Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Wednesday, 01/22/2026 at 09:02 in the morning. We're here to begin our day with members from the Northeast Kingdom who are here to speak with us this morning about all the good things that are happening in the kingdom. So first off, you have mayor Richard Chase from city of Newport. Rick, good morning. Thank you for joining us.

[Mayor Richard "Rick" Chase (Newport, VT)]: Thanks. It's good to be here. Thank you, chairman Marcotte. Thank you, committee members. It's great to be with you this morning. I'll be brief. I just wanna do kind of a topical outline of the things that I hope you all will be aware of and watching for in terms of what's going on in the northern part of the NEK. Others here today will be able to speak more clearly about what's going on in the southern part of the NEK. We call that divide roughly Sheffield Pass. And so the communities that are are in the northern part of the pass generally look toward Downtown Newport as their downtown. Folks on the South Side look more toward, Lindenville and St. Jay in that area. First thing I want to mention is the Vorek grant that we got two years ago. That was a grant that was given to, Newport Downtown Development. I happened to be the executive director of that organization. It's how I got into Newport politics. And we did a pretty remarkable thing. We pulled together 10 organizations that had not previously overtly worked together. And together, we submitted a grant proposal that was funded to the tune of $200,000 from the state to help build up the outdoor recreation economy in the Northern part of the NEK. A year and a half later, we are one group shy of completing all of the work that we promised to do in that proposal. It basically was designed to build capacity in every single one of those organizations. I won't rehearse them all, but it was a remarkable coalition. And because of it, that coalition has endured. There's now a committee that we are just in the process of forming that's looking toward a long term strategy to build up outdoor recreation economy, the four season outdoor recreation economy in particular. And because of that, we just received and are just embarking on a process through the What is it? Recreation Economy for Rural Communities grant through the EPA. They will be sending a team starting sometime in the next couple of months to work with us on developing a long term strategy that will guide our work on building the outdoor recreation economy in the northern part of the NEK. For my money, all of that started because of the catalyst that was provided by the Vorick grant. So I just wanted to bring you up to date on that and let you know about it. The rest of what I want to talk about is really focused pretty tightly on Newport. I've been out on what I call a charm offensive meeting with select boards. I've been to 10 of them, I believe, now around the northern part of the NEK because my family that lives in Lowell and so many other families across the NEK have always looked toward Newport as their downtown. So I just wanna give you kind of the same pitch that I've been given to folks out there. I'm not looking for anything in particular today except to make you aware that Newport is on a new trajectory. We have a city council that is strong and doing amazing work since last March. We've taken responsibility for a series of blunders that caused a pretty significant financial, challenge to our community. We I I can now say with confidence that we have stabilized the situation financially for Newport. The council is, one moment away. I think next week, we will be taking action to put forward a new charter that is a ground up, new understanding of what our charter is. We've been working with a charter that's over a 100 years old, and when I mention our charter, other places in the state invariably anyone who knows us winces and says that must be so challenging for you. This charter is designed to create language that is accessible for local residents to understand and for potential lenders across the state and for anyone else looking to come and provide leadership in our community. So although it's not specifically tied to any one part of our long term development strategy, we see it, our council sees it as a key tool that we're trying to develop to try and help everyone recognize this new moment and to become a part of providing leadership for that moment. And so the reason I mentioned it to you today is because it's my hope that the voters will approve that charter on March 3, and it will come to you and we'll be looking for quick action to get the charter in place because it's pivotal to so much of what we wanna do. We've been working with White and Burke Real Estate to do a feasibility study for the possibility of a tax increment financing district for Downtown Newport. We are on the edge of being able to make that determination. I don't yet have the final numbers to make sure that we really can say with confidence we're going to move in that direction. We're very interested in CHIP and what it might do for us, and there may be a way in which we do one and then the other, depending on how the feasibility study comes back. But I just wanted to mention that a lot of the effort that we've put into the financial stabilization is with a view toward this long term development strategy. When we think about that long term development strategy, we're pretty clear that we are not trying to become North Conway, New Hampshire or Breckenridge, Colorado, or even Stowe, Vermont. We're trying to become again what was once kind of the downtown for about 20,000 people who orient toward Newport in the Northern NEK. And then finally, wanna mention about that, that we're we've been meeting twice a month since August with commissioner in BGS and her key staff. The state staff have been remarkably helpful to us, just in that department, but also in now commissioner Jepsen's department, department of economic development. Both of those commissioners have been personally highly supportive, and there are a large group of people who are working with us to figure out how we're gonna get over the hurdles because I don't have to tell anyone in this room how hard development work is, and it's not any easier, I guarantee it, in Newport, Vermont. So to that end, I won't talk about it this morning because time is so limited and I know others will, but I'll just say housing, housing, housing, housing. That's the foundation of everything we're trying to do in the northern part of the NEK. And then finally, I just wanna let you know that, we're paying attention to the crisis that is occurring across the state for folks who are unsheltered. And so we are, I hope, a week away from opening a a warming shelter that will run through the April. Any any temperature, any condition for folks to get off the streets. That's an entirely volunteer effort. We've done it all without state money, state funding. We've raised $65,000. A local organization called Joshua House has taken the lead on providing kind of fiscal underpinnings for this project, and and it's an all volunteer effort to get this thing up and running. So we're paying attention to those questions too. We have some long term thoughts about how we're gonna try and respond to this, but I'm not gonna take up time this morning. I'll be back to talk more about that in the future. And I thank you so much for your time.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thanks, Rick. Before you go, can you just touch on Wednesday on the waterfront? Yeah. What that sounds?

