Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Nope. While you're while you're getting that set up, I'll just say a few things to the committee here by way of the morning announcements. We're thank you for being here at nine. We have, again, a full slate of testimony this morning on all of these different bills that we're looking at, And then again, this afternoon. So lots of work in progress. And we're fortunate today to have additional testimony from Professor Bellman joining us remotely. He's not in The UK. He's actually in Maine this morning, he says, and we've got about a half hour to spend with him. If you'd like to just introduce yourself formally for the record, Steve, we can go ahead and get started.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Yes. So you can see my presentation now, correct?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes, we can.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Yeah. Okay, fantastic. So, yes, I'm I'm Steve Belmaine. I I'm in born and bred in Maine. So, I I grew up in Maine and I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Vermont But for the last thirty years, I've lived in London in The UK working at a place called the Natural Resources Institute. And much of my career has focused on trying to develop alternatives for rodent management. So this trying to get away from the use of poisons, I think is a good thing. Much of my work is focused on research in Africa, in Asia, and in Europe, trying to develop alternatives to the use of rodenticides. So I think fertility control is a real prospect. And so I would like to try to raise your awareness of some of the issues and constraints around using them. Shall I just carry on and go through Yeah, some of the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: feel free. And then if we have any, we'll try to let you go through. I think you said it's a short presentation. If we have questions, we'll interrupt.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Excellent, thanks. Okay, so I'll try to be quick and I think you'll have a copy of these slides anyway, that you can refer to them and ask questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We do, yes, thank you.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: So the first thing to raise your awareness about is that in The United States, there is an organization called the Bot Stever Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control. And I think they would be a good resource for you as you move forward about some of these issues. So I'm an advisor to this foundation and they are a source of information around fertility control for many animals, not just rodents, but they do have material on their websites specifically about this developments around contraceptives for rodents. So they're having a conference quite soon about this. And a lot of this of course focuses on larger animals, some of like some of the issues with wild animals, wild boar, wild pigs, wild horses that are are also causing sort of human wildlife conflict. And I don't think I need to labor this issue. This is happening around the world. More and more places around the world are trying to restrict the use of poisons because of the damage to the environment, to other non target species, and even to human health. So I think this is something that is going to increase, but we must make sure that we do this in a sensible way so that we can still deal with some of the very serious negative impacts of rodents on our livelihoods. So for a long time, we've been considering the use of fertility control. This goes back to the early 2000s where some theoretical work showed that fertility control should be much more effective than mortality control, particularly for rodents that have a very fast reproduction rate. So if you can stop them reproducing, you could have quite a big impact on managing their negative impacts on us. And number of organizations and institutions around the world are involved in this from different angles. So we have things called immunocontraceptives, a lot of plant materials that have anti reproductive effects and other products such as chemosterrilance and hormones. So I just want to, again, I put this in context. This is something that doesn't really happen in The United States very much, but in many parts of the world. Some of this video is from Australia where they have outbreaks of mice and it's very devastating. Some of this is also from Asia. These kinds of impacts when these outbreaks happen can lead to a famine and a 100% crop loss. And this is again, where an opportunity of fertility control to control these sorts of things could be quite useful in limiting those sort of outbreaks from happening in the first place. There's also quite a lot of evidence growing, and this is some examples of the research that I do where we're finding out that killing rodents actually can exacerbate disease outbreaks. So this has been shown for leptospirosis and even research in Vancouver and Canada has shown when you kill rats, you may make diseases like leptospirosis worse, not better. So this is a concern in the community where doing mortality control could be making matters worse in terms of disease spillover. We need to bear that in mind as well. I've got

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a question here. Yes, right ahead. Yes.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Can you just say a little bit more about that? Killing rodents makes more disease? How does that work? Can you just give me a few more sentences to understand that?

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Absolutely. So it's a bit counterintuitive. So what is happening? And there's a number of research projects around the world doing this. So when you kill rodents, those that are left behind, you're never going to kill all of them. But if you kill a large portion of them, those that are left behind, then you open up habitat and those rodents that are left behind move around more. So that what that movement means that they're picking up diseases and spreading those diseases to places perhaps where those diseases were not there before, but also you're changing the demographics of the rodents themselves. So you're killing animals and then the response of those animals left behind is to increase the reproduction. So they replaced their numbers very quickly, But what that means is all those young juvenile rodents that are created have naive immune systems. So you're actually then end up with a population where you have more rodents that are excreting the pathogens into the environment. So this has been shown very well for Lassa fever in West Africa, which is a rodent borne disease. When you kill a lot of the rodents, they actually increase the number of rodents in the population that have arena viruses that cause the Lassa fever, and this then triggers spillover to the human population. So it's still research and it has not been validated in the context of what would happen with fertility control, where we think this could be actually managed better with fertility control, because we won't cause those large animals that are maintaining their territories to die. And we wouldn't then have them moving around and then creating a lot of juveniles suddenly that are more susceptible to the disease. Does that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: help? Yes,

