Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: So we're going to begin our afternoon testimony hearing about program that Forest Parks and Recreation runs called Wood Warms. And it may not be what you think it is based on the sound and based on some conversations that I've been hearing about. And so we will have probably a few other members trickling in, but why don't we go ahead and get started? Have you met all of us?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yes, I believe so. We have a

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: new committee member who you may have met in another committee, but he's not new to the building. John Bartholomew. Yes.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Welcome. Thank you. So for the record, my name is Jim Duncan. I'm the state lands manager for the division of forests within Forest Park and Recreation. So I oversee our five district stewardship foresters who manage state forests, assistant management on state parks and wildlife management areas in all aspects of vegetation management, assisted habitat management, and also recreation management. So really anything on state lands that's happening, we're supporting or directing that through the Division of Forest State Lands Program in partnership with Fish and Wildlife and Parks. The topic I'm here to talk about today is the Woodworms program that we run within the agency. It's something that's actually very near and dear to my heart. So I wanna thank the committee for their interest in this topic because it's one of the things about my job that I get to do a little bit of, but I really like. So I'm excited to hear a little bit more about it today. So just a quick roadmap of where we're going. We'll be talking about what is woodworms? It's a good question. What are wood banks and why do we have woodworms supporting wood banks? How do we implement that program and who's benefited to date? So woodworms is a part of our agency natural resources timber harvest program, where we send a portion of wood that's harvested on State Land's timber sales to wood banks. And then those wood banks process wood and distribute it to Vermonters in need of heating assistance. So this is a small component of our timber harvest program, but an important piece of getting wood to Vermonters in need for heat. And we have wood banks around the state for a pretty clear reason. 35% of Vermont households heat their home in part or in bowl with wood. And of those 22%, or sorry, 22% of Vermont households use it as a primary source for heat. As you can imagine, people in all different physical and social conditions need heating assistance from time to time when fuel runs low, when prices go high, when existing cash resources are exhausted. Wood banks come in as a critical gap filler for those people. Stockpile wood and distribute it to communities who are in need and mobilize a lot of creative approaches to get wood to those folks who need it for their homes. Our forest economy program within FPR works with wood banks and post quarterly peer group meetings to help them connect across the state and learn from each other and find ways to do things better, get more wood out to those who may need it.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: You mind if we interrupt if we go or anything? I

[Rep. John O'Brien]: just wonder how are wood banks formed around the state? They're not quite like food shelves, but they're If I wanted to know where the wood banks in Orange County are, for example, and they're not really municipal. In Tunbridge, we find people who can't afford it, but we don't have a specific wood bank, for example. It's a

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: great question. We're aware of about eight wood banks. We have three or two that run larger regional distributions and then a number of smaller community focused ones that we have interacted with as FPR. I know there are others that have been organizing around the state and they tend to be hyper local, a group of community members, serving a small group of communities and then people who need help within those communities. So it's a fairly loose affiliation. It's generally not an incorporated entity. Sometimes it's just a conservation commission trying to get together and do some work. So it's a pretty locally driven effort in most cases, aside from the two larger regional ones that we work with as well. So I think one of the benefits of our FPR economy program, forced economy program right now is really getting that peer group built up so banks who are bootstrapping this themselves can start doing work. We have a list of eight web banks on the FPR page for web banks. So folks who are interested in finding out if there's a web bank near them can use that as a resource. So why do we do wood worms? Timber harvests on state lands take a lot of work to develop and put out, so why add this onto it? For us, it's pretty straightforward. We work on a variety of state land timber harvests because of the wide range in score stands and conditions. We end up with a number of opportunities for timber harvesting where we have lower grade products that make a good match for firewood. On average, about 2,800 cords of lower grade wood is offered through our center step program each year. And because of recent flooding and COVID, there's been a dip in that over the last couple of years, but-

[Unknown committee member]: Did you say 28 or twenty eight?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Two thousand eight hundred.