[Mayor Richard "Rick" Chase (Newport, VT)]: Yeah. You know, about ten years ago, two women in town who had been away to college in early parts of their careers came back for back in Newport, and they were sitting around. They tell me drinking wine one night and saying, how come we don't have cool stuff like other places do like, you know, Providence or Portsmouth? And one of the things they thought of was sure would be cool if we use this beautiful waterfront to its advantage. They started a project called Wednesdays on the Waterfront, where every Wednesday night, in July and the first two weeks of August, we have a live band come in with a make big stage that, we we pick up from, Catamount Arts and anywhere between four hundred and twelve hundred people fill the lawns for a free outdoor concert with with dancing and singing and having a ball. And it's become the heart of the community in many, many ways. And, actually, that gives me an opportunity to say, if you have not seen it, I highly commend to you a new video that Newport Downtown Development just put out last, last fall on Newport. It's about a fourteen minute video, and it tells a true story about what's what's before us as a community and also what the challenges are as a community. It's gotten, a huge response from our local community because it's so well describes who we are. You can find that on the discovernewportvt.com website. It's right on the homepage.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Good morning.

[Peggy Clay]: Good morning. I apologize if I read a little bit, but I need to stay on point and keep within my time frame. Good morning, and thank you for allowing me to testify today. My name is Peggy Clay. I am the human resources manager at Vermont Aerospace in Lindenville. I'm also a member of the board of directors for the Burke Area Chamber of Commerce, and I've been a resident of East Burke since 2018. I've been with Vermont Aerospace for just over a year, but my motivation for this work comes directly from my experience living in this community. Having moved here, I developed a lot of relationships with some younger people. And over time, I watched too far too many of them move away, not because they wanted to, but they just didn't see a future here for them locally. And that reality just weighed very heavily on me. So when I had the opportunity to join Vermont Aerospace, I saw it as a way to help change that trajectory, and not just to create jobs, but long term careers that allow the youth in Vermont to stay in Vermont. One of our biggest challenges today is the number of job vacancies far outweighs the pool of qualified candidates. We actively recruit beyond Vermont, and often it's the Vermont tax structure that makes it difficult to compete. You know, we are on the border with New Hampshire. I have folks that will apply from Littleton, and they say, well, you know, with your tax structure, we need an extra two per hour. And that's just not a sustainable model for us. It just puts us at a very competitive disadvantage when trying to attract talent. And I'd these challenges are exactly why workforce development and education partnerships are so critical. As soon as I started at Vermont Aerospace, I developed a registered apprenticeship program, just so that we could have a clear, earn while you learn career pathway. I also tried to build relationships with some of the local schools as well, which was more of a challenge than I had anticipated. However, I was able to build a relationship with Linden Institute. And they didn't just agree to collaborate, they invited us to the table. They brought in Vermont Aerospace and some of our fellow area manufacturers in for an advisory board for their advanced manufacturing curriculum. Their willingness to engage employers in program development has really been the highlight of my first year with Vermont Aerospace. I understand they are now applying for a VDA grant to help build out their manufacturing space and the makerspace. And we're proud to be a full partner in integrating our training and our apprenticeship program and expanding the adult education pathways that will lead directly to skilled employment. And we invest in workforce training, apprenticeships, education partnerships. We're supporting employers, we're retaining residents, strengthening our rural communities, and protecting Vermont's economic competitiveness. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank Just so you know, at 10:00, Secretary Saunders from the Agency of Education will be joining us to lay out the agency's vision of career technical education. That's the piece of the educational overhaul that's being done. We take on the task of queer technical education here at Commerce. Looking forward to hearing what they have to say.