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: thank you.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Okay, great. I just wanted to say a few words about some of the products that are available in The United States. These are only available in The United States. Nowhere else in the world is fertility control being used for rodents. So there are some products that you have available which are sold on the market. The first, the well known one is ContraPest and this is sold and being used. I know it is, but I would be a bit cautious in saying just because it's been commercialized, people are buying it, That is actually working as it is supposed to be. So the compounds, this compound with BCD, which we'll call for short takes quite a while to have an impact in rodent. So in the laboratory, it works great, but remember in the wild rodents have many different food sources. And the challenge with VCD is that they have to eat it on a daily basis for quite a long period of time, up to say two or three months before it actually starts to limit their reproduction. So evidence in the field suggests it may not be working. And this is part of the problem is that there is very little evidence in the field action of using ContraPest and it's actually limiting reproduction. There's also another compound in there called tryptolide, which is a natural product extracted from a plant, which is known to be quite toxic as well. So again, I think we should be a bit cautious just because this is being sold. It has been EPA approved. Does it actually work as it's supposed to? I would say the jury is still out on this. There is very little independent research on its use. So there are some colleagues that have tried to do some research on ContraPest and does it actually work? And it's really very inconclusive. So this is work that was done in Germany and this is sort of looking at what is the impact on males and sperm production? And it kind of says, we don't know still. And if you speak to some of the experts who are well known in The United States, like Bobby Corrigan, who's done a lot of work in Boston, he's currently doing a trial in New York City through instruction from the board in New York to do fertility control, he is so far not finding much evidence from previous trials and the ongoing trial that this is actually working as instructed. So again, I'm not trying to say this doesn't work, but I would say we need a lot more evidence to show that this is actually working and not actually killing the rodent. Elsewhere in the world, so in The UK, we're trying to develop a contraceptive through immuno contraceptive for gray squirrels, which are, so the gray squirrels are from here in The United States. They've been brought over to The UK and they're taking over and out competing our native reds and people don't want to lose our reds. So there's actually a lot of ongoing culling programs around trying to get rid of the gray squirrels. They're quite a problem, not only for the reds, but also they damage our trees. So behavior not observed in The United States is that they debark our trees and kill our trees. So there's a lot of reasons we want to get rid of the grays. And so this is work where again, in the laboratory, we're trying to develop an immunocontraceptive to control squirrels. But again, this is not available yet. So there's a lot of ongoing work around this. There are other organizations trying to develop these sort of immunocontraceptors. So this is a foundation based out in California that's actively looking into develop for fertility control for rodents through a food bait. But again, this is early days. This is work in the laboratory. I think it could be quite promising and that this could be very species specific. It won't harm other animals or humans and have a very good effect. But again, it's only in the laboratory at the moment. For other products you might be aware of in The United States is Evolve. This is a compound also made by the same company that makes ContraPest. This is not EPA regulated. So EPA has said it does not need to be regulated because it's just a natural compound. Cottonseed oil is the main ingredient in EVOLVE. It has to be fed again to rodents over a long period of time. Gossipol is the main active ingredient in this. It is also a toxic product. And again, we're not really sure if this is working in the way it should. There's very little evidence from the field. It may work in the lab. Does it work in the field? We don't know. Another product that's being trialed, again, it's being used in a number of different places across The United States, but again, it hasn't gone through regulation yet, is an extract from the thunder godvine. So this is where this tryptolide compound comes from. There are a number of other compounds related to tryptolides like tryptanide. This is from a plant that has a history of use as in Chinese herbal remedies. So people have taken this in the past to try to cure things like cancer. It's anti inflammatory. So there are these sort of medicinal properties to it, but I think it's also very dangerous. And if you talk to any clinicians about this, they would never be prescribing this because getting the right dose is quite important. It is known to be toxic and people have died from taking this. So it is something we should be also quite cautious about. Is it actually causing a reproductive effect or is it just killing the rodents? I don't know. There's no evidence of either effect happening. And so again, I think we need to take some caution. Evolve is being sold. People are buying it. But does it actually work as a contraceptive? I think the jury is still out on that. So there's other compounds again, that are not commercialized yet where, again, there's a lot of work here. Other compounds might work much better than what we are currently using. But again, we'd really need to do a lot more research to see if that's going to happen.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll see if we've got

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: another question here. Yes, go right ahead.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Well, I was just going to say we had somebody testify for our committee who had sort of, I guess it was a pilot study using the Wisdom Good Works product. And they had said that their rodent population was reduced, basically maintained and reduced at a level of 83% less after using this on an ongoing basis. But I don't know how a single pilot project, like how would that factor into these other kinds of studies that are happening?

