 Hey, good evening. My name is Richard Shear, and this is Montpellier Civic Forum, and I've got a very special episode tonight with a very special person who's been in Montpellier Civic life for decades now, Mary Hooper, soon to be private citizen Mary Hooper. Mary, when did you start this, and why? Hi, Richard. Well, thank you for inviting me to this. It's hard to say when I started this. I've always been in love with Montpellier and interested in government. I was elected mayor of Montpellier in 2004, and I served four terms as mayor. And then during that period, I also ran for the legislature, from which I am, as you noted, retiring, or I'm not running for re-election. But before I was mayor, I worked for the Montpellier Downtown Community Association, which is what became Montpellier Alive. And I helped form Montpellier Downtown Community Association as part of a citizen group that was looking at the vitality of our downtown community. When did you come to Montpellier? Oh, goodness. We moved here. We bought a house here in, I think it was 1980 up on North Street. Where you still are? Yeah, where we still are, and I'm not leaving. I love it desperately up there, and I continue to love this community. Montpellier in 1980 had how many people roughly—we're down to about 7,500. Were we at 8,500 at that point? I don't think we were quite there. We were still remembering the glory days when there were a lot more people, but we were definitely losing population when we first came here. What was it like? You were with the public school. You sent kids into the public schools? One son. But that wasn't until a bit later when we moved here, among other things—I mean, we're talking about civic life. I can't remember why, but I had some business in front of the city council, and I remember thinking as I looked at this kind of panel of white men that, Kali, I don't feel a connection or see myself as part of this. I in fact served on what was then called the Zoning Board of Adjustment for a number of years. I forget how long, and so I gradually did become part of that aspect of civic life. Now was the Zoning Board a prototype for the Planning Commission? No. It was the one that appeals to or—not appeals, but when applications for development did not fit the norm, there was an ability to give some abatements or adjustments to the application, so it really was the predecessor to the Development Review Board. So at that point in time, you started to become civically engaged with Margo George on that board? No. I don't believe she was. Phil Zalinger was the chair and was for 20-plus years. Margo was definitely deeply involved with the—she was often on the other side of the table, either raising concerns about proposed development or, you know. Not a warning to people. You're going to hear a lot of names that you have to have lived in Montpelier a long time to be able to know, but that's land use policy, basically. And if you became mayor and land use policy became a serious concern. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and remember that the Planning Commission and Colleen, I can't believe that I'm forgetting the proper—it is the Development Review Board—what are now responsible for making those decisions. The City Council is responsible for considering ordinances and doing the final sign-off on that. And those decisions are made by the Development Review Board. Again, we're in ancient history. When did the Design Review Board come? Oh, that predated me and was a really—and that was part of the steps that you went through. And there's where Margo George came in. Where Margo would have been. And she, I believe, was on the Design Review Board at different times. And that is what gave much of the character to our town. You were asking what was Montpelier like in the 1980s. We were so fortunate that either because of some of the development principles that we have, as well as just being overlooked that our downtown did not suffer from the demolition of some of the beautiful buildings we have and the structures that give character to our community. Including the churches. Oh, absolutely. But if you look at the fabric of our downtown, it's really remarkable how intact it is. So the only victim of urban redevelopment was what would become the Stalinist-looking post office federal building. It's so funny how people remember, even though they don't remember, that beautiful building that stood there before. There were many other victims in putting forth the street. Could you explain the use of that beautiful building that stood before? Oh, the federal building? Yeah. Well, it was the post office. I want to call it a Victorian. That's not the proper way to describe it, I'm sure. But it was one of those grand old ladies, you know, multiple stories high. But it was a post office that just was not functional or they chose to say it wasn't functional and tore it down for what we have today. And it's funny because it's next to the courthouse, you know, which stayed along with its clock. And then the fight was the commercial building on the corner of Elm and State, what would be right now the McDonald's. Yeah. Yeah. Could you describe that fight? It actually also predated me or was happening right when we came here, but there was a proposal. I don't think to tear down the building at all. Not at all. It was to have McDonald's in that building. Which used to be a bank, I believe. The corner one? Yeah, it was actually. Yeah, yes it was. And there was just a great deal of concern about what would happen to the character