we could be taking these kids once they had stabilized once they were out of a situation of crisis and once they could be given treatment in a less secure environment and having those places available for them so that they could be moved out and that's what's made it so that we can even be here having this conversation about you know what is ultimately going to be a six-bed facility which is you know if you look at the last couple years of Woodside's population that's probably that's that's right on as far as what the population ought to be six is sort of on the high side for essentially the last year of Woodside's population so I wanted to start just by acknowledging that because I think it's really important because that really is you know that's the best way to address this problem and that's what that's the work that's been done that I don't think is necessarily gotten the appreciation that it deserves because it really has a lot to do not just with getting kids out of a program that was deteriorating and really bad counter therapeutic for those kids but also just making sure that kids generally are getting the treatment that they need in the least restrictive place that they can get it so the only thing that I want to just chime in on as far as the bricks and mortar go and just echo something that's already been said is the importance of having video conferencing capability it's nothing crazy sophisticated really just having a decent computer with a camera and zoom and WebEx on it is all that's needed but the one thing that hasn't been mentioned that I think is really important is making sure that that equipment is in an area where kids can be unsupervised so that kids can have confidential uh attorney client conversations without having to have a staff member in the room that's been a problem for us for example in having certain conversations and having certain video uh it was a problem it's been more or less rectified at this point but when we first moved uh adult prisoners to Mississippi um there was places where they could go to be in front of a video camera so that they could participate in a hearing but no place where they could be in front of a video camera to have a private conversation with an attorney so I think that's just the one thing that I would add to that conversation is that it's important not only to have the video uh capabilities but also to have that in a place where it's going to be okay for kids to be unsupervised or at least if they're going to be supervised that it's you know visual supervision from outside the room so that their conversation with their attorney can remain confidential and with that I'm happy to take any questions thank you committee many questions we don't see any marshall thanks for coming john cambell are you still out there john yes i'm still here senator i i guess i realizing that you know importance you know being the last person you know i get relegated to this buddy how are you hello senator how are you it's been a while since i've been in institutions also and i'm glad i'm glad to see you have my good friend senator recormick and senator parent and they're with you um senator angles we have not met yet one of these days we'll meet i used to be a member of that of your wonderful group known as the senate and in fact it's interesting because while i was listening to everybody testify here earlier i was thinking that you know there's not been often are there often there's not been times that i've you really kind of wanted to be back in the in the chair there that you guys are in but this is one conversation i think i would love to have been a part of the institutions committee um however i won't talk about um some of the policy issues i will just talk to you about a couple of issues that that i think are extremely important i think judge first of all judge gerson really summed it up the best with all of it so i'm not going to repeat what he has to say the importance of getting something um up and running it cannot be understated we're having some significant problems um around the state and actually they're they're going to be uh discussed on friday and senate judiciary but um i i am one of the belief that we need we should have the facility now i mean when uh the former commissioner decided shut down um wood side and again not arguing one way the other whether it was a good thing or not it left a significant void um in in um having to deal with with uh the people that this uh place served and um i think that uh you know i know that they've said that this should be up i i guess i heard that said that it they thought it should be up and running by the end of the year and um i'm still waiting for a dormer to be put in this place uh which uh was supposed to have been started last year so yeah with that right you're in a cellar yeah no patty put me up on the third floor she you know it's um i i'm stuck up here if i if i stand up i i'll hit my head but she's busy talking and you know doing the real business downstairs making money so um uh but anyway i'll get all kidding aside i'm just hoping that's the case but um i i think that we are in very dangerous territory in the interim period especially when you look at some of the problems we've been having with with the finding you know locations at the right time for some of the youth that are served uh you know a lot of these time a lot of times uh the the youth are not getting in trouble necessarily uh during the morning hours and it's usually late at night and you know we've had several uh incidents especially up in st albins area in franklin county where the youth have been um arrested artists should say arrested but take it into custody and uh you know 11 12 o'clock at night and the only place they they could have gone would have been 204 down in bennington and of course there's no transportation no one is there to transport them so um in several cases they've had to stay in hotels um there's been a couple of incidents that we just had especially with an 18 year old and this was up in the northeast kingdom where there was no place to uh take that person and so uh the the uh they ended up getting you know basically kicking the guy out citing him to come back the next day and here it was 18 year old no place no home and he was it was like 30 degrees uh and he's out there uh no place to go but sleeping on the ground I think he slept behind a dumpster and you know so there's so many things here they're just so wrong with this uh you know we're a better state than that number one uh when it comes down to it's not just the safety of the community it's also the safety of the person that we're talking about the youth um so I know that might come you know sound strange coming from the state's attorney the prosecutor but it's true I mean really we have an obligation here we're not a you know a one of these states that uh or country that that um feels like uh if you've committed a crime or if you've you've done something wrong that you're automatically just cast aside we just don't do that and so I think the the sooner we do this and get this accomplished the better one thing that I do want to point out about this um you know being over in Bradford that does concern me a bit is what I initially said about the transportation you know Bradford it's like what about two and a half hours away from Bennington and probably the same from St. Albans and uh if if there if it's in the you know at nighttime the state paid deputies from the sheriff's departments they've already put their eight hours in and they're not obligated to come in to um you know to do a transport and we found and uh that you know when they're called at you know 12 o'clock at night they're saying you