Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Obviously, if we need to dig in deeper than we have time for today, we can maybe isolate something that they can come back anytime. Thank you. We are live and I'm not sure that the guest is somebody we all know, so maybe just a quick introduction.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Absolutely. Glad to be here for the record. Daniel Fitzgow, Commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation here to share with you the government's recommended budget for Forest Parks and Recreation. And I had the amazing

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Steve Gomez. I'm the chief financial officer for the agency of natural resources filling in on the budget piece for FPR since they're out without a financial director. So at the moment.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: How long has he been without a financial director?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Since October, but we have interviews, second round of interviews tomorrow, so I hope that it won't be too much longer.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That position is budgeted.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yes. We need it. Steve's amazing, but he's getting tired.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You're covering for all departments then?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Luckily, no. So I'm managing the secretary's office budget, the ANR oversight and then this piece. Then Fish and Wildlife and DEC, they have their

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: own budget. They have their own people who are in place.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: The person we're paying for would just be for FCR. Okay, so what you had in the email that we've shared with you is a little bit more than we have done in the previous years. That's because both appropriations committee asked us to provide more information. So there's a lot here. We'll do our best to go through it with you, and I'm happy to stop at any point, answer any questions. I'll give you a little overview of FPR. I know most of you are very familiar with us. We'll talk about prior year fiscal appropriation to give you an update. I'll give you the department sort of overview, what's new in this budget that's not base. That includes work funding and some budget language suggestions for our lands and facilities trust fund, and then we'll go into each of the division's budgets. And then there's bunch of reports and information that are there for you, but we're happy to go through any of those as well. I know you all are familiar with FPR, and our mission is that the department is responsible for the conservation and managing of Vermont's forest resources, operating and maintaining state parks, and promoting and supporting outdoor recreation for all Vermonters and visitors. When I think of FPR, I think of when people when they think about Vermont, I think they think about a lot of the service that we provide or forest resources. We work so hard to keep them healthy, intact, and sustainably managed. Our state parks, 55 across the state. We like to say there's a state park within twenty minutes of every Vermonter, but it's also an economic driver because we get so many out of state visitors that visit our state parks over well, this year, just under a million visitors this year. And then outdoor recreation, huge economic driver, really important to so many Vermonters. In fact, 90% of Vermonters say they out there recreate every year. Tomorrow is outdoor recreation day in the State House. It's events happening all day, so I hope you can stop by for some of them and have sharing in celebration of the work. And I think it's an we have a lot of momentum going and look forward to that continuing. This is sort of my people slide, just to show you sort of like how we're organized. You know me, but and I know you also know Kate Eberle, she's our principal assistant. Kate's main role is to do legislative affairs. That's why you see her hanging out with you all a lot. She's also our head communications person for FPR. And then below that are four divisions. I know you know Oliver Pearson really well. He's our director of forests. Nate McKean is our director of state parks. And Becca Washburn, I think she's been in here several times as well. She's our director of Lands Administration and Recreation. And then our administrative division, that's the one that's faked it now. In a couple of weeks, I can come back and say that's been filled. We have 144 year round staff. And then as I think I've shared every year, the summertime, we really blow up with seasonal staffing, mainly to support the operations of our state park system. But we also bring in staff to support state land management. We have recreation staff that we bring in and also forest land management.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And Nelson? Thank you. I remember last spring and the change into the national forest here in Vermont and stuff. Did were you able to were you charged with helping out there or able to help out there? The fire suppression team, we had the fire in Williston?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. We have a great partnership with the Green Mountain National Forest, and certainly on wildland fire, they come out and support local efforts. We and I think they were on several this year because we we responded to 12 events, and that's us going out and helping local firefighters. And then we also had temporary staff supporting timber management for them, and then we will be entering into a good neighbor agreement with them to continue to support their forest management activities. They're because of staffing constraints, they have the financial resources, they have the timber management charge, and so we're offering support. Are those FTEs or,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: like, positions, authorized positions?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: These are, I think, are the authorized positions. When we actually get to the division budgets, I will show you the position and actually the because in many cases, the FTEs are lower because we have several staff that are part time, maybe working 80%. So our FTE is a little lower. Okay. This is just a little bit more about our divisions and what they do. Our administration division, I think I can say they keep the lights on for us. Honestly, they, as a team of 11, and they do all of our fiscal management budgeting, purse personnel oversights, contracting grants, accounts payable. So really just keeping everything moving so then the program areas can do the good work and service out into Vermont. Forest, lock program areas here. I think it's seven different program areas. Everything from forest economy, watershed forestry, urban and community forestry that works downtown, forest health, wildlife fire. So really robust, but our goal is to keep our forest forested, healthy, and resilient, and managed well. Against state parks, we're really lucky to have I think it's the crown jewel of the Monarch State Park system. They're they're fantastic. I think our our sweet spot is customer service. We really take a lot of pride in into that. The people come, they feel welcome, they get the service that they need. And then lands administration and recreation. This one's it's interesting because it actually has, like, three different areas of work. We have a land conservation sort of bucket here. So we conserve land that will eventually become part of ANR's portfolio of lands that we manage, and we also do conservation that is as easement on private landowners. So that's one bucket. They also do the recreation, which includes a a lot of recreation grants out, but also supporting our partners and thinking about the long term vision of outdoor recreation in state. And they also support the overall lands administration for the agency of natural resources. So have an agency function where they help our state lands in the planning and management sort of portfolio for the agency. So that's sort of our overview of FPR. I went quick because I know that you've seen it you see it every year. This is an opportunity for us to share on two line items that were in the last year's budget that were kinda beyond sort of our general appropriation. One of them was a $250,000 one time grant to the Serve, Learn, Earn program. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but it's a good. It's a fantastic program that's workforce development, with several partners. One of them here today with Audubon Vermont, but it's also Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. Vermont works for women and Resource Vermont. And they really are workforce development in areas of thinking about, like actually, I wrote it down here. Building trades, conservation, agriculture, and education. One of the things I really love about Serve, Learn, and Earn is that beyond, like, the workforce training, they really have a suite of wraparound services for those participants. So in addition to sort of the trades, they also get, like, the wellness support. They get coaching for job placement. So it's a really good full package program, and they really have outstanding outcomes. So it was a pleasure that we were able to pass through funds each year to serve, learn, earn. And we are actually a beneficiary because several crews work on state lands and do a lot of work in our park system and on and our trails and even forest management helping us remove hazard trees. That appropriation was granted out in August and work is underway. Continue it, serve, learn, earn.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That was a one time appropriation, but have there been previous years where we've also put in one time money for that?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yes. There's couple years ago, I think it was actually even a $2,000,000 one time appropriation when there was more funds. I will also share last year that there was a $500,000 base fund that was put in FPO's budget that will continue, but it was in our base funding. So last year, there was really 750,000 that went to serve learner, 500 continues this year, and then the 250 on top was one time funds. And we maybe we'll

