 My name is Peter Reed. I'm the board president of Randolph Area Community Development Corp, or known here as RACDC. We always get that one confused. I'm the host today for this event and I'm very pleased to welcome Governor Scott and all of you here to sign this critical housing legislation. And it's been great for me personally to see a few familiar faces from my brief tenure in the legislature. It's especially exciting to be here in Salisbury Square, which we hope will soon be a new Randolph neighborhood offering much needed affordable housing for our families and workforce. You'll be hearing more about this project in a few minutes from Julie Ifland, our executive director. RACDC has been developing affordable housing in Randolph for the past 30 years and currently provides housing for nearly 250 people in Randolph in addition to supporting local economic development with a focus on our downtown. Our vision is to cultivate a thriving resilient and inclusive community that we call home. We're grateful for all the hard work, negotiation and compromise embodied in the bills. The bills Governor Scott will sign today and look forward to leveraging this legislation in our community to make Randolph a stronger and more accessible home for all. And with that I'm very proud to introduce our governor Phil Scott. Thank you Peter and good afternoon. I think this is our first public bill signing since the pandemic. What a great prayer. It's great to be here with legislators, community leaders, members of my cabinet and others to celebrate S 210 and S 226 being signed into law. I also want to thank our hosts here in Randolph for their hospitality and partnership as we work to expand Vermont's housing stock. This is at least the fifth housing press conference I've done this year, because building more housing to address our critical shortage has been a top priority. Last year when we learned Vermont would receive over a billion dollars in ARPA funds, I knew housing had to be one of our top priorities. So I put forward a plan to invest a quarter billion in this sector. Working together with legislature, we've accomplished that goal. S 210 and S 226 in particular include about 50 million for housing and investments on top of the 50 million in the budget going to the HCD. In the aggregate, this will amount to the largest state investment in housing we've ever seen. Anyone who's tried to buy a home or find an apartment to rent knows just how critical this is. Last week I joined leaders from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to talk about the work we've done to support those experiencing homelessness in Vermont. And the nearly 100 million we've spent to help our most vulnerable. I'm proud that Vermont has been recognized by the Biden administration as a national leader for those efforts. And these two bills expand on that. S 210 also includes 20 million dollars for the Vermont Housing Improvement Program or VHIP. This program is designed to use existing housing stock that's fallen into disrepair or is in need of serious upgrades and bring them back into the market. After being renovated, these units will be rented at affordable rates. S 226 also includes critical funding for what I call the missing middle. Over the last few years, we've invested a significant amount of money for low income housing, but the lack of middle income housing has affected the whole market. With fewer homes available in this range, there's more competition for lower cost housing, which in turn drives prices up, which then leaves lower income Vermonters with fewer and fewer options. So in addition to our affordable housing investments, we'll spend 15 million to incentivize the construction of modest homes that will be sold at prices middle income families can afford. This legislation also includes an expansion of the successful downtown and Village Center Tax Credit Program, which incentivizes private sector investments and act 250 reforms that will spur housing in the areas where we need it most. Even with all we've done though, we know this won't completely solve all our housing problems, but these bills are the most significant actions we've taken as a state. This will be a strong foundation to build upon. Before I hand it over to the next speaker, I want to thank the many people who were involved in passing these bills. From those in the legislature, many of them here today, my teams at ACCD, A&R, and across the administration, partners like VHCB, VLCT, the RCDs, and more, as well as our congressional delegation for their work securing much of this funding. I want to especially thank Chair Stevens from House General, who we were in constant contact with in the last parts of the legislative session to work out compromises on these bills, as well as Chair Sirachan, Senator Clarkson, and the Senate Economic Development Committee for their work. I know it's usually the areas of disagreement that get the most attention, but the end result is here is a great example of how people of different parties can agree on a fundamental problem. Put differences aside and work together to find solutions that will benefit our state for decades to come. So with that, I'll turn it over to Senator Clarkson, Senate Majority Leader, and the Vice Chair of the Senate Economic Development Committee. Good afternoon. I'm Allison Clarkson. As the Governor just said, I'm the Majority Leader in the Senate and the Vice Chair of Senate Economic Development Housing and General Affairs. And these bills represent getting to yes. We had our disagreements on many aspects of these bills, and we have finally come to a productive conclusion to move forward on behalf of the people of Vermont. So it's one of the great examples. These bills are great examples of why Vermont is such a fabulous place to live, work, and make progress and how we productively work together. So I'm really pleased today. I have the honor of representing the PROTEM, Rebecca Ballant. And so first I have remarks from the PROTEM, which I would like to read for you. From the start of the session, the