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Okay, good. I think there's a lot of questions we need to ask ourselves here. So one of the things with fertility control is it actually takes a while to reduce the population. So if you think about reproduction, rodents do reproduce quite quickly, but to see a real decline in the population, it will probably take somewhere between nine to twelve months for you to really see the rodent population decline. That's assuming that enough of the rodents have actually eaten the bait. This is another real question is in order to reduce the rodent population, you'd have to have at least 70% of the population eating a bait. Otherwise, most of the rodents haven't eaten it and they'll just carry on reproducing. The kind of impacts that Good Works and this triptyline based compound are seeing are much quicker than that. So they're running these trials for three, four or five months and showing that they've reduced the population. In my mind, that suggests mortality, not fertility control. So the way they're monitoring this is by how much of the food bait is being consumed from their bait stations. So they put out good bites and then they keep topping it up and keep feeding the rodents. And then after a while, the amount of bait being eaten declines. So that is what we do with rodenticides. Rodenticides when the bait declines, you assume that you've killed the rodents. So again, what kind of other evidence is provided? I have not found any evidence besides this sort of bait take assessment. That in my mind suggests mortality control, not fertility control. I want to see more evidence that this is actually causing a decline in reproduction. To do that, you need to catch some of the rodents and see, has it actually changed their ovaries, their testes, are the hormone levels in these rodents reduced? Far as I'm aware, none of that kind of work has been done and published. So again, just to try to think through how these things are working and what kind of evidence is there behind that. So it's easy to say 83% decline, but that I think is just not realistic the way this is being used. Okay, thank you. Okay, great. So some of these other, I'm gonna go quickly through this, because this is work that I've done on using synthetic hormones that humans have used as contraceptives. I think it works quite well. There's a lot of research around this. It's not used in The United States. And this is partly because a lot of these products, they're endocrine disruptors. So this is a product that's available in Tanzania where I do a lot of my work. So there, this product is again, and being used to regulate these big population outbreaks that I showed the video of. So I'm not going say much about this, just the fact that we have done quite a lot of laboratory work, as well as field work comparing fertility control to mortality control, which again, I think is something that's lacking in The United States where if you're going to show fertility control works, what are the comparisons? And these good byproducts are not being done in a replicated comparative way where you can show that how does this work in comparison to doing nothing or using another alternative such as a poison to kill rodents? Then you can actually see what is the impact in that sort of context. So I think that I'm coming to the end here and it's just really trying to, again, ask some questions here. What are the environmental impacts of some of these products? VCD doesn't accumulate quite the same level as rodenticides, but it still is a persistent product. It doesn't break down immediately. Triptilide, I think is quite toxic. Again, much evidence of this online from many, many studies that tryptolide and tryptolide. And so these products in Good Bites, as well as ContraPest are toxic to humans and many other animals. I think there are a lot of questions about how these are regulated. EVOLVE isn't regulated at all. So it's just been put out there with no regulatory oversight at all. So the other thing I was mentioning about that, you've got to deliver this to a large percentage of the population. I think that's incredibly challenging in an urban situation if you speak to people. How would you do that? I think we're not doing that with mortality control. With mortality control, if we kill fifty percent, we think, Yay, great success. But if you're not getting at least seventy percent of the population eating a bait with a fertility control in it, it's not going to work. All the other animals will just reproduce more and you'll be in the same situation. So I think the main question that we must ask is we're not going to use fertility control indoors. If you've got a rat in your house, you're not going to feel it feed a contraceptives and let it just be there. And so remember, this is where most rodent control happens inside houses, warehouses, food manufacturing. All these indoor environments are really important in terms of public health. We can't use fertility control there. So it's really going to be outdoors and in agricultural situations where fertility control could be used. That might be a good thing in terms of managing agriculture, but it's not going to be a replacement for a lot of the urban pest problems I think that we have in cities. These are again questions for you, questions for everyone, really. I mean, there are a lot of problems with rodents that I think are sometimes overlooked by the people who are pushing for fertility control and the elimination of rodenticides. And this does relate to social justice, sorry, and economic out, where you are on the economic ladder. I think a lot of poor people have huge problems with rodents. They're getting in their houses and the people who are asking for rodenticides to be banned are people who might not have such a problem with rats around their own properties. So, do again think we need to think about how banning rodenticides will affect some of the poorest of the poor in our communities across the world. I think, again, just try to put it in context about some of the harms. People being bitten by rat bites. This happens a lot in Africa, but it happens in The UK. It happens in The United States as well. People in New York and many city areas are living with rodents quite in a problematic situation. So we do have to think about the environment. It is really important. Also need to think about and put that in balance of the harms that rodents are causing to us. So, there's a lot of advocacy out there. I know that, but again, we need, again, just remember, we want to do this in an empirical way. We really want to understand is contraception an important part of that. So my last slide here, just again, I think there's a lot of things we need to do moving forward and understand, do these products that are already available, but are in development to make sure that they work properly? And so then I will end my presentation there.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you. We've got a couple more questions, I think. Representative Nelson.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Thank you. I got three questions. Steven, when did you graduate from the University of Vermont?

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: 1990.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay, I was '85.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, I did a biology degree there and then I went to The UK and did my masters and PhD in London. Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Nice. Is there is there any secondary, like a rodenticide, the big concern with rodenticides is secondary poisoning, owl, hawk, fisher fox, know, bobcat's eating rodents that are dying from eating a bait. Is there any secondary sterilizations

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: with these products? That's a good question. So that's one reason why in The UK and this Tasha Foundation are focusing on immunocontraception. So immunocontraception should not be causing any secondary impacts If you were a wild animal to eat something that had been feeding on an immunocontraceptive, there would be zero impact on any non target. However, can't guarantee that would be the case with some of these other products like VCD, which might persist in the tissues. I'm not aware of any research that's been done on whether this VCD compound is completely broken down in the digestive system or metabolized somehow. There may be something out there, but I've not yet come across that kind of work. Some of the other modes of action could indeed lead to problems like that. So synthetic hormones, for example, the work that I do in Africa, this needs to be metabolized as well. So if a predator was to come along and eat one of those rodents and it was still in their stomach and undigested, you could imagine some sort of impact on a predator that way. But there should be less impact with most of these means, whether it's evolve or ContraPest or wisdom good bites, should be less of an impact than what we observed with anticoagulants.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay, and my final question is, this sounds like a developing tool to be another tool in the toolbox to use in, you know, with rodenticides, with snap tracks, blue patches, exclusion, cleanliness and use this and you lessen the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: impact all the way around.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: That's absolutely true. So I think, we always talk about integrated pest management. We have a number of tools. We want to be able to continue to use all of those tools. We may want to put more restrictions on rodenticides, but we should not be banning them outright in my opinion. We do need them for public health issues and we can try to remove some of the negative impacts. Again, you should be looking to California. They've had restrictions on rodenticides for many decades now, and there's some very good research on coyotes in California, where they're showing even when you use rodenticides very safely and according to the law, urban coyotes particularly are still being exposed to secondary poisoning. It may not be killing the coyotes. So again, there's a woman called Niamh Quinn in California who's done a lot of research on non target uptake of poisons showing that the coyotes are eating poisoned rodents, but they're still living for many, many years. Is it having a negative impact on their health? Possibly, but so far the evidence suggests they can live quite happily with low levels of anticoagulants in their bodies. Even when we use rodenticides very safely in urban areas, we are still going to get some non target poisoning with rodenticides. So we're never going to get rid of it. Even when we use rodenticides correctly in urban areas, we will still have some animals getting access to rats that have eaten the bait, possibly not dead yet, but then they get eaten by a coyote or some other animal. So that might be something we just have to live with in terms of trying to control some of these issues.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bos-

