 Good morning, everyone. Before I get into our announcements around housing assistance today, I want to take a moment to talk about how far we've come with testing over the last few months. A strong testing program is important in maintaining the progress we've made to slow the spread of the virus while we restart Vermont. It's through testing and contact tracing that we can find those infected early on, trace their contacts, surround clusters before they turn into outbreaks, or as I've described, contain outbreaks before they spread like wildfire. Our ability to do this is a team effort, and I want to acknowledge the commitment of those individuals, organizations, and businesses who are contributing to these efforts, which again are critical to keeping Vermont healthy and open. The Health Department has taken the lead, but involves many others as well. Health care providers refer patients for tests. Hospitals are regularly doing testing. The Health Department response teams coordinate testing in long-term care and correctional facilities. And with our National Guard, we've opened up pop-up test sites at locations throughout the state. These sites have proven to be very helpful and are doing a great job at containing the community outbreaks we've seen. But we can always use more hands-on deck, because as we've seen throughout the country, the virus is still with us and will be until a vaccine is widely available. That's why community partners are going to be incredibly valuable in our work to provide routine testing across the state for the long-term. Many have already stepped up and want to thank them, including Kenny Drugs and Newport. Starting Monday and each Monday through July, they will offer testing as part of a pilot project. And Walgreens and Essex will also be offering testing for its customers later this month. I know others are considering doing the same, so right now I'm asking Vermont's pharmacies and their parent companies to move as quickly as possible to join in this effort for their customers, staff, and all Vermonters. I also want to recognize the state's health care providers for their testing and referral efforts. These folks on the front lines have made an incredible difference, but their additional commitment to patient testing is also needed, especially for those in quarantine who have been exposed. Vermonters can find out more, including how to register for one of the test sites at healthvermont.gov.covid19testing. As I've said many times, this pandemic has impacted almost every aspect of our lives and every sector of the economy and probably will for the foreseeable future. And housing is no different. Landlords, renters, homeowners, and those experiencing homelessness have all been impacted by this virus and need some help. That's why from the very beginning we worked with the legislature to provide support and protections for renters and acted quickly to provide housing for our homeless population. And it's why the economic recovery package we proposed to the legislature included funding to help those unable to pay rent and the landlords not receiving it. It also included assistance for homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages and resources to support those struggling with homelessness. My team at the Department of Housing and Community Development and the Agency of Human Services worked closely with the legislature to address these critical needs and pass two bills with housing initiatives. I want to thank Senator Sorotkin and Representative Stevens and their committees in the House and Senate for working with us to provide this much needed relief. In total, 85 million in CRF funds will be dedicated to housing assistance. Today we're able to announce the availability of two of these funding programs which will support tenants unable to pay rent, landlords suffering from a loss of rent payments, and those lower income homeowners who can't pay their mortgage because of the impacts of this pandemic. Now I know many Vermont families and landlords are struggling and this won't be enough and won't address all their needs. But we'll continue to look for ways to support them so they can survive this once in a century crisis. It's critical we keep moving forward so we can recover as a state and nation and recovery starts with everyone having a safe and secure place to call home. Our announcements today cover just a portion of the housing support past and we'll be highlighting other programs at future press conferences as well. So at this point, I'll now have Josh Hanford, Housing and Community Development Commissioner share more details on the rental and mortgage assistance programs we're highlighting today. Josh, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Governor. We all know important having a safe, secure and affordable place to call home is this pandemic has highlighted that more than ever. The safe, safe, stay home has become part of our everyday language. Months ago, months ago now an eviction and foreclosure moratorium was put in place to ensure families had that safe place to stay regardless of their ability to pay the rent or the mortgage bill. This was necessary to ensure families were not forced into homelessness or doubling up in crowded housing during this crisis. Unfortunately, not paying the rent or mortgage has very real consequences. Landlords depend on that rent to keep housing safe, to pay the utilities, to pay their own bills. Credit unions and banks need mortgage payments to stay in business and keep making new homes. The 25 million rental assistance and 5 million mortgage assistance being announced today is a step forward to address these serious issues. The partnership, through partnership, collaboration, and lots of people working very hard, funding for both of these programs will be available starting Monday, July 13th. The Vermont City Housing Authority, an agency that manages federal rental assistance programs statewide, will minister the 25 million set aside for rental assistance payments. Providing much-need relief to landlords, in some cases owed many months of that rent. The Vermont Housing Finance Agency, an agency that finances affordable housing statewide, will minister the 5 million set aside for mortgage assistance payments. Providing some relief to lower-income homeowners that could otherwise face foreclosure. Knowing the need is great and the demand for this assistance will be high, technical assistance has been made available through the Vermont Landlords Association to help landlords across the state access this rental assistance program and the Vermont Legal Aid to help tenants and homeowners access these funds. More information on these programs is available on accd.vermont.gov. Now, this time I want to turn it over to Richard Williams, who's the Executive Director of the Vermont State Housing Authority, to provide a little more detail on the rental assistance program. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Haniford. Hopefully you can hear me there okay. My name is Richard Williams, I'm the Executive Director of the Vermont State Housing Authority, and I want to thank Governor Scott today for allowing us to be part of this press conference. And also I want to thank you, Governor, for the support that you have personally given us, along with all your team members, and I can't say enough good things about Commissioner Haniford and his team there. So, today I just wanted to begin by, even prior to COVID-19, over half of the renters in Vermont, about 36,000 households have housing costs that consume more than 30% of their income. The standard for assessing affordability. When housing costs consume more than this, tenants are less likely to have enough income remaining for other living expenses, which can lead to housing instability. One quarter of Vermont renters, about 18,000 households, spend more than half of their income for housing costs. These renters are at high risk of housing instability, which can lead to frequent moves, eviction, and even homelessness. The program we're here today to talk about, the proposal was designed, as it was mentioned previously, by the Vermont Landlords Association, Vermont Legal Aid, and the Vermont Department of Housing Community Development, in consultation with Vermont State Housing Authority. The BSHA is a housing service provider with over 50 years of experience administering complex federal housing assistance programs. BSHA currently serves over 8,000 households and provides over $50 million annually to program recipients through direct payments to landlords. We're here today to talk about the Vermont State Housing Authority Rental Housing Stabilization Program. The primary goal of this program, during its public health emergency, is to keep Vermonters housed, allow Vermonters to keep their rented homes and avoid homelessness, and a virtual termination of Tennessee and court evictions by granting back rent funds. The second goal is to compensate landlords for some of their losses due to the CARES Act, judicial emergencies, and stable eviction proceedings. The program is designed to maximize the number of households who remain housed during COVID-19. I just quickly would like to go over a couple of the overview of the rental housing stabilization program. So who is eligible to apply? Both tenants and landlords can apply if the unit is occupied. People or households experiencing homelessness. The grant money can be used for past due rent payments, including past due mobile home lock rent payments. It also can be used for first and last month rent payments and security deposit payments to secure affordable units for tenants. The simple application process, certifications are under penalty of perjury. Certification of past due rent by landlord by month, simply a rent roll or a ledger. And the unit and the landlord must certify that the unit is not out of compliance with the Vermont Rental Housing Health Code or any health and safety order. If the unit is out of compliance, the landlord will have 30 days to bring that unit into compliance. Certifications by the tenant of all household members covered by the grant, and the tenant also has to certify that there are no known health and safety violations. And if there is, the tenant will allow the landlord access to the unit to make the repairs. All successive certifications that rent is passed due is payment guaranteed provided there are remaining programs. So basically what I just tried to say there was that you can reapply more than once. Applications will be processed on a first come, first serve basis. Calculation of condition of grants, the grants are limited to the Vermont State Housing Authority. Payment standards or the actual amount due the landlord for the months being claimed, whichever is left for households at a single unit. The landlords must waive any late fees, any rent and excessive BSHA payment standards for months of the grant. The landlord must agree to drop current eviction and past cause for eviction. And the landlord must agree not to evict for nonpayment or rent if tenants application for rent arrears grant is pending for a specific period of time. The landlord must agree not to increase the contract rent before January 1st, 2021. The landlord agrees not to discriminate against the tenants. On the basis of race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, president of minor children, abuse, sexual assault or stalking or receipt of public assistance or marital status. The CR funds can be used to pay arrears just incurred before March 1st. The intent of this legislation is to prevent the homelessness and eviction during the March to December 30th pipeline and to assist landlords who have also lost income and are facing hardship due to the pandemic. Given the public health benefit as well as the cost savings of preventing homelessness, the expenditure is justifiable. The grant amount is not taxable income for the tenant. However, the grant amount to the landlord is taxable. If you are a landlord interested in these funds, please consult a financial advisor for additional information. At the end of the year, the Vermont State Housing Authority will issue landlords a 1099 tax form. The other point I wanted to make is that a certification of legal U.S. residents is not necessary for the rental assistance program. I would like to refer you to my webpage. It is www.bsha.org. Also on our webpage, all that information will be available on Monday. There will also be telephone numbers and contacts for the Vermont Legal Aid, which all tenants can call if they need technical assistance or want to know how to apply. The Vermont Landlord Association also offers the services to landlords, but you do not have to be a member of the Vermont Landlord Association. Any landlord can call. Those numbers will be there. And also all the other program, UTL applications, everything will be on the website. So as the governor thanked the legislature, I just would like to say I'd also like to thank the legislature, especially the committees of jurisdiction. Commissioner Hanford for the hours and hours and hours that we spent on the super meetings to stand up this program. Thank you, Governor, for inviting me here today. And my next task is to introduce Maura Collins, the executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. Thank you, Richard. And thank you, Governor, for inviting me here today. My name is Maura Collins. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. We are a statewide affordable housing mortgage lender. But today I'm here because the governor's administration invited us to administer one of the housing assistance programs that he proposed that will help keep Vermonters safely and affordably housed throughout this pandemic. Over 60% of Vermonters own their homes and own money on a mortgage, and many of them have been hit hard by the economic toll of the COVID crisis. In response, the legislature supported the governor's proposal and awarded $5 million to help lower income homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgages. This program will pay for up to three months of missed mortgage payments for households who faced economic hardship due to COVID-19. Using federal funding from the CARES Act so that these households don't have to face modified loan terms that could make their housing unaffordable going forward. To be eligible, a homeowner's recent current income needs to be below a certain limit, and they must have missed at least two monthly mortgage payments since March. The mortgage must be the primary residence in Vermont, meaning this isn't for vacation homes, and the loan has to have been in place before March 1st of this year. While VHFA is a statewide affordable housing lender that focuses mostly on first-time home buyers, this program is not just for VHFA borrowers. This program is open to all eligible homeowners, as is explained on our website. Our goal is to help homeowners who've had job loss or income reduction during this pandemic, and therefore maybe at risk of foreclosure once the moratorium lifts. We want them to remain safe in their home, and this grant will allow them to afford to do that. The governor signed this bill on June 2nd, and I'm very proud that next Monday, just 11 days later, VHFA will launch our online application process where homeowners can apply for this grant. We will be accepting applications from Monday through the end of August. Despite the governor's proposal and the legislature's good work, we anticipate that there will not be enough funding for the applications that we expect. So we'll be prioritizing those who have the lowest income and the highest risk of foreclosure. This program will not be first-come, first-served, but instead be based on needs so we can ensure we are serving the Vermonters who have been hit hardest since this all began. More detailed information for this program is already on our website at vhfa.org slash map, MAP, which stands for Mortgage Assistance Program. I'm sure the ACCD website will also have links to these programs on their site. You will find frequently asked questions, contact information, and that is where the online application will appear Monday. Interested homeowners are encouraged to contact their regional homeownership center or some other nonprofits we are partnering with to learn more about the details of this program if they need help applying. All information is online at vhfa.org slash MAP. On behalf of VHFA, we are very happy to partner with the Governor Scott administration to roll out this critical piece of his overall housing assistance package. Thank you. Thank you, Maura. Thanks for all your good work over the years. I'll now have Commissioner Pichek come up and give us the update on modeling for this week. Thank you very much, Governor, and good morning, everyone. For those who are watching at home, I want to remind you that you can find today's presentation along with all of our modeling resources on our department's website, dfr.vermont.gov under our COVID-19 resource page. This week we will again focus on the data from this past week, and then we will turn to our four reopening metrics to see how they are trending. And last, we will finish by looking at the continued increase of new cases that we are seeing across the country and how that may be impacting the northeast and our leisure travel map. Over the past week we have seen 45 new cases. This compares to 36 confirmed new cases from the previous week, representing a week over week increase of just nine cases or 25%. I think it's important, as we've discussed previously, to keep in mind that with our very low case count here in Vermont, even a small increase of the number of cases week over week could result in a relatively large percentage increase, again, which is why we instead focus more heavily on our four restart metrics, which tend to be more stable and more informative for us as we move through restart. Most importantly, we can see that Vermont continues to track closely to our seven day rolling forecast, and our model continues to forecast low case growth over the next few weeks. I also want to highlight some very favorable trends that we've seen over the past two months regarding the low number of Vermonters who have required hospital care related to COVID-19. As you can see from the slide, since the middle part of May, individuals in staffed hospital beds or in an ICU have remained remarkably low. This can certainly be explained in part due to the considerable reduction in new cases we've seen over the previous months, represented here by the yellow line. However, this low rate of hospitalization is also partly explained by the reduction in the average age of Vermonters who are testing positive for COVID-19. Based on a 14 day rolling average, we can see during the months of March and April, the average age of a Vermonter who tested positive for COVID-19 ranged between 50 and 55 years of age. During the months of May, or during the month of May, that range generally fell between 40 and 50 years old with a distinct downward trend. And finally, for the past six weeks, the average age of a Vermonter testing positive has generally remained under 40 years old. This illustrates that more vulnerable Vermonters, at least by age, have done a really good job of protecting themselves during Vermont's restart, and so have the many facilities across our state who house vulnerable Vermonters in nursing homes or other long-term care facilities. So again, while our data is trending favorably generally, taking an even closer look at our data provides even greater reassurance. Now, turning to our four reopening metrics, these are all again broadly trending well. The percentage of Vermonters visiting emergency rooms or urgent care facilities to report COVID-like symptoms remained very stable this week, and today sits at just .63%, well below our 4% guardrail. The three and seven day viral growth rates have again held steady this week. Both remain under 1%, and neither is demonstrating the sort of sustained growth that would give us pause. Similarly, regarding test positivity, our rolling average is just .5% over the past week, with the daily positivity rate ranging from pretty much close to zero to about 1.34%. All of these numbers, well below our 5% guardrail, and just for some comparison to a hot zone in the country, Miami-Dade yesterday experienced a positivity rate of 33.5%. So to give some context on our very low positivity rate. Our fourth metric is hospital and critical care bed availability. Over the last week, we have remained close to the 30% buffer, but our non-ICU capacity does remain high, and generally since our other trends are favorable, this is not concerning to us at this time. Unfortunately, the trends across the rest of the country have not been as favorable. On our national daily infection slide, we can see that three census regions, the south represented by the yellow line, the west represented by the green line, and also the Midwest represented by the blue line, are all now trending up in daily new cases. Additionally, the south has now far eclipsed the daily numbers the northeast was experiencing during the height of the pandemic's first wave here, and the west census region is not very far behind. We are even seeing this impact the northeast to a degree where our cases have remained generally steady. However, we did see a small increase in new cases week over week of 1.33%. It's the first time we've seen an increase in the northeast for about a month or so. This rise in cases has also had an impact on our travel map. You can see from the slide that many of the states that are on the perimeter of our map have seen counties move to yellow or red status, while much of the northeast has remained flat. Approximately 11.5 million people are eligible to enter Vermont without a quarantine, representing a decrease from 13.5 million who were eligible to enter Vermont last week without a quarantine. Again, for New England and the northeast, including New York, those numbers have remained steady and flat. And it's mostly the states around our perimeter of the travel map that have seen increases located in the south census zone and the Midwest census zone. And I think it serves as a good reminder about how interconnected our country is and how we need to remain vigilant, even though our numbers are so steady and favorable here in Vermont. