 All right, here we are, government operations on Friday. And today we're going to talk about a couple of different things. We're going to look more in depth. Yesterday we had just an initial conversation about the quasi-judicial boards and how we need to have some special legislation around allowing them to meet virtually, also. And then we're going to continue that conversation. Then we're going to hear of any other issues that are facing municipalities that haven't come up yet that we haven't dealt with, that we might need to deal with. And I will tell you that I just got off a meeting with the Secretary of State and with Sarah Copeland Hansis. And they have, I suspect that some of the issues that might come up today are around elections, whether that municipal elections, whether it's school boards or town budgets, excuse me, town budgets, anything else. They have a draft of some guidance for towns to follow. And as we got off the phone call about 10 minutes ago, Jason Malucci had sent over an advisory to the Secretary of State's office that the governor was pretty ready to sign off on it. So if they get that in a final form, as opposed to a draft form before we're done today, they're going to send it to Gail to post on our website. And there's, because there's a lot of, it'll answer a lot of questions about local elections. So with that, do we have Karen or Gwen? Yep. Okay. Do you want to kick off the conversation here just around some of the issues and we'll hear from some of the local people? Okay. Can you hear me? This is Karen Horn at the League of Cities and Towns. All right. I am giving my neighbor's office a break today. When you can see me in my garden, then I'm at my neighbor's office. So yeah, there's a few, first of all, we want to give you a huge thank you for all that you've done for us already because your committee really has been front and center on helping municipalities get the tools they need to get through this. So thank you very much. You're welcome. We do have sort of a never ending list of issues that arises. One does have to do with the quasi-judicial boards which you're already looking at. We did have questions about municipal elections and if somebody is trying to get a question onto a ballot for a municipal election, are they still going to go out and need to get signatures on that petition? We've looked at the guidance from property evaluation review and I think that some of the questions that Representative Gannon maybe has been discussing in House GovOps are around inspections for assessments and with respect to grievances. We are thinking that we'll get quite a few grievances this year. And then an issue that actually just came up in the last day, I'd say, is whether towns should are able to specify the way in which property taxes should be paid. For instance, there's at least one town, maybe more that don't wanna accept cash at this point. And a lot of stores are also not accepting cash right now. But anyway, that's a question. So I don't know if Gwynn has other issues or other perspectives to add onto those, but that's sort of what we've come up with for the moment. Hi, this is Gwynn Zachoff. Oh, sorry. Sorry, keep going here. Go ahead, Gwynn. I was just going to elaborate, Gwynn Zachoff of VLCD for the record. I was just going to elaborate on the BCA stuff. So I was under the impression that the committee would be taking this up next week. So we can sort of hold off on some of those issues. But I think of all the issues that the committee might talk about today, that might be the one that may be the most pressing in terms of needing sort of a legislative fix eventually. In terms of the petitions that Karen had brought up. So under the directive from the Secretary of State's office earlier, which has been incredibly helpful in terms of the need for getting signatures for petitions. The way we're reading it and we're hoping, we're trying to walk kind of a little bit of a tight rope here because it's not super explicit, but it most likely does address the petitions for special meetings that voters would call for. What it doesn't have to address are those petitions that are basically littered throughout statutes that enable or empower citizens to gather signatures for sort of subject matter area issues. So those could be things like when a town is looking to sell property. I mean, a select board is selling property under 24 VSA 1061. There's the ability for citizens to basically challenge that. There's also the ability for citizens to challenge or sorry, not to challenge, but to propose a charter under Chapter 17 or under Title 17. They can also do a challenging an ordinance or a rule that is put forward under Title 24. So there's a bunch of these that are sort of littered throughout statute and what we've been telling our members so far, sort of in this like gray area is to sort of use your best judgment and if at all possible, don't make decisions as a select board or as a city council that would put you in that position of having to receive these petitions, whether it be selling property or adopting an ordinance or those sorts of things, but it's a little bit that can only hold true for so long because eventually they're gonna have to make, eventually those actions are going to come about. So that's just a greater clarification of what we have seen as sort of a gap in that the governors and the Secretary of State's order is not really expanding beyond local elections for special and annual meetings and not going to the subject matter area. So, Gwen, I think you are right about thinking that we were going to go into much more detail on Tuesday about the issues. What we're hoping today is to get them all out and to just get some general understanding of what some of the issues are in my right committee and then on Tuesday, because we won't have anything ready for we're having a floor session on Monday and what we will have from here on Monday is the property tax issue and the posting issue. Those are the two that will pass on Monday. And then I don't know if we'll have a floor session later in the week, but it'll be either later in the week or the beginning of the next week when we do the elections and the quasi-judicial. So I think you were right about that. Yeah. So are there any questions for Gwen right now or Karen, Brian? Well, actually, Alison had her hand up first. Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to say generally, I think that what I'm interested in and I thought we all were was is municipal issues that both need immediate fix that are cropping up, that we want to hear that need immediate fixes, but also municipal issues that where this pandemic is creating our understanding for opportunities for the next phase of our work. And things that need legislative fixes and things that may just need our support and a letter which reinforces the need for something. Yeah, I think you're right. We're not at the point yet of taking up non-COVID issues. I mean, we can bring them up, but it's gonna be a while before and we have a whole list of them on here that we should be learning from, but you're right. Brian. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I know the answer, but when Karen mentioned that there were municipalities that were preferring not to accept cash, I think I understand why I ordered a pizza at a local spot last night where they have to bring it out to your car and they won't make change. If the pizza's $15 and all you have is a 20, there's your $5 tip and that's the way it goes. Is it the same situation where people are afraid to actually handle money, Karen? Yeah, that is the concern right now, yeah. Okay, thank you. Could I offer just one other comment? This is Sean Fielder, the manager for the town. Hardwick, just on that particular issue, Senator? Yes, please. The other thing is we've got a, in the town of Hardwick, just as an example, we have about on a given cycle, about 125 of our customers do pay in cash. We have been talking to them about, look, if you're in a position to pay by check or money order, please do that. The other issue here that comes up is many people try to pay right on that day when it's due for the town of Hardwick, it would be May 11th if you're paying in person. We're gonna have a challenge of, how do we implement the social distancing measures if over that day, 125 people show up to pay the bill? So that's another aspect of this discussion just for your information. So Sean, Jeanette, may I respond to Sean? So in Woodstock, Sean, I live in Woodstock. I'm Allison Clarkson, hi. Yeah. They have a box, a locked box in the hall, in town hall lobby, and you just put your payment into the drop lock box, and then you sign in that you've done it. So there's a record of your having put it in and then you leave. Yep. Sorry, for the record, this is Sean Fielder for town of Hardwick. That is something that we have talked about at this level and to be frank, we're pretty concerned that all of a sudden some folks out there in the community are gonna figure out that we've got thousands and thousands of dollars in a lock box. And if we don't do a check on that in the middle of the night, we got a security problem. Right. So that's been one of the concerns. We do have that capability with a drop box. Another related issue that we have talked about is, okay, what happens when somebody says, hey, my $2,750 was in there and we counted up and there's only 2,350, we can't count it sitting beside of them. So then we get into that issue. And I don't bring this up to say it can't be done, but these are just some of the logistics that we're starting to see coming at us. Okay, so let's get a sense from here. Committee, did we, we were going to look at kind of other issues that are coming up. Is it Kristen or Christine? It's Christine, thank you. Christine, okay. Did you have issues that you wanted to bring up to us? Yeah, I could just a couple of high level things. Just identify yourself for the record, please. Sorry, thanks, yes. I am Christine Lott, Mayor City of Winnieski. I wanted to first thank you for, I believe you already passed out, voted out a draft bill for waiving penalties and interest on property taxes. We are extending a grace period for payment for our residents. I know you're well aware that we are concerned about the gap that that's gonna cause if our residents are paying property taxes later and we don't have the money to make the Education Fund whole to our commitments. So I look forward to seeing the discussion that you have around that in a future meeting. Something else that's come up and I'm not certain if you're the right committee for this but we have been thinking about the residential training program for police officers for the academy. We are the right committee. So we are already down on our staff. Haven't heard word about if there's gonna, the spring academy is postponed, clearly can't be doing that during social distancing. We haven't heard word on the next iteration and we think this is a really good opportunity to consider non-residential academy program so that we can expand the pool of candidates who can be a part of this and free up the ease up on the wait list and get a more diverse police force available to us. One more item that I would mention is, I believe you also have already looked at evictions moratorium and something that we have thought about is, I don't know if this is statewide but certainly in this area, June 1st is a very common lease date and we are concerned about non-renewal of leases being used as a way to get around that. So just making sure that people are not being put down to the streets when we likely are still gonna be in some sort of social distancing and stay home measure. Yeah, and that bill has been passed out of Senate economic development. Oh, excellent, thank you. I mean, it doesn't, well, anyway, it mostly stays action and stays any action on evictions and foreclosures, but it does make, yeah. But so a non-renewal of a lease is different than an eviction. It is, absolutely, it's different. So does your bill address that? No. That might be something that you might wanna take back to your committee because that is an issue. And usually there's a non-renewal for any, I mean, you don't have to have a reason for not renewing a lease, where you have to have a reason for evicting someone. Correct. So you might wanna take that back to your committee for more work. Well, for additional work, yes. Yes. In case we didn't have enough. Absolutely, thanks, Christine, very, very helpful and thank you, Jeanette. So Christine, the issue of the non-residential academy, we have been pushing that issue for a number of years and we'll continue to push it. Once we get, I mean, I think that COVID-19 has certainly made it clear to us that we need to be able to do that. But I think that when we get to the point where we can start addressing issues that aren't specifically related to relief during COVID-19, that that is one of the issues that we will continue to bring up. And there, as you know, there are two minds of this. There are people who say you have to have it and it has to be residential and build camaraderie and then there are the people who say you don't have to have that. You can have some residential, but not 19 weeks, 16 weeks. And I think we heard from you before about that you had a couple of people who would like to have become police officers. One, I believe, was a single mother. That's right. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, and we've had other candidates who simply can't step away from work for that period of time from their current income. Well, we'll keep pushing on that one. Christine, you have a mayor and a manager because I feel like in our housing, we had somebody testify at Senate Economic Development who was different than you, who represented Brunowski. Our city manager, Jessie Baker, and she has- Oh yes, yeah, she's great. She can speak much more eloquently to the topic of the academy. She's very familiar there. I've talked to her and to your police chief about that and a couple other issues. That's it, Jessie testified. Yeah. Oh, if I could, one more item. Yeah, please. I don't know where the purview is for this, but our food shelf is really struggling to acquire toiletries. So they're trying to get personal hygiene and toilet paper and things like that for families who are not able to use, so these are low-income folks coming in there or people who have lost work. They're not able to use their food benefits, like there's no benefit to cover that. And so now- Right. Provide enough toiletries for these folks who need to be able to keep up hygiene during a public health crisis. I wonder if any of our colleges and schools would have had things on hand in their bookstores or, I don't know. So, and to that, and Christine, our food shelf asks all of us when we're traveling to save all our soaps and shampoos and things. Sadly, no one's traveling right now, but that could be a call out into the community to see who has saved. Like, there are soaps and shampoos and conditioners in those little things and bring them to the food shelf. That's produced a lot actually. And some of us are trying to pressure hotel chains to not do that, but to have dispensers instead because you're producing all those little plastic bottles. I know, but at a moment like this, they're useful because