Governor, the Speaker, and I have been unified in our belief that addressing Vermont's housing crisis must be the first priority of this legislative session. We all understand the devastating impact the housing shortage is having on families, businesses, and communities across the state. And throughout the ups and downs of the legislative session, we never lost sight of that shared goal. Today, the legislature and the administration come together to celebrate both historic housing investments and the critical policy changes needed to turn the tide on the housing crisis that has been decades in the making here in Vermont. I am proud of the work we've done to meet housing needs at every level, from affordable housing to middle income home ownership, and that includes critical updates to rental units and manufactured homes. We've also updated policy to make it easier to build housing where we want it, in our downtowns and village centers, and to better ensure that no Vermonter lives in substandard housing. I am grateful to our outgoing Chair of Senate Economic Development, Michael Sorotkin, for championing these bills and ensuring key provisions made their way into law. And to all my colleagues on economic development, Vice Chair and Majority Leader Allison Clarkson, Senator Keisha Rahm, and Minority Leader Randy Brock, for all the hard work they did to address our housing crisis this session. And it's heartbreaking to me that Michael Sorotkin isn't with us today because he has championed these bills and cares enormously about all these issues that are embodied in these bills. And as you know, there's a whole range of housing issues that are in these bills. So I would like to read some words that Michael and I are contributing together today. We're proud of these bills as they not only invest tens of millions of dollars in housing incentives, and if you look at the whole biennium, it's almost 300 million. I mean, if you look together, it's just, it meets your goal and then some. I'm always willing to have you exceed my goal. Millions of dollars in housing incentives. Yeah, I mean, it's really astonishing. They also advanced important housing development policies that we worked collaboratively with the governor on in order to override past vetoes. This is getting to yes. This is why we're a functional legislature and a functional administration. The housing committees have worked for several years to ensure renters safe and healthy housing to protect consumers from home improvement fraud and to advance smart growth development of more affordable housing units through more flexible permitting and land use policies. Finally, through these new bills, we have taken significant steps forward on all these fronts. I've always said, we have always said for a little longer. We've always said that while new monies are crucial to addressing our housing crisis, so is the enactment of smart housing development policies. We need to make housing easier, quicker and less costly to maintain, restore and develop. And thank you all for joining us today as we celebrate these exciting investments and this exciting project. Thank you. I forgot my other key job. I'm so sorry. My other key job is to introduce the incomparable State Representative Thomas Stevens who also has been an incredible champion on the housing front. So it is with great pleasure, I introduced Tom Stevens. Thank you so much. This is an incredibly exciting day. This really is a culmination for us for actually for four years of work. It feels like since we started in 2019 that it's before your biennium what would COVID tossed in and the length of that biennium and then to be back at it again and some of these bills. It's been hinted at some of these bills took a long time to get to evolve to get to this point. We tried to reach the governor at different times, but here we are today, which is the most important piece is that we were able to get there. I too have words from Speaker of the House Jill Kroinski, and then I'll have a couple of comments to fill in after that on the speaker wishes she could have been here today and asked that I pass on these remarks. Housing is by far the biggest need I hear from Vermonters each and every day. Whether it's the need for units for those who are unhoused for people moving to or trying to stay in Vermont or homes for working Vermont families. The need is great and impacts all 14 counties. Both S210 and S226 make great strides in helping us tackle the housing crisis and they put more money on the ground for our communities to help greater access to safe affordable housing. And give Vermonters access to funding for the purchase of their first home or for home improvements. Over the last two years, we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars to help create greater access to housing and lower the cost to rent and purchase a home. These bills include important programming to help meet these goals, including $20 million in incentives to property owners to bring rental units back online. Provide incentives for property owners to develop accessory dwelling units. A missing middle income housing proposal which would invest up to $15 million to create housing for Vermonters whose income is between 80 and 120% of the area median income. Providing varying levels of subsidy to the home buyers who may or may not otherwise be able to afford a mortgage and much more. We've made tremendous progress, but there's still a great opportunity to do more to support Vermont communities. A big thank you to Representative Tom Stevens for leading these efforts on the house side. And thank you to the governor and our Senate colleagues for finding a path to enacting those bills into law. I look forward to continuing the work to create healthy, safe, equitable and affordable housing solutions for all Vermonters. I wasn't allowed to edit that. I would just like to say that these two bills represent, they're the storyline that cuts through these two bills. And if you start with the VHIP program which we've been working on for several years of taking