 Thanks everybody for joining us for this last session of the Resilient Vermont Conference for 2022. It's been a really great day. I hope everybody has got some fantastic things to take away with them from today's conference and I know that it just makes me that much more happy to live in Vermont and to know that there are just great people in a great community. So my name is Karen Hinkel. I'm the Associate Provost for Research. I oversee the Office of Academic Research which houses the research centers including the Center for Global Residence and Security, which is putting on the conference today. I'm really pleased first to introduce one of our very best Norwich students who's going to introduce our speaker for the workshop. So this is Alyssa Brink. She is a senior at Norwich University. She's an honor student and she's majoring in architectural studies. She's minoring in construction management and she has been awarded a Norwich Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship this summer in which she's going to study and analyze urban agriculture in Detroit via vertical farming and rooftop gardens. So Alyssa, take it away. I am very honored to be here and to introduce you to Kara Robichek, who unfortunately can't be here with us as a person today, but she can be here and present to us all. So Kara is Deputy Director and Network Manager for EAN working with our network members and partners to expand our collective impact on clean energy action and emission reductions in Vermont. She came to EAN from Vermont Energy Education Program where she was the Executive Director from 2014 to 2021. Prior to her work at the EEP, she spent eight years PG Forces such as Environmental Communication, Environmental Economics, current environmental issues and Children Health and Environment for the Community College of Vermont, Johnson State University and University of Vermont. She has served on the board of Planting Hope as an elective parks commissioner for the City of Montpelier and as a member of the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee. She has a bachelor's in Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College in the Masters in Renewable Natural Resources and Development from the University of East Angola. She lives in Montpelier with her husband and her two children and she enjoyed playing on or in the water and walking across country, skiing in the woods and listening to her children playing. Thank you for that introduction. I am so sorry not to be there with you. I am getting over COVID, which has presented as cold symptoms to me so I'm feeling lucky but not lucky not to be there. I would love it if you wouldn't mind going around really quickly and just letting me know your name and where in Vermont you are from, assuming you're from Vermont. Would you mind doing that really quickly before I talk at you? Sure. I'm Ta'a Kukarni. I'm right here from Vermont. I teach at Norwich and I'm from Montpelier. Karen Heiko and Professor at North University and I live in Middlesex. G. Cross and I'm on the slideboard in Bethel. Caroline McKelvie. I work for the University of Vermont at the Vermont Lake Champlain Sea Grant and I live in the Bolton area. I have a bus stop, break, and I just live across the street in Williamstown. I'm Kevin Geiger. I work for the two Riverside Quick Region Commission and I live in Palmer. I'm Lisa Cole. I work for Vermont Emergency Management as a State Hazard Mitigation Planner and I live here in Rockfield. I'm Carl Aitner. I'm on the slideboard in East Montpelier. Thank you all for doing that. So my plan for today and I'm hoping it'll work just as well digitally as it would be if I were in the room is to give you maybe 10 minutes of context. And then my hope is that we can have some conversation because this is supposed to be a workshop, not me just presenting at you. So the topic of conversation is building Vermont's climate workforce. And as was part of my introduction, I work for Energy Action Network, which is a pretty broad network of about 200 for-profits, nonprofits, educational institutions, and lots of folks who work for the state who are all working together to achieve Vermont's climate and energy commitments in ways that create a more just, thriving and sustainable future for Vermonters. And one of the things that we do through that work, there's a couple of big roles we hold in the state. One is that we bring together a lot of data and analysis, and we share that through a report that goes out each year that you may have seen. But the second thing that we do is that we convene this network of people to work together towards solutions. And each year in September or October, we have a pitch process, which is a competitive process to bring together new ideas and bring together a network action team to work on something that is one of the solutions that our state can employ for meeting our energy and climate commitments. So we have seven of those that are pretty active right now. Four of them started in 2020. Another three got added in 2021. And we're starting the process of developing some new ones for 2022. Those are all listed up on the screen. They vary from weatherization at scale, which has been trying to push for an additional 90,000 homes to be weatherized by 2030, mainly of low and moderate income folks through to the clean heat standard, which was a policy idea that was developed by an action team over the course of about a year and a half. You may have heard about it. It did go through the legislature this year. It was vetoed by the governor and veto override narrowly did not go through by one vote. There are some other network action teams. The future of world transit has been looking at trying to combine public and school transit using electric buses and trying that's a long slow process as you might