[Unknown committee member]: 2800.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Are offered each year through our timber sales on average. And because we're generally focused on promoting forest health and complexity and resilience, we're really taking a whole forest stand approach, looking at all the different wood products that could be harvested to meet our goals for that forest. And then some of that is a really good opportunity to donate to a wood bank. So our State Lands Timber Harvest really provide this kind of regular opportunity for donations when the conditions are right. So how do we implement this within our timber sale program? We begin by looking at all of the harvests we're gonna start developing in the coming year. It's usually a conversation in spring with our stewardship foresters to say, what sales do you have that you might be developing over the next two years? Which of those might have some low grade products that would make a good opportunity for donation? And we look to try and get about a 100 cords each year that we can say we'll be able to commit this to wood banks from this timber harvest and make it available. Though some years we have more, some years we might have less. That's our general idea of a target that meet the needs of the wood banks that we've already partnered with. Every spring we go through that list, we then identify where those sales might be located, who the closest wood bank is, how much capacity they have to process and distribute wood and try and match up the best arrangement so we can get everyone some wood, but not ask bloggers to track many, many miles away from harvest. So it's kind of a balance to get to that final number. We seek to meet as much demand as we can while maintaining the viability of the harvest, which is important. But once that harvest has been marked and tallied, our state lands foresters right out of prospectus for potential bidders, and it'll include deduction from the required minimum bid price to account for the wood that's going to be donated to wood banks. So we're basically offsetting the cost to the logger through a lower price for that wood. So

[Rep. John O'Brien]: that little river job we saw in the field trip, would have some of that wood gone to

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: wood bank?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yes, for that sale we had 50 cords that was donated to two different wood banks from that sale.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: And that same that you're saying here, that contractor then donated it, but then there was an offset.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Correct. So in that case, we saw those logs on the landing, they were loaded on the trucks instead of taking a truck to a mill and getting a scale slip for selling the wood to the mill. The logger took it to a wood bank and put it in their yard and took a scale slip for having dropped off that amount of wood. So really, there's the difference. And the difference is they got a lower sale price out of that.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: In that case, or in general, would they be delivering other low quality, low grade, whether it's not part of program, but it's

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: going to become fairway? So the contract specifies the minimum requirements has to be a certain set of species. There has to be, it can't be a very crooked piece of wood. It has to be generally straight and free of major defects. So we're not trying to put the lowest quality wood there. It has to meet some basic form requirements, essentially what a mill would require for a firewood log as well. The wood bank can accept a minimum quality and an acceptable mix of species that would make good internal wood burning.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: So it's not like the seconds or the castoffs.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It's got to meet the specifications and we can inspect those loads to make sure that they're meeting those specifications. So the contractors cut the wood, they've loaded onto a truck in this picture, it's taken it to craft Spurry and they started to unload it onto the concentration yard for the wood bank. So this is how it's delivered. And at that point, the wood bank takes over. They organize volunteers to come and buck up the wood, split the wood, stack it or load it and send it out for delivery. So the beauty of this program is it really takes advantage of the strength of our contractors in terms of getting the wood to where it needs to be. And then it takes advantage of the local community to organize both who needs the wood and who can help us get it to them. So really, it's a good handoff from our perspective. The one piece I'll say, I mentioned this process takes about two years. So one of the challenges that we have been trying to get ahead of is how long it takes to go from saying you're going to get 50 cords in the clean seller sale at Little River State Park. And then that would actually get into the logger, the wood bank could take two to three years depending on the season, depending on the time it takes that get that sale sold. So we're trying to build up many years ahead of time what the commitment is so that now what banks have been getting commitments for several years on a regular basis and can expect what's coming next to try to reduce some of that unpredictability. Overall, the Wood Warmth program I was looking at our numbers for this presentation. We've delivered two thirty two cords over three winters. So that's actually off the land to wood banks. We have 11 upcoming harvests that we've estimated the total potential of up to 500 cords for those 11 harvests. So we have been finding more opportunities on state lands where we can. And I know our banks have mobilized hundreds of hours, if not more, to get the wood that we've delivered processed over the past couple of years.

[Unknown committee member]: So you mentioned that 2,800 cords were offered each year, and if you only delivered that many, what happens to all the rest? Are they in storage somewhere or?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: They might have been-

[Unknown committee member]: Because that seems like a dramatic amount to be storing over a long period of time.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. I might have miscommunicated there. So when I say offer, we offer for bidding from our timber harvest. So we would say there's 2,800 cords total from all of the sales per year on average. Gets offered out in a contract to a logger. Of that, we peeled off 500 cords for donation. The rest is sold by the logger for other products.

