 Welcome to town meeting televisions, continuing coverage of general election 2020. Today, we're talking to some of the uncontested candidates from South Burlington and also Burlington's South End. We have Barbara Rachelson from District 6-6. That's my neighborhood. Welcome, Barbara. And we have Maida Townsend, who is from South Burlington District 7-4, and John Kalaki, who is from South Burlington 7-3. Martin Lalonde, who could not join us, is also uncontested. I have to make sure I have all the districts right. He's in 7-1. And as you noted before, Anne Pugh is in a contested race in District 7-2. So thank you so much for joining us. I just want to remind folks that if you would like to call, we certainly will welcome your calls at 802-862-3966. So we're gonna just start with opening statements. And Barbara Rachelson, why don't you tell us why you're running for reelection and what qualifies you for the position? Thank you, Lauren. So I'm Barbara Rachelson. I'm running for reelection. And my background is I am a social worker. I don't do direct social work. I went to grad school to work on policy because I really have been committed to social change since my high school and college days, I guess. And I've been an employer. I have run nonprofit organizations. I've been in the CEO role of two different nonprofit organizations for a total of 33 years. I have particularly been committed to working on issues related to children and families. Also, some of the serious problems that our society is struggling with now, addiction, mental health challenges, poverty. And I am a dedicated legislator. I am, my colleagues will vouch for me that I am a sort of an obsessive researcher and want to always see what the evidence shows and like how have these policies played out in other places. I am not a fan of law of anecdote and we seem to do a lot of that in Vermont. I also have served on a number of boards. I'm a mom, I was a working mother and I'll end there. Thank you so much. We'll talk about some of the issues that are important to you coming up. Thank you. Representative Mada Townsend, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us why you're running for reelection and why you're qualified. Okay, thanks. I'm running for reelection to offer stability for my constituents in this very unstable timeframe. The experience that I bring to the work is eight years, having served in the legislature, the first six years on house government operations and the last two years, this most recent biennium on house appropriations. Thank you so much. That was very succinct. Excellent. John Colacchi, you are running, this would be your second term, the first term you had a bit of a contest and now you're in contested. So that must be a little bit of a relief. It is and I did run into my opponent from two years ago in the post office the other day. We had a nice visit, we're all friends of course. I retired from running the Flynn Center in downtown Burlington a great years, two years ago and ran for my first term. And so as a citizen legislator in my first term, it was extraordinary for me because I was wanting this next part of my life to be about service. And in my first two years, I really focused on affordable housing, early education, livable wages, small businesses, environment, recovery homes, mitigating homelessness and improving conditions for women in our prison in South Burlington. I have been, it's been a profound two years and I really hope that I can, I've run it uncontested. So I, as we rebuild our personal, social and civic lives, I really wanna help for monitors. I continue my service. Thank you so much. Mita, why don't we start with you? I'm gonna hop right to the budget question. What is the FY22 budget look like to you and how are you gonna navigate the competing interests? Well, there is a set approach which we use for the budget. We take testimony from our policy committees, the policy, the committee's jurisdiction. We take testimony from all of the governmental agencies and we take policy, we take testimony from the public and the advocates. And then we set about, then we set about trying to put together what resources we have at hand to meet the needs, to best meet the needs of the people as we have understood them. Now, in this context, in this timeframe, we have heard from our economist resources that budgeting in this COVID era is somewhat like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall or to ride a wild tiger and having been a member of House Appropriations, putting together multiple budgets in this current calendar year, I can testify that yes, indeed, that is true. When we get to January to start work on first a budget adjustment for the current fiscal year 21 and also to start work on the full year, fiscal year 22, we really don't know yet what we will be facing just as we really did not know what we would be facing when we came back in in August to deal with the full year FY21 budget. But we do have very healthy reserves that we did not have to touch in any meaningful big way to meet the needs in the fiscal year 21 budget. And we will simply have to assess where we are. I have to be very realistic and share that it will be very, very difficult even with our over $200 million in reserves that are still sitting there to be used, if necessary. We were very fortunate to have the $1.25 billion from the federal government in COVID money to use for the