imagine. But we're working with some communities on exploring that as a concept. There's a there's a number of others here. But the one that I want to talk with you about today is the team that's been working on climate workforce. So that was a team that started gathering together in November of 2021. We know that our climate workforce is a really important thing. There's a lot of a lot of benefits that come from growing our climate workforce that can be excellent careers. It's investing in the local economy and it's reducing emissions. But it's also a real challenge. So we had Matt Barowitz from the Department of Labor come and do a presentation at one of our coalition meetings on climate workforce. And he showed this slide. This was in January. I'm sure he has new data since then. But you can see what we're up against in that we were already had a declining labor force before COVID hit. And then there was a precipitous decline. You all know this. I'm not telling you anything new, but it really does show up on this graph that we lost a lot of workers and a lot of those were early retirements that are probably not going to come into the workforce. And there, as you also know, are other issues that are holding some people from coming back into the workforce, including issues with childcare, housing, etc. So at the same time that we have that happening, we have had a new climate action plan be adopted. I'm sure you all heard about that this morning at the plenary session. But the new climate action plan includes 26 pathways, 64 strategies and over 200 actions that they're recommending the state needs to make if we're going to meet our climate requirements from the Global Warming Solutions Act. So the image that is showing right now is just one of 15 or actually just the top of 15 pages of things that we should probably think about doing in order to reach our goals. And along the way, this is also something that I think Jared Duvall, my colleague, shared this morning. There's, you know, you can dive into individual actions that we are going to need to take. And this graphic shows the highest impact strategies that we might want to take. I don't know how much Jared described this morning, but the purple lines on each of these graphs are what we're likely to get through business as usual, the policies we already have in place. Whereas the increasing bar graphs are what we would actually need to do to reach our climate goals through the climate action plan. So for example, you can see the ramp up of electric vehicles. While we're expecting that those will ramp up fairly rapidly, we're going to need to see a lot more than is even the business as usual. But even with business as usual, we're going to see a big increase. And that means jobs, that means jobs, installing electric chargers, that means people learning to service electric vehicles instead of diesel and gasoline vehicles. Air source heat pumps similar, we need a lot of people who know how to install those. Whetherization, again, whether we're looking at business as usual, or what we actually need to do to reach our climate action plan, we're going to see a big ramp up and we need a lot more workers in that field. Continue on. These are these are the additional top measures for getting us to our climate action goals. So whether we look at business as usual, or whether we actually look at our goals, we need more people in the field working in these jobs. I'm going to take a quick pause and ask if there's any questions since I can't see you closely. Should I keep going? Great. So we've had a really broad coalition of people talking about how do we address the climate, climate workforce needs. And in those conversations, it's been a broad conversation about climate workforce. And there's been a more specific conversation around weatherization workforce. Because weatherization is a really good thing to do first. You know, you can't you can't put in some of the the new, you know, like heat pumps as effectively until you've weatherized the building. So it's one of those, you know, first things that we want to be working on. So we've had a lot of conversations about what are the things you need to have in place in order to build the climate workforce that we need. And one of those needs is consistent funding. So we're in this beautiful moment in terms of money in that there actually is money to do some of this work, which is somewhat unusual. The the American Rescue Plan Act funds give us funding for a lot of a lot of work to be done between now and 2026. But we know that we need that funding to stay consistent, because one of the issues that have has happened in the past is that there have been sometimes slugs of money that come in. But their short term, it doesn't give a company enough time to build up its workforce and then maintain them and and be able to maintain good quality jobs. And so it's it's hard to get the work done because you don't have that that ramp up and that continuation of funding. So that's one of the things we need in order to provide good and fair wages and benefits and job security, which are all needed to get people into the into these jobs. Another thing that we really need is wraparound services. And this is where the conversation gets so big and broad that it can be it can say, Okay, we need to do everything all at once. But it is true that we need to make sure that we have housing for workers who may not be making as much money. We need transportation for people to get to their jobs. We desperately need childcare if we're going to allow our entire population to be able to be in the workforce. Some people need health or mental health care in order to be able to to stay in the workforce. And we have a lot of new Americans coming in who have great skills and work ethic, but may not have the language skills