[Unknown committee member]: Okay. So there's actually about 500 cords that are processed?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Year No. To year, it varies based on that timing of actually getting delivered. So we've done about a little less than a 100 cords actually delivered over the last three winters. As we've identified more harvest going forward, we've got greater supply coming in the next couple

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: of Okay. Alright.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Our goal is 100 quarts a year committed. It may or may not be 100 quarts delivered depending on the timing So of

[Rep. John O'Brien]: some of these wood banks may have processors and some just have volunteers with home splitters. And then it's up

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: to them really how much they season it before it goes off. So most of our wood banks do season wood first before distributing it. So they're doing some of the stocking and that's obviously much desirable. But we leave it up to the wood banks to determine what their community's need is and how to meet it. We have some wood banks that can only handle splitable wood, so they can't handle eight foot logs. So one of the kind of areas I think for growth that I'll talk about in a little bit is sharing some of that capacity across wood banks for processing eight foot logs into splitable.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: Who decides on who gets the wood? How is that decided? And then what parameters do they use? Is it based on income? How do

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: they determine need? So that'll vary by the Wood Bank, and I won't be able to speak to the specifics of each Wood Bank. Some use income testing and some do not. Some is simply a statement of need and maybe a follow-up conversation. But it's handled by the Wood Banks to determine which recipients they're going to

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: be able to support. How does the wood get? I guess it varies by wood bank. How the recipient gets the wood, how it's delivered.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah, I think in some cases, people can come pick up wood from a specific location, but generally, wood banks are trucking it to the location when they can, so they can have a certain delivery area and that's what they can actually support.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: Is there an estimate for wood this is costing steady?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So we deduct the stumpage value from the price of the harvest, so we're not paying for it. But the overall timber sale value is lower because of this deduction. I understand that, but do we have the dollar amount? Have, the prices over the last five years have ranged from $100 to $200 a quart.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Does that? Are you well? I'll just follow-up. Do you know whether that flows through the budget? And is it charges revenue with an offsetting expense?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: That's a little bit out of my wheelhouse. I can ask that question, how that's reconciled, but I suspect it's not because of the way the special fund works. I suspect no, but I'd have to ask.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Like an in kind donation?

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: You'd have to recognize almost Yeah. Yeah. I mean, We do have the budget presentation next week, so ask then if it seems important. But it still seems important to ask, no, I'm just curious, really. As a way to quantify, another way to, yeah, on the course.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Just on that, so if I was a logger and I contract to do, some of the job goes off to a woodwarm's, a wood bank, are you paying essentially what they would get selling it commercially to, say, a processor? They're wholesaling it to a processor who will value out it because they're taking it that much further? Or cord. Know just from property owners, when you do use value, you're getting an unbelievably small amount for hardwood, cordwood that goes off.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. So it's a little bit complicated to answer. So essentially the way the timber sale bid process works is we list a minimum bid price. Everyone has to meet that minimum bid price. That minimum bid price is a combination of the estimated stumpage value that we estimate on the sale minus any deductions. So those deductions could be woodworms donations. It could be landing improvement. It could be road maintenance that we need to do to get to the sale. So we can include additional work within that timber sale and include as a deduction from the overall minimum bid. So the loggers who bid on this get our estimates. They see the marking on the trees. They walk the property and decide what they could probably make from it. We set a floor, but they decide the price based on what they think everything is worth. So they can take the deduction, but they're also bidding a price that they think is competitive. So I think that's why it's a little bit hard to say, they're getting a check for this amount to offset their costs. It's not how it works. They're saying overall, I can probably sell the wood that I'm going to sell for this, and that includes my costs to cut and deliver this firewood.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: These stocks. It seems like a really nice program to help people in need. What I'm finding troubling though is that it's not implemented where Vermonters have uniform access. Seems a little hard to justify where we're providing state funds, not directly, but only certain Vermonters have access. How do we justify that?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It's a great question. I a next slide on, or I have some discussion points on expansion that we're working on right now, and that might help see where we want to go with that, because it's a really good point. Yeah, so right now I mentioned the cords that we have delivered have served Vermonters in need in Chittenden, Lemoyle, Orleans, and probably Franklin County, but the one wood bank we work with is based in Chittenden, but I know they are now expanding to deliver in many other counties. So these are kind of the three wood banks that we have worked with in the past. Guess I also just wanted to put in context the same numbers I mentioned before around the percentage of Vermont households that heat with wood. At that same survey estimated we use about 400,000 cords of wood in households for heating every year. So the 100 cords that we're able to put forth is a small piece of what Vermonters use, but it is that kind of last mile piece where other programs for heating assistance aren't going to make up the difference. So it's a small but mighty little program