FY21 budget. And we believe we used those dollars very, very well. So I'm gonna just pause you because it's almost impossible to in an extremely short time summarize the work that you have done on the Appropriations Committee. And so you've given us a very high level and we can talk for an hour on this question because you've really been on the front line there. I'm wondering, John, you are not on the Appropriations Committee but why don't you tell us your view of the challenges ahead with the budget and your political philosophy on that? Sure, I sit in general housing and military affairs. So affordable housing is something that we work a lot on and that's certainly a big issue. And it's a concern about how we keep building and making them more affordable. I wanna go back, made it is quite extraordinary in the budget but if all is uncertainty, we did work with the House, the Senate and the administration and there was a balanced budget of 7.1 and $5 billion that was passed. And we continued programs and we didn't really dip in significantly into the reserves which is really important. Now that COVID money was essential at 1.2. We're hoping that there'll be an additional stimulus package after November 3rd or what we hope it'll come in and because it's needed, it is gonna be very difficult but I think what we learned in COVID is how to work differently. And I'm new to this the week but I really saw in three weeks time we turned around the budget for the nine months and stuff because we all work together with kind of shared principles in a way and less siloed and I think there's some systemic issues of the benefits of working in that way. And I think really one of the things is not how can we do more work lessons because the state has been doing that and we'll talk about nonprofit sector later on but we have to talk about how to do better with lessons. And I think we've learned some things with our COVID relief money, how we can do better. And I hope those examples resonate and continue to teach us. Thank you so much. Barbara Rachelson, is anything you've heard resonate with you and what is your thinking about the budget? A couple of things. One is I think it's a chance to, I mean, I think John is totally right. We can't do more with less. In fact, I think we might want to do less in some cases. I know that there are efficiencies that we can still realize from doing some educational consolidation, which I know is a touchy big subject. I won't get into that. But also corrections. I'm excited to see or to hear that we're going to rethink corrections. It's a gigantic dollar figure and our results from it are terrible. Like if healthcare were that bad a result, we would be screaming and yelling. So we know that there are places we are spending money now that I think we really need to look differently. Same thing with the revenues. I just think that we also have seen one weird opportunity with COVID, which is people moving to the state. And so we need to look at people who can afford to buy houses over a million dollars or very luxury items. Because we know I'm hearing from constituents more and more how tough it is financially. Like as tough as people have felt in the past, it's worse now. So we do have to really, it's not gonna, I hope we don't do business as usual. And the under representative toll leadership, they have involved the policy committees more, which has been great. But we also need a mechanism to say, we can save $3 million a year, but we're not gonna do that in the first year. Because again, we're always looking at that 12 months. And if we don't have a mechanism to kind of recognize that something will bring savings later, you know, it's that whole prevention thing that we talk about. We, it's like, well, we have to have it by June 30th when the budget closes. So again, I'm hoping we can do some like out of the ordinary thinking. Thank you. I'm just gonna remind our viewers if you'd like to give us a call, we're talking with candidates who are uncontested in district 66, the South End of Burlington and in South Burlington. So you are welcome to call us at 802-862-3966. So John, you mentioned the impact of COVID on the budget process. Well, talk about what you think the impact of this health emergency has been on the state and where the opportunities are or, you know, the real areas of concern, just kind of your analysis about Vermont in the time of COVID. Well, I'm gonna talk about my experience on the committee. And one thing that we worked on during COVID is we had to really get our arms around the homeless population in Vermont because they could not really stay in shelters and congregate settings. We had to isolate and move people more safely into hotel rooms. And every January, there's a point in time survey done across the state saying how large is our homeless population in Vermont? And those numbers are usually about 1,000 to 1,200 people and they're imprecise because it's a day. But during the height of the pandemic, we had over 1,900 people in hotels and 245 of those folks were kids. And so that's a big number. That's also a number that we can get our arms around. And the amazing thing is we put an $85 million package together, COVID relief funds that was systemic, that built out, we made shelters. They were renovated so that they could be socially distanced. We bought derelict properties and made them into homes for people. We have a program for