yet. So there needs to be some translation services to be able to maximize our workforce as well. And then there's there's also we've had a lot of the training providers involved in the our conversations, which has been great. And we have a lot of training in the state. There's the the college is obviously the career Tech Ed centers that students can be in from high school. And then there's a lot of nonprofits working in the field like resource is doing great work from our works for women from my adult adult basic education, the YCC and Audubon. And there's a lot of organizations that are using a sort of serve earn and learn model where they actually pay people to go through the trainings. And that can be really helpful for anyone. It can be very hard to step out of your life in order to get trained to do something else. And a lot of a lot of employers are training their their folks on the job as well. People also need to be able to see what the clear career pathway is. So there's this really cool tool I was just going to show you. I'm going to go out of this the PowerPoint and show you this live. So this is a neat tool that I would have said that green buildings career map is what it's called. And they have this for sort of green buildings. They have it for renewable energy as well. But what someone can do is they can say, okay, I'm interested in learning about, you know, insulation, your air sealing technician. That sounds like something I might be interested in going into. So if I go in as an entry level, where does that take me? And what other options could I have going onward? And you can see that, okay, well, if I'm doing that, well, maybe I would go on and I would become a commercial construction for a person. And that could be the next stage of my career. And then what might I do? There's these other options. So this is just one of many, but this sort of a visualization helps people to understand that when they're stepping into a job, it has a future and they can think about where they might want to keep going. So those sorts of tools are really helpful as well. So that is the conversation that I've been having with lots of people that I wanted to bring to you. And I would love to know if you all have any questions or comments. And then where I'm hoping that we'll go with this is, I think we have some post-it notes and some markers in the room. And I wanted to share a few questions I have for you and have you take a minute or two, a few minutes, to write out some thoughts. And then we'll have a conversation about what you know about what's happening in your community, what some of the opportunities are, where you are, share some ideas. That's where I was hoping we would go with this. But are there any questions or comments on what I've shared so far? Questions, comments? A cool tool. At Lake Chambers Secret in particular, our funding is through NOAA to a certain degree and workforce development is high on that list, especially with funding that's coming through as well. So I'm intrigued to look a little bit more at that one. I think it's a little bit outside of our realm of like construction engineering type thing. So I'd like to dive in more to that website. Very cool. I think that's it for questions, great. Okay, I'm going to throw my questions to you up here. And I'm hoping that you all can just take a moment to think about, okay, what's happening in your community that that could help develop a climate workforce? So what things do you already know about? What are the needs in your community for further building a climate workforce and who should be involved in finding the solutions? And then I'd like to have a conversation about that. And when I say community, there's so many different ways you could slice and dice that that might be your work community. It might be the physical community where you live. It might be any other communities you're involved with, faith-based or you know, service, service clubs or you know, whatever those pieces are that are in your life. And if it, if we have some, do we have some post-it notes and some markers that we could pass out to folks? Give people a couple minutes. And what I was thinking is if you can write ideas, write one for post-it note that you have for these three questions and then we'll go through and we'll talk about them afterwards. So I am having a little trouble hearing you all. So if I'm, I guess if you can speak up, that would be great. And if I can't hear you, I'll let you know. Okay, so I'm getting a call off. So Kara is able to put our thoughts up on a working document. So yeah, that's my plan is to use post-it notes to keep track of some of these. But I welcome any, you know, conversation. And I will say that this is actually really useful to me too. I'm hoping to help you share ideas or ask you to share ideas with one another. And we're still in the gathering of ideas space as well, both in terms of what's happening and in terms of where, you know, things might go for the next legislative session where there might need to be more funding, where there might be great things that we should be looking at. So I'm grateful for anything that you have to share today. So the first question I asked is what's happening in your community that can help develop the climate workforce? Where do we start there? I'm wondering if folks have anything to share. Hi. Okay, can you hear me, Kara? I can. Okay, great. Why is this a community issue at all? Why is it a community issue? Why is it a community issue at all? Towns have a lot on their plates. The state is trying to reach a goal. Why doesn't the state, Weatherization Mobile just drive around the street ringing their bell, giving that ice cream and say, we'll come and put in your water here while we're at it. You know, the state is doing that for the lower income folks. The