Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Wednesday, 02/18/2026 at 09:05 in the morning. So this week, as we are continuing to look at budget requests, we have with us Serve, Learn, and Earn. Faith, good morning. Thank you. Thanks

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: for having us. Should I share now?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yes. Okay, perfect.

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: Okay, awesome. Well, like Chair Marcotte said, my name is Kate Gluckman. I am the Director of Development and Communication at Vermont Works for Women. I'm wearing my serve, learn,

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: earn hat

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: this morning. And I just want to thank the committee and Chair Marcotte for the time that we have with you today, and also just the steadfast support that y'all have shown for Serve, Learn, Earn over the last five years. So we are super grateful and are excited and very proud to share with you our outcomes from the past year. We think we're having, in fact, a positive impact on Vermonters across the state and providing a really strong return on investment for your investment in Serv Learn Earn. So y'all are old pros at Servlearner, so I'm going to sort of move quickly through this data. Just holler if you have any questions. I'm joined by our four executive directors across our partner programs. They're gonna speak a little bit to the details of each of their programs. And so feel free to ask them questions as well. We do this incredibly important work in partnership with Forest Parks and Recreation, the Department of Labor, as well as our AmeriCorps programs here, and I couldn't do this without them. So just a quick reminder, Servant Earn, our mission is to provide high quality paid training and service opportunities across the state. And we work with high schoolers through adults with a continuum of programming, which you can see behind me. So really starting with career exploration and moving to workforce development programs where employment is the end result. Work sixty one percent of our participants are between the ages of 15 and 24. So really that young Vermonter population, as well as really specifically targeting working with marginalized communities. So whether that's new Americans, people with a history of justice involvement or in recovery, folks with significant barriers to employment who really need the support, those are the people that we are trying to serve. So here's a little map for you. This is the location of the participants that we served in the past year. You can see that we are statewide working both in our more populated Chittenden County, but across our rural communities in the state. It's really important that we are based in those communities because we know that some of the challenges to employment are transportation or location. And so we work in partnership with training providers, CTEs, employers across the state to complete our programs. Last year, we served five forty three participants. And really our focus is like, how do we help people be competitive in the workplace and earn a living that sustains themselves and their families? And one of the ways that we do that is really to focus on opportunities to train and earn industry recognized credentials, or IRCs. We know that they are a vehicle to get a foot in the door as well as to earn higher wages. And so that's really important so that you can see that our participants are earning those, as well as some of our participants earned high school or college credit or continuing education credit, which again helps them advance in their careers. One of the things I did want to just share with you, and one thing that we're especially proud of, in this past year, three of our programs have been registered with the state as registered pre apprenticeship programs. And so VYCC has one in timber framing, VWW, Vermont Works for Women has one in plumbing electrical, and Resource has one in HVAC. Or actually, I'm sorry, HVAC. I just learned recently that's how you're supposed to say it. So what that means is that we are integrated into the Department of Labor sort of vision for their apprenticeship program and really working in collaboration with our employers across the state.

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: No, that's okay.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: Yes. Okay,

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: no, you're all set. No problem. Okay,

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: so I wanted to just talk to you a little bit. We've come to this committee and said we are working on how we collect data and how we are tracking our long term impacts. And so I want to talk to you about how we did that in the last year. So when people enter our programs, we ask them, what is their goal? What do they want to do? Where are they in their career journey with us? And how can we help them? And so some of them here are still in their educational pathways. So they're either in high school or they're in college. And this is an enrichment to that. So often those are programs that happen in the summer between academic years, and people are gaining career exploration, exposure, building skills. Some of them are employed and they want advancement in their careers, so we're helping them upskill or even career changers, our big population that we serve. But about 50% are unemployed and are seeking employment at the end of our training sessions. And so that's really important for us to know when we look at our outcomes, that we know that really about 50% are seeking those job placements at the end. So new this year, we surveyed everyone six months after the completion of their program to see what are they doing now. How has our training helped them? Here's what we've learned. One, people don't respond to surveys that well. This is an imperfect tool. And so we do feel like this is an undercount probably across all categories. But we learned that 99% 99%. That would be awesome. 99 people were employed within the six months. Many went back to school. 20 entered another service opportunity. We really love this outcome because it means they continue to serve our Vermont communities. Typically, this is an AmeriCorps position or opportunity. 10 remained an advance with their previous employers, and six indicated other

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: We're not

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: quite sure what that is. So what we know, though, is that we served about 600 people in 2024. So if we think about 50% of them wanting to be placed in jobs, that's 300 people. One third of them that we know of were placed in a job. So about 30%. We feel that as actually a very good outcome and aligns with what we've learned from DOL or hireability around their outcomes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Question? So those 99, do you know that they were employed in something similar to that, related to their training?