landlords with derelict properties. They could get $30,000 to upgrade their property if they were five years, a lot of homeless are low, you come from honors to live there. So we began to change some of the dynamics and what is interesting to me is that this is a game changer for the way we really work with this population because there's multiple needs. It's not just housing, I mean, housing is healthcare but you also have a lot of wraparound services and we really understood that integrating them was the way to go and not keeping things in silos. So for me, I think a lasting impact is that we look at rehousing people in a systemic way. There's a possibility to really significantly eat away at that 2,000 people who really don't have homes in our state. Thank you. You bring up something that's really interesting and Barbara, you might opt to talk more about this but problems that seemed really difficult and insurmountable before the COVID emergency, all of a sudden people were able to get with it and reach the gaps and collaborate and solve the problem. And I wonder if you saw examples of that, Barbara Rachelson. Well, for sure, I must say, and Meita may have a better take on this since she and I started in the legislature at the same time, there was a lot of incredible goodwill among all three parties and getting things done in a way that I don't think I've seen, in general, I mean, Vermont's pretty good, but it was extraordinary how well everybody worked together and I know locally with the effort John just talked about, I mean, it was pretty impressive. I've talked to a few of the local providers including Rita Markley, I know how impressive it was that they were able to quickly house so many people and I don't think anyone got COVID. I mean, it was just really of the homeless population. It was phenomenal because people don't always make that time for collaboration and what I was hearing from my nonprofit buddies were people, it was that same thing we were seeing in Montpelier. People were really mission focused and did what they had to do and thank goodness we live in a place that we have such caring people. Yeah, thank you. Meita Townsend, tell us about your view of the COVID health emergency and what impact it's having on Vermont from your perspective. Well, I think it provided a very clear light very quickly as to the fragility that an awful lot of Vermonters live with. It's particularly clear within communities that have been over time marginalized in various ways and part of what we looked at as a legislature, both chambers as well as the administration was how we could be supportive as quickly as possible in as many different ways in a meaningful way, not just band-aids, for instance, what John was referencing is going upstream to deal with the housing issue, not just continuing to do quote unquote emergency housing, but to look at a means for providing good solid housing for folks moving forward, a lasting kind of solution. And everywhere we could, I felt in various bills as well as in the budget, wherever there was an opportunity to reach out to provide extra support to those who were among the most fragile in the state, that opportunity was taken, whether it was reaching out through the budget with regard to health disparities, communities of color, Native American communities, the homeless, folks living without good shelter, if in a whole lot of various ways, effort was focused there in, let me just leave that there since you wanted to focus on health. We also saw that it was necessary to provide stabilization for the healthcare system writ large and we managed to do that in a meaningful way and framing it in such a way that it wasn't only the largest, most powerful players on the scene who were able to take advantage of what funds we could provide. We wanted to make sure that the smaller entities had an equal chance and in some instances, more of a chance because they were so little. Great, that's good. Yeah, I mean, again, COVID is one of those other topics that will take us a lifetime. But Lauren, Glenn, I think a factor is that as a rural state, we got $1.25 billion and we had one of the highest per capita amount of money that came into our state because of our population. And so we had an opportunity and we had to turn it around very quickly on this and we had to listen to our providers who we had really under-resourced for a very long time. And so we were able to hear from them solutions that so in my example, $85 million, that would be unheard of in any other budget year to say, if you had another $85 million, how could we do things differently? So I think this one-time infusion has been a game changer for systemic thinking. And now I think what we need to do is figure that out as Barbara was saying, going forward. How do we look at this a little bit differently and listen to the nonprofit providers and the people doing the work in our state? And I just wanna point out too that at least some of the nonprofit providers and partners that we work with on House Judiciary, we were enticing them to do more and they were like, oh no. I mean, one thing is there was a very hard deadline to spend the money. And so I think some of the nonprofits didn't have the capacity to be able to pull that off. So that's unfortunate, but Vermont was very lucky. If I could add in one little thing. Well, that federal infusion, the $1.25 billion was incredibly important. I think we