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: that we are able to contribute to. What's 400,000, did you say? 400,000, yes, correct.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So to date, our program has been what it is given the limits of the system. We've had three main recipients that serve primarily Northern Vermont, as you were noticing. We've recently been able to, through the work of the forest economy program, we've got connected to other wood banks and we have two more that have been added to the recipient list in Brattleboro and in Norwich. So we're able to expand that reach further south. And I'm really excited for that partnership. And they're the first ones who've had processing capacity to come to us and say we can accept year end processes here and deliver it here. And then another area that I'm excited about is the Force Economy program is in the process of evaluating the overall Woodbank system within the state and understanding where we could see some improvements or some supports or some expansion of that capacity. We're expecting that report in April through the Vermont Certified Public Managers program. Had a chance to sit down with a couple of those folks. I think they're really taking a good look for where we can get efficient and expand the impact of the work. So that's the expansion of what's coming next. As I think we've talked about in this committee, the challenge of putting out timber sales on state lands is primarily one of careful review, thorough vetting, a lot of work load on our foresters who have a lot of other responsibilities. And so this is a small program, but I want to close by saying it's one that I feel good about when I talk to our foresters. They feel good about when we work with our loggers, they're feeling good about the contributions Kate's making in this area. And ultimately, there's people who are receiving to it who may otherwise not be able to get it or go with them. I think that was what I had for slides, but if there's any other questions, I'd be

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: happy to answer them. Are the 11 artists that was on the slide that you had a second ago, 11 upcoming artists, are they scattered around the state? I'm not sure where the state lands are concentrated. So to representative Bartholomew's point about not all counties being served by the program. I don't know whether it would make a lot of sense to drive from one end of the state to the other. Where are the parcels?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Sure. That's a really good question. And primarily, we're looking for parcels in the northern half of the state. So we go down to the Rutland area and north essentially is where we've got properties that are within a reasonable trucking distance of our existing wood banks that can process logs. So we've had donations from Groudon State Forest, Victory State Forest, from Mount Mansfield State Forest, Camelstompe State Park, and Aiken State Forest is scheduled in that 11 that I mentioned on this slide. So we've got a couple in Aiken and Coolidge potentially state forests that can donate. And as we have other timber harvests get developed, say on the Worcester or others, those would be ones that again can reach those northern areas. I'll also kind of just share that our larger forest acreage on State Forest is in the northern half of the state. So we do have most of our forest acreage is in our District 5 Northeast Kingdom District based out of St. Johnsbury. So there's also that kind of matching in space of where we have opportunity. But a lot of our state forests and state parks in the southern half of the state around Springfield area and further south really are too far to send that wood up to Crasberry or to Louisville.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Where are the two located?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: The two banks. We have one who's based in Jericho, one that's based in Lamoille County in Morrisville, and then one in Crasberry. Crasberry, okay. I have two questions. First question, do

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: you do this on any of the fish and wildlife lands?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We do not. You don't? You do not. You do

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: it just on the forest and the parks. Okay. And then second question. I'm sorry. I I was with the school kids downstairs. Do you are you working with people that have wood processors that are the ones cutting and blocking the wood?