Weatherization Assistance program provides free weatherization and recently they have gotten funding that allows them to also, at the same time, when appropriate, replace heating plants and water heaters for heat pump hot water heaters and to do additional work that allows all that to happen, because sometimes you can't weather it as if the roof is leaking, for example, but they have to find the people to do the work and so they're struggling to find the people to do the work even though they have a fair amount of funding right now for that work. So the question is where do we find those people who are willing to step into that hot, dusty attic and do the work? They also have recently increased how much they pay per hour, which will hopefully be helpful in finding and retaining workers, because I think it's going up by about $3 an hour, which is a pretty big jump starting July 1st, but even so it's hard to find the people. Where do we find the people? So I took it for the community aspect. I'm thinking of Lake Champlain Sea Grant and I'm thinking in particular my PEOPLE Supervisor Up has really focused on salt and salt reduction in Vermont or the basin in total and it's interesting because it's got to be the road crews and what we're realizing is it's very hard to get a hold of road crew individuals for many reasons, but that she is leading salt summits that in the off season, during summer time and things like that, where road crews aren't necessarily starting to salt by having them come and talk about, hey, why is it important to calibrate your machine and X, Y, or Z? So that's something that's happening, but I think then when I took it as community as well in my personal community in Bolton, it's we have extremely bad erosion problems. We are on a mountain, our road and so our road crews are just they're sanding and I just even living there a year and a half, I've seen that the road has already increased probably three, four, five inches and that's causing issues in our personal driveway and so I think the amount of time that they graze, I think for such a small town that they're almost like looking for things to do is like let's graze the road. I think that there's opportunities out there to work with road crews to know why you only add X amount of salt or X amount of gravel or things like that because you can see the sides of our road right now are just encompassed by loads and loads of sand which obviously are going to go into the streams or rivers and have exponential impacts later down the road. So two different views of the community aspect but I think road crews are an important aspect of that climate workforce that you can kind of target to hopefully do some sort of education set of things. So through the Sea Grant program you're able to do some of those trainings, you're able to provide them. Yeah, yes and no. Obviously we're a smaller organization too so you can only do so many trainings and there's between New York and Vermont because that's all part of the basin that's quite a few towns it's like 300 plus towns so you can't get 300 towns new with each and every single road crew that you try and broke them all in but it doesn't quite work out that way. And I've heard similar things about it can be hard to you have to find the right timing for the training and it can be hard to if you're already trying to ramp up your workforce say in weatherization which is what I'm more familiar with and yet you want to train those people you also want to be fully having them in the field doing their work so it can be it can be a hard balance to to find. What else is going on in in communities that can help develop the workforce that you're aware of anything? Yeah, I was also thinking of outreach activities especially at the university we do a lot of outreach and it starts with K through 12 and I'm wondering what the age is of the folks who can start off in projects like weatherization so for example Ken high school juniors and seniors take it on as a as a summer job and get into the profession that way and start out and make some good money over the summer and then find their path as you pointed out earlier. And I know Sheldon farms has been doing just an excellent job with training educators and helping them bring more clever education in schools and universities in just excellent best practices and models. So in terms of training Yeah, I think those are both really good points. Sorry, I can't always think and type at the same time. So if I pause awkwardly, that's what's going on. It is interesting finding the bite-sized pieces that could be carved off for a summer job because again you can't train someone in a you know it takes three months to train someone to be a full weatherization worker but there may be specific aspects of that job or there may be other jobs that are climate jobs that could go to youth and definitely starting training younger. I think that that's a really good point as well. It's not just when students are when young people are 18. There's a need for that training earlier on and later on. It's not just the 18 to 25 year olds either who need the training. Any other thoughts on this one? The town of Bethel is with the Ibaraki Chikyu River's planning regional planning commission is rezoning to make it possible for more multifamily dwellings and smaller properties along the roadways. Hopefully because we're finding that you can offer somebody a job but they don't can't find some place to live and then they can't find child care. So but so we're working to rezone so that we can hopefully provide housing for people. I would also comment that our contractors in the area local building people they're booked for the next year and a half. There are not enough of them to do the work that they are now as seeking to do let alone weatherizing 100 year old