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: get to it, but is there also one time money in this year's budget or just the 500?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Just the 500 base dollars, not one time in our budget at this time.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And I guess I'll just ask the question that probably we'll ask for all things that sort of fall into this category, just to help us understand if that money weren't there, if that 500,000 or the $2.50 in this case hadn't been budgeted, what would not have happened?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I can't answer directly for the program, but I would say you'd have less participants going through the program. I know last year because of some federal money decline, I think they were 15% down. So they pull money from federal side, state side, and philanthropy to really kind of make a big package. I do have some stats here that I wrote down. 2025, they enrolled 128 new participants and served a total of 280 participants. So I would assume that would go down quite a bit.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: These are it tends to be younger for monitors?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Younger than young adults.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Adults. Yep. Mhmm.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: There were this is in 2025, 194 service projects and 56 in over 56 communities across the state. 22 affordable housing projects, 15 community construction projects, 73 outdoor recreation projects, one flood recovery project, and 30 habitat improvement projects. So workforce development, but really tangible projects on the ground. Thank you. The next one time item was $275,000 for f FBR to purchase a pipe six fire truck, wildland fire truck. I think we were probably the only state in the nation that the state did not have a wildland fire truck. This is not something you go down to the local fire engine dealer and just buy. We have been working with BGS to put out an RFP. I was hoping it would be dropped this morning, but it's not there yet, but it's going to be up there any day. And we anticipate the bill will still be about a year to eighteen months. It's it's customized. But as we are responding to more wildland fire incidents, having this apparatus available to support bonds is really important.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Is that type six or a class six? Oh, the type six. Okay. Okay. Because a class six is a, like a six wheeler or a light 10 wheeler. Or and I don't know what a type six is. Perhaps it's like a three fifty or f five fifty with outrig with all the

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I I wish I could give you the detail.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I'm excited to see it when you get it.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I'm gonna send you all a picture.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: A picture.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. I'm gonna send you a picture. It it the the I think it's perfect. It can go in, like, recognizing that when we're called out to a wildland fire, you're going to pretty rough terrain. So you've gotta be able to travel in areas, like, off roads and then also have the hoses and everything else you need. So it's a little bit more nimble, I think.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And when you get it, Jed and I like to be there for the unveiling and the opportunity to drive it.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Well, you can come in to trade me. It's getting

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: higher.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Amy, what happens in the event that a wildfire needs aviation to We've

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: got it this year.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah, so we can do a lot of talking about what it's like for us to respond. This year in particular with the drought was very we were on high alert all summer. In fact, our staff was out straight for a long time. And we start to prepare. So we have agreements in place with with the forest service and with partners through the Northeast Forest Fire Compact that we can call in resources from surrounding states. The forest service staged a helicopter here this year, and we actually used it on a fire in Williston. We were able to drop 11,000 gallons of water in Williston in, like, thirty minutes. And we chose to do that because there was infrastructure around, with telephone communications and housing around, so we figured it was just best for us to take care of it quickly. So we're monitoring and start to pull in the resources when available. We had crews lined up from other states that were ready to come into Vermont if necessary. So we're just making sure we're, the local team does what they do to respond, then we pull it up at a state level. And then if necessary, we reach out to the regional level to support.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So how do you budget for that? Well, that's difficult.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: This year, in the past two years, actually had to put in a BAA request for expenses. This year was a little over a $100,000, which is mostly overtime for our staff because we are on call all weekend long or responding. It was off of the helicopter. And then we also Green Mountain National Forest will come out and help us for twenty four hours, but after that, we have to pay them. So those were the three buckets of expenses that we had. But we're trying to figure out that, and we're hopeful that we've we have some proposed language that we have in house of ops that will form a task force to look at what we need to be better prepared to respond to a large event in the future. And that would be like, what are the resources we need people wise, funding wise, equipment wise? So we're not doing that work after we've had a large fire in the state. We're trying to be proactive with that.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Would FEMA ever reimburse you for

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yep. There's an FMAC program where FEMA will reimburse us, but it's gotta be really urban infrastructure. So we're not New Hampshire has tried and have not gotten funding, but Connecticut had a 2 and a half million dollar fire, and they were able to get it. So we're not quite sure, but there is an equivalent sort of FEMA of wildland fire. Has to be over a $100,000 for Vermont, then we can pull in resources on a single event.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I think the National Guard have they have a civil res response team. Did they assist in any of

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: They did they did not assist in that this year, but we do work with them collaboratively and are looking at how we enhance that partnership into the future. We're doing our best to train as many Red Card staff. We I mean, couple of years ago, we probably had eight in FPR. We're up to 22, and we just had a training this morning trying to recruit more. And then we're thinking about what it looks like to recruit more red card volunteers across the state that we can sort of pull in when necessary. So that's one of the pieces that we're trying to figure out. How do we build that capacity? But it takes capacity to build that capacity.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Like this is something that we might Sounds like the committee might wanna know more about. Absolutely. Larger questions. So

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Okay. We're really fortunate that the governor recognizes the value of outdoor recreation in the state. We have the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: This

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: is a steering committee that helps support the economic growth, stewardship, and well-being of Vermonters through outdoor recreation. We've had a grants program that has primarily been funded by one time funds. And in the governor's budget, he's proposing $500,000 for grants. This funding really is local economic impact. It really supports downtown, small businesses, tour tourism, and rural communities. It also supports stewardship of our trails. It leverages lots of partnerships, municipalities, nonprofits, regional organizations. You'll see them all here tomorrow. I think there's 120 people registered for tomorrow's event. Through our grant program, we have given out so far 85 grants in all 14 counties. That's a picture of where grants have been funded. We did not have any funding last year, but in f y twenty five, we had $6,000,000 in funding. And we had $13,000,000 that we could not fund and 70 other grants. So the demand is really great. Communities are ready in the pipeline to go. So we have invested $11,000,000 so far. So this is just a really great opportunity for us to maintain our outdoor recreation grants. I know it's not gonna meet the demand out there, but it will still keep the momentum going forward. I do have two projects that I could share with you that sort of highlights sort of the impacts of these grants. In wage fields, they received a little over $400,000 in grants. And the key benefits, like, I wrote them down. I got this off the chamber their chamber website. It supported a welcome center that had all the information about the downtown businesses, the recreational assets, had a trailhead amenities. So when people got to the trailheads, they also knew what was going on downtown. There was a bridge over Millbrook that supported pedestrians and mountain bikers that then allowed access to 60 miles of trail. So it really just expanded the recreation network. They improve downtown crossings for recreation to make it safe for all kind of recreational users and really an investment in sort of the stewardship of the trails. The commerce say it drives business growth, increases visitor engagement, strength of community engagement, and supports sustainability. So for five about $400,000 investment, you really have some proven community results. And in Danville, with just under a $100,000, they transformed the historic train station to a recreation hub. They updated the bathroom to make it ADA accessible. At the hub, they provide information about the recreation assets in Danville in the region, and also opportunities to shop, eat, and explore in their community. I have we have a ton of quotes about the impact, but this one just stuck out to me. Increased sales have been reported due to trail users entering the village. So these grants really are sort of the three pillars of economic development, stewardship of our trails, like taking care of the land, and then also sort of that well-being, getting Vermonters and visitors outside. So their request here is a $500,000 to continue to support the grant program.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Very good.

[Amy Schollenberger, Action Circles]: That's

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: do do you get, like, in Wakefield or Danville, is there a community match dollars or or fundraising done by the communities to put towards these projects at all? Or are they relying a 100% on

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I can't believe I cannot answer that question. I don't believe it's full a 100%. I do believe there's a grant match component to it. Do you know?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: I don't know for sure, I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: know the building that they transformed in Danville was their old recycling center. It was, I mean, the frame was there, but it wasn't much of a building. So I'm assuming that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Other funding funding involved.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Okay. You know, chairman, we really owe Pat Leahy and senator Sanders a big thanks because the Danville Hardwick all the way from Swan to Saint Jay, the funds that and the the vision of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, That's where why this it's it's impacted some remote, not mainstream communities that's opened up all sorts of East Hardwick. It's been

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: fantastic. I'm not certain, but I think this isn't the only state investment that was made to help build that trail over the

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: years. Yes. This was really meant to be like this is a Danville project for the train station, but lots of money from the state and also federal government the trail. And then the agency of transportation is the managers of the of the trail that trail network.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: This is helpful. I I just wanted to say that I don't think we were asked to make room in our calendar tomorrow for anybody coming in for outdoor recreation day, which which is fine. I'm sure that people are busy and we have a full day tomorrow. But I'm just thinking that we took two hours of testimony yesterday on a million dollar grant program request, and we're taking another two hours this afternoon on the same million dollar request. So if you feel like there's more that the committee should know about this program, I know we've looked at it in the past.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We would love to share more about it. It's highly impactful program for this really