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: Or is

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: this yeah. Like in Craspberry, who's doing the the mechanic, making the end product?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So that'll be the wood banks provide the equipment and the people to process the logs once they're landed at the wood bank. So our kind of handoff ends when the logger or the trucker delivers the logs to the concentration spot.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: I mean, then how do

[Unknown committee member]: You probably already

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: said this, and again, sorry, if I need to watch a video, I will. Who how do you decide where the wood goes? Who's the receiver? It's the income based, I'm sure.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So once the wood is split, how do we decide where it goes? So that is up to the wood bank. So some wood banks do some income criteria, others it's all in an interview. And it really depends on the local community and how they've arranged their wood bank.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Thank you.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I was thinking one way, if you wanna look towards expansion of this program, almost be to tell your story to other landowners and harvesters, so whether it would be the national forest or even big property owners, because if those loggers who are contracted to do that had a similar model, you could whatever the multiplier would be. But just because you're somewhat constrained by the amount of jobs you do every year in Vermont. But imagine 100 big time property owners saying, we want to have a similar program and send wood to the wood banks based on your model. That's a

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: great suggestion. I hope we have time to influence the outcome of that report I mentioned, evaluating Woodbank system. It'll be interesting to see if this model could be pitchable to other landowners. Does

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: the Forest Service, that national Forest Service,

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: have anything similar? I am not aware of one, but I could find out. I just don't believe so, but I'd have to ask.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: If they did, they probably don't know.

[Unknown committee member]: Aw, probably true.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Sorry.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Other questions? I did have a question, I forgot who it was.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: The off bad side, who's distracting you?

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: I guess, no, I do remember. Is there anything in statute that talks about the Wood Bank or is this Not a statement. Discretion of the commissioner or somebody?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: There is nothing in statute that talks about the Wood Bank. This is a program that predated me by decades. It's been around since saw the date and I'm not going remember it, but it's been around for at least fifteen years prior to my arrival in 2022. And it's kind of There's always been a piece we've done when we could, and it's been formalized more in the last three years, kind of give us some structure. Yeah, true.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Sort of similar to hunting on state lands, are there any state forests where Vermonters can go and harvest a cord if they wanted to?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: No, we don't have that program.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Not a liability to be a problem, but there's certainly a lot of wood out there. Even if lowdown is for example.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Yes. Willy nilly skin.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: A and P rules. But I hear what you're saying.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Since we were most of us about a year ago standing out in that Yeah. 10 degree rather than colder than balmy day compared to what we've been Yeah. I know. Experiencing lately. I assume that project is wrapped up? Yes. We finished that project last winter and closed that out. So, yeah. Okay. And I remember talking about how that project had been delayed for some time. I don't remember how long, but it was something that had been Like fourteen years now. Yeah. Maybe you're not prepared to answer your questions, but are these 11 upcoming harvests, are they also ones that have been in the pipeline for a while? How do they plan just in terms of being on some kind of schedule?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Sure. I would have to pull up the list to say that it will vary by unit. Some of these harvests are on much on track with their implementation year. The one that we looked at on Mount Vance Field was that the target implementation year was about fourteen years, twelve years earlier. So I think the one that we have at Burtt and that's coming up would be pretty close to its implementation year. So again, we set that schedule as a goal for when these will be cut. And then staff resources and other competing priorities, say flooding, can help us or hinder us in getting to that goal. So I'd say, just thinking off the top of my head, probably about a third of these are relatively on track, and some of them are coming from units that are probably a little bit further delayed.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Do you

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Does the the FBNR, like, delay a cut because of the economics? You know, the the timber value of that particular species, the prices way down or the markets are saturated, do they adjust the time of harvest with that or if the water can go and the conditions are met like right now, do they just go, okay, without looking to income? That's

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: a

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: good question. The short answer, the simple answer is no. So we wouldn't just choose to say we're gonna wait two years on this harvest because the economics aren't right. It could end up happening if we have a sale that we try to bid at the wrong time. A logger just may not bid on it because the sale prices aren't right. And we'll just have to rebid that again when the conditions change. So we have made a decision to wait to rebid something until the conditions have changed if we know that price is the reason nobody bid on it. And we've had that condition happen at least one sale recently.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: So