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah, I got a message from somebody talking about the idea of electronic rodent monitoring as part of the way that you can reduce rodenticides, where you have an electronic monitor, and that way, if it'll show in real time if there are rodents, and then you put the rodenticide, but that way it decreases the use. What do you think of including something like that in our bill?

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: I think it's a fantastic idea. So some of my colleagues in China are developing bait stations and traps with AI where there's like a little camera in the trap that can tell which animal is in there, what species it is, and deliver the bait only to the animals you want to. So I think that's a fantastic idea. That's partly what we're trying to do with gray squirrel control in The UK. So the traps we're using there, we know we only get gray squirrels in the trap. So it's a weighted door. So unfortunately the red squirrel is lighter, so it won't trigger the door. It won't open for a red squirrel. It'll only open for a gray squirrel, an adult gray squirrel. Other animals like badgers and foxes and other things we have also are unable to access the trap. So I think that's a great innovation that we can certainly exploit, but we must remember. So even when we do that, the rodents that go in and eat the bait, they're going to come out of the station and they might still be eaten by a predator after that. So we're never going to eliminate the risk of non target poisoning, but we can certainly reduce it a lot more through that kind of technology.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We're about out of time. Does committee have

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: any other questions? Representative Bartholomew? Listening to your presentation, I kept hoping to hear about a product that you thought was really great for fertility control and I don't think I ever heard one. Did I miss one?

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Yeah. At the moment, I don't think the products that are available on the market or being tested in The United States are real alternatives, unfortunately. Rodent control has been plagued by snake oil salesmen since its inception. People make money out of selling these things. There are people selling ultrasonic emitters that send out noises that are supposed to repel rodents. We know they do not work, yet people still sell them, people still buy them, people still use them. So I think we always need to keep that in mind. Just because something is sold and being used does not mean it works. The reason that people are using these things is based on emotion. They want to protect wildlife. Hands up, that's a great idea, but that's not necessarily means that fertility control at the moment is the solution to getting rid of our problems.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And my other question is when we talk about electronic monitoring, what kind of price tag is that? If you have a small pest management company, I'm assuming that it could be prohibitively expensive, but maybe it isn't.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: If the right development is put behind it, it could be quite sustainable. So again, there's some good research from California and you can get rid of rodenticides and just rely on trapping. So trapping, it can be worked just as well as poisoning and trapping, but trapping is much more expensive. It's about four times more expensive than putting out poison because the pest control people have to check the traps. It's much more labor intensive. And do people want to pay that extra cost for pest control? And the answer is usually no. So we have to, again, think about, if we're going to use sophisticated traps, AI traps, electronic traps, they are going to be more expensive. Our people are to be willing to pay for that when the simplest alternative is just chuck out some poison.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I was laughing earlier a moment ago, Steve, because I think we have one of those devices in our pantry that emits a high frequency something perhaps that and I can attest that it doesn't work.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: There's zero evidence ultrasonic emitters work. The city of Hong Kong is implementing these things in their markets. The people implementing it and the Ministry of Public Health know it doesn't work, but the public and the government are pushing them to implement it. So it's great cost with no impact. It's a shame, but this is what happens in rodent control.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I want to ask just because this is the way the world works. When we hear about research in this country, university research, it's often industry funded. And I don't know in The UK how things work, but can you say just twenty seconds about who funds your research?

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Absolutely. So most of my research is funded through what's called the research council, so what we call UK Research and Innovation. So this is like the Medical Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council. This is funding that comes from the government, but it's independent. So it's an independent entity that you write grant proposals, they get evaluated academically. So that's funding that is not funded by None of my work is funded by commercial entities at all. It's usually from the European Union, which runs a big program called Horizon. And that's about collaboration across Europe and with other countries, UK research councils. I also have funding from an American charity called the McKnight Foundation based in Minnesota. So they fund agricultural research in East West Africa and parts of the Andes as well. But this is a charitable foundation. Some of my work in the past has been founded by the Gates Foundation as well.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you for that. And thank you for joining us this morning.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Happy to help. So if again, any queries in the future, you've got my email address, please just fire off a message. Happy to respond to anything in the future.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right. Well, I'm glad we were able to connect.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: Excellent. Great. Okay. Thank you. Take care. See you. Bye bye.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. A little bit later this morning, Bradley will be in here. We're going to look at some we'll do some marking up of that bill. But we now have the committee is able to turn his attention back to the Right to Grow a Vegetable Garden Bill. I think it's five thirty seven. Cameron is here from Ledge Council. He was listening in on the testimony we had earlier in the week, and I asked him to do some marking up on that bill. So when you're ready, Cameron, you can join us. This so what we're gonna see reflects suggestions made by the attorney who lives in the other day, and also the attorney we had in a few weeks ago who represented the Landlord's Association. I see a hand raised.