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: Yeah, great question. Some of our programs know that and some don't. So for instance, VWW, we know if they are employed in the trades. That's sort of a question that we ask them. Others, I don't think we know as much. Research

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: had good numbers on, and usually we're placing folks into jobs. So we know that placement that started employment and most are in the trades because that's where they're training.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I see. So

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: these are some of the folks who have hired our graduates. You can see really working across the trades, conservation, forestry, agriculture as well. We have about probably 100 employers that we are working with each year, whether that's in terms of hiring, but also providing paid internships or mentoring and doing job fairs with our programs. I think the second part of the return on investment that's so important about serve, learn, earn is the outcomes of our project, the service element. What are we doing with participants? So we really view service as this vehicle for learning and developing our participants. But we have about eight buckets of service project categories that we do, and you can see those across the state. I think for your interest and maybe state priorities, I wanna just point out that you can't really see it, but we completed 10 accessible and affordable housing projects. I'm really excited for Tom to talk about resources partnership with Habitat for Humanity that's ongoing. We continue to do flood recovery projects, unfortunately, both in terms of housing, but also other state infrastructure like state parks we're doing. We're doing a lot of conservation and forestry, habitat improvement and assessment projects as well, and sustainable agriculture food security projects with VYCC's farm.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: Do you have a relationship with the Fremont National Forest?

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: I'm gonna turn over

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: to my VYCC Audubon folks to share.

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: I'm Brett Knopf. I'm from my view of participation for we do. We do a lot of work with the US Forest Service every summer and post sections of that national.

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: Okay, so just looking historically a little bit, we've received state funding through the Vermont legislature since 2021. And for the first four years of that, we received just one time appropriations. Last year, we received part of our allocation as base budget funding in the Forest, Parks and Recreation budget, which we are so grateful for. And so you can see, we have are usually between 500, 600 people that we're working with. Last year, I presented to this committee in the spring about the significant budget cuts that we received, not just from state funding, but also federal funding. So we did see a drop in that. The dark gray column is where we're at currently. So we're only six months in, that's why it looks so small. But I do want to just share that we're about 17% reduced this year thus far in the number of participants that we've worked with compared to the first six months of last year as well. But we're seeing, because of state investment, we really have been able to amp up the length and duration and intensity of training that we're being able to provide, as well as these ever important credentials of value that our participants are earning in our programs. The growth of Serve, Learn, Earn is tied so Or it's so connected to the state funding and the support and stability that it has provided. The other thing I want to mention is that it really has allowed us to leverage philanthropic and private funding. So last year, we are so proud to have secured a $1,800,000 investment from a national level workforce development funder called the Ascendium Foundation, who is specifically interested in rural workforce development. But they really were attracted to Serve Lone Learn because of the state investment, because of the connection with Forest Parks and Recreation and the Department of Labor. And so we're grateful for the legislature because it not only for the funding, but also for sort of the endorsement that has enabled us to seek private funding as well.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Kate, just to be really clear, the reduction in participation is because you don't have the stipends to bring people in. So it's more directly due to the fact that there's less money being invested in the program.