I can give all my capital plaza ones to the food shelf. Do you remember when we, this is an aside, but do you remember when there was a group of people that organized a collection to send over to Afghanistan? Yes. And there were tons of those little ones and little things of toothpaste that were in the boxes. But that could, Christine, that could be a community appeal and I bet you would get a bunch. That's a new angle. Thank you. I just saw two more things for some of our vulnerable populations. The Association of Africans Living in Vermont and the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program have mentioned to us, they are trying to assist clients with unemployment insurance claims over the phone and having trouble getting sort of the authority to speak on behalf of their clients. So they're looking for some sort of leniency there as they support those folks. And then also has been brought to our attention that immigrants without social security numbers are not receiving stimulus or unemployment insurance. I know that migrant justice has spoken with some committee about this. Just that those folks are probably, they're likely doing frontline work and not receiving any supports like the rest of our residents. We've heard from migrant justice here also about some of the issues confronting the vulnerable communities. And yesterday, I believe it was on, and all these meetings run together. It was either on an all Senate meeting or a chairs meeting. We talked about the bill that's being proposed for essential workers, the frontline people who are getting paid. This is because they're not eligible for unemployment. So people who are getting unemployment are actually getting more money than those frontline workers are because they're making like $12, $15 an hour. And the undocumented migrant dairy workers, and there are probably other people also can't be included in that. But so the appropriations committee is trying to figure out a different way of approaching that because we know that those are essential workers. And we need to be honoring them also. So, Jeanette, Christine, I'm gonna take the issue of people speaking on behalf of a client or another person to our Senate Economic Development Committee which I'm vice chairman because we do all the UI stuff. This strikes me as just a strong letter that we could send a commissioner here and can recommend this. So, thanks for that. Thank you all for hearing from me and for the work that you're doing to push these issues forward. Well, we hope we can push some more forward. So are there other issues or can we talk a little bit more about the quasi judicial boards? I'd like to get just a little bit more information on them. And then if other issues come up, we'll just do the whole thing on Tuesday and then Chris? I have a question for the mayor. Sure. When you were referring to the inability to use, what you were talking about, SNAP like an EBT card for SNAP benefits being restricted, you can't buy personal hygiene products with it, right? Yes, that's what I'm told by our Food Chef. I wanna make sure it was like the SNAP card or something. Yes, yes. Thank you. Okay, other issues or other things that we should talk about? And I guess... Senator White had a couple of other things from the town of Hardwick, is that okay? Oh, that's what we're here for. Okay, I had provided, again, Sean Fielder, town manager with the town of Hardwick for the record. I had provided a written statement to Gail, but I was behind the curve in that I wanna say thank you also. I understand that the committee did move forward the local legislative bodies capability to waive or change due dates on property taxes, reduce or waive penalties and interest and late fees for municipal property taxes owed by the property tax payer. So I wanna say thank you on behalf of town of Hardwick. Our select board did talk about this particular issue over the last two meetings. If I have my information correct, we at this time don't necessarily have anything in regards to if the town property tax returns or city property tax returns come up short, we're still obligated to pay our education bill to our elementary and our high school union district. And if I see information from the league being accurate here, my understanding is this is gonna be moved or being taken up by the Senate Finance House Ways and Means Committee. The town of Hardwick would like to see it that in the event, I'll use our town as an example here really quickly. We have a property tax due date before knowing this information, our property tax due date is May 10. We don't anticipate changing this due date at this time. We are at this time, we're owed about $2.8 million in property tax returns on or before May 10, our education bill that we've gotta pay to our school districts is $2.6 million. We obviously, we closed out our third year, sorry, third quarter fiscal budget, it was okay. But we're really concerned, where's this fourth quarter gonna close out particularly with what's owed on our property tax return. So it's excellent that we have the opportunity to make an extension, but we're really worried if we're significantly short, we're gonna have to dig into our reserves and or borrow to cover this whole. And that's really gonna put the town at a disadvantage for our financial operations. You know, we would like to see that the state potentially take this on and take on that borrowing capacity on behalf of all the communities in the state if that's an opportunity. So that I understand may be taken up by other committees. So I can coordinate with Karen and Gwen if I need to provide anything more to those committees. We just a couple of details already mentioned that, you know, we've been trying to evaluate, we had early on evaluated at the town level, can we make an adjustment on our due date of our property tax? And we had already set that so and mailed that property tax bill out because the secretary of state had been recommending don't conduct any votes at this time. We decided it wouldn't make sense to go and make an adjustment. So us at least at the local level being able to waive some penalties and fees is good. We do and have done this for some time in the town of Hardwick. We offer up contract opportunities for somebody that is not in a position to pay their property tax bill. So we anticipate some folks having trouble moving forward. I think everybody's aware, you know the unemployment rate we're seeing is unprecedented for a generation or more. We know of a number of businesses in the town of Hardwick that they are not operating right now. So as you can imagine, we got some pretty significant concerns what's gonna happen moving forward here. If we can continue to offer these contracts and we basically enter us into a six month contract with folks if we cannot penalize them at this phase and here's what I mean to say if it's a certain amount owed and we don't have to assign this 8% penalty and then the monthly interest at the local level now we can waive that if we can now work it up the line so that the town is not facing a penalty in case we come up short that would be the ideal situation from our perspective. So if there's anything that can be done to advance that I think it would be really valuable. You're gonna see the test, go ahead. Wait, Alison, let him finish. Okay. No, if you'd like me to answer a question why don't you go ahead? No, I'd like you to finish and then we can ask some general question. Okay, I'm adjusting on the fly because my apologies I was behind the curve on what the league of cities and towns had put out in regards to some changes and this is not an excuse but I think we're all in the same boat. My bandwidth