[Patricia (Committee Assistant)]: Yes, just checking. May I post the new draft which Cameron sent a few, you know, fifteen minutes ago?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Oh, yes, please. Think it's that Cameron, did you just send something that we're gonna look at now?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, sir.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. So yeah, feel free to post that on our committee page. Thank you, Patricia.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And Patricia, may I have a copy of your Zoom link for this morning?

[Patricia (Committee Assistant)]: Sure, sending it now. Thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so while I'm pulling that up, just to reorient, I was here yesterday and we talked about five thirty seven. That's the bill that provides a right for both individuals who live in a common interest community or individuals who are renters to grow a vegetable garden in areas that they have use of in either the common interest community or in the rental space itself. The week before you all went on town meeting break, you had some testimony from the Landlord's Association about that section of the bill. And I've incorporated a few of those, two of those minor recommendations or tweaks into the bill. And then I also made some additional changes based on the conversation that we had yesterday regarding the first part of the bill and common interest communities based on some some feedback that I had provided, but also some feedback from the attorney that you heard from Chris. I think her last name Jensen. Yes. Yes. So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And I'll just say for the committee's sake, we're Patricia's in the process of posting this. It's not posted yet. The system the electrons don't move as quickly for some reason buildings as they do

[Unidentified Committee Member]: in other places. Zach and I are storing things out, trying

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to fire up our ends. But we'll get Cameron the screen sharing facility, and he'll at least have it on the screen up on the wall. And shortly, it should be in our

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I am I am in the waiting room, and I am I am ready to go and and share. Here we go. One other thing I would just mention quickly right off is this version has not been edited. There's really only some very minor tweaks. So I don't think it will take long to be edited, but I just wanted to flag. I was drafting this up yesterday, last night, and this morning. So just bear If with have a misspelled word in there, feel free to call me out. But I think we're all good. I just wanted to comment on that for the record. Okay. The first piece here is the section one. And I highlighted this because I mentioned this yesterday. I've left it here, but highlighted for further conversation for you all. So as I've mentioned previously, in the common interest community space, the law governing those entities is really going to be dependent on when the entity was created. If the entity was created pre-nineteen ninety nine, then the community would be governed by the Condominium Ownership Act, which is entitled 27. And that's the act that governed condominium associations prior to this body enacting the uniform law that went into effect 01/01/1999. You made certain provisions, mainly around governance, retroactive at that point in time. But it was primarily a point in time. If it was pre-nineteen ninety nine, then you were under the Condominium Ownership Act. Post-nineteen ninety nine, you're under the uniform law. In 2011, you made additional changes to the uniform law, and you made another point in time, and you made certain provisions retroactive. But then at that point, 2011, this body put it into statute to say, listen, we're not having this retroactive issue going forward. Going forward, post 2011, if you were created after that date, you are subject to this act, and you are subject to any amendments that come later. So I bring that up to say that if you were to enact the section about the vegetable garden piece, who's it going to apply to? What entities is it going to apply to? It would apply retroactively to any entity that's created after 2011. And so if you want to go back beyond that, you need language and legislation to do so. So this first section is saying that it's going to apply to all of those entities pre 1999. And so the question then is, do you have any issues with doing that? And there is a possibility of a constitutional issue because this is amending contracts. That's what a condominium association or a common interest community is. It's a contract agreement between the association itself and the declarations that have been filed and the individuals who are purchasing a home in that community. You're purchasing the home under the understanding that here's your interests in that entity, and here are the rules that govern your ownership and what you can do with the unit. So it's a contract. So if you're going to retroactively amend those contracts, you do implicate the constitutional contracts clause, which says you can't retroactively impair the obligation of contracts. That's not just a blanket prohibition. There is a constitutional test that a court would look at to determine whether or not something was constitutional if they had retroactive application. For starters, the court is going to look at whether there is, in fact, an impairment of a contract. If there is an impairment of a contract, they're going to look at the substantial nature of that impairment. And then they're going to look at whether or not the impairment serves some sort of important governmental purpose. And what I would just want to say to you all is that's the test that the court is going to look at. There's not really a lot of case law analogous to this scenario, so it's a little difficult for me to articulate to you if you made this retroactive and someone challenged it. Is it gonna be upheld in court? It's somewhat hard for me to say because I haven't found a lot of case law that is similar in nature to something like this.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The date here that we're talking about, because I heard 1999 and 2011, just from a practical standpoint, if a common interest community were formed in say 2003, So between those two dates, is that going to be affected by our decision, or is it only associations that were established before in 1899?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: My understanding is yes, it would cover both.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. So really, we're thinking about what impact do we want this legislation to have, who is it going to affect? And it will be a larger universe if we enact the yellow language there. We're not sure how much larger.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, sir. That's the other key piece of information that I unfortunately don't have for you all is, well, Okay, how many of these entities actually were created pre-nineteen ninety nine? As I mentioned yesterday, the ones that were created pre-nineteen ninety nine can amend their declaration and come under the Uniform Act, and many have done so. And so I don't know how many would remain.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And then there might be somebody might challenge it in court saying, you can't go back and do this. Maybe offsetting that concern is the fact that we have heard testimony from the somebody representing the common interest community and never can get those words quite right. And with with some of the changes they suggested that that Cameron's gonna show us here in a moment, maybe there aren't gonna be any concerns. So that's my summarizing.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't remember her having brought up this issue in particular. I'd be happy to reach out to her if you wanted me to.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: She was in the bill as introduced. Yes, sir. Okay. Representative Bosom?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I can wait. Thanks.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So that's just a point of conversation for you all,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: as It's like you that we need to make a decision, but why don't we representative Bartholomew.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm trying to there's a lot of words here, and I'm trying to listen to you and decipher this at the same time. Which are the words that would make that true? Where it would play before 1999? It's in the sub three. Sub three. Here, I can try to pull up the statutory section.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So everything is high is highlighted.

