Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Other a couple of weeks ago during the fire alarm, I think, and suggested that since you were well, I'm not sure if you were planning to be in the building at all today, but in any case that you were you had something that you thought would be of interest to our committee. And so we're glad to have you in this morning to talk about community led rural housing. And I think you've got several people on the agenda. So why don't we go ahead and get started? We've got roughly forty five minutes, a little bit longer if we need it. And I'll turn it over to you.

[Jean Hamilton]: Great. Thank you so much. Yes, I am Jean Hamilton. I use she and her pronouns, and I'm one of the co directors of the Land Access and Opportunity Board. And we have prepared like a mini panel for you today to talk about this exciting work that is happening that LAOB is participating in really focused on rural housing and the innovations we need and the collaborations we need to make sure that we have rural housing as it is such a key element to our thriving rural communities and particularly to our farms and working lands enterprises. And so Arnel, I think I'm gonna hand it to you to really kick off our presentation. So Arnel and I will take the lead on framing, and then we do have some guests we've invited here today. And as we, I think maybe just guests, when queue you for your talking time, you'll introduce yourselves then. Does that sound okay? Okay, Ornela, I'm gonna hand it to you and put up our slides.

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: Wonderful. Thank you. Chair, members of the committee and members of the public, thank you for having us today. My name is Ornella Mata Figueroa. I am one of the co directors of the Land Access and Opportunity Board. And as we begin, we begin everywhere with our touchstones, which I'd love to live to read out loud for you all today. We listen generously, and we speak our truth from our heart and mind. We make the way that we work together an example of what is possible. And we trust that we each hold a piece of the puzzle and that we need each other's pieces to understand the whole picture. Do you all consent to working with these touchstones in mind during our time together today?

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

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: You. Thank you. Our core message today and that we just like invite the introduction of Vermont's agricultural culture depends on people being able to live where they work. And that rural housing is not a side issue. It's agricultural infrastructure. And Jean, I'm going to pass it back to you to go over our agenda today, if you'd like to talk a little bit more about it. Yeah, great. Thank you, Arnela. So yes, today we're going to remind you all

[Jean Hamilton]: of who the LAOB is so that you can have some context of why we're doing this work with rural housing and how this fits into our work. We have invited guests to help us tell the story and to really underscore why these rural housing strategies are so essential to farm viability and our thriving culture of agriculture. And then we want to talk as a group and demonstrate for you all the work that we're doing with our small scale developer training program, which we're doing in partnership with Homes For All, and how that program is creating a space for us to work on these strategic initiatives and really to gather all of us together who are working on thorny issues like rural housing and farm based housing, and build momentum through our collaboration and shared resources. So that's our hope today of what we will cover.

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: I'm going to get us started by giving us an overview of who is the LAOB and how do we work. The Land Access and Opportunity Board was established by the Vermont legislature in 2022 as an independent state board. Our statutory charge is to address long standing disparities in land and homeownership in Vermont for people and communities that have been historically and systematically marginalized from land and housing access. While our statute centers communities most harmed by current land and housing systems, we want to be very clear about something foundational to our work. The L. A. O. B. Belongs to all Vermonters. We operate from a simple but powerful belief. When those who are most marginalized do better, we all do better. Improving access to land, housing and homeownership for people who have been historically excluded makes Vermont's entire housing land system more accessible, more resilient and more functional for everyone. We sometimes hear our communities described as disadvantaged, but we want to reframe that. Our communities have survived disadvantaging conditions for generations. And in doing so, they have developed deep expertise, adaptation strategies, practical knowledge that are especially relevant to the challenges Vermont is facing right now. The LAOB is a nonpartisan body. At our core, we're dedicated to fostering civic engagement and community led systemic wide solutions to personal and community poverty as it intersects with land and housing. Our statute we can go to

[Maddie Kempner]: the next

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: slide is unique and potent. Broadly, our duties fall into two categories. A common misconception is that the L. A. O. B. Builds housing. We want to be very clear. We're not housing developer. Most of what the legislature asked us to do is something different, and we believe it's incredibly effective. Our advisory powers are about identifying levels, levers and bottlenecks and structural barriers in the land and housing system and recommending grounded and realistic solutions. In practice, this means that an investment in LAOB, as we've seen before, is not meant to produce housing units directly. Instead, it's designed to translate into more housing at lower cost that actually meets the communities where they are by changing how the system functions. Our advisory powers flow in two directions, of course, the State of Vermont and affiliated institutions in ways that we identify, analyze, and help redress structural barriers embedded in policies, programs, and regulations related to land and housing access and towards historically marginalized communities and individuals when we provide guidance, support, connection, and helping communities not only navigate the systems, but directly be a part of the next policy processes by bringing policy to community members. To do this, I think next slide, Jean, we spend a lot of time listening, observing impacts, asking difficult questions, gathering feedback across communities, and the land and housing systems. And we try to do this with honesty, vulnerability and genuine curiosity. Our job is to look at rulemaking and systems not through just a human's lens, but as a part of a living ecosystem serving people, land, water, air, animals and our future generations together. I'm going to pass it on to Jean now to do an overview of the community of practice.

[Jean Hamilton]: Thank you, Ornella. Okay, I'm going to talk about our partnership with Homes for All and this community of practice that Ornela just referenced, it would be helpful if I could see if you feel very familiar with the Homes four All program, would you raise your hand so I can just see if how much.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No hands are raised.