is a little bit limited these days trying to keep up. So forgive me, I'm a little bit behind on certain aspect of this being passed out so I appreciate that. Just a little bit, we talked about cash for the property tax return. The other angle for us at the town level is the town manager's office makes a determination what kind of contracts we will enter into. Right now I'm the only one that is reporting to the town manager's office. You know, we have my financial manager and my HR manager working from home right now. So the way it works for us in town is yeah, we have the capability to not make an adjustment assuming the legislature goes forward with this on waiving these penalties and fees. This is gonna be a good thing because now I can say to my property taxpayers if you're facing a hardship situation the property taxpayers, excuse me if you're facing a hardship situation why don't you wait until the first week of June and then we will go forward we're getting a contract set up with you and you can get this addressed over the next six months. Without this, people likely would be hollering at my office to say I need to be in there and meet with somebody about setting up a contract. And the fact of the matter is the social distancing measures are gonna be here for some time. So my HR manager is the one that does this and she's got a young baby at home. I don't want to put her in a situation where she potentially is being exposed if that makes sense. So, you know us having some flexibility on these things is gonna be extremely valuable. We're trying to balance this I'll call it a soft open right now. As an example, our town clerk's office now is doing limited appointments based on Governor Scott had released last Friday about, okay, you can start to ramp some things back up in regards to things like title searches some of these other issues that all of you are familiar with. But as you can imagine, it's from some customer's perspective when they hear information like this they think, okay, we're right back to 100% of operations. And I literally had to do a post last week in consultation with my town clerk to put up on front porch forum and put up on our website. We are holding to our no public access until May 15th with certain exceptions. And that's gonna be determined by the department in this instance, the context with the town clerk's office. So, you know, there's some pretty significant things that are coming up that just none of us expected and we're having to adapt on the fly. So, just putting out there that there's these small things that come up that you think on face value wouldn't be that too big a deal to figure out but it causes some angst and frustration on both sides of the table, I guess is how I would say it. The tactic here from the town of Hardwick and I think this is many other municipalities and businesses tactic. Well, I don't know if it's everybody's but the tactic we're taking is we're airing on the side of caution. And, you know, we're just trying to tell, let me bring it back around to some of these folks that are paying, you know, they wanna pay their property tax bill in cash by law we're obligated to receive that payment in a cash format. But what we're doing is just, you know asking and respectfully saying, please, if you're in a position to pay by check or money order, please do that. Unfortunately, just about the time the COVID-19 situation was rearing its head. We were actually looking at getting ourselves in a position to receive cash, excuse me, credit card or PayPal payments but with everything happening, that process get on hold. So that would obviously be one of your questions. Can you receive via credit card payment? The answer for us is no. So, you know, related to revenue shortfalls the other thing is coming up for our community. Let me just state this, we've been lucky enough that we haven't had to do any furloughs or any layoffs. We've had a pretty tight and frugal budget for years. So we're very lucky in that respect. We don't know how it's gonna go moving forward. You know, hopefully we can get these returns in and we go from there. We also, we do have public water and wastewater service. We have quarterly bills due on that May 15th. This isn't having to do with the property tax returns but we're anticipating that some folks are gonna potentially have a problem paying those bills as well. So we're trying to figure out, okay, how does this also impact these enterprise funds where the fees are gonna be down? Just a couple of things that are coming up. Before I forget, I appreciate the mayor's comment about, you know, if there's a way we can maybe flex on police officers and maybe use an out of state academy as an allowed requirement. That would be good for the town of Hardwick. I know there's a number of municipalities and agencies who are having a really hard time finding officers right now. We're one officer down. We were about to make an offer to an officer to fill a position. They were anticipating going to the August Academy and coronavirus crept in there. So that's been on hold. So, you know, if we could get ourselves in a position and maybe have that as an opportunity, I think it would be valuable. You know, one of the thing that's happening and this is separate from coronavirus and COVID-19 outbreak that you all need to be aware of and maybe you are. But if you're not, one of the things we're seeing is we're having to do, we're having to compete with the departments who are offering signing bonuses that municipalities and towns can't come close to offering. As an example, a nearby agency has offered a $15,000 signing bonus for officers. Who did? Is it okay? One of the county sheriff's departments. I won't mention the name. So, you know, that, and that's their prerogative. They're, you know, they're an independent enterprise. They can do that. But the point is we're just, we're not in a position to be able to do a signing bonus like that. Well, we do try to, we do have a very good workplace and, you know, do our best to offer a good benefits package, but that's definitely a challenge that we're into. I don't need to go on and on. I've offered a couple of things here. I just want to say thank you to the committee and appreciate all your good work. I mean, all of us are dealing with issues that none of us would have expected two months ago. And I know you've been extremely busy on things and, you know, from municipalities perspective in the town of Hardwick, I appreciate everything that you're working on. Try to make it easier and better for us out here on the, you know, at the local level. So thank you. I'd be glad to answer any questions you might have. Allison, you had a question. You said what could you do to advance the conversation about the town, state penalty situation? You can be in touch with the entire committee of Senate Finance and the entire committee of House Ways and Me and let them know how important this is. Thank you, Senator. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Sean, I'm happy that you indicated that you had the knowledge about the impact of potentially delaying your due date and having it intersect with the state's due date for their money, because that was one of the, not objections, but one of the points that was raised in an all Senate caucus when we began talking about our belief that the local legislative body should have that option. The towns and cities do now, as you know, but they can't have an all town meeting. So this seemed to be a reasonable way to do it. So thank you for being aware of that because that was one of the issues that was raised was do the towns really understand that on June 1st, they're still gonna owe the money to the state. There's no doubt about that. And so by saying that you potentially are gonna not take advantage of that, moving your own date, that's good to hear, although it doesn't help you at all. My other question was, if you do change the 8%, how do you pay your tax collector there? I'm the tax collector and there's no disparity, it's part of my salary. Okay, so no, some municipalities do have the monstallity and some use the 8%, so okay. Yeah, that's correct. That's an actual stipend position, I'm aware of that. In the town of Hardwick, that would not be a pertinent issue. There's no additional there. Okay, thank you. The way that we're thinking about this issue is just real quick, if you allow me, what we're trying to do is we do have a certain percentage of payers that do enter into a contract with us. And in the past, we have assigned this penalty and interest. The way we're thinking about it now is with this new economy that we're in, we didn't wanna see, it's a double jeopardy situation is the basic comment. If anything we do to try to help people, so they're not gonna lose their homes, that's important as our perspective. So I know this is probably heresy, but I will, every time we talk with municipalities or anybody about property tax, what we say is we need to keep the Education Fund whole. And I understand that, but there are not any, in my opinion, there are probably not any funds that are going to be kept whole throughout this crisis that we're facing. The Transportation Fund is not gonna be kept whole. So at some point, the Transportation Fund sends money to municipalities for local, for road maintenance. And that might be down. I mean, we don't know what's gonna affect most of the funds, but we always, always, always talk about keeping the Education Fund whole. And I think that's a conversation, it's a larger conversation, but I think we need to have that. So I know that sounds like heresy, but I think it needs to be put out there. Senator White could ask a clarifying question. Yes. What I had mentioned, and if I look at what's being pushed along to the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committee, what we're, the town's a position is this, let me start over. What we're trying to do is, if we come up significantly short, we understand we have to pay this bill, we got that. But we're trying to figure out, and maybe you said this, and I'm just not getting it. So I'll just read it back this way. What we're trying to figure out is instead of the town having to dig into our limited reserves and or borrow on the market, is there a way that the state could assist in that borrowing capacity, if that makes sense? No, I understand that. My question is a larger one about the Education Fund itself, and about how we have based the Education Fund a lot on property taxes, and is that the right way to do it? And is our Education Fund the proper fund? I mean, is it at the proper level? And all revenues and all funds will be hurt through this, and that might end up being one of the ones that is hurt as are others. That it's a larger question. It certainly isn't gonna be answered within the next couple of weeks. And I know there are a lot of people who would probably put a sock in my mouth right now, but so be it. I'm not gonna put a sock in your mouth, but that integrity of the Ed Fund was part of a quid pro quo with Act 60 and 68 is that before that, the Ed Fund had often been borrowed. There were issues with money leaving for different reasons and the promise was maintaining the integrity of the Ed Fund at that point. And I think it goes just back to that, why people talk about keeping it whole. It's like a promise that your tax dollars won't be siphoned off for any other purpose. That's I think where it comes from. I get that. And I get that. I just think it's a conversation we need to have about how the Ed Fund is funded and is property, is the huge reliance on property tax the appropriate place because that... So anyway, it's a larger conversation I know and I probably shouldn't even have brought it up. It may be heresy, but we count on you to bring up heresies from time to time as chair. Okay, I'm always willing to be the one that gets left down. So are there any other questions or anything here that we need to... Any other questions for anybody? Gwen, Karen, Tucker, IC is with us. Anybody else? Yeah, any other towns? I mean, 251 towns. I mean, we have two terrific spokespeople but nobody else? Well, we've got... Well, Senator, you can bring in a parade of towns if you like. No, I don't think we need that. I think... That's good. Anthony, did you want a parade? No, I said we're good. But they have two very good representatives here with us all the time, so... This is Gwen Zakref again. I just, we were under the umbrella that the COVID-19 centric legislation was moving forward. So that's sort of how we position this sort of discussion. And to address Senator Clarkson's point about things to look towards in the future, I mean, we're doing like everybody's doing, I'm assuming, a lot of issues spotting along the way of sort of lessons to be learned that were obviously kind of like holding on her back pocket pretty openly, I guess, for even small things like how you do payments, whether it's credit card or whatnot. And right now in statute, different officials have different powers over who decides what type of payments are made and in what form, which is like walking in... The example is like walking into a Walmart or a supermarket and paying cash at the deli and paying credit card at the produce section or whatever. So it doesn't make any sense. So we're learning... These are things that have kind of been in play for a while, but they're really being highlighted now, just like the deeds and titles and those sorts of things. So we're paying attention to all those issues and keeping sort of a formal and less formal list and paying attention to what our towns are saying, but we wanted to sort of keep on the COVID-19 kind of issues as directed. If I could just add to that, and this is not in your committee, but we have written to both the appropriations committees and particularly in light of the fact that the most recent aid package from the federal government does not contain any assistance for local governments, that we are going to have needs for replacing lost revenue or covering some of the costs that are being incurred at the local level. And we're gonna need help from the state and from the appropriations committees on that front. We don't have a number yet. It's gonna be kind of hard to get a number, same as with the state budget, but that's definitely a major ask that we have. Right, that's clear, but that's coming down the bike. The U.S. Senate would just say you used to go bankrupt. Yeah, we heard that. We heard that. Actually, we need your permission in order to go bankrupt. Really? I don't know about that one. We don't miss it for everything. Yes, we do. So this is Sean with the town of Hardwick on that last issue. This came up when the Family First Coronavirus Care Act, if I have that right, first came out. We didn't know at that time if, okay, for our employees, if we wanna consider some of our essential employees, if we wanted to consider doing an on-call work situation, as an example with our highway department, we were evaluating that and the route we took was we kept to the schedule to the best of our ability and did the social distancing and we're doing our best to protect the workers while still getting those essential tasks done. It would have been nice if through that act, and it's just what Karen has outlined, the municipalities also would have gotten a little bit of reimbursement