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: Yeah, great question. So we have committed all public funding that we've received through the state legislature to direct programmatic expenses. That includes the stipends that Rep Graning is mentioning, as well as equipment, supplies, staff time. So I wouldn't say it's just the stipends, but it is all of the direct programming. So we just can't host as many participants right now. So we are providing about over $1,000,000 of participant stipends each year. Yeah. So here are our levels of public funding. Like I said, these blue first four were one time The current year, sorry, right now we got $750,000.500 of which were in base two fifty was one time funding. That's about a 66 percent decrease in funding from the previous year. Currently, we remain in FPR's base budget at 500. And what our ask is, is for you to raise that base budget funding to $1,000,000 So we are asking for an additional $500,000 in next year's budget to support serve learner grants. With that million dollars or that extra $500,000 would that have the opportunity to unlock additional funding for you? Yeah, that's a great question. So we're already in communication with Ascendium about a new grant after our three year grant, so we're in our second year. And I do believe that it would allow us to continue to maintain our programs at a level that would still attract national funding. One of the reasons that Serve, Learn, Earn has been able to do that is because of our collective impact. Each of our programs, VWW Trailblazers, we serve about 50 women a year. That's just not at the scale that a national funder would like to be at. But when we say we serve 600 people a year, all of a sudden they're interested. And so we're expecting in this year to probably be reduced 25% by the end of the year. And so another $500,000 would allow us to maintain, I'd say, a similar level to what we've started with this year, around $5.50, which is really critical for us to unlock that others. Some of our other partners can speak too, is that we have revenue that comes from a fee for service. So if UICC can put a crew on the ground, then that means that we can generate more revenue because of the work that they're completing during their training. And so it's a complicated sort of give and take. But I would say, yes, it would enable us to continue, I think, at the level that we're at. Yeah, thank you. Any other questions before I pass it over to one of my colleagues?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Sure the committee realizes that is four organizations under this one umbrella. It's something that we've, I think, pushed on over the years, and they've done that. I think they've been pretty successful at working this out. So it's something I think we really need to think about as a priority for that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you so much.

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: Good morning. My name is Tom Longstrecht. I'm the Executive Director of Resource. I'm going to speak specifically about resources programs, workforce training programs. We have a bunch of work experience programs I'm not going to touch on because they're not part of this collaborative, instead focus on our construction 101. Excuse me, our construction intensives. The construction 101 is one of those, an HVAC 101 and a weatherization 101 heavy equipment 101. That's that bucket of programs. And then also our YouthBuild program, which is a year long program for 16 to 24 year olds. So the intentions are sort of open to all age groups. The purpose of both programs is to get people into employment. You know, mean, you know, you know, resources purpose is to create opportunity in our reuse programs, protect the environment, relieve poverty. And we do that by finding value in things. And then our training programs find value in people. You know, Vermont has a real, construction, workforce shortage. We have a general workforce shortage. It's particularly acute in construction. We've got the lowest unemployment rate in New England, I believe, third lowest in the 50 states. The demand for construction workers is acute. You know, the workforce in construction is down 11% since 2019, and that's despite this enormous housing demand. And the shortage is likely to get worse. 20% of the construction workforce is undocumented. 41% of the construction workforce is expected to retire by 2031. You know, many of the folks who are swinging hammers today are are, you know, older than me, and I'm I'm already feeling some aches and pains. So, you know, Vermont has the lowest birth rate in the nation, and it retains only 2,000 or 5,000 high school graduates each year. And, you know, when you think about AI and automation and possibly incorporating manufacturing into construction, Those all may be part of the solution, but it's hard to imagine how those are going to have a real impact with rehab and weatherization projects. The other reality is that Vermont has some of the oldest housing stock in the country. So you add all those pieces up, and it's a pretty grim situation. And we've talked about workforce training and the need to invest