[Jean Hamilton]: Okay, I see that. That was a quiet space. Okay, so I will spend a little bit of time then on this slide. Homes for All is an initiative that has started out of Department of Housing and Community Development. And you may have heard or seen a design and do toolkit that they published and printed in 2024, which is basically like a soup to nuts. So you wanna be a developer in Vermont kind of toolkit textbook. That was the first phase of Homes For All. The concept of Homes For All has really been how can DHCD and associated partners come together to really increase the pipeline of housing that is being built and identifying that there's a huge opportunity with infill housing within our towns and with small scale developers who could take on and really contribute a lot of housing units through particularly infill housing. So that has been the primary focus of phase one of Homes For All. I'm used to calling phase three, but has been rebranded as eight zero two Homes is another component that is led by DHCD. And this is the work that DHCD is doing right now to create a set of 10 pre permitted architectural design sets for different kinds of housing typologies that fit in that communities will welcome, they'll welcome the design of, and whose layout and structures designs actually meet the needs of communities. So this is a really cool project that is building again, pre approved design sets, but then builds a platform to open up supply chain efficiencies. Basically, there's a lot of work being developed now to say, hey, which of these design sets can we build modularly? And what happens when we contract these modular units at a larger scale than any individual developer could take on? And also a stick built, site built equivalent of the modular units. So with the same kind of supply chain efficiencies, hey, we have these 10, kind of catalog homes,

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: all

[Jean Hamilton]: of the lumber yards, can be familiar with them. And if we have steady supply at a greater volume of these particular cuts and lumber needs, can we achieve some supply chain efficiencies for our builders and developers? The phase we are working on, the component we're working on is this training program. So really, how do we see all of the Vermonters who are saying, I wanna help contribute to the housing solutions that my community needs and meet them with the training and support they need so that they can actually conduct a development project. The training component of this is very much in collaboration with DHCD. So DHCD has taken on this classroom work. They've contracted with a firm called Inc. Dev. This is their logo here. And right now we've seen two of four one day immersions, basically like one all day workshops that have happened and a six week intensive online classroom is about to launch and there will be three additions of that. The component that LAOB is leading on for this developer training program is one on one technical assistance. So we have received funding from VHFA to contract with a local firm called Helm Construction Solutions, which is available to support developers with a range of TA consultations ranging from first kind of two hour readiness session that can help people who are early in their journey get oriented all the way up to twenty or even one hundred hours for much more complex projects that need more hand holding. In addition to this one on TA, one on one TA, we've also created a community of practice, which you'll see in some of the next slides. And this is really the focus of our presentation today is talking about how a peer support network and a community of practice can bring us together, can bring together people who are working on similar development projects and all of our support systems and organizations can come together and actually identify, okay, where are the barriers? Where do we keep getting tripped up? Can we plug in a resource? Whether that's a handout, how to guide, a policy change, some kind of new supply chain adaptation, or etcetera. Basically the community of practice gives us a space to problem solve together. And then we are also in the process of developing a grants program, a grants and loan program that will support pre development cost with the goal of really helping people get through what is typically a very challenging financing moment for developers, especially developers who don't have a lot, new developers who don't have access to a lot of capital. That these pre development grant and loan funds are intended to help bridge folks over to get more traditional financing sources. So this is the whole overview of Homes four All. This is a project that has been in development. Our partnership with DHCD has been in development for the last couple of years. And we launched this past January. We launched our community of practice and the developer training program this past January, mid January. Vermonters are really excited. We've had over two sixty people sign up to participate in this since January 16. Many of those have signed up additionally for the community of practice and the one on one TA. And something that's notable about this number is that we have a lot of impact goals that we really wanted to measure with this program. And so we do have a bit of a lengthy intake process and two twenty people have gone through our intake process, which is a testament to both how much they want these resources and also really exciting for us all, as we really can learn about who is participating specifically, what kinds of barriers are different kinds of people experiencing when they want to step up and build these kinds of homes. And then I mentioned that there's been a first and second workshop that DHCD has conducted And these were standing room events. So there was one in Montpelier and then one this past week in Middlebury with sixty five and seventy five people at both of those events. So there's a lot of enthusiasm and we are already really pulling out what are these near term low hanging fruit, like first things that we should address together. So one component of the community of practice is an online platform. And I'd love to email you all the link and have you all check it out. It's really a cool platform. This is a private network that we've set up that anybody can sign up and join. This map here shows you where people have signed up from across Vermont. And as you scale in, you can actually get, not granular down to their address, course, but more granular to say, oh, exactly are these folks and who's in my neighborhood? In this online platform, there's the opportunity to speak to the whole group through message posting boards or to break out into smaller groups and speak in more topical areas. People can also direct message one another. There's file sharing and file holding on here, so people can actually develop portfolio materials for their projects. Or if there's a technical assistance resource, we can share that through a classroom modality here, or just file and resource sharing. So it's really exciting to see more and more people using this. And then in addition to the online component of the platform, we also are developing these affinity groups around specific kind of topical areas that we've learned from listening to our communities are really, in these areas where our communities are facing particular acute challenges in developing housing. So the community of practice is not just the online platform, but is also we are hosting meetups, in person meetups, virtual meetups. We're doing a lot of research with our partners, the ones we brought here today with us to circle up and really identify and get clear where are the biggest challenges? Where are people falling through the cracks? Where would be the highest impact places to insert a resource? Again, whether that's a training or a partnership or better marketing and communications. And so these two that are highlighted, community land trust, Cooperative Communities AgriHoods Affinity Group and Farm Worker Housing Affinity Group are two areas that we really wanted to highlight for your committee because of course their relevancy to your committee. And also because we love these partners that we brought here today. And it's been really exciting to see how this structure that we've built in this program is able to then contribute to work that our partners and collaborators and community members have been leading on and wanting to lead on, needed, but will benefit from more support and that sort of collaborative momentum building. Let me just check. Ornella, can you think of, have you heard me forget to say anything that I should flag?

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: I I would ask the committee any questions up until this point?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Any questions yet? Representative Brigitte?

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: Have you you know, in our town, we've recently had quite a bit of interest in this new chip program that passed the legislature last year to bring in housing because trying to grow our industrial park, the big complaint is there's no housing for workers. And are you guys working to try to work through that program to get funding for affordable housing?

[Jean Hamilton]: Yeah. One of the CHIP is a great example of how this community of practice can really be beneficial to people in communities like yours. Programs like CHIP, programs like VHIP, and other affordable housing dollars like the Low Income Housing Tax Credits or the VHCB dollars are typically challenging for people to navigate if they haven't been in that business for many, many years. And so what we have here with a community of practice is we can actually provide direct handholding for folks that are entering in and saying, hey, we wanna put together a CHIP application and we don't quite know where to start. Through the various front doors we have here of the community of practice or the one on one TA or the workshops and classrooms, people can identify and say, Hey, this is what I wanna do with my project. And I think this is my next step, but I'm not really sure. And then we're able to weave them in with direct support on, okay, how do you navigate the program itself or support preparing financial proformas and getting materials ready to apply for a program. So like the technical assistance that I think our state has done well through a program like READY, this is a program that is really intended to make all of the other state programs more accessible, more legible, and more achievable for many more Vermonters. Sam, are you with us now?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm here.