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Dr. Levine. Good morning, everyone. The Health Department continues to follow the Burlington-Winooski and Fairhaven outbreaks, but no new cases have been added in well over a week. Sporadic cases of COVID-19 continue to occur in Chittenden County and elsewhere in the state. None of these sporadic cases appear to be part of a wider community spread of the virus. As I said many times before, this is indeed our new normal in the COVID-19 era. It is the expected consequence of the transition from stay home, stay safe to our current less restrictive existence, our steady and phased reopening of the Vermont economy and our lives, and the return of visitors to our state. And although we are designing guidance with the utmost care and consideration for health and safety to allow students return to school and college, this will also be an anticipated but hopefully minor result. I know I risk sounding like a broken record, but honestly, this is all part of our new normal. We have come this far and avoided much of the worst that other states have seen only due to Vermont's commitment to the four pillars of disease prevention in the pre-viral therapeutics and pre-vaccine times that we currently live in. One, stay home if you're sick. Two, wash your hands a lot. Three, keep physically distanced. And four, always wear a face mask indoors when around others and as appropriate outdoors. And if you don't believe me, just look around the country in the tragedy that is unfolding, especially in the south and west. I'm not here to try to strike fear in the hearts of Vermonters just to convey what the data seemed to be showing and to tell you that I am very concerned, disturbed, and upset by what we are all witnessing. Connections are now being drawn to mask gatherings, to easing up on mask wearing and social distancing, to overzealous congregating in settings like bars and social events, and in some instances a failure to reopen following guidance principles or simply going too far too fast. In some places around the country, a return to stay-at-home guidance has already occurred. From what I'm seeing as a public health official, I would be advising for even more restrictions based on the slope of the epidemic curve and the profound impact on the healthcare system infrastructure that's already occurring in several places. And finally, though deaths have fortunately been a minor feature of the recent surge, there are indications that deaths too are on the upswing, especially in Texas, Arizona, and Florida. While the young age of many of the ill has been protective, along with our new understanding of appropriate antiviral therapeutics and targeted ventilator use, there is usually a time delay in deaths that begin to occur weeks later, and I fear early signs have appeared. We in Vermont remain at 56 deaths and have not seen a change in that number for quite some time. I'd like to next piggyback on the Governor's comments and speak to the future of testing in Vermont. We really must continue testing at our current pace and anticipate an even greater need for this capacity as we expand routine testing in settings like long-term care, healthcare, and corrections, and as we see more outbreaks and need to do more contact tracing. Not to mention the need for testing that the return to school or college may lead to. We very much value our many partnerships in the healthcare system and the community, but I must say that these partnerships will need to become even more robust and sustained to free the health department to attend to outbreak responses and these vulnerable populations, the people who are most at risk from severe illness and death from COVID. This is all the more crucial as we will soon face another flu season, knowing that the combination of flu and COVID infection creates even more cases and could potentially be even more deadly. We're very much heartened by the engagement of hospitals, federally qualified health centers, and in many instances the primary care system, but we know these efforts will need to become even more expansive and look forward to even further engagement, especially in the area of testing those who are in quarantine or who may have traveled or may have been exposed or may work in a field that requires periodic testing. Many have already stepped up to help us in this cause, and we heartily welcome the pharmacy pilots and hope that these can become even more expansive and quickly. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Levine. And with that, we'll open up to questions. Calvin? All right, thank you. So I'm quite sure who's the question for, but regarding this new rental housing assistance program, what's stopping people that can't pay their rent? What's stopping them from applying this or applying to this and taking advantage of the program? Yeah, I'll refer to Commissioner Hanford and he might want to delegate from there, Commissioner Hanford. Yes, actually I had a hard time hearing the rest of that question I think the question, and you can clarify Calvin if I get this wrong, but the question was what prevents those who can pay their rent from taking advantage of this program when they actually have the funding available to do that? Yeah, that's, you know, obviously there have been unemployment insurance and other assistance that's been available to folks. They've maybe had other needs for those funds. You know, there is a proven need for this funding to be released. The fact that they have not paid their rent has certainly been a challenge for the landlord to have to keep that housing safe and pay their bills. So there's a dual benefit to this program. I'm going to see if Richard Williams has any additional comment on this question. Thank you. I think we all know that most of our homeowners are very honest and so I know people are, you know, people have been trying to pay their rent and we've seen some good statistics that show people are paying their rent but I think we're going to see as this continues, this pandemic continues I think people will be stressed out, you know, the monies that they were receiving will run out soon and they're definitely going to need help. You know, it is a self-certification. You do it under per jury and a landlord has to, you know, certify what the rent is outstanding. So I think that's the best I can give you for the answer. We definitely know as we go forward and we collect more data but, you know, we're feeling pretty good that, you know, homeowners are really trying hard to pay their rent. So much of this of course shouldn't be worth worrying about. You know, I'm trying to recall and I'm not sure that I have a general counsel on if there's anyone on the line that can help me with this but I believe that it would expire when the executive order expires. I don't think we put a time frame on there other than we can choose not to include it when we renew the executive order or we can continue to have it included but we haven't made that determination at this point. Governor, I might be able to help you on that. Sure. It's 30 days after the executive order ends that you can begin an eviction for non-dimmer rent. Thank you, Richard. Thanks. Governor, can you give us an update on the applications for the recovery grants that Commissioner Goldstein spoke up on Tuesday? Yeah, I believe we have either Secretary Curley or Commissioner Goldstein on the line who might be able to give us an update at this point in time. Yes, I'm here. I didn't give the whole question. The question is about an update you had given us on Tuesday an update on the first two days or Thursday and maybe you could give us a little bit more. I believe the number of applicants has dropped off a bit since then quite dramatically in some respects from the first day but I know they had another, I think they had another webinar yesterday or yesterday afternoon so maybe you could give us an update on where we are with the grants. That would be great. Happy to. We've had 2200 applications that have been begun and we have about 357 that are in queue to be approved. We've approved 138 of them already so in total there's about $30 million worth of ask but we are steadily approving so there's about $4 million worth that have been approved so there's still significant amount of money left just to be clear on this queue we do have a number that are waiting for review. We have a very manual process of review. We have to review each and every application and it gets submitted for approval so it did drop off from the first day but I can't say stop, stop that specifically. There is significant amount of work still going on to process each and every one. I don't know if Craig or Doug are you on the line? Maybe give an update from the tax department? Yeah, I'm here Governor. Craig will open the tax department. So we've had about 1400 applications or more than 1400 applications since the start of the week. We are currently making sure that our back end process is able to handle those and we anticipate that starting our review next week. Thank you Commissioner. Alright and Governor we're at 50% of restaurants now. Is it your intention to keep it there for a while? Is that essentially as high as you are comfortable going given what Dr. Lupien has told you? We're in this for the long haul and in some respects we'll make adjustments as time moves on and hopefully things will get better but what we're seeing nationally does give me some pause as to what happens when you open too quickly. We've been fortunate here. I've been listening obviously to Dr. Kelso, Dr. Levine trying to determine our reopening plan based on the science and the data and we've done pretty well. Right now which is pretty amazing in some respects. The number of positives we have in Vermont is third the nation right now. Hawaii is number one, Alaska is number two and Vermont is third. We surpassed Montana as a matter of fact. So again we're doing well but we need to continue to move along the same track and be very measured in what we do. So I know there's a lot of pressure to continue to reopen but I don't want to end up in the same position that other states are like Arizona and Texas and Florida. Our plan is working and we need to move forward again in a very measured way. We'll keep it here for a while. Well we'll see. We'll go week to week actually and we'll make determinations as we move forward. Different sectors we might be able to mitigate in some ways but again it all really depends on the data and focusing on what we want to do in the fall. I really think it's important for our kids to get back to school so we need to do that in a safe way. So again with more of our college students coming back in the fall as well as our plans for public education opening back up I believe that we need to be careful in not opening up anything else too quickly. Alright I think we can move to the phone starting with Ed from the Newport Daily Express. Good morning. My question comes from several other readers. They want to know when DMC is going to be opening up for the public. You mean for in-person service Ed? Yeah. Obviously I just want to remind everyone that we haven't really closed at DMV just from an in-person standpoint so you can still do things online you can still call in but we're working on a plan to open up in a measured way. We did open up the driver license programs so some of that has been in a far different way outside of the facilities but I might ask Secretary Young if she's on about the plan moving forward for more interaction with the state employees and how that's going. Thank you Governor. The question is in connection with the motor vehicle office? Yeah it was for the DMV office but I thought we are thinking a little bit forward in terms of how do we bring back some of the state employees that are essential for in-person service as well. Yes absolutely. I think each individual agency and department right now is looking at who they would like to bring back to the work site, how they can bring them back to the work site and motor vehicles certainly is one department that is one of the first on our priority list. So the Department of Buildings and General Services is working with motor vehicle to set up some safety features the sexy glass that may already be in for customer service. So I think those plans are proceeding and we are finalizing work site safety guidelines generally but the big question is for each agency and department who should be returned to the work site and when and as we've said all along those employees who can do their job through tele community and teleworking are being encouraged and asked to do so for the immediate future. Ed you'll be seeing that it'll be one of it's a priority for us DMV in particular so you'll probably be seeing that sooner rather than later and I'm not sure whether you had asked earlier but someone had asked about the rest areas and service areas along the interstate and those will be opening up soon as well. Not all of them but a portion of them some of the higher capacity rest areas will be opening up soon on a limited basis. We're looking at