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: to some extent, it's a bit of a timing issue. But from a departmental perspective, we would not say we're going to hold this sale until prices are better. We say this is when the sale needs to get done for the management goals. And then when we sign a contract, the logger has a certain amount of time to execute that contract and price is not a reason that we would change the date of that contract alone.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Yeah. Well, in in a way, sometimes this works, private landowner may elect not to harvest this timber. But so now you have people in the logging industry that are sitting on equipment with payments due and no place to go, and they have a contract with you, whereas the state's not worried about maximizing their returns, and they can cover their expenses. It gives them so Yeah. It it it can work to

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: the benefit of the industry.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I think that's fair.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I was just thinking how harvested wood really moves starting from this program to sending our logs to Maine or whatever. Is there any concern with invasives, starting with emerald ash borer, being harvested and sent to places where it's not right now, even starting with this program, but I can see even with your harvest on state forests, state foresters try to identify that we're cutting a lot of emerald ash disease pretty easier. And what happens with that, I guess, just speak to that.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: That's a great question. Certainly, we do so many harvests for trying to benefit forest health and improve forest health. So that's a really top of mind concern is making forest health impacts spread or worse somewhere else. The way we handle that on our state lands timber harvests, first of there are quarantines in place for different pests and loggers have to follow those no matter what, because that's a state law and federal law gets into play there. With Emerald Ash Borer in particular, all of our contracts, require that the loggers follow the slow the spread guidelines, which includes restrictions around transporting infested wood during flight season and treatment for that wood once it arrives. So in the case of logs that log would have taken to a mill, they have to be debarked by a certain date or processed and heat treated. So there's a range of conditions that they have to meet in order to move that wood outside of that infested zone. For the wood banks, we haven't had that issue, so we're fortunate right now. But there's been a lot of need to process ash trees lately because once they die, they're hazards, especially in things like our park campgrounds. So trying to manage that wood supply and keep it from becoming a forest health impact down the road is really something we think. We've talked about, can we donate harvested ash from a campground? And that's a challenge. You have to be careful about how you do that so you aren't inadvertently making the problem worse.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Where does that would go? I mean, that's sort of way less than these contract jobs when you just have to take down hangers and blow downs and things like that. Does that would get utilized as fuel ever, or is it just composted?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It can. Some of it goes to biomass. It gets chipped on-site and then burned for biomass. Some of it is left on-site and seasoned for a campfire, for use by the campground as firewood. That's less common because of the storage and processing and handling requirements. So we're often working with tree companies and we get into those complicated takedowns and they have a system to figure out the best way to dispose of the wood product. Sometimes it's chipped and spread, which is an effective way to deal with emerald ash.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Ever grab a piece of infested emerald ash, throw it into your wood stove? You can hear them screaming when they go out.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: Any

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: other questions about wood banks? While we have the state finance manager here, Got other questions?

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Are we still growing at a three to one, or we surpassed that level?

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Biggest estimates I've seen is three to one pre growth for every one removal. State, thanks. Statewide. Statewide.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Well, thank you very much, Kim. You for

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: your time, I appreciate it. About the program.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: I've known people in

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: the past that got away from this program and it really helped him out. Yeah. And you answered this question earlier. There's a list somewhere on the website, on the FPR's website of where people can go. I a couple of them.

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. If you were to search Woodbank's FPR, I'm pretty sure you would find it, and I can share the link with you after the meeting.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: I don't know if you

[Unknown committee member]: can just

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: stay up for a second. We've got two other things this afternoon, and the next one isn't until two. So we had planned to take a short break before then. We could use five minutes now or so for discussion rather than at the end of the day, so that we're Thumbs up. We also have, after the budget discussion, Mike O'Grady said he would stop by to answer any questions or give us his perspectives on that case of language that we walked through yesterday with the legal counsel from ANR. So that is also this afternoon, but I don't think that needs to be very long, and we don't need to be staying anyway after that. But question is whether anybody has anything that you wanna share, questions who else you might wanna hear from about the municipal regulation question. And what I'd like to do over between now and when we meet on Tuesday, my intention is to ask the legislature council to pull together some language based on our thoughts, collective thoughts. That won't be the last word necessarily, but just have something to be looking at and talking about. I think things tend to move faster when you actually have language in therapy.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: Yeah. Planning the testimony to becoming increasingly repetitive. So maybe we've heard enough.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: We've heard enough. We've heard enough.