[Jean Hamilton]: Okay, so as we head in, next phase of our talk here is we're gonna hand it over to Sam to tell us a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of the need for housing and how housing impacts farm viability. And then we'll hear from Buster and Maddie to talk about some of the work they're doing around farm worker housing and then around community cooperative farm ownership so that we can sort of model and talk about how this community of practice can really help us build momentum to achieve some successes. So Sam, love to pass it over to you. And recently you said in a meeting, housing and climate change are the two biggest threats to farm viability. And so I'm just going to prompt you there with that. I'd love for you to share your expert opinion on, you know, what's happening with housing for our farms and what do you think are the first things we should do to fix the problem?

[Sam Smith]: Yes. Thank you, Gene. Thank you, committee. Thanks for having me back. I was in, speaking to you about the Farm and Forest Security Fund and climate related concerns with farms earlier this year, and I welcome this opportunity to come back and talk about farm housing, which is, yeah, like Gene said, right at the top of the list. So I'm just gonna reiterate, I, I work at the Intervale Center. I'm the farm business director there, and me and my team provide direct technical assistance to farmers, about a 130 farmers across the state every year. We work with farms across the spectrum from thousand plus cow dairies to, small farms that may be in the concept phase and not even turned over any soil at this point. You know, in my opinion, small farms are the small and medium scale diversified farms at the heart of our rural communities. They provide the food security jobs and and and the cyclical dollars that really create strong, robust rural communities. The housing stock that we have on existing farms is really, for the most part, dated and, somewhat dilapidated. So I work with a number of farms per year that go through a transfer process and are purchased by a new and beginning farmer, and oftentimes, they're buying a former dairy farm that may be a couple 100 acres and has a house that was better suited for a family of eight to 10 people, back when farm labor was comprised mostly of, how many children you had. And, and those houses are, you know, our new and beginning farmers are looking for houses that are smaller, energy efficient and much less costly to repair or maintain. One of the key concerns around farm housing, both farmer housing and farm labor housing, is that it's very difficult to construct or repair a house on a conserved property. I think many of you are aware of this. It's definitely come up in committee before, and I'm happy to answer questions at the end of this about more of the details on that, but I'm gonna give a quick example. So the majority of the farms in the state that are conserved are conserved with an OPAV easement, which is the option to purchase at agricultural value. What that does is it pegs that, that purchase price to the agricultural use value of that land, which is a great thing, in terms of the farmland. So valuing that farmland at the productive value of the land allows for that transition to the next generation of farmer and takes it out of the speculative market. That same OPAV easement has a has a very negative impact on the potential for the construction or improvement of farm housing farmer housing or farm labor housing. And to give you an example that in real like, real dollars, if a farmer wanted to construct a house, and the construction cost of that house was $400,000, say it was a thousand square foot house, the post construction appraised value with an OPAP on it is probably gonna be around a $100,000. So that farmer is going to have to either come up with that $300,000 in cash to do that construction or not do it at all, because none of our lending institutions at this point will allow they need that post construction home for collateralization of the loan, whether it's construction or a purchase loan, and so they, they're not comfortable with that level of risk. That also has a couple other impacts on the farmer that are sort of less well understood but very, very real. One of those is that farmers, if they have that reduction in equity, if they are able to fund construction or renovation of a house, and they use up a significant amount of resources, they have that reduced equity on their balance sheet, which does makes it very difficult for them to access additional capital, which they would need for, like, operations or improvements related to their farming. And then the second impact is that, when they go to sell that property, they have a real distinct reduction in long term equity. So while most people who are buying and owning a residential house see, like, a three to 5% appreciation in that value every year. Farmers actually farmland has appreciated, but when you go in and and build a house and you see that, you know, 75 reduction in the value of that house once it's constructed, that means that they're never gonna recover that that value. So those are those are some really key concerns that we see, and I think that the land trust and this community that that Jean has been talking about are really actively discussing this and trying to figure out ways to incentivize, new, farm farm farmer or farm labor housing, in a way that it allows farmers to do that without having significant cash reserves or, taking that severe equity hit as part of the process. But we really do need to think on a policy level about how we can support that as a state. So the other thing that I wanted to talk about related to this is just, you know, some of the and I think Maggie's going to get into this around collaborative land access, alternative land access models, but I think, you know, part of this discussion today and the group that we've put together is really thinking about some of the more novel approaches to land ownership, collaborative land development, and really thinking about the needs of this new and beginning farmer group. And I I think within this conversation, we need to really think about, multiuse conservation projects that, you know, bring together farmland conservation, recreation opportunities, farm farm worker, farm labor housing, and then multiuse affordable housing developments. And I think there examples of this. There are a couple in the town where I live, Charlotte. There's 10 Stones and the Charlotte Cohousing, which were both purchased as large parcels, conserved, had, clustered development with some affordable housing covenants, and then had room for farm production and then also community food production. And so I think those are the types of projects that really meet the needs of the next generation of farmers. We do have you know, we have a spectrum of farmers, and the majority of them are gonna be looking for smaller plots of highly productive agricultural land that are close to customer bases and also close to the community that they're going to provide their food to. So I think I'd like to leave it there and, yeah, just keep the conversation going. I think it's exciting to have this group talking about.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Sam. And we've got a couple of committee questions here. Representative O'Brien. Thanks, sir. Sam, I was just thinking how is farming unique and it's a business where you prefer to live where you work?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: And then, except for maybe some small businesses, it's really unusual that way. And that gets at that whole conservation OPAP problem.