units that are offline, which means that they're not code compliant, they can't pass their unsafe. And so we are starting to enact a rental housing safety department within the public department of public fire safety. And of course we'll have to keep working on that to make sure we continue the investment. But how important is it to live in safe housing? And it's not just safe housing for tenants, it's safe housing for landlords to make sure that their properties aren't damaged so that they continue to rent. We have in here a lot of home ownership ideas, one of which is creating money, taking existing money and turning it into grants. For people who generally have had a hard time qualifying for loans, people who belong to communities where credit has not been easy to get to. And rather than having a home purchase, a down payment assistance program that's based on loans, there will be money available for grants to people who can buy homes because building wealth through home ownership should be for everybody in the state. And so we're doing that. For Vermonters who suffer, continue to suffer, Vermont homeowners who continue to suffer through job related problems or income related problems. We have instructed towns to work with them and to work with the Vermont Housing Finance Agency to provide mortgage and tax relief so that their homes don't get sold out from underneath them because they can't afford to pay it due to the crisis. And finally, there's a piece in here about, you know, we're going to have $300 million of construction going on. And there's a piece in here that will ask that contractors who take money to do their job to sign to have contracts on home improvement jobs such as we'll see in VHIP to be registered and to be accountable for their work. And that is something that we've been working on and we've struck a compromise with the administration and it's in 226 today. And so with that, that story that we're trying to bring more housing to people and make sure that it's safe and affordable and that it will last are incredibly important to Vermonters in need and to the people who are still seeking homes and still seeking the stability of having their own homes. And I'm so proud that we could get to that point this year and share the goodness of the federal money and also to make sure that we're investing it in the right way. So thank you. Next up I have here Julie Iflin from the RACTC Executive Director. Hi everybody. Thank you. Welcome to Randolph. Welcome to Salisbury Square present and future. I want to say a few words about the project obviously but the first thing I have to say is you should be very proud. We are, those of us trying to do this work are so proud of you and I can't say that enough. This is sort of a monumental thing and we're really also thrilled to have you here to celebrate it. So Peter said a few words about our organization. We're a small nonprofit that works in housing and community development. And this site was the home of the Salisbury Furniture Company and then the Ethan Allen plant after it. And for about a hundred years it provided a really thriving job center for Randolph. But when RACTC acquired it it was a lot of crumbling concrete and decrepit buildings that had been vacant and abandoned for about 20 years. And our then board I think took a leap of faith that it could change that and turn this into something that would be again a productive part of our community so close to downtown. And the way that they saw that becoming productive was to make it a place for people to live. And so we started that work. Accomplished, some of you see here, this is the bookkeeping building. This was where they had payroll and stored their important records. That sort of odd looking door on the second floor connected to a warehouse that was here because they were afraid of fire and so you can't go from one part of the building to another. Anyway, this was, you know, it had a lot of stuff that needed to be cleaned up. We went through the Brownfields program. We developed some of the housing. We re-finished the bookkeeping building, which you're welcome to go take a look at. But the financial crisis sort of stopped those plans. And also we had a real challenge with the home ownership part of our goal because we went to the community and said, what would you like to see here? And their answer was we'd like a neighborhood, a new neighborhood. We'd like to have mixed income. We'd like to see home ownership and rental. And we have been trying very, very hard to make that the case. And I think with these bills, it gives us some tools to get the rest of that distance. Now in the intervening time, we have been able to design homes that include efficiency and resiliency measures that were really honestly beyond our wildest dreams. When we started this project, we've been working closely with efficiency. Our architects, a wonderful development team and others, lots of help from funders like the H-T-B and others to sort of vision and vision what we can do. And what we're coming up with is that this next phase of the plan will include 12 rental units and nine single family homes, which will all be high performance solar powered homes. And that means that they will not only be affordable hopefully to rent or to buy, but they will be affordable to live in because we are all facing those problems. And on top of that, thanks to some very inspirational thinking by some of our friends like Peter Schneider at VEIC. We are, and also thanks to a grant from the congressionally directed spending awards recently that Senators Leahy and Sanders have acquired for us. We are incorporating a direct current DC microgrid into this development. Now microgrid is basically a way to take that solar power that's being generated or access solar power and to store it in batteries, which will be in the basement of that building. And connect all of these homes and apartments into a unit that can help each other every day by say powering an EV, you know, do EV charging, electric vehicle charging. Or in times of crisis, these