because I think what it would have really been valuable for us was, okay, we can go to a little bit of an on-call situation and rotate some schedules and be covered, you know, made whole financially or at least a good portion of that. Why this would have been important for us is the anxiety levels for workers who are, I mean, we're not like in the hospital, but there still is that anxiety of, you know, I'm out and about and working, so certain employees obviously get pretty concerned about that and it's been a hot-button issue. I've been dealing with quite a bit in this last three or four-week period, you know, with our employees across the board. They're just anxious about, okay, if I'm in this work environment, what are the ramifications? You know, knock on wood and thank God we haven't had an incident as of yet and hopefully we keep it that way, but if I had my preference looking back and I would have known I could have gotten some financial reimbursement through this act, I maybe would have done a cycle of on-call approach and I think that would have been really valuable. Well, if Senate government operations was ruling the world, we would have done a lot of things differently. Senator Collomer, did you have something you wanted to throw in? I would only offer, I thought I heard that if there's going to be, let's say the fourth one is the one that just was passed yesterday by the U.S. House, I believe, and I think we'll be signing today by the president and begin to get distributed and that has money for the PPP and for hospitals and for testing and some other things, but I don't believe there was anything in there which included municipalities, but I thought I heard Congressman Welch say today that there's a fifth potential bill coming that will include some funding for municipalities. Yeah, I think that- This is Karen. Yep. This is Karen Horn and that is the case that the legislation they passed last evening does not include any aid. The House is interested in providing direct aid to local governments, but it's going to be a very, it's going to be a huge partisan fight because as Senator Polina said, Mitch McConnell, excuse me, Senator McConnell says, go bankrupt. I mean, he's holding the position that towns don't need any assistance. Well, isn't it all about the pensions for Mitch McConnell? I don't know what he thinks. He's using that as an excuse, I think. I think it's a bigger issue and I- I will say that what's been really interesting in the last few weeks is that across the country, even in the most conservative senatorial districts, local governments are saying, we need help. Yes. Anyway, that's a huge other discussion. I'm sorry to take you down that rabbit hole. Well, that's my fault, Karen. I apologize for even bringing it up. I didn't mean to insert any partisan division in what has been a very nonpartisan process. So I forgive him. And I think that they're at the very highest levels. There are, it probably is seen as a partisan thing, but I think that if you start down with the municipalities and go through the states and the governors and many House members and many senators are not seeing this as a partisan issue at all. I think it's the, to be blunt, I think it's the president and the leaders, the legislative leaders that are seeing it as partisan. But I may be wrong. I would definitely agree with that. Yeah. Okay, so- I have a question for Gwen or Karen. This is Sean. Wait, wait, Chris Bray has a question here. Yes, on methods of payment, are there electronic means available to cities and towns that don't have a fee associated with them? I mean, if I can imagine, the normal credit card processing fee would be pretty devastating if it was applied to your grand list, tax roll, something like that. Are there low or no interest electronic processing systems available to municipalities? I believe that part of the reluctance for some municipalities to go to credit card payments is the fee that is charged. I don't know, Sean mentioned PayPal. There's probably, there's a fee, I think there's a fee attached to almost everything, but not particular consideration to cities and towns in reduced fees. Well, okay. So maybe there's an opportunity there for a credit union to offer within Vermont municipalities the process, the ability to process their payments for little or no money. Because- You're reminding me actually, I got a letter from the Chamber of Commerce. I think this must be the local one, complaining about how everybody's using charge cards now for everything and nobody wants to handle cash and that the credit card companies are making a windfall over these fees. And they were wondering if there's something we could do with it about it as a legislature to make them reduce the fees or not take advantage of the situation. I'd kind of forgotten about that, so I'll bring that up again when I get a chance. State bank. Yeah, that'd be nice. Could I, this is Sean Fielder from Hurdwick. Could I just offer a quick comment? Yeah, please. You know, we obviously know we've got things at the national legislative level, both in the executive and legislative branch that could impact us positively or could impact us negatively at the town and municipal level. And I don't wanna project here, we're whining and needing more. What we're trying to do here in the town of Hurdwick and I believe this is the case across the state, we're doing our best just to deal with the situation at hand. And that's why what led up with, hey, can the state consider waiving some of these fees? So here we are talking about a credit card fee and it ties right back to this, part of this initial discussion. I appreciate that your committee, this committee advanced. Hey, at the local level, you have the opportunity to waive some of these fees. So we get at least a little bit of a time out to try to get some solutions in place to keep the ball rolling. I mean, the action items that are coming up and I know you all are experiencing this, they're things that are just, we never would have expected this. So not a complaint, but we're trying to handle these high level decision making actions. And then on the same, in the same day, we have to deal with here's new guidance, that we have to follow in regards to practicing our social distancing. So anything that we can be doing right at our level and try to make a change, I appreciate. And that's what we're trying to do here. And anything you all can be doing to advance our calls and support it is very much appreciated. Well, I don't think you should perceive it as we think you're complaining. We just think you're updating us on what the reality is out there in the community. So I appreciate it. Thank you, Senator. And we did, as a committee, send a letter to finance, encouraging them to think about the 8% penalty. It isn't our decision to make, it's theirs, but we did encourage them to reconsider that penalty. The due dates, I don't know if they can reconsider but the penalty they certainly can. So we're encouraging that, but it isn't our decision. So. Yeah, understood. So if there are other, not other issues right now from municipalities on Tuesday, I think what we'll do is the quasi judicial meetings, municipal boards that have to meet and get more information on that. And I did might be, they might be in a position to talk about elections then. I'm not sure, but I'll think I'll know that more of that by Monday and we can set an agenda. Does that work for people? If we do it that way and not set an agenda right now. So okay, so but what we do have to do today is Tucker is here with us to, we need to finally pass the version of the posting bill. So Tucker, if you could help us with that. Yes, Madam Chair. And