[Sam Smith]: It is, and I do a lot of work around transfer planning at this point. I work with probably five or more farms a year that are multi generational farm transfers, and the housing is usually the piece or one of the major pieces that, causes those transfers not to happen. You know, I can give a couple examples, but one is that, you know, for a farmer, for an exiting farmer to move off of their property, they have to be able to, find suitable housing within the community that they want to stay in, and to find affordable, suitable housing within that community is usually more of a challenge than or, more costly than just staying on the farm and leasing that farm to some other farmer, and then that leaves the farmer who is leasing, and I've seen this a number of times, unable to they also struggle finding affordable housing that's close enough to the farm so that they can maintain operations. So that's one of the ones where I think policy can have a, you know, can have a pretty profound impact in terms of allowing for multi like, sub, the creation of multiunit housing within these larger existing farmhouses or even working with the land trust to sort of expand conservation easement language to allow for multiple family dwellings within a conserved parcel. But I also think, you know, the conversations we're having on a state level around conservation and the way that we develop our small communities really plays into this because that the presence of having affordable, suitable housing for families and individuals are what it's one of the key elements that can allow farmers to remain viable. Like, the, you know, the majority of farmers that struggle with the housing themselves are also unable to hire folks because they can't find a place to live in their community.

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: Representative Burtt.

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: Thank you, Chair. Yeah. Sam, I was wondering, you know, what just thinking of an example of what something, you know, what we might be suggesting. Like, could a, say a 50 acre piece that has an old farmhouse on it, that would be a very small scale dairy operation possibly. Could it look like having that 50 acre piece have either five or 10, kind of like a cluster development, but, you know, with enough land around each house to really homestead and maybe have a little bit of livestock? Is that a potential model going forward instead of saying, well, we're going to let one person own the old farmhouse and the 50 acre farm. Now we're looking at, know, what, you know, would the model be more open to something where it's basically a cluster homesteading instead of one person having one owner managing 50 to 100 acres, we divide that up into five, ten, twenty owners managing that chunk of land, it's with agriculture obviously being the center of that, but fitting more of the model of farming in today's landscape. Is something along the line of what you're looking at and

[Sam Smith]: thinking Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think Maddie will get into this probably a little bit more, but and I'll submit, We we have a very recently sort of completed alternative land access model document, and we have a brief that I'll submit here. But, yeah, it's we're what, you know, what we're really hoping to promote is a policy conversation or conversation around policy, which promotes this sort of, these different approaches to collaborative land access. And so that would be one of them where, you know, you have essentially a group purchase, conservation, and then cluster development that allows for agricultural activity, both commercial and noncommercial. And I think that would be a, you know, that would be a way to both reduce the barriers to entry for the farmers and for those potential homeowners, but it also would meet the needs of that entire community as opposed to just, you know, right now, like a housing project may not do that, and a standalone farm conservation project may not do that. But if you sort of bring all those together, add some recreation in there, you end up with a really wonderful, I think, mix of the types of communities that are appealing to the younger generations of farmers and potential homeowners and or whatever that that access model looks at. And so I think for this group, it really is about, like, about how these collaborative land access models are developing because they're so new right now. And so they you know, we're pushing the envelope in terms of conservation, financing, and regulation. And so we we wanna it's we had a really interesting I had an interesting conversation with a bunch of the sort of multiunit developers as part of a roundtable this past summer for VHCb, and they were like, we do these dual use developments, and then they're like, but wait a second, we could do multiuse and have all these things happen on this, you know, serve these, all these different functions. And I think that that's what we have to think about as policymakers, as professionals. Like, the vision of a 100 cow dairy doesn't work anymore, and so we need to, as a state, think about how to meet the needs of all these different communities, and the farmers within that, the more access they have to land, the more access they have to markets and a supportive community around them, the more successful they're gonna be. So I think I'm gonna, yeah, pass it back to Gene, and then Addison will talk about those all, the collaborative land access models.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Got one one more question. I I do wanna make sure we leave time for the other speakers, but representative.

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: Hi, Sam. We worked together a while ago on a transition plan. When you're dealing with the land trust, there is the ability to split out land for housing for, like, the family. I know we did it. I just conserved another piece a couple years ago that was a separate piece, and that we left out a chunk for a possible homestead like a house and barney, because it's a separate piece of land. Has there been any discussion with the land trust about, you know, being a little less stringent for this very reason? Some of these big farms that are being conserved and are not gonna remain in dairy, I mean, they almost need to be subdivided into smaller chunks of land if you wanna keep, you know, the food local and keep the land immune so it's not, you know, being raised by a bush hog all the time. There any discussion in that on that realm? Or maybe a twenty five year conservation contract, and so the next generation could actually re conserve it down the road as the price of land goes up. Some things that should be talked about, I think, this stage of where we are?

[Sam Smith]: Yeah. We I would say the land trust is very engaged in those conversations at this point. They whether it's on the level of individual projects, I've been on a couple different projects recently that, they have been very actively trying to consider how to create housing on those farm parcels and how to create housing that is suitable for, multiple generations. And and then the, you know, the other piece is really thinking about it from a policy level, and probably the person to come in and talk about this would be Maggie Donan, but I know they're really thinking about how to include affordability, not just in the the OPAP itself, but also how to how to incentivize farmers to develop housing on parcels that is suitable for their needs or for their farm labor needs. And I think that goes to both the way they construct easements and then also the way that they support development on the farms long term.

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

[Sam Smith]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Just have a quick comment. Sam, I also wondered a discussion for another day, whether on the UVA side, whether there'd be incentives for us to do here of, if you build farm worker housing or farming housing, you don't get penalized, say for withdrawal, or you don't have to pull it out. It's still part of the farm essentially. Mean, housing, as we've discussed is agricultural, right? If you're a farmer.

[Sam Smith]: Yep. Yeah, I think that would be a, you know, I think that would be a relatively straightforward, like, policy shift. Obviously, there have to be some guardrails put up there, but, you know, there are, like, the existing, rural development programs around and some of the VHCB programs around financing, farm labor housing, sort of have guidelines that would be I think be similar, where you have to keep it in that use for, you a certain amount of time, and then the grant or loan is forgiven. And in this case, it'd be the same way. Like, if you are committing to if you're going to pull that land out of its agricultural use and then put it into housing of some sort, there would need to be some sort of long term commitment to that prospect. But I think it's a really intriguing question.

