 administration and we're here today to talk to you about, you might have heard that we received $2.7 billion in American rescue plan money from the federal government and we're here to talk to you about how we hope that we can deploy this money, watch this money into your region, we're actually trying to get it throughout the state but we want to make sure that everybody has the people opportunity to access that money and try to make strategic investments in your region to help really set you on course to be very successful as we climb our way out of this pandemic that I don't want to take a walk down memory lane on but we will, I'm going to in a second I want to head over to Erica but after Erica has a few minutes to say a few words, we will hand this over to the folks sitting at the table. I'll tell you a little bit about the programs that they have to offer within their departments or agencies. Some of it is specific, ARPA money but other areas are funds that might grade well with that money or other monies that they think that folks in the room might want to hear about and really once we get through that we're going to hurry through that a little bit because ultimately our goal is to hear from you. We want to hear what you're all thinking about, we want to make sure that we're addressing barriers that you may be feeling in your community accessing the money more to hear about projects that you're thinking about doing and give you an opportunity. Again, we're here to serve your needs and we're really happy to be in Rochester, we're happy to be in Windsor, Warner, Windsor County this afternoon when we started the morning in Springfield so it's again a beautiful day to be here but Erica, I want to thank you for being a great partner and posing as a part of giving you the opportunity to say a few words. I'm only to say a few words because the big draw today are these folks and it's a great opportunity to have some FaceTime with people you might not normally get a chance to have FaceTime with. I'm Erica Hoffman-Keese, I'm the Executive Director of the Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation. We're the regional development corporation that serves this area. Our service area is Orange County and Northern Windsor County so they were with my southern colleague, Bob Flint, in Springfield this morning at Springfield Regional Development Corporation and I very nicely asked if they could add a Northern Windsor trip, a stop to their trip. They're supposed to be in Randolph and Janney-Murray to get snowed out so I think the sun is blessing Rochester today with its beautiful weather. After today, if you don't have all the information that you want after you go out of the session, one of the things that regional development corporations do is act as a conduit and a liaison to get access so we aren't here. You don't have to come to us. You'll be free to come to any of these people directly but if you've lost a number or a name or just have a question about who you should be talking to, our office is there to serve you on that purpose in that role. So a few things before I hand it over, I want to say thank you again. This is a beautiful hall. Here's Hall and Leslie, I know you might want to help but I want to thank you for all the amazing goodies back here. If you're all hungry, thirsty, just move back here. Thank you. Thank you. You're all really shining brightly here in this alley. It's a really great welcome for us so thank you. And I wanted to mention that you're going to meet the folks sitting at the table here where there's a few other folks from the state that are with us today so we're going to give you a quick chance to say hello. We have someone from the governor's office. My folks are Tommy Gardo, assistant state library. I'm under Scott's office and special projects and working with a lot of these folks driving a lot of different projects throughout the state in regards to our federal funding. Hello, Abby. Hi, Abby Sherman, executive director for the Vermont Accounting Department. Good afternoon, Brian Tull, buildings and general services, state energy program manager, Mr. Fitch. Marie, do you want to introduce yourself? Marie, is that the view on the water type planers for the Department of Environmental Conservation? Are there any legislators in the room? Okay, I didn't know who it was. Okay, I didn't know somebody that snuck in, so, okay. So, with that, so, Todd, I need to pick on you first since you don't initially have $1.00 specifically to talk about but I'm going to turn it over to Todd from Presentations. Thank you. I'm Todd East and I'm the director of the Marlboro Rose Program. I'm here to represent B-Trans and as you heard, B-Trans doesn't have anything specific to our federal funding so we're figuring out if we're looking forward to all of the IFJ-8 funds that are going to be coming down. So, in regards to that, I do have some suggestions some information that might help as far as different programs that might bring well with the other programs that are down the line or something that might help in the future as far as IFJ-8. I have a summary that we traditionally call Show Me the Money and this is the summary of all of the state projects or state programs to help fund some transportation projects or quality projects. But in pet projects, which I'll call your attention to because I just opened up as far as the bike and pet there's several different ways that you can apply for that through either scoping or design construction which is also small projects. I also have a summary of a number of federal projects that are already in existence that would help with some of this and one that I thought might be of interest is this very, very potentially large plant that helped with comparing for some of the IFJ-8 production around things like that and one of the things that my program does if you're not familiar with the model of the roads we focus on municipalities and as far as anything that has to do with the roadway networks one of the ways that we've been encouraged to try to help support you guys with all of the special funds coming is to build and train programs that might help you with grant writing and things like that so that is exactly what we're doing we just recently rolled out a basic grant writing program the next one that we'll have is some of the anticipated pitfalls that you might experience or might trip over as far as filling out some of the IFJ-8 federal competitive grants and so we're trying to get out ahead of that and prepare you guys for that while you share up with your pencils yeah sure hi boy Josh Handler, the commissioner of the modern department of housing between development see a lot of friends in the room friendly faces I did live in Rochester for 14 years so know the area fairly well Alex Farrell with Deputy Commissioner of Housing and Development we're both here to one, tell you about your programs but two, listen to what is going on what your needs are where you're running into any road blocks I'm sure you've heard there's a challenge in housing in Vermont right now I think other places but there's not enough of it and I hope you guys are affordable enough for the folks living here so this has been a struggle sort of decades in the making really but we do have a number of new funding sources and new programs to try to help provide some incentive for communities and some funding for builders and developers I'm going to just mention a couple of the programs some of the lower barrier ones that are easier to access sort of on the smaller scale one apartment, one house sort of scale and one of the larger ones has been the Vermont Housing Improvement Program it's been around just a couple years up to $50,000 grant per unit it's been moving back online and serving affordable housing when we have affordable rates it can be to build an accessory dwelling unit an ADU we are adding on a separate apartment onto an existing single family home it can be adding other properties to be renovating a property doesn't have to be housing in the past but converting it to housing something that's in existence that you need some repair money to bring it up to code weatherize it and that's up to $50,000 grant 20% match for the property per unit with conditions to serve folks in need of affordable housing and that program is I think we're already up to about 550 units that have been created with that program statewide it's accessed through the regional housing groups the homeownership centers so this region kind of touches a number of them but you're in Windsor County so it's the wind of Windsor housing trust is the entity that serves the two counties they are the ones that directly work with the property owners the landlords helping through the process helping meet the conditions and a good thing about this program is there's ongoing funding there's rolling commissions there's no due date it's sort of a ply if you think you have an opportunity to provide more housing in your community another one is brand new it's a manufactured home improvement and repair program MERS is the acronym and it provides small grants to folks that live in manufactured housing to mobile home parks there's a lot of folks of lower income that are living in homes that are in really tough shape and this is a grant program up to $15,000 most of these grants are $5,000 to do immediate repairs or fixed windows, leaky roofs things like that repair doors, front steps this program lost in February and the first good news I heard about it was we were able to approve there were two elderly households very low income they had lost their entire this program was able to approve the funding to replace their whole heating system within four hours the same day so really quick results on this have a sheet up here that has all the links in program descriptions that you can take so those are two lower barrier programs that I think folks should be aware of under that mobile home improvement program there's also funding for long repair some of these mobile home parks have vacant and abandoned homes on them lots that are in disrepair it needs to be foundation put down or new electrical broad or cleaned up there's also grants to the park owner to do that to make these more healthy safe living environments as well as homeowner grants for the foundations if you place a new manufactured home on a foundation it's going to age better it's going to appreciate it's not going to have the same problems that older mobile homes used to heave and create problems the new manufactured housing is energy efficient, it's energy star lower utility bills so really try to provide some access to folks that live in that type of housing need that type of housing it's a affordable way for someone to become a homeowner in Vermont some of our other programs are much larger multifamily think 30 units plus sort of properties and they are with our partners like the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board or the Vermont Housing and Finance Agency they're listed on here