know what I'm sorry I'm not driving down to Bennington because they'll end up being stuck down there waiting um it's not just the drive itself but you know you just drive down and back but also the the time of getting them settled in so um there there's a serious problem there and when you when you put those that extra mileage on and it's not a central location that's just creating more more problem more issues I think than than I would like to see and finally I think the uh issue of the having the video there and I think we're we can probably all agree that that's essential there's no sense in doing anything and building anything in today's uh society especially the post-covid uh without some type of um ability to do virtual reality and virtual um communications such as what we're doing right now so um I would encourage and I think BGS uh Mark O'Grady he's he's great in any project that I've been involved with with Mark he's he's uh on their team over there it's always been top notch um and the commissioner fetched she's done a great job so um I think that that will you'll be served well by that uh and then the other matters probably um uh as far as policy issues I I think I'll reserve any comment but I may contact you guys individually I don't know um we'll we'll say especially Senator Mazza because I needed I needed some apple pies John were you in the Senate where the decision was made to split policy off from institutions you know I I actually it's funny because I have it on my notes the first thing was that when you mentioned that now that I've chance to to look down there I agree I I thought we you still maintain the policy on on um you know certain issues I and Dick you know you probably you know Senator Mazza you know it was uh it was a decision between judiciary and judiciary I think felt strong about taking it and I think that's how it happened it was like fight over it I I think on this one issue is I don't care like uh you know I think maybe you should have joint meetings but but um if the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing on this one uh there's I think you're looking for some serious you know problems yeah I think I'm somewhat envious of Alice Emmons having both issues in her jurisdiction and uh while I serve on judiciary and that's helpful the rest of this committee is not really on the money as far as the policy questions that are producing this conversation when you talk about lack of this being out in the middle of nowhere technically this location in my eyes is a heck of a lot better than Essex Junction because virtually the entire southern half of the state is so far away from Essex Junction that all those transportation issues are certainly at the forefront but you know that's a two hour two two and a half hour trip from Brattleboro or Bennington so virtually the bottom half of the state is distanced um there is a lot of what you're saying that's true if we had two separate facilities and could divide them or even three separate facilities but now we're talking a whole bigger much bigger investment and I don't think we're in a position to even think about that at the moment I I agree there uh you know one thing about the committees and this is why I think it's important from a knowledge standpoint with policy also with the bricks of mortar though is one of the questions that I think Senator Mazahab with the 19 year olds I mean some most people would think okay we're not going to have 18 or 19 year olds in in this facility but that's yeah but that's exactly what you're going to have and um and you know of course Senator Benning you're you're on judiciary and you're also you know practicing attorney in the criminal system so you'll know but it could easily slip by and some things could slip through the cracks and you guys could be planning on making a a decision about a facility without realizing you know well what's the facility going to be used for and who are the people that it will be served in that facility so um I think you know maybe a you know some joint meetings would certainly be in order if if I was back there but I'm not approach them anymore so well just point of information I'm not practicing anymore I actually know how to do it yeah Senator McCormick yeah just on the the distinction between funding and policy I'm actually just appointed that my uh law school trained colleagues aren't able to somehow make that simply go away based on how you phrase it I think this committee should decide what we want to spend money on and that might over might overlap into policy I don't know wouldn't be surprised if it did yeah I think you need to take that up with with the powers to be yeah yeah but he scares me so I can't I think that's you know a lot of people feel that way that's why that's why it is the way it is probably the Senate not in the House yeah but I mean I must say though just in his defense he's he's put a lot into this hang of the whole he raised in the age well you you all did on that committee um and he is probably the most knowledgeable person uh of juvenile justice I think in the in the uh in the legislature um you know when it comes down to the things especially like this because of his experience with 204 and his experience even before then yeah you always john you did a good job that was very interesting today thank you thank you yeah good good I guess that's why just shut up john it's time to go no no I'm just I'm just thanking you for some good idea good thoughts that you put into this I appreciate that you know it's good thanks dick I appreciate it all our senators I appreciate it and um if there were any not any other questions I will sign off thanks for being patient and sticking around no problem thank you guys all right committee I am out of witnesses and we're out of energy yeah we're all out of energy I don't know if anybody rusts you got a question or a comment you got to unmute yourself um I hear the passion of everybody speaking and I think that's great and um and nobody wants to hear this question but I think it needs to be asked what what does it cost to house all one of these kids if uh if we didn't build this facility and we had a place to put them I mean what what what what what's the cost of doing that of housing one child um and another facility I mean they they must be available to the level of what we're being asked to consider here and we must know that number it's a valid question I don't know Sean if you have that off the top of your head if you give me two seconds I can I can tell you um um so we um in the interim entered into an agreement with the state of New Hampshire to place youth that need the highest level of a secure setting that would have been Woodside or this facility um with their sinew new youth center in New Hampshire um and so we negotiated a contract to place youth there we've had to utilize it once um um in late summer into early fall for one youth that cost us around $1,550 a day so if you annualize that cost and then we're also using other in-state settings too right now for youth which are very expensive as well but just to place one youth for a year in this sinew new center would be um almost $570,000 a year thank you so Cory just for your info you evidently you get a a facility like this named after you if you're run for governor so in your case if you were governor this would be the parent youth center I would prefer to have my name on other things yeah committee I want to thank you very much been a long day um we will be back again tomorrow at 130 everybody else who's on the screen appreciate you all coming and hanging out with us this afternoon and we will see you again Denise if you could take us off of YouTube and stick on the line with me