need to give due regard also to how Vermonters, large numbers of Vermonters pay those deferred taxes, the taxes that were deferred back in April. It was astonishing. It went beyond what had been envisioned would come in in the middle of the summer in terms of deferred tax money being paid. Incredibly helpful in meeting the needs of Vermonters and their communities. There was also the work within the departments and agencies, they scrubbed their budgets like crazy, scrub, scrub, scrub, and came up with something like $30 million worth of what are called inversions that we could drop to the bottom line to use again in support of Vermonters and their communities. Thank you. Maita, I'm gonna ask you the education question. This is deep background for you. And I think education financing has been talked about since 1990 when we started this channel. So maybe you talk about that, tell us what you think is next for education financing. And I'm gonna go find while you do that a light because I realize that I'm in the dark. So why don't you go ahead and answer that? And I will all be listening. Okay. Well, clearly the funding mechanism for pre-K through 12 schools has gotten increasingly complex over the years. A piece that if this were an easy situation or an easy question to solve, it would have been solved by now. There's nothing easy about this. There's no magic answer. But there is out there an entity called the Tax Structure Commission. It was established by Statue in 2018. And they've been working like mad for the last two years. They're due to make their final report in January of 2021. And they've met over 25 times. They've been taking testimony from a variety of sources, a variety of people and organizations. And it's their job to make recommendations as to based on all of the input and their study, how we should move forward as it relates to our tax structure. Obviously right at the head of the list there, property taxes and the education tax. A similar tax commission presented its work back in 2010. Suggested, for instance, looking at how we deal with tax expenditures, that sort of thing. But we never made much headway on their recommendations. Hopefully, now that 10 more years have gone by and people have gotten more and more just really hammered, shall I say, it's a huge burden that people are carrying. Hopefully the recommendations which this commission brings forward in January will see good conversation, good work to follow through. Moving forward. Yeah, John, you would be next on your approach to education financing. What needs to happen from your view? Well, one thing I thought might have mentioned but I'll mention it and she'll correct me if I didn't get it quite right. But what we did do is we held education property tax is for fiscal year 21 to what they would have been if COVID hadn't happened. So there wouldn't be an additional burden on Vermonters. So that was one strategy there. As a freshman in the halls in Montpelier, I hear whispered that maybe property tax isn't the way we should go and maybe we should really look at income tax and taxing in that way for our schools in Vermont. And I think it's an interesting idea to kind of pursue and analyze more. I did read the blue ribbon tax portion. So we've had a lot of study done about this and but there's, I would say a lot of inaction as well. And I think maybe it's right, the tipping point has happened and I really hope we do look at either is property tax the best way or what other ways to do it. I think that's really what we need to do in this coming year. Don't we in effect have an income tax based education financing? There is the income sensitivity piece. Income sensitivity. But I'm saying that take it away from property tax and tie it directly into our state income tax. That would be separately, yeah. Thank you, yeah. Barbara, Barbara Rachelson, your view on education financing, what's next? Okay, so I spent my first term serving on House Ed and there are probably three to five people in the state that can explain how it works. So one thing is we need a system that at least people can understand because that makes it way worse. There's also some weird built in dynamics of whatever budgets get approved, those, somebody's gotta pay for them and it's not always that school district. So I know I will misrepresentative Donovan who would repeatedly say to constituents when they said you're raising our property, our education taxes, it's like you're the one that's voting on your school budget but still it's a bad system because, because again, I hear so much from people how high their property taxes are, especially in Burlington, it's, I definitely have had many constituents move out of Burlington. Not all of them have left the state, it's concerning and I've had a couple of constituents just try to gain the income sensitivity because they're right on the threshold and they will take time off without pay in order to come in right under it. I would like to see us not, we have fewer school districts, we also have fewer students, we need to put a cap on administrative costs statewide because we're paying way more than we should for each supervisor reunion because each one needs their own whole financial infrastructure. Yeah, I just have a quick side question. Do we know anything about the impact of all these people that are moving into Vermont? Is there gonna be some, is that a net gain property tax expected