they have some long standing programs and then hundreds of millions of dollars added to them with ARPA money to help support new housing development much of that housing also dedicated to those ex-conformalists trying to help folks secure permanent safe housing as well as recovery housing, folks going through those struggles so there's lots of new sources out there some of this can be pretty complicated and daunting so seek us out, ask us questions if you know anyone that is trying to build housing you think there's opportunities in the tower or in the region the last thing I'll leave you with is really for all this money to be put to best use and to see sort of more housing being built across the state to serve our residents really starts a lot with planning back to your community planning for housing growth you know adopting zoning and bylaws that are pro housing growth in the right locations seeking certain designations to allow some of the regulatory areas to be lessened also incentives into those smart growth areas so we have designation programs there's a link up here for that they really help communities plan for the housing that they need, they want you've got to do some legwork up front to make it more affordable for your home builders your developers because right now in a situation in Vermont where there's lots of funding to sort of help folks at the lowest income levels subsidize housing to be built and then there's a market rate housing that folks that are wealthier can afford and find a house for themselves to have something built but sort of in that middle there really is a broken market right now it costs more to build a home that should sell for $300,000 you can't build it for that it's going to cost four or $500,000 but really the population needs homes that are more of the $300,000 range and that being said, it's high I bought a house in Rochester 15 years ago but that workforce middle income, missing income missing middle income sort of bracket that is really above the affordable programs to support affordable housing and where people can't yet compete in the market because the market is so overpriced because there's such a scarcity in housing that's driven up costs so there's some new programs hopefully we'll get passed in this year's budget to incentivize that type of building as well so please reach out to Alex or I will be here talk to you about housing talk to people about housing all the time and if you're involved or you know someone that's trying to build housing, thank them we often try to look at developers is it a bad word in Vermont I'll tell you people trying to build housing they need support and assistance and they need incentives to actually pull it off to serve the population in the type of housing our communities need so thank you I'm Brett Long, I'm the deputy commissioner of the Department of Economic Development and we're actually a sister department with Josh's group underneath Secretary Curley's agency of a commerce and community development and our job is really to try to improve the lives of Vermonters by listening to supportive and advocating for businesses trying to develop a business community across Vermont and before we had started a couple of folks mentioned to me some of the issues that you're confronting here in Rochester potentially losing your market having a high school close and I probably should start off I will start off by saying a lot of what we do is facilitation we hear about those kinds of issues in small towns across the state you know we've seen situations there was a situation fairly recently in the northern part of the state where a group came together and bought out a market that was going to be closed and turned it into a call a heavy lift, a lot of work somebody's got a spearheaded I certainly understand those issues but there are alternatives and I encourage you to reach out to us or Josh's group to see what we can do to help facilitate we're actually involved in a project right now in the southern Vermont where they're trying to re-use an existing high school that high school has actually been making for 10 or 15 years a long time so the message there is try to reach out if you think there's something we can do to help with the issues that are confronting we're specifically here today to talk about ARPA federal funding opportunities and through COVID our department and I think there's different assistance programs that we have administered we currently got one running right now it's called the community recovery and reinvestment program or CRRP it's a very large program for us and for the state it's $40 million we have awarded about a quarter of the money we're in the midst of trying to get approval to award another roughly a quarter of that money and a quarter or two we expected to have about half of the money awarded but we're still accepting applications there are four or five different tracks for financing in that program one is trying to support the development of childcare facilities another is trying to develop affordable housing and to try to differentiate between what we're doing and what Josh's group does we're trying to support affordable housing developers who don't have access to some of the larger or well-established sources of financing so they tend to be smaller projects in more remote locations so lots of information about the affordable housing track on our website we also have a track to try to support the development of businesses specifically in qualified census tracts specifically in Rochester but we could certainly communicate about it and then there's also a track for developing water and wastewater projects when those projects are tied to affordable housing or a business expansion so a couple of several different tracks and what we're trying to do there is focus on things that were most directly impacted by COVID childcare was very heavily impacted by COVID and we have the residual need for people to be able to get childcare to be able to go back to work so I say it's a 40 million dollar project program and awards can be up to a million dollars or 20 percent of the project costs so the idea is we're really trying to find projects where they've been percolated for a while there's a lot of work done already but we can provide the funding or the financing to be able to get people started out the next thing I want to talk about is our department acts as essentially the marketing arm of a federal agency called the Northern Reorders Regional Commission and BRC who also has just kicked off their annual program and this is a program that's available in the four northern tier states of New York, Vermont, New York and Maine in Vermont it's available across the state in the other states in only in certain counties and it's a program that Senator Levy has pushed very hard during his tenure and this year the amounts have been increased to 11 million dollars so a substantial program it's targeted at infrastructure specifically things like transportation infrastructure telecommunications renewable energy business and workforce development healthcare tourism and recreation but it's not specifically available to businesses available to nonprofits and municipalities so a lot of what we see is where municipality is the applicant for funding to support some kind of a need in those other areas oftentimes supporting a business expansion or development I don't know if I need to say a lot more about it than that except that it's a two step process the first step involves submitting a letter of interest that describes the project gets into only a little bit of detail those will be evaluated and then if it's a priority project that project can be invited to submit a full application the other thing I wanted to mention is we administer a number of other programs but one in particular that's I think particularly relevant especially in talking about the closure of your high school is a Brownfield redevelopment or radiation program we're a little great for the high school specifically excellent but our department can make funds available through the agency in connection with the agency and natural resources to try to help clean up remediate Brownfield situations you know the reason our department's involved is it's specific to try to foster economic development that's my program, thanks if I stand in both Latin America hi, hi, I'm Stephanie Smith I'm the State of the House of Regions officer at one of the agency management and who remembers I don't know what to say right now okay, so mine's my advantage is probably around producing future impacts from flooding so prior to Hartwell that was on the FEMA side there's two big programs there I'll tell you a little bit about one is the hazard mitigation grant program that's funding that follows disasters in the state so following our $32 million in our program to spend anywhere in the state to reduce future impacts is tied to whatever disaster it was and when we have disaster funding in the state we get a cut of that to reduce our future risks to look forward and see what we can do to prevent the next one we can't prevent the storm we can prevent the impacts so that's one program the other big program on the FEMA side that I wanted to mention is the building resilience infrastructure and communities program so that's FEMA's annual funding program across the country to do some of that to reduce risk risk production so that's the FEMA side following Irene we became really clear that we couldn't in the long meet the full need of flood production without doing all the types of projects that we wanted to do with just that kind of budget specific requirements that don't necessarily relate to the length of the flood so for a few years now there's been interest in having a state program when our program became available we were able to create that program so our state program is supported in a community fund so we're in the second year of funding for that program we have just under 9 million left to spend and I'm hoping to have most of that allocated by this beginning summer so trying to do things pretty quickly but helping reduce the risk to flood events so the types of projects and I mentioned the three different programs you guys don't need to know which program makes the most sense I don't expect you to you don't need to be on various deadlines but reach out to us I also from the back of the room here have Lisa Cole and Steve Plippi who are both on my team and we'd be more than happy to help walking through this from the first step to the end so in terms of the types of projects that we can do across all of the funding we can start at a we know we have a problem scale so looking at the coping study we've done a few village-wide studies we're looking at what are different areas where the river is constricted, what types of projects are going to have the best impact for reducing the flood risk so that means we can help you in terms of that risk and increase it in an efficient way we can look at specific structures like culverts or