I emailed out to the committee earlier today and I believe Gail has posted version 2.1 of the bill and the changes that were made yesterday in committee were first to remove section two that related to, excuse me, the non-posting issues, the quasi judicial proceeding issues. And second to add a clause that would make it clear to the municipalities that they could use a combination of electronic and physical locations if that is how they wanted to proceed. So the language that I will point you to starts on line 15 and the clause now reads, a municipal public body may post any meeting agenda or notice of a special meeting in two designated electronic locations in lieu of the two designated public places in the municipality and here's the clause that you asked for or in a combination of a designated electronic location and a designated public place. So the language you discussed yesterday was much simpler. However, when I went in to revise that particular sentence to add the language that said or any combination thereof, I realized that that would actually imply that they had to use two electronic locations and two physical locations. This language was necessary to make it clear that it would be two total combination of electronic and physical if that's how they choose to proceed. So are there any questions on that or is that? Yes, Brian. Thanks Dr. on line 20. I'm just noticing and forgive me if I didn't see this earlier. It says that the notice should be posted or the agenda in or near the municipal clerk's office. What exactly, why are we doing the near part? That's the language that is used in the open meeting law. Okay. So that's an underlying requirement. Nuff said fine. As far as the near part, my assumption is that's a posting board. Okay. That's fine in the building. Yeah. I think that some towns have different configurations of where their clerk's office is. And for example, and gravel bro in there, they have their clerk's office is in the municipal building, but they have a bulletin board. They might post it on the bulletin board at the town hall instead of on the office door. That's what I think. So are we okay with this committee? Sure. Any more questions, comments? Brian. I'm ready to make a motion. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Were you ready to make a motion? Indeed I was, Senator, but that's fine. You can go ahead. I don't know if she can, because she has to answer her phone. It's busy. I'd make a motion. We amend drafting request 20-0966 with draft 2.1. Okay. Yes. Any more discussion? All right. Are you ready to call the roll? I am ready. Senator Bray. Yes. It's amazing. I can hear you all the way from Addison County. Senator Clarkson. Yes. Senator Collamore. Yes. Senator Polina. Yes. Senator Wright. Yes. Great. And I'd now make a motion that we adopt drafting request 20-0966 as amended by draft 2.1. And Bray. Yes. Clarkson. Yes. Collamore. Yes. Polina. Yes. And White. Yes. Great. So I will report the property tax bill. I have used to answering questions. I'm hoping there's no questions asked, but I'll report that. Senator Collamore, would you like to report this one? Sure. Unless somebody else wants to. That's good. Tucker. Tucker, you wanna report this one? I have no interest. No. I also don't have the capacity. I just wanted to check in to see whether these were going to be introduced as separate committee bills or whether they're going to be combined so that I can coordinate with the Senate secretary. My understanding from this morning is that there will be two bills. Okay. Thank you. Oh, you had your chairs meeting this morning. Yes. How'd that go? Like a chairs meeting. It was good. It was good. Yeah. Tucker, we'd be able to just shoot me a quick, it's a floor report, but it really doesn't need to be very complicated. Or which bill are you reporting? The one we just voted on. Okay. Yes, I can do that. And I believe Senator Collamore that what the clean copy will have to come from you to secretary Bloomer's office because you're the reporter. So it'll have to come from you with a report of the vote. Okay. So, Tucker will forward it to me and then I'll forward it to John Bloomer. You're still a Tucker. You were muted. You're still muted. That was intentional. My wife was answering her phone. Oh. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought you were saying something to us. From what I understand, the reporter of the bill delivers it to the Senate secretary. Madam chair, you have to send an email to drafting operations, approving both bills. And I also apparently have to do that, which is why I was asking how many bills we were gonna have. So how do I send a bill to drafting operations? Who is that? Is that Nadine? Yes. And if you would like when I send my approval, I'll CC you so that you can just follow up on those. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. And then when I get it, I'll forward it to John Bloomer. Yeah. And then I need a clean copy also for our records. Okay. All right. Anything else that we should address today that we might want to? So we will plan on meeting on Tuesday. And if I would like us to finish up with the quasi board issue, quasi judicial board issue so that we can make sure that we have that ready for the next time there's a floor session. And I don't know if there'll be a floor session at the end of next week or it'll have to be until the next week. I don't know that at all. And I don't think there are any other municipal issues that we need to make sure we get in there. Madam chair. Yes. I just want to make sure that when we do the meeting situation with the quasi that we had also had something in it but inspecting and that we hear from some listeners or someone like that. Yes. And I think that either Gwinn or Karen this morning said that John Gannon has some information about that. And maybe we could either do this as we're thinking about doing a joint committee for the municipal elections that the secretary of state is proposing and then hearing an update on the state and federal elections from them. So if they're ready for that on Tuesday we could do that on Tuesday but I think we would also have time to do the quasi judicial boards on Tuesday. So I'd like to get that done. If we don't, if the elections people aren't ready on Tuesday we'll do that later in the week but I'd like to get the quasi judicial boards done. I think so we'll. Senator. Yeah. Senator, wait, this is Gwinn Zuckoff. I just, last, oh God, I must have been yesterday when I brought up the VALA, the Listers and Assessors I also think it would be important for the committee to reach out to Jill Remick at PVR at the Department of Taxes because they've been putting out guidance to municipalities about this very issue. So she'd be able to fill in sort of the nuances about how they're trying to approach this issue. Okay. All right, so let's look at those two issues and we'll do the elections thing on either Thursday or Friday of next week. We'll do that. Okay. Just the municipal issues on Tuesday. And anything further that we're thinking on vulnerable communities and so I will take the issue of the people working on behalf of people who don't speak English yet well enough to deal with UI. I'll take that to Senate economic development. Anything else that we want to work on legislatively on our vulnerable communities issues? Well, we did. I think it was at the chairs meeting that I brought up the issue of the undocumented farm workers in particular that aren't eligible for really anything and they don't get paid sick days and they have cramped quarters if they have to quarantine. So they're really at a huge disadvantage here on almost everything. And Jane said