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

[Jean Hamilton]: Thank you, Sam, and thank you committee for all those great ideas and questions. It really highlights the purpose of the community of practice and the purpose of LAOB building this structure, programmatic structure, is so that we can bridge all the different silos and kind of sectors that are critical to these kinds of decisions and program developments. Sam, you talked about finance and farming and regulation. We see is that often those conversations and the people who work in those fields all operate in separate sectors and don't have a lot of opportunity to come together. And that's really what we're building here is okay, how do we create a think tank basically, a community led think tank where we can bring all these ideas, put them on the center of the table and sort through, okay, this one seems that UVA change seems promising, what do we need to do that? And we have people at all sectors from the folks on the ground all the way up to policymakers working together so that whatever solutions come forward are really well informed and vetted. I know we're starting to creep up on time. Chair, can you give us a little bit of a time check just so we know how much time to give Buster and Maddie?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, no, I think that we want to be able to hear what both of them have to say. And if we get to a point where we're really running out of time, we'll invite you to come back next week if that is doable because I think this is a great conversation.

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: We would love to come back.

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

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: Because it's nice to hear the appetite and the curiosity that there is in shifting and looking at these OPAPs and looking at what is the future of farming and our young farmers want in the state? And we have been in this conversation for the last year. We've for the last three years, and we would love to be in this dialog with you all as we are closing out the session and then looking at next year and work together so we can get something better for our community.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, let's continue them now. Think we can make some time.

[Jean Hamilton]: Perfect. Okay. So now I'd love to invite Ernest Caswell, who I think we all familiarly and lovingly call Buster. But Buster, please introduce yourself with how you want to be called. And Buster's going to talk about another really thorny issue that has been, you know, has made us all feel crazy in this state. And that Buster, I just want to acknowledge what a voice of leadership you have been. I want the committee to know that Buster has come to every single LAOB board meeting since I started three years ago to advocate for farm worker housing and saying, we really need someone to take the lead on farm worker housing. And we have finally just now been able to come together and really support you, in the organizing efforts that you're leading on. And so, yeah, just really want to give you the mic to say, where do you think we should go next?

[Ernest “Buster” Caswell]: Hello, thank you all. Hello leaders. My name is Ernest Caswell. I'm a farm worker housing advocate. I'm employed at stand playing orchards. One of the things

[Bill Driscoll]: brought

[Ernest “Buster” Caswell]: us all here today and something that needs to be formalized is a group discussion. That's how we solve problems when people come together and we talk about the needs and the issues and we come up with solutions and recommendations and strategies and have goals and bring you folks facts. And a lot of the dialogues been missing and there have been several conversations throughout the years and I'm thinking we're getting there of formalized the such a agricultural workforce housing working group or our committee, I think we're getting there. And that there, every time we get together and they're willing to future, it takes people outside the silos. Okay? Because a lot of people are stuck inside those silos I'm bringing a lot of success. For example, the farm worker housing needs assessment, one twenty one and the replaced and build new, but there's a lot more we can do, you know, in creating a dialogue, we can get more done. And Sam and others thank you for being here today and letting the committee know of some of the needs and there's a couple working groups in New York. One right out of the Hudson Valley, just a focus site that people could check out. It's called growing homes. And as a board member for eight years with an organization based out of New York. We're in nine states and Puerto Rico. Our organization have built multifamily homes. All farmers and beginning farmers have a place to call home that is outside their farm or their place of work. And I've been to two right in New York, which our organization plus we have at least one in Puerto Rico and one on its way. And then we have the Mike rant rest center, which is in Ohio. The migrant rest center is a place there's a place in Ohio where people can go live there temporarily until their next job comes online and there's a lot of supportive services. It will bring on housing development, and it will bring on a much needed conversation that will continue the discussions going on now. And I can't stress out enough. And I think we're getting there. I think with LOA land access and opportunity board leadership bring you a lot more knowledge and security and future investment that the state will be needed to do. Thank you for your time and I can't echo enough of Sam and and Jane.

[Jean Hamilton]: Pastor, you muted right at the end. Did you are you complete?

[Ernest “Buster” Caswell]: I grew access and build affordable homes to grow our agriculture. So thank you for your time.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you very much, mister Caswell. I have trouble calling you, Ernest. So stick with mister Caswell. Any questions or feedback from the committee?

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: I think it's pretty obvious we need to work on some stuff in the next session, I think, that things are right direction.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah. Let's see whether had Maddie also, right?

[Jean Hamilton]: Yeah, and I'll just point out that, so as we're transitioning over to Maddie, that what Buster's saying about coming together and bringing different people around the table, Buster organized a meeting that LAOB supported with note taking and a Zoom link a couple months ago. And it was wonderful for me to see Sam meet Julie from Champlain Housing Trust and build this bridge of, oh, Champlain Housing Trust with their farm worker housing program can be connecting and spreading the word through the farm viability program and farm viability providers like SAM. And that could be a really positive way. I mean, the Champlain Housing Trust is sitting on unspent dollars because farmers maybe don't know about the program, don't know exactly how to access it, but they're already working with farm viability providers who can help provide that kind of TA and support. And just in one hour hearing Sam and Julie talk about like, oh, we could do this, we could do this. Like those were low hanging fruit. And that's the perfect example of how community leadership in the form of Buster called a meeting, brought people together who should have met ten years ago and are only meeting now. And we can see real impact from that. Obviously there are much more complex issues also that will take longer and more head scratching to figure out, but we can identify that full range. And speaking of complex issues, Maddie, I'm going to hand it to you to talk about collaborative farm ownership and land access, which is probably one of the most complicated issues out there. Do you want me to turn your slides on?

[Maddie Kempner]: Oh, yeah, sure. If you want, I'm happy to I can screen share too, Jean.

[Ornella Mata Figueroa]: Okay, yeah, whatever I'll

[Maddie Kempner]: pull them up. Hi, everybody. Great to see you again. Maddie Kempner, policy director at NOFA Vermont for the record. Oh, I have to ask for sharing. That's easy to set up, great. If not, Jean's got the slides.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Hang on. Say goodbye, Maddie.

