 Okay, so good morning. Thank you everyone for coming in to the state house to help us stay in tune with what's going on in the world of housing and conservation, lane work, happy to be here, a joint meeting with the Senate Economic Development, Housing and Military Affairs, as well as Senate natural resources and energy. So Senators Rockett told me that he's already spoken to you briefly. I'm particularly appreciative of you all coming. My own entry into the legislature was through working in the Middlebury area, Lane Trust, so that was the door into this work for me, and we all appreciate the work you do. We're delighted to be able to get an update from you in person on what you're doing. So we're here to listen, turn it over to you. Senator Rockett? Oh yes, please. So let's do this quickly over on the table. Let's start with Senator Perrin, and we'll introduce ourselves. Senator Franklin County, Albert. Brian Campion, Fenton County, and Wilmington. Michael Sorotkin from Chittany County, and I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to leave for a little while, but I will be back, and I was glad to talk to you before. That was great. Allison Clarkson, Windsor County District. Cheryl Hooker-Rotland. Decavalent, Wyndham. And Nancy Owens. What's that? Hi. All right, thank you. So my name is Nancy Owens. I'm president of Housing Vermont, and so thank you for giving us an opportunity to be here today to talk about our work on housing and conservation and how it supports the goals of this institution and the state related to climate change, energy, the economy, and housing. So the Vermont Housing Conservation Coalition is a group of about 50 plus different participants, non-profits and businesses, private businesses, who are here today in the state house, and there's a whole lot more than 50 of us, but coming to advocate for increased state investment through the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to finance affordable housing and conservation. You know, across the country, people are clamoring for affordable housing, and its lack is contributing to health issues, social issues, and economic problems, and Vermont is really no different. I think the one difference is, there's no different in the sense of the need, but the additional thing that Vermonters are seeking, besides affordable housing, are jobs that are gonna provide us sufficient income to live decently, and really this sense of place that we have and our access to natural resources and our care and our concern for a healthy environment. So for more than 30 years, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board has been the vehicle to achieve these critical state and community goals, to create a productive affordable housing, water quality, farmland protection, rural economic development, and recreational assets. But with, we've heard a little bit about it already this morning, you know, the rapid rise of the real estate market, the changing environment, combined with this relatively flat wage growth, people are really losing economic ground. So now is the time to fully fund BHCB. That would result in $22.4 million to make investments that counter these losses, and catalyze new growths and creating opportunities. We know we can do that. We have evidence of our success and making a real change in these areas that we're focused on and you care about. I'm gonna talk about those changes related to housing, and they're the people following me who are gonna focus on other issues. So let me turn now to my area of expertise around affordable housing and economic development. So broadly speaking, housing in Vermont works statewide to address housing and economic development needs of low and moderate income people. We've been in business over 30 years and produced over 6,000 affordable apartments in more than 180 developments in towns all around the state. To do that, we've raised and invested private capital, private equity from banks, over $360 million, which is leveraging another $470 million in that time from private and public investments. In addition, we run a program through Vermont Rural Ventures, which creates favorable financing for investments in economic development, new businesses, including down in Bennington right now where we've invested in the Pottenham block. There's over $128 million that we've brought in from external investors into Vermont to support those economic development projects. Whose purpose really is to produce jobs in low income areas and to bring in new services in those same communities. So certainly, I think everyone can see there's so much work and study, linking housing and the economy and many members of the Senate Committee on Economic and Housing have just been a really serious time investment over the last six months traveling the state, holding hearings and talking with people. Talking with individuals, with businesses, with providers about the housing shortage, housing cost, housing quality and how those issues are impacting our economy and businesses and people. So we truly, really appreciate your work to go out and meet with people and learn more about this. And certainly the work of the legislature as a whole and supporting the housing revenue bond back in 2017, that $37 million bond has been created enormous impact and resulted in hundreds of new homes. What I wanna turn to now and what you may not know is clearly as the economic link is also how the housing work really has a positive impact on our environment. So residential and commercial buildings in the US account for more than 40% of energy consumption in total. And when you look at even from a global impact, buildings as an operation account for almost 30% of carbon emissions. So in our work, we're very focused on this energy topic both from a climate change and carbon footprint perspective but also from an economic perspective and that as we make those investments and our buildings operate more efficiently, our costs are lower, which enable us to