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: I see

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it. Got it. So you did the very first sentence shall apply before 1999. Yep. Very, okay. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Representative O'Brien? Is there provision for common interest communities to withdraw from the 2011 universal? That's a good question. I don't believe so. I believe that let me double check. I think the statutory construct is, you you come under this agreement, you're not you don't have the authority to then go backwards. And representative Bascome.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So I guess I do wanna ask my question. So Maine actually has the right to grow food, and I just looked up how they did it, and they actually included a constitutional amendment.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Mhmm.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: You feel like we need to do that to cover it? Do we need to start that process? Or is this enough to just put it in statute?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It depends on what hierarchy you would want the protection to be. And what I mean by that is when you're looking at individuals' rights that they have, obviously, and for us lawyers, we look at legal issues, generally you start with the constitution. That's the bedrock document that kind of governs all of our protected rights and what the legislature can and can't do, the rights that you can impair and you can't, etcetera. So if you put something in the constitution, you're giving it somewhat of a higher level of emphasis, if you will, the statute can easily be repealed, as you all know. You've been acting and repealing and amending statutes every year that you're here. So if you put it in statute, it can much more easily be amended or revoked, etcetera. The Constitution, not as easily. The process of amending the Constitution is significantly more burdensome, I think, intentionally. But in our constitution, it has to be proposed and approved in one biennium and then approved in another biennium, and then it goes to the voters. So it's quite an extensive process. Takes four years. I guess to answer the question directly, I don't know that you have to put it in the constitution to give this statutory right to individuals. Mean, will, if you enact this provision, individuals are going to be able to point to it to say, you legislative general assembly have given me the right to grow these vegetables and prohibited landlords or common interest communities from prohibiting meat from doing so. If you were to put something like the right to grow in the constitution, it would just become more of a fundamental protection than if you had it in statute.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: It looks like Maine put it into statute in 2017 and then changed their constitution in 2021. So they were kind of, like, at the point that we are right now in 2017 and then also started the process of the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Interesting. We would have to lobby our senators because we can't start that process now.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Begun Was to over HOAs and condominiums?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Was it I don't know how it works in those cases. I'd have to go back.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I have to look at the language. I'm

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: sincerely apologetic. I have to go at ten. So, okay. The first amendment to the language that we have is going to be here in section two. And so this is the provision that would apply to common interest communities. As we've discussed, it has the definition of the vegetable garden. It has the limitation on the common interest communities in B1 saying they can't prohibit the use of vegetable garden in someone's exclusive space. And then there was discussion in the sub two yesterday. There was concern that was raised about if there is this approval that's required. The statute doesn't require the association to have an approval process. It just says the association can't prevent individuals from growing a vegetable garden. So the association doesn't have to enact bylaws or enact some sort of, if you're going to grow a garden, you have to get our written approval first. They can do that. They're not required to. And so what this section is saying is if the approval is required and then key language of the concern was raised yesterday's online for there. The approval or denial of an application shall be in writing. If the application is not denied within it was sixty days from the date of receipt, the application shall be deemed approved. There was some concern that was raised about these are voluntary board members that are members of the association that govern the association itself. And so there was some concern about maybe they need to defer to their legal counsel. Maybe they have to gather more information in sixty days, maybe too limited amount of time for them to make those decisions. So this proposal would extend it out to ninety days.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Richard Nelson. Yeah, I guess you want to plan well in advance because if

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you decide in April you want

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: a grow garden and you better wait ninety days, you're going

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to miss growing season. That's my only.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, I had that same thought and figured, yeah, if you want to be planting, you know, the

[Prof. Steven Belmain (Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich)]: May, you need

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to be deciding thirty to ninety days before that's February. And I guess most people are starting to think about their gardens in February because they're getting antsy. But it is three months, summertime. But the concern was that the boards might not meet more often than quarterly. They might not do it. All right, well we can discuss that, but anyway, you for And then