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: small I'll check-in with the committee, but I don't want to take the time now just to see in general what things we'd like to hear more about if anything. So this might be one of them.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. Happy to. They would do a much better job of

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: telling us. And I'm not offering you

[Unidentified Committee Member]: more knowledge than that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: necessarily, but maybe some additional thought.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So that's the one time community grants. The next new item that I'll share with you is really budget language proposal. We have it's called the Lands and Facilities Trust Fund. And this is a fund that is managed by the treasurer's office in a high interest account. And all the funds that we get from uses of state lands, so think commercial, like think of power, communications towers, or licensed and special use permits, or timber sale revenues, all go into this fund. And then we can use a portion of that fund, 5% of that to actually do stewardship work off the ground. So we're looking to do some modernization of the language of how this fund is utilized in three main categories. One is where the language sits is under the agency of natural resources authority, and it says forest parks and recreation. So this is just a technical correction to change it from FPR to ANR. The other piece is is to clarify the eligible uses. Most of the funds, the funds all go to stewardship on the grounds. We'd like to expand the language to include administration support because we most of the money goes out in contracts and to be able to keep a little bit of the funds in to support our business office mainly that does all the grants and contracts because we can't we can't get the money out if we don't have the in house capacity to do that. So we're just asking for a little bit clarification so we can actually keep some for that administrative piece. And then to go from 5% to 8%. And we're sharing that we're considering that upgrade because of the health of the account right now. We have about six little over $6,000,000 in the account. We feel like if we go up to 8%, that account will still grow, and we will have additional funds that we could use on the ground for stewardship. Representative Nelson.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I'm on the waterfowl advisory board, and we have a little over $3,000,000 in our fund from ducks stamp money, and we had 600 and somewhat $1,000 to spend, we spend just the interest, we don't spend all the interest every year. So when you're drawing down, you know, percent or, you know, 5% of a you said you have 6,000,000 in

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: there? Yep.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So you would be able to draw down 300,000 at 5% or you just spending the interest or

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: That's a guy.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Well, this is perfect because I was the financial director at Fish and Wildlife and had oversight of that fund. So the way that the Lands and Facilities Trust Fund works is basically we can go back to previous 12 quarters and that's where the 5% comes out. So we take the total account, the total principal or total principal and interest in that fund. We can budget basically up to that 5%. So right now, the way the fund works is we don't dip into the principal at all. We use basically combination depending on the year of the earned revenue from that year and maybe interest. Based on the variables that we're using here, we expect that in the beginning year we'll generate about $570,000 of income annually under this plan that includes both earned revenues and interest. So under those assumptions, basically the overall fund would continue to grow. So our projections show that it would reach about $7,000,000 in FY34. So you'd see that we'd be able to put more dollars on the ground, use some for admin time and still continue to grow that fund long term.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: We also this year, the we requested that the funds we covered get extracted now and moved someplace just in case we have a hiccup. Like we did in what year was it? 2221?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah. Right around there.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: We all took a hose in?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yep. Yep. So the proposal is to change the distribution from five to 8% of an average value. Why 8%?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yep. So basically the modeling that we worked on. So what we did is we looked at the earned revenue, which is from a combination of sources for the fund. We looked at the interest rate and then we also received a small amount of donations to that fund. So what we did is we looked at three year, five year and ten year averages for each of those. And then we took whichever was the smallest growth rate for all of those, basically built the model and we wanted the fund to continue to grow in out years so that based on all of that math where you get at is 8% allows the fund to continue to grow up 1% a year gets us to that $7,000,000 in FY34. So if we had gone to 9%, the fund wouldn't really grow much. So, we felt comfortable with budgeting conservatively that that 8% would allow the fund to grow still long term.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm sorry, I missed the 7,000,000 by 2034. What's that?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: So right now, at the end of fiscal year twenty five, the entire fund was $6,250,000 If we change it from five to 8%, that entire fund would still grow and would grow to 7,000,000 in FY34 is our projection. So it's trying to provide an understanding of at 1% a year, basically that fund would reach $7,000,000 in seven years.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So that's just a fun fact. That's not the whole extent of your topic. Correct.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: It's sharing, it's going to continue to grow even if we make the change.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is that assuming market growth at any rate similar to what we've been seeing?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Right now we are assuming 5% return for the interest rate. Looking at the last three years, it's been 10% in the trust investment account. So that's the statement. We have two options for investments. We have kind of like your checking account, like you don't really see much and then you have the trust investment account. That's where higher education fund, the duck stamp fund, these funds all sit and the treasurer's office manages that. So that the last three years I looked at the reports and yeah it's been 10% annual growth. So we're going 5%.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Wasn't the duck stamp fund the first ones to say, hey, we want our money working harder for us? I believe that

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: was 2012. Tom Decker, was the director of operations was the one that kicked that off.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And I was on that committee and we're the ones that requested it.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Well, me taking that experience from fish and wildlife, we're trying to apply something similar here. So another step that we took with this is over, was it last fiscal year or two fiscal years ago, FPR took the same approach. We're now We benchmarked to keep 90% of the fund invested in that higher yield trust investment account, which models the Duck Stamp Fund to again make sure that we're generating as much interest as we can.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm pretty proud that we did that.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: That's a conservative estimate. Sean, did you have a question?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No. Your hand is up. Great. Somebody okay.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I just could show you something on the show if you're interested. I kinda thought about it and broke it out into three categories. There's on the ground projects, trailheads. Example, this year, funds are gonna go to Stope Pinnacle, adaptive mountain bike trail at Little River, Shrewsbury Peak, visitor infrastructure, think of fire towers. We have eight fire towers on state land. They need rehabilitation to preserve them, but also for safety reasons. So some funding is going to fire towers. People love them. I know. They they are a recreational asset in the state and a real draw. And then we're gonna be doing a design for a dam removal in Underhill State Park. So that's sort of the on the ground projects. There's also some we don't have a lot of money for operations of of just general operations on state land. So this really helps with the poor land stewardship and public safety, Hazard tree removal, forest health, and ash mitigation. We have to remove ash because they're infested with emerald ash borer in high use areas. Bahamas East State Park is our highest ranked risk area, so there'll be funding going there. And then just overall vegetation management, like mowing along roadsides and introduce invasive species control. And the last one is workforce and capacity. We bring on state recreation trails crew, we train them. Think about areas that are outside of state park, like Willoughby, high use area. We don't receive any revenue coming in. It's not a gate controlled area, but we do have to staff it. So these funds help sort of all three of those categories.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: We got to preserve paraquat so they can introduce invasive species. Goes on contact. Do

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: any state parks have endowments? Like do they come with endowments like your jaconic ramble one, you're buying it from somebody. Sometimes they leave an endowment?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Sometimes we do have funds that would go into park special fund. We do in this particular land facilities trust fund, when we do acquire new lands that will go into A and R portfolio, we do try and get stewardship funds. We've started that over the past several years because recognizing that we will need money to care for those lands. So we do get funds and it it goes into this pot. Any questions on that before we