keep our rents affordable. So it's a very good business practice as well as an environmental practice. And the work that we've done is really compared very favorably to any conventional residential builder. And I wanna acknowledge that our practices and our learning and we also are attributed with efficiency Vermont as a great partner and the Clean Energy Development Fund both on a financial and technical assistance level. So for example, to just get a little more specific we've installed over a thousand solar panels that are now generating an estimated 307,000 kilowatts in solar power every year avoiding half a million ton of carbon dioxide which is the equivalent of driving 639,000 miles. Another specific example again relating environment and housing in 2019 with our housing revenue bonds we had just finished a near net zero building that's in White River Junction. It's an apartment building with 30 apartments, has a garage on the ground floor, an elevator, center corridor, community space. It's a big substantial building. And we made a really purposeful and intensive investment in the thermal shell and utilized some innovative approaches around heating and cooling. And last year we're building fully occupied in the month of August without air conditioning. The indoor, so it's warm outside but without using air conditioning but just this central ventilation system. The indoor temperature was a very comfortable 72 degrees and our electric bill after netting it from our solar net metering our solar PV system the electric bill for the entire building of all of the apartments was $289. Because of the way that that bill is built. And that took in a capital investment to get that kind of outcome. And we know those results because not only are we making the capital investment in the equipment we're also making an investment in measuring and measuring the results, tracking those results and optimizing those results through a data acquisition system so we understand what's happening in the building. Because we want, it is a capital intensive investment to make those kinds of improvements. We wanna make sure we get the results from that work. And the other environmental point I wanna make about housing is just that we've had this very important and foundational policy in the state of Vermont to focus on our religious centers, our downtowns as a way to curb sprawl. But there's more than that. What happens in our downtowns, we know is the Vermont Center for Geographic Information tells us that the households who live in our downtowns drive 50% less than the average Vermonter. And we can see that in our properties. For example, we just completed here in Montpelier at Taylor Street over the new Montpelier Transit Center. Those folks are well positioned to not have to use their car as frequently as others. So those examples I just read out are all new construction and those are great. And we do reduce carbon footprint and sort of do much better than many other builders. But without a doubt, and the point I wanna emphasize is that where we really get the biggest bang for the buck on our housing investments related to climate change is when we renovate our old and leaky buildings. And I know you've, I hope that you've heard this from others. But it's certainly in a case down in Bristol and Aston County, Pleasant Hills is a senior housing property where we made improvements to the thermo-shell heating system and as a result cut our fuel bills in half. And again, back here in Montpelier, the French block people are familiar with. Efficiency Vermont, that's a historic, if you're not familiar with, it's a historic building right in the downtown option hardware is on the ground floor. The French block efficiency Vermont calculated that our efforts reduced the carbon footprint by 186,000 pounds of carbon per year. And the other really interesting and important thing we didn't expect or didn't realize would happen was our neighbor, Abashan, called us after the first winter. They hadn't really done any work on their ground floor but we had fully renovated the upstairs, insulated the upper floors which had been vacant for 80 years. They called us to tell us that they're spending 50% less on their heating bills. So because of the work that we had done on the building and that benefited a business in the building. So spending energy dollars on renovation is really, that's where we get our biggest return on that investment. And we know that that's just an effective use of our dollars. And I would, one of my concerns, generally I want to just put out there and this opportunity to say is that we have a great energy code and we're getting great new buildings under it but we're getting good buildings. But right now in Vermont, the energy code is updated every three years and it feels a little bit like the perfect Disney enemy of the good in terms of pushing that energy code further and further on new buildings while maybe it's a better investment or it could be a more impact by thinking about how do we focus our efforts on the buildings that we have. The buildings that we have are here to stay. They're not going anywhere. We're not actually building a tremendous number of new buildings in the state and the code that we have is really pretty remarkable. We're getting great results with it. So I just would think about how do we focus on our existing housing stock and make improvements. I also want to focus on that because in fact, climate change and the impacts around climate change, around the world and here in Vermont as well, impact low income people more substantially. People are living in less valuable properties in less valuable but more vulnerable locations. You think about that existing housing stock that's in poor quality. Who's living in those buildings as opposed to that new building that gets built? So we need to make investments in areas around climate change and housing that benefit those who might not be able to do that on their own and increasing pH