[Maddie Kempner]: Like I got it. Thank you, Patricia. Okay. Great. Well, I will try not to repeat too much of what has already been so eloquently said by others. Thank you, Jean and Sam and Buster. It's really great to be in this room and Ornella with all of you. So just really quickly, I'll say at a high level, NOFA's work has really been focusing in the realm of land and housing access on what's been mentioned a couple of times, which is really alternative models of land ownership that allow people to access land in a collective or collaborative manner. And it is very complicated. And we are really because these arrangements are relatively new and because they are so deeply needed in order to address so many of our challenges with farmland access and housing access, we have really taken some just initial steps to try to learn more what we can in a very collective way and are excited to work on this with you all going forward, especially when it comes to policy change. But for now, I'll share some of our programmatic work that you may not have heard about yet. So just to reiterate some of the challenges and factors that our work is seeking to address in deep collaboration with lots of other folks high land costs, disappearing farmland. I cannot remember if you all have had a presentation from AFT on their data around farmland access farmland loss. You have. Great. So you're familiar with that. Access to capital remains a really big challenge for new and beginning farmers looking to get onto land. Sam mentioned the challenges around dairy parcels and the housing that comes along with those parcels often being inappropriate or challenging for the folks taking over. We see a lot of challenges around the traditional nuclear family ownership model. And the lack of racial diversity and land ownership in Vermont is really, really staggering, even compared to our overall racial demographics. As a state, the data on land and housing ownership among our Vermonters of color is really extreme. So we are trying to squarely address that through our work, too. And yeah, I think that's all I'll say about that. I want to just share at a high level what our goals are that we've articulated as an organization for our land access work. We want to ensure that farmland becomes accessible. We recognize that it is not currently accessible for those who did not grow up in farm families or who don't have access to generational wealth. And our goal is to ensure that that land is in organic or ecological production for future generations. We want to create opportunities for combining agricultural land access with safe and affordable housing, modeling that dual purpose projects can succeed. And you've heard folks talking about that goal from other organizations already. We want to expand the possible pathways for collaborative and nontraditional structures for land access and food production, center agricultural projects led by historically marginalized groups like first generation farmers, BIPOC, LGBTQ farmers, and land stewards, and farmers without access to generational wealth. We want to move toward decommodifying land while supporting farmers and land stewards in building long term resilience. And we want to cultivate Vermont's food sovereignty to ensure that all people have access to the nutritious culturally relevant food, the agency to grow or purchase local food, and to build community resilience. So with those goals in mind, I will share a little bit of the work that we've been up to over the last couple of years in particular. And actually, this feels distracting because I don't want to actually talk about the Land Together Learning Network quite yet. I want to just share that over the past year, we have been conducting a webinar series on alternative land access, where we've brought in practitioners, farmers, leaders who are really starting and have been doing many of them for decades now, innovative models around collective land ownership and access to teach and learn from each other. And this series was incredibly successful and really well attended. And I think by starting it and this has been a lot of the flavor of our work around land access is just putting feelers out there and seeing what catches on and trying to understand what people are needing to learn with and from each other and leaning into how we can resource that learning. So the webinar series was really successful, really well attended, and then has led into some of this work that I'll talk about now. So the Land Together Learning Network is a new cohort program that we're starting that we've just fired up that's just kicking off this spring. And where this idea came from is that we really saw and this slide talks about the background we saw several examples of groups of people trying to come together quickly to purchase land that became available. And then often what we saw happening was that without a lot of really deep skills, including relationship skills, but also some of the things that Sam talked about around financial skills, governance, legal structure for those situations, oftentimes they struggled or fell apart. And so we have really been asking what we can help provide as an organization with many collaborators to support those farmers and folks who want to be able to build a functional project around the collective land ownership and production of food. And so that's where this Land Together Learning Network came from. It is really led by Megan Browning on our team, who's on our farmer services team, in collaboration with Fred Miller at the law school and Martha Caswell from the UVM Institute for Agroecology. So we're really excited about that project. The goal is to bring together and we have a long history of doing this at NOFA bring together farmers and having them really co develop this project in a way that allows it to meet their specific needs as a group. So we have a basic structure outline for this program. And especially because it's new, we're also making sure that we're leaving space for the people who are in the cohorts, the individual groups and folks who join, to really develop it as it goes so that they make sure they're getting the most out of it. The idea is that we're going to support people to collectively learn about the skills, the financial tools, the governance structures that they need to successfully do these collective land ownership projects together. And just to give a couple of concrete examples, I wanted to share some of the projects that we are actively either involved in or learning about. There is a project happening in Colchester in partnership with the Intervale Community Farm and Vermont Land Trust that we are hoping to support to allow them to expand the land that they have available. And this is, I think, in part a project that is supporting some housing goals that the farm has, but also some climate resilience goals that the farm has given their location. We are working on some alternative equity building projects to support landholders and wealth holders to invest or share resources in different ways. And you see some examples of those ways here. And then really coordinating, as Jean and Buster and Sam were just talking about, with lots of partners who have different roles to play in this work. And then finally, we are working as an organization on a gift acceptance policy because we have had people reach out in offering either wealth that they would like to donate to support land access goals or land itself. And we want to make sure that we are doing the work to make sure that those resources are used in support of the goals that I mentioned earlier. So I think that's all, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Addison. Any committee reactions or questions? It's good to see these specific examples. And I wanted just before we end the discussion altogether, go back to saying that acknowledging the persistence that Buster brought to the issues that he's been such a strong voice for. How it's really great to see the board here, the Lennox as an opportunity board, finding a way to convene that group and to make that conversation happen. Very appreciative of that. And the offer then still stands because I think that we've probably barely touched on some of these topics. If it would be helpful, if you think it would be helpful, as we have time during the rest of the session, just to come back in and continue the discussions here, just within the committee, we'd be happy to make some time for that again.