of the community if that became a McDonald's. And you're right, it was quite a fight. And I think that's to the principle of paying attention to the built structure of our community because that's much of what obviously the people give it, its character, but the physical appearance of our community is also terribly important of how we feel about it. Now that brings us to another name from your era when you ran the downtown corporation and the like. Could you give your impression of Jeff Jacobs? Could you explain who Jeff Jacobs was to people who, or who Jeff Jacobs is actually, he's still alive, to people who don't know that name? He is one of the handful of people who own a significant amount of property in our community, and particularly in the downtown, and had some rather strong feelings about what he could or couldn't do with his property and there were occasional or maybe more than occasional clashes over that. And he owns the property that you were referring to where the McDonald's was proposed to be. Now if I remember correctly from Bill, my wife and I hadn't moved here yet, I believe that Bill said that it was parking that ultimately cost that site. I mean a large section of public didn't want it, but technically it was lack of on-site parking that took it down. If you think about it, it's fortunate that our regulations aren't based on what people want, or public opinion, but in fact they are based on regulatory standards. So you have to have so many parking spaces or so many means of egress or accessibility, et cetera, et cetera. And that is my recollection also that there was, while it was supposed to be principally a kind of walk-up sort of thing, that there was an expectation that there be a certain number of parking spaces associated with it, and they didn't have access to it. Parking has been, it's the conversation that absolutely never ends. We either have too much or not enough or it's not in the right place. And that actually has driven development proposals over time. When do you start the Downtown Development Corporation or the Downtown Promotional Corporation? When we were chatting before this, you said you wanted to remember Warren Kitzmiller. Exactly. And one of the moments in my life was, and so I'm guessing in 1999 or so is when I was kind of in between work and I volunteered to be on a committee that the City Council had appointed, a committee of cast of, I think, 18 or 20. And I remember thinking, oh my God, this will never get anything done. And Warren was on it. He was, at that point, a private citizen and an owner of a prominent business, a really important business in our community, the Union River Sports on Langdon Street, one of the hippies on Langdon Street, which is the way the City Council like to refer to Warren and his partner. At that point, we also had the Horn of the Moon Cafe, only placed eat in town, it seemed like sometimes. Was Fred, did Fred have his records? And Fred absolutely was there, yeah. Yeah, Fred Wilbur was from Book Stealer. Yeah, and that was kind of one of the vibrant hubs in our community and a little different from the way the rest of the street fell. And there was a used bookstore where the clothing store is? Well, in Rivendale, on the corner also, and yeah. But Warren was on that committee and he said, you should make Mary the chair of that committee. And, you know, so I became the chair. I knew Warren from way back. We lived on the same street. My first memory of him, and I think this is an important way to remember him, is that being at a party at his house and seeing how his face lit up when he talked about his two little girls, who then were little, little girls, these darling things. And he loved them desperately. He loved his wife desperately. Karen Kitzmiller was also a very important part of our community. Could you speak just to Karen Kitzmiller? A lot of people know the picture on the second floor of the library in the Kitzmiller room. Who is Karen Kitzmiller? Well, at that time I thought of her as the public, the civic-minded person of that family. Honestly, I don't remember what she was doing before she became engaged in politics, but she was deeply involved in our community and ran for the city council. I mean, the legislature, when Amy Davenport decided to step down. And actually, Amy and I talked, Karen and I talked to Amy about that seat. She told us that she was thinking of not running and she was looking for people who might succeed her. And Karen jumped on it. I thought about it. And so that would have been in the 90s, I think. I'm not good at remembering. But she served in the legislature, was highly effective there, principled voice for kind of liberal policies, not afraid to stand up to power. I remember there was one point where she supported somebody who was running against the incumbent speaker of the house and that always created an interesting opportunity. That person didn't win and they were, you know, legend has it, they were banished to one of the do-nothing committees in the legislature. That's all kind of legendary sort of thing, because all of our committees do things. But at that point was in the back of your mind that when Karen, ultimately Karen tragically died, but when Karen stepped down that Mary might consider stepping in, was that in the back of your mind? I've never had a plan. I've never thought, oh, I want to be mayor because I want to be mayor and then I want to be in the state house because I want to be in the state house. It's always been more of a, huh, I think I have something that I can offer here, that I have a perspective that is valuable and so I'm ready to go. Well, when Karen died, Warren stepped forward for that seat. Yeah. Yeah, so he was, as often happens when a member is lost during, you know, their term, the sitting governor appoints somebody and it's not uncommon that a spouse will be. Who's the governor at that point? I don't think it was Snellen. Was it still Dean? It might have been Dean. It was probably Dean at that point. Yeah, yeah. It might have been Snellen, don't remember. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. But Warren was appointed and then subsequently ran and succeeded a number of years. I think he was served 18 years. I may be wrong. When did the straw hat show up? I always remember that straw hat, but more importantly, what I remember is his voice on the radio. Hello, folks. This is Warren Kittsmiller. I can't imitate him, but that was a common greeting that he, you know, he remember that he owned the store and was really well known. He also served on the city council for a period of time. So he too was very dedicated to our civic community. Now let's go back to the Downtown Development Corporation. Was the Cracker, Association, was the Cracker factory, had that burned down at that point? Oh, yeah. That went in 1981. So that was, yeah. So it essentially physically is the same downtown it is now? Yes. In the kind of that state in Maine, interestingly, then I remember walking Senator Jim Jeffords around what we call the car lot because that's where the transit center is now. But doing one of those kind of walk and show what your proposal is to a sitting federal senator because we were trying to get grants to support the redevelopment of that whole big area. And so we were thinking about the redevelopment that finally became the transit center in the early 1990s. What about stone cutters? That happened under Chuck Caparis and there was some federal redevelopment money that came in that might have been a result of the 1992 flood. And they laid the infrastructure that enabled that to happen. Folks who don't remember that we had a junkyard in our downtown, nor this kind of derelict area that now has on stone cutters, it has become an important street in our community. That has changed. So state in Maine has not changed, but the areas around it have changed significantly. When I became mayor, I focused on Barrie Street and folks need, when we first came here, we were told don't live on Barrie Street. Tell that to Anne Watson. Yeah, it's a lovely street. And as a result of a number of initiatives that we made, we helped support the redevelopment of the building that Anne is living in. In that group of condominiums has 30 homes in it. The block of buildings that is adjacent to it that is really important in terms of low income housing has 40 or 50 across the street. We helped support redevelopment of more housing and just as importantly the senior center. We were looking actively for something knowing that we really needed to support our senior community better and the senior center. I wouldn't go into another block of house, two other blocks of housing Elm Street. But I want you to stop for a moment. We did a lot on Barrie Street that was really significant and people tend to forget what we've done and it's always what else can you do. But Elm Street is another and it points to the importance and the value of the partners who help us do that sort of work. I don't remember the name of the work. Was that Elm Street or? It was the predecessor organization to Down Street. And Down Street has been critical in what was the developer. When I say we, the city supported Down Street in the redevelopment of those Barrie Street. Exactly. I was going to say they were Barrie Street. Yeah, but on Elm Street there was owned by the predecessor organization to Down Street, a really rough group of buildings that were actually coming out of there. They had an obligation for 20 or 30 years to remain affordable and then they were up for, I'm getting this wrong, but essentially they were could have gone on to the private market and we really supported retaining and redeveloping them as that predated me. So you can see my sense of we, I feel so strongly about this community that it's always we, the city helped to encourage the continuation of that as affordable housing, really attractive housing now. It was awful before. It was just the cinder block hard-looking place. And I think it's really wonderful now. The lane development behind Main Street, Middle School, when was that? Way before me. That's owned by the Montpelier Housing Authority, another one of the non-profit entities that supports us. And a wonderful example of the adaptive reuse of a building, of a collection of buildings. And thank heavens those weren't torn down. Again, when you look at the character, and character matters because it helps us love the community we're in. I want to take care of my community when I feel good about the place I live in, when it's a beautiful place where I live, then I want to add to that beauty. So let's go back 20 years for development again. And what must be aggravating for you is the angst of having so much empty space on the second floor of downtown. And I know that that's been a constant push to try and develop for downtown housing. Yeah. Well, and one of the interesting things we did with the Montpelier Downtown Community Association, the predecessor to Montpelier Alive, it volunteers did an inventory of the downtown. And we literally walked up and down each of those