opening welcome centers along the borders that basically provide I think it's up to about 75% of our capacity when all rest areas and information centers are open. We're going to be having to staff those a little bit differently so we're limiting the phase 1 of the reopening to 9 out of 17 of our existing information centers and those should be up and running and online within the next two to three weeks our goal is within two weeks. Thank you very much. Thank you Ed. Wilson the AP. Good morning everybody I have two questions somewhat different quite different actually the first one since Vermont started allowing people to visit from other states without quarantining those counties that are now I guess shrinking. Has Vermont noticed an increase in the number of people from those areas and secondly this is a question I guess for Dr. Levine. Every day when the number of new cases are published on your website they seem to vary dramatically from day to day like today of the 5, yesterday of the 15 and those 3 and is there anything to be read into that and just I would have expected it to be a little more of a notch and those are my two questions. Yeah I'll try and answer the first one. We don't keep data on the particular areas those counties that we have opened up and who is visiting and we do keep an automated type of log determining how many people are coming to the state. It's leveled off a bit. There was a bit of an uptick two weeks ago three weeks ago and at this point in time since the 4th of July I believe we actually had a little bit of a decrease in the number of people so I don't know as we've measured it I might refer to Mr. Peachek to see if he can answer that further before we get to the second question. Thank you. So the Governor is right about the manual counting of vehicles coming into Vermont. We also have access to third party information about mobility data from aggregated anonymized cell phone applications user consented as well. But third party applications will show that we have seen a relatively small increase of traffic into the state but that it is down considerably when compared this year to the similar time period in 2019. Okay. Has there been enough any impact on business or on the tourism industry that's detectable or is it too soon for that? What was that Wilson? I didn't hear the question. I was just curious if Vermont's tourist businesses have noticed a difference. Are they getting more to the point? I'm not sure. Again it may be difficult to determine over a short period of time especially with the holiday weekend and so forth. But it might be a better question for the chambers of the world. They might be able to give us that data. Okay. Thanks for that question then. Thank you. I will send second question time to answer. I often go to bed at night asking the same question because we do sometimes go from 5 to 17 to 0. I guess to put it in perspective I would say that keep in mind we're testing over a thousand people a day. So even if it's 0 or it's 17 that's still a very small percentage of 1,000 or 1,200. And in the bigger context we've tested over 72,000 homeowners to this point of time. So that's even more infinitesimally small percentage. There are probably given days where we may have a pop-up set up in a particular location because of an outbreak and we would expect perhaps a few more positives in that location. Or there may be a household that all tests positive in a location. So I can partially explain that but it's really really very random. And on the days that there may be more cases they are characteristically well distributed geographically. So it's hard to really put your finger on a particular part of the state that seems to be experiencing more illness than another. So challenging question even more challenging answer in light of our smaller numbers. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Mike Donahue, the islander. Thank you Rebecca. Dr. Levine we continue to get questions about ongoing non-compliance with Vermont Directives about COVID-19 mass gatherings, overcrowding, etc. But in one case in particular I was told recently at the Vermont Fire Academy a training session was held and later one of the firefighters was determined to have returned from an out-of-state trip a long trip. Like a day or two before training and never quarantined to set all the firefighters at the training class had to be notified later about the non-compliance by one of the classmates and firefighters in several departments had to potentially be self-quarantined because of this conduct. And as you know Commissioner you've been set to Vermont Police and Fire and Rescue squad they're not reporting their own cases to the state. So I guess the question is so why should private citizens be expected to follow the Vermont directions when public safety officials across Vermont apparently refuse to follow them or even self-report? What can you do to bring them into compliance or is this just a line without a line? Hi Mike. So I guess number one I'd want to know more of the details and if you could forward any of them to our communications office that would be really helpful. Because I don't want to be expounding on something that I don't have any details on at all or may not be fully fleshed out yet. But I do think you make a good point that if our public officials at whatever capacity aren't aware of the kinds of behaviors that we are expecting Vermonters to model they should be held accountable. But I wouldn't want to draw the conclusion that we have abundant public officials that are not actually abiding by all of the rules which in many cases they have helped and contributed to our crafting. So certainly I wouldn't want our audience of Vermonters with the impression that this is a widespread problem because I'm not aware of it being that and I would hope it wouldn't be. But certainly we should as you imply hold people accountable and if there are indeed officials that have not stuck to the rules as we've crafted them we should hold them accountable for them. So you probably read the story in the still report maybe that a police chief went to Montana on vacation for a couple of weeks, came back, didn't sell quarantines, said he wanted to work at the police station went shopping and who knows where before the town manager stepped in and ordered him to go home for two weeks. I mean how many police fire and rescue squads have your contract contact tracers determined to have had COVID-19 positive tests or had been placed in quarantine or whatever. What do your tracers tell you? Public safety doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Yeah so certainly my contact tracing team has not indicated to me that we have an endemic widespread problem with people in law enforcement who have needed to be or have generated contact tracing because of exposures that they weren't completely up front about reporting on. But have I had any cases, I'm not back in white spread, I'm not asking 100% or 50% I'm just asking what have they told you? I mean 2, 3, 4 departments or what? They have not told me anything and I've not asked the question because it hasn't become to our attention that it's been a significant problem. But you will be asking that today probably. Oh I think you've publicly asked it so we will see if we have any data to support that. Thank you very much. Hi we've seen a lot of talk about what happens in a month and a half when schools are set to go back. And I know our goal here is to send kids back to school in person but we are planning in case remote learning is needed. We are seeing some school districts here considering doing some mix of the two, the in-person and remote learning. I guess my question is what is the state doing to address the ripple effects of those decisions that the arts can't go to work for some percentage of the day so the whole school year because their child has to learn from home. This I asked from questions I fielded particularly from working moms who are really nervous about the impact that this will have on them. And some are kind of feeling caught between this idea like you can't have a job and a child during this pandemic because you're forced to choose between them. Maybe I'll start with Secretary French. Thank you. We're calling a hybrid approach for learning which includes the sort of simultaneous provision of the in-person structure. That is something we're reviewing. I originally set the goal of pre-setting that by mid-July. I think we'll be on track to produce it next week. I wanted to begin by reviewing the statutory and regulatory sort of parameters on which we would enact that. A lot of the only ones that are so good I think are charting territory but a lot of our regulations don't necessarily match up with some of the strategies I think we will need to employ including hybrid learning. So I think at this point I'm totally sympathetic to the idea my gut instinct is that districts are going to need to have maximum flexibility to navigate what's in front of us coming to fall so I think hybrid learning is something we need to have in our school kit. We're going to work out the cloud guidance next week as soon as possible so it's described sort of the parameters of which that could be enacted precisely so we can start to give families and school districts folks the time to start planning for doing. But it will be challenging but I think it's the necessary approach for us to have it on tool kit for the fall. I guess for, you know, what would you buy message that you have Governor for the families out there who are looking at this possibility in the fall not being able to, if they have a job that does not allow them to work remotely and even if quite frankly even if they do because most parents like children will tell you working remotely and trying to help your kids school are not easy. What would be your message for them on how to navigate this fall? Yeah it's going to have to be contingency plans put into place by everyone individually collectively. I think Secretary French has outlined a proposal for a hybrid type of approach and having just as many options as possible. This isn't going to be easy. It's not going to be perfect. But by and large I think we have to consider collectively what's best for the kids what's best for them this fall. And I think getting back to school for in-person instruction is incredibly important to our kids so somehow some way and again it's going to be perfect. But I believe this is the right approach for our children. And what would be your message to employers who in the fall are going to be about you? Same deal. I mean they're going to have to be as flexible as possible. I think we've seen an incredible amount of flexibility amongst employers and employees and employers and we're going to have to continue. This is a long, long road ahead of us in some respects. We're going to have to go over by any means and it won't be until we have some sort of vaccine in place that is safe and that is distributed throughout the population. So that's going to take some time. But right now in the meantime asking people to be as accepting as possible to be as versatile as possible to be as understanding as possible from an employee standpoint and an employer standpoint. And we'll do so on the state level as well. We'll get through this. But we're going to have to again just be as versatile as we can. Would the state consider some of the protections that we had earlier this year when the pandemic was in its height as we're shutting down, parents were needing to juggle childcare and if they couldn't go to work in person they couldn't be fired. Would the state consider reinstituting some of that so parents wouldn't worry about losing their jobs if they had to deal with childcare? I don't think we've ever stopped that cap. I think that's still in place. Okay, sorry, I