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: move on? The Pinnacle Trailhead Trails. Thank you. That's one of the most popular, if not the most popular and the trail needs work. Well, there's been any parking, they park for three quarters of a mile long.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I know we did just do parking investment up on the the meadow side. I can find out some more if there's any other plan, but we're always trying to work with the town and make improvements where we can. If there's available space for it, sometimes we're constrained by, you know, we don't want to put any more impacts on the land if it doesn't work. So sometimes that's why we're constrained. We have a, what we call, we call it project pipeline. And it is, we put our projects on state lands through a sort of review process by criteria for public safety, hazard mitigation, then later access. And we rank them and we give them funding based on the priority. We have a $13,000,000 list of projects, and I think we have about a million dollars for all of our funding. We put federal money on the ground too. So we'd have a huge backlog of projects, and that was just for this year.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: John?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Just quickly, how many fire towers in Vermont?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Eight. Well, I don't know who.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: On state land.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah, eight on state land.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: I see it at least replacing some of those steps.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yes, I agree, 100%.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Big value.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: 100%. We did put some federal dollars here as well. We got some money from economic development authority that was based on supporting outdoor recreation. We put maybe almost probably $5,600,000 towards fire tower. So we try and pull for wherever we can.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: know I'm going fast. I put it a lot that they're asking us to give you updates on. So federal fund updates. If we look back to f y twenty five, I think last year I was here, we were all nervous. We didn't know what was gonna happen. Turns out FY appropriations, while there was a lot of confusion, turned out to be that there was really no material financial impact to the FPR programs. Our funding came through like it had in previous years and we didn't lose any competitive grant funding that was at risk. So that was, that's good. FY '26 that was just passed maybe a week ago. Again, confused, like worried because we're pretty much zeroed out in president's budget, passed by Congress, we're pretty much level funded again, which is good. We anticipate some increase in the land and water conservation fund. This is funding from the National Park Service. It primarily are funds that come in that we grant back out or put on the ground on state lands. We will see an increase because the revenue from this comes from offshore energy projects like oil and gas, and that's increasing. So that should go up. And then we are seeing a slight increase in urban and community forestry funds. If we actually do get those in Vermont, we'll probably grant those back out in our grant program to communities. An update on ARPA funds, because we did get $3,300,000 in ARPA funds, which need to be spent by the end of this calendar year. We had three major categories, state parks, three acre stormwater management. Basically, just like everybody else, the state parks has to meet the three acre stormwater rule, and it's quite an investment. So we have funds to go to help us there. We have 19 parks that trigger three acre. We gave out funding to support urban tree planting, both at the municipal level and on private property. And then parks major maintenance, which was I think a wastewater project in Underhill. We are set to spend those by the end of the year. We have about $89,000 left at 3,300,000

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: John? Just quickly, do you also track partners out there in Forest World who may have lost money like Northern Borders?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Northern Borders was actually okay. Yeah, there was one that we're still hoping maybe will come through with the regional conservation RCPP through the NRCS. And there was funding to go to support landowners with projects, forestry projects on the ground. That was a $10,000,000 grant that still has not been through. We weren't involved in that one. It was passed through money to others, but it's indeed the department of environmental conservation was the grantee, but it has a forestry component.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Like government shutdowns, those affect like our national forest?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Well, the national forest could speak to sort of the changes that they have. Certainly staffing is something that's changed for them as well. The government shutdown for us was more just, we have less partners to work with during that time and things got delayed on our grants for sure.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The money up on the slide here does flow through the agency budget. So state budget, of this is directly going to anybody else. It's all part of the budget. Yes,

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: these are part of our, well, ARPA funds happened previously in our budget, but the other federal funds will come to FPR. A lot of it does go back out. We sub grant that a lot of funds to communities and partners. Yep.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, it's good news that the confusion hasn't been We're watching it,

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: we're very engaged with our national organizations. Yeah,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: the 89,000 that is on the spanner with the plan for that? Is it gonna get

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: That is going to the three acre stormwater projects and they're basically encumbered in a I mean, basically the projects are selected. It's just they haven't spent the money all

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: the way. There is a plan to spend.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Oh, Yes. Okay. Actually, we're gonna be overspent in the end. We'll have to be capital dollars.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. I'm just wondering if

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: the 3.3 from ARPA is appropriated covers

[Unidentified Committee Member]: something that cover all the costs. You mentioned 89,000 is gonna be up from the as well. How much is

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: it is the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: state having to pay for that?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Well, have, we're really fortunate that we get funds in the capital appropriations and we get about, I mean, FY '26, we got the state parks $3,500,000 to support infrastructure. So that's also helping to fund things like the three acre store mortar. We'll go over the capital dollars to help fund that. Our actual asset needs on state parks, if you look at, we have $280,000,000 in assets. If we're gonna look at depreciation and need for investment each year, we would need $7,000,000 a year. So we're doing the best we can in hitting our priorities and trying not to defer maintenance. But the reality is we're not keeping up with our portfolio like we should.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm just curious, just that three acre stormwater management part, How much that?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Interesting if you

[Unidentified Committee Member]: have a ballpark idea.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Of the 3.3, I think it was 2,000,000 of it was appropriated for State Park three acre stormwater out of that 3.3. So, and then 1,000,000 for the urban and pre planning block and then the rest for parks major maintenance.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: But we That's

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: how the split happens.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. I think you're asking also like how much is our total anticipated cost to meet the three acre stormwater rule? That's. And we have, I don't know the number, it's 19 state parks and I don't know, 7,000,000.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We'll have you dig into that.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah, I'm happy to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just wanted to kind of have an idea of how much is

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: taxpayer dollars. Imagine a three acre roll out in the middle of the woods.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Well, these are in areas that have Yeah, they have the impervious area and that's pretty much 90 of our developed state parks. If you think of the roads networks.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Parking

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: lots. Yeah, parking lots and you think of the roads around the campgrounds. Okay, part of

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: the assets. Yeah.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I think you're going to start hearing more from Steve. Think we're to skip over this budget.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: We'll cover this in much more detail so we don't have to do the high level of it.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We well, Okay. I can do this one real quickly. So basically in FPR, we have five different appropriations. So we have five different line budgets really within FPR that roll up to our overall budget. One is state parks. They're basically by division. You have state parks, land administration, recreation, forestry, our administrative team, which includes the commissioner's office. And then we had this small fund called Forest And Parks Access Road, which is about $230,000 to support maintenance of our 600 plus miles of roads on on FPR lands.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Total budget 600 miles.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Probably a little bit more, but yes, 600 miles. And total budget's about 55,000,000?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: 53,600,000.0. Is

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: that federal and state funds?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah, that's federal funds, state funds, special funds like financial facilities trust funds, state parks special funds, general fund, that's everything.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So percentage wise, we're about a third federal. How much is probably 40% park special fund, then the rest is general?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah, it's 17,000,000 of state parks special fund.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative O'Brien?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Jen, do you have any idea how much we're down because of Canadian visits?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah. Our Canadian our state parks this year just saw under a million visits. More day use than camping. Day use brings in the numbers. Camping brings in more revenue. We were 60% down in our Canadian visitation this year, that definitely had an impact on our overall budget. And it's just a re that's the reality of where we're at right now.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: All right.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Let's Okay. So this gets into our our budgets a little bit more. This is the administration division. I I shared with you what they do. This gets into those position counts. We have 13 positions here, including our business office and then Kate and I, the commissioner's office. 12.75 FTE because one person is part time. We do have one additional position. I talked about the Lands and Facilities Trust Fund. Federal government in the past couple of years has recognized they're passing us millions of dollars, but no funds to do admin work. They're now giving us admin money, so we're able to hire a position with that, which is great. New this year for this division is we have $33,000 proposed in vacancy savings. Can you explain that a little bit more? Sure. I'll it and you can probably clean up after me. When we're doing our budget, in order to get to the number that we're looking for, We're anticipating that we'll have some vacancies and how much we're not spending on salaries and benefits because we'll have vacancy. Right now, actually in the admin, we have four vacancies right now. So there definitely will be vacancy savings. I don't wanna ever see forward things, but the reality is it's just part of the churn of employment.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So out of the 13 authorized positions, right now there's only nine ish people.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Most divisions are more fully staffed. This one just had a turnover moment.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So you could achieve that vacancy savings by hiring, by filling three of the four positions, roughly a year, three and a half?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Just by natural process of hiring, there'll be time when that vision is vacant and we'll be saving money. And