in that for a long time. And I think the problem keeps getting worse rather than better. I was at our job site actually meeting with a roofing contractor there who literally, there was a sound of desperation in his voice. He was coming in to speak with our trainees and trying to engage them and show them there are real opportunities in construction trades. So, are we serving? We serve youth who are not succeeding in school. They're disengaged. They have barriers. They're at risk of dropping out or they have already dropped out. And we serve adults who are disconnected from the work phase, but who want to work. We're helping people who are underemployed or unemployed. Yesterday, at the same time I was meeting with this contractor, met, went to two our youth, two job sites, a construction 101 training and also a youth build classroom. They do morning meeting. I got to do a bunch of strength and stretching exercise, which is not part of my everyday routine. But it is part of how we engage the students and get them focused and make the program fun and exciting and useful. We're big believers in that many of the folks who are being disengaged, especially boys, the physical activity and hands on learning are two of the key pieces that makes our program successful. So anyway, of the seven folks in the intensive construction, they were in day two, but I got went around the room, learned a little bit about their backgrounds. Four were mid career, I mean, in their twenties, early thirties, had not found success in in in work, in a career. And they were had always been interested in construction, but they'd never had a parent or father usually who was engaged in the trades. And so they never considered that. All four had decided this was what they wanted to do. We created our program. They saw that as an opportunity to get their foot in the door, learn some skills. The intensive program is just six weeks long. So they get critical safety skills, tool use skills, basic construction vocabulary and basic knowledge. And that's enough to get them in with employers. Employers, is sufficient. They will take someone who's eager to learn and has these basics, but they need some reassurance or someone who's cold, never done it, that they won't risk that hire. Two of the other seven were self described former addicts. And honestly, they had the markings and the appearance that supported that. And one was a new American. And all were eager. They were in the class together. And then you could already see the team forming a bond, connecting and eager to learn. With our YouthBuild class, this was one class. We have a site in Burlington. We have another in Barrie. So I had met 17 of our students. It was an amazing mixture of individuals, including more new Americans. I noted a couple of kids with MAGA hats sitting side by side with new Americans. And I thought that was an important contrast in the ability of the program to connect on a human level and break down some of the barriers that I think exist. And I I asked the instructor about that and whether those political divisions surface and how they surface. And he said, well, try to keep away from politics, but that we do insist on civility, teamwork, and working through problems together. And I think that's the culture that we create in these programs that is so essential, because otherwise folks are consuming social media and they're disconnected from that human connection. Why is our Sorry. So, what is making our training program successful? And I think it's that combination of hands on learning, the academic components, some book learning, and the doing service that is making a difference. So, youth build students in each program, they're building affordable housing. I think Kate mentioned that we have partnerships with Habitat for Humanity, and we don't want to become a developer, a housing developer. So we've always looked to partnerships with housing developers to handle all the development side of things. What we'd want to do is build the housing, do the construction. And so the partnership with Habitat is great. It's especially positive right now because Habitat is a problem. They can't recruit enough volunteers, and that's their whole model. They've depended on volunteers. So they hire skilled construction supervisors who then supervise teams of volunteers. They can't find enough volunteers and they can't find enough supervisors. So, they have this backlog of projects that are funded, that are permitted, and they can't build. And so, we are able to add to their capacity. And so, we're doing a duplex right now in Essex Junction with our Burlington crew, and we're doing a project in Northfield with the Central Vermont Habitat. And it's a great partnership. Again, I think that's part of what makes serve, learn, earn effective is this collaboration, doing things as most efficient way as possible. And we are also doing that with our partners in the affordable housing sphere. Resource also played a major role in doing flood repair work and relief. So, we were training people while fixing, repairing homes that were damaged from the floods we've had recently.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay,