thought that had been. No, I believe it's still in place. Erin, BT Digger? I have some questions about the cross-strait state travel map. I had an epidemiologist contacting me about the methodology for the travel map and I took a good look at it myself. He has a number of criticisms. I don't know if I get into all of them here. One of the biggest ones is that he calculated based on the known percentage of people in these counties that have COVID and the known and unknown percentage of testing levels in these counties. The margin of error on the actual numbers is pretty big and it's quite possible that a lot of those counties, whether or not they meet that standard of $400 million, is really partly a matter of random chance or even just counties having the better or worse testing strategy. Do you have any response to that? Well, first of all, Erin, I'm just curious whether this person, this epidemiologist, has a name. We'd love to talk with him or her to discuss that. His name is Dr. Remington Nevin and I believe that he's also reached out to you guys directly. I also ran it through two other epidemiologists myself and they didn't have any substantive criticisms of his work. Did they have substantial criticisms of our work? Is there anything that they agreed with his concern? I see. Well, I will let Commissioner Pechak answer some of the questions but you know I have a great deal of faith and Dr. Levine and our epidemiologist Dr. Kelso we've been working together and I would have to say the numbers don't lie. I mean we've had this in place for quite a few weeks at this point. We're seeing people come to the state and I can't give you the exact numbers but we know they're here anecdotally and we're seeing the plates and so forth. And we haven't seen a spike in terms of a number of active cases so what we're doing and again maybe it's fair for criticism, maybe we can do it differently. I know other states have just opened up to the whole state and they're offering such a low threshold as 400 per million in terms of active cases but we took this cautious approach and I think it's working. So I'll let Commissioner Pechak answer. Thank you Governor and thank you Erin. So relating to the threshold of 400 active cases per million I think that has been proven to be a pretty solid number for us and we've seen other jurisdictions incorporate some level of threshold they either end up right at near that 400 level or in some cases they're even stricter. I think New York, New Jersey and Connecticut if they were to apply their methodology to ours the threshold would be about 650 cases per million so a little bit higher. The EU implemented recently a threshold as well theirs is on a 14 day average so that would equate to a threshold that was lower than ours about 100-150 I think active cases per million. So I think we're right from a threshold standpoint right sort of in a good spot. The other question is how do you calculate active cases and that's an open question. There are many different ways of calculating active cases so it's quite possible that this epidemiologist has a different opinion on that. We decided to use an approach that we are very comfortable with internally that was developed internally but we also cross-referenced that approach and I do this personally by looking at the work of an outside consultant Oliver Wyman that also has a travel map that's available online. They have a similar threshold a similar sort of way of calculating the numbers but they have a different methodology of getting there and our counties are always relatively in line with theirs. Their numbers are not identical because we have a different approach to the methodology but generally the methodology is looking at waiting the cases the cases that are more recent more heavily because individuals are more infectious during that early time period as the science has indicated and then become less infectious over time. We've run what we refer to as gamma distributions on that to come up with a number of scenarios and a number of ways that we can more confidently understand those numbers and then we apply a multiplier to that which is basically a number that brings our number up to the average that we've seen in Vermont so at the beginning of the travel policy that was a 2.4 multiplier and that's basically how we get to our number. Like I said ours is unique compared to ways that others calculate but we think it's more representative of the risk basically waiting the risk heavier earlier on and then that risk as people get through the disease and are less infectious. When it comes to both the active case calculations and the decision to make the 400 those aren't necessarily based on scientific research or modeling that has proven that as long as it's at that level it will prevent any kind of danger. Does that make you a little concerned that there isn't hard evidence that 400 is low or high enough and you're just basing it off of what other states have done? Well just to be clear we were the first to do a travel methodology like this EU came after us, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut came after us. So when we looked at doing this we're really the first state in the country certainly pretty much the first jurisdiction in the world contemplated this and it's the first time we've had a pandemic of this level in 100 years so there really wasn't scientific evidence or scientific literature that we could rely on and say what's a safe threshold that will make certain that Vermonters are not going to get impacted but what we did do is look at the relative risk. We looked at what were the Vermont counties looking like over time where what was that number at the time it was somewhere between 100 and 200 active cases per million so we said what's a number that may be you know is a reasonable number based on that what's a relative amount of risk that we're willing to accept and from the beginning we've always said you know that these aren't necessarily safe counties it's not how we're describing them we're describing them as quarantine or non-quarantine counties so there's always an element of risk and we've said that up front but what the county threshold does allow us to do is provide us some certainty that if we do see some cases that are imported to Vermont that we do have testing the flesh that out and we do have contact tracing to isolate it so that threshold was designed carefully in terms of you know what's our capacity to withstand an increase in cases and what's our risk appetite but like I said there really hasn't been an experience like this before so we really had to do some critical thinking and come up with an analysis that made sense and a number of other jurisdictions have landed with an analysis right around ours so that gives us some comfort The last thing that he touched on that talking with him was that you know I don't believe this is intentional but just looking at the results a lot of the counties are excluded have a higher percentage of people of color than the counties that are allowed to travel to Vermont so it has a bit of an outside effect on people of color. Does that confirm you? Do you think that it's fair to you know kind of make judgments about people just based on where they live and not what habits they're following or whether they've tested positive Vermont? So certainly the discrepancy in COVID positive and the experience that people have once tested positive is certainly deeply disturbing and troubling to everyone What I would point out first is that everyone can come to Vermont in some way whether it's not through whether you don't have to quarantine or whether you have to quarantine at home then come to Vermont or whether you have to come to Vermont and then quarantine here. So Vermont is open to everyone we just set parameters that we think are appropriate based on the risk of a geographical location Anyone else have any comments before I I might just ask if the epidemiologist is critical of other states and their travel policies or is it just Vermont Well he's a Vermont based doctor who's also a trade epidemiologist so I think that's why he's specifically on Vermont. So I'm just wondering if he pointed to another state that has a better policy than we do I don't think he's specifically highlighted, I won't know I don't think that he's gone over them in detail as much as he has with Vermont but that's their point. It'd be great to find out because if somebody else is doing it better than we are maybe we can learn from them. Yeah, that's true Thank you. Sasha, seven days Hi, thanks for having me. I have a question about PPP or PPE rather with cases rising in many other states recently we've seen national stories about shortages flaring up again with PPE. Does Vermont currently have an adequate supply of PPE and are there preparations underway now to stockpile more ahead of an expected increase of cases this fall? Yeah, it's a great question and something that we've been concerned with from the start and we haven't been idly sitting back waiting for something to happen we've been building our supply and stockpile in anticipation of something happening in the future. In fact, over the last couple of weeks I've asked Commissioner Sherling to who keeps track of the inventory and who's been building our inventory to bring us up to speed on that so he did just that even this morning and it looks like we're in really good shape and we'll continue to build on that supply. I might ask Commissioner Sherling if he has anything to add to that. Good afternoon Governor, not much to add only that we continue to stockpile in anticipation of any twist this virus may give us in the fall the FNS warehouse continues to supply a variety of stakeholders in the COVID effort on a day-to-day basis and we continue to leverage our partnerships both with Vermont business and health care providers in particular giving them health network to purchase the key components of PPE in anticipation of any future needs. And I think we're talking months of supply available at this point that is correct we have in most instances we have multiple months of supply and to be clear with folks where our target is to have on hand 180 days of supply of all PPE based on our best assessments of the burn rates of each of the items we're not there yet that is a stretch goal it's been recommended by various folks that we stockpile 90 days we've chosen to double that just because you know the circumstances change in ways we can't imagine so we're doing things on the safe side Yeah and if I could just take a moment Commissioner Sherling Deputy Commissioner Herring and as well as Director Borneman have been doing a great, or Herak I should say Director Borneman has been doing a great job trying to make sure that we have plenty full supplies and it hasn't been easy as you might recall in the beginning we were running out of K and 95 masks as well as gowns and so forth and gloves but we've rebounded and we're continuing to make sure that we don't end up in that position again Just one quick follow-up Commissioner Sherling mentioned the 90 day mark have we reached that at this point For most items we've reached that one of the nuances there is we're not at 90 days for true medical grade and 95 but we do have in reserve hundreds of thousands of K and 95 that could be used to supplement that but unlike the the sort of crisis posture we were in in March we're actually measuring those two things separately so we're targeting actually 180 days of true medical grade and 95 masks and then we would have another large slug of masks in reserve beyond that but if you took the two together now we're getting much closer to that number Great, thank you very much Hello can you hear me? We can Thank you When I was a kid I would ask my father about something and he would say answer soon and soon was a