 Thank you. So good evening. This is an evening public hearing of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee on February 8th. And we are delighted to be partnering the two committees to be sitting together, listening to Vermonters' concerns and testimony with regard to the fiscal year 23 budget. We have scheduled two hours for this public hearing and we have a large group of people who would like to speak to us. And so we have allocated two minutes of time for folks to testify. We read every bit of written testimony that people would care to submit. And so please feel free to submit written testimony. And please stick to the two minutes that we have allocated. That's important so that we can hear from everyone. There is a two-minute clock and at zero seconds we will interrupt you and ask you to finish your sentence, your testimony, and then we would need to move on to the next person. The process is going to be as is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and I have spoken and today I as the chair of the House Appropriations Committee will be chairing the hearing and tomorrow we are having another public hearing and Senator Kitch will be chairing that hearing. Before we turn to our guests, the people who are joining us to testify, we would like to introduce ourselves. We are experimenting and being in person and remote. The House Appropriations Committee is for the most part in the State House and the Senate is joining us remotely. And so the odd little picture that our guests are seeing is the House Appropriations Committee. And if nothing else we'd like to introduce ourselves so that you will know our voices because you surely can't see our faces. So I will go around the room and then I will turn we have one of our members who is remote and then I'll turn to the senators to introduce themselves. So Peter. Good evening. Peter Fagan, Ron City. Next is Meda Townsend, South Burlington. Kristen Salino, Bradabura. Good evening. I'm Marty Feltas. I represent Lyndon Sutton and Burke. Hi, Jim Harrison. I represent Chittenden, Benden, Killington and Bridgewater. Hello, I am Robin Shye from Middlebury. Good evening, Trevor Squirrel, Underhill and Jericho. I'm Helm from Fairhaven, Kaston, West Haven and Huberty. Kimberly Jessup representing Middlesex and East Montpelier. And I'm Mary Cooper and I represent the City of Montpelier. And our last member is Remote, Dave. Hi, I'm Dave Diacaboni. I represent Moorstown, Elmore, Wister and Woodbury. Good to see you. Senator Kitchell, do you want to lead off your colleagues? Sure, I will. I'm Jane Kitchell and I chair the Senate Appropriations Committee and I represent Caledonia Orange District in the Senate. Senator Nica, you want to go next, please? I'm Senator Alice Nica. I live in Ludlow and I represent Windsor County and the towns also around Holly and London Derry. Bill? I'm Senator Phil Baruth. I represent Chittenden County. Rich? I'm Rich Westman. I am the Senator from Memorial County. Bobby? I'm Bobby Starr. I represent Orleans and Nassix County and a couple of towns in Franklin County. Rotem? I'm Becca Ballant. I represent Wyndham County. Is Senator Sears, he may not be able to make it tonight because of family demands. So that's that's the Senate here tonight. Thank you. Thank you. And so with that, we would like to turn to the Vermonters who would like to talk to us about the FY23 budget. As I said, we've allocated two minutes. Please try to stick to that amount of time. I will call people two at a time, the person who is to testify and then the person who is behind them just so that people can prepare and we can move efficiently through there through through the process. So again, thank you everyone for joining us. And with that, the first person to speak with us is Jill Olson, and she is followed by Linda Winchlack and Wishlack. And I will begin by apologizing for not pronouncing people's names correctly. Ms. Olson. Thank you very much. I'm Jill Olson. I'm the Executive Director of the V&As of Vermont representing Home Health and Hospice. Two issues I'd like to draw to your attention tonight. One is the nursing workforce shortage. It impacts home health agencies too. I think we hear a lot more about hospitals, but very big impact on on our work as well. And we are supporters of the AHS workforce strategic plan, including the nurse loan repayment and scholarship dollars that are in the governor's budget. The second issue is long-term care services at home and in the community. That's helped with everyday tasks like bathing, dressing, nutrition, and getting out of bed. We are very glad to see the 3% increase for choices for care and some other long-term care services in the budget. We strongly support that, but we're also supporting the long-term care crisis coalition's call to bring that increase to 10% along with some other investments in the long-term care system. There's really no other way to say this. The needs of Romaners and their families who need long-term care services are not being met. We cannot recruit, and by we, I mean all providers in the long-term care system, we cannot recruit enough caregivers to take care of the people who need us without a much greater investment. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. So next up is Linda Wischlack. And please correct my pronunciation. And then following her is Robert Perry. I may have just confused everybody by taking somebody out of line, but I think that's what I need to do. So with Linda and then Robert Perry. Hi, I'm Linda Wischlack. I'm the Executive Director of Bennington Project Independence and the President of the Roman Association of Adult Day Services. First, I'd like to share with you that BAN supports the budget initiatives of the long-term care crisis coalition, of which we're a member and others will be testifying. I also want to thank all of you for your support of our request in the budget adjustment bill for more funds to get us through this fiscal year. When COVID hit, as you know, we all had to shut down. During that time, three adult days closed permanently. The remaining programs had to be able to stay afloat mainly because of CRF and ARPA appropriations. We started to reopen in July, but no one is at 100% capacity. Most programs are below 50%, largely due for workforce shortages, and thus revenues are limited. We are requesting an increase in our Medicaid reimbursement to $25 an hour. Well, before COVID arrived, day programs were struggling to cover our costs due to the low Medicaid reimbursement. We receive only $17.24 an hour for the comprehensive services we provide, including nursing care. We're unable to attract and retain sufficient staff due to the low wages we have to pay because of the rate. We're unable to compete with other programs and businesses. Our starting pay that we can offer is between $13 and $15 an hour on average. Many of us cannot afford to cover health care costs or retention bonuses. We've been in discussion with DEVA about payment reform, but we really can't get very far in the conversation until our Medicaid reimbursement rate is increased to the sustainable level. We try to get a sense of the dollar amount that would be needed. We looked at FY 2019 utilization numbers. Based on those numbers, the increase to $25 an hour would be roughly $3.8 million in increase in total Medicaid funds, including state and federal. However, our utilization numbers are not anywhere near that at the present time. We do hope to get there again, but once the pandemic becomes more manageable, our current Medicaid reimbursement rate is unsustainable. We appreciate your consideration of our request in order to attract and retain staff to cover our fixed costs and provide the level of services so needed in our communities. Thank you very much. Thank you. Robert Perry and then Linda Olson. Good evening. My name is Robert Perry. I'm the Executive Director of the Mad River Valley Television Station. We represent and broadcast to the towns of Fasden, Moortown, Watesfield and Warren, and we're known as a Vermont Access Media Organization, PEG Channel, which provides public educational and government content to our community. I ask that you support the 600,000 opposed in the fiscal 23 budget to support the work of the Vermont Access Media Organizations throughout the state. By showing and archiving local content, particularly municipal meetings, school sports and events, and local activities, we support and meet an important need in our community. The pandemic has increased the value we provide by allowing remote participation and replays of municipal meetings that enable parents to virtually join events even when spectators are not allowed. We capture and show all the local select board meetings, Harwood, school district board meetings, and other related meetings. Recently, for example, we live streamed Troy Wenderley's pop that was done at the Watesfield Elementary School. Parents could not attend, but through our live streaming, we were able to bring them into the performance. We had over 400 viewers connect to our website where we streamed the video. Our work connects the community and supports the democratic process of our governments. At this time, we face serious and consequential funding challenges. Court cutting is reducing cable revenue, which is our primary source of income, and therefore our cable grant continues to decline. For example, we're losing about 5% revenue a year at the Mad River Valley TV station. To counter the dwindling number of subscribers, we've started streaming the channel to reach more in our community. However, this adds to our costs and time and equipment and makes it harder for us to do our mission. So again, I ask you to please support the $600,000 that's in the budget for this, and thank you very much for your time tonight. Thank you. After, so we're now with, I beg your pardon, oh, Linda Olson and then Jessica Barquist. Thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight. I really appreciate it. And thank you so much for all you've done for the Vermont State Colleges in the past two years. I know that you inherited a problem that was not of your making, and I appreciate the effort that you put in to try to keep us afloat and allow us to serve the public good as we're intended. I am the vice president of AFT Vermont for higher education and also a faculty member at Castleton University for 27 years. So I'll get right down to my ass. I know that we don't have much time. I'm asking that the Vermont State Colleges be given a $48 million annual budget appropriation going forward and a $7.4 million bridge fund for this next fiscal year. While we certainly support the governor's recommendation of a $5 million increase to the annual budget-based appropriations, we need more funds in order to meet the needs of our state, our system, and our students. I'm also asking for bridge funding for the next several years, FY 2020 through 2026, a total of $36.4 million so that we can get through this transformation process and better serve our students and our needs as a state. Vermont State College, as you know, the Vermont State College system is an economic anchor in their rural communities and our students are not paying an affordable rate for their tuition. So I think we need to focus on that as well. I certainly appreciate the work that people like Senator Booth have been doing to try to make that more affordable for our students and I encourage that to continue. I really want us to serve the public good that we were intended to serve and to do that we need to be adequately funded going forward and we need to provide our students with an affordable option so 40% of them who are currently not going on to go on in the future. Thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Jessica Barquist and then Tina Zuck. Good evening. I'm Jessica Barquist with the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. The network supports the budget request of the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services. The network and our 15 member organizations are largely funded through the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services and shortfalls in special funds such as the Domestic and Sexual Violence Special Fund have created significant funding issues for victim services providers across the state. The Center's budget request aims to address these shortfalls and we ask the committee to please support their budget request in its entirety. We hope that the General Assembly