stairwells and said, what is here and what is going on? And there is this view that there's a lot of undeveloped, unused space. But what it is is really underused space. The flip side of that is it's affordable space. Another group of buildings that didn't become developed until way after my time is what I call the French block, so the across the street from City Hall. That was absolutely unused. I mean, the owner of that property, which were essentially that's where the hardware store is above the hardware store. Yeah. Those were essentially single occupancy tenants. And following World War II, as those tenants walked out, he essentially locked the door of each one. And so they stood there, you know, through the fifties and sixties becoming emptier and emptier until it was finally, no one, it was not safe to live there, but totally unused. And we began plans. I helped get $150,000 to install a sprinkler system, my deepest fear. This was when I was with the Downtown Association. I was terrified of fire. But we did have fire. We had terrible fires. That took out the store next to Charlie O's. Yes. The Shoulder Ice. What was the name of that? What was the country store was there? Exactly. What else was? Oh, and playing in Sam. Right. Playing in Sam was Sam. Yeah, what it's now is Guitar Sam. So there was that, you were remembering the fire where the Civic Center, that you were recalling that, the threat to downtowns, to our old wonderful downtowns is fire. That is probably fire. And then people slowly moving out of them because they're hard to redevelop. But fire is absolutely a concern. And that's the reason I wanted a sprinkler system in that undeveloped building because I was afraid it would burn down and we would sit there. They refer to those as like missing teeth and your smile. And that would have been missing your whole top row of teeth. So ultimately, Down Street did develop those apartments. Yeah. And when we say Down Street, you need to remember that the city has been very aggressive and thoughtful about also putting its money in, its money being the taxpayers' money. And that is one of the things that we started when I was mayor. We had a campaign that was a penny for homes. And just trying to say that we would spend a penny of the property tax on setting aside for a trust fund for home development or housing development. And that is what gave us a pod of money to help support what is now Down Street's redevelopment. So it's very much a partnership between the city and Down Street and enabling these projects to happen because we are actively putting taxpayers' money into it. The transit center where it was the car lot, which before that was not a car lot, is a choice. It's a property use choice. But at the same time, we don't have housing near the river. And I know that in retrospect, is that a trade-off that you think in terms of being able to grab immediate access to the river, to developing alongside the river? So at that point with that, I'm trying to remember, we had the city council did make the decision because we were the owners of that property. At that point, do you put it immediately on the river or set back? And we made a decision to set it back because we wanted to have the public use of the bike path there, which strikes me why let just a handful of people have that wonderful view of the river or what should be a wonderful view. And instead by having finishing, beginning the process of finishing the bike path, we assured that the entire community could enjoy the river. When this came around 2000 is when we're really talking about this. And it was an earmark. It was a big earmark matched by a civic vote. Yeah, but it was walking Jim Jaffords. I mean, it was people say, why does it take so long to make these things happen? But you've got to bring the money together. So we brought Jim Jaffords help bring the money in and then there was a big vote on it. It was controversial. It was at the same time. This is a painful one. We started to look at Saban's pasture and then the same ballot we put 500,000 to quote purchase Saban's pasture, although that would not come anywhere near purchasing. We still have an empty Saban's pasture and we still have a housing need. Yeah. How frustrating was that during your years as mayor? It was. I mean, we see the needs in our community and what was frustrating for me is that during that period we formed a group of people. We said, okay, let's bring the different views together because there are some folks who said no, it should not be developed and others who said it should develop it this way and that way. And you know, rather than having a contentious community debate, when the owners remember it is privately owned, when the owners chose to do that, we thought that we would try to facilitate something that would get them what they needed to get out of it, but also address some of the community needs. And I thought that we were there of the people sitting at the table. We were there. There was agreement. And then we had the recession of 2008. And you'll recall that that was a housing bubble that burst everywhere else in the country. We didn't really have a bubble to burst, but it shattered the markets and changed. And our moment might have passed. That moment certainly passed. It wasn't, they're talking about the sort of development we were talking about was just would have been absurd under those circumstances. So that moment passed. I hope it's not the moment has passed. There will be other moments. Well, again, let's return to bear. We're going down