to be funding to the full funding is what we need to be able to do that. And so I really, we'll be able to improve the buildings where low income people live. We'll be able to affect more positive impact on the climate. So thank you very much. I would want to make sure I have time for others. I have a question or two, we have a very full schedule. So we have a center, a camping center and center battle. So thank you Nancy. And also thanks for your investment down in the pod. I really appreciate it. Can you just say a little bit more about how you identify buildings that you're going from the wind tube in and renovate? Or is this, you know, when I think of downtown Bennington, downtown Brataburro, you know, there are a lot of areas that a lot of homes that are either harshly occupied or not occupied, tell us a little bit more about how you identify and make those investments and decide how to make those investments. Mm-hmm. So... Because these are built, and this may be for clarification, Michael, are these buildings that you already own that you're going in and renovating or you're choosing new buildings to work on? Both of those things are true. So we have, among the nonprofit organizations I mentioned, we have at least 6,000 apartments. Among us all, I think there's something like 10,000 homes that have been supported with BHTB. And as you know, that's a perpetual investment, right? Forever affordable. And so there is an element of sustaining those homes over time and reinvesting and making improvements. So that is a piece of it. And the other piece is acquiring new properties, new existing properties, or building new buildings. And it's really driven, it's driven by policy consideration, you know, which is set among our housing funders and by the legislature itself. Where should we be purchasing homes? What goals are we trying to accomplish? As well as by the needs of that particular community. Some communities, as the committee learned when you went to visit, some communities simply need more supply. And housing, there just isn't enough housing. And other communities down in Ritland, I think the issue is really housing policy. So how to be repaired and improve those houses. So that's part of our equation, is the need and the policy that drives us. And then it's just real estate, right? It's an evaluation, yeah. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for making the trip a long thank you to be here with us. Thank you very much. I had a driver, John Campbell from the Vermont Land Trust. Good driver. Yeah. And he drove home with his wife in the back seat the entire way. I don't think I want to ask anything more about that. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for inviting me to spend a few minutes with you today. And I'm Dave Newelman from the Bennington area. Home area of Senator Campion. Right here. Thank you. And I am the president of the Prospect Mountain Association. We have some tremendous support from the Mon Housing and Conservation Board. In our case it was conservation and economic development with the themes. And what's being passed out to you now is a page I think from the Vermont Land Trust annual report that describes very briefly the project that a community group engaged in back at the end of 2018. Prospect Mountain ski area has been around in the Bennington area for many years. It opened in the late 30s. It was a hometown downhill alpine ski area with an end until the end of 2018. Outdoor recreation and now the history here is in 1982 there were cross country ski trails put in there for the first time. 10 years later a local gentleman Steve Woodham and his partner Andrea Amadeo purchased the ski area out of foreclosure from the Merchants Bank. And they successfully ran this ski area for 25 years. They made the decision at that time in 92 to end the alpine skiing there and focus solely on cross country and Nordic skiing and snowshoeing. The Steve and his partner made it clear after 25 years of working pretty hard at this that they would prefer to move on with the next phase of their lives and leave this information to a bunch of us locally who were always skiing and active and up there. And we decided to take it upon ourselves to work with them and find out if we could find a way to transfer the ownership of this Nordic ski area to a nonprofit 503 community organization. I was one of those folks and we began talking to them and the price tag which was fair was 900,000 for this ski area which included 144 acres of land, five buildings, all the equipment, rooming equipment, snowmobiles, the system bully the whole thing and we had at least the forest service which expands our trail number to about 30k of trails up there. But I knew that this project was gonna be a bit of a daunting one so I called my friend Don Campbell the guy who drove me up here. And I said, Don, we have in front of us this prospect of buying prospect, can you help? And he said, yes. What I can do is help you develop a grant to the Broad Housing and Conservation Board to help support this great project as well as give you folks some help with the campaign which we had to do to raise the money locally. He did a tremendous job with that and we had the excellent support from the Broad Housing and Conservation Board who awarded us a grant of 265,000 to against our $900,000 commitment for this which jumpstarted our effort tremendously. When that was made public and folks knew about this it really changed everybody's attitude about, well, this really is possible and now we can do it. And with the help of the land trust and a tremendous amount of local committee support and folks began a fundraising campaign locally and we partnered with Williams College which is a fine school right south of us in Williamstown, Mass to help us with this and they ended up paying half the purchase price which is $450,000. The reason they did that is their Nordic team practices there and trained there and the Williams carnivals there over the other