bridges and I might need to pick up sites all things in design or funding so we've done a few of those across the state that we're removing fill allowing the river to access it's floodplain and the problem is so that it's not impacting our communities and we can do property buyouts so if there's a property that's pretty heavily impacted and or has risk to be pretty heavily impacted we can purchase those properties and make sure that they stay in greater more spaces for utility so if we're removing that space it can access it but not we can do median parcel conservation as well so there's a site that's developable but if we at the town hall that are recognizing there shouldn't be anything there because the river access is that site once in a while we can help reduce our flood as well so those are our programs but I encourage you to reach out and let us know if we can help you reduce your flood risk Good afternoon everyone my name is Kathy Nell now I'm a state librarian and I'm here to tell you that my library is going to be administering the first of them is is through the U.S. Treasury and it's specifically our book funding so if you remember think back to the beginning of the pandemic do you remember when your library closed raise your hand quite a lot of folks here in Vermont had libraries closed during the pandemic largely because the facilities were older and they weren't set up really well for social distancing because here in the state we actually saw libraries open and then they had to close again when it got cold and they couldn't have circulating air to meet the requirements from the health department for the local health officials so we learned that our libraries have some facilities issues that actually prevented them from serving against that center that you all needed in your community not just to get folks which you think about a lot with the library but you also go to the library to use the internet so while some people in the community you were able to work from home you were able to go to school from home your kids could go to school from home you could go to the doctors from home community members who don't have the internet in their homes or who don't have a device to use the internet in their homes or broadband when they would try to go to a meeting during the pandemic with the library closed did that work out very well for them? No, not at all so this funding is really geared toward a specific hardware response and the US Treasury has funding that is really carved out for public libraries and other facilities where people are able to access the internet for the purposes of their education and telepathy so the state of Vermont has applied to you $16.4 million of those US Treasury funds to support public libraries in our state in ensuring that they have facilities that are really able to continuously provide service to you so some of the things that might qualify would be if the library has a significant issue with the building that would potentially prevent it from opening so we envision that this could be something like an HVAC replacement that it could be an ADA access issue where some people actually still just on a normal day forget about COVID but they really can't get into the building because there may be steps and they need a ramp it could be something where there's a gaping hole in your roof and sadly we do get the department of libraries here about libraries in the state that have a hole in the roof or a hole in the floor or a staircase that's not working so we're still waiting for approval from Treasury and we're still going back and forth to that exactly what this program will look like but those are the types of projects that might qualify for that $16.4 million you might have heard we have a lot of libraries in our state we know of at least 185 of them I think there are more hiding out there so we know that the need for improvements to these buildings many of which are over 80 years old over 100 years old and there's a significant need for funding that a lot of towns especially small and rural communities haven't had the money to set aside locally in their municipality to support their municipal public library or their incorporated public library so about half and half so the department was encouraged by Senator Lakey's office to apply for Congressional Directed Spending so we did that and we were really excited in December to find out that we will be receiving $10 million of Congressional Directed Spending to support public libraries in Vermont it could be a municipal public library or an incorporated public library both are eligible for these funds to make capital project improvements that are going to help the community to kind of bolster their resources to ensure that their library continues to be able to function that the building that any repairs that are needed can be done and that the building can be maintained by the community so the department plans we have a total of $26.4 million that we are going to be administering it's exciting for us at the department of libraries because that's a really great opportunity for libraries we'd like to distribute the funds throughout the state right now we are conducting something that is called a needs assessment so if you talk to your local library and they know that they have an extension until the end of the day on the 15th to submit their needs assessment and the results are going to help the department to build out the grant program for both of these upcoming grant opportunities we'll do one grant application and like our colleagues we don't want you to have to figure out which grant you qualify for let us figure that out we'll have one grant application that we will score and we'll figure out which projects different communities qualify for and these will be competitive grants we anticipate that there's a lot of need but we really want to be sure that we distribute the funds equitably around the state and it's really important for us to be serving specifically our small rural communities with that congressionally directed spending money through the HUD through HUD so for more information soon the department will be doing webinars and we've got two flyers up here that you can read about each of the different programs you can also go to the department of libraries website there's a little spotlight image and you can illustrate to the capital projects patrons thank you good afternoon so I see some faces that I remember so after 2013 I worked for the Vermont agency we did the accelerated fast forward Rochester on 73 so I worked with this community before you're an amazing community to work with so today I'm the commissioner of building general services at the time I was one of the project managers for the Vermont agency of transportation but a great community to work with and it's great to see some faces that look familiar today so department of buildings and general services primarily serves internal customers so we're internal to state government but we have a couple of external programs one is all of our information and welcome centers we manage all of those we have an energy office and in the last couple of years we've been trying really hard to take our internal program and make it external for municipalities so basically we started this program in 2012-2013 the goal of the program is to make state buildings more energy efficient and by doing that we're also reducing our operational costs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions so it's really a win-win and we're really excited last year we reflected for a 45 million dollar program to make municipal buildings more energy efficient and resilient so this program is just for you which is pretty awesome so how many people here today represent a municipality? okay we got a couple of hands and then there was one person but how many people here today are from a regional planning commission okay so all eyes on this gentleman over here and afterwards all race to him so this program basically has four components and so the first component is the regional planning commissions are receiving 2.4 million dollars to help expand capacity and provide direct services to all of their municipal towns what that means is they have been hired basically to do training, outreach help with grant application assistance and also technical assistance so really their job is to walk you through this program so if you think about it the EGS group oversees the whole program then the RPCs are helping administer the program and then they're working directly with the town so it's kind of the triangle that we've set up we've already gone out and so the next step which we're in now also very exciting is we have up to $4,000 mini grants they're very easy to apply for the barrier is really really low and what those $4,000 grants are for is to either build an energy committee within your town or maybe have gatherings within your town to talk more about energy efficiency and resilience and what that means to you in terms of town operations or even your own home which is all used for planning so you can hire a consultant to come and help identify candidate buildings for you help you start filling out applications and then there are some other things that we're going to be doing in buildings as well that they can help administer so that opened up about a month ago we're accepting applications on a rolling basis again the barrier is super low for those and there's no match requirements so really easy to get those money the next step and this one is really important if you want to leverage the funding for building assessments so the goal here is that every community has to do a building assessment on a building that they may want to actually invest dollars into so they're called level one or level two assessments level one is like a walk around assessment does that mean someone's going to come we have consultants that are working for BGS we're going to deploy them through the RPCs so we can deploy them efficiently and they're going to come around the level one is a walk around so they literally walk around the building because I noticed over here on both sides you have some insulation here they're going to look at things like that they're going to look at what your heating source is they're going to look at how weatherized your building is, they're going to do those sorts of things when they come around level two is the same thing as level one but it's more intensive so they're also going to do a lower door test which really shows you where your building is leaky so where it's best to put insulation and they'll do thermal imaging as well to try to look for those cool spots along the wall so it's more labor intensive but it gives you more information about your building so if you have energy bills for the last several years if you have some building plans I would definitely recommend doing the level two but again, if you happen to do level one either one will access you the money so the fourth step is up to $500,000 grant to make