[Unknown committee member]: What I'm saying. I don't know that there's gonna be any particularly new insights. I think it's just gonna be a matter of threshing out which perspective makes sense. Because honestly, whoever explains it, it makes sense from their perspective, and yet we can't go with what they're all saying because some of them have different ideas from each other. So it's tricky.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: I wonder, to be fair, because we've heard from so many different farm organizations that come in with the same line. If we have the, I'm gonna say, at least the cities and towns come in and really push upon them how I feel about one b. I don't know if y'all feel the same. I understand one a and they wanna control on one a. But I think one b has such more outreach and impact in our smaller communities, Derby being one. Mhmm. And, you know, I don't know about Cabot if you have planning and zoning.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: We do.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Of course, you're gonna all be tier three anyways. You're out. Tunbridge, Burlington, do you have planning and zoning there? Would they

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Burlington has some. Yeah.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Would they be signing up for one b areas? You know?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah. But is that a different conversation than

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: No. Selection? Well, it is part of the conversation to the extent that the league was perhaps not quite ready when they came in to say whether it would be only one a or one a, one b. And I I think that we don't necessarily need to have them come back in to tell them what we think. I think we at this point we can just if we decide that we feel strongly one way or the other, we'll just go ahead and do it. Okay. Yeah.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: I guess I would add, we've had the testimony and would anyone's, has everyone made up their mind? Would your mind be changed by additional testimony?

[Unknown committee member]: I feel like I can be moved by whatever we decide to I don't feel like I need anything new because it feels like we're hearing a lot of times, like especially from the farmers, they're all saying like, don't change the wraps. Then Steve has a certain perspective and leads to cities and towns. We're just gonna have to kind of thrush through those perspectives. And I'm kind of willing to go with the wisdom of whatever we come up with. I trust us. Okay.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Yeah.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: But I just don't know if we wanna, what I was saying earlier, we've got the task street decision. Do we just want to strictly deal with that? And then maybe this year also deal with 1AB in different legislation?

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Well We've

[Rep. John O'Brien]: got the one to four acre question, too, in effect to grow food. That seems like it's connected, but it doesn't have to be part of if we just want to return to

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: the pretask free world. Yeah. I prefer return to the pretask free world. You know? But I can understand that one a, but they didn't say they wanted to preclude growing food. You know? They they realized that people should be able to grow food. It's just if you're gonna have if you happen to own a two acre lot in that one a area and you wanna have a little market at your house, they are concerned about traffic flow, ingress, egress. And I being a chairman of the zoning board, I can understand that. And the neighbors and, you know, and it wasn't in a one a area, you know, but it was in a certainly, now I was chairman of Derby, and that's one b, all of it.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Yeah. I mean, just say that that's an example that came up, but I think that it wouldn't just be traffic. It would also be noise and it would be Yeah. Exactly. It could be Four

[Unknown committee member]: more. Right? I was under the impression it was more so trying to meet the goals of the amount of housing units going in house. Is

[Rep. John O'Brien]: that the way they were talking was that we need these fields

[Unknown committee member]: for houses. So because I think that's the motivation for being able to zone one area so the housing

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: could put there.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: One a or one b, one b. You're are you referring to one b or?

[Unknown committee member]: I'm talking one a mostly.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: So I think one a is already pretty well defined. I don't know if they

[Unknown committee member]: I think when I heard the LCT in here, sounded more like in order to meet the desired amount of housing coming into the state that they were preferring that when they have more access to the land that they need in order to do that. So I think it is a direct issue. Actually developing farmland in my mind, I don't like the idea of zoning farms out of business essentially. You sell it as a Well, I don't even know how they would do that if it continues to be grandfathered in as long as

[Rep. John O'Brien]: it's operating as a farm or if know when it's sold that it can no longer be

[Unknown committee member]: to the next owner, it can no longer be farmed at that point. Like if you rebuilds, whatever, but I don't even know if they could do that. I'm So not really sure how that even works, but So

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: that's something we could take more testimony on if we wanted to understand how that would work. And I think that if understood correctly, the explanation that we heard the other day was an existing farm with its existing buildings and its existing structures, they can't and no one would come and force that those to be taken away. But