Berry Street. We go to Bar Hill. Yeah. Were you involved at all? No, I wasn't at all. That's solely Anne Watson and under her leadership with the city council. And that's been an asset on Berry Street? Yeah. I'm not sure I would have been as taken with it or I would have had my questions, but it certainly seems like it's been a terrific asset there. When you were mayor, you look back on those years. What was your accomplishment? What was the one thing that you look back and say, hey, I made that happen? Yeah. It's the change on Berry Street is a lot of what I'm proud of. So those were the incremental changes, but really foundational changes that made that it's always been an important part of our community, but made it a more welcoming part of our community. And beginning with the senior center, remember what that was like? It was tiny. It was tiny. It had been allowed to fall into disrepair. It was owned by controlled by the school board, and they just were not able to think about what to do with it. And it's, again, really nice housing in what was underutilized space upstairs, an important community gathering place downstairs. So I'm proud of that. What we haven't talked about is, and when I think about my times with the city, I now know that we were riding the tide of climate change. So what I spent so much time on was the aftermath of three two floods in our downtown, another storm that washed out significant parts of our structure, and a couple of wintertime storms that were really, really rough. And when we were experiencing, we were annually standing on bridges, looking at water, thinking, oh my gosh, you know, this is the big one. Well, this is another big one. And we were having active conversations with the Corps of Engineers about building an ice structure, an ice retention structure to prevent flooding of the downtown, because what a new term to me, phrasal ice, the buildup of ice in our rivers, that rivers were freezing differently because something was going on that is obviously part of climate change now. But ironically, we haven't had a flood since I left City Hall. I mean, what's that about? Is there a causation? Yeah. But I think what that says to me is how rapid our climate has been changing. And I do not think ice-related flooding is our problem going into the future. But that was happening every year. One that doesn't get a whole lot of attention is the shift during your time as mayor to a different policing model under Tony Fakos is the beginning of community-based policing. Could you talk about police relations when you were mayor and how you saw civilian police, police as they relate to citizens? There was the beginning of a shift. Tony in particular was very interested, and I'm going to be losing some terminology here. But they were looking actively at how the police interact with citizens on the street. And changing the model, they called it Act 2. And we were getting a lot more training for our police officers in terms of their interactions with people and how to de-escalate hard situations. Tony was putting police on bikes, and we were trying to be much more engaged in that way. He was a leader in helping with that. And that was the beginning of talking about social workers being engaged on the police force and just how do you have different conversations with folks who are struggling with issues rather than kind of the more traditional do-what-I-say-or-else sort of approach. Let's put you in the legislature. Why did you run? Everybody runs through the legislation to reform something. What was it that you saw that needed reforming that you could lend your talents to? So I didn't say, oh, I'm going to go change that. Again, I think it was something where I felt that I had something to offer and that I understood what Montpelier was about and that I could do a good job of representing Montpelier in the statehouse. I began there and continued with a deep interest in climate change-related issues. And so I wanted to work on that and did work on that. I was at one point the chair of what we called the Climate Caucus, slowly got some pieces of legislation through that we're trying to make a difference in terms of climate change, some of it to support Montpelier. I spent three terms sitting in the House Institutions Committee because by golly, I was going to see the funding of the district eat plant and that was happening in that committee. And so I was going to make sure I was there while that happened. The euphemism for the district heat plant is the wood chip plant. Yeah, right. Yeah. And it's an interesting idea. It's something that's been there forever, but we expanded it. That was an initiative of the city wanting to get, at that point, we were watching the price of oil go up and up and thinking this could be an asset to the community to have an alternative wood, locally grown, sustainable source of heating that would help property owners in our downtown. Ironically, oil prices went down and they've gone back up, and I think over time it's the right investment. But a lot of European communities that are densely built rely on these district heating systems as a way to support their communities. The other important part of that is it got oil tanks out of our downtown. Remember that was also the time when we were facing significant flooding. A lot of our downtown is in flood zone. And so getting those hazardous things out of the downtown was smart. Which committees were you on when you started and where did you have your eyes towards? I was on the house, what's called