[Peggy Clay]: Thank you for that. I will be here. Thank you. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That should be Yes.

[Asha Marshall]: Okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: There is you can type chair there if can hear that. Good morning.

[Bill Stimpson]: Yes. Hey. Good morning everyone.

[Bob Chappell]: Good morning.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning.

[Bill Stimpson]: My name is Bill Stimpson. I'm the general manager of Weidman Electrical Technology here with Asha Marshall, she's our senior HR business partner. So today, we'd like to share a little bit about our business. For those of you who don't know, Weidmann Electrical Technology is a global company. We are the world's leading producer of transformer insulation. There's nobody else in the world that dislike we do. And our plant has been there since 1969 and currently we're in the middle of a $40,000,000 investment and we're expanding rapidly adding more people. The investment does represent a long term commitment to the region and modernizing the equipment, expanding our production capacity, and also hiring new folks. Over the last twelve to fourteen months, we've hired over 100 people, and in that amount of time we still need more folks, and so this year alone we're going to hire another 60 folks. So you can see in two years time, 160 people that'll bring our headcount up to somewhere around four sixty, four seventy, so very busy plant and this doesn't represent a short term surge. This is not just a three to four year thing. In the next three or four years, we're going to add more equipment. We're going to expand our production operation further and we'll continue to grow our workforce and that's what it's all about. But the big question here is the big challenges is it's not that we can't invest and create more jobs, the challenge is can the infrastructure in the local community in the area support it? That's the big problem and we're seeing that because a lot of our folks come from many, many distances to work at Wiben every day. So with that said, I'll pass that off to Ashwin, she can speak to the housing and people situation.

[Asha Marshall]: I think to echo what many in the room are probably going to speak to today, one of the most significant challenges we have, you know, specifically I know at Weidman is within that area trying to find skilled labor is we don't have much in the way of affordable housing or available housing. I myself am a perfect example of this in that I came to Weidman in June 2024 as our HR site leader, and I was unable to find any housing in St. Johnsbury in the local area. There was nothing available. So I ended up in Morristown, and I'm about an hour's drive away from my own opportunity. Now I'm dedicated and committed, but this company is growing rapidly. Again, to echo, Bill's sentiments is we are hiring for sustainability. This company is in what we call a super cycle. There's there's no slowing down right now in the in the business that we're in. So we want to, you know, ramp up our hiring. We want to get some of those those larger positions too inside of our organization that are what we call like overhead positions. Those are our salary positions to get that kind of talent into the area we're going to need to have, you know, available housing and affordable housing. So, the other challenge, I would say, that we have, you know, with with the limited pool is that we really don't want people that are having to travel from like an hour away, because if you think about that isn't going to be sustainable for them and the affordability. So what could happen is people are coming into our organization to work and then having to leave. So that could create turnover, and that's not what we wanna have right in the area.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You. Thank you. Boydman was the recipient of a veggie grant.

[Bill Stimpson]: We were. Absolutely. And we thank you for that.

[Peggy Clay]: Yes.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I went down and visited this facility It last

[Bill Stimpson]: was a great tour. And we invite you back in May. Our grand opening ceremony will be at the May.

[Peggy Clay]: Yes.

[Bill Stimpson]: Okay. Absolutely. Hopefully, the snow will be gone. Yeah. I

[John Sayles]: can't stay with you. Thank

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Kayla? Morning.