neighbors will help each other weather the crisis because the lights can stay on. The oxygen machine can keep going. The computers can be powered for a short while while the grid comes up again. So we see it not just as this amazing feat of technology, but a wonderful way for neighbors to help neighbors again in a new way in our community that has had a long tradition of neighbors helping neighbors. So we're really just excited to start to have this come together, see it happen. And I'll tell you these bills, we will be happy to help you spend that 300 million. But there are certain provisions in this bill, these bills that go well beyond money and that are going to help us in other ways to crack these nets. The missing middle being one of the crack that home ownership challenge that we've been facing and to really make this come alive. So again, on behalf of our CDC, our board in the community generally, I just want to say thank you. Obviously to the governor and to the leadership to the legislature, including some of our members of our local delegation who are here today and to our comrades in the housing world. But especially to this common sense desire to make our communities livable and to support those people in those communities try to make housing available for their residents. So thank you. I can't express how grateful we are to everyone and I just want to welcome everyone and hopefully we'll be back for a ribbon cutting soon. Thank you. Thank you Julie. It's hard to go after that. You see her vision there. I want to thank Julie and all of our RACDC in the town of Randolph for being such great hosts today. None of this would have been possible without their quick work and teamwork and digging right in. So thank you. These new resources and programs and solutions make it possible to address our housing needs across Vermont. Salisbury Square is a great example of what's now possible. You heard about all of the fancy housing solutions that are being proposed here as well as employing some of the land use regulation changes. This is a new designated neighborhood which will have an easier time getting fully permitted now. Communities like Randolph, really it's really every community in the state. I can give a list of every community we've talked to that have spoken up and said we're ready to address our housing challenges and we're ready for the solutions that these bills provide. But we would be here for every single community in the state. It's really that pressing. I want to thank everyone, really everyone that's here and a lot of folks that can't be here for what we've been able to accomplish. This is a huge win for Vermont. I first want to thank the governor for his steadfast leadership on housing. It's been non-stop since day one. I want to thank my friends and colleagues at ACCD and the Department of Housing and Community Development. I want to give a special thanks to the Chair, Chair Stevens and Sirachan and Vice Chair Clarkson and really the entire committees. We worked very hard on finding a compromise and long hours to get here. I think it's also worth thanking the Joint Fiscal Office and the Ledge Council and appropriations committee members and the leadership. I think that towards the end of the session folks don't know how hard and how long people are working to finish important bills up like this and it's hard work. So thank you. I also want to thank all of our housing partners out there, VHB, VHFA, all of the regional housing organizations and our advocates that make this bill better. A lot of them are here with us today. Some couldn't. I want to thank the developers and the builders, all the folks that are going to get this work done. We need you too. And in sort of conclusion here, with all this celebration, it's important to remember whose thanks is most important. It's those who need this housing now and who are going to need it in the future. So we still have a lot of work to do to earn their thanks and it starts with action and it starts today. And so thank you all for coming. Let's do a bill signing. So this is a bill signing over there and it would be wonderful if everyone would come up and get behind us with the building behind us as well. Make a great picture and I think that it tells a lot about the support we have in Vermont for housing with all of you up there if you're willing. I know. Assign S-210 first. You can do anything you want on the table. Oh, there's one. And now for S-226. S-226. Sorry. The questions are starting. Woo-hoo! All right. Good to you. Just come. You had previously vetoed two of the rental registry and the contract registry that made it across the finish line. What did lawmakers leave out of that bill or those bills that earned your support? You know, the contract for registry was one where I was concerned about small contractors in particular having the provisions for insurance that was almost unavailable to them. And the cost for registering as well would have an impact on small contractors. So that was, if you remember, that was at the $4,000 and below level. I believe it was $4,000. And they raised it to $10,000. This gets us up to the medium-sized contractors. So that was the compromise we struck and I think it was appropriate. In the rental registry? That didn't make it. But there's a statewide system for inspections now. Right. Oh, okay. Right. But there's not a rental registry, but there's a statewide system for inspections. Correct. For the public, public safety is going to do that. Interesting. I guess I have a question about like not necessarily this event, but yes, last night the Burlington City Council officially approved a ranked choice voting for their charter. I was curious what your reactions were to that. And even if you guys, you know, at the state level would consider ranked choice voting at a bigger level, maybe statewide. Not while I'm governor, I wouldn't consider ranked choice voting. But this was a charter change. They had decided to do this as a community. It's just for council members. And they've done it before. They decided not to