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: moving to page four, bottom of page three, top of page four, this is the section shall not prohibit an association from enacting a bylaw or rule that reasonably restricts the installation and use of a vegetable garden. So you have the right to have vegetable garden. And then this is saying that the association can enact reasonable restrictions. And then there is a list of statutory restrictions that that could include. And then there was discussion yesterday about the association's ability to control the erection of certain infrastructure or just permanent structures that may go along with installing or using a vegetable garden. And so I've added this sub one as kind of a beginning point of discussion. So what this would do is it's saying that an association can reasonably regulate the erection and installation of permanent or temporary structures to go with the vegetable garden. Keeping in mind some of the testimony you had yesterday from the attorney, there is a separate provision in the Common Interest Ownership Act that requires the associations to act reasonably. So even though they can regulate the structures, it has to be a reasonable regulation. And an individual would be able to challenge that if they felt that it was unreasonable.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And I think that we've listed here, there are five, now five items that are listed, and they're not exhaustive or Correct. And arguably, they're just here sort of to help people understand. But the existing law that you just referred to would give the in theory, give the association the ability to do this anyway.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The association has the right to enact bylaws and rules governing. So let's assume you didn't have this subsection C. I think the current statutory framework, the association would still be able to enact laws because the B, the prohibition, says they cannot unreasonably restrict. And so by implication, they can reasonably restrict. And then they have the separate statutory authority to enact the bylaws and rules to govern behavior and use of the spaces. And so I do think that they have the statutory ability to enact rules here. You're just signaling in this section to say, you can't unreasonably restrict it. And we're going to go ahead and designate these things as not being an unreasonable restriction. And so just giving clear signal to the association that you can regulate these areas, and statutorily, it's not going to be unreasonable for you to do so. And so it's not an exhaustive list. And the last thing I was also going to mention is that these are associations. The board members have to vote on these rules. They have to be voted on by the unit members themselves. So the community itself has input into how these restrictions would go into effect.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I know you've only got five minutes, Cameron. Maybe I should just let you go through the rest of the highlights, and then we can get questions in if you have time.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great. This sub D here is about, this was another concern that was raised, wanting to give the association some explicit authority to address violations that may occur. And so the D1, two, and then moving to page five, the D3, it's saying that if a unit owner is in violation of a reasonable restriction that the association has outlined, the association can provide that individual written notice and give that individual ten days to correct. If it's not corrected within that ten days, or if it's not corrected after that ten day period, the association could come in and correct the violation itself. And then the association could charge any costs associated with that correction to the unit owner specifically. There was conversation, if you remember, about, well, the unit owner has to expend resources to fix a problem that comes up because of one unit owner, technically, the financing of the association is by all members of the association. And so wanting to make sure that if they had to expend money, that it would be charged back to the specific unit owner whose violation is causing that need. Thanks. And then, Okay, so that's in the common interest community space. Those are the amendments that are there trying to address some of the concerns that were raised. I did remove two provisions, the D and the E. If you remember, there was a section in D about penalties and attorney's fees, etcetera. And I commented that there's already a separate section addresses that and provides remedies if there are violations of the entire act. So I did remove that. And then I removed the distinction between the condominiums. It included condominiums that we talked about not really being necessary. Or at least the distinction doesn't legally make sense in the intent of the legislation. Then you get to page five. So now we're moving away from the common interest communities and into the landlord space. And the only changes, there are two, is there was a comment about, I think that said tenants private space. And there was comment from the Landlord's Association that it wasn't really a term that was used in the landlord tenant world. I don't know that it has any real legal implication, but I've changed that to tenants rented space. And then there was discussion about security deposits. And so what I've added here in the bottom of that section is an E1 that says the landlord may charge a security deposit for the installation of a vegetable garden under sub B2 for the purpose of securing against damages or removal of the vegetable garden upon the termination of the rental agreement. And then the provisions of 4,461 shall apply. So what does all that mean? The reason I limited this to B2 on line 12 is because if you look above what you're saying in the legislation that a tenant has the right to grow vegetable gardens in portable containers. And so the landlord shall permit them to do that. And so I don't think you want to require a security deposit for something that you're saying the landlord has the right to do. However

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The tenant has

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the right to

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: do. Pardon me. Yes, sir. The tenant has the right to do. However, the B2, you're saying that if there is a space, if there's a yard, the landlord may authorize the tenant to install a vegetable garden other than what's contained in portable containers. And so the thought that I had there in drafting up this sub e was, okay, if you're going to authorize someone to actually install a raised bed or invest in a vegetable garden on the lawn or land that the landlord owns. I could understand having a security deposit for that. If tenant leaves, vacates the place, or has to be ejected or for whatever reason, if the landlord wants to secure against having to return that piece of land back to how it was prior to authorizing the person to install the vegetable garden, I could understand wanting a security deposit there. Under the first piece where you're saying that tenant has the right to have a vegetable garden in these potable containers. If there was some sort of damage to the property because of that, the current section related to security deposits is going to cover. So you've provided your first month's rent, your security deposit, and then you have these potable containers and you damage the property and then you go to leave, the landlord is gonna be able to deduct from the security deposit that they've collected for that damage currently. And I don't think you need a statutory change there. But I do think this would make sense to have the e one if you're going to allow someone to build something. You may wanna secure that with a separate pot of money in case there is, like I mentioned, some sort of a damage or the landlord needs to return that space. You wanna get a quick question? And you're okay. I'll I'll, you know, help you.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So around that that thought, I guess I'm just wondering if if you have a first and last month's rent, maybe that's enough security deposit to pay for an in ground garden that's gonna be outside. I mean, you're because you're probably looking at 3 or $4,000 looking at the the cost of today's rates. I mean, I wonder if somebody's trying to plant a garden in their little apartment yard.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Let's flag that. I think

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we don't need that. It's a policy decision. Think a landlord's going to come in and say, what we have first and last or security deposit and last, that's securing against the property. And now you're telling us that we allow somebody to build something else. We want a little more security deposit just in case there's damage to the property. And now we have to clean this up. So I could see someone asking for more security deposit in that instance, but it is a policy decision for you all. Do you think that the current security deposit section where you can charge whatever? There's no limitation. The landlord can charge six months security deposit if they want. Do you think that's sufficient? I think it could be. It's up to you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bartholomew. I think