year. It's 20 minutes away from their campus. But the overall support on this, the reason we did it was for the community to have this great Nordic ski area preserved and to preserve the mountain side in exchange for the VHCB grant. We now have an easement on the mountain itself for 120 plus acres. Now open for public recreation and perpetuity can never be developed. And it's a very important wildlife habitat also and watershed for that area. We got little baby bears singing up there right now with their moms, yeah. And no bears, the bears will be out in late March they do spring skiing a lot. You'd like to see it. The net result is we're able to make the deal. We raised about 200, 325,000 locally again spurred on by the VHCB grant. We had the Williams 450. And we're able to make this transaction and now the ski area and its own mountain preserved by our Prospect Mountain Association and 501C3. Why do we do this? Well, we know about conservation and local recreation but we are at quietly a pretty solid economic driver for Southern Vermont. We have over 400 seasoned pass holders who come to ski at Prospect Mountain from six different states. That doesn't include Vermont, the six states, seven when you throw Vermont in there. We have about over 3,500 skier visits a year and these folks are coming to our area to ski and enjoy, have some dinners, stay overnight. Some of them have second homes. It's a very solid wintertime and increasingly 12 month economic importance to our area. We have a variety of events up there which are great. National snowshoe championships have been there twice 2014 and 2018, brings 300 elite snowshoe races to our area. We have the Williams Carnival, it's happening next month, brings 100 plus Division I NCAA skiers and all their support folks there. Vermont High School champs have been there several times. Massachusetts schools use our area as well as New York state because they don't have as much snow as we have. We have about a 2,300 foot elevation and we're easily accessible. One of Prospect's major attributes is you can get to our place easier from down south and anywhere else in the Green Mountain State except Rower. So that's a huge benefit for us. Bill Koch Youth Ski League of course, all the young kids age two on up use it. And this translates into of course, excuse me, rooms and meals and second homes as I mentioned. But this would not have been possible without that grant that we got from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and the tremendous support and advice we got from the land trust which really is an organization that does some excellent work in Vermont and we were in the beneficiary of that. So I certainly think that BHCB is worthy of the legislature support. And now we have a 501C3 managing this skier which has gone pretty well. There's no tax dollars involved in that and responsible for ourselves in season pass and managing and paying our employees and make it work. And it is working. So that's our story. Happy to take questions and love to have you come down sometime. Enjoy our trails. Yes. Thank you very much. You know, we have four more speakers and only another half hour. So I'm a little conscious of the time unless there's sort of a pressing question. Just a minute, how many people work for your 501C3? The guy who we bought it from State Honors, our mountain manager and he's a full-time employee. But other than him, we have part-time seasonal employees and that would be, now we have two plus him and we also have some nice high school kids who come to help us in the wintertime. So we probably have a staff of six or seven there in the winter and a staff of one all year long which would be our mountain manager. Right. Thank you and congratulations on that work. It's also great as a reminder for all of us of the diversity of the portfolio of projects that your organizations are supporting. Chris, may I just make a request? Would you be kind of just to send us the tax impact of, you alluded to it, but you don't have it here, the tax impact on prospects to that area? I probably could bump something on that, yes. That'd be great. It's just part of our habits. Yeah. You are Steve Ludwig. Yeah, I'm Steve Ludwig. I'm the Executive Director of our River Conservancy and we're here as a team. Makka is the chairperson of the Hancock's Lead Board and Kevin Geiger is a senior planner with the two rivers out of Quechua Regional Planning Commission. We're going to talk about a project that we work together on in the town of Hancock. It's a small plan conservation project, but part of what I think is a emerging sort of understanding about what important rivers are and conservation along rivers are to both long-term flood resilience, but also to economic aspects. And just our organization for the last 25 years from our River Conservancy has worked closely with BHCB to provide public access to public waters. We focus particularly on swimming holes and I know it's hard on January 30th to think about swimming holes, but six months from now, this would be a major part of the Vermont culture as people going to swimming holes and enjoying them. And we found that swimming holes are available to everybody no matter their economic needs. And so protecting public access to Vermont rivers is an important and very strongly supported by BHCB over the years. So I want to make a point out, but this particular project that we're talking about today is in the town of Hancock. I have a site plan. I don't know if you folks can see this. I should have been blown up. So this is a five-and-a-half-acre parcel of land right adjacent to the White River in the town of Hancock. So folks were to drive down Runehundre through Watesfield and Warren and over the gap through Grandville, you come into the mighty town of Hancock. Traffist on Irene, August of 2011, really ripped apart the town. The Humber Point River was really decimated by the flooding of Traffist on Irene and that really changed a lot of the thinking about river