do it, and then they decided to do it again. So I thought it was something that they wanted, obviously. But from a statewide level, I have no interest. I think the person with the most votes wins. You know about housing, the word crisis is used a lot to describe our situation. I think you think that's an accurate assessment of the situation. That implies that we have needs this moment. But some of these projects aren't going to happen for years, right? But don't forget, you know, we identified this early on when I came into office six years ago. And that was one of our first initiatives to address that. I'd heard over the last decade or two people talking about the housing crisis. What are we going to do? And it was so much the interaction. I said, well, we should just take a step forward. We should just do something. So at that time, we decided to borrow $37 million, a housing bond. We thought that was significant, $37 million. Now, we were able to come together, pass that, work with the legislature. And what happened then was it was the $37 million that leveraged more money to the tune of maybe another $200 million worth of private assets. So that's pretty significant in itself. And that was five years ago, I believe. So we've seen those projects are still coming online. They haven't been finished. So it's not as though we're starting fresh. We did do a lot, maybe $200 or $300 million worth at that time in getting us to this position today. And while we're talking about $250 or $300 million now, that's going to leverage private assets as well. So this is significant far beyond the initial investment. So I'd say, and Josh. Sure, I'd say that the first year of the pandemic, we've already added over 800 units of housing. The initial support for funding to address the housing crisis, which is real, was right out of the gate. So there are units coming online, ribbon cuttings practically monthly now. And this additional funding and bill is going to allow more of that to happen. The missing middle money, the $15 million, I believe it was, how many units or how many houses are we looking to get out of that money? Sure, it's a little variable. I mean, if we need a smaller subsidy, we'll take it and try to stretch those dollars as far as possible. But we're hoping 150, 200 units, home ownership units could be supported with those funds. And what's really interesting is that's going to leverage a whole bunch of additional home ownership units that'll be built without the subsidy. So we can mix in a few of these affordable modest homes in a development which may have straight market rate home ownership units going up that don't need any subsidies. So it really will leverage those developments as well. Much like my opposition to the contractor registry, the legislature wasn't keen on the missing middle either. I think we proposed about $50 million to begin with. But this was a compromise. We were able to get the $15 million. I believe we're going to find this program to be over subscribed. I think we'll find that out fairly quickly. And so if there's more money in the next legislative session, I'm hopeful they'll take another look at that and add to that because it really does, that's where we have the greatest impact. If we want to grow the workforce here in Vermont, we need to take care of the middle income workers, the workforce and provide for housing. Are you concerned with the effects of the economic situation that we have now and what's being predicted for the near future? Yeah, absolutely. Inflation is something I think about every day. And we've worked so hard to make sure we haven't raised taxes and fees over the last five or six years and Vermonters can keep more of what they earn. And this inflation that's happened over the last six months or more is really going to impact every day of Vermonters and going to have an effect on the money that we worked so hard for to put into place for infrastructure. That's going to cost more materials, goods, labor, everything that's costing more. So it's going to have an impact and something I'm concerned with. Again, I'm just hopeful that we'll get, you know, we'll move in the right direction. That's the most important thing. Recent census data has showed that Vermont has the highest percentage of vacant homes in the country. Do you, Governor, have a sense for why that is and how this legislation will be more than just a band-aid but address those larger problems? I'll give you my thoughts and then you can correct all of them. You know, I talk a lot about the rural areas of the state and we've seen what's happened in Springfield. I've seen it in my own hometown of Bear. We went from being the third largest city in the state at one time with over 10,000 people and now there are 8,000 people and we are no longer the third largest city in the state. So with that has come more vacant housing, dilapidated housing, needs renovation. That's why we've talked about the, why we've thought about the VHIP to begin was to provide for relief so that we can, we can put people back in those homes because it's so expensive to build new but we have the existing infrastructure. So I would say a lot of the homes that are available are in outside of Chittenden County, maybe outside of the Northwest Corridor and I think that that's where we're seeing a lot of housing stuff. Now for the real story. Well I'd like to add to that, I mean the word vacant to find in the census is a little misleading but that really counts also as vacation homes and Vermont's got the second highest percentage of vacation homes behind Maine. New Hampshire is about third and if you dig into that data Essex County and Grand Isle County have the highest percentage of vacant homes. It's because many of those are camps and second homes that are vacant for a majority of the year and so that data needs to be be parsed out a little bit more but what I can say is why we proposed VHIP is that in Vermont's most recent housing needs assessment it was identified that about 19,000 units of housing in Vermont are considered poor quality