houses like I live in. So that's a real issue. This is a real issue. And it's a chicken or egg situation. We need the housing to have more workers to build more housing to it does feel that way sometimes like how do we how where's the leverage point where we can start. But I think that that is a really good example of the rezoning for more multifamily dwellings and I've heard of more multifamily dwellings being put in in some areas around Chittenden County as well. I think it's really important and hope that the standards that are in place on those buildings mean that they get built so they don't need to be weatherized later because they get done right the first time around. But that's great. Any other thoughts on this one. We have a new community center serving Washington County and Barry or at least some portion of Washington County. So that is an opportunity to provide that's a community center. I mean career center an opportunity to provide training for high school age students in all sorts of building related careers. Yeah and the those career and TechEd centers are doing great work in bringing youth along. I had the chance when I was with Vermont Energy Education program to travel around and do sort of a listening tour at some of the career TechEd centers and it was interesting to see how vastly different they are. The one in Newport sends more students to college than the actual high school there does. It's massive and it's like it looks like a college and then there's some that are very small and they're sort of serving more of the students who are struggling in the traditional educational setting and I'm hopeful that we'll continue to grow those so that they serve whoever wants to be there and to be learning in that way at a slightly younger age is sort of hands on and technical work. All right. How about this second question. What are additional needs that you know of in your community that could be helpful. Maybe we've already named a lot of those. Any child care workforce. Are there gaps that you know about anything that we didn't name already. Is there I think a gap that constantly comes to mind is not knowing who's doing what already. And so I don't know if I'm reinventing the wheel because that program already exists or do we really generally need new programming or new direction. And especially with the state kind of coming up with the new climate office or the some of the new setup for the climate action plan. Order that might be a good place to house some of these things like the workforce development is in support of the climate and energy and these sectors then could there be a centralized body that at least has an ongoing list of who's doing what. Because there that list is housed is always the question because who's going to maintain it. Yeah. Part of it's in my head and lots of other people's heads but how do you actually make that accessible to to others. Yeah. All right. How about that final question who should be involved in finding solutions. So I was curious the very first quite the very first comment that we heard was it should be shouldn't be on the communities it should be or if I'm I may be paraphrising this wrong. You can correct me I would welcome that but more that the state should be doing more it shouldn't be on the communities. I think I guess my feeling is we're all in this together and we need everybody to be helping to find the community or helping to find the solutions. So I'm curious you know what groups or what what structures might be in place to help find solutions. Was if the state is serious which is not for sure then they need to make this very easy for people to do. People who don't have a lot of time. People who are working you know it can't be like waiting for the cable guy to show up and I got to leave work here. It's got to be easy to the point of of just like raising your hand and people come and do it type thing easier than getting cable and since it's a state goal the state should have its people move it. Now there is a lot of to me work that can be done by churches or the capstone agency or you name it to explain to people like listen they're for real they'll come to your house they don't rip out your wall if you don't want to you know that's your favorite window whatever the things are to do that kind of explaining about the program but from the user side I think we make these things complicated when they need to be literally like a 911 call 811 and they say and I give you the address and you come and do it while they're at work and they come home and there's just a new water like or a weatherization whatever it is it's got to be super super easy. Yeah I hear you it's hard to coordinate all of those things yeah and it's hard for anyone to know everything that's going on especially if it's not your day job and everything that's available to people there is a new program of finance financial and energy navigators out of the community action programs which I think is a fabulous model I'm very excited about capstone community action and Barry is sort of coordinating it but all of the community action programs around the state have someone who's been hired to help coach people the financial both finances and energy so what can they do to save money but in particular looking at their home and transportation needs etc and those people will be well versed in all of the different programs that are happening but you really need that across the board that's mainly going to be for low and moderate income people you need it for people at all at all levels of of the spectrum and for landlords because a lot of people obviously don't own their own or we can't make those choices for themselves necessarily any other thoughts on that question or any other thoughts in general I know it's the end of a long day and I'm sitting looking at