[Kayla Valoo]: Morning. Thank you so much for having me here. Thank you for having all of us. NEK Day is a really important opportunity, especially for young professionals in a rural area who don't always have a clear pipeline to connect with state legislators. So it's empowering for me as a young professional to live in a state that holds the space for rural communities, not just today on any K Day, but all throughout the legislative session. My

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: name

[Kayla Valoo]: is Kayla Valoo. I currently serve as the chair of the Northeast Kingdom Young Professionals Network, which is a project of the Northeast Kingdom Chamber of Commerce. Like all Vermonters, I also wear many hats. I'm also a small business owner, a technical assistance provider, and a board member of the Linden Downtown Revitalization Corporation. So I transferred to Linden Institute my sophomore year of high school from Connecticut. Then like so many younger monitors after graduation, moved away and came back and moved away and came back and moved away and came back. And when I chose when I realized that Linden is home to me, I decided to move more permanently. And my friends who had also moved away would say, oh, there's nothing for young people in the kingdom unless you're mountain biking or vlogging. And I don't do either, so that might have been a little bit confusing to some folks. But around the same time, I heard someone say, By not engaging with your community, it doesn't mean you're not a member of that community. It just means you're an inactive member of that community. So that was just the right message at the right time for me. So enter the Northeast Kingdom Young Professionals Network into my life. The YPN is resource for young professionals living and working in the Northeast Kingdom. Throughout 2024 and 2025, our primary project was managing the Northeast Kingdom Chamber of the Vermont Welcome Wagon Project. So the Welcome Wagon aims to close the talent gap by welcoming in new and returning Vermonters and connecting them with local Vermont hosts to help them figure out the kingdom because it's a little funky there sometimes. It's quirky. The Northeast Kingdom's got a great personality. So the goal is to help new Vermonters find their roots and be more connected to their community more quickly. Management of the Northeast Kingdom Welcome Wagon program was largely funded, or entirely funded, I believe, by Think Vermont's GROW program. That's the grant for relocation outreach work. So through that project, in August 2025, an initiative called Keys to the Kingdom, we welcomed 21 new potential Vermonters to meet with us and stay with us in Newport, experience the region for a weekend. As a result, after that event, a young couple moved from their home in Pennsylvania to Derby, Vermont, which was amazing. So still connected to them today. The Welcome Wagon is now our sister organization, and the YPN is looking ahead and asking what I believe is a critical question. What factors are leading people to leave the Northeast Kingdom? Because honestly, from my point of view, I don't fully know the answer yet. That gap in understanding creates an issue for us when we're trying to create a program to lean on to move forward and manage. When young professionals leave, on our end, we're experiencing a steady erosion of leadership capacity, workforce stability, of course, volunteer boards looking for people, and local businesses succession plans just aren't necessarily built out. So I believe we need better ways of understanding why when professionals stay, why they leave, and what would make staying not only viable, but desirable to be in the Northeast Kingdom. I think the Northeast Kingdom is ready to grow. So I would like to see the state dedicate some resources to better understanding the needs of the young professionals who are already in the Northeast Kingdom and hoping to find their community and put down the roots there for the long term. Because when young professionals' needs are supported, we don't just remain in place, of course. It means we have the ability to become business owners and community leaders and board members and volunteers and just leaders in the community. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Glad you came back.

[Kayla Valoo]: Glad to be here. Glad to be glad to be in Vermont at all. Yeah.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Burton?

[John Sayles]: Hello. Morning. Hi. My name is Burton Hinton.

[Burton Hinton]: I'm a fifth generation dairy farmer by trade and a lifelong Vermonter from the NEK. Grew up in the town of Westmore, and I now reside in East Burke with my business partner where we co own East Burke Market. And I'm also a member of the Burke Area Chamber of Commerce with these two good looking young ladies right here. I just came to I was to address, like, the challenges of a small business. Taxes are killing us. The the the minimum wage hike is a is a challenge for us. I mean, payroll taxes, but with property taxes going up. And, you know, that takes money away from what we're able to put back in the community. We we we we we do a lot for the Fenton Chester Arena, the senior meal site, etcetera. We don't have the money. We can't do it. We miss the Canadians. Probably probably that's a singing a the same old song, but it it hurt us. And tourism, with farms going by the wayside, is a is a big deal. And especially, I think, in the NEK, it's, it's growing. It needs to continue to grow. We have a very weather dependent industry. Case in point, we had some some some flooding in the area that that stung to hit home. We had enough money set aside for a new generator. So when the power goes out, we can can serve our community, but we had to put that into a new parking lot because it washed down the Psumpsik River. We have a beautiful state, and the Northeast Kingdom is the best part of it in my biased opinion. So, anything we can do to attract people to spend some, tax dollars, gas tax, to pay rooms and meals, sales tax. If you can do anything you can to help us get them in here, that would help us soften the blow considerably. I don't know. I have no idea if that took me two minutes or no.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Well, thank you. We certainly understand the challenges. I own a small store in Newport, so

[Bob Chappell]: It's a great store.