discusses the recent report completed by the Joint Fiscal Office regarding structural funding issues within victim services and uses the FY23 budget as an opportunity to move toward more sustainable funding models. The network is also seeking a one-time appropriation of $48,000 in the 23 budget to keep the only statewide legal clinic for victims of domestic and sexual violence operational for the entirety of 2022. Due to cuts in federal funding, the clinic faces a one-time shortfall which extends from January through September and the clinic hopes to access the federal grant in October to continue operations of the clinic. This committee has already extended bridge funding for the clinic in the budget adjustment and this one-time ask is to fund the legal clinic in its entirety through September. And then finally we're seeking a one-time ask of $100,000 to conduct a housing needs assessment. This would fund the National Alliance for Safe Housing to perform a statewide domestic and sexual violence housing assessment to inform a master plan for housing victims. We know that survivors face significant housing needs which have been exacerbated by the pandemic and this assessment would identify those gaps in emergency transitional and permanent affordable housing for victims and make a clear action plan on how to fill them. We thank the committees for your consideration. Thank you Tina Zuck and then Tom Dalton. Sorry about that. Hi I'm Tina Zuck. I'm the government relations director for the American Heart Association in Vermont and we're asking your support for three different areas. The first is to please support the governor's recommendation for $951,000 for Diva for the expansion of postpartum Medicaid coverage. It's supported by our organization as a necessary measure to ensure the best health for moms and their new babies. Please support as well the governor's proposed $12 million for early child care and after school programs. We know that an important driver in lifelong health including heart health is high quality early childhood education while the state works towards long-term transformation of the child care system. We encourage you to provide immediate one-time supports to help obtain the early childhood educators who are so important to children's healthy development. And critical to reducing health care spending and tobacco use in Vermont is additional funding and resources for Vermont's tobacco control program and we are asking for at least an additional $1 million for this program. The health department's media budget for the tobacco control program is half of what it was four years ago and that's due to a loss of $1 million in one-time master settlement funding. Replacing this funding is critical because media interventions shift social norms around tobacco use. They reduce tobacco related disparities reduced tobacco use by both adults and kids and increase quit attempts and use of cessation resources. We're also spending $348 million annually just treating tobacco-caused diseases and we know that research shows that funding for tobacco control programs brings a great return on investment. For instance, early evaluation of Vermont's program found that over a 13-year period we saved $1.43 billion in savings by investing $73 million so we ask for your support for this important program. Thank you very much. Thank you. Tom Dalton and then Amy Johnson. Hi, my name is Tom Dalton and I'm the Executive Director of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. We're in the process of opening a specialized recovery center for justice-involved people living with substance use disorders. It's an important group of people to pay attention to, yet only 5% said that they are currently accessing services at an existing recovery center. Over the last two years, Vermont has seen an alarming acceleration in overdose deaths, the largest increase in the country. The risk of fatal overdose increases by over 1000% in the weeks following release from incarceration. I was happy to hear the governor recommend an $8 million increase in funding to address the opioid crisis. We would like to see some of that funding go toward helping justice-involved people succeed by funding this specialized recovery center at the same level as the other recovery centers. Only 13% of prison staff say we are adequately preparing people for success upon release, but prepared or not, people are coming home to their communities every day. Incarcerated people listed improving re-entry support as their number one need. Vermont doesn't currently have a re-entry center to help those transitioning from prison back into the community and this specialized recovery center will fill that need for many. Our recovery center will enhance Vermont's recovery infrastructure by adding a community partner specifically focused on the needs of this particularly consequential and high-risk group. Our staff will be available to people in all Vermont prisons and work to connect them with their local recovery centers and treatment providers across the state. I've submitted additional information with details about the important and unique services we will be offering and please remember when justice-involved people succeed, we all benefit. Thank you. Thank you. Amy Johnson and then Donna Bailey. Good evening and thank you. My name is Amy Johnson and this is Luna and I'm the director of the Parent Child Center of Northwestern Counseling and Support Services and I'm here today in support of increasing state funding for parent child centers providing essential state services. First I'd like to thank the legislature for their ongoing support of the Parent Child Center network. I feel fortunate to live and raise a child in a state that recognizes the importance and true value of a network of family resource centers that support positive childhood experiences. Early experiences are an important public health issue that the PCCs are on the front lines addressing. To continue to provide prevention based supports and services and build healthy communities in our state we are advocating for a base funding increase of 1.5 million to the PCC line and the FY23 budget to help deliver our essential services. Underfunding has made providing all of the needed services to families a constant challenge. We are also asking for a second year of one-time funding 3.7 million across 15 PCCs to address the growing needs of families with young children impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is critically important for Vermont families in the communities and the communities that the services provided by PCCs are not only fully funded but of high quality and consistent across the state. An increase in funding will support the overall global health of the network by allowing for adequate funding of our prevention hub. An increase to our base funding will ensure that our state maintains a rich and robust network of family resource centers. The system exists to support families and it is a robust one. We need to invest in the current system. We need to invest in the high quality prevention work of PCCs. For Vermont families PCCs are the answer. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration. Thank you. Donna Bailey and then Sophia Don Force. Hello. My name is Donna Bailey and I'm the director of the Addison County Parent Child Center and the co-chair of the Vermont Parent Child Center Network. Thank you for convening these public hearings in order to hear from Vermonters across the state and for building a budget that supports all Vermonters focusing on those most in need such as our children. I'm here tonight to ask you for your support of the parent child centers. Please fully fund the parent child center's essential work with families with young children. Base funding for the eight core services should be $10 million annually. In fiscal year 22, please work towards getting us to our goal of 10 million by ensuring that parent child centers receive a base fund of $7.5 million. This means we are asking for a second year of $3.7 million in one time funding for the parent child centers to support families with young children as we're still dealing with the consequences of the COVID pandemic. We are also requesting an increase in base funding for parent child centers by $1.5 million for a total of $4.8 million in the PCC line. I hope you are prioritizing Vermont families in your outlining of the budget and ensuring that young Vermont families and the workforce that keep them moving ahead are supported with preventative measures that will keep families whole and self-reliant in the future. Parent child centers are partners with the state and are the hub for connecting families to community and state services. The work that PCCs do families to cope successfully with both the timeless challenges of our families with young children and new challenges of the 21st century. As Benjamin Franklin said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you. Sophia Donforth and then I'm going to Hannah Sessions. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Sophia Donforth and I'm Executive Director of the Milton Family Community Center located in Milton, Vermont, which serves families across Northern Chittenden County. I'm here as well to advocate for the Vermont Parent Child Center Networks Request to increase our base funding by $1.5 million for a total of $4.8 million in the PCC line in the FY23 budget and also for a second year of $3.7 million in one-time funding to address the needs of families with young children because of the COVID pandemic. Parent child centers are remarkable in that they do prevention and mitigation work simultaneously for Vermont's vulnerable families. The multi-generational approach to supporting families gives kids what they need to thrive and partners with parents and caregivers to ensure they can better meet the needs of those children. In this way, immediate needs are met and the groundwork is laid for healthier and more resilient children and families. Families gain concrete supports and isolation busting connections. In the past year, my center has used our state funds to help families access food, diapers, safe housing for survivors of domestic violence, referrals for specialized support for children with special needs, strategies for coping with stress. I could go on. Another feature and focus of Parent Child Centers is partnering with families to identify and build upon their strengths. This leads to parents and caregivers who advocate for themselves and others, set and meet their own goals and come to be resources for others. This peer support is crucial to many families and expands the reach and impact of Parent Child Centers. This last part I know firsthand as a long-time participant at the family room in Burlington, I received support in parenting my young children and connected to a community that has helped meet immeasurably during the challenges of childhood, especially during a pandemic. The depth of support and connection helped me learn both about the importance of creating it for others and about my ability to contribute in this arena, which is how I now find myself heading one of these centers. PCCs help parents and caregivers recognize their own worth and support them to be their best selves, which is what all of our children need. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Hannah Sessions and then Megan Carsewell. All right. Thank you. My name is Hannah Sessions and I'm here today as a board member of the Vermont Land Trust and a former board member of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. I live in Leicester, Addison County with my husband and our two teenage children. We run Blue Ledge Farm where I go dairy and cheese operation. I'm also here for personal. I'm personally invested in the Land Trust because they are the reason that we're able to start our business, our value added business. Back in 2001, we sold our development rights to the Land Trust. We now have a herd of 150 goats. We employ 10 people. We purchase milk and support a small family farm in the town next door. Enough about us. I know that the Vermont Land Trust and many of other programs from the VATB are a critical part of the future success of a lot of agricultural businesses. They really have their feet on the ground in Vermont and when people come and visit the state, they say to us, why does Vermont feel so different? And I say, well, Vermont values its farmers and its open land and it's working for us. And also, did you know that over 20% of the state is conserved in the Land Trust? Wow. No, I did not know that. They're delighted to hear that. So the the author Pete Davis said, we are rooted not just by our ancestors, but by our descendants as well. And this is a critical time to support the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. They support visionaries all over the state in all of the amazing work that they're doing to establish our businesses, to network our businesses, and promote, export our Vermont products. So I urge you to fully fund the VATB this year. And thank you so much. Thank you. Megan Carswell and then Heather Wilson. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Megan Carswell. I work for the early intervention program serving Chinden County. I'm joining you today to speak to some of the issues that children and families are facing in our state and to voice my support for an increase in funding to strengthen children's integrated services. I would first like to thank you all for allowing me to join today and for your ongoing support of the CIS system. I've been working directly with families for many years and I've seen firsthand the benefits that these services have on our youngest and most vulnerable Vermonters to continue providing quality ongoing supports and services within our community for advocating for an increase of $1.8 million to bring it to $13.3 million for FY23. We are also seeking a one-time investment of federal pandemic relief funds of roughly $1.6 million for a statewide data reporting platform. The strain that the pandemic has had on our system as well as on the families we serve is tangible in all areas of our service provision. As a home visitor, I observe and experience these challenges from all sides. Young children in need of services are unable to be supported by their child cares and parents isolated from personal support systems are treading water at home. Without adequate programming, children are slipping through the cracks and parents are left feeling defeated. Investing in this critical work not only allows for direct support for families but also early prevention leading to long-term positive outcomes and a reduction in cost down the line. An increase in funding will allow more families to have access to a strong system of support in a time where it's crucial. The CIS system was created to help families in Vermont thrive. Without proper funding, the quality of services and access to them will only dwindle. Now more than ever, this is vital work. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration. Thank you. Heather Wilson and then Annie Crossard. Good evening. My name is Heather Wilson. I live in St. Albans City and I work for the Parent Child Center of Northwestern Counseling and Support Services. I'm also here like Meg to speak about the budget for Children's Integrated Services, CIS. We're looking for a couple of things this year an increase of $1.8 million to budget to bring it to $13.3 million for the coming fiscal year as well as the one-time investment of about $1.6 million for the statewide data reporting platform. CIS is the system of care for early childhood, pregnancy, child six birthday. CIS provides essential and federally mandated services impacting families as early as possible to improve outcomes. This includes home visiting nurses and family support specialists, mental health clinicians, child care coordinators, and special education services. Services are more important than ever right now with the increased rates of child welfare involvement, poverty, homelessness, and housing instability, and the increased mental health need. While Vermont provided an increase to our budget for fiscal year 22, analysis shows that our services remain underfunded. Our current case rate per member per month should increase to $700, factoring in the actual cost of provision of services as well as inflation. Financially backing the true cost of CIS will allow us to do the following, address our staffing crisis related to burnout and low wages, reduce or eliminate wait times, increase hours of care, obtain needed yet costly training, and remove the burden of tedious data collection and reporting. So please consider our request to strengthen CIS and investment in the outcomes of all Vermonters. Please increase the CIS budget to $13.3 million and allocate $1.6 million of federal pandemic relief funds for our data reporting platform. Thank you. Thank you. Annie Crawford and then Dave Bellini. Hi, my name is Annie Crawford. I'm a homeowner in Williston, and I'm here as a volunteer trustee of the Vermont chapter of the Nature Conservancy. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I want to acknowledge this once in a generation opportunity to leverage public funding to advance projects and programs that boost Vermont's resilience from the effects of climate change. I appreciate the budget's focus on workforce and housing. Of course, it follows that more people will mean more pressure on our natural resources. Investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation now will prepare us for future demands for more power, clean water, development, safe transportation, etc. These investments can simultaneously protect Vermont's natural and working lands and the economy that relies upon them. And there's good news. Vermont has a big advantage over other states. We already have an effective funding model for conservation and proven results in the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and its partnering nonprofits. Like Hannah Sessions said minutes before, this moment calls for the full statutory funding of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. Conserving and restoring Vermont's lands and waters is a proven investment that builds resilience for the climate change, including improved flood flood resilience. It also creates open spaces for all Vermonters to enjoy. It improves our public health through improved water and air quality. And of course, it preserves natural places for our flora and fauna to move as existing native habitats change along with the climate. And last but not least, Ph.C.B. funding is an economic driver for various enterprises which rely upon Vermont's working landscape. I hope the legislature will support continued investments in conservation. These nature-based solutions to climate change will be critical in helping our state thrive in the years ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Dave Bellini and then Susan Summer. Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Bellini and I'm not the executive director of anything. I've retired from the Department of Corrections and I am here to ask that the legislature perform an intervention on the executive branch of government for the Department of Corrections. You have a crisis in the Department of Corrections. The Department of Corrections has a 44% turnover if you, you know, that's the best that they could come up with. It's probably higher than that. I'm requesting that the legislature put $20 million immediately into the Department of Corrections for something called a market factor adjustment. You cannot function with this amount of staff leaving all the time. None of your goals when you talk about the culture or you want to do X, Y, and Z, that's irrelevant and it's silly to the staff. It's ridiculous when you're working 12 and 16 hours a day and you're sleeping in your car and you want to see your family. That is the culture. Sleep deprivation is the culture. So I just, I don't have a script or anything. I'm telling you this because it's true and it seems like you always have to have a body to throw on the table to say here, you know, here you go. You will have a major catastrophic event. This is happening now and corrections is out of sight and out of mind. It's an unsafe place to work and I would not recommend it to anyone I care about and it was a good career for me and this started before the pandemic and the DOC can't be the ATM machine for the legislature that it was, you know, for all those years. So $20 million market factor adjustment. Thanks for listening. I really do know what I'm talking about. Thank you. Susan, some summer and then I have to turn the page. I'm Susan summer. I work with Bennington County Habitat for Humanity. I'm here tonight speaking on behalf of all of our Vermont Habitat affiliates. There are seven Vermont Habitat affiliates and three chapters. So 10 of us doing the work of making affordable home ownership and affordable home repair opportunities available for people in our state. We're asking that you fully found the Vermont Housing Conservation Board just as a couple other groups who are interested in the conservation and have asked here tonight as well. During the pandemic, our habitat affiliates brought people home. People became homeowners. People work very hard under Habitat for Humanity requirements to become homeowners. We also were able to complete home repair projects such as building ramps despite the pandemic. The Ron Housing Conservation Board has statutory funding that often is not fully funded. This means that even though affordable housing in the state of Vermont is an oxymoron, whether you are a renter or you would wish to be a homeowner, the state is not fully funding the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. If you're serious about housing and affordable housing and home ownership, then you need to do that. Please keep in mind that all of us deserve these opportunities. There's not just a missing middle income group of us. There are many of us below that and slightly above it that don't have the opportunity for home ownership. It doesn't matter what your income level is. We all should have that opportunity and our Habitat affiliates can do it. Please encourage the Vermont Housing Conservation Board to put more of their money toward their Habitat for Humanity affiliates and please fully fund the VHCB. Thank you very much. Thank you. Margaret Adelman and then Kaye Hopper. I agree actually, sorry. You're muted. My name is Margaret Adelman from Winooski and I'm the coordinator for the Vermont PFOS Coalition. A PFOS, which is better known as Forever Chemicals, are everywhere and while Vermont may be considered the fifth greenest state in the U.S., we score 45 out of 50 states on water quality, which is truly, truly disgraceful. The Department of Health and the Agency of Natural Resources must be given an additional $1 million to address PFOS toxins and these additional monies must be earmarked for scheduling regular fish, wildlife, and water testing of our rivers and lakes for PFOS, lowering the limit of total PFOS in our drinking water from 20 parts per trillion to one part per trillion, which can be done by the Vermont Environmental Protection Rules, Chapter 21, Water Supply Rule, which allows that to be done as necessary. Testing for 29 forms of PFOS that are included in current EPA methods, imposing a moratorium on the use of biosolids on agricultural lands, banning the importation of construction and demolition waste, as well as sludge from other states. Testing the many private wells in rural Vermont near where PFOS has already been found in public drinking water, educating the public about the dangers of PFOS chemicals in our food, clothing, soil, and water, and prohibiting all Vermont state agencies from purchasing non-essential products containing PFOS chemicals, a real easy fit. All of these actions can be taken by the governor, the department of health, or the agency of natural resources. Thank you. Thank you. Kay Hopper and then Evan Perkins. Hi, my name is Kay Hopper and I'm calling about the state pension system. The governor has stated that there will be no new taxes as there is enough money. Any changes to state employee benefits that result in an increase in costs to the state employees and or a decrease in the employee benefits is an increased tax to state employees. Increasing our costs and decreasing our benefits is unethical and illegal. It severs the contract with the employee at the time of hire, which promised a pension benefit at an expected cost. I find the proposal presented by the pension task force to be inadequate and unequitable. The highest paid employees, the judiciary, proposed a CPI cutoff remaining at 5 percent, have given up the least and remain among the highest paid employees in the state in retirement and in employment. If the state would like to attract and