your buildings more municipally energy efficient and resilient again, no match requirements we're trying to keep those barriers down we really love again and the goal is we want to help you weatherize we want to help you fuel switch to more renewable heating sources and really what we also want to do is lower down those greenhouse gas emissions but we also want to make your buildings more efficient and by doing so it will be cheaper to heat your building for example so your cost to operate your building should go down as a result of this program so again it's really a big win-win all around so the assessment application should be coming out shortly hopefully in the next four weeks or so again, many grants already out and we're hoping to do the up to $500,000 implementation grants starting this fall so we're really excited about that and I just want to mention too that we have a lot of partners so we mentioned the regional planning commissions we also have efficiency Vermont the Vermont League of Cities and Towns so Kate Buckley loved her she's amazing, she's been doing a lot to support our program there's some information pretty soon about matching funds we'll talk about that in a second and then the last group is the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network so again a lot of partners are helping us get this program off the ground the last thing that I want to mention that's really important and thank you to Deputy Secretary Carter we'll be talking here a little bit this program actually got selected for revenue replacement so originally it was ARPA funds very restrictive in terms of what we could do with it couldn't meet the intent of the bill but it was selected for revenue loss replacement which means now it acts like state dollars not federal dollars and what that does for your community is it allows you to take those dollars and to match it with other federal funding opportunities so by leveraging this program you're going to be able to unlock federal dollars so a great example of that is my partner here at Libraries so you could take our money and invest into a library because mine acts like state and hers acts like federal dollars so lots of opportunities for stacking we call it stacking and again Katie Buckley is going to be pointing out some information to municipalities about how all of that stacking works and those stacking opportunities but we're really excited to bring this program to you so hopefully we get some folks that are happy to have this so far awesome, that's great, thank you so much it's an honor to be here good afternoon Nancy Tabbitts I'm on agency agriculture a couple things I'd like to talk about this program that just recently launched is something called the farm and food workers relief program and this is for farm workers maybe they were working in produce maybe they were milking cows maybe they were in the slaughterhouse there is a one time $600 payment that could go to those workers that began at the the start of the pandemic if you recall back in the pandemic a lot of places were not allowed did not shut down because they were responsible for feeding us fed so that program is available it's a regional program it's being run as an application online it's a pretty simple application it's written by something called PASA out of Pennsylvania P-A-S-A if you google that there's an online portal which you can apply there for that one time $600 payment for working in agriculture whether it be produce, milking cows or in the slaughterhouses I would encourage people to apply early for that there's no deadline I'm rolling in it but when the money goes out the money's done so you'll get your application on that better a couple other programs to think about something called working lands think about someone who earns their living working off the land whether that's in the woods or on the farm could be someone that has a business where they're turning a wood into a value-added product it could be someone that's got firewood they need some infrastructure improvement with that that can extend to the farming agriculture community as well maybe it's a cheese maker maybe it's someone that's working in produce that needs that critical storage capacity maybe they need a freezer that is a granting program that we run through the agency of agriculture another one specific just to dairy something called the northeast dairy business innovation center we received some USDA funds and this is thinking about some new approaches and also building some of the infrastructure that we already have in Vermont that improves that infrastructure so think of cheese makers thinking that maybe someone that maybe wants to transition to another practice on the farm maybe they want to implement more grazing practices maybe they want to improve what's in the milk house we have grants for that but also on the processing side if someone is a cheese maker and they want to improve their capacity that program is run through the Vermont agency of agriculture those are a couple of programs we're also trying to get a few more things to the legislature that would help the infrastructure for agriculture because we're all aimed at trying to feed more of us locally because of the pandemic we realized that the system kind of broke down it was a natural system we need more of a regional approach to what we do but we really need to get more of our capacity with infrastructure storage distribution freezers all of that because we can grow and produce a tremendous amount of food in Vermont but we need that network so we're trying to get a few programs through the legislature that would focus on three areas particularly one is meat one is maple and one is produce those areas that have been historically maybe underserved or have not received those in the past so we're trying to get a program a granting program through the legislature and the only reason we're able to do that is because of the pandemic the programs we've got some more robust funding that's come through and we think that as our theme has always been long term projects are going to help us down the road in those areas and agriculture to feed more of us here but also New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York and the East around for any questions after this and we're going to go to Julie now right we always close out when we talk good afternoon I'm Julie Moore I'm the secretary of natural resources and was going to talk about a few opportunities related to water infrastructure funding that's currently available through the agency as well as some additional opportunities beyond what commissioner Fitch described related to climate action so the agency of natural resources has received nearly 300 million dollars of our funding to invest in water infrastructure projects there are a number of different initiatives I'm going to touch on three that I feel are probably most germane to this part of the state two of them fall under what we call our healthy homes program the first provides direct benefits to low-income promoters who have failed or failing wells and septic systems to replace those systems it's got a sliding scale of payment up to the full cost of replacement for promoters making less than 80% of median household income we have had two rounds of applications so far and received more than 2,000 applications from promoters with failed or failing systems we anticipate another round towards the end of this calendar year individuals have to apply and so anything you can do to get word out to your neighbors that this program exists and encourage them to enroll if they are find themselves in that condition would be great a related program under that healthy homes banner is focused on manufactured housing communities and have been providing grants to work on drinking water systems wastewater systems and drainage systems in MHCs we know that generally the infrastructure in these communities can be challenging and that often times investing in the infrastructure results in a re-increase that residents can't really afford the beauty of these ARPA funds is we're able to provide a higher level of loan forgiveness or cost share than we've ever been able to provide with the traditional programs administered by the agency of natural resources we've done an initial round of funding received applications from 56 MHCs statewide including 6 in Windsor County and a lot of the initial work is doing assessments of the condition of the infrastructure we anticipate another funding round this summer where we will actually put out more money for implementation to help support the construction of those drinking water wastewater and storm water improvement projects that you are aware of manufacturing housing communities in your municipality encourage you to pick up one of these handouts we have an email list for each of the different program initiatives and if folks sign up they'll get pinged every time there is a new funding opportunity the third funding opportunity I wanted to flag is what we're calling our pretreatment initiative as a wastewater engineer this is one that brings particular joy to my heart but what it is is oftentimes particularly breweries distilleries meat processing dairy processing manufacturers produce a really high strength wastewater it has a lot of sort of spent product in it which is challenging for municipal wastewater facilities or on site septic systems to be able to handle effectively the pretreatment program provides grants to those businesses to actually install the necessary practices to knock down the strength of that wastewater our hope is that helps these businesses grow in place and as Anson had indicated in his remarks we know that some of those producers were particularly hard hit by the pandemic so it's sort of a double win we've done an initial round of grants most of them went to breweries and we anticipate announcing additional pretreatment program funding later this summer so again if you're aware of a local business that you think might be interested in this program please have them sign up for our listserv in addition to the water infrastructure investments the state of Vermont is investing about 250 million dollars of its arco funds and climate action initiatives the biggest chunk of that is going into weatherization programs for low income remandiers those programs are being administered through the office of economic opportunity for the department of children and families as part of our low income weatherization assistance program but from moderate income remandiers there are expanded opportunities through efficiency Vermont so it's a great time if you're if you know of people considering weatherization projects to look at those two different funders and see if there might be funding available to support a weatherization project coupled with that is money to help do electric service panel upgrades we know that many of Vermont's older homes aren't ready to plug an electric vehicle or to support a heat pump that you need to often go from 100 amp