moving target. A while ago I had asked you about when we would be testing the nursing home staff because you know these are the most vulnerable population for the lethality of this virus So when will soon be when it comes to testing nursing home staff specifically up here in the kingdom area I'll take a first stab at that and if Secretary Smith has anything to add he can add I believe next week at one of our conferences we're going to be presenting more of a plan for the long term care facilities but our goal is within the month of July to have progress made on all of the long term care facilities testing The way testing works is it allows a facility to in a phased manner reopen in that sense reopening doesn't mean as much in these kinds of facilities as it does in the economy. Here it means things like perhaps having residents of the facility be in the same dining room at the same time even if they're not close together or have another type of activity occur that up until this point in time could not happen So it's easing of restrictiveness that testing the facility would help with because of the lack of COVID presence Regarding the KN95 mass versus the N95 mass the KN95 is electrostatically charged to pick up the viruses like the N95s the Kosher N95s are So my understanding and Commissioner Sherling can pipe in generally when you use the K in front of the N95 it means it was not produced in the United States quite often it was produced in China or elsewhere and though they are routinely by the FDA evaluated and in fact they come into Vermont we work with the UVO Medical Center to evaluate them they may not meet the same exact specifications of an N95 as we know it in this country so we always have to determine does it actually meet the specification that was advertised before it arrived and could it be used on the front lines or reassurance and safety in mind I see that just adds to Commissioner Levine's description that there's three levels of assessment there's an assessment of the specifications before and orders made for KN95 then when they arrived there sent the UVM Medical Center for testing and then they go into two buckets one could they be used as a replacement for an N95 in an emergency circumstance under emergency use authorization by the FDA and then the other bucket being if they haven't quite made that cut we can use them for something else like replacement of a surgical mask or just a general mask and then a secondary test is done for the ones that have met the initial threshold for replacement of an N95 and out-of-state testing is done before they're finally put into not into service necessarily but into the supply that could be used in an emergency down the road great thanks Mike could I have a quick one for Mr. Smith go right ahead I'm sorry I missed that alright thank you regarding the attempt to suicide up here at Newport there seems to be a bunch of questions we've got that this man was placed in segregation aka the whole where they're not being watched even though he had a history of like psych problems and while he was awaiting a bed down in Brattleboro is there a reason you can give for why this guy was not being watched it's my understanding Steve that this individual was on a 15 minute watch and according to the preliminary investigation he was being watched every 15 check every 15 minutes now you describe it as a whole he was in quarantine because he was a new prisoner coming into the system quarantine that we are making sure that it's segregated from the rest of the general population because as you know and as you're aware we have had various instances of people that have tested positive for COVID-19 coming in in the intake process in our system so he was in quarantine in terms of the Brattleboro retreat it's my understanding that his lawyer wanted him to be taken and was attempting to have him move to the Brattleboro retreat that Department of Corrections had no core order to move him or no core evaluation order for him during that time according to what I have been told so just to clear up those sort of instances alright but if you had a history of psych problems why was he given why was he allowed cheats instead of a padded blanket the I don't know about his history of psych problems I don't know if the court had ruled a psych evaluation as it was as he was appearing but he was under 15 minutes checked and he was in quarantine during that time alright great I have a bunch more but there's a lot of people waiting to talk to you folks so I guess I'll wrap it up there thank you very much Steve, Greg the county courier Hi Governor I'll be quick with this and Governor I think you're off the hook I think this was likely for Dr. Levine Yesterday Planned Heritage made an announcement that they'd be changing the way they were going to do STD and STI testing so that they could do it so that people could do it at home and STI rates are on the rise and they attributed part of that to losing contact tracers to the public sector such as the health department for COVID testing Has the state of Vermont taken contact tracers from Planned Parenthood and kind of a secondary question are you aware of any measurable statistics in Vermont that would indicate if STDs or STIs are on the rise or fall With regard to your first question you're implying that Planned Parenthood employs contact tracers I'm not so sure about that We have our own contact tracing workforce so I don't think it's been robbing Peter to pay Paul by any means With regard to the second part of the question I'm going to have to look at our latest data because I've not seen our latest data on the time course and trends and sexually transmitted infections so I don't know the answer So just for clarification purposes if somebody tests positive for an STD or STI in Vermont is it the health department that does contact tracing Yes, so has the health department taken some of the people that were designated with STD and STI tracking and moved them purely to COVID tracking Is there less workforce doing the STD and STI tracking I guess as well? Clearly it's all hands on deck with the pandemic but that doesn't mean we're not doing things that we would normally do as part of public health I'll get a formal answer to you to be sure that there's been no major disruption in those services but I can tell you right now that we continue to do some of the traditional work It doesn't just disappear because of the pandemic but I'll get a more formal answer back to you You have a great weekend. We'll chat again on Tuesday Thank you Good afternoon. Just a quick question we had a couple of viewers call in in regards to summer camps and how they're operating specifically there's a summer camp in Rutland that our viewers are telling us about that the kids are not wearing masks they're not social distancing there's about 100 kids acting like there's not really a pandemic if you have heard of any of these complaints is there any check system for summer camps or do we need to re-look at the guidelines or anything like that? I'm aware of the situation in Rutland in his source of controversy revolving around a camp that was set up in a holiday inn so we are on that and actively pursuing what we believe that there's too many at the camp for the facility because of the 50% of the lodging limit. I'll ask Commissioner Sherling if he has any updates there and maybe Secretary Smith if there's anything on another facility that I'm not aware of in South Burlington I think you said Brittany Yeah with South Burlington Good afternoon. Brittany, Mike, Sherling we as the Governor indicated we're following up in collaboration with the Division of Fire Safety the Department of Health and the Attorney General's Office to try to bring Rutland into compliance. I'm not familiar with the South Burlington situation in general I would say that as as reports of non-compliance come in various state and local entities go out in the educational posture to try to ensure that folks are first aware of the nuances of the sector guidance and then to ensure that they become compliant if they're not. For anyone listening I would encourage you to go to the ATV website to see the nuances of the various sector guidance including what is required of summer camps. Brittany this is Mike Smith. I have not heard of the South Burlington situation we will look into it. Okay thank you so much I appreciate it. Joe Barton Chronicle We've gotten some questions from people who were surprised that they were charged, at least their insurance was charged for COVID testing and one of the people had a family member who was not going to be tested because they were not sure they could afford it. Is there any information you could provide that would either provide reassurance or confirm their concerns? I'll have Commissioner Pechek first answer that. So thank you for the question. We have as you probably know issued a mandate that COVID testing not just be covered but be covered with no cost share under commercial insurance. There is a possibility that so basically anybody that gets their insurance through the exchange through the ACI exchange that would apply for them whether it's a small business or whether it's individual. There are some organizations that are exempted from state mandates because they are under ERISA and if that were the case it's up to the employer whether they're going to cover at zero cost share but what I would recommend is certainly for those individuals to reach out to our department or consumer group at the Department of Financial Regulation and Insurance Division because at least the coverage of the test should have been there if not the full cost so that there was no deductible so we'd be really interested in learning more about that. Thank you very much. I have one other question and this goes back to the attempted suicide at Northern State. Just to be clear in my own mind was the person in question being housed in one of the separation cells that are up near the central guard post in the main building. I know they're aware of them that people coming into the facility normally spend time in for a period before they're housed with other people and is that where this gentleman was being held? Let me check on the precise location of the quarantine unit. Each facility has a quarantine unit now based on COVID-19 so that we can quarantine intakes coming into our system to make sure but let me check with corrections and get back to you on that the precise location of that person's cell. I very much appreciate it. Thank you. Pete Hirschfeld, new PR. Thank you, Rebecca. Governor, according to your latest campaign finance disclosure, you spent $50,000 on optimist consulting. I'm hoping you can talk about exactly what services or products you purchased and the purpose for doing so. Yeah, we didn't really actually purchase anything. It was a contractual relationship that we had with them and it was another payment on that unfortunately we had thought we were going to be in the midst of a campaign cycle at this point in time so it's just a payment that was due so we're not receiving any goods and services at this point. Thank you and Commissioner Hanford, are there any income eligibility thresholds for this rental assistance that's going to be available? There is some rental income eligibility requirements. The rents can't be above the domestic housing authority standards which means these rents are reasonable affordable rents. I'm going to turn it over to Richard Williams for actual household income verification. I think that's one of the components of this program that we wanted to keep quick, simple and moving forward. So, Richard, can you answer that question in more detail? Sure, thank you Commissioner. The answer to that is we are not verifying the tenant income. But we do as the commissioner mentioned, there are payment standards