retain employees, they need to seriously consider not capping the CPI at all. In one year, an employee retiree or her retiree faces a serious loss of income with extreme inflation. If the CPI caps stay in place or worse are lowered, we risk increasing the number of impoverished retirees. This will further erode the state's income as the state will not gain needed tax revenues and the economic fallout to local businesses will be damaged as there will be less disposable income available to generate a healthy economy. The state's wages are typically very low, with many job categories making the lowest in the nation. Many employees live check to check. When you factor in these low wages and calculate the 30-year outlook for an individual's pension, this does not equate to a living wage, and this is before trying to gut the pension and benefits farther. Please consider that a vast simplification to the pension system agreements across all separate categories of agreements would save money as the management of such a system would not require as many employees to maintain. The level of complexity that has been created so far is quite ridiculous. This decision will again set an important precedent that either all of our dedicated long-term employees deserve a retirement that is not impoverished or the state has decided to enrich the rich by taxing the lowest paid employees. If the judiciary will not accept a lower CPI cap, I do not see why other employees must accept a lower CPI. Why should the lowest paid state employees subsidize the highest paid employees? Thank you for your time. Evan Perkins and Michael Abadi. Hello, my name is Evan Perkins. I run Small X Farm with my wife, Heidi, and Barnett. We have received two working lands grants in the last five years that have had a huge impact on our business. I am asking you to please make a transformative investment in the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative of $15 million for the next three years. Heidi and I run an organic vegetable farm, and this program has helped to transform our wash pack space, increasing our efficiency, which has translated into our farm hiring more employees and the ability for us to pay a higher wage. As an example, this season we have hired five employees, two of which are moving to Vermont from other states. In addition, our farm provides a good life and living for our family in rural Vermont. We believe that small-scale organic farming attracts younger people from other states to move here. That is why we moved here 20 years ago and provides genuine opportunities for young Vermonters, particularly in rural areas where we have seen agricultural careers decline with the loss of our small dairy farms. Whenever possible, we spend our money within the state. We hire local people and we support many other Vermont businesses, like compost and soil producers, seed companies, local hardware, and building supply stores. We also provide high-quality produce for our community, which has sold at many local retailers. Money invested in rural enterprises like ours tends to spend a lot of time in Vermont before it leaves the state. All of these Vermont businesses we support provide high-quality jobs within our community. The grants we have received have not been make or break for our farm, but have allowed us to be a better, more viable business in a shorter period of time. I am asking you to please make a transformative investment in the Working Lands Enterprise initiative of $15 million in the next three years. Thank you so much. Thank you. Michael Abadi and then Catherine Stamper. Good evening. I'm Michael Abadi and I live in Randolph. I'm also the board chair for Orca Media, which serves Randolph, Montpelier, Waterbury, and 10 other towns in Central Vermont. And because we covered Montpelier, we served the whole state by capturing important happenings such as the governor's COVID updates and the work of the legislature. We in the public access community are grateful that you recognize our importance to the political and cultural life of Vermont. We urge you to support our 24 media centers with an appropriation of $600,000 fiscal year 2023. Pandemic has made abundantly clear that people must find ways to connect remotely and that community media is an essential service in these trying times. We've assisted select boards and school boards as they pivoted to virtual meetings and then reverted back to in person or hybrid. We work with area high schools to live stream graduation so that family and friends could participate such crucial milestones. We've also served non-profit arts organizations like Lost Nation Theater so they continue to find an audience for the creative works remotely. The need is so great that we determine we have to hire more staff for education and outreach so that all may have the tools and skills tell their stories in a virtual format. That hire has moved us into deficit territory which is daunting given how our revenue is so dependent on waning cable television viewership. But we're diversifying our revenue streams with grants, partnerships, community, and summer youth offerings. And we successfully launched a Vermont youth documentary lab last summer. Be shortly opening up registration for this summer. And yes we moved to the Vermont College of Fine Arts in February 2020. We look forward to finally having an open house to showcase our new studio. That move also significantly lowered our rent so please know we are trying our best to reduce our costs. Legislature support will be crucial as we try to do more with less. We ask you to appropriate $600,000 for fiscal year 2023. So the community media may continue to thrive in Vermont. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Catherine Stamper and then Betsy Thurston. Good evening. I'm Catherine Stamper and I live in Burlington. I'm the Development and Communications Director of Vermont Adult Learning which serves seven of Vermont's 14 counties. Chittenden, Franklin, Grand Isle, Addison, Rutland, Windsor, and Wyndham. I'm here to ask you to support the statewide adult education and literacy provider network with an additional appropriation of $1.4 million in FY 2023 to address historic underfunding and ongoing expenses related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Adult education and literacy providers serve adults in Vermont who need help with basic skills in order to access other educational and career opportunities. Increasing literacy in reading, writing, and math opens up opportunities for students including better jobs, furthering their education or developing new job skills, having a better family life, and being able to do tasks for themselves. My parents, refugees from Nazism and Communism, benefited from adult education upon arrival in the United States. Two battered suitcases, one from Bergen-Belsen and the other from Stalinist Poland, carried the work ethic and educational aspirations needed to foster socioeconomic advancement. Trauma from poverty, war, domestic violence, or marginalized group oppression is a common thread in the lives of our students whose educations were interrupted. We offer a restart button. An educated workforce is an employed workforce. Please support the statewide adult education and literacy provider network with an additional appropriation of $1.4 million for FY 2023. Thank you very much. Thank you. Betsy Thurston and then Jessica Martin. Good evening. I'm Betsy Thurston with the Bellas Falls Downtown Development Alliance and I thank you so much for hosting us. I'm here to support Vermont's downtowns. I'm a member, supporter of the Vermont Downtown Coalition, a new alliance of the 23 downtown organizations that organized to support, grow, and strengthen Vermont's historic downtowns. The downtown program started in 1999 and has provided communities with financial incentives, training, technical assistance to help restore historic buildings, improve housing, design walkable communities, and encourage economic development. To ensure success of this program, we're asking you to fund the 23 downtown organizations together with the Vermont Downtown Coalition, which will spur COVID recovery and overall growth in our state. We are asking for funding of $485,000, $20,000 for each of the 23 downtown organizations, and $25,000 would go to support the Vermont Downtown Coalition. Funding would support marketing, content development, increase digital reach for downtown organizations individually and collectively. It would expand the ability of the downtown organizations to educate, guide, and partner with businesses, nonprofit, and community organizations to strengthen downtown models and leverage state funding. Support communication within the coordinated effort of these state mandated organizations to leverage successes. And it would increase the successful downtown and Village Center tax credit to $5 million to expand the downtown program to existing neighborhood development areas. I'd just like to say personally what we in Bellas Falls and Rockingham have accomplished this year was done by a handful of volunteers. We are proud of what we've accomplished. There's so much more to do. My funding for my salary comes from the town and we're just going to wrap up please. Thank you. And we'd like to thank you for your consideration and invite you to come visit us in Bellas Falls. Thank you. Thank you. Jessica Martin and then Michael Rolo. Hi, good evening. My name is Jessica Martin. I am the Executive Director for Springfield on the move. Like Betsy, I am one of the 23 designated downtown organizations. And I do want to say thank you for your consideration for funding. I wanted to talk about the Better Places grant funding. Springfield was one of the eight organizations that was able to receive this funding last year in its pilot year. And as a result of this funding, we made permanent improvements to our newly established park in our designated downtown as well as provided a music series and put money in pockets of struggling musicians and gig workers last year. There was, however, I believe close to over 50 other applications in communities that were not able to receive this funding. So we are asking that the state consider the 1.5 million for the Better Places program. In its inaugural year last year, Springfield did not have to provide a match, whereas this year's Better Places grant funding does have to provide a match. And I can say that last year, it really took a lot off of our plate when we did not have to provide that match. And as a result, we had over a thousand attendees for our four concerts last August. So this 1.5 million for the Better Places, the grants would range from five to 40,000. And excuse me, we want to ask you to please consider lifting the cap of one project per municipality for this funding opportunity. Again, thank you for your time and everything that you do for our communities. It really is making a difference. Thank you. Michael Rolo and then Keith Oppenheim. Hi. Good evening. I'm sorry. There's a delay on my end. My name is Mike Rolo. I'm the government relations director for the American Cancer Society, Cancer Action Network, also known as ACS-CAN. If you don't know, ACS-CAN is the non-profit, nonpartisan advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society. And on behalf of ACS-CAN, I want to thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony this evening in support of increasing funding for the Vermont Department of Health's tobacco control program by one million dollars. If passed, this increase would bring funding levels for VDH's program back to levels that were allocated by the legislature several years ago due to one-time master settlement agreement funding. And as you may recall, the House Committee at least received the recommendation from the House Human Services Committee for this funding during last year's budget deliberations. With this funding, VDH could continue and possibly expand their proactive counter-advertising campaigns. And you may ask, well, what are or why do they need counter-advertising campaigns? Due to the sharp increase of youth tobacco use in recent years, largely due to skyrocketing rates of e-cigarette use, the decades of progress that have been made in reducing tobacco rates among youth is now in jeopardy. Here in Vermont, 28 percent of high school students use tobacco products. And there's even higher uses amongst those that are dual users, those that are using combustible cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cannabis, smokeless tobacco, those sort of things. It shouldn't come as any surprise that the youth rate is so high when you consider that the tobacco industry spends a staggering 14 million dollars in the state for advertising to our youth. That couple that I'm taking into account with how much VDH is spending in state funds, which is approximately 645,000, you can understand why we're asking you this evening for this increase. For these reasons and for others that I won't get into, because you have my written testimony, I want to thank you for your time. And just leave you with this investments in this important program are investments that have been proven to result in substantial returns, both in terms of lives and in dollars. I thank you very much. Thank you. Keith Oppenheim and then Susan Arnott. Hi, everyone. I'm Keith Oppenheim. I serve as vice president on the board of the media factory, our community media center in Burlington. I'm also a professor of broadcast media at Champlain College. I'm here to support the Vermont Access Network request for $600,000 in FY 2023 to support the PEG community media centers while policy is developed for long term funding. One of the goals of VAM, the Vermont Access Network, has been to provide media education to young people and adults across the state. I've developed a professional partnership with the media factory. In our broadcast program at Champlain, students complete a capstone course, a major final project where they synthesize much of what they've learned. And for eight years running, our students have worked with the media factory to create an annual program of documentaries about issues and topics in Vermont, ranging from farming, music, immigration, homelessness, gender identity, just to name a few. One measure of our success is that our students have won more than 30 awards from contests and festivals on the local, state, regional, and national level. It's been pretty good, but the greater accomplishment has been the learning itself. By having a community media center that shares our educational goals and values, we have a place where our students can interact with professionals and create top notch content. That has a major impact on their intellectual development and their ability to get jobs in the marketplace. And I'll add that some of our students do internships at the media factory, others have gotten hired for full and part-time positions. There really is no other place locally where we could create this kind of partnership and have this kind of success. That's why I'm asking for your support of VAN and its 24 PEG TV community media centers with an FY 2023 appropriation of $600,000. I thank you for your time. Thank you. Susan Aronoff and then Catherine McNam. Hi. Good evening for the record. My name is Susan Aronoff and I am the senior planner and policy analyst for the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. And I want to begin by thanking you all for having this hearing and giving us an opportunity to share our thoughts and comments and requests with you. A lot of you might not be familiar with what the Developmental Disabilities Council is, so just a quick background on that. We are, every state has one. We are entirely federally funded. There is a line for us in the budget because the state has to provide some in-kind support in order to receive the federal funding. The state also has to provide assurances that it will not interfere with our advocacy efforts and that is why I have the rare and fortunate privilege is a privilege to talk to you this evening and to advocate. Susan, hang on, Susan, hang on just a second. Did you mean to please back up a little bit and keep going? We were getting feedback from another member. I'm sorry. Yes, that's quite all right. We're all dealing with that these days. Zoom is wonderful. Yeah, I just wanted to give everyone just a little bit of background about why it is I, as a state employee, am able to advocate for a budget that departs from the governor's recommend. So because we have these federal assurances, we're allowed to advocate. I get to advocate on behalf of Vermonters with Developmental Disabilities and their family members. And it is part of our platform this year to support the wage and rate increases for the Vermont Designated and Specialized Services Agency. And so I want to join in the support for the Long Term Care Coalition for the 10% raise, particularly for Designated and Specialized Services Agencies. I also want to note that on our platform is a housing item. This is 25 years, 25 years, 25 years since the closing of Brandon. And we have to ask, where are we for the parents and families of people with developmental disabilities in this state? Really, where are we? We have parents, some of the best parents in the world, in the state, advocating for secure safe housing for their loved ones because they are afraid of what will happen to them when they're no longer able to care for their adult children. We're talking about adults in their 20s, 30s, 40s. Their parents are aging out in their 50s, 60s, 70s. And they're terrified about what is going to happen to their children 25 years after closing Brandon. So our housing request is modest. There's additional money in the home and community-based service system because of the increase in fMAP. Representative Yacoboni has a simple bill that would require some additional housing options be created by the Agency of Human Services in conjunction with our housing agencies that there be three new service supported and services. Services are key. Service-supported housing for the folks with disabilities and I will leave it there. I submitted written comments and I will be submitting comments from our council members as well. And thank you all for your time and your service, especially during this pandemic. You've all been amazing leaders. Thank you. Catherine McMahon and then Ruby Baker. Good evening. My name is Catherine McMains. I'm chair of the Jericho Select Board, chair of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and chair of the Jericho Energy Task Force. As chair of the boards, I am aware of the difficult job to balance the ask for spending with the amount of funds available, but I appreciate this opportunity to request additional funding for the Regional Planning Commissions. As the town with the small staff, the CCRPC has been invaluable with assistance to Jericho. For example, from projects on creating a master plan for the commercial district, a stormwater master plan and subsequent projects or transportation planning. Additional help was provided to the Jericho town staff answering their questions on projects and grants while we were without a town administrator. Serving on the Executive Committee of the CCRPC. I've also seen how much more of the RPCs have been asked to do over the years. From housing, equity and bylaw updates, water and sewer, climate change, resiliency, planning and now help with ARPA spending issues, dealing with the broadband about doughnut holes and implementation of the enhanced energy plan. The state has been helpful in providing funds for an energy coordinator help. What about future funding for the work? The RPCs have been level funded at $30 million, $30 million, maybe a lot of money. The RPCs have been funded at $3 million for 20 years. Statutory funding would provide the RPC $7 million. On behalf of the RPCs, I would request providing at least an additional $2 million to allow the RPCs to continue their work for all their communities in the state. I thank you for this opportunity to speak as well as for all the work that you do. Thank you. Ruby Baker and then Mary Hayden. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. We can hear you. Okay. I don't know why you can't see me. Hi, my name is Ruby Baker. I am the Executive Director of the Community of Vermont Elders and we are a nonprofit that advocates in the state of Vermont for issues relating to older Vermonters and we are supporting the ask of the long-term care crisis coalition with a primary budgetary issue to invest in our long-term care system, which is actively in crisis. The long-term care crisis coalition represents over 200 Vermont businesses that provide long-term care services across the state of Vermont to vulnerable older adults and people with disabilities. We are asking for a 10% increase to the choices for care funding and ACCS funding to ensure older Vermonters and those with disabilities can access the care they need. 3% is great but it doesn't begin to address the real need in the long-term care service sector. As it stands today, Vermont is unable to guarantee care to our older and disabled Vermonters. 10% increase would bring stability to these services which are in crisis across the board across the state in every region and we are asking that you increase funding to all of these service providers. Thank you. Mary Hayden and then Michael O'Brien. My name is Mary Hayden. I'm the Executive Director of the Vermont Association of Area Agencies on Aging. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight in support of budget items which impact on older Vermonters. V4A is also a member of the long-term care crisis coalition. This group has been meeting on a regular basis since last summer to discuss the issues affecting long-term care in home and community-based services. What has emerged very clearly from our discussions is the impact that workforce shortages are having on older Vermonters who need and deserve these services as well as the need to increase Medicaid reimbursement rates in order to be able to provide such services. V4A was pleased to see in the governor's budget a 3% reimbursement rate increase for home and community-based services but this crisis is so acute that this is not enough. Therefore V4A also supports a 10% Medicaid reimbursement rate increase for the home and community-based providers. These are critical services that older Vermonters need to be able to stay in their homes and communities. V4A also supports increasing Medicaid reimbursement rate to $25 an hour for adult day services. Adult day services are currently reimbursed at only 17.40 an hour and this is not sustainable for the future. V4A also supports raising the threshold for Vermont's social security income tax exemption. By raising this threshold it will help to improve the quality of life for Vermont's older adults as well as making our state a more attractive retirement destination. Finally V4A supports workforce budget initiatives which will provide training retraining and incentives to find and retain more workers in Vermont including licensed healthcare workers but also skilled home and community-based workers needed to support older Vermonters to be able to stay in their homes and communities and these workforce development programs should be inclusive of older and retired workers. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight about these budget initiatives which support older workers. Thank you. Michael O'Brien and then Carrie Stoller. Good evening. My name is Michael O'Brien and I'm a resident of Winooski. I want to thank you tonight for the opportunity to speak with you and I will be speaking about funding for regional planning commissions. As I said I'm from Winooski and I'm the city's representative on the board of the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission. I'm currently on the executive committee acting as the immediate past chair. In my years on the CCRPC I've experienced the vital role that RPCs play in supporting our member communities especially communities with limited staff. For example some of the work RPC has done in Winooski includes a parking inventory analysis and management plan to assist our planning commission in reviewing our parking requirements and a scoping study for East Allen Street to help plan for improvements for vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Other issues the RPC has helped Winooski with include a scoping study for the Main Street Bridge, rewriting our master plan and drafting a form-based code for our Gateway corridors along Main Street, East Allen Street and Mallets Bay Avenue which has resulted in significant development. More recently the RPC has been involved in developing a regional dispatch for emergency services assisting MS4 communities with wastewater issues and assisting with housing issues broadband and energy issues. Over the past several years RPCs have been asked by the state and local governments to get involved in a widening range of issues without increased base funding and with the increased level of federal funding available for infrastructure investment and the JOBS Act we will need more funding because our current level of funding will not be sufficient to draw down those increased federal funds. We all understand and appreciate the difficulty your committees face in later the varying requests for funding that you must weigh in developing a sound state budget but I ask you to consider increasing funding for RPCs to the levels identified in statute. Again, thank you for your time and we appreciate your consideration. Thank you. Carrie Stahler and then Zach Watson. Good evening. Thanks for your time tonight. My name is Carrie Stahler. I live in Linden and I'm the government and public affairs officer for the Vermont food bank. I'm here tonight to ask you to support the food bank and our 300 statewide partners with a $6 million one-time fund appropriation from the fiscal year 23 budget. This funding will continue to address the ongoing increased food insecurity we're seeing across the state. This funding continues the work that you funded in the budget adjustment act and directly addresses the needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. Even as we continue to navigate new phases of the pandemic our neighbors need for food continues. The extended nature of this crisis is stressing our social systems many of which rely on volunteers and philanthropic giving. While there are federal support programs like SNAP this crisis has revealed just how many of our neighbors are not eligible for federal nutrition programs. The state's support is critical to address the prolonged and heightened hunger crisis across the state and to fill the gap for those who cannot access federal programs. Previous economic crises have shown that food security lags other indicators of well-being for low-income working families. When the Great Recession struck in 2008 it took 10 years for Vermont to return to the pre-recession levels of food security. In 2019 9.6 percent of Vermonters were food insecure. That number was already too high and the latest data shows that the rate of food insecurity is at 27 percent in Vermont. As many sectors return to normal as a state we cannot forget our neighbors who are experiencing food insecurity. We need the state to lead the fight to ensure that our neighbors have the food they need. The Vermont food bank stands ready to work together with the state using ARPA funding to address this need. Our request meets ARPA requirements and the state statute regarding the purpose of the budget to recognize every person's need for food. Please support our neighbors across the state with an appropriation of six million dollars to the Vermont food bank and our network to address the ongoing food security crisis. Thanks for your time tonight and for all the work you're doing. Thank you. Zach Watson and then Bonnie North. I'm Zach Roy Watson. I'm the Executive Director for Central Vermont and Habitat for Humanity. I'm joining you all today with comments in regards to governor's budget recommendations for housing. My first comment is in support of the 20 million dollars in ARPA funds for the Vermont housing and improvement program investment program. The Washington County needs assessment determines the greatest need for housing is for middle-income housing but also recognize that they did not factor in the cost of renovations and rehabilitation needed to make low-income housing modern safe and livable. This includes lead abatement, roof and foundation work, weatherization, etc. Many of the houses on the market which are affordable for low-income people require these upgrades which can be very expensive and ultimately are not really affordable for low-income people. Furthermore many of these low-income housing options are actually mobile homes which depreciate in value over time and VHCV will more than likely not provide mortgage assistance to housing which will depreciate. So VHIP dollars are necessary to invest in low-income housing so that they can actually be affordable to low-income housing people. My second comment is to ask at the legislature fund VHCV as a full statutory share of 35.2 million dollars and encourage VHCV to designate more funds towards this Habitat for Humanity fund. Habitat mission is to build strength, stability and self-reliance through shelter. It is our belief in our experience the best investment you can make in housing which will help Vermonters and Vermont communities is in home ownership. Home ownership is a long-term investment that helps Vermonters create financial equity in their home when it's an asset and it's also an investment in our communities because people that own a home are invested in that community their homes are located in. Building homes for home ownership is difficult but not impossible Habitat for Humanity affiliates have been doing it for 40 years. VHCV currently has a separate designated fund for Habitat affiliates. We build about 10 houses a year right now but with more funding we could we could do a lot more. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Bonnie North and then Daniel Brooks. Hello my name is Bonnie North and I serve on the Rocky Hems Select Board and the Wyndham Regional Commission. I'm on the executive committee there. I want to thank you for this opportunity to join Catherine Mainz and Michael O'Brien and express my strong support for significantly increasing the budget of Vermont's regional commissions. In Rockingham our primary village, Fellows Falls, was once a major economic, industrial, and transportation hub in southern Vermont. The legacy that remains abandoned mill buildings, long neglected former mansions in dreadful condition, hazardous brownfields, and so forth presents enormous challenges as we struggle to revive our town. Nonetheless we've had some stunning accomplishments such as the demolition and environmental cleanup of the former Robertson Paper Mill, the creation of a beautiful riverfront park below the Great Falls where the soils were especially contaminated by the refuse of former mills of industry. These successes were achieved largely thanks to Wyndham Regional's assistance in navigating the labyrinthine tangles of legal and financial kernels involved in brownfield cleanup, development grants, and proper municipal mapping and planning. I cannot overemphasize how much the support we receive from our regional has meant to this community. Most of Vermont's small towns are run by part-time community volunteers who rely on the regionals to help them with the challenges they face. I urge you to increase the funding and not leave our communities without the professional guidance they so sorely need. Thank you very much. Thank you. Daniel Brooks and then Carol Langudden. Are you muted, Mr. Brooks? We can't hear you. Am I still muted? Now we hear you. Thank you. Hi everyone, I'm Dan Brooks from Westpollet. My wife, Lori, who is a visual artist. I own and operate a grass-based raw milk dairy called Wayward Goose Farm and Market. Please consider increasing the funding for the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative in the state's 2023 budget to $15 million. Early in 2020, we were approved for a Working Lands grant by a series of dismal events beyond our control, including COVID, made us rethink our business and everything we'd planned. We needed to pivot drastically and we got the okay to change our grant funding to meet the realities of our new situation. So partially funded by the Working Lands grant, we upgraded the tiny farm stand inside our dairy barn to a new and larger standalone structure. The grant funded the purchase of a large display fridge and freezer, a commercial dishwasher for our glass milk jars, and a point of sale system for self-serve transactions. This has allowed us to transition from an income based on the production of fluid milk for an outside processor to a much more diversified farm. We have a sizable raw milk customer base and also raise our own beef, veal, pork, and meat chickens, which we can now safely display and sell. We make our own baked goods, holiday reeds, dried and fresh flowers, and grow our own vegetables and pumpkins, all of which we sell direct to consumers at our farm store along with some of Lori's art. Most importantly, through our farm store, we support at least 20 other local and regional producers, many of whom are beginning farmers by purchasing their products. In our first full year of operation, we spent $70,000 on goods for resale. This money stays in the local economy in large part due to the flexibility of the Working Lands Enterprise Board. Without these grants, it's unlikely we would still be in operation. An increase in working land enterprise funding to $15 million would help keep young farm entrepreneurs in Vermont and incentivize new folks to begin farming. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Carol Langodin and then Kyla Storm, strong. Good evening, everyone. My name is Carol Langodin. I'm the Executive Director at the Lamoille Family Center in Morseville, and I also live in Lamoille County. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity, and thank you for your commitment to making Vermont a place we can all be proud of. We respectfully request that you support the Parent Child Center Network's request to increase the base funding by $1.5 million for a total of $4.8 million in the PCC line in the FY23 budget. We also ask for a second year of one-time funding in the amount of $3.7 million to address the ongoing needs of families with young children impacted by the COVID pandemic. Parent child centers were a remarkable innovation when they were first created nearly 30 years ago, and they remain on the cutting edge of prevention work that supports families and all of our communities. When children have strong families, our communities are stronger and more resilient. PCC prevention programs and services ensure that parents and caregivers have the knowledge, skills, and resources that they need to care for their children. PCCs can strengthen families and the communities that they live in. This important prevention work ultimately saves money over time for us all. Lamoille Family Center is just one of 15 parent child centers in the state doing incredible work in all of our communities. In the last year in Lamoille County alone, we were able to provide over 3,500 home visits through children's integrated services in our youth programming. We were able to connect 515 families to child care financial assistance or a child care referral. We were able to connect 271 adults with 363 children with concrete supports. So again, we ask that you support the Parent Child Center Network's request to increase the base funding by $1.5 million for a total of $4.8 million in the PCC line in the FY23 budget. We also ask for a second year of one-time funding. Thank you so much for all the work that you do, and I appreciate all of you. Thank you. Kyla Stroh and then Patrick Welle. You're muted. Thank you. Good evening, all. Thank you so much for having me. Sorry about my unmute. My name is Kyla Stroh. I am a resident of Richmond, Vermont, and I am the Farm to School Coordinator at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, and I work on the Vermont feed team, which is a farm to school project we know for Vermont and shelter and farms. I'm calling in tonight to ask you to please support the governor's recommendation to fund the local purchasing incentive program at $500,000 and to also please fully fund the Farm to School and Early Childhood Grant program at $500,000, which is currently in the governor's budget level funds at only $171,000. The Farm to School and Early Childhood Grants program will help support schools in succeeding in receiving access to a local purchasing incentive and strengthen our local food system. As a technical assistance provider that supports schools in purchasing more local foods, I have heard again and again from school nutrition professionals that they want to be serving their students fresh Vermont foods, but it always comes down to price. Since the development of the local purchasing incentive program, I've had the opportunity to work with supervisory unions to help them access the grant. And in the first year, nearly half of the state supervisory unions applied, and the many SUs that didn't apply are eager to apply next year. By providing supervisory unions this grant opportunity and fully funding both programs, the state can continue to support feeding Vermont kids fresh local food and direct more dollars to Vermont farmers. Every $1 spent on local food for a school meal contributes $1.60 back to Vermont's economy. Again, I ask that you please support the governor's recommendation to fund the local purchasing incentive at $500,000 and also to please fully fund the Farm to School and Early Childhood Grant program at $500,000. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up is Patrick Welley and then Sean Larkin. Hello, good evening. My name is Patrick Welley. I'm a geologist from Middlesex, and I sit on the board of the Vermont River Conservancy. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. I'm talking to you today to ask that you continue your strong support for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. The VRC, the Vermont River Conservancy of which I'm on the board, is a nonprofit organization, and in part we rely on funding from the VHCB. The work that we do completes conservation projects in Vermont that conserve habitat, access to the water, and for recreation and other uses across the state. A significant project that's in my neighborhood close to Middlesex is one that was funded through the CB funding and VRC. It's the North Branch Cascades Trail, and it's along Route 12, just a few miles from Montpelier. My family and I enjoy this project and enjoy access to the water from the trail just off of Route 12. It's a place that my kids learned to skip rocks. It's a place that they go to search for critters in the riverbank or that they learned about on Wildcrafts or some other place that day. The trail itself is a local gem. With organizations, organizations such as the VRC, the VHCB enable such projects across the state. And so I ask that you fully fund the VHCB tonight in order for them, for the board to continue to fund similar projects that will strengthen rural economies and the vitality of our working lands, protect farms and make sure that they are affordable for the next generation, improve water quality and soil health, protect community and indigenous gathering places and cultural sites to conserve wildlife, habitat, and irreplaceable natural areas to leverage available federal matching funds, to boost climate resilience, to protect forest and flood plains and wetlands and many other things. Thank you again for your time. Thank you. Sean Larkin and then Kristina Godwin. Good one. Hi, my name is Seen Larkin and I'm a resident of South Burlington. I am the CEO of the Global Technology Company on logic headquarters in our beautiful state. And I am here to talk to you about the importance of child care in Vermont. I'm also a single parent of three and I am well aware of the challenges of trying to juggle a career and making life work and how difficult that can be. And many Vermonters do not have a lot of options when child care is not available and it affects their careers, their earnings potential, it reduces our workforce and economy. While some can work remotely, many jobs in our economy cannot, like ambulance workers, frontline workers, manufacturing line workers, they must be present. Being absent from work due to an inadequate child care infrastructure can disrupt career opportunities for promotion or for experience. This issue does not affect only those that might need to stay late or be present to gain new training for better earnings potential. When a location that provides child care shuts down even for a day, all professionals in Vermont, in Vermont's workforce that has a child at that location gets a call and must leave work. Not only can they not stay at work for new experiences, if they're in a job that requires them to physically be at work, they might lose their regular pay for the necessities of life. This is a problem we need to invest in our child care professionals and their infrastructure. I am asking you to continue to support and invest in child care so we can build our economy and provide opportunities for all. Thank you. Thank you. Christina Goodwin and then Jill McColgas. Hi, good evening. My name is Christina Goodwin and I reside in FDX Junction with my family. I'm the executive director of Pine Forest Children's Center, a nonprofit early childhood education program in the south end of Burlington. Our school has infants through preschoolers with 75 children and 22 early childhood educators. As a director, I'm faced every day with meeting the needs of the children and families in our school community, as well as the needs and well being of our early childhood educators. There is often a thin margin around whether we can open our door safely in order to provide high quality early childhood education that I believe every child in this state deserves. Now more than ever, we need to fulfill the vision that each and every child beginning at birth has the opportunity to benefit from high quality early childhood education delivered by an effective, diverse, well-prepared, and well-compensated workforce. The key to this vision are early childhood educators. The pandemic has highlighted the need for compensation and benefits. As a nonprofit, my program has worked in collaboration with our board of directors to ensure ample wage increases and well-rounded benefits for early childhood educators in our program, but there is still so much more to do. We know that families cannot afford to pay more, and early childhood educators cannot afford to make less. The reality is that the early childhood education system needs to increase wages and benefits. We deserve the kind of public funding we invest in K through 12 educators. It is time that we address these inequities and fold through this workforce in crisis. We need to take care of Ann Scaffold, the early childhood education workforce in Vermont, not only now, but for the future, and we need your help. In this year's budget, I asked that you fund emergency investments and additional retention bonuses, health insurance assistance, and expand loan repayment for early childhood educators so we can continue to support Vermont's children, families, community, and the economy. Thank you for your time and support, and I appreciate all of your hard work. Thank you. Jill McColgan and then Linda January. I think you're muted. We can't hear you. Unplug your headphones. There we go. Maybe. There we go. My name is Jill McColgan. I'm an occupational therapist working in children's integrative services early intervention. I am part of a multidisciplinary team that includes nurses, mental health conditions, family support workers, and specialized child care. We work collaboratively to support families so they have what they need to help their young children develop optimally. During the 12 years since the inception of Children's Integrated Services or CSI, funding for the program has stayed flat while costs and demands have increased. This has led to a loss of capacity to support some of our most vulnerable children and families, increasing the risk of them experiencing homelessness, food insecurities, poverty, and substance use disorders. We know that investing in child development, even during the prenatal period, pays dividends in the future. For instance, providing speech stimulation to a two-year-old who is not talking as much as expected is successful and more cost-effective than providing intervention in kindergarten. The pandemic has only increased the importance of providing services to children under three. Time is of the essence when it comes to identifying and addressing developmental delays, but due to coronavirus, most infants and toddlers spent the spring isolated in their homes rather than in settings where concerns are often flagged first. The closure of most child care programs, for example, meant providers were no longer seeing individual children on a routine basis and were thus unaware of their progress or lack thereof. We are so close to fully funding a system of care that gives our youngest citizens the foundation they need to be successful in school and beyond. When 80% of the brain is developed by age three and 90% by age five, it makes sense to put our resources towards supporting optimal child development in these earliest years. When hundreds of millions are spent on public education for early childhood before children even get to kindergarten, spending $13.3 million on children's integrated services sounds like a bargain. Please consider increasing funding for CSI for FY23 so we can give our kids what they need to succeed. Thank you very much. I'm sorry about my headphone issue. No worries. Thank you. Linda January and then Jenna O'Farrell. Linda January? Okay. Let's go to Jenna O'Farrell and then after Ms. O'Farrell Lewis. Linda January? Yes. Sorry about that. Hi, I'm Linda January, the Executive Director of Otter Creek Child Center in Middlebury and I'm here to talk about the vital field of early childhood education and the critical investments needed to continue to support Vermont families, businesses, and Vermont's essential early childhood workforce. Thank you for your work last year to pass H171 Act 45 which put in motion a historic public commitment to achieving an affordable, accessible, equitable, high quality early childhood education system. Act 45 was the first step in achieving this and it gave great hope to those of us working in this field. If the pandemic has done nothing else that has shown Vermont the country, the world, how incredibly valuable early childhood education services are to the larger society, how vital the work of early childhood educators is to the well-being of families, children, and the economy. When COVID-19 shut down the world in March 2020, within less than a week it was clear that in order to have the critical occupations open and working in order to have doctors and nurses on the front lines, we had to have child care and swiftly and nimbly child care opened when the rest of the world was still closed. And yet despite this acknowledgement that our society as a whole cannot function properly without child care, we are still struggling. The workforce is shrinking, programs are closing, and families are struggling to access and afford child care like never before. Tonight I ask you to continue your commitment to early childhood education by supporting the governor's proposed increase to the Child Care Financial Assistance Program. And I also ask you to think creatively about how Vermont can support the early childhood workforce now to ensure that we stop losing and start adding to this critical workforce. Please support strategies like providing no-cost child care for early childhood educators, helping early childhood educators access and afford health insurance, help reduce student loan debt, and focusing on recruiting new early childhood educators to the field. Thank you again for holding these hearings and allowing for the people of Vermont to be heard. I look forward to the amazing transformational work that will happen this legislative session. Thank you. Thank you. Jenna O'Farrell and then Louis Nicola. Hi, good evening. I'm Jenna O'Farrell, St. John'sbury. I'm the Executive Director of Northeast Kingdom Community Action. And tonight I'm representing the Northeast of Vermont Community Action Partnership, which consists of the five community action agencies, NECA, Sevca, Brock, CVOEO, and Capstone. We greatly appreciate the legislative funding we receive to implement and extend the Embrace Small Business Grants administered through a Micro-Business Development Program. The program has been able to offer greater household financial security, business longevity, and the retention of state tax revenues throughout the preservation of these businesses. For new investments moving forward we are requesting $400,000 for implementing our statewide Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program, the VITA tax program, to help low-income Vermonters file their taxes to ensure the state receives the taxes owed and that these Vermonters also receive the full-complementary refunds that they're eligible for. This is particularly critical in this year with the specialized tax credit programs including the child tax credit that many low-income Vermonters are eligible for but may not receive without VITA support. All Vermont Community Action Agencies offer the VITA tax program to low-income Vermonters for recharge. Thousands of low-income Vermonters