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: sorry. Yeah, go steer off my notes. What is the size of our impact? So, there's five fifty resource trainees who've gone through, thanks in part to SLE funding. We've had over 700 industry recognized skill certifications awarded. 90% of resources YouthBuild program trainees are placed into employment with an average starting wage of over 19 an hour. 81% of our resource intensive trainees are placed into employment with an average of 22 an hour. The state investment, we have been successful in raising private funds. You know, habitats paying us to do the construction work. So I think we have an opportunity to leverage SLE funding. The cut down from a trend line of 2,000,000 down to 500,000, if that's what finally is approved, is going to limit what we can do. And I think there's gonna be a return on investment decrease because there's gonna be fewer people out there working who are paying Vermont taxes. So I think very quickly, not going to help the state in terms of solving its financials if we can't get people employed. So I think I could stop there. If there's an opportunity to continue, I'll tell you some stories about some individual trainees I'm very proud of who have really doing great things and have overcome a lot of adversity to be successful with the little push we've been able to give them. Thank you very much for your time.

[Jamie Fidel (Director, Audubon Vermont)]: So good morning. I'm Jamie Fidel. I'm fairly new director at Audubon Vermont as of late last summer. Thanks for having us in this morning to talk about the partnership. We really appreciate the support that you've given this body of work and going to briefly touch on the kind of work that Audubon is Vermont is doing. So our youth conservation leadership programs, we have five branches of workforce development and next generation conservation leaders program. We have three AmeriCorps member positions that work on environmental education, community science outreach engagement, and conservation field specialists. We have internships that range across environmental education, conservation, and gaining policy expertise. We have six seasonal educators that are focused on environmental education. And then we have junior conservation techs, about 12 positions, and also 10 counselor and training positions. The SLE funding is mostly focused on on those folks who are gonna be closer in age to actually integrating into the workforce. So I'm giving you kind of an overview of all the youth leadership engagement that we have, but I'm now gonna touch on some of the examples of of what we're doing with the with the SLE funding from the legislature. And so we're we're helping, in particular, people are interested in gaining environmental conservation skills that can be applied on the ground. So we're working in partnership with a lot of different organizations, with agencies like Forest Parks and Recreation to gain skills in things such as applied forestry, working on habitat assessments, species recovery efforts like peregrine falcon monitoring and Bristol Cliffs. We're working with private landowners that are doing forest management and working on flood resiliency projects. So this ranges from forestry, as I said, flood recovery, habitat improvement, farm and forest land assessment, species monitoring. And so the skills can be applied in diverse ways. So I'll give you a couple quick examples of work that happened last year. One is our AmeriCorps position that focused on community engagement helped, in Rockingham pull off the state's largest wildlife festival that occurs, the Herrick's Cove Wildlife Festival. So I mentioned another, practitioner was focused on monitor and peregrine falcons, which are a success story as far as the species that we brought back, from sort of the brink of being, in real trouble in Vermont. Another AmeriCorps position worked on bird and bee friendly farming assessments and habitat improvements in in Bennington. Yesterday, I was at a meeting at North Branch Nature Center in Audubon and North Branch collaborate on best practices in environmental education, went around the room, got a chance to meet some people that are working there, and named Annie, said that, hey. I went through the Audubon SLE program, and here I am full time employed at North Branch Nature Center. Last year, our AmeriCorps member, our community science and chapter engagement member, is now hired as the program manager at the community sailing center, and he's working on expanding access to lake recreation for all Vermonters. And then just, finally, wanted to hit on a couple of other, sort of placements that we've seen over the years. We have practitioners that are now working at Northwood Stewardship Center, working on forestry and working with landowners. We have practitioners that are at the Department of Transportation, the Vermont Department of Agriculture, Shelburne Farms, Atlas Environmental, the Vermont Center for EcoStudies, CVU High School, Shelburne Community School, Williston Central School. So the skills that that these young adults are learning are so valuable in their ability to get these educational positions to teach our youth, to work with organizations that are working directly with agencies to help supplement their work, to help landowners understand how to be good stewards of their land, and they're learning and we take very seriously the mentorship opportunities and the time that we invest in helping young adults gain the skills that that they can utilize to have this kind of employment. So thank you for your investment. We think it's making a real difference in helping young adults stay in Vermont and be employed in a lot of really important organizations doing great work in Vermont. Thank you.