service to 200 amp service and there are grants available right now through the department of public service commissioner Tierney isn't able to be here this afternoon but to help support homeowners in making those upgrades to their electrical service so that's just a little or a high level overview and would only end before I kick it over to Doug with a plug for the fact that in addition to these federal funds the agency of national resources is slated to receive an additional about $350 million in water infrastructure funding this is as much money as my agency has seen well over the next five years as we saw in the previous 50 so it's really unprecedented the level of funding we have available for drinking water and wastewater projects if you have a community that needs to make an investment in their system the time is now I know that the league of cities and towns Katie Buckley has done a lot of work encouraging communities to look at their ARPA funds as an opportunity to match some of these state dollars and just want to let you know that there really is an unprecedented amount of funding available to support that foundational infrastructure thanks Julie so Douglas Farnham deputy secretary for the administration and it's kind of fun for me because in AOA we don't usually interact with the public most of my job and the job of the deputy secretary is focused on budgeting and contracts and grants and no one wants to talk about that so before I get into my AOA style speech one consequence commissioner Terry not being able to be here she didn't get a chance to talk about the broadband investments that have been part of the employment and Julie just talked about being a lot of money in water the other area where there's a lot of money is in broadband and I think it's not even zero to sixty you know type situation it's more like a zero to two hundred so prior to the pandemic I just didn't have a lot of funds available after assessing all of our other needs to invest a lot in broadband so a million dollars two million those were the types of conversations that we've had pre-pandemic right now there is essentially two hundred and forty five million dollars of federal spending that's being deployed by the Vermont Community Broadband Board and they're doing that through the communication union districts it covers I think 120 out of Vermont's 246 or 247 I forget what the numbers just changed to recently towns but it's like 90% of the towns are in a communication district there's another method for towns that aren't in a communication district but those CUDs as they're called cover most of it and the money is being distributed through that mechanism it also has a very strong methodology for data on which addresses which areas are underserved from a broadband perspective so it is going out to the areas that need it the most and then now there's another federal program where another hundred million dollars is coming down so I urge everyone to be aware of and to participate and to kind of keep an eye on what is happening with the CUDs but there is a structure in place it is moving forward over a hundred million dollars that has already been spent but that is going to be a massive change in Vermont and the access to broadband that our communities have over the next five years most of that money most of that 245 million of it needs to be spent by the end of 2026 so in the next three and a half years there's going to be a pretty dramatic shift in accessibility of broadband and I think we're just starting to see signs of that in some communities we're starting to see some of those signs of what is happening but at this point none of the projects have actually been finished so it is really ramping up right now and I think that access to broadband is an enabler for higher levels of either working remotely instead of having to drive in every day having more business starting out in smaller communities I do think that broadband is going to help with the economic development in our region and then of course there's at least another 100 million we haven't heard back from the feds on if we're getting an additional amount above that 100 million but that will be a little bit longer timeline and so the next five years are going to be really a massive amount of progress in that front and then combined with the weatherization efforts the grid modernization efforts I think public service department certainly has it's a busy time so now shifting more into my AOA kind of general remarks when, just like Secretary Curlie I have no desire to revisit the pandemic but for context Vermont received 1.25 billion of coronavirus early on in the pandemic a lot of that in the timeframe the spend was incredibly short AOA stepped in as a central administrator for that money all the programs were built in all the different departments and agencies and the agency of administration oversaw the program development made sure we were within the federal rules and kind of coordinated the portfolio of spending the decisions on what the spend on were made by the legislature but that 1.25 billion it was spent very well but it was spent on short term needs on helping the healthcare system get through the pandemic on economic support as a former tax economist if you look at how the Vermont economy has weathered the pandemic we actually made it through the pandemic much better than a lot of other states because we did put resources into helping the businesses survive that tough time we did spend our money quickly much more quickly than most other states so that was reactive money and it was spent very well it was spent very quickly 1.15 billion of that 1.25 was spent for the end of 2020 so we were ready to essentially when it was originally set to expire we pretty much had that all spent and we had no uses for all of it the one year extension that helped out a lot of states didn't really change things for us that much it actually shifted small amounts of funding around for us but Vermont really got through that and spent that money fast then our state fiscal recovery came that was 1.05 billion of very broad discretionary money and 113 million of capital investment money that had to be tied to broadband when I talked about that broadband earlier that's where that 113 million came in I just I'm trying to talk about the numbers for the scope here the 1.05 billion again was it was appropriated by the legislature worked with the governor on spending in buckets really and I think that recovery money was spent by Vermont as it was intended to be in infrastructure that in economic recovery efforts that really helped Vermont get set up to be in a better position if there's a future pandemic and I think that the heavy investments in the water sector make a lot of sense because the more time I spend in state government the more I realize that investments in a community's water system are one of the main things that are holding our communities back from growing smartly from more businesses getting set up I was just talking to a business owner in Chester who was basically saying well it's lucky our business is this way because the town was concerned when we came in and didn't know if there would be capacity on the water system if we were doing business in this kind of way it happened to work out but that also tells me that Chester is kind of redline on the capacity in their system and I think a lot of Vermont communities are in that position where they necessarily have the extra funds to upgrade and to prepare capacity for growth and that's what a lot of this art of funds are doing is trying to set the stage for long term growth in Vermont and then allowing the communities to pick their path of this is how we want to grow this money we're talking about the hundreds of millions of dollars the billions of dollars we usually fight over between five and thirty million dollars a year in new initiatives in state government the annual conversation pre-pandemic was down in that range five to thirty million in most budget years of new stuff this is really a once in a lifetime opportunity for towns and I do think if your community is going to grow in the next twenty years it has to be enabled now it has to be planned now I don't think that we're going to see this again not in my professional lifetime I think the long term impacts of the level of spending at the federal level that came out the kind of the political situation of the national level we're not likely to see more funding coming out especially with the level of discretion and the flexibility that was provided states was highly unusual as well so the door isn't closed on ARPA we are right in about half of the money about five hundred million is right around there is obligated and so there is still opportunity to get in there but then even after the ARPA programs are getting farther along we have the bipartisan infrastructure law programs Julie referenced some of those for agency and natural resources the agency of transportation is also getting a great deal of funding in the bipartisan infrastructure law in more traditional areas but dramatically increased levels of funding which will provide more opportunity for more towns to participate in those programs and then the inflation reduction act also is passed and those programs haven't rolled out yet at the federal level inflation reduction act programs are strange they're different they're not this state model where the state was given money and then discretion they're not the bipartisan infrastructure law where more money was pumped into the existing channels of formula grants and competitive programs that already existed a lot of new programs a lot of new tax credits a lot of different vehicles were created in the inflation reduction act so there's going to be a lot of opportunity in that program over the next couple of years it's going to become more clear what that is but it's also going to be different and it's going to be new so I do think that's one area I would encourage communities to keep an eye out for especially for communities of energy and climate change because from a policy perspective climate programs were the major component of the inflation reduction act even though it was called the inflation reduction act it was actually I think from a policy perspective more focused at some of those green programs and promoting energy efficiency so very important five years and then the last thing I would talk about is during the session the administration proposed three million dollars of general funds so of state money for municipal technical assistance that could be prioritized to communities that based on a number of metrics appear to are much more likely to need technical assistance in general smaller communities are less likely to have the tax base to have the budget to fund economic development for our planning staff and that's fine most of the time smaller communities may have long stretches where they don't necessarily need to make any big changes so keeping someone on staff wouldn't always make sense