management in the state. So this project is really a result of that changing of thinking about how we managed land along our rivers. The property at that time was a junkyard. It was owned by a local auto repair. It was a licensed salvage yard. It was in the flood plain. It was very vulnerable to flooding. With the help of Kevin and two rivers, we worked together with the town of Hancock to purchase the property and convert that junkyard into a restored flood plain area that now has public access to the White River. In that particular project, what I think is it was small in acreage but it's indicative of how we need to kind of rethink about how we work along rivers. And the BHCB support for this project was really critical in two ways. One, it was critical matching money to funds that two rivers out of Creechee were able to federal fund so this being able to match federal funds was very important. But also BHCB along with the river concerns, it will be the long term co-holders of the conservation easter on the property. And I think that's something that we wanna make sure people understand is that it's great and important to provide the funding up front to preserve the properties, but the long term success of that conservation is really gonna rest on being able to make sure those easements are properly stewarded. So BHCB has been very important to us on both of that sections. So I think I'll turn over to Monica to give you the perspective of the person in the community who was right behind this. Sure, so thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you about Hancock. It's not an opportunity that comes up very often. We are a very small town of about 323-ish people. And we are about 80% owned by the Green Mountain National Forest. So our tax base is quite small and our median income, I don't have the exact number, but it's fairly low. Our housing stock is old. We have an aging population. And so it's very important for us to have a way to bring in some economic development to town. In addition to being a flood hazard, this property, developing it as a site for public access really helps us bring people into town who then hopefully are able to patronize the few businesses that are there in our, in our quote, downtown. But it's very, it's actually right next to a convenience store. And it connects to the White River Partnerships River Trail. So that's also a very important part in that it ties our economic development also to the region because we are an isolated valley and we all, we really need to work together to the towns of Grandville, Hancock and Rochester to keep ourselves going. So the funding to make this project possible was critical. We could not have done this on our own. We looked at it as definitely a flood hazard. The neighbors who border this property were always in fear that they would end up with toxic residue in their backyards, old cars in their backyards, which was very much a reality. And that we would have to be pulling all this stuff out of the river eventually. So without the help of this funding, there is no way a town like Hancock could have pulled us off. And we really appreciate having had the partnership of the River Conservancy, BHCB, two rivers, the White River Partnerships, all the many, many partners that worked on this. So if I can have just a minute of the committee's time. So I'm Kevin Geiger. I was co-lead, I am co-lead still of the state's buyout program for Irene. And if you think that's old news, the, we're having a buyout today in Pittsfield. So it's still ongoing. Part of that was very critically funded by $2 million in BHCB money. That money directly went to 26 properties that are part of the 155 that have been bought out across the state. But what it did is also every property that was bought out has the ability to have a BHCB easement on it. And so we were able to do that with properties that the BHCB money does not touch. That money was critical. It was one time funding. Back in Irene is not a one time risk though. And unfortunately we have a dozen more properties that came on our list from last Halloween storm and there is no money to be helping those people out. And so we urge you to continue funding BHCB as much as you can for their help in many, many areas, including reducing the plug risk. And you know, the serious consequences of people being in floods of the flood risk. And Steve's patience on this project was outstanding because there was a lot of touch and go times. Steve, can you say just something briefly around water quality issues in terms of how you partner with the BHCB, Land Trust and others. One of the things people are understanding of water quality issues has grown. I think our stewardship, my understanding is our interpretation of what stewardship obligations has also grown with it. Can you say something about stewardship and water quality in certain properties and projects? Sure. So I think that the primary connection between conserving land along rivers and water quality is that there's a couple different things. One is the floodplain function that preserved lands along rivers provide. And we've encroached, we society, economically encroached on rivers for 200 years. You know, rivers were the economic drivers of the Vermont economy over the water power area. So we've done a long history of moving in close to rivers. And rivers need that area to naturally establish meander patents and all. And when rivers have the ability to achieve that natural kind of stability of those patterns, then there's less net erosion of sediment along rivers. And that less net erosion means less nutrients are going into the rivers and being in the case of Lake Champlain Basin deposited into the lake in case of the Connecticut River ending up in Long Island Sound. So there's a sort of direct connection between water quality in the long-term and stability of river corridors and conserved land along rivers helps create that stability. So. Great. Thank you very much. Any other quick