or is it just to wash because other people owned those buildings before these? Well, there's the transfer, there's the transfer tax, which is a good thing. I don't know, I thought you were gonna ask if they have kids and if they are bringing more children into it. I don't know, I mean, the data is like, yeah, I have not been able to get too much detailed data yet, but I bet when we have our briefing in December, they'll present us with whatever population data is available. Did you have anything to add on that one? No, no, I think Barbara's quite accurate that we don't have the information yet to know for sure what situation is in that regard. Thank you. Let me ask you the F-35 question starting with you, John Kalaki. People are very concerned about the noise of the F-35s. What kind of mitigation efforts are underway or do you think needs to happen that could be affected through the legislature? Well, in my committee, General Housing and Military Affairs, we do the National Guard and so the F-35 is a very pertinent topic of discussion in our committee. Our committee did not move a resolution forward asking to ban the F-35s. Other people in the house are advocates for it. You know, it's a federal decision. It is not a local decision. So I live in South Burlington. I know how loud they are. I have a horse in Williston and the horses completely freak out when those planes go over the barn and it's detrimental to them. You know, I'm afraid they're gonna break out of the pastures and stuff because it is so loud. So I know I have friends who have kids and it's very, it's like we're living in a military zone but it is a federal issue. And so there's almost nothing that our state legislature can do about this, unfortunately. The airport and we've been all involved in looking at getting sound mitigation, which is essential in the corridors. I mean, parts of my native district has been destroyed by these planes in the airport. And so it's essential that we do protect and rebuild the sound for the homes of Manuski and in South Burlington and Burlington and the schools as well. These things are going over the schools, right over the schools. And so I think that that's a more effective place for the legislature to really impact citizens who live here. I'm gonna hop to Mayda and ask you as a South Burlington rep, what's your view on the noise mitigation? What do you think, what's gotta happen next? Well, first, if I could clarify, dear John, my district lost so many houses back before the F-35 that had even arrived. Because the sound levels from the airport had already reached a level, which was considered uninhabitable. So anyway, and just for the very public record, the very public record as folks in my district, no, I have been opposed to the F-35s being here ever since they became an issue. But as John pointed out, it was a decision made quite out of our hands at the federal level. There is work being done, the airport itself just had a meeting last night, actually, for the public. Two hour meeting explaining how the master plan is moving forward and made reference to the efforts they are making with varying degrees of success to get federal money to support sound mitigation. And there's going to be a pilot program. I think it's for 10 homes just to see how this would work to provide the necessary insulation, windows, doors, that sort of thing to mitigate the sound. There's also work to help at Chamberlain School, the little elementary school in my district, which is just a stop, it's a strong stones throw from the airport. The sound levels, if the windows are closed in that little school, the sound levels are below the on paper objectionable levels that's not getting into what it really is like to live with those levels of sound. But if the windows are closed, the sound levels inside the school meet the requirements. But since you can't open a window to maintain those levels, they're looking at that through the airport providing money for an HVAC system so that the air within the school can be fresh in the way it should be kind of thing. So it's an ongoing issue and will take years to cover all of the homes. I mean, decades, literally decades to cover all of the homes which might well be eligible for the work on their homes. And there's also the possibility that the airport might want to buy some homes from residents and do the sound mitigation and then resell. I think there's pretty much been a chord now that no more homes are coming down if I understand correctly. Okay, thank you Barbara, go ahead. I know the legislature, the mayor, our mayor, Mayor Weinberger and the mayor of Winooski met with sort of the Burlington Winooski delegation before this year's part of the biennium and asked for our support for the matching part of this federal grant. That would be the sound and also weatherization. So I know some of these federal monies do require a state match and that might be the case coming up again. So yeah, I must say, especially with changing their schedule to evening flying, I've heard more from folks about the noise. Thanks Barbara, why don't you, we're getting down to our last question here. What do you talk about systemic racism in Vermont and the role the legislature has played if you think it is adequate, if you think reparations are in order and if you think an apology is in order for how we have treated black people in this state? For sure, I think that we should be