you on a screen but I'd love to hear if you have any other thoughts about climate workforce the needs or the opportunities that you're aware of that you'd be interested in sharing with one another I think it's just important to find partnerships you know even the reason I'm here at this conference is that even though my background specialty might not necessarily be in hazard resilience we're looking for the partnership saying hey we've got the funds and the resources to be the moderator and run that Zoom call in that web series and you're the one that's giving out EPA grant funding right now to municipal officials we'll find municipal officials to come listen to that webinar but I'm not going to present on that and that's not my specialty and so just that partnership of you can't carry everything yourself but it does take effort to make the partnership and it can't be a one-way street but you also need people to pick up those phone calls are put in the effort too or have the same schedule as you you know the list goes on and on where potential hurdles can be yeah I think one of the themes that I'm hearing from you all is around communication communication and partnerships to me there there's a similarity there it's it's the how do you know where the information is coming from how do you know how to get good information how do you know who's doing what so that you can call on them and know who to reach out to does that sound like it's kind of a theme a theme in the room it is but there's also the balance with there's too much information you know we some of websites including where we're sitting today and one of the issues with websites is that everything's on it which means you can't find anything and it's I think everyone struggles to find that balance how do you hand out that information but do it in a clear and concise way when you're trying to convey 40,000 different messages and it goes back to Kevin's point of we have people we're a lot of us are just trying to make it through the day and we only have so much mental capacity to face what's in front of us and now you're asking you to go chase down even something as simple as putting in a website to find somebody to come take care of something that's not my immediate need and I think when we talk about communication it just it's that that's that hard balance how do you communicate everything you have to communicate in a way that you're not overwhelming people who are already overwhelmed it is I like the ice cream truck approach and you know what I mean like it's ridiculous as it sounds so like if you're out in front of my house and you're saying I'm gonna come in and do an energy audit I'm gonna be like okay if I have to put it on my calendar as conscientious and says I am as a person I'm going to struggle to do that people want to do good things they want to avail themselves of the of all of these opportunities they just don't have the individual capacity to do so I know the problem I don't have a solution but I think that's the balance we're trying to find yeah so it's not just communication it's it's again going back to that you got to make it really really easy and I think part of the communication piece is also that it really does come down to human beings you know we can have all of this these cool tools like when I showed you earlier and we can have all of these resources but a lot of it comes down to who can I actually call up and ask the question because I trust them so I guess that's part of what we need to build up is those those resources and how do we make it as simple as possible and if I should as an example most people do not know that the American Red Cross will put in smoke detectors for free I didn't know that most people and it's not across the board but most do I happened upon the only reason I found that out is because we lived in an area where actually the fire department had a grant to put them in I got our whole house done for free so I moved which we do all the time and I started asking around and I accidentally found the Red Cross program that came in and probably put in $50 worth of smoke detectors in the house that never had a smoke detector I'm exceptionally brilliant it took me time to figure that out I started telling people about it and they're like I didn't I didn't know I didn't know again and if you ask the American Red Cross they'll tell you oh we tell everybody so it's just that practical they were just driving down the street and said would you like us to go bring in the boat I was like Kevin's idea I think it's the answer to everything I'm serious because if we need the person to call the Red Cross we've lost about it yeah we need the Red Cross to show up in their driveway on Saturday morning and say we'll play with your kids don't worry about it here's a biscuit for you dog we are coming in just take the water heater off the truck you know it'll be an hour boom we got 80,000 of these things to do in the next seven years for us or 100,000 it is it is national guard mobilization it is not develop a program hope you make the call and do the website right but we need the people do the work too so I mean part of me is wondering like are there people who would come out of retirement to do some of these and maybe it's not the installing the weatherization but maybe it's the person driving the ice cream truck for weatherization right or the the you know what I mean like are there people who could do some of this hand-holding and talking to people and letting people know what's happening who might not otherwise want to be in the workforce that's an idea it just came up with from listening to you there's a program AmeriCorps seniors I used to run and RSVP it's AmeriCorps seniors it's a nationwide program that the government is piling money into right now and it is a group of volunteers 