[Jean Hamilton]: That's great. Yeah, I think if there is time, we could certainly pull together these partners and or others. Some of what we're seeing from LAOB's perspective is that rural housing has been kind of missing as a policy focus area across the board. Not to say that nobody's working on it, something but that a lot of people are working together on in a concerted effort that there hasn't really been the attention there. And Sam, I think some of the points you made about where affordable housing is being built and kind of the economies of affordable housing are in a way, I think many of us are identifying that are actually threatening. If we don't change course or we don't start focusing on rural housing, that our current trajectories are actually threatening the future viability of our rural communities and our agricultural landscape. And so, it would be great to keep talking with you all either in committee or one on one about what does rural viability in Vermont look like? Like, can we actually start creating a vision of really, how do we make sure that our state doesn't sink into the kinds of rural gentrification and hollowing out that have happened in so many other rural communities. And this work and focus on act 181 reform, I think creates, it's just been a really exciting opportunity to see so many rural folks in Vermont stepping forward and speaking out with real skill, expertise, vision of exactly these kinds of issues. And that with this information and these spaces where we can come together and sit together across sectors, across expertise, and really share these concerns, identify them, define the problems together that we can then start building energy to tackle some of these issues that really rely on many more people being involved, which is a theme you'll hear from LAOB is that we really like all of these solutions rely on increasing our civic engagement and really inviting many, many more people to the table. Because when we rely on the limited capacity we have right now in the system, there's just not enough capacity to wrestle with these hard mazes to navigate. There's like a capacity gap that then leads to the sort of path of least resistance for the system, which means a lot of our community members fall through the cracks. And so, yeah, thank you so much for being receptive to this presentation today. And we would really like to work with this committee to foreground rural housing as an anchor point for this vision of a thriving culture of agriculture in Vermont.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you, Cina. Think we're gonna leave it there just because we do have another witness that we need to squeeze in, but you do know where to find us individually please reach out to Patricia and we'll schedule some time over the next few weeks. Thank you, Sam. Or, Noah, thank you.

[Sam Smith]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. I think in the interest of time, we'll just anybody's okay with it, we'll have Bill just to come right up.

[Bill Driscoll]: I should.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: What is that? Can you still meet? I think we can, yeah. Okay. So we asked Bill if he would be able to comment on the coordinated container question that we were discussing over the last couple of days. So thank you, Bill.

[Bill Driscoll]: And, yeah, for record, Bill Dreskell with Associated Industries Vermont. I appreciate the opportunity. So I had to take a look at the amendment. So sort of two things. One, I do want to look into and get a better understanding of how it really expands the universe of of foreignated containers. Last year, Vermont enacted it was H two thirty eight moved through. They included a two phase ban on fluorinated containers. The first phase is, I believe, next July, which is any of the listed products like cosmetics, food packaging, things that Vermont has banned for PFAS. There can't be any fluorinated packaging for any of those specific products. And in 2032, there's a generalized ban for consumer products. And I think think beyond consumer products, but again, this sort of gets into what the scope really is, for fluorinated containers at that point. So the what this would do is add pesticides, the subset of pesticides that are economic poisons as defined in the statute to that generalized ban on fluorinated containers for those products. So I don't know exactly what that means in terms of expanding what was already in the statute, but it does touch upon a more fundamental position that we have with regard to flornated containers, both for pesticides or anything else. And that is a very common to the extent that you have aggressive PFAS bans, what you generally see in other jurisdictions is something called an unavoidable use exemption process. And what that basically is is for whatever product you might be banning with PFAS, if you get up to that point and the manufacturers say, Look, we don't have an alternative to PFAS for this reason. This product is necessary for this reason. Can we get an exemption because we can't do anything else? And then the regulatory authority reviews that information, makes a judge and either says yes or no, you can have an exception. In this context, so there are basically two states that effectively have a ban coming from fluorinated containers. Containers. Maine is the only one that is explicit, and it's kind of similar to Vermont in terms of the timing. They did it before we did. Maine has an unavoidable use exemption, They also have a federally regulated exemption too, but our main focus here is unavoidable use. Minnesota has a more generalized PFAS ban in 2032, which by default includes fluorinated containers. And they also a currently They also have an unavoidable use exemption.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: They both do, yes. Written into their statutes. Correct.

[Bill Driscoll]: When Vermont was developing this statute that you're amending here, when h three two thirty eight came out of the house, it also had an unavoidable use exemption for this specific provision that you're you're amending regarding, chlorinated containers, and we were very supportive of that. Now that was not included in the senate version and not included ultimately in the final version of the bill. There was some concern expressed as to the need or the workability. ANR, I believe, the time had concerns. There were some other stakeholders. I can't speak to those other stakeholders. It's my understanding that there is becoming greater acceptance of the idea that it probably would be a good idea to have it on a one of the least exemption. We certainly strongly support one. It just makes sense to not run into a situation where it's a choice of having a product or not having a product because of whether PFAS is needed for. And it's more in line with what other jurisdictions that have gone down this road do. So pending unless something unless unless there are other consequences of the economic poison language in terms of scope that, come up, our position would be that if you're certainly, if you're expanding or changing the fluorinated container language, we would wanna see the inclusion of unavoidable use exemption. You can use the exact same language that the house tried last year. We would support that. We would certainly wanna see that as a minimum. If that was included, that would address pretty much whatever potential concerns we could have about what the the consequences could be of of of expanding the span or or even just simply going ahead with what's in statute now. I don't know if we'd be jumping with joy, but, I mean, it would definitely address our key concerns for sure. So we would strongly encourage the inclusion of that exemption language, and that would be a very positive change.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: If you thank you. And if you can, after we're done here, let Patricia know who at ANR might be used for us to connect with us. Sure,

[Bill Driscoll]: I can check with them too, just because I don't know if they would want to do a tag. Yeah, I'll definitely check with Okay, if they're uncomfortable. Yeah, and I can send you the actual language that was in last year's. I mean, it'd be easier to find, but I can send you the language that was in last year's. Okay, yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Sorry, there's something else I was gonna ask, but since I can't remember what it was,

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: anybody else got a short term birth? Do you recall if you mentioned the date of 2032, is that at that point, the unavoidable abuse with the parties, is that supposed to sunset as well for

[Bill Driscoll]: 2020? No, would be, in fact

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: That would continue.

[Bill Driscoll]: Right. That's when it would really matter, because barring an unavoidable use exemption, that's when a broad swath of products and containers would be banned. And so that's when you would want to know, okay, the products and are the packaging ready for finding alternatives

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to PFAS? So there are a couple of very specific products that have already It's already gone into effect or it does go into effect in this coming year. So this coming year July.