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you said it's new this year to budget for that?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yes, we had not budgeted for it before, but it's certainly a lever that we included this year. It was And it's real. I have the biggest savings. Okay. Just an idea of sort of what the business office does. We're asked to share sort of outcomes. I mean, business office is insane. 250 contracts a year they process. Think of all the state lands, work state parks, everything from plowing a trailhead to a 300 or $3,500,000 maintenance shop. And then we have umbrella contracts, outbound grants over a 160 a year, incoming grant make incoming grants over a 100 that we're managing, 19,000 account payable transactions. The parks buy a lot of stuff, to sell you. And you have to. Think about ICE and all the food concessions, and this is a lot. And then they oversee our payroll, which is a lot. Okay. Now I'm gonna pass it to this one to the next one. Okay. This is our budget for this area.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah. So this is some of you are probably familiar with this. This is the budget development form. So essentially the chart on the right, I've tried to consolidate a lot of those lines because they're duplicative and basically boil it down to the key changes on the left. So for the admin division, basically what you're seeing is the normal increase in salaries and wages plus that additional position. So that's $110,000 The vacancy savings that Commissioner Bitsko had mentioned. And then essentially we're just increasing our cost of increase. We're going, we're looking to meet that. So there's an additional $15,000 for legal services. So all of the attorneys and general counsel, they actually are from an organizational perspective, part of the agency of natural resources secretary's office. However, they are also embedded in departments. So departments basically pay the agency of natural resources secretary's office for those stats. So the $15,000 increase for that. And then the items below you'll see insurance, there's a $13,000 increase fee for space, which is essentially lease cost $35,000 and then vision, which is the state's accounting software. Contribute to that with all departments. There's a $35,000 increase. And then last but not least, there's a net decrease in the agency of digital services cost by $113,000 For FY27, the Agency of Digital Services, they changed their billing model. So essentially what happened is they have something called the service level agreement, which used to basically capture software costs. Has part of that has been now rolled over into this new building called core enterprise services. So there's this this happened in the FPR budget where because the service level agreement was mostly in the admin budget, you're going see a decrease. But as we go through the other divisions, you're actually going to see a rather large net increase. And just to kind of give you a perspective for the agency of natural resources as a whole, our agency of digital service costs went up by about $1,450,000 It's about a 76% increase and that's been distributed to the individual departments and divisions. You're going to see pieces of that through each of the different divisions. 76? Yes, for our agency, yes.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: So you can see there's up, you're not seeing the upward pressure in this one on that, but the upward pressure is in the other budgets. Okay, Greg.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thanks, Jared. So it says a positive 35 k vision of ISF. Is that what what is total of the vision of it ISF?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Let me double check-in on that for you.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm just trying to see, is it increasing 10%? Oh

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: yeah, it was 14%. Some examples here, the fee for space was a 15% increase. The vision piece was 14%. So those are some examples of the comparative percentages.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: To get a baseline. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: So understanding.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And what was the percentage increase in healthcare?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Oh, that's great. I think we settled out. I think it was 10 to 15. Yeah, think it was 10 to 15. We did it in two phases this year with our budgeting. I think the first phase we budgeted 5% and I think there was an additional 10%. So somewhere between 1015% is where we landed. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Did the fee for space increase simply cover existing space? I know there's been a lot of conversation about the back to work order in house. In some cases, there's new rental space. And just

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: as a little bit of background, what's labeled as ISF up here is internal service fund. So that's when our department agency is paying another department and state government for a service. So, how those work is basically we receive just a notification basically, let's budget this amount this year. This is what the cost is. Don't have like some of our other expenses, like the itemized movement. One of those departments, this would be BGS in this case, that would know what those moving parts are for that increase. But we didn't expand our footprint. No. Thank you.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Move to next. Yes. Okay. This is our division of forests. We have 64 staff. We do have two new positions that are grant funded funded on a limited service. We received a $5,000,000 grant. We were worried about this one coming through from the forest service. We were gonna hire four, but we're hiring two just to be cautious. So they're on board. Our total count is 63 FTEs Because of the salaries, I mean, the staffing size here, our vacancy savings is about 155,000. And I will pass it I won't go through these, but you can look at them. Like we were asked to show some measurable outcomes. So we report on some outcomes each year. So there's examples of some some of those that are in there for you. I'm just gonna go because I feel like you probably want budget stuff. No. Forgot about this. We were also asked to share on grants that we give out and anticipate what was happening in '26 to what's happening in '24. Forestry division doesn't have many grants that they put out, but there's two. One's called communities caring for canopy. These are grants that support local communities in sustaining and growing local urban forestry programs. $40,000 in f y twenty six. We anticipate $40,000 in f y twenty seven as well. If we do get more federal dollars, then like I mentioned, it would probably go right to this grant program. In previous years, we've had funding come in. We're able to offer three, four hundred thousand dollars, but I don't we don't know the federal dollars right now because we haven't seen those at the state level. And then wildland fire gear grants. For rural fire districts, we offer a fiftyfifty gear purchase, like PPE, hoses. We give them the money to go we used to actually buy it and they'd come pick it up, now we give them the money to go buy the gear. No change there as well, unless we get more federal dollars in. Okay. Back to Steve.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: All right. So you'll see some similar things here. So the net salaries and wages increases, again, that's benefits and that's also those additional positions are captured there. There's a $1,000,000 decrease for economic development authority work that was a one time grant that was awarded to FBR in

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: probably twenty four, three or four.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: So basically that works wrapping up and so it comes off of our budget sheet. For FY27 FPR, there's an additional $300,000 budgeted for clean water funded work that goes through the clean water board and the clean water budget process, which is separate from our annual budgeting process. But essentially there's an additional $300,000 for work there. The forestry division, they have an $80,000 decrease in their insurance internal service fund costs. So this is part of the property and commercial insurance. So there's two different types of insurances that we pay for. You'll see also in the state park slide there's another large decrease in that property in commercial insurance. And then for this division you see the large increase in ADS. So this is 2 and $63,000 up on that already completely offsets and shows a net increase when you compare it just to the admin division. And then there's an additional $1,100,000 budgeted for federal funding.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Speak to the very top line above the actual spreadsheet. I think it shows the sources of- Yep. Just so we know what the framework is. Yep.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah. So luckily with FDR, all but one of them is very straightforward. So the first column general fund that's coming from the state's general fund. Next is clean water. That's money that flows through the clean water budget and board. The special fund that is all of the division or department special funds. That can include the state park special fund, lanes and facilities trust fund, all terrain vehicle fund, the snowmobile fund. I think there's you have maybe 10 to 12 different special funds. So it rolls those all up. And then we have federal funds. And then the last one there is interdepartmental. That is money coming from another entity in state government. So it's another department paying for service or maybe us paying another department for service.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So the yellow line at the bottom summarizes then that basically adds up the column above. And if I'm reading it correctly, the federal dollars that are expected are expected to increase by 1,300,000.0. Yep. Correct. And that's because How do we break that down? Why is that happening?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah, mean, the main driver there is there's a new IRA grant that the forestry division receives. That 1,100,000.0 of that 1,300,000.0 is captured just in that single new grant. Representative

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Lipsky.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Go ahead. On the Clean Water Fund, are any of the slow camp funds included in any of these?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: No, there's no funding in our budget right now for slow camp. I know our team came and presented to you on that. Becky? I can't see what time it is, but I'm guessing we're getting close.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Right. Are we okay? We are yeah. I've checked in with our next witness and let them know that we may be running a little bit late. Okay. So I I think we'll let's keep going. Okay. Sorry. Was there another question there, John?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I just wonder. Where do the ski area lease