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: going back to the common interest community where it says erection of temporary structures, would that include fencing? Yes, sir. I would interpret that on a plain reading to include something like that. Just wondering when you talk about reasonable exceptions or reasonable restrictions, suppose you are in an area with lots of deer and they say you can't put a fence, that effectively means you can't have a garden. Would that be a reasonable considered a reasonable I think it is a great question. And what I think might be reasonable, someone else might think unreasonable. So that would be something that would be fleshed out. Either within the community itself, individuals would come in. And again, these are communities that are intended to be run by the individuals living there. So individuals would come in and make that argument during the meeting where they're discussing what rules they're putting in place. And ultimately, the members themselves vote on those implementing those or electing the individuals to the board to then implement. But yes, sir, I see your point. And you could carve that out further if the committee wanted to and was concerned about that. You could have the restriction on permanent or temporary structures except that an individual shall be allowed to erect temporary fencing. The language above that on so this is on page two in section two b.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It's essentially saying, I think, that any restriction that effectively prohibits a garden is null and void. So if you say you can't have a fence and you've got deer that you're trying to control, that would sounds to me like that might effectively prohibit having a garden. I agree. So section B on page two. Subsection B1. Okay.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's the prohibition. It's here B1, starts on line 16. So it's saying that your covenants, your restrictions, your deeds, your bylaws, etcetera, that either effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict the installation of the vegetable garden is void. But so the question then becomes, who is the arbiter of that? Who determines if not allowing you to have a fence is effectively restricting or excuse me, prohibiting you? And ultimately, that would probably be a court that would determine. But I understand that concern.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You have time for another question?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, Just quickly, what happens when there's conflict between the right to the vegetable garden and potential property degradation in that. For an example, say, gardener has a compost pile that creates a rodent problem that wasn't there before. So the property itself now infested with rats and mice. The language states that the unit owner is responsible for cost of the installation, maintenance, repair, removal, replacement, cost any damage to common elements or limited common elements resulting from. And so if that were to happen and it caused some sort of damage to the limited elements or the common elements, then the individual would be responsible for repair of that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I love how that question sort of helps us transition to radical genocide. Yeah, go ahead.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So kind of along the lines of what John was talking about. I mean, I actually wrote a note to myself under number one where it's talking about structures that you can limit or guide structures or something like that. I was just wondering if it might make sense for us to actually name some of those things. You know, like, we think it's reasonable to have a fence. We think it's reasonable to have a tomato coach or to have other kinds of supportive devices to grow green beans or something like that. Those are the kinds of things that might be considered unsightly by a condo society, but that if you're gonna grow green beans, you probably need to be able to have some kind of device to add. So I don't know. I feel like maybe we need to add some of the language that we intend to consider reasonable.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that's a policy decision for you all. Do you want to be more prescriptive in saying, this is Okay, this is not Okay? I don't know that you'll ever get to an exhaustive list. Or do you want to allow allow the the common interest communities themselves to make those determinations? That is the policy decision of which way you want to go, and you can go either.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Cameron, sorry. What's your week like, the rest of your week like, in terms of availability too?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have time this afternoon. I'm in appropriations until eleven and then I have to do a small walk through in house general this afternoon. And then I have no availability tomorrow morning, but available tomorrow afternoon. I do have some more time.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: If we're able to fit you in before our 03:30 time on the floor, we'll see if we can have you back. And if not, then tomorrow, I guess. That works. Okay.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And in the meantime, I'm also going to wanna 100% ensure the retroactivity piece, the nineteen ninety nine, which I'm gonna take another look at that. Okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Why don't let's anybody have any we're gonna take a short break, and I I know Bradley's here, but I don't wanna have us sitting still for the rest of the morning without taking a break. Anybody have any other quick thoughts or reactions that you wanna be thinking now while you're thinking of them to some of these questions that have come up? And if not, that's fine. Yeah.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. This is is kinda new, and it seems like if we run into issues, we'll just have to fix it later. We're not gonna get it perfect the first time.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That's happened before.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. This seems like we've covered a lot of the scare ground we've talked about. It makes sense to move forward with it. So all that perfect get in the way of good? Something like that, yes.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I mean, I would say for the most part, I agree. I do think that that one example of naming fences, tomato cages, and maybe, what do you call those wall Trellis. Trellis, yeah, trellis.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Or a spanish.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: And other essential items for vegetable growing or something. Feel like maybe those might be useful because my guess is that there would be some kind of societies that might not agree about what is essential in the garden. And if our intention is we really are trying to make this available, I feel like adding a few examples of what we're thinking about would actually be helpful.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So we could say regulating the installation of structures with the exception of, or then say, but these things are permissible. Yes. Yeah, again, I guess we want to be careful about trying to get too detailed and then getting it right. But I think the concern that was expressed was really about like a garden shed, maybe. I mean, heard, I think I heard buildings being expressed as a concern. And maybe fences that you can't see through, that's a little different too.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: On your point, Michelle, I mean, never lived in a plant community or common interest community. Well, not yet. But, you know, I've done gardening my whole life, and there are little rodent tellers, there's raves, shovels, rope bars, watering cans, wheelbarrow, you know, there's fertilizer. Well, it's just I can't picture carrying all that stuff into your condo where you so most gardens need a garden shed if you don't have A garage. An overhang or garage. So

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: They might have a garage to store that stuff?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: They they may. But wheelbarrows, you know, where such peasants, my partner will go find one wooden handle to a wheelbarrow. We'll put on four, five hundred miles going from one hut, you know, instead of just buying another one. You know? It's it's

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: it's go to Percy's back to his barn and you'll find all kinds of stuff with a dumb lot.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Anyway, I can see where, you know, a garden requires some kind of storage and it also requires You

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: wanna be careful, I think, how far you're pushing out the envelope here on the right planet, on those planet communities and condo associations because they're pretty

[Unidentified Committee Member]: they can be pretty only have not. Yeah.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But we could do, like, a such as, but not limited to.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It's a good words. Alright. Well, let's take a break.