[Bill Driscoll]: Believe the way it's it's a little convoluted how it's worded, but basically what it comes down to is you go through that list of things that are banned. I remember what that PFAS has banned it, like cosmetics, food packaging, juvenile products, cookware. Well, cookware is a little bit later. Anyway, those ones that Vermont has specifically banned in statute, Those products, even if the product itself doesn't have PFAS in it, they cannot be in a fluorinated container at the consumer level. So yeah, I don't know if talking about more would be getting even more complicated.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And everything else And everything else is in 2032. Six years away, okay. The other thing that I was going to ask was if you can remember who, and we can look into this too, but it was H-two38. H-two38, yeah. So I'm wondering who the legislative council was who worked on that, but we can check that out. And Yeah. Especially if you could just make a note of H 238 and

[Bill Driscoll]: Might have been O'Grady or I think it was O'Grady. Okay. Okay.

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

[Bill Driscoll]: So what we're talking about here is a modern significant environmental pollutant that has health effects. So what kind of scenario we're gonna reach where there's a product that's

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: so

[Bill Driscoll]: important that there's an unavoidable use and why would there be no alternative to packaging? I don't, having difficulty seeing why there would be an unavoidable use. I think there Well, so I'm not a material scientist, but you look at some of the corrosive or volatile materials that need to be contained. You don't either either contamination doesn't come out or contamination doesn't get into the container. And you know, that's why you have fluorinated containers now, and there may or may not be the chemistry to to replicate that in in any sort of practical way for some sort of critical product. There's also there's not only just, like, the desire to avoid contamination one way or the other. There are also federal requirements in terms of safety on the on the highways in terms of transporting products or materials. And so we may get to 2032, and there isn't a problem that there are alternatives, or we may get there. And and for some cases, there aren't. It just will I mean, we won't know until we until we know for sure. We're talking about products that will somehow eat through any container that doesn't have PFAS lining it. In some cases, it's not always eating fruit necessarily, but yeah. And I think what's come up before, some people sometimes say, Well, you can use something like, say, glass or metal. Well, not necessarily. Glass isn't always necessarily very safe for transportation, as one can imagine. Metal is extremely heavy. That raises significant transportation costs. If you look at fuel consumption for transportation, that raises issues there. So you've got to try to find a balance there, too. And there may be more specific chemical reasons why metal might not work in interacting with a product or a substance. Again, I'm not a material science, so I just I can I can we can look into I know I've seen I know that there's been some work to kind of scope out for some products where PFAS is needed certainly? And with current formulations and understanding of alternatives, I can try to find some of that stuff for you for some examples. Yeah, I mean, it's conceptually, it's certainly plausible that there may not be alternatives for every case. But the thing about the current use exemption process is it tests that situation. In other words, the case has to be made and demonstrated that there is not an alternative. And if the regulatory authority believes that there is, then they don't get the exception.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Under the language that the House apparently passed last year that didn't end up in the final bill, who would make that determination? Well, it's the Attorney General's office.

[Bill Driscoll]: As it was drafted for Vermont. I mean, I can double check very quickly. Yeah. In fact, I can read it to you. It's not very long. And this was basically where this amendment you know, there's a, b, and c in this amendment language. Where it was is right after that. So it would be d, the attorney general made by rule while the sale of sale distribution for sale or distribution for use in the state of a consumer product prohibited under sub maybe I should have read this article, but I copy it. Subsection a of this of this section of a fluorine treated container or consumer product prohibited under subsection c of this section. Upon determination that the use of PFAS in the consumer product or in the container is a currently unavoidable use. Two, as used in this subsection, currently unavoidable use means that the use of PFAS is essential for health, safety, or the functioning of society and for which an alternative is not reasonably available. That's pretty much pretty boilerplate type language that you see in other jurisdictions for this. Gas jugs. We used to call them gas cans. They're not made out of metal anymore. They're made out of plastic. Mhmm. I read where a lot of the fluorinated containers have a darker color. So, you know, I don't know if that's fair to assume that the clear ones don't have PFAS in them, and it's just the dark ones or not. But, you know, gas stands are red red for gas, yellow for kerosene, blue for water. Yellow. Yellow for diesel, kerosene. Are those chlorinated? You know? I I believe I believe that they are certainly some of them are for certain applications currently. And I I don't know what the check what the forecast is for alternatives for those cases, but I think that's one of the areas where certainly, Fortinet containers have been used.

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: Great. Well, I think this speaks to it, but the definition there has to do with, if there isn't an alternative, you know, with regard to health, safety and whatnot, which I'm all on more with that. The only thing I see that even that exemption doesn't cover, and I'll give you an example, John, because you're asking this question about, know, it heat through the jug or whatever, is that why it needs to be fluorinated? I've had in the past selling it free. This is just about a sales discussion and whether or not I choose as a manufacturer, so to speak, to sell to somebody. Sometimes the co ops will ask me, can you do a half case? Can you do half cases? In a full case, half of it's one type of map or half it's the other. Half cases are a pain to create. I wanna know that that full case is one type of apple. Even Vermont Food Bank, they want in their thing, they have guidelines about the palate basically wants to be one thing, because they don't want to deal with a mixed pallet. What I foresee happening is the company is just going to say, If you want it in a non fluorinated container, we're just not going to sell to you. Because I tell the co ops that want a half case, when they ask me, do I do a half case? I just say no. I don't. And if they don't wanna buy from me, then I won't sell to them because it's not worth it for me to invest in. Either take a full case or I don't. Or they're the case minimum. When I buy donut ingredients, they won't come to me unless I buy $500 worth of stuff. This is just how the world works. If we're one of the few states and we only buy a little bit of something, they're just gonna say, we're not gonna supply. That's the problem, I see.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And it comes down to what the

[Rep. Greg Burtt]: They're going to continue to do the same thing, it's just not going to be sold to us. They're going be like, because it's just not worth it for them financially to us.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So then it comes down to whether there is one manufacturer who sees an opportunity and says, all right, I will get into this because nobody else is willing and probably charges. So I mean, that's the way capitalism That could happen. Okay, good. Thank you anyway for that. Sure. Just committee wanted to check-in. So we're done for the morning. Got legislative council scheduled for one. I know they're going to be a little bit late and I wanted to just see who is possibly going to be not available later this afternoon. We can go offline. If

[Bill Driscoll]: we're working

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: on