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: That goes into park special funds.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Special funds.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yep. And that's actually the very next one. Quickly, 50 positions, almost six positions, FTEs, and then vacancy savings of 70,000. The metrics for state parks, they're awesome. Here's the budget number.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. Hopefully, you need to rush to work. You wanna

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: you wanna be sure that I know you have the other ones you can or you have in your PowerPoint that you can-

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: with this one, looking at the key changes portion, the first three items there, so net salaries and wages, salaries for temps, and then the unemployment compensation and catamount health, Those are all increases basically to meet the cost of the workforce in FY '27. So as Commissioner Fitzgolomew mentioned, there's about four fifty seasonal employees that come on every year for parks. So with those temporary seasonal employees, there's a cost of living increase that you'll see there. Again, vacancy savings newly budgeted in FY '27. And then there's a few different cost increases here. There's an additional $160,000 for removal at state parks for emerald ash borer disease. And I think that you remember what the full cost of that, because I was right, this is a partial.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We're getting money, also money through the land and facility trust fund. We definitely don't have we're doing our best to hit the highest priorities where we can, but we'll be seeing money for EAB for years to come. And then there's an additional $65,000 budgeted for repairs to the island runner, which

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: is the boat that runs to Burton Island State Park. So there's that piece and then $70,000 for ice and food. So this is inflationary pressures. The park system, they purchase these items to then resell to campers and they use just seeing a large increase in those costs. There's a $460,000 decrease for property and commercial insurance. This is the result of there was a large increase last year due to the previous year's flood. So as we kind of move along in time here, those insurance costs have now gone down because of the volume of claims. And then you'll see another increase here for Agency of Digital Services, just over $200,000 for state parks.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is there a budget, you mentioned some large number a few minutes ago, 70% or something? 76% increase for

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: the Agency of Natural Resources. Yes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And are other agencies seeing similar increases? Are they just ramping up what they do? Or is there something else happening?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: So my understanding is that they've been operating basically with a deficit for years. And this is an attempt to partially correct that deficit and basically true up their bringing in the amount they need to provide this level of service that they currently do. So it's not like a huge increase in service. It's trying to correct basically past year's deficits. Okay. But I would ask ADS to talk about that. That's just my understanding. Representative O'Brien?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I just wonder what happened to the island runner. You know, you you give us those those fake passes. And I was like, I'm gonna go to Vernon Island, then I heard, oh, it's we'll have be here.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We couldn't get it fixed in time and get services, but the goal is to have a boat available for this year to get people to the islands.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: That's ideal.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: And then we have a long term strategy of buying a big another boat that will serve at the runner and also sort of our land craft that could take garbage and wood back and forth. So we have, like, a three year plan out for getting people to Burton Island and stuff.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Their drought last year, they must have ran it up on a reef.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I'll tell you what happened.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good job. Another question here.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: You've heard from me before about

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Oh, I know. The Cina

[Unidentified Committee Member]: fund, the coin operating showers. We can't give people free showers. What would it cost in our budget to give people free showers in our

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I will ask that question.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just find it so embarrassing compared to other states that we make people put a quarter in there to get some a shower.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Oh boy,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: done. Have to fund another quarter. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So where's time for quarter? People,

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: keep the line sorter.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: At least you can maybe upgrade and use your phone so you don't have to find a corridor. Don't I just it's

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I would

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: be out a lot, I don't know if could get

[Unidentified Committee Member]: small Contracted services be way down on contract services.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yep. Oh, That is a big bucket. Contracted services, from electricians and plumbers that need to come out to the parks to provide service. It could be.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: I would.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah. That's purchase. That's purchase. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, it's anything that we have to hire somebody out for to come to the parks to do work.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Others and that also we've got

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: vision, ISD, of this is

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: wrapped up

[Unidentified Committee Member]: in employment costs. Correct? Is food and reimbursement to employees? No,

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: that's purchasing food for resale at parks. Oh, Yeah. So yeah, when you when you boil down this budget, I would say over two thirds of the increase is related to staffing. The, you know, just keeping the same number of folks at work at the parks.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Land administration, smaller division, 17 staff, just about 17 FTEs.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You're proposing two new positions there.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: There's one new position that came on board. The position that was, I believe it was transferred from the secretary's office to that division for the wider lands planning work for the agency.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Correct. We have funding from BHCB to support ANR lands planning, and then there's funding to support Act 59 inventory and work.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: And then the other position is we changed software systems for budgeting. Last year was Vantage. This year's Adaptive. One of those positions wasn't captured in the old system. So this is it shows two, but actually it's really plus one, but we just wanna make sure it all reconciled to our budget documents.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: First time for vacancy savings here as well at 35,000. Great metrics about the work they do in this division. They, as I mentioned, they really give a lot of grant money out. Lands and water conservation fund, that's a big one. We get about 3 and a half million dollars each year from from the National Park Service. The money is meant to be split 50% in house on state land and 50% out to communities. The way we grant out is because it's so much money, we do it every other year. So in FY '26, it was 3,300,000.0. There'll be none in FY '27. And then in FY '28, it'll probably go up because I mentioned that was on the increase, maybe $3,600,000 in FY '28. It's just an administration of our work. So you'll see zero this year. And then recreation trails grants, this is we have some money from Federal Highway Administration, a little bit of money from the state, from a gas tax, about $75,000. We grant out about $600,000 a year. We anticipate doing that again. Those are really this is really trail related work with land and more conservation is like facilities, and you can do anything from a playground to a swimming pool and also land conservation that supports outdoor recreation. So that's what that bucket's for. What do

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: you budget for an FTE?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Around depending on the pay grade, but I'd say about 150. 150?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah. With your fully loaded benefit rates and it'll be It depends. That's just kind of our standard rate. And then sometimes less depending if we look at it.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We just wanna make sure we're budgeting and then if they take it depends on what benefit package they take, we wanna make sure we have enough.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: And then also, right, there's like your laptop cycle, Travel. Cell Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Good.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Represent front of me. The slide before that, that stuff down at the bottom,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: is that from last this?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: This is from FY '25, which we report at the end of the calendar year.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's information over a period of the year.

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

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: All right. So this division budget is pretty interesting because there's a lot of large dollar amounts moving around, but actually, we get down to it. Not a whole lot has changed. So you have the normal salaries and wages and vacancy savings that you'll see for the first two items. This division had a $68,000 increase for the ADS billing changes. And then you'll see there's a 4,100,000 decrease in land acquisitions, dollars 3,800,000.0 of that being federal funding with land acquisitions and budgeting for those, you know, one or two large projects can really swing that amount. So what you're seeing here is in FY '26, there was a large project budgeted that's coming off the books for FY '27. So we're just reconciling that. So looks like a large decrease, but it's just because that project will be completed in FY '26. Next you have the land and water conservation fund. So basically what you're seeing there is your $4,200,000 increase in contracts and a $3,300,000 decrease in grants. And that's part of the land and water conservation fund cycle where every even or odd. Even grants out. Every even year it grants out. So that's when we have a large grant amount budgeted. Every odd year is where we keep that money in house for projects. You're just seeing that cycle there. And then the last item is there was a fund twenty one thousand seven hundred seventy nine, which I think was called the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps Fund. It was a legacy fund. There was no revenues actually flowing into the fund. The fund is zeroed out for whatever reason that number had been carried on and budgeted for, but we have no revenue. So no way to spend it. So we backed that out of this year's budget to true it up. Yeah, no impact on that line item.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I thought the history there, that'd be helpful. I think we need to keep going. I'm sorry. You guys can chat offline.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: The last one is, I mentioned Forest And Parks Access Road, we get to about $230,000 put on the ground for road maintenance activities. All this money goes out between operating costs and contracting services that does not support any backing money. It's really just on the ground work. And this budget sheet's pretty easy. I just State that the rest is all reports, legislative reports, performance reports, pretty much.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We can peruse at our leisure. Yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So what was your total budget increase adding all your different fields together?