so that three million dollars is prioritized for those smaller communities for instance Rochester is pretty high on that list just outside the pre-qualified range but we do consulting with the regional planning commissions we're going to play a huge role in that program we don't believe the full three million dollars is going to be taken up by pre-qualified towns and starting in May we're going to have a mechanism for towns to come in the door and propose and request assistance that aren't pre-qualified and then we'll assess those as a group and I think with Rochester being close to the pre-qualified level we would request for assistance from Rochester would certainly be taken extremely seriously one thing we're trying to encourage there is of course working with regional planning commission but also proposals that set up shared staff or shared capabilities with other smaller communities in the area those are heavily favored right because sometimes it may not make sense for one town to have a full time resource if three or four towns that are smaller share a resource then they can support that resource long term and it's more affordable so that program is going to move very fast the opportunity to start putting in requests will start in May and we do anticipate that that three million dollars should be spoken for by the end of the calendar year because what we're really trying to do is make sure that smaller communities communities that need the technical assistance help provide additional support so they can put in applications to be considered because we have to have all of the ARPA money obligated by the end of next year so by 1231, 2024 it has to be obligated and so we can't take our foot off the gas in our programs so what we're trying to do is help provide additional support to some communities to make sure that we're at least seeing all the projects and then we have to have spent the money of course by the end of 2006 so we're definitely in a move very fast situation but we do want to get more options and one thing I was missing for giving one reason we're out here today talking to you is actually my work with John Zanin over there he helped us look at projects and try to identify you know which parts of the state we're not hitting as much we want to make sure the ARPA money is going out equitably and helping to improve everywhere in the state not just the very geographically densely populated areas so I think one thing that spurred this tour this kind of conversation is we want the programs to hit more towns we want to get more applications and the only way to do that is to go out and talk to people so thank you all for coming here today and sorry if I took up a bit too much time we'll have some questions we're good we're going to stay here so thank you so with that this is what we want to turn it over to all of you and hear from you so is there anybody that would like to volunteer to go first and what I would just ask is that you would state your name and you know ask your questions so everybody can hear the question and we'll try to fill it out to the right person it's going to be somebody that's got a perfect question so I'm part of the re-promising on the high school project we've been at this since quite quite better work and we are now starting the phase two work that I thought and we were able to work with Vermont Community Development Board to get a feasibility study and with the balance of that those plan grants we're filling other things we are incredibly grateful for our regional planning committee and we've been greatly supported especially by Sarah Wright so but the property is currently owned by the school district and once you get the results of the environmental assessment which we are so important the town will have an acquisition of Act of 36 basically said the town can acquire more but the voters of course want to be informed so we are working very closely with the school district right now and one of the questions I have is is there any kind of parking where in a situation like this there is a property owner which will be the town and the current property owner which is the school district and I think the lead school district is also considered a feasibility is there any way that we can work with partnership to actually qualify for some of these grants I mean so far we've been doing well as a prospective buyer but for some of these grants do we have to already own the property because I understand that there is already submitted and so we are in that sort of precarious state where the voters want all the information we are working with kind of a little bit of scarce availability of some of the consultants that are necessary to move this process so it is very hard to know a date by which everything is going to be completed and yet we want to be able to take advantage of this funding because the feasibility study put a pretty high price tag on that and we want to do the funding staff right? Bernie Sanders is supporting us before and he is supporting us right now but we will pass the congressional for a very long time so I am asking the committee what would we in this particular situation be hoping for so I do believe there are programs that is where we encourage partnerships between the municipality and the project correct? I don't know if anybody knows really how to tackle that wonder once to start so you are in an interesting situation where you are saying school loans that the municipality wants to buy so the way Act 172 works for the up to $500,000 in our program is it is for municipally owned buildings except for schools so that is the tricky one but if the municipality is going to buy it and it will technically be owned by the municipality is it going to be used as a school or is it going to be used as something different? Well the proposal that is to have a reforms building that will provide community services like job care, adult services, arts and learning center as well as business rental so we have a piece of this economic development as well it is a complex and a large project but it grew out of the community engagement process so we are trying to meet the unmet needs of the community so it sounds the school will have access but it will not have ownership so it sounds to me like if we apply for the program then the second piece would be when it becomes owned by the municipality meaning you know we will have applications open at a certain time and it will be dependent on whether or not it is owned or if it is likely to be owned then it is a conversation we can have on case by case basis about eligibility and when could you be eligible with all those different kinds of things but it does sound like you could apply for this program In addition a project like that probably would qualify for the Immortals Regional Commission Vanessa you know that program is open now maybe next year we are talking about something like that but we have provided funding to people who are trying to purchase property correct me it seems like there might be some we might be in a phase where we are asking for some ideas which still may be premature in their situation but she could at least go on our website and get connected and we would be happy to talk to you about NBRC financing and that's it we are trying to be the strongest application for implementation grant we want to upgrade the building to make it energy efficient before being occupied by tenants so there is these steps that we have to go through and we've had great support under Josh's department as well fantastic people right now working with Grace Vincent and Mae Cleveland and so we are moving along but we started this process very naive because we are volunteers so we have learned about navigating the regulatory landscape and there is no room now and all these projects are quite different what is the expected cost of doing the work you are thinking about so the feasibility study which comes in at a 35% inflationary price tag is up to 3.1 but there is aspects of it that we see could be addressed by other funding sources in that funding stack and we are also hoping that 35% will actually come down I ask because virtually every project we see has as you referred to a funding stack it's really difficult to put together funding in Vermont and most projects have a little here, a little there and a little there in order to be able to get over that so it sounds like you are in the right direction thank you the site control question is you have to owe and you can have a long term lease something but the limbo piece sounds like MVRC might be unique that it could be set aside for the eventual new owner a lot of other programs there has to be a site control new ownership or some long term lease in order for the money to actually go into the project yeah these are the pieces that are sort of trying to figure out right now so that we can access funding yeah we are hoping to have a vote by the end of August but we just can't know because the process is what the process is great, we will look around maybe some other thoughts will come in to play on that are there other questions? I was leading the energy community and kind of energy coordinator we had equivalent of a level of 1 in our Philippines here the building was in the greatest need of course in the high school, the library our town office but at the time we were always on the floor we were he's quite kind we're happy to have that seems unnecessary the office, the library the library has actually had two I think two efforts in conjunction with efficiencies or not but actually when it was very nice to go over the structure started to have some real problems and we put together a scope of work we have to do it again a sort of preservation of some other ideas about it and yet we had some discussion between the buildings about building science but are there any more kind of flexibility there if we are if the auditor would take a look at the three buildings they would be more helpful can they look at that other and have some common sense in that and then the other question is are the auditors those who are working with efficiencies or not are there group monitors because availability of those folks is very low right now so our job is to make your job as easy as possible so we have hired four different consultants to come in and do these energy assessments they can do level one and level two if you've already had a level one done you're still going to need to do what we call a gap assessment because there's other things in the build that need to be assessed that are beyond level one or level two or two so no matter what we have to come back out and to that end you can apply for as many municipal buildings within your town as you'd like to we do ask or we will be asking for you to prioritize those because they're restricted across the state so we want to know what you're number one to and so on and so forth we're going to try to do as many buildings as we can with the five million dollars that was appropriated in the bill so we're