[Bill Stimpson]: Going go

[Burton Hinton]: in there and get a snack now and again myself when I get up there.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Well, thank you all very much. We certainly appreciate everyone coming in today, and we'll see you around the building as the day goes on. We'll see you at the press conference at noon as well. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Very happy to have you here. Think John is here from the Lamoille booth, right?

[John Sayles]: Well, yeah. She's training for her successful swim of the year. That exercise to Lake Willoughby. So, yeah, we've got to go up there and cheer her up.

[Mayor Richard "Rick" Chase (Newport, VT)]: It really is. It's beautiful.

[Bob Chappell]: Gosh. It's good

[Mayor Richard "Rick" Chase (Newport, VT)]: to meet you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning. Morning. Thanks for joining us. You did a great job of clearing the room.

[John Sayles]: It's my special skill.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Welcome. We're glad to have you this morning and hear more about the food bank. Thank you. You don't happen to know anybody by the name of Cabot, do you?

[John Sayles]: I do happen to know him. Cabot's my son.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Glad to have him as one of our restaurants.

[John Sayles]: Yes, and he's very excited about the opportunity here. We talk about it

[Bob Chappell]: a lot.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I start? Yes, sir.

[John Sayles]: All right. For the record, my name is John Sales. I'm the CEO at the Vermont Food Bank, I live here in Montpelier. And I'm here today just to give you an update on Vermonters feeding Vermonters, which came before this committee last year. So that was Act 34 And in the materials, there's a handout, which is just a one pager. It's about our ask and budget adjustment, which I'll get to in a moment. But I just want to thank you for your work on Act 34 and let you know it's working really well. So the legislature ended up appropriating $500,000 to our monitors feeding for monitors in one time funding. We had requested 2,000,000. That 500,000 was spent with 17 Vermont farms between July 1 and October 6. We used up all that money. We're using some philanthropic dollars in the program this year too, and probably about 1,200,000.0 total. Vermonters feeding Vermonters is about investing both state and philanthropic dollars in our Vermont agricultural systems with our farmers here. All those dollars go to purchases from Vermont farmers and growers, And that food that's purchased is then distributed at no cost to food shelves through our veggie van go mobile produce distributions all across the state. So the Vermont Food Bank, we are a statewide organization. We have about 300 partners, about two twenty of those are food shelves or meal sites in every district. Every one of your district has a food shelf and your constituents go there. And this is an opportunity for folks to be able to access fresh, very nutrient dense Vermont grown food that they wouldn't otherwise perhaps be able to afford. The way food banking works is we are really just an economic support for families. Family has a budget. If the ends can't meet on that budget, then you have to look for ways to fill it in. And we have this system of food shelves and meal sites, veggie van goes around the state, and it's a way for families to close the budget gap. If there were other ways for them to do that, then they would probably prefer to shop for food at the grocery store like we all do. There's plenty of food, in Vermont in this country, and and really, there's plenty of of resources. There's just we just haven't been able to put together the political will to to really end hunger. We're working on that here, and we'll talk about that perhaps another time, because I wanna get to, to our our guests. So at its peak, the the food bank during COVID was purchasing about $2,400,000 worth of Vermont goods. And based on a study by the Center for Rural Studies at UVM in 2016, there's about for a, every dollar spent, the economic multiplier is an additional 60¢ in economic activity. So every dollar we're spending with Vermont farms is multiplying in our economies and you all know about that well. I'd like our farmer guests to talk about how this supports farm operations and how it feels to them to have the Vermont Food Bank as a customer. The other thing I wanted to share was in addition to those large scale purchases that the food bank does, and we're talking Gaylord size, Gaylord's big boxes, truckloads of food. We also, for our partners or for smaller farms that can't provide those quantities, we give grants to food shelves and meal sites around the state, small amounts like maybe 3,000 to $5,000 and then they can purchase directly from smaller local farms. For instance, a food shelf may purchase half a dozen CSA shares from a local farm and those get delivered to the food shelf and broken up and distributed to the folks that come in. We also have a program for culturally responsive foods for our neighbors who are from Somali our neighbors, our other African migrants who are in the Burlington area mainly, our Afghan families. We've done a lot of work with Afghan families moving to Vermont to make sure that we are purchasing from Vermont growers the types of foods that are more familiar to these folks so that they're eating what's culturally appropriate for them. So those are the kind of the three slots of where this money goes. And before I turn it over, I just will mention we've asked the appropriations committee and the House Agriculture Committee, Agriculture, Forestry, and Food Resiliency, has also made a request that in the Budget Adjustment Act, the legislature include the additional $1,500,000 that wasn't funded in the last the fiscal year twenty six budget. The food bank does have a plan that we know we can spend those dollars with Vermont growers before the end of this fiscal year on June 30. With that, I think I'd like to turn it over to Hillary Martin from Diggers from Earth, who I think is on. There she is. So I would just want to say about Diggers Mirth and Chapelle's, both long standing partners with the food bank, both as farms that we purchase from and also farms that donate to us, because most of the farms we purchase from also donate. So with that, I will be quiet.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good job. Morning, Hillary.