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Overall, was a decrease because of the land acquisition, the $4,100,000 for land acquisition. So it was actually, I think, just around a million dollar decrease. So I think we went from 54,500,000.0 to $53,600,000

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So if we level fund you, you would have a million dollars for working land. Okay, good to know.

[Steve Gomez, Chief Financial Officer, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources]: Only funding sources have ever slipped out.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: If we were to isolate that little anomaly, is there a clear way to answer the question?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: We built the budget with a 3% general fund increase. Pressures were greater than that. And so we made up a lot with federal dollars. I think we did budget a little bit more than the 3%, not much. And we increased, we were hoping to get more revenue through our parks, through the parks special fund, and then really relied on a lot of federal dollars. And we've been very fortunate to be very competitive there. But I will anticipate, because right now we have higher inflation reduction act funds and some of the ARPA funds, those things will start to phase out. So we will start to see a decrease probably in federal funds in the next couple of years, unless something, the pendulum swings again.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: This has been a really productive hour plus. Thank you for the new work that you were asked to do this year. I think maybe to not get too much farther off our schedule, we should stop here because I'm not seeing any hands. Individual community members, feel free to reach out directly, I would say, Kate if there are questions, and we'll have a chance to discuss this and see whether they may or not have people come back in on. Certainly, I mean, could have, I'm sure we could have sat here for another hour really and thought we were going to look at some of the spreadsheets, but they're very helpful. Thank you.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: Yeah, thank you for your attention and great questions and happy to answer any more. I took some notes, we'll be getting some things back to you. Great. Thank you. So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: committee, we have one more agenda item before we break for lunch and we're not sure

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: who we're gonna hear from.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Amy. I'll set you up. Yeah. Great.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: And

[Amy Schollenberger, Action Circles]: can you speak to how much time you're gonna allow for

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: us Okay.

[Amy Schollenberger, Action Circles]: On your schedule?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We had we had budgeted twenty minutes. If we give you fifteen, which puts us a little bit into lunch, we can have you finished, come back certainly at a time that works out for everybody. I apologize for the fact that we're running a little bit late.

[Amy Schollenberger, Action Circles]: No problem. So I'm going to make the suggestion that you hold your questions till the end then, so we can get our testimony. Is it okay to start? Yes. So for the record, I'm Amy Schollenberger, and I'm here actually representing several of my clients. And I'll explain that in a little bit, but I'm joined by Connie Beale, and Ivy Enoch is on, the screen. And also, there are some folks here from the Parent Child Center Network who aren't planning to testify, but, they're part of this proposal. So they're sitting in for moral support and also available for questions later. This a proposal. But it's also more than a budget proposal. So what we're going to talk about today is the proposal for benefit assisters to be funded in community service provider organizations. I submitted a handout about the proposal that's on your I think Patricia posted it on your website. I don't have other written testimony. I'm just going to tell you a little story. But the main thing that I want you to know is that the proposal is fully outlined in the handout. I wanted to let you know how this proposal came about and what it actually is proposing to do. And then I'm not going to go into the big details about it, but I'm happy to sit with any of you or come back. So last spring, we, the Action Circles team, my team, realized that federal impacts were going to be serious and create some really thorny issues that the state was going to have to address. At the time, we didn't know what they were going to be. We didn't know how bad it would be or whether some of them might even be good, but we knew something was going to happen at the federal level that was going to impact the state in a major way. So we wanted to help our clients have a measured and judicious response to the impacts while ensuring the best possible outcomes for the people of Vermont. So what we did is we worked as a team at Action Circles and created a framework for our clients to use that asked a series of questions about, what do you know about the impacts on your organization, on the people that you serve, on your budget? All different things. And how can we, rather than just coming into the legislature with our normal way that we do budget requests every year, can we come to the legislature with requests or proposals that are actually responding to the context that we're in? And all of our clients work through the framework. And interestingly, independently, a couple of our clients came up with a proposal to have benefit assisters funded in their organizations. Some of them already do this work, but not at the scale that we're proposing. And some of them, you know Like, we have a lot of coalitions, so some of them, like, a couple of the organizations in the coalition had Benefit Assisters, others didn't. So we flagged it as like, Okay, we're hearing this from multiple clients. And then I saw an op ed that Connie Beale wrote. She's not my client. And I was like, well, it's the same proposal. And then we started hearing it from other places. So at that point, Joint Fiscal Committee was meeting and allowing testimony. I went in and testified about this at the Joint Fiscal Committee, just saying, This is something that's coming up. I want you all to be aware of it. And then we heard from more people, Oh, we're thinking about this, too. So Connie and Ivy and I worked together. We sent out a survey to as many community service providing organizations as we could get to. Common Good Vermont also helped and asked, Do you want to be part of this? Do you want to help think about it? And we pulled together a coalition to build the proposal and calibrate it to the capacity of the organizations that were contemplating this and also the need on the ground. So we've been working with a little over, between sixteen and twenty organizations, and the ones that are The logos are on the back of the handout are the ones that are, included in the funding proposal. Plus, there's also funding included in this number, and Ivy will talk about this a little bit, to meet the increased people stay connected to their benefit programs, particularly SNAP and Medicaid. They may also enroll them in other benefit programs, but this proposal is really focused on SNAP and Medicaid. And the reason is because our state is at great risk for many, many people losing these benefits. And that's terrible for the people and their households. It's also terrible for the state. Millions of dollars coming to our grocers through SNAP would be lost. Millions of dollars supporting our healthcare system through Medicaid would be lost if people fall off of these programs. So it's kind of a win win win to keep everybody on, and this is an organic proposal that came from the community of service providers to address that issue. So Ivy is going to go next, she's going to, if that's okay with you, Chair, she's going to sort of dig into the snap side of it a little bit. And Connie's here to sort of explain how she's with Working Bridges. She's gonna talk about what that looks like and also what it looks like to actually work with a person to do the benefit assistance. Thank you. Yeah, that's fine. Ivy, we are trying not to

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: have it run too late. You can help us understand why this is important to have now.