[Rhoni Basden (Executive Director, Vermont Works for Women)]: Well, thank you all. I appreciate being here and speaking to the committee more on our organization's work with Serve, Learn and Earn. I'm Ronnie Bazden, the executive director at Vermont Works for Women. Vermont Works for Women is a statewide economic justice organization that seeks to advance gender equity and support women and youth in any and all stages of their career journeys. So our work really starts with our youth, providing after school programs, summer camps, and career exploration opportunities for youth to build curiosity in these fields, to build connection with employers, industries, and their career tech centers, and to build confidence in these skills to take on these career pathways for their potential future. We just hosted last week an exciting day over at Green Mountain Tech Center, where we had over 125 girls attend from middle school to explore all that the career tech center had to offer. Get your hands on equipment, meet some of the students, engage with the educators, and break the stigma of entering our career and tech centers that are incredible opportunities across Vermont for our students to get into really high need, high demand Vermont employers and industries. So it was a very exciting day. And those programs continue to grow across the state with more tech centers and more sending schools interested in bridging those gaps and really providing that targeted opportunity in a supportive I really want to focus my time today on our SLE supported work and what your committee has been able to allow Vermont Works for Women to do as far as growing some of our work. So Trailblazers is our registered pre apprenticeship program that is supported through Serve, Learn and Earn. Trailblazers is a Vermont Department of Labor pre apprenticeship program, was actually started in 2019 by a federal Department of Labor grant that focused on bringing more women into pre apprenticeship and apprenticeship pathways across the country. So really ensuring that there was targeted outreach, targeted programming, and targeted conversations with employers about how do we not only recruit but retain women in these industries for state success. So Trailblazers is a seven week cohort based program. It runs from Newport to St. Johnsbury, Brattleboro to Rutland, Burlington, and will now expand into Manchester this year. It provides skills in construction, plumbing, electrical, heat pump install, solar installation, and whatever other community employers can help provide in those modules. It provides these skills to be job ready to walk onto a job site and be prepared and confident to take it on. But it also pairs it with the self advocacy skills that participants need to really tackle what is still currently male dominated industries across Vermont in trades. So Trailblazers provides that supportive handoff to not only gain the skills, but pairs it with a local work experience where they can meet employers, apply those skills, and hopefully take on those jobs post graduation. One of our actual success stories within that is in a recent Linden Trailblazers cohort class where our participant was working at the Hill Farmstead Brewery. She had a good job. She really loved her job, but she was interested in the mechanics of the brewery and saw trailblazers as an opportunity to just advance those skills in her job. She took trailblazers and was actually paired with Alliance Mechanical, which is an HVAC company up in Caledonia County, Through a ten day paid internship program that Vermont Works for Women was able to provide through serve, learn, and earn funding, she loved the work that she did at Alliance and was actually offered an apprenticeship program, an apprenticeship slot there, and is successfully going through that apprenticeship program now. It's a huge credit to what that will do for her economic success, for her family, for her future, to be able to have that skill and to credit just a seven week program that ran two nights a week and on a Saturday to really build that opportunity for her. So that was exciting. As Tom and Jamie have mentioned, and as you all are very well aware of, Vermont has labor needs. We need to recruit more into specifically our trades industries now. We need to build homes, we need to take care of homes, and we need to help our neighbors. Trailblazers is an opportunity to reach a population that is underrepresented in these fields. We still see less than 11% of women in construction jobs in Vermont, and less than 4% of those are actually in what we call shovel ready positions. The remainder of them sit in administrative roles. We know through trailblazers, we just opened up registration for our South Burlington class. And within the first week of opening, we had 30 applicants apply for what we can only accommodate for 18 slots. We need to focus those that are coming into our program that are ready and motivated to get into the fields. So between those 30 applicants, we have an interview phase where we can really dive into goal setting and understanding what you're trying to get into to align that program. When Trailblazer started in 2019, we wanted any and all individuals to come and just learn skills, get your hands on power tools, fix up your home. Where this program has been able to grow today is we see such a shift in those coming that are looking for a new career or starting their careers in these fields. They see the opportunities in their own backyards, and they want to find ways to supportively connect to them. So we've been excited to see the growth in Trailblazers. We hope to continue to meet the demand of running these programs across the state. I know I am honored to sit as a member of the state workforce board, and one of the large goals that we're working on right now is reengaging Vermonters into our workforce. All of the programs that you'll hear from Serve, Learn and Earn are doing just that. We've been historically doing it for many decades, but we're highly motivated to continue this work and continue to grow it to meet the state goals and to really support Vermonters to build economic success for themselves and to give back to their communities here in Vermont, too. Vermont Workswomen is very thankful to be a part of Serve, Learn and Earn. It has absolutely allowed our programs to grow in demand, in the credentials that we're able to offer, and in the opportunities that we believe we can provide communities and employers, as well as connecting our participants to these experiences. So thank you for this committee and your support of our work and of Serve, Learn and Earn. And I will pass it over to Brett.

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: Hey. Good morning. Brett Knott with Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. I would echo my colleague's gratitude for being able to be on the agenda and have an opportunity to speak and think about serve, learn, learn. Better? Okay. Off