questions from the panel? All right. Just thank you. So our racial agenda. And actually Hancock has a big impact because so many of us drive through it, trying to get to Middlebury. Over the gap. My name's Josh Ryan. I'm the founder and principal of Timber and Stone LLC where a trail building contractor outfit based in East Montpelier. I like to say loud and proud that I am way more comfortable wearing a pair of four pants and a tool belt and standing in mud rather than wearing a suit. So that said, my wife is impressed. I got this thing on. So that said, I'm gonna, if I may approach and provide these, I'm gonna encourage you to go on a hike with me here. These are pictures of projects that were built on BHCB funded properties located throughout the state of Vermont. They're all different. So encourage you to pass around and check them out. 15 years ago I saw an open niche for professional trail contracting within Vermont. This was after about almost 20 years of working with Vermont Youth Conservation Board and seeing an opportunity to take our towns into the woods of Vermont. Once the land has been conserved using BHCB funding, our phone rings and we are then invited out to properties that such as the ones you're seeing right there. Our niche is providing accessible trails to all people in the matter of their mobility and interest in being in the outdoor. So a lot of pictures you're seeing are boardwalks, stone stairs, naturally surfaced pathways, places that families, friends, visitors to Vermont and come into. One thing that I've been tracking as I've been participating in the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative, which is Governor Scott's initiative. I'm on their steering committee. I know in the last three years I've been a quiet voice but a mighty one, sharing our impact on the economy in Vermont. And so although we only gross 850 to a million per year and we have seven to 12 employees, we do work on 25 to 40 projects. A percentage of those are BHCB funded and we're seeing that increase. I think because of the interest of getting people of all abilities and physical abilities out into the woods. So some of the numbers I came together, when we pull into a community, whether it be in Southern Vermont or in the Northeast Kingdom to build a project, we are sinking our dollars into those lumberyards and those steel shops and those welders. So we are a mobile force of hundreds of thousands of dollars going into individual communities. When we leave, we leave a piece of infrastructure that you're seeing that visitors and tourists and local residents are using, school groups are using for education to interact with the wetlands or the mountain tops. So that is a main driving force as to why I was invited to come and speak with you is I also should say, I'll speak on behalf of four or five organizations like mine in Vermont. I unfortunately have to also work in seven other states every year. We travel quite a bit. I very understanding family and each trail is unique but I am also very proud to share that oftentimes when we're working in Southern Connecticut, I then find they're emailing me and saying, where else have you done work? Well, go check out Raven Ridge in Mungton. Nature Conservancy did an amazing job there. This is a 900 foot boardwalk, come check it out. They are starting to come to Vermont to see the projects that we do as craft people that we are exporting and thus importing visitors. With that, I hope I don't take questions. Conscious of all the people's time. Beautiful work. Thank you. Yeah, really, yeah, yeah, yeah. Heartland, I first experienced your work in Heartland at Escobar, it was terrific. Yeah, that was another Nature Conservancy project where we installed a 300 foot accessible boardwalk with an accessible parking area and as I understand it is what's highly used, very well loved by the area. A unique project where the lady slippers and other very sensitive species were all flagged prior to our arriving, so they weren't blooming. All you see is the flags and they're saying, please don't step on those. It's very difficult to bio build a five foot wide boardwalk while monitoring that. On June 21st, we're all thrilled. Yeah. Which is when they're blooming, we welcome you all to come and see them. A small footnote I'll add as far as hiring, I know it's in keeping people in Vermont and encouraging people to stay. I was sharing some thoughts previous to coming here with an individual from Nature Conservancy and sharing that we have two employees that worked with me, have for the past four years, grew up in Vermont, went to UNH for studies, found out about me, came back to Vermont to work with us and are now settling down in their late 20s to stay, even though they grew up in Charlotte. And then tomorrow we're interviewing somebody from Colorado that's flying here to work with us to move to Vermont. So there is a dynamic there that can't be denied on a small scale, but I hope to see it go there. And just the last question, which is how many of those projects, how many of your projects would you say BHCB helps fund? I'm gonna say, so a lot of the BHCB funded projects are typically the larger scale that have been. So of those 25 to 40, I would say probably five to six would be potentials for those. And, but the dollar values kind of sway those. A large boardwalk such as the one at Raven Region is a big investment for sure. So one of the ways we end up building more support publicly for keeping open lands open and nature, natural spaces. Natural is helping more people get out into them. So can you tell you a little more about the ADA portion of your work? Is that every project or only some? We're, so of the other five trail builders in Vermont, our specialty is accessibility, I'm for certain. At OAN, technical stonework, we kind of vacillate between the two. The accessible portions are trails that are built where two wheelchairs can pass. There's a certain grade that is not quite the level of the state