Corrections and Institutions. And I served three terms there. I've always felt that the most profound way to affect policy is to follow the money. And so institutions and corrections is responsible for the capital bill, which are the capital investments and statement and also grant programs for communities. And so I was three terms there and then four terms on the House Appropriations Committee. And I'm chair of the House Appropriations Committee now. Which is a very powerful position. Yeah. Why are you leaving? You finally reached it. Oh, I know. Boy, have I had that conversation with myself. It's a fair question. And Richard, these past three years have been brutal. The COVID years. Yeah. I remember the March day, which was the Friday after town meeting week, that we returned where we sat in our committee. That was the day that we decided we had to shut down business probably for a week or two is what we thought. And we in this case being the institution, the General Assembly said, okay, we need to pass some bills that will enable emergency actions to be taken. Some health care bills, a variety. But we kicked out out of appropriations the entire state budget in one day because we had to make it happen. And I didn't, at that point, we thought we were coming back in a couple of weeks, maybe a month. And we really didn't go back for another two years. That year, we passed that bill and four other budgets in the four other budgets we did while we were learning how to go online. At the same time, I was hearing from constituents who had lost their jobs and had lost their benefits. They were not being served by the Department of Labor. And I would work in committee and then I would spend at least another eight hours a day working with those people, trying to get them through the system of, you know, helping them to figure out how to survive. That first year was brutal and we never stopped legislating. It went on and on. We had a profound amount of money coming in. We had to make decisions very rapidly. I want to walk you through two big ones. From your perspective, the gun legislation. Were you there when Governor Scott signed that gun legislation on the front? I was standing. Would you describe what that felt like? Because it was such a tense period. Just that one scene of standing behind Governor Scott. I looked out at the crowd. I was very proud to be there. I was proud of him for what he was doing. And I was also thinking, how am I going to get out of here when I hear that gunshot ring? That's how tense it was. And there have been a number of times being in the State House when I've thought about, okay, how do I make sure my committee is safe? But what is my exit strategy? That was a hard time when people did the right principle thing. And I'm proud of them for doing that. Pension reform. That's another one that was so contentious. That's a long conversation. I don't want to miss. I thought you might ask me what I was most proud of, which vote I'm most proud of. And I just don't want to—marriage equality. That day, and I continue to feel that way. If I did nothing else, I am glad that I was one of those votes, the 100 votes that it took to override the Governor's veto of it. And this State was so incredibly foresighted to have done that work. I'm very proud of that. So, pension reform. Right. Are we out of the woods in pension reform? We're on the path. I want to say that when we came into this—I've been watching, I'm now on appropriations. I've been on that committee for eight years. I was watching how it was eating the changes, the State's obligation, the employer obligation to our portion of the bill was growing and growing and growing in a way that was totally unsustainable. Three years—three or four years ago, not the total amount of what we were obligated—and by golly, we were always going to pay our obligation—but the increase in our obligation was the equivalent of what it costs to run the Department of Corrections. I mean, it is a huge amount of money, and we were not looking at it and saying, how do we manage this cost? How do we help hold that down so that we can meet the other obligations of state government with the municipal—so there are three pension systems, the state, the school, and the municipal. State employees and school employees are more actively managed by state government. Municipal—I said that wrong. None of them are actively managed, but they're different agreements. On the municipal side, the employer and the employees were making equal contributions annually and adjusting their rates, and so if you look at what was going on with the municipal side, their costs were not rising in a way that was unmanageable. We didn't have that same sort of balance in the system. I tried to rebalance it in 2010. Did incremental little changes? There was a list of things that folks said if you did the list, that would reset the system and keep it under control. We did—we cherry-picked from that. We didn't do the list, and as a result, the costs kept going up in the way I described. This time, the speaker took the very principled and honorable view that we've got to tackle this. We cannot keep spending taxpayer dollars for a system that is costing more and more, and needing—which means we're going to spend less and less on other obligations we have. So, started a really difficult conversation that got us there. Well, there were three, if I remember correctly, or if I understand it, I do remember the way I remember it, but if I understand it correctly, you had three tracks that were running