[Ivy Enoch, Hunger Free Vermont]: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Chair Durfee and committee members. For the record, I'm Ivy Enoch. I live in Burlington, And I'm the policy and advocacy director here at hunger free Vermont. And I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss with this committee, the strength and the importance of benefit assisters in communities across Vermont. And so every month, I facilitate a meeting of 30 to 50 people representing organizations across the state who serve as benefit assisters for three squares Vermont among other programs directly in their communities. This is called the ThreeScores Vermont work group. And our mission is to reduce barriers and maximize participation in ThreeScores Vermont. Attendees at the ThreeScores Vermont work group include the 10 official SNAP outreach grant partners of the state who work to increase access and awareness to ThreeSquares Vermont, and who will be impacted by the reduction in the federal share of SNAP administrative costs come October year. So it also includes, in addition to those partners, which are community action agencies, area agencies on aging, the Vermont Food Bank, It also includes Vermont Legal Aid, healthcare centers, as well as partners from NOFA Vermont, staff from Economic Services Division, who are responsible for administering three scores Vermont and members of our congressional delegation staff. So this is a group with many years of experience and expertise in navigating not only three Scores Vermont, but other Medicaid, Medicare fuel assistance applications, and in connecting people to programs like Crack Cash, which I know you are very familiar with. So this group is a really essential core group of benefit assisters and partners. Collaborate on and we develop tools to overcome stigma, gaps in awareness, organize joint outreach efforts across the state and really learn from each other about application assistance, best practices, and study program roles to ensure a depth and accurate understanding of the policy. I think this group was especially important at two critical moments in the last couple of years. The first that comes to mind for me is emergency response during summer flooding. As you well know, Vermont endured catastrophic flooding in 2023 and 2024. And during that emergency, many folks lost their homes, saw damage to their homes, including loss of groceries and three's grocery month participants were able to receive replacement benefits to compensate for lost food. And we're temporarily able benefits to buy hot foods at grocery stores. But the question is, how do you get the word out about this very technical, very temporary availability in such a moment of crisis. And the Three Scores Vermont work group of benefit assisters really played a critical essential role in communicating this information to communities, including being trained on how to actually help folks request those replacement benefits. The second critical moment was and still is responding to those historic snap changes passed in the federal budget package HR one. This bill, as you know, went into effect July 2025, and really marks the largest ever cut to snap and Medicaid. So it made deep funding cuts and eligibility changes to this program. And I know you have heard testimony from my colleagues and others on the details of those changes. But I just want to remind us of those eligibility changes, and the fact that they went into effect in October 2025. So there were changes to how households report monthly utility costs, there were changes to the existing work reporting rules that limit access to three scores Vermont to three months in a three year period for adults. And then there were changes in eligibility for many immigrant community members. And in total, those changes impacted more than 7,000 ThreeScores Vermont households, either by terminating their eligibility or requiring them to report new information to keep their level of monthly benefits. And ThreeSquare Vermont, while it is our most effective food security program, you know, it is also a complex program and benefit assisters help people decode this program, decode the application process, understand what documentation is needed to verify their information, what to expect in the mandatory interview. And I think the importance of this service really couldn't be more apparent than when we saw those major changes in eligibility with HR one, right? The Three Spores Remote Workgroup worked and continues to work really closely and tirelessly with the state agency and with each other to ensure a comprehensive understanding of these changes, and how to communicate them to clients, how to answer questions about confusing notices, and support folks in keeping their benefits if they still qualify, or help explain why folks may be lost benefits. In addition to Three Scores Vermont work group, Hunger Free Vermont hosts quarterly trainings on three scores from eligibility. So we cover application assistance, best practices, positive messaging, outreach strategies for benefit assisters. And last year, we trained more than 800 people in these processes to inform their benefit assister work. And between work group, these quarterly trainings and the institutional knowledge that just exists in community serving organizations, we have a really strong network of benefit assisters. And Vermont is often lifted up as a model for other states, because these trained benefit assisters, they not only ensure a really unified understanding of ThreeScores Vermont statewide, but they support our state agency as they process applications that are completed accurately, done in partnership and support by a benefit assister. And this is really important in the effort to maintain a low SNAP payment error rate. So benefit assisters improve the human experience of navigating paperwork, phone calls, and documents to access basic needs support like money for groceries. And it really can't be over stated that benefit assisters are responding now to many complex program changes and greater needs. And investing in this existing network of benefit assisters at trusted organizations across Vermont will, as Amy said, have a multiplier effect by helping eligible people continue to receive those federal three Squares Vermont benefits and keep those federal dollars flowing to our grocers and our farmers and our overall economy. I know we all together want to ensure the best possible outcomes for people living in Vermont and benefit assisters exist to do just that in their communities and in your communities. I thank you so much for your time. I know we're eating into your lunch hour, and I look forward to discussing the value of investing in this existing network of compassionate experts further. Thank you so much.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, thank you, Ivy. I wanna be sure that the committee just understand what we're talking about here. Everybody kept the idea that it would be to fund physicians that would make sure that eligible Vermonters, eligible for SNAP and Medicaid and maybe others would be able to get those benefits. They can be confusing. Think we all know how things can be confusing. I know we're not talking about Vermont Health Connect, but I could have used a navigator, a more accessible navigator on Vermont Health Connect. And I know we had another witness. I'm wondering whether we could just keep it very brief because

[Connie Beal, United Way Working Bridges]: I see you're hungry and I won't take a lot of your time. I won't read word for word what I have to say. For the record, my name is Connie Beale. I am United Way's Working Bridges Director with United Way of Northwest Vermont, which is a program that is shared between Green Mountain United Way and United Way of Northwest Vermont. I am a working parent of two children, and I live in St. Albans City, which I love. And I'm here today to share a little bit of perspective from working Vermonters and employers we partner with in Northern Vermont. Over 30 employers that we work with across 44 different work sites, with a reach of over 20,000 individuals who are working and are adult learners in our community college system. Our work at Working Bridges is really about helping employees keep jobs and advancing jobs and to really have financial stability to be showing up to all of the demands of our days. And I'm here with this collaborative to share the perspective of helping people who rely on these benefits to show up to their jobs. The team of resource coordinators that we work with provide benefit assistance. And just to name the impact of ensuring that eligible Vermonters have food helps people to show up at work. It helps them to stay healthy, to have health care access also helps keep them in the workforce. I know you know these things, and in my written testimony, you'll see some data points that might help shed light on that and what I'm referencing. But as Amy shared, it's a win win win. It's good community economic development if we're supporting people with their most basic needs, especially as we face a workforce shortage and need more people to be working. The folks that we serve at Working Bridges rely on food to take care of their families. Hardworking Vermonters use Three Squares Vermont to help feed their family. We know a good job alone does not guarantee stability, and that's where we come in. We work with employees confidentially in workplaces and help them navigate complex resources in community, both hyper locally, statewide, and even nationally. It's our role to serve Vermonters so they can stay at work. They can go back on a manufacturing line. They can go back and take care of patients. We're mostly working with essential workers through our program and folks who have great jobs, who are well benefited, still need services like Three Squares Vermont. I share an example of an employee that I recall working with recently who, due to household changes, went through a very difficult separation, was at work and approached me as their resource coordinator and asked what they could do to help feed their family without having enough funds to spread around. We know food is the thing that people will opt not to get when they don't have enough. It is that they will eat less. They won't get the food that they need to stay healthy. They will use that money to pay other things that are so essential, like transportation and showing up at work and being able to put gas in the car. And we see that every employee that we connect with. And this person in particular had children at home. And while they earned well, were well benefited, they didn't even know they were eligible for three squares from a lot. They didn't even know to ask. And when I talked with them, they had to kind of come to me and accept that they were asking for help. And it's a very hard thing to do because in our culture, we believe that if you work and you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that you should have all of your basic needs met. And we know that's just not true. People, you know, have all sorts of things that happen. So that's the story. Ultimately, being able to help that person right at work to complete that paperwork, submit it, helping with computer access really met their need. This hyper individual way of supporting someone confidentially while respecting the dignity of work. And what I can share is through our program and through that relationship and that trust that we build over time, we can connect back and forth. And now that person knows they have a trusted person they can connect to when they get increased verification requests, when they get the request for work authorization information, when all that person has is a smartphone. And then there are additional barriers and challenges that really, really really want to drive that home is that the community organizations that we partner with and we work with in this proposal, they are the trusted people for so many of our community, for so many of us. We really rely on them. So I will leave it at that because I can see that you're very hungry. I can feel that. And so I want to let you get to your food. But I want to thank you for your time, your service. I also encourage you to support the proposal, to look at it, ask questions, review the material, follow-up with us because we would really love to answer questions as it relates to food, food access, and making sure workers can eat and show up.

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation]: And thank

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you. Thank you staying a little bit late. I don't personally think I knew anything about the program. So it's always fascinating to hear what's going on out in the rest of the state.

[Connie Beal, United Way Working Bridges]: Thanks for having time for us today.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Ivy. Thank you, Amy too. What I'm gonna suggest to the committee is that we've got a very full afternoon and of course a hard stop for the floor at 03:30. If we could get, and and I wanna also recognize that y'all be kind to, a, eat and b, maybe return phone calls, etcetera. Maybe we could be back here at 01:10 sharp for the second half of the bed. Yes.