they could not include them in the essential workers bill that we're going to be looking at soon. But they are going to try and figure out a way of keeping them going. We met with them a couple of times in the agriculture committee and they talked about two proposals. One in New Jersey and one in California where the state have found a way to try to give them some financial support. And the eye committee is thinking about trying to do something similar. It would still go through appropriations. Obviously, I don't know whether Bobby would have been at the, well, you were at a chairs meeting. I don't know if Bobby brought it up but the idea that we have to find some way to separately to find a way to help them with their financial troubles. So, and so, Brian, there's most of those migrant workers in agriculture are still, I hope, being paid. I mean, they're still working on these farms. So they're still being paid and okay. So that hasn't yet been an issue although they are on the sort of front lines as it were providing food for everybody. Yeah. They're also talking about supplies like gloves that they need to change more often and also some of their housing issues. Wasn't necessarily, it wasn't always about pay but it was about other issues that they have that require financial help to be able to survive. Remote education was a big deal when they talked to us. Yeah, I can see that. Jenna, I wanted to ask you about, you talk about this elections thing that you're mentioning. Is that, are we talking about the upcoming primary and general election? Is that what they're working on? Yeah. What we talked about this morning was, so there are two different things here. There's municipal elections and how particularly towns who don't have budgets and school districts who don't have budgets, how they're going to conduct their elections. So the secretary of state's office has come up with some guidelines for the municipalities and they were proposing that working with the governor and the governor was reviewing them to make sure that, because in our legislation, we said that there had to be agreement between the secretary of state and the administration. But we don't have to approve that stuff. No, but it would be good for us to hear. Sure, sure. But it's not up to us anymore. No, but these are coming up fairly quickly with many municipalities. Sure, but it's up to us to understand it and be supportive of it, but we don't need to approve it. We don't have to. Because we've already given them the power to decide. There might be a couple of things in there that we have to, that might need some legislative fixes, like the thing that Gwyn brought up about the petitions. And so we might need to do something, but we don't know yet until we see what the secretary of state's proposal is. And then there's a second, and that would answer any questions for municipalities. Then there's the second election's issue, which is the primary and the general election. And that they have draft proposals and they're still working with the governor to try and figure out. And for us, when we deal with elections all the time, we have a better understanding of how long it takes to, I mean, when decisions have to make, it's Chris Bray's analogy the plane taking off at the, they need to know what that date is when they are gonna decide whether they're gonna lift up or not. So it's harder for people who are not involved in elections every day and don't deal with it all the time to figure out that you need all that advance planning and there was some suggestion that they should wait until after the primary to figure out how we were gonna do the general election. But if you're not immersed in elections, you wouldn't know that that would be a problem. It didn't make sense to do that. So they're working with the governor on that and there may be a few things in there that we might have input on. And just for your information, we received money from HAVA that should cover, it came yesterday, that should cover all of the elections issues that we will need for next year. And what's in this election? What's HAVA? What's HAVA? Help America Vote Act, Help America Vote Act. Yeah, yeah. So there are some things that I think we might want input on here in terms of the election, the general and the primary election, just to hear from them. That's why we're looking at it. But yeah, legislatively, there's nothing to do, we've already done that. When you say that, Jeanette, it makes me think of the window for voting is starts 45 days before the election date, right? So I think that's like one of those things people don't think about that. How close those votes actually, the first day of voting actually is, you know? And the gaps are way smaller than people think. And if you're going to mail a ballot to everybody, that's a lot of extra postage printing, mailing it out, having it mailed back, how are you gonna have it come back? And there are talking about possibly two different mailings, one that mails to everybody saying, request your absentee ballot, your early voting ballot now. And so they're talking about a number of mailings, some mailings to, when we heard from, I don't remember who it was, Susanna or Mark Hughes, who brought up the issue of doing some kind of a mailing to everybody in the state saying, this election is gonna be different. You need to know that it's gonna be different. And so they're aware of it. So all of a sudden the election isn't different and people didn't know. So they're doing all of that kind of stuff and they need to do it early. You know, that first notice mailing, when there'll be plenty of things that will get bounced back to them, anytime you mail you find out how many bad addresses you have and it's challenging. Yeah, well, I think they're thinking about the informational piece, just going to every household, however you do that and then the other one going to registered voters. Right, right. Yeah, like every door direct mail, so you can get every address. Yeah. So we'll try and get next week's schedule done. Are there any more questions or issues or things we need to address? Or anybody have any parting words of wisdom or non-wisdom for us? Oh, sir, tomorrow's supposed to be back. You gotta go do some shoveling. I do have to go do some more shoveling, although it's kind of rainy here today. So yeah, I've moved about six or seven wheelbarrows full so far. Good work. I know. We're going to be evaluating you for a non-point discharge, so be careful. It's all compulsive. Right, we know what it is. I just don't want to come down there and see any chickens walking around on it. Oh, wait a minute. We haven't passed that yet. We have chickens at both ends. Well, that's right. You can have chickens on it. I forgot. We have chickens at both ends of our road just run across the street all the time. If you're fast, that's dinner if you hit one. That's dinner. I bet you're going to be plucking, too. No, but I'll tell you what I was good at. I am good at plucking, but what I was good at is when we lived in, when we were in, when we were VISTA volunteers, we lived in a Gainesville, Georgia, which is the poultry capital of the world. And we lived right near all the poultry factories. Oh, lucky. And the neighborhood, they would come through with these crates on the trucks and each crate had about 10 chickens in it. And they would whip around the corners and the crate would fall off. And the neighborhood kids showed us how to be very stealth and catch the chickens. So we became very good at going out and getting behind a car and catching a chicken as it came off the truck. We won't tell. Oh, the world has it now. Thanks for letting me comment to the committee.