going to keep doing those assessments until the money runs out so it's just a matter of sort of knocking on the door first and getting in and then we will work through our UCs to deploy these consultants we're doing some other things to make your lives easier too so ADA is something that's referenced in the bill we're going kind of we're putting some consultants on a retainer contract municipalities can basically work to grab those folks to do ADA assessments as well and talking about historic preservation we're already having conversations with historic preservation and ACCD about how to get some of these buildings to review really quickly in that historic assessment so we're doing lots of things to make people's lives easier that's the goal if we find working through the RPCs that there's other resources that towns would really like to have access to they just need to let us know FGS and we'll go ahead and put them under contracts but really we're trying to make it easy super easy so the most important thing is to get with the RPC and then they're going to want to do that full process but it is really their job as they connect with you to help you complete the applications and then when we send out a consultant to do the assessments it's going to be their job to help organize those assessments so they're done efficiently so if we're coming to Rochester, let's say we're going to be three buildings, we want to hit those three buildings in the same day to make use of that consultant to the best of our ability and the RPCs will be helping us schedule and coordinate all of those. That's what we're trying to do. I can't answer this question now but I heard you say that schools were excluded from what you can do so my question would be is there a place for that to happen? So it is a great question so any of the retainer contracts that we have through the Office of Purchasing Contract and which sits within BGS those are open to municipalities so we have lots of different retainer contracts and people can work on those the only difference is that you have to pay for it versus Act 1, Act 2 is paying tapping assessments done they municipally own buildings except for schools So do you know what they're sending in? Again I know this hasn't been the act of this curious why schools there must have been a reason they were omitted Yeah I was going to highlight for Commissioner Fitch's program that ownership really matters like some libraries are owned by the municipalities and it has to be a municipally owned building to qualify for the BGS program As far as schools go one reason they weren't included in the Act 172 program is that the I know the acronym is ESSER for multiple tranches of funding that were dedicated to schools throughout the pandemic and they received a very substantial amount of assistance for weatherization and HVAC improvements over the course of the pandemic so that was why schools were excluded because there was and I think most of those programs for the most part run their course some of the work is probably still getting done but those happened over the last 2-3 years so that's why schools aren't afraid but it's written into the film meaning BGS itself for example didn't exclude schools it was people legislated process that language was put in there and back I have a question about public transportation I wonder if there's any chance that there could be a reasonable public transportation linking our town to other towns and communities we don't have a pharmacy there's no way for people to get their prescription drugs unless they leave this area and go somewhere else so I'm wondering what can be done there used to be a stagecoach that ran at relatively normal hours for people to use but that has been discontinued and we're quite isolated so I wonder if any of you have any suggestions there is a program for all of the details program contact community that might fit for that but that's something we can talk about see if we can identify some of the people can I just get your name I think for purposes of making sure we can get back to you on that one Burma, like the country B-U-R-M-A, Cassidy C-A-S-S-I-D Y what was the first name Burma, Cassidy enough I'd like to add on that one that transportation is another one of those areas where in distributing the ARPA funds spending in transportation was explicitly prohibited at the time the ARPA passed and so the legislature worked with the governor over two years they didn't make a policy decision not to spend any of that billion dollars on transportation it was prohibited that money had been appropriated in the most recent federal vehicle they actually allowed states to spend up to 30% on transportation but all of that money has already been planned out in these different programs so I think it's possible that we could see things change with some transportation spending getting pulled into scope for ARPA over the next year and a half as programs run we see if everyone's going to spend all their money or not but I just wanted to highlight that the main reason we're not talking about a lot of transportation programs today it's not a choice that we made in Vermont it was a federal aspect of the law I just wondered is it tri-valid transit service provider for this area that replaced stagecoats and it just doesn't run frankly enough because I know it's it goes all the way from Middlebury to Thetford it's over three valleys once COVID hit it just pretty much shut down now because my whole phone number was the previous one it gets confused with the old stagecoats number and it ran out I have a volunteer driver what I do at day on Tuesdays and I know I'm working with tri-valid transit they're almost like everybody else in the states looking for people so if you don't have people to volunteer you're not going to be able to transit you're not going to be so that's the concern is that you just there's a need that's out there but there's the underlying need too of getting people to do things like that in terms of paying tri-valid transit driver or as a volunteer to do your own community listening to the discussion about the energy work of the consultants I think that's something we touched on earlier in Springfield where the capacity whether it's at the federal government moving all this money and then they're not getting back quick enough because they're under resource and staff the state all of our partners at their regional organizations and nonprofits and then all the businesses trying to respond to all this money I mean just in our department budget alone it's up 300% just before the pandemic so if we weren't sized to deal with this level of influx of money and all the resulting work that's happening before that's reality everyone is overstretched and there isn't enough people to do and respond and everyone's just making the best that they can maybe we'll catch up at some point or maybe it'll stretch on and as Doug said help mitigate the sort of possible economic downturn because we have these resources that are going to continue to be spanned by communities for the next five years which will help in some ways if there is some sort of downturn this project just don't happen and likewise we're going to need our state rules for energy and greenhouse gas emissions we've got a second workforce there we're going to take more training and help them in those specific areas absolutely questions I state a hand over thank you I was recently new director for park house which is affordable for seniors and other adults 100 year old building across the corner I guess I'm wondering so I think about for one our building is old we did have some recent remodeling but there are some other energy efficiency things we'd like to do replacing boiler some ADA accessibility types of things we'd like to do and then aside from the building I'd love to figure out a way to help make it more affordable because I think as the population ages with the inflation right now and sort of a stagnant on retirement incomes and benefits and things like that we struggle to sort of make ends meet in our own budget in order to keep it affordable for them where do I begin which problems or which pot should I like aim for first do I try and I don't know if that's even a question for you guys but hearing about some of the housing initiatives like we are non profit but do we qualify municipality there's been some programs I looked at that were geared towards affordable housing and whatnot but they were more homeowner specific programs some things I've tried to look into for a residence that I'd have to apply for every single one of them myself in order to help them do that but we have 15 people living in our building I'd just like to help. Clearly the affordable housing programs I do know that there was an investment probably five or six years ago within our house to try to address those things the main funder in this world and you're going to be Vermont Housing Conservation Board VHCB there possibly some other through the town through the CBG program I think there was an assessment of the needs it kicked off that work it was done about four or five or six years ago and so digging that back continuing to follow up I know the challenges of trying to keep things affordable but yet make repairs and how you're paying for all that is tricky there are lots of senior living facilities that are in a similar boat across the state that are in need of significant investments and you can't really charge in order for the services to make those so you're going to need to rely on these programs to do that I know the town is pretty sure still votes to support your tax evasion whatever it is so I'm happy to help and talk to us and give you the name your best source you're going to need to talk to them and you're going to need to also include your your legislative reps from this region to echo your need to support that application because there's lots of application and lots of demand for those same resources but happy to chat with you after and a follow up just to make me think of it as well obviously I think it's a nationwide thing but all of our population is aging and more and more people are looking for these alternative types of places to live I think ours is relatively unique in the way that it's set up but if we wanted to expand if it was possible for us to do that I think we could fill a new place up really quickly we have a relatively extensive waiting list we have one for a couple of years so the thoughts have been the wishes and the dreams have been floated about what if we could add another building or add on to our building some way to increase our capacity does that is something like that all under yeah it's I'd add another acronym there for financing to see they would look into some big federal loan from housing tax credits and there's a small carve out for senior and independent living it still is very competitive but let's chat afterwards and start back up not just us, but we've got a little one page up here that captures some of these programs