house, which is 5% or less, but we typically keep it 8% because you're in a natural setting. Those are national guidelines that we follow set by the FETs. And it requires a fair amount of engineering for sure. And since you work out of state, how's Vermont doing compared to other states? Are there best practices you're seeing elsewhere that you can bring home? You know, again, I'm maybe a modest, but again, there are only five, I can't keep saying that. There's only five of us that do this really. We collaborate, we compete, that's kind of the Vermont way. We are also being pulled to Niagara Falls to put in 300 stone stairs down just outside New York City to do a 10 foot wide bike path. People aren't doing this kind of work with the same kind of craftsmanship that we offer because we're Vermonters. So we have a serious reputation that is that can't be denied. So. Thanks, Jeff. And do you have, is it easy for you to find people to help you with these projects? Like, how many jobs do you provide? We could be a lot larger. It is very difficult to find people who have this type of skill. We're currently working on a boardwalk in Lakewood, Misaki where we're on the ice and we're drilling through the ice to put in the foundations to try to stay ahead to be ready for a spring for another job. Pretty tough to find people who want to do that. Right for apprenticeship. Thank you all for your work. Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Lisa Babazian. I'm from Putney. And I want to thank you all for hearing me today. I'm glad to be here. I'm the treasurer of the Putney Historical Society and was first the project manager and then the property manager, now the property manager for the Putney General's Store of Reconstruction. As well as the project manager for the next-stage arts rehabilitation, both Vermont Housing and Conservation Board projects. And most recently, I ran the store business for a few years between proprietary tenants I'm also a historic preservation consultant and serve on the board of the Preservation Trust of Vermont. And I want to start by thanking you in advance if it's not premature, thanking the legislature for honoring or hopefully honoring the Paul Vroom, founder of Preservation Trust of Vermont as vice chair of the trust and as a friend who learned so much from Paul. Please accept my deep appreciation for your recognition of the profound and positive effect Paul has had on Vermont. Paul and the Preservation Trust collaborated often with the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to support long-term sustainability for Vermont's towns and villages, almost all of which are historic gems, but many of which are struggling economically. As a result, they've had a profound impact on the health of Vermont's communities and not just on its old buildings. I want to tell you how this played out in Putney, a town of about 3,000 and I'm sure you're familiar too. William County represent. Woo! We're down there but we're in port. But you're certainly active. I mean, there's lots of happening. Lots happening, very drawn, a lot of drama. Partnering with the Preservation Trust and other state and federal agencies, Housing and Conservation Board invested 70,000 as well as feasibility study money in the Putney General Store, helping the non-profit owner buy it on behalf of the community and restore it as the economic anchor it had been for over 200 years. Along with the rest of the country, in 2008 our village economy was in crisis and first our independent bookstore closed, then our 200-year-old general store had a fire and closed as well and finally a year after that our congregational church folding. When the cherished general store burn, Paul Bruton was there the next day offering engineering assistance and advice to a stunned store owner and the community grieving the loss of its center. After the owner decided he could not rebuild the historic building, Paul saw that the likely market alternative for the site was demolition. He encouraged the Putney Historical Society to take the novel approach of non-profit ownership. And though people in the commercial and economic development community were skeptical, a packed meeting hall enthusiastically endorsed the idea. And with a non-profit model, the Housing and Conservation Board and donors were able to jump in and help. And in fact, the Housing and Conservation Board was the first state organization to support the project with a grant to buy the burned building. This was an enormous vote of confidence for a local historical society taking on the role of a community development organization. The state support was a huge asset in raising the rest of the funds. With the guidance of the Preservation Trust and the Housing and Conservation Board, we secured loans, purchased, and then stabilized the historic store. And while that was going on, the Historical Society was asked to take on the former congregational church, another treasured historic gathering place across the street from the store. But before we could figure out what to do with the 1841 church, a major tragedy struck. The stabilized store building, a project that had involved hundreds of local donors and was near completion, was burned to the ground by an arsonist. Now arson is always a terrible and violent crime, but in this case, it felt like the entire town was picked and looked up. And when the second fire happened, I called Paul in the middle of the night as we watched it burn. He came the next day and sat with us and other stakeholders as we tried to pick up the pieces. And even though many of us were too devastated to think of continuing, somehow the meeting ended up inspiring us to start again. And significantly, the Housing and Conservation Board stood by us with their support, even though we technically no longer had an historic building to preserve. This again proved to be a catalyst for other funders to stay with the project, now a reconstruction to restore the downtown heart of Putting. And you