not to exceed. So, let me just give you an example if that would be helpful. For example the Burlington, South Burlington area for two-bedroom apartment would be $1,464 compared to the Washington County which is $1,199. So, the payment standards recognize the various differences in the rental cost throughout the month. But the answer to the question is no, we're not verifying income. Anyone can apply for this rental rearage money. So, the only requirement then is that rent be passed due? Correct. And the unit has to be occupied. So, if the tenant has left the unit, the landlord is not eligible for this funding. So, the unit has to go ahead then, sir. No, I apologize. The unit has to be occupied. The unit has to meet the rental housing codes. And the landlord must submit a copy of the rent row or ledger showing how much is delinquent to him. And the tenant also confirms the amount of money owed to the landlord. And then finally, it's more than still on the line, when is the income eligibility threshold for the mortgage systems? Yes, the legislature wanted us to target it as a percentage of area median income. And at the same time, we're looking for simplicity. So, we went with a statewide limit except Chittenden County has a different limit. Again, as Richard said, appreciating the Chittenden County's markets are a bit different. So, we're looking at the last 90 days of income knowing that this COVID crisis, we want to target people who've really lost their jobs recently or had income reduction. So, the last 90 days, you have to have earned less than $15,000 or in Chittenden County, it's $18,000. So, the equivalent is $5,000 or $6,000 a month in as an income limit. And I just want to clarify that for ours, the payment is directly to the mortgage servicer. So, there was a question earlier about the checks and how do we know people are going to be honest with this? I agree with Richard Williams that in general Vermonters in the affordable housing programs we work with are exceedingly honest and there is little to no cases of fraud. For the mortgage assistance programs, any assistance received will go directly to the mortgage servicer, which will be, we will communicate with the servicer and make sure that is applied to the mortgage payment so that the money goes directly there to achieve its intended purpose. Thank you all. And Wallace Allen, BT Digger. Hi, following up on those questions, I was wondering if I could ask Josh just for a little context on any other housing assistance that has gone out during this crisis. Is this sort of the first state assistance that has become available? Yeah, thanks for the question, Anne. You're correct. It is the first assistance for Corona relief funding assistance to go out directly in the hands of folks that need it in Vermont that I'm aware of. There's talk of other federal housing funding but it hasn't arrived here yet. Just want to be careful to point out that there has always been ongoing rental assistance programs, which Richard's organization runs. But those often have long wait times and are ongoing and permanent. And so this is really the first Corona relief funding assistance in the housing world going out. And we've looked across other states what they've done, how much money they put into similar programs. And we found some states that have done a lot less and some states that have done a little more. And we felt that the percentage of assistance and the design of these programs was right in a sweet spot from what we've looked at across the whole country. Do you guys have any idea how many people it might affect? Yes, we had some initial statistics on that and the numbers have changed a little bit as far as what exactly is available. And of course depending on how many months of assistance someone received you know a landlord of one month versus four months and same on the mortgage side will determine how many people different households actually receive this assistance. I think Richard and more of both have sort of an sort of an averaging if you will of the number of households this can help. So I'll ask them to elaborate. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Josh. You want me to go first, Josh, on that or is more So there's we've seen different statistics. In Vermont there's roughly about 85,000 low-income households renters and we've been predicting potentially 10% of those could be delinquents. So approximately maybe 8,500. We've seen some high numbers. I know Josh, excuse me, Commissioner Hanford and the governor's proposal was looking at approximately 13,500 households and we've also seen reports published by the federal home loan board that it could be as high as 21,000 Vermonters that could be seeking rental leverage. Sorry I can't answer specifically but you know until we start to see data that's sort of the high and low that we're looking at. And this is more for the mortgage assistance program we know from census data that there are over 45,000 homeowners in Vermont with mortgages whose incomes roughly fall under the limits that we've set. And we also know that several mortgage lenders have reported anywhere between 7 to 10% of their mortgage portfolio has household to have taken advantage of the forbearance agreements that are available to a lot of mortgages due to the COVID crisis. So we are thinking we'll know more as of Monday when the application is open but that out of the 45,000 eligible households of 10% apply that's when I say things like I don't think that the $5 million while we're very happy to move it forward and it's going to help many Vermonters I'm not sure it's going to be enough to meet the full needs. Got it, thank you. If I could follow up on that one more. In early April there was about 600 pending court cases in Vermont courts for delinquent rent. We're hoping with our program that we can clear those working with Vermont Legal Aid and Vermont Landlord Association. So we can clear those and make it a little bit easier on the courts and the judges. So you think those six unantending court cases were focus related in early April? They were as I said when I spoke about this program it doesn't have to be exactly COVID related. There could be a rearage and the idea is that we don't want an infection between the 1st of March and the end of December. So it would be eligible to participate in this program. And that's also in the guidelines for federal funding? Yes, we've had an opinion on that. A legal opinion on that. I can add that with the eviction moratorium that was put in place early on, many of those cases were pending before the pandemic started and it essentially froze those from going forward. So there is a nexus back to the pandemic and effects of it. And Richard's right that here was that rusting someone into eviction and possible homelessness during this pandemic from past due rent is eligible because it is a nexus to COVID. You look at Commissioner Vanford? Yes. Thank you. Chris Roy, Newport Daily Express. Yes, good afternoon. Could you briefly speak on the legislation that you've signed Governor recently about COVID-19? Chris, are those all, I don't recognize all of the numbers. Are those all COVID related recovery bills? Yes, they are. They are supposed to help businesses who have financial difficulties during the COVID. Yeah, I mean we've enacted as we spoke about earlier, we've put those into place and those have been activated taking applications as of Monday and we've seen quite a number of people and entities that have signed up and will continue to evaluate and put money out the door just as quick as possible. From my standpoint again, we need to do everything we can to help protect these businesses because without the businesses they don't provide the jobs that are much needed. We still have 40 or 50,000 people on unemployment or the PUA system at this point in time so the quicker we can get these businesses back in order and to keep them at least in a survival mode so that they can provide the jobs necessary when we work our way out of this. Okay, great, thank you. Tim, Vermont Business Magazine. Hi, Governor, just following up on that the PUA and the federal assistant to the unemployment insurance is going to run out to $600. As I understand at the end of this month, which is happening pretty quickly as you mentioned, there's about 41,000 people still on unemployment. Then you have, of course, the housing assistance, which has been a big part of this discussion here. That's going to be that extra $600 a week for all those people runs out in just a few weeks. It's really going to hammer the economy. Do I have that right, first of all? And second, is there a plan B to make up for that either here or in Congress? Are you aware? Yeah, the $600 does end at the end of the month. It is concerning because I know a lot of families are counting on that for a lot of their expenses. I have heard I had it was on a call yesterday with the National Governors Association and it was mentioned that there is some talk about the possibility of having some portion of that. They don't believe that it would be the $600, but maybe another appropriation to help fill the gap. Time will tell. Probably a great question for the congressional delegation, maybe the Senate in particular in determining what they're seeing and whether they can do this before the break. I know the Unemployment Trust Fund is well funded now, but that could be a big impact. I'm wondering if there's any modeling or planning regarding starting on August 1st how to deal with this or not. In terms of the PUA will continue as I understand it through the end of the year and so our Unemployment Trust Fund, the PUA is funded by the federal government. The traditional unemployment is through our Trust Fund. Our Trust Fund is still relatively healthy. It's not down I believe we started out with a little over $500 million we're at like $324 million now. We've tried to take a look outwards. Commissioner Harrington may be on the line now but I've asked him to determine if we continue at the present burn rate how long can we go. It's a concern, but I think we're in a much better position than many other states. As you remember I think it was early on about two months ago. I believe California had already had to take out a loan from the federal government to supplement their Unemployment Trust Fund so we're nowhere near that at this point in time and with any luck and continue with the strategy that we've imposed that will make it through this without going to the federal government for a loan. Commissioner Harrington, anything you want to add to that? I think you were spot on Governor just so the people listening know the numbers. We just released numbers for the week of July 4th and for the week of July 4th we had 39,089 people applying for traditional UI and that's a decrease of about 3,300 people from the week before. For the same week ending July 4th we had 9,485 people applying for PUA and that is down about 850 weekly claims from the week before that. So we continue to see even though slight we do see reductions in the numbers of people filing weekly claims. As you mentioned the PUA program continues through the end of the year should the $600 SPUC program come to an end similar to what you said we have heard that there are discussions about whether a new round of stimulus money will be used to support ongoing we'll call it a bump in UI benefit. There isn't really a mechanism or the ability for the state to offset those funds we do have a maximum weekly benefit amount so anything additional on top of that would have to be from a federal appropriation. And as you said while our trust fund since the start of the pandemic we are in a much healthier position in many other states our current balance as of July 8th was 313.1 million and we are doing modeling under a couple different scenarios about how