relied on the VITA tax program during the pandemic. Historically, the VCAP VITA tax program has run on philanthropy and grant support to offer this critical service. As a result, VITA has uneven implementation across the state due to this lack of funding. We have difficulty lifting this up equally with equity throughout our programs. To ensure all Vermonters have access to critical VITA services especially our rural Vermonters we're asking for the $400,000 to support the program statewide. This will provide $80,000 per agency to support a full-time VITA program coordinator. This would allow all income eligible Vermonters access to free accurate and reliable tax support year-round. In closing, we greatly appreciate the important support you've provided for low-income Vermonters throughout the pandemic. We see this as a moment in a historic opportunity to reset our economic disparities through investments and programs that can truly help individuals rise out of poverty. Thank you. Thank you. Louis de Nicola and then Lisa Axelrod. Hi. I'm Louis de Nicola and I'm a recently retired pediatrician after working 46 years, 45 years in Vermont in Randolph and I'm past president of Vermont Academy of Pediatrics. I've been on executive board of the Academy of Pediatrics for Vermont almost my entire time here. I've had the honor of holding approximately 7,000 newborn babies in my hand since I've been here and I have also felt that during the time that I've been here, Vermont is one of the few states that I think really cherishes children and families. However, I think we need to do more and we are. Last year, the passage of H171 Act 45 was amazing and it's a great start, but it's only a start and I think that's really important. We need to continue that this year and I'll jump ahead because so many people have already said what's important. We need to continue to study what we need to do for the finances to make sure that we understand the best way to finance early childhood education. We need to upgrade the IT system. We've talked about the fact that early essential education for children provides an investment that lasts a lifetime. As a recruiter for many years when I was medical director at Gifford Medical Center, one of the first or second questions that people ask were, how would schools and do you have child care? We actually started one of the first child care centers in Vermont, Robin's Nest and Randolph designed for the community and the hospital. It's now 100% hospital employees who have their children there because we don't have any more space. And I think that's great. Just very quickly, we have to have programs to educate teachers. I believe that any teacher that's been involved in early childhood education, it's not certified, should be helped with scholarships. Everything that we do should be high quality just like with our schools. It must be accessible and affordable. There has to be sliding scale fees and no one should pay more than 10% of their income. And to end it all, we need to support and sustain the startup and operations of centers directly to get them started and maintain them while paying competitive salaries under a system which will hopefully will correct yourself providing tax credits a sector to families is important. But with the state of the current system, we will not work if no centers are available to use them and no workers to work at these centers. And thank you. Thank you. Miss Axelrod and then Anjanette Watson. Hi, everybody. I'm Missy Axelrod from Roxbury. Two of my babies were lucky enough to be held by Dr. Deena Kolo when they were born at Gifford. So I'm going to see his face. I am with the Vermont Farming Forest School. We're a small nonprofit. We work closely with the Northeast Organic Farming Association and Vermont Feed on farm to school and early childhood education and over a dozen schools in central Vermont and beyond. I am here this evening to ask you to please support the governor's recommendation to fund the local purchasing incentive program at $500,000. Also please fully fund the FTSEC grant program at $500,000 which the governor's budget level funds at $171,000. I am here both as a farmer and an educator. I've been working with farm to school and early childhood for over 10 years and I have seen the amazing effects that it can have on thousands and thousands of Vermont children when children are connected to their food through growing it at school gardens, visiting local farms, bringing that local farms to the school cafeteria. They're way more likely to eat the food, to nourish their body so that they can learn in a fuller, more healthy, nutritious capacity. The farm to school and early childhood program helps schools to create the structures and build the partnerships that we need to be able to bring farm fresh food into our schools and early childhood programs and offer it to our students on an everyday basis. And this is such an amazing way to connect the community to local farms to help keep our working landscape in agriculture and the farm to school and early childhood program is such a critical connector. We provide support and funding to schools and child care providers. We help schools succeed in accessing local purchasing. More and more schools that I'm talking with really, really want to have more local foods and this program will help support that. So again, I ask you please to support the governor's recommendation to fund the local purchasing incentive program at $500,000. Thank you so much. Thank you. Antoinette Watson and then Hannah Morgan. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you. My name is Antoinette Watson. I'm a resident of Fairfield, Vermont, which is in Franklin County. I'm an MD, PhD. I've been a professor at the University of Vermont. I serve on the board at Northwest Counseling and Support Services and the Standing Committee. But I come to you tonight to represent really the client need. I am a client also at NCSS. And there's a couple of things I hope others have read, which is the at a breaking point from seven days and the partner's workforce crisis. We really don't have a fair playing field regarding hiring and retention. State competes amongst itself for positions. So there might be one position that's paid at a state level with compensation. There's another at the DA where the individual is earning less than working at a fast food restaurant. So I'm advocating for the increase of 10% that the DAs are asking for to compensate for this. Basically, I see that we have two options. We can either lower the state employees in the agency of human services, or we can increase those that are on the front lines at the DA by 10%. If we do increase that by 10%, we are making ourselves competitive with McDonald's for at least these positions. Which I want you to think about in terms of maybe changing your mechanic or changing your hairdresser. For me, maybe changing a gynecologist or your PCP. Retention for those who are on the direct lines of mental health is really, really important. And the only way that I can see that we can write this mental health ship that's tilting in Vermont is to offer a competitive rage. Please vote for the 10% increase. Thank you. Hannah Morgan and then Wendy Criker. You're muted, but we can't hear you. Now you're muted. I guess you weren't, but we can't hear you. Maybe try your volume. You have headphones stuck in your computer. Pull those out. There. Someone's happy. Ms. Morgan, we'll let you, we still can't hear you. How about now? Yes. There you go. Yes. Okay. I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. I don't know what was wrong. I'm Hannah Morgan from Plainfield, Vermont, and I'm a volunteer for 350 Vermont. When my son Jamie was a toddler, we went camping in Groton State Park. It was early morning and the sky was just pink. The campground was silent. Jamie and I were still snuggled under sleeping bags watching my husband kindle a fire. And then the silence was broken by the piercing call of a loon. Jamie's eyes got so wide. And as soon as it stopped, he pointed with his chubby hand and grunted for more. Loon became one of his first words. Jamie is three now. And in November, I opened a Vermont digger article about the latest Vermont climate assessment. I started reading and then closed the computer in despair, and then I opened it and read some more. Scientists have projected that the common loon will disappear entirely from Vermont in the next 25 years. I closed myself in the bathroom and cried before pulling myself together for my family. Mothering in the face of such incredible loss feels impossible sometimes. But love keeps me going. I've joined 350 Vermont to call for bolder climate action. And today I ask you to join us because we can't do this alone. In the aftermath of Irene, I worked with neighbors and strangers, shoveling mud out of the flooded basements in Vermont, because we take care of each other and jump into action when the need arises. And I'm asking all of you to jump by providing funding for the level of climate action that we need. The governor's proposal is a bare minimum, and we need to do more. Please fund low-income weatherization so the most vulnerable among us don't need to choose between food and heat in the winter. Make heat pumps and solar available to everyone. Invest in a robust public transportation system so farm workers and other low-income populations can get to the store, work, or the doctor's office. Fund a switch to 100% electric school buses so our kids don't get asthma from toxic diesel fumes. You all have so much on your plate, and I thank you for your service. But this cannot wait. Please fund a bold and impactful climate justice budget this session for my kids, for everyone's kids, for the loons, and for all of our futures on a livable planet. Thank you so much, and thanks for your patience. Thank you. So the last person I have is Wendy Krager. If people have been following along with the list, we've had a few people drop off, which is the reason I've been skipping them. So Ms. Krager. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good evening. My name is Wendy Krager, and I live in Bethel. Thank you all for your time and your service. I'm here to share about the staffing crisis in early education and how that is impacting my family, my job, and the community I serve. My daughter will be one this coming Sunday, and since September she has been in early childhood care in a center in Woodstock. From September until January, her center lost four teachers, ultimately causing the decision to close her classroom. We found out on Saturday that her classroom would be closing the following Friday. In addition to being a mom, I'm also the lead teacher and director of the Woodstock Nursery School. My husband and I had to scramble to try to figure out how we were going to provide care for her for the next month while her teachers or her school was hopefully finding some more teachers. And ultimately what had to happen is I had to close Woodstock Nursery School early so that I could go home and provide care for my daughter while my husband could work in the afternoons. Since the original closure, we found out that two more teachers have since left her school, and now there is not a reopened date for her classroom. There are two centers in Woodstock that provide infant care, and now one is closed. So the impact that this closure has had on my family, my job, and the community is huge. The times that I was forced to close my school early, the ripple effects into the community are numerous. So as of the 21st, I'm going back full-time, my school will be open full-time, and my husband will have to leave his job. So we will lose one entire income for my family. And the situation is just unacceptable. We need to recognize early childhood educators for what they are. They are the foundations of our community, and we need to fund initiatives and benefits and wages that show them how important they are. So thank you for your time and your service. Thank you. With that, we will conclude the public hearing. We've heard from 47 Vermonters by my count. We're deeply appreciative of the time that Vermonters have taken to talk to us about the state's fiscal year 23 budget, and an awesome deeply appreciative of our colleagues' times and the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, not to mention the tremendous backroom support that we receive from staff. So thank you all very much. And with that, I go on. Let's go on.