55 and older who serve their community that is a and again though each of those programs is individually run and they have their individual needs it is finding that yes there's our answer that and then they can go out and do what they do best is find volunteers and with certain skill sets but then you're going to have a liability issue the attorney there's going to be a liability issue so again it's that whole goes back to the state is in the best position to make that happen because they can use their resources to make all those connections and make the program work problem solved what's that program called again it's RSVP it's RSVP so retired and senior volunteer program they just changed their name because of course they extend money and main changes all the time and it's AmeriCorps seniors so if you if you follow that they and there is one there are seven number one that is a really cool talk because I've been thinking about galvanizing retired engineering colleagues and thinking about needs of so Kevin I talked to you this morning just in terms of municipal municipalities that struggle with finding the trained professionals and it's not even to do the final project which could go to a formal technical firm but to do the scoping of what where are the gaps what do we need and what's the timeline what's the budget and just get some of that initial planning done which hopefully minimizes liability and I didn't know about this program so it's really exciting to hear but it could be that you know like I really colleagues who are retired but not they just don't want the whole day time to the desk but they're still interested in helping and especially for community work that's great thank you that's also a large summer job for college students if communities can afford that right now we can afford a lot on the money that's floating around to ARPA yes and no yes and no right as a select board member we need to be incentivized to use the ARPA money for this crisis we're not being it's too easy to use the ARPA money to maintain the roads and keep doing what we've always been doing without hiring somebody to do the research into electric vehicles for dump trucks and and snow plows and sidewalk plows we don't have the staff that can do that we don't have volunteers who say I got a day job I can't do it we need to hire people at the community level who can watch for the grants get the money you know tell us well there's some ARPA money here you can use for this right now we're trying to figure what to do with ARPA but it's it's not going to go to climate change unless there is some real incentivizing for local communities to use that ARPA money in ways they that it's money that they would not have had otherwise they can keep on keep it on that's great but it's not going to solve crime it's kind of the ice cream truck for villagers right and there's I don't know how much the Vermont clean cities coalition is reaching out to communities and I don't know how connecting ARPA is but I know they have information on some of the technologies you were talking about in terms of you know the electric street sweeper or whatever those pieces are that's one of the information sources that's good feedback thank you I would say also working with the college age love look I know Seagram in particular has gotten funding through NOAA and above to fund students they're not going to use the correct terminology the families that they're first-generation college age students so not only is it then paying for their internship throughout the school year but it's then those students showing what programs they're interested in and Seagram then works trying to again that partnership affect to reach out to people in green infrastructure throughout saying hey we got this intern they're part of our program you know here's their cover letter this is their background and then because the student has said it has expressed interest in that field it's not them necessarily going and looking for that job it's through the organization saying hey reach out to these people will pay like Seagram literally pays their internship but the internship is through another organization that specializes in what that student is interested in so that's where that partnership comes into play if we've got the funding to pay them but we don't have that internship here what's your where can you as a green infrastructure X Y or Z get a college age student to come do that etc yeah thanks for that idea as well there are probably also a lot of these jobs that do not require college education and a six-figure debt load when you graduate so how do we incentivize people to not feel second-class or less than because they choose to be a contractor or a heating heater installer or a plumber electrician I mean those are maybe we make them college courses and then the trades that we need are not necessarily those who are going to be college graduates we need to learn how to value that absolutely I completely agree with you I think we're supposed to be done now and I don't at 515 I'm not sure if that's you I'm happy to keep talking but I also don't want to keep you sitting inside if you would like to go and enjoy this beautiful evening I will throw up here my email address scara at eanbt.org would get to me and I'm really happy to continue any conversations to invite anyone into you know some of the conversations I know are happening or just to answer questions if more ideas come to you if more if specific questions I am a person who connects people it's one of the things that I like to do so welcome continued conversation and I'm really grateful that you stuck around for this conversation and sorry I couldn't have been in the room there with you thank you thank you thank you so much Cara I think it's a really productive conversation so thank you again