[Hillary Martin]: Good morning. Can you all hear me?

[Bill Stimpson]: Yes.

[Hillary Martin]: Amazing. Well, I'm so sorry I can't be there in person. I love coming to the Golden Dome, but thank you for having me here today. I love the opportunity to talk to legislatures about what I do and what I care about so much here today in support of the Vermont Food Bakes budget request. And I'm so happy to be here to talk with you about Vermonters feeding Vermonters. My name's Hillary Martin. I'm from Burlington, Vermont, and I'm co owner of Diggers Birth Collective Farm. We rent and manage 15 acres in the Intervale, where we've profitably raised organic vegetables since 1992. We are collectively owned, so the farm supports six owners and one to three seasonal employees, and we raise a mix of vegetables that we sell just within Burlington to stores, restaurants. We sell to Sodexo up at UBM. We sell at one farmer's market, and we're fortunate to be part of the Vermonters Feeding Vermonters program. Our work with the food bank or with Vermonters Feeding Vermonters, as John mentioned, we've been donating through our gleaning program for many years, but the work with Vermonters Feeding Vermonters began as a pandemic response that was grant funded. But thanks to the food bank's advocacy and organizing, we're now planning into the 2026 season and really hoping, counting on years to come after that. And here's how it works from our end. The food bank contracts us to create weekly shares of vegetables from July through October. So we are paid retail value for these shares, and we're given control of what crops to grow and how and when to distribute the crops through that twelve to sixteen week period. And then we wash and pack the shares, organize them, organize the crops into shares, and then we deliver them once a week to our partners. And our partners are the family room and Feeding Champlain Valley. I'll talk about them a little later. And they distribute them to recipients. So we grow crops that are desired by the recipients of these shares, almost entirely new American families. And what we grow is largely informed by our years of selling to new Americans at the neighborhood farmers' market that our farm started back in 1992 in the old North End. And so since then, we've sold produce to the various waves of people that have settled in Burlington, including people from Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, The Congo, Burundi, Nepal, Afghanistan. And so we really have a sense of what people are looking for, which vegetables bring them the joy and the confidence and the comfort of their cultures from home. Our contract with Vermonters for Feeding Vermonters is really our favorite account, and that's because we love that fresh and healthy food with really a premium quantity and quality is getting directly into the kitchens of the people who need them. Our community partners are really embedded in the community, and they know how to get produce to people. It's sometimes a challenge. Obviously, farmers markets are outside of some people's culture and access. So our partners are able to get it right to people. And our partners are empathetic and flexible and professional. They understand proper handling of the produce and cooling needs, and they distribute it super efficiently. It's been a really profitable and efficient and consistent market for our farm, and we're given trust and control and flexibility. And kindness and caring is at the root of this project, and it really just radiates outward through the whole process. It's such an amazing feeling. And I want to really tip my hat to our community partners. The family room, which is one of the parent child centers, is really intimately linked to families across the city, and they know their needs. People seek them for childcare and language help, access to services, group play, father support, anything that makes a healthy family. And so the organization really knows what people need. And you're probably familiar with Feeding Champlain Valley, which is the biggest food shelf in the city and distributes food across four counties. So we love that we can really focus on the work of growing the vegetables, and then they do that hard work of distributing them. And I know that the food bank's request includes funding not just for the growers, but also to support their essential work. Am I okay on time?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yes.