looking at the reparations issue and the apology. I'm not sure it would have to be a really sincere meaningful policy, I mean not apology, I'm sorry. There's a bill that I put in last time that Kaya Morris and I were working on when she was in the legislature and I'm really gonna push for it. I've talked to Coach Christie about pushing for it again, which is to have a racial impact information available before we pass a bill to see what the policy implications might be on minorities and people of color in particular about 10 states have done it. And it's way better to find out before we pass a law that it's gonna have some unintended consequences than after. It's a lot like asking for a fiscal note and I think it's important for us to try to stop the continuing to do more harm in addition to making reparations. Thank you. Maida, your view of the role of the state in stopping systemic racism, meaning the legislature and the need for reparations and our apology. Well, I think we've made beginning steps in this, particularly in this last biennium, not only in terms of direct efforts at dealing with racial inequity, for instance, in terms, and inequity for all folks in previously marginalized populations. For instance, we had an equity stimulus bill which provided for our immigrant populations the same kind of stimulus support that others in Vermont received, but these folks didn't because of their immigration status. We took care of that. We've dealt with health at least a step with regard to health disparities and getting a handle on that as the racial issues exist in the context of law enforcement. We took a step with regard to having more civilian individuals on the training council, the group that oversees training of law enforcement, folks who have lived experience in terms of there being part of various cross cuts of our population here in state. We now have with the Vermont state police through the budget, civilian, person of color, co-directing the fair and impartial policing program. So we have taken steps, but there are only steps and there are others that I haven't listed there. The whole question about reparations and apologizing, I think apologizing is a very nice thing, but personally I would prefer to see action that makes a difference in people's lives. There was a bill, a different bill, H-478, which was around this whole biennium, which would have set up, if it had passed, it would have set up a task force to consider this very issue of reparations and apology and to make recommendations on what appropriate remedies would be for this state. But it didn't pass. They never saw action and never saw anything in the committee. As I ran out of time, I think. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you, John, your response to this question. Well, I think it's every committee's, and each committee's responsibility to look at this in their own policymaking. And so, you know, in preparation for this, what did general housing military affairs do about systemic racism? Increasing the minimum wage, protecting victims of domestic or sexual violence from housing discrimination, renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day, making sure Indigenous names are on all state parks, agreeing with the treaty signed hundreds of years ago to have free fishing and hunting licenses for our Abenaki people. We did eviction and foreclosure protections during this time. We passed an inclusionary housing bill that you can no longer say a particular kind of housing is not appropriate for the character of a neighborhood. So that's, it's called redlining. It's racist. You know, we, today I submitted a request to begin again, for a homeless bill of rights that we had been working on. Our committee was working with Eugenics, resolution, an apology, and also to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There was talk, should we combine that with the other work of the other committee. And it's like, well, I'm not sure we should combine everything in the one because all of these things are important because, you know, the Eugenics movement is a horrifying chapter in Vermont history of racism. And, you know, literally sterilizing people because they were Abenaki or because they were disabled. You know, so there's that paid family and medical leave is an issue that we want to bring back as well. And that's going to have impact and communities of color. So I think all of these things help with the issue of systemic racism in Vermont. Well, I want to thank the, thank you, John, for that response. And thank the three of you for your public service. I wanted to thank you for that. I appreciate that. Thank you. And I appreciate the opportunity that you are willing to run for another season, another biennium on November 3rd is the election, and you will be voting if you haven't already on Barbara Rachel, son, if you're in the South End of Burlington district, six, six, and made a Townsend who's in district seven, four and John Clackie, who's in district seven, three. Martin Lilan could not join us. So I think that's going to be a great opportunity for you to join us in this contested race. No, Martin seven one. And a seven two. So thank you so much for joining us here tonight. It's just a pleasure to speak with you all. And thank you for watching town, meeting televisions continuing coverage of town meeting. No general election. 2020. Thank you. Thanks, Lauren. Thank you.