and business cards oh over here hi I'm the emergency management director for Rochester so as EMD one concern that I have is that the valley currently does not have an ambulance in Orca Alley from over a mountain range to get here and be on the night of other pools that we could lose neighbors that way can you folks comment on the important creation of an ambulance building to have a housing ambulance a sleeping facility or something that municipality would attempt to work with to go right through the local ambulance so it's going to take you here that's the first query for emergency services around the state I think maybe heard a lot of articles that you put that in that boat were some services from the fire department some of the chairs I mean there's a regional shortage of capacity that's going on I would argue in some of our rural communities that maybe new approaches or new approaches to how we address these needs that many of the small communities have and that would be a novel to one day create a new town hall perhaps on this sure and perhaps redevelop our current offices for affordable housing could we potentially build in an ambulance or other municipal service garage with that I mean I think again it's an infrastructure change that potentially could qualify the fact that it hasn't the project itself hasn't been it's not that far out of the gate could be challenging in terms of even getting it under the liar so to speak that could be the challenge that being said I don't think any of us are here to say it's completely Erica looks like you might have a thought on this have you spoken to anyone over in Sharon or Gryllton because they are going through a similar situation they have a western service and they're trying to kind of replace where it's located for better accessibility to their service area and so I think in terms of those they might have some of it I've been in touch with Matt Parrish I've been to Bethel and they are our provider here they're currently covering 7 pounds and if they're in Barnard in so many years as a part of that I think we can get in touch there's two weapons on the line Larry I can connect you with I can connect you with Department of Health and Public Safety you may potentially have some avenues I know a lot of these programs on the federal funding side especially a lot of focus on the services well that's what our situation we need to create I mean specifically the public the public works to the structure but there may be some other avenues for the federal funding for more community stuff community safety community safety but there are still there options there that would be great with that I think I'm just going to be respectful of folks time you know some of us probably need to run out there's a few that may leave them for a few minutes I will give you one last question one last question there's an early question I was thinking on how you would expand on this one you asked the government to identify what are some of their areas that are that are leading to the problems and this is specific to housing I'm curious what if there's any thoughts there being these how they have impacted the availability of housing in the rural communities like this where it's seen people like to come here and visit and you can't find a house to rent or provide because they're being bought up and impressed with services for families you sure sure Reynolds we can spend a whole day talking about that there's statewide data and not every community is experiencing the same challenges not every community has the same feeling about short term revenue some are low people with open arms some are saying it's causing no problem for their community members so there clearly is a change you know but what's interesting is Vermont has had second homes for 100 years already the second highest rate of second homeowners in the nation only get my name so there's always been vacation homes that have largely been vacant or used seasonally and short term rentals with the online platforms have flipped the switch on a little bit and have allowed people to be owners of those properties easier than they were in the past because they can cover their bills allow people that have second homes to use them for part of the time so what we're seeing statewide on the Rochester data is used to short term rentals about half of that is within what are already vacation homes and 17% of Vermont's housing stock is second homes so short term rentals are much smaller problem than second homes if you're looking at homes out of that housing stock but yet it can have an effect on a community I'd say the other part of this challenge is short term rentals are often now used for extended workstays you know people are using them other than just the case sometimes they're serving as traveling nurse or someone that's actually working in your community they can't find something else so then that's an added challenge and then I think another one of our homes is we are heavily visited state tourism is the second biggest industry are we building enough actual vacation lodging problem I know it's being met somewhere else even in the capital city legislators and lobbyists and folks that come there was a new hotel that was defeated in downtown Montpelier folks didn't want to see the parking garage associated with it was defeated well the short term rentals in Montpelier are just grown it's not because no one has taken up that demand other than the folks that already own housing there because it's not going to land and so I think it's a multi part and we've also used a lot of the lodging properties to serve emergency housing over the last couple years thousands of units out of what was part of the traveling space available is also shifted to the emergency housing so there's so many things feeding into this that can actually be a huge problem in some towns and not a problem at all it showed us that lodging properties really are part of our housing stock and that you know they highlighted that more clear to us but I think that just needs to take that into account when we're thinking about do we have enough housing stock that's also part of it and what do we have to do now to meet the needs for that whole spectrum of all those types of housing especially to bring in the demographic that we need the government working families that's what's going to sustain this state and we can't go to Montpelier the other component that we see in our department is what's happening is hotels etc are being used as workforce housing so ski areas places like that are purchasing hotels taking them off the market creating more Airbnb demand because they don't have enough workforce housing and someone that lives in a community like this that may be struggling with their bills they might convert part of their place to Airbnb to pay their bills so it's hard to paint one you know, paint one problem when there's so many other things sometimes it's a solution as much as it's a problem there's a difference between someone who lives in communities, invested in the most part of Montpelier and someone who just purchases a building or multiple buildings just for Airbnb that's a whole different reality there's an article on that I understand the percentages are kind of indefinite but still sometimes I can stop I've actually created policies and I assume that that is something that towns can do if they're particularly threatened by this renominal and they can't get their teachers in and they can't get their healthcare helpers in place so a town can make their own policy there's a lot to have but you have to understand your own data you actually do an opposite impact of what you thought you were going to solve I know I didn't say one more but go ahead it's a quick practical question my wife and my eldest we were a farmer in town we raised them in various industries we've had it for 16 years and thought we'd be living on it now but it's a fun so we've still tried to get enough money for that I've got a quick I might have screwed up a little bit but I'll put it in the housing if we could build a little farmer we'd free up a house in town I've tried going through working lands looking at working lands grants but there's been matching funds that have been daunting and other things is there some way that this group could help clear the way so that we'd find maybe someone could come from housing maybe someone could come from working lands is there a way to coordinate and make something work out of that I know there is an application currently before working lands that deals with farm worker housing which would be a shift dollars have not been able to be used for that impact so that's being evaluated and there's also another project and it's statewide which we're talking about because there are three or four farms in Chinden County and they need housing for their workers which housing in Chinden County it's expensive everywhere but it's really important for that so there's some work being done so that you build the missing middle the missing middle where it needs to be addressed I'm happy to follow up on you but I think we're trying to make some progress with that because there's a lot of work on these farms you know the farm got to be there more than eight hours a day so they're having to commute long distances to work on those which is creating all sorts of issues but I'm happy to follow up with you on that it's particularly challenging because a lot of the public money that we invest in housing it's supposed to be for housing that's available to the public and so when you're providing to one owner it's sort of publicly available and then you have that added challenge of often much farmland is conserved the conservation eaten in or you've sold your development right so then therefore you're not able to access the same mortgage sort of to be in first position to build a home on the farm if you've got some of it enrolled in that conservation easement so there's a lot of work on this that is playing out right now of the few test cases that Anson was talking about and I think there'll be even more opportunities down the road here but I'm happy to talk to you more about that I just want to respond that one of the areas that our CRP financing can be used for is to support agriculture we've had a couple of applications that are situations similar to yours I don't want to offer too much help but one of the problems with our program is it only provides 20% of the financing that's required to do something and I think I mentioned earlier we're looking to be the last money to get a project going so I'm expecting our funds to be used quite in the near future Thank you all for being here today as I mentioned earlier some of us still try to render for a few minutes but again if you need us if you're Erica reach out to one of us directly if you look at any of our websites you should be able to find us pretty easily Erica do you have any last words I'm Erin I mean you guys have to find me just reach out and we'll see what we can get going