[Hillary Martin]: Okay. I just want to make a note that the pandemic, it's almost like a cliche now to say, talk about how it's changed everything, but it really changed the landscape of our farms' markets. It's really disrupted sort of how and where people shop. And so sales at our retail store accounts have been dipping a little bit. Our restaurant accounts are struggling. Our farmer's market sales spiked during COVID with outdoor shopping and the stimulus checks, but we're also seeing those sales dropping, probably because everybody's costs are rising and there are tighter household budgets. So at the farm, general, we're trying to weather all of these erratic conditions through the pandemic, economic strain, and climate change. Not the least climate change, but that's another subject. But Vermonters feeding Vermonters has been such a steady market and has a consistency that's so crucial for us and our business. So I call Vermonters Feeding Vermonters a win win win project because it's giving security to farms like us, and that supports our working lands economy. It provides food security for our neighbors with fresh and healthy local foods that are culturally specific. And I believe by supporting the most poor and vulnerable among us, our whole community is stronger. Obviously, I'm reading this testimony, so I attached a written version of it. But with that, there's some photos of our farm and some examples of the vegetables we're growing and the shares that we're distributing, if you're interested in checking that out. And thank you so much for taking the time to learn about our farm and our participation with this program, and I hope you'll consider funding the programs.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you, Hillary. Thank you for being here, and we look forward to taking a look at your pictures and learn more about your farms.

[Peggy Clay]: Thank you.

[Bob Chappell]: Thank you. Bill?

[John Sayles]: Two. I'd like to introduce Bob Chappell from Chappell's Potatoes in Williamstown. Hillary, Kyle says hello. She's here today.