[Unknown committee member]: They wouldn't be able to add on.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Be able to add on, and then you could also say you can't be running your equipment during these hours, even if you were already there. Think that

[Unknown committee member]: Which you could basically make it so far more would be point of saying, don't think I

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: wanna do this anymore and I'm

[Unknown committee member]: gonna sell my land.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: And then a question that I think has not really been answered is how much farmland are we talking about theoretically here? The urban agriculture part. Yeah, yeah. And I have asked just, again, going back to the one other testimony might be helpful, I ask it today, and think I that there still may be an answer out there to that question that somebody could get for us so that we were not in the dark on that.

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: Well, well, the amount of land is something we wanna look at, but if it's your family farm, it's your farm. It's gonna have a personal impact on some of markets. Sure. Yep. And I think for me, from my perspective, this issue is really important for Vermont farmers and I'd like to see it move as quickly as it can because I don't want to see it get tied up somewhere and not get So the quicker the better from my perspective. And I think when we talk about fight to grow food, that's another important question. But if we're gonna explore that, I'd like to see that as a separate bill because it kind of is different. Don't wanna confuse the the question we're trying to address. Part of

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: the calculus here, it needs to be that since we're working in another title in in sort of in another committee's jurisdiction, we can introduce a committee bill. I don't think anybody's gonna object to our introducing a committee bill that's in another title because it's about ag. But there will be somewhere in the building, somebody else that has an interest that is not necessarily consistent with just going back to where we were before the decision. So to the extent that we can indicate that, yeah, we've considered that perspective too, here's our recommendation, that may be helpful.

[Unknown committee member]: I feel like we have a pretty strong case for going with the historic relationship between municipalities and the state in regard to agriculture that, you know, even if you wanted things to

[Rep. John O'Brien]: change for a municipality, govern more things that,

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: I don't know, it seems like we got

[Unknown committee member]: a pretty strong argument behind what we're doing, but I think that's where I see that, I mean, to me that middle, I don't, I think everybody is in favor of afraid to grow, that I can think of whatever side of the argument you might be on to be able to grow a garden. Don't see that as being any political hindrance to the rest of this. So and it seems easy enough to add in the bill, just get it done. If for some reason it comes to the point, you feel like that's not the case,

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: I can see, you know, we better adjust. Well, I think that the interest is, I think we all have the interest of getting something out quickly and having it pass ultimately. So how does adding anything help that? And it could help it. I I could see where actually people like the idea and say, okay, yeah, I'm in favor of this. Or it could be something that they don't like. I think this is not something that they wouldn't like.

[Unknown committee member (from Derby; Zoning Board Chair)]: Well, Rep Cina came to us last year and was very excited about community gardens and the right to grow food, the right for people to feed themselves. To the point he wanted to have co opted equipment, and I thought, boy, that's a nightmare.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So with 1a and 1b, are the sort of permitting processes for Act two fifty diminished or exempted? So municipalities are really gonna be the ones who laying down the law for what this development looks like?

[Unknown committee member (represents Cabot)]: Yeah,

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: I think that, so big caveat, I'm not immersed in this, and I've been in the mining industry, But I think that the municipalities once there's a map in place, municipality will have the ability to go through a process and end up at the end of a process being a one a having part of the map be one a where there'd be no active 50, basically. So nothing to worry about, the active 50 wise. There'd still be other permitting. And then the one b would be you don't have to use active 50 for housing, but other development, commercial development, I guess, would be still subject to active 50. Okay. So that's bigger area. And I'm gonna stop there because I haven't really been part of these discussions. And I think that this is part of the challenge too, is they're still trying to nail down exactly what's happening.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Because it seems that there's an irony in that as Act two fifty pulls back from say one tiers that municipalities also want to claw back the exemptions being farming

[Jim Duncan, State Lands Manager, Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: in this

[Rep. John O'Brien]: case too, which it's interesting that the exemption's not remaining there because that could be really had nothing to do with farming.

[Unknown committee member]: Yeah. Are we gonna have an official break before 02:00? Because otherwise, I'm just gonna jump.

[Committee Chair (likely Rep. David Durfee)]: Let's take our break now. All right. Okay.