long that could last whether we say it's the current number of people filing or if that's the number of people filing to lose the draft as you said the money that is directly attributable to the trust fund are traditional UI benefits so folks receive in pandemic unemployment assistance or pandemic emergency unemployment compensation which is a form of extended benefits in both of those scenarios those are fully reimbursable by the federal government thank you very much Matt WPTZ Thank you this question is actually for Dr. LaVine it's been hot you know it's the summer here in Vermont and you guys have been encouraging people to wear a mask when out and about and I'm just curious if you have any tips or advice for people who might have an urge to maybe take off a mask you know it's pretty hot outside but also you know want to make sure that you're wearing a mask in hot weather Thanks for that question because it really gets at what we really mean about this facial covering and mask business it's not so strict that people can't be flexible under circumstances that any normal human being would say these are appropriate circumstances so we're very strict on the indoor setting and it's often very, unless you're in your own household of course and it's very challenging often for people to not stay in an indoor setting for the amount of time that would be safer or not being a crowded area indoors so it's very very important there and when you look at all the studies about what's gone wrong when people are potentially exposed to infection they can trace it to potentially being in an indoor setting and so you'd really want to have the covering on at that time but outdoors probably the best advice is that you would want to make sure that you had enough physical distancing capability wherever you are so obviously outdoors is more expansive we've restricted the kind of sizes of mask gatherings that would perhaps put you at risk but as long as you can stay six feet away from other people you're going to be in great shape we do recognize a challenging it is to wear a mask when it can be very very hot and so again we want to be rational human beings and understanding human beings who know that best intentions sometimes get complicated because of weather circumstances there's plenty of opportunity to still have it on at the appropriate time if you're waiting in line for instance at the creamy stand and not everybody is spaced the way they need to be and you're crowded together there obviously once you get the creamy you're going to have to take the mask off but you want to put yourself in a position where you're not in the middle of a crowd while you're doing that likewise with physical exertion we are very understanding about the fact that you may need to take the mask off because you're exerting but hopefully while you're exerting you're not in the midst of a whole bunch of other people you're actually either running on your own or on your bike on your own or taking a nice walk with one or two other people that you can be distanced from. Does that help you? It does. You also made me hungry and I want to go get a creamy next but I don't think I can so thank you very much. Hi thanks for taking my question. Reader shared with us a recent Facebook post featuring sponsored content from the Vermont Department of Health urging people to wear a mask. I'm wondering whether the Vermont Department of Health is also purchasing ads and sponsoring content in Vermont media that provide local jobs I'm curious about whether Facebook has devoted any of its resources to covering all of these two and three times a week press conferences Governor do you want me to take that? Yeah why don't you try it Mike? Okay I guess the best answer to that is standby. We are in a three phase approach to what we call a what you know a mask sort of campaign that I mentioned we wear a mask I wear a mask because the first phase with social media the second phase is getting out this information through various partners of state government through state government through all our associates including new businesses the third phase is earned and paid media that is coming next week starting next week as we move forward so I guess the answer is the standby on that for a local local investment and if I could follow up what is the plan specifically in terms of getting Vermont tax dollars in the state to support local media I'm curious why the state would support Mark Zuckerberg at all and I'd also like to follow up on a letter that the Vermont Press Association sent to the administration speaking to partner with the administration on a mask campaign as well as a get out the census effort has there been any interest in that? I've been interested in the census I'll let others speak to but certainly the mask campaign I'm interested in how we can partner so we'll follow up on that I've got Rebecca here who can comment on Lisa yes we have received a lot of press outreach asking for local add dollars to go to you all and I have shared the letter you're referencing with our census team they have a marketing strategy plan and we're interested but I don't know specifically what if they have an add budget so that would be the hang up there but it has been forwarded on to them as well as the mask team that as Mike just referenced thank you but it seems like if there's money to pay for traditional advertising I don't know that I don't know that the census team is advertising on Facebook I don't think they're doing paid advertising April Burlington Free Press Hi my question is for Taylor Harrison can you say again this week about so long time the inconsistent answers from the staffers with regards to any questions and why the appeal process is taking a long time to be evaluated it was a little broken up but I think I captured the question with regard to I believe the first question was regarding our call center we continue to do regular actually in some cases daily training with our call center I would just point out and I think I've mentioned in the past when we're talking about unemployment insurance and pandemic unemployment assistance these are some of the most complex programs out there in terms of requirements federal requirements, state requirements where you have to compare those two against both federal law and state law and then layer on the fact that there are multiple steps in a process and multiple variables so it's not always a black and white answer it takes years and years and years for our staff to become experts in UI and we've asked essentially a call center of brand new people to pick this up in a matter of weeks and so there are times where the information doesn't always match up where people get different answers in many cases what happens is someone follows up and does not get the answer they need or the call center isn't able to provide them with the answer they are added to an escalation sheet and are followed up by someone else who may have more knowledge those do eventually come to our staff in the department and we do regular daily call backs on escalation logs to follow up on more complex cases. I'll also point out that we also then added two new federal programs on top of these with very limited guidance and built one of these programs the PUA program from scratch and that program continues to be molded and adjusted depending on the need so it can be a moving target and the number of variables being considered on each claim can be overwhelming at times and really take some deep knowledge on how the program was built and designed so I do recognize that it can be frustrating for people we are working to provide regular training to our call center staff and we also know and I think what we are seeing from claimants is that it is also a confusing program for them and so what ends up happening is many times due to the complex nature of the program the information being provided is contradictory or incomplete and that also can slow the process with regard to adjudications in a field this is actually a national problem and it has come up on many national phone calls and work groups that we participated in and it's because the adjudication in the appeal process is so heavy in terms of due diligence and backfinding and providing people with due process in the appeal process these are quasi-judicial proceedings they are evidentiary in nature and require sworn testimony so when we get asked why did it take so long it is because there is an opportunity for backfinding both on the claimant but also on the employer side and these cases go through an adjudication process I will say that Vermont has fared relatively well compared to other states I've heard of states that have over 25,000 claims in their adjudication process going back months we've been able to at least stick relatively to a 30-day turn around some happen much quicker depending on the case Commissioner I think we might have dropped Commissioner Harrington we can connect April and Commissioner Harrington if you'd be afterwards we have one final question from Patrick at the Rutland Herald did we lose our feet Patrick we may have lost our feet we'll connect with April and Patrick to make sure they're all set okay so this is Patrick sorry I guess I was muted and I thought they turned it off so Governor Scott obviously we're keeping an eye on the situation in the Rutland hotel which by the way I hope everybody who is on the call realize it's not a Rutland camp just have everything placed in Rutland it's a local back owner my question though is apparently this person was there for a couple of days without anybody even realizing there were hundreds of kids in the camp from an area where they made the coverage may have been high was there any lessons left from the state that have had a response to this type of thing in the future to prevent other large gatherings of people from out of state for months without the state being aware of it well again we'll probably reassess the situation at this point in time we didn't contemplate someone coming in to set up a summer camp at a hotel and certainly during normal times that probably wouldn't happen because the facility wouldn't be able to accommodate that but again these are unique times and someone did something unique but we'll have to reassess and contemplate that for the future but at this point in time we haven't seen whether they have done anything that was not in compliance so we are again looking at the Holiday Inn in particular in terms of the 5% lodging limitations and it appears they may have exceeded that so they'll have to bring the number down and then we'll again reassess all the other making sure that they follow the rules and the guidelines that are in place well and I just want to follow up with one thing very briefly so obviously I'm sure you're aware also that the same organization is on the state that the farmers doesn't belong to college and again my point is not just not to imply that they're doing anything wrong that they are and it may be that nobody is getting sick there my concern is just that apparently the state did not know about this so I guess that might be your concern is there's a limited amount of control but is there any lessons learned here to say in the future we want to make sure at least that we're aware of these things you know either before they're happening or at the moment? Yeah again unique times during this pandemic and I'm not sure that anyone would have contemplated this going into this situation or in this period of time again I'm not sure that it would replicate in the future but you know we learn every day about something that we could obviously do differently but we didn't know about either of these situations before they happen. Thank you. With that that concludes today's program so again thank you very much for tuning in and we'll see you on Tuesday.