[Bob Chappell]: Hey, Bob. Yes, good morning. So I'm Bob Schappel. I'm a potato farmer in Williamstown, Vermont. And we have traditionally grown 50 to 60 acres of potatoes, but my wife and I are becoming part of that geriatric segment of our population. And so we're scaling back a little bit. We're down to 25 acres, which is still a lot of potatoes. At our height, we were producing in excess of one and a half million pounds. So now we're down, you know, somewhere sixty, seventy thousand. No. 100,000. But the We've been farming for a little over fifty years. And so I am one of the Vermonters, feeding Vermonters. And it's been a pleasure. Been a pleasure working with Vermont Food Bank. If you don't already know, they're extremely professional operation. You go in to make a delivery, everybody is just They're all smiling, which is very suspicious. They seem to be happy. They're very cordial. If there's some problem, you know, I can't get my truck off the loading dock because there's too much freezing rain the night before, you know, I can call you know, there there's a person to call, and we can rearrange. And it's, Hillary mentioned, it's a real pleasure working with Vermont Food Bank. So the real advantage for us as a farmer, and I'm sure it's true for everybody else, Hillary mentioned this, is that this notion of forward contracting. It's unheard of in the produce business from my perspective for the last fifty years. We literally put a crop in the ground in the spring, a lot of dollars, and hope for the best, hope for good weather, hope that help shows up, and then hope, which results in a good crop generally, if all those things happen, but then you hope for decent prices. And this is a little bit of the case with dairy farming and other segments of farming. It's sort of there's a sense of the last farmer standing. Like, I can weather this storm, and then a couple people will drop out and everything will get better. Well, that's not exactly the way it works. But I was telling John while we were out there in the hall waiting for the room to clear out a little bit, pessimistic farmer is not a good situation. And in produce, let's say, dairy farmers, they're looking down rough road. They kinda know what's ahead of them. They know what the price of milk is, and they can make decisions, informed decisions. In the produce business, that's not that's not so. We really don't know. For example, this year, we had, as you know, a drought, severe drought, worst we've experienced in fifty years. And we ended up with it was a crop failure. We had 20% of what we would normally get. Instead of 500 bushels a year, we got a 100. And so had to make some tough decisions. We're we're meeting with Vida and our lenders next week. Hopefully, we're gonna get back to the starting line, which is always our hope. But I I my background was not all I didn't start off as a farmer. I started off as an engineer and with a strong background in math. And then I actually taught math for fourteen years. And I understand probability. And I gotta tell you, I've never bought or even been tempted to buy a lottery ticket in my life. But somehow I've ended up in a profession where I gamble for a living. Because that's literally what's happening. I'm putting money out. I didn't know this up front. I went in with my eyes. I didn't know what I was getting into from that perspective. I'm not sure, but I am very happy farming. I also told John that I I I hope to die with my boots on. I wanna keep going. So but Hillary mentioned how important the food bank is contracting is to their farm. It's very important to our farm. Right now, it represents, in a good year, it represents roughly a third what our gross income would be. And it's actually better for us to pack in large quantities and make one delivery rather than go up starting in Barrie, up to the Swarton, to the border, delivering to Hanifers stores twice a week. We love doing business with the Hanifers, and and we always have. But I think at one point, we were up to 11 stores. And before that, we were in with almost 20 stores with Grand Union when they were still in business. But this year, with our crop failure, I didn't even have enough potatoes to fill my contract with the food bank, which, as Hillary mentioned, for them, it's their most favorable pricing. From our point of view, there's money left on the table. From their point of view, we didn't get as many potatoes into the market. But that's all we've done. I had to notify the Hanifers and wholesalers that I deal with, some IGAs up in Burlington. I just didn't have potatoes, and we weren't gonna be able to do any business at all this year that we hoped we were gonna get back in. So the the idea again, this is something Hillary touched on. The idea of farmers feeding Vermonters, this money goes back into, in our case, our our farm, the farm economy. And and it's spread throughout the state, you know, throughout the year. You know, we pay our employees, and they spend their their money in state. And we've always up until we got involved with Food Bank, the number one pro product always went into the the grain unions or the Hanifers or one of the into the restaurants through wholesalers. What I used to sell to food bank back in the day, and it's gotten to be recently where we we donate it, but not directly to food bank, but another operation. But the number two market, which is those that's misshapen or slightly bruised or maybe a green spot on a potato, they're still totally edible, just a little more peeling involved. And generally, we get half or less the value of what the potato would be if it were number one. So until Vermonters feeding Vermonters came into existence, all our potatoes to our neighbors and whatnot, most of our a lot of our neighbors live in Williamstown. It's a blue collar town. And a lot of them couldn't afford to shop in Hanford. And they would go down to a convenience store, pick up a 50 pound bag of so called unclassified potatoes. Unclassified meaning they're not number ones. And they could buy a 50 pound bag for $8 or $9 That was good. But now, I feel good and proud that some of our product with our name on the bag is getting into the hands of people that haven't had them before. So one side of the formula on farmers feeding Vermonters. It's a big part of our operation income wise, but that money gets spread back out through the state. And then the other side is there are people there and for whatever reason, food security is an issue. And I sorta had some firsthand knowledge of that. My wife is kind of putting a hammer down on how much we're gonna spend on the food. So when the money's short, we tighten our belts, like everybody, I guess. But I had an employee. I had to kept my main employee. But my other employees, for the most part, are part time. They work either in the packing crew in the winter or in the fall when we're digging. We need extra help on the harvest here. And one woman, I've been working with her to try She's trying to get SNAP benefits, and it's unbelievable. Poops. They have to run go through. This is news to me. Probably, you're aware of it. It's pretty pretty stringent. But I think I think I said pretty much what I wanna say. If anybody has any questions, I'd be glad to go at it. But it's if you have no questions I know I yesterday, I sat in on the ag committee meeting just to get a sense of what goes on in these rooms. And, yeah, there was a couple farmers there who, right away, jumped right in. They had a lot of questions, dairy farmers. Yeah. So anybody has any questions? No questions. Time for one question.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Any question?

[Bob Chappell]: I must have said it all. Thank you, Bob. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much for being please support the FoodMax proposal. It's simpler.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you, Hillary. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you,

[John Sayles]: committee. I appreciate your time.

[Bob Chappell]: Yes. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I have to go off this way to get on to another.

[Bob Chappell]: Five

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: minutes. So we're not going take a break. Secretary Saunders will begin, others. But this is going to be a hearing. House Secretary of will be joining us, Senate and of Economic Development will be joining us as well. They'll be joining on noon. Everyone will be in here. So there won't be any breaks if anyone needs to go. If I have to wear anything, just get up and go and make sure it's not a mass accident.

[Peggy Clay]: Sorry. Did you say we're

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: doing it in here? Yeah.