can see from the pictures that it really is the heart of our historic district and our village. This tragedy also had unexpected silver lining. When the whole town wanted to gather after the fire to mourn the store, we of course turned to the Congressional Church, which had long served as a venue to town weddings and funerals. It felt like half the town wanted to speak or perform, and the other half came to celebrate its door. When we heard the incredible acoustics of the room and saw an audience of over 200 people sitting happily on 100 year old Q cushions for over two hours, we thought perhaps the old church could have a new life as a theater. And again, the Housing and Conservation Board partnered with us and with the preservation trust to first assess the building's needs and feasibility of this adaptive reuse, and then gave us key funding of about 140,000 when we were ready to move ahead with a major rehabilitation project. The project was intended not only to find a use for the church, but to help revitalize the village center and support its other small businesses. So, much to our amazement, we in fact secured a total of $1.3 million for the Plenty General Store, which reopened in 2011. The BHCB's piece of that was only 70,000. A few years after that, a $1.5 million campaign turned the old church into next stage, a state-of-the-art performance venue. I hope you've come to me. Some of the performances, it partners with schools, arts organizations and restaurants and brings folks downtown. Housing and Conservation Board support for both projects was a foundation for their success by honoring our local support and leveraging other funding. And as remarkable as this story seems to be, it's not in fact unique. All over Vermont, the Housing and Conservation Board advocates for village centers by working with communities to save their small commercial and local acres. In Plenty, the drama of two fires certainly helped gain publicity and in turn helped with fundraising, but most towns don't have such an extreme story to tell. The Housing and Conservation Board is a key partner to all communities and truly sees them when even their troubles are not on the front page. The board is so effective because in partnering with local communities and other organizations like the Preservation Trust that bring other resources to bear, they're leveraging state dollars to major investments involving private and public funding. And it's also very vital because it's one of the view sources available to small village projects like this as opposed to larger towns or more focused on urban problems. So back in Putney, our skeptics stand in awe as the nonprofit community-driven models proven to work in our village. I note that despite nonprofit ownership, we pay full property taxes on the store property because it's a for-profit business. And the story of Putney makes the case that even when the real estate market doesn't value something, a community can take control of its own destiny and redefine value through their own investment. These Housing and Conservation Board projects fill a very real gap between low real estate market values and the actual cost that we have on construction between commercial models that depend on business volume and the reality of Vermont's low-density rural population. So since the Putney General Store reopened in 2011, the Historical Society's worked closely with its proprietors and even ran it ourselves for three years to make sure the business remains healthy and viable. And we recently sold the business to a couple with store experience, Vision and Drive, who are dedicated to making this a great success. So as one of the two managers who recently ran the business, I learned just how much it really means to our town by watching people connect with their neighbors every day by seeing the store and its network of customers act as an informal social service for those who have nowhere else to turn by providing 12 to 14 mostly local people jobs and many of them young people having their job for the first time. That's not easy, let me tell you. Most importantly, I see that if the Historical Society did not own and protect this anchor, the business could easily disappear as many in Putney and other small villages have. So the Housing and Conservation Board is one of the few organizations providing this critical support to small communities trying to conserve what they have. And it takes community investment and effort in the face of an increasingly challenging economic environment to preserve those things, those places and programs and businesses that are the core of village and community life, those things that make from that such a great place to live and work. So thank you and I urge you to fully fund the BHCB this year. Thank you very much. Are there any questions? So we are at time actually, it was perfect timing. I just want to thank everyone for coming in and remind me of a sad loss of Paul Bloom this past year. Looking out, I see generations of people who have worked on these projects and one of the things I most appreciate is what we've heard about just the small sample today from housing, ski areas, walkways, swimming holes, general stores, salvage yards cleaned up, river quarters reestablished, churches, performance centers. And I know that that's just a small sampling of the many creative projects you do that are really palpable investments in real Vermont values, what makes the place special. We all value and appreciate that you are the leading on keeping those Vermont places special and intact for those of you. And in large measure, the volunteer energy that is making it happen. Because there are a few professionals out there we see, but many of you are volunteer time which is an incredible gift to the state, thank you. So we only had an hour with all of you at once together right now, but we're all happy to be, catch us any time today or other times, hold our feet to the fire, help us get this work done. Thank you.