and need upgrades and reinvestment to meet the needs to be safe, decent housing for folks and so that's what we're focused on is the apartments and the housing units that are meant to be lived in full-time to bring those up and make those available rapidly. Some of the pressure on housing certainly in southern Vermont has been the growth of short-term rentals especially those purchased by out-of-state investors would you support regulations or limits that would require owner occupancy or would greatly promote owner occupancy? You know from my standpoint not at this time and I understand some of the difficulties in places like Burlington for instance Chittenden County but it's the livelihood of some people that are of modest means and have homes that they need to rent out so that they can pay their property taxes maybe for the Florida for the winter and so forth and so on so I think it's a slippery slope and I just think that we need to wait into this very carefully. Perfect. You know I would just add to that the Vermont short-term rental alliance just had their first annual conference in Montpelier last week and if you look at the data of Vermont about 80% of the short-term rentals are folks that own one or two homes the majority of the owner operators are female head of household and the majority of the short-term rentals are in the ski area towns which are very familiar with vacation home rentals and so it's estimated that short-term rentals is about occupying about 1.5% of the housing stock so you know it's looked at as a problem but I think each community needs to make their own decisions about whether they need to regulate it or whether it's right for their community it's not the type of solution that a blanket statewide policy I think best is the best course of action. Well I have your attention you're still reviewing the budget I believe any word on that when it might be ready for a decision? I don't know if we have that now we have a number of bills to do today but that's not one of them. Okay. So I have no problems with the budget this point in time unless we see something technically wrong and we have there've been a number of bills that have some technical problems many of them we've let go but there's one I think for Thursday that might be I don't know if it can be salvaged at this point but we'll see. Which I think? Apologies if you already answered this question earlier but as a former contractor yourself how did you feel about signing the contractor registry and did you if you see benefit in it do you see most of the benefit in the oversight or in the revenue generation? Program. Again I didn't think there was a need I was worried about very small contractors because it had requirements for insurance that they was either unavailable or unaffordable and would put some of the small contractors I believe out of business and they just go to work for larger contractors and who's going to do all the porches and all the small work that's desperately needed in our communities but they raised that from 4,000 to 10,000 that alleviated my concerns but I think it was sold as a consumer protection bill and I think we already have a program in the Attorney General's office and I believe that the Attorney General's office could handle any of these consumer protection issues so that was my opposition but going to the 10,000 threshold eliminated my concerns for the small contractors. Do you see the revenue generation component of that problematic or do you think it's appropriate? I think it will be absorbed and consumers will pay for it I mean they're not going to completely absorb it it'll be passed on. Okay and this is the last question but it's maybe not even a fair one but We're shocked How do you square your political low tax of small government philosophy with the fact that the biggest things being done right now in Vermont from a funding perspective are coming from the federal government which comes from taxation which plows money back into the state to get things done. How do you square that with your own innate sense that we should have small government and lower taxes? All we can control is state government so the federal government does what they're going to do and if they have money available we're going to take it and I worry about the tremendous debt that our nation is burdened with at this point in time but there's nothing I can do about that so it's beneficial to the state we take the money but we don't need to make the problem worse we don't need to raise from my perspective raise taxes and fees especially in these inflationary times and there's a lot of burden on everyday Vermonters that are trying to make ends meet and we just don't need to add to the problem Could you imagine a situation where another tax measure might come up in the future that you might be okay with because you recognize that there's just need sometimes to levy taxes on folks to then come together to support a program that can help maybe lower income people or people in need or in a crisis? Well again, I've been in an office now for six years we haven't raised tax and fees significantly since day one and we didn't have any surpluses before I took office for quite some time and now we have surpluses so as long as we have surpluses I don't see the need in raising tax and fees Thank you Governor, there were some endorsements made last week in the Vermont U.S. Congressional race I know former Governor Madeline Cunin endorsed Molly Gray so some endorsements besides that because of Vermont Governor if you planned on making an endorsement in that race in the future I won't be on the Democrat side but I typically stay out of the primaries and the support candidates after the primary but I've just always stayed out of them but I know who I'm voting for in the primary for instance I'd be voting for Joe Benning to support him but an endorsement official endorsement maybe not but I plan to vote for him Thank you Governor Thank you all Check your legs There's a lot of legislators out there you might want to talk No, they're right up there