parallel. The governor felt that he was going towards that same end. The legislature, the house, felt they were going in, and kind of sideways to it was a treasurer who, at Beth Pierce, was looking in that same direction. It was the ability to take those three and make them one. So, quite honestly, the governor never was a player. He chose to sit on the sidelines. So, he was rhetorically a player, but not in reality. He—and you will recall, he said, legislature, you know, I'm going to respond to what the legislature said. He was not. And normally on highly complex technical issues having to do with money, we see what we call the fifth floor working closely with us. That wasn't happening. Unlike what had happened in previous years where I had conversations with members of the fifth floor about, okay, you know, what can we do? That was not happening. Was the treasurer working with you? So, Beth had started—she was seeing exactly the same thing we were seeing. And we, in this instance, are the people who sit with the money and are trying to figure out how to make it work. You know, it's so arcane to everybody else, and it's just so complicated. Are we going to have to revisit this, continue to revisit it periodically? I hope not. I think that we need to re—we need to be looking at it and watching it much more closely, weaving the whole legislature on a regular basis as opposed to just kind of the wonky few who sit up on the third floor and think, oh my God, you know, do I put the money there or there? And we're always going to honor our obligations. That's the one thing that I'm very proud of. There was never any doubt that we would not honor our obligation. My deep fear was that there was a strategy to let the pension system go so far south to become so troubled that we would abandon the defined contribution—let me get my term—abandon the defined benefit system, which guarantees employees, state and school employees, a defined benefit through their retirement. And I think I was really afraid that there was an interest in allowing that to collapse and move to a defined contribution plan, which is what has been happening throughout this country. Beth Pierce was the treasurer, was very focused on that, and that was a principle that certainly the House Democrats held very strongly, is we were not going to abandon— Our retirees. Our retirees. And we honored that commitment. We asked working people to make more of a contribution. It was a hard thing for them to do. I understand the frustration with that. At the same time, we need to remember that we're managing the whole state's treasure and have obligations to other people also. And when I looked at how much we were putting into the pension system, as opposed to, say, our mental health system, sorely in need of support, way more support than we're doing. But you have to make those choices. Would you talk about the people's business in the House? What is it like? You've been there for so long, since what year? 2008? What seeded in 2009? Since 2009 until now. Are people as civil to each other as they were in 2009? You just look across the nation and you see people yelling at each other or saying really ugly things to each other. Has the House been able to hold on? It's a people's House. It's a very, very special place. I think it still is special. It was hard during the pandemic because I didn't sit like this with my colleagues. We sat on Zoom instead. I think in my experience, every single person who walks in there walks in with the intention of doing the people's business. I absolutely, in the committees that I've served in, it has always been an extremely civil, understanding, thoughtful, engaged exchange. That's what happens in committee. We work out our differences. We try to figure out how to serve Vermonters. When you go to the floor and you support this or that, well then you're going to posture and you're going to position a little bit more. But it's not personal. It's not personal. One of the things that I love to do is to watch Prime Minister's questions, which is the British Parliament, and watch how they talk to each other. Listen to each other. We actually have very explicit rules about how we behave on the House floor. I have to stand up. I have to look at the speaker. I address her. It's always the member from Montpelier, the member from all of that by looking at the speaker rather than at the person who may be saying inferring terrible things. It takes the tone down. It allows it to be, you focus on the policy issue, not on the person. It's a remarkable place because of that. But more importantly, anybody from Montpelier can walk into that building and find me and talk to me or to their new representatives, to the people who will take warns in my place and have a conversation about what matters. We will listen and we will try to help you with that. We're talking about 18 years of your life. What's ahead? What are you looking forward to next year? Are you planning your garden? Oh, I plan my garden every day. Yes, and so I'll be playing there. I'll be focusing on other parts of my life for once. I would just say thank you for 18 years of service. I would have never done that myself, but there's a lot of things I would have never done and I think it's great. I really appreciate the time that you've given us today and I hope that you who are watching this appreciate the Mary Hooper who did so much for us in the city, in the state, and the Mary Hooper will be attending her garden next year. Thank you so much. Take care. Thank you, Richard, very much.