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: to a

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: great start. Sharing the programs and impact of VYCC in seven minutes or less is a little bit of an impossible task. So I'm comforted that you all are fairly familiar with the work of VYCC. Rather than provide a detailed overview of various project types. I think what I'd like to do is just focus in on one story and use that as a way to tease out some takeaways that I think are be relevant and of interest to this committee. Last year, VYCC piloted a pre apprenticeship in timber framing. And as Kate mentioned, it was one of the first pre apprenticeships to be registered with the Vermont Department of Labor. We thought we would start small and really just test the viability of this program, with hopes to expand in the coming years. And so what we designed essentially was a seventeen week timber framing experience. No experience was needed in order to be accepted, although we did have fairly targeted recruitment. So as we were interviewing prospective members, we were asking the questions, what do you want to do coming out of this program? And for those who answered, I'm really interested in the trades. Those are the folks who we selected. The experience itself was a mix of new construction as well as historic preservation. VYCC is fortunate that we have both historic barns that we're repairing as well as a need for new infrastructure on our campus, and so the the activities were focused on both new construction as well as historic preservation. The curriculum itself, we made a point of aligning that with the modules that the International Timber Framers Guild has developed for its two thousand hour curriculum. So that if you come out of BYCC's five hundred hour program, you will have a baseline of skills that already give you a head start if you wanted to pursue a two thousand hour experience. In short, you'd be five hundred hours into that two thousand hour experience. And so it's within that programmatic or organizational context, if you will, that I wanna talk about Emma. Emma grew up in Milton. They're in their early twenties, didn't go to college. And I had gotten to know Emma a little bit because they were working at a line cook as a line cook or at a restaurant where my daughter was also working. And, you know, generally, Emma had their act together, but had talked about the fact that they were really feeling like they were in a dead end job. And over the course of a multiple series of conversations, Emma had shared with me that they had done some construction with their dad at home, and it just kinda had a little bit of an interest in this. And so I invited Emma to come to VYCC to meet some of our instructors. They were curious about this. And so, yes, they would come by and see what VYCC was all about. And it was, you know, it was a great visit. Asked good questions. I could tell they were interested, but there was something that, like, I was just wondering why there was not exuberant enthusiasm for this opportunity. We were walking back to the parking lot, walking back to our cars, and Emma asked the question, so how much does it cost, for me to participate in this program? And I just love that question, because one of the central tenets of serve, learn, earn is making sure that these training experiences, these service experiences, these workforce development experiences are accessible. And that's why we offer stipends. And so, when I was able to turn that question on its head and say, No, no, no, no, no, you got it wrong, we actually provide a stipend. It was just this wonderful moment where I saw in the eyes of this young person a world of future possibilities open up, and everything shifted. And Emma's next question was, okay. So what do I have to do to ensure that I'm the strongest candidate as possible? So I just that that moment is a really important moment for this committee to hear because you're making these experience because we are making these experiences possible. Obviously, I'm telling this story because Emma was a standout four member. And one of the things that we do when we offer these programs is we teach a lot of technical skills. There's also a community there that a young person enters. They feel a sense of belonging. And I don't want to gloss over this because I think when you really feel at home in a place, it allows you to do your best work. It allows you to really learn in ways that maybe aren't always possible if you're not feeling like you're part of a community. We also try to incorporate connections to employers. That takes that takes on a few different forms. So, we have a career fair every year. It's not just a VYCC career fair. It's really a serve, learn, earn career fair where we have different employers come to the West Monitor Barn and you can meet and greet with them. We also have visits from different construction companies. So, for example, Andrew Martin, CEO of Nagalian Chase, has come multiple times, visited with our crews. We have work that we do alongside the Timber Framers Guild, and then we have field trips to different companies. So it was on one of these field trips to Vermont Frames in Starksboro that Emma met Kevin Moyer, who's the CEO, owner of Vermont Frames. And, to make a long story short, Emma's now working at Vermont Frames. And I talked with Emma last night. They're working on an installation crew. So there's a crew that does fabrication in the shop, and then there's a crew that goes out in the field and assembles homes. That's it's that second crew that Emma's working on. They've had multiple raises. They asked that that not go beyond this committee because other their colleagues might be disgruntled, but their the point there is they're doing just awesome work. And they share that it's just the best, that BYCC and serve learner is the best thing that ever happened to them. So some takeaways here. One, really across the serve learner and coalition, there's a real sophisticated and focused and at times personalized recruitment effort to bring young adults into our programs who would benefit the most. There's teaching through doing. It's not abstract teaching. It's not conceptual teaching. It's these projects matter. Here's we're gonna build this together. There's a sense of community. There's a sense of belonging. The crew experience is one where people have real world expectations. We've talked before, probably in this committee, what that the best way to prepare a young person for the workforce is to actually give them a job. That's what surf learner does. There's multiple efforts at multiple times to connect folks with employers. We get feedback from these employers. How are our how are our graduates doing? And at times when the graduates are struggling, we make a point of trying to, use that data, if you will, to improve program design, improve support for participants after they leave VYCC. We often, across our coalition, pilot different initiatives, start small, and see if it's viable, see if we can expand that. So last year's, pilot of our pre apprenticeship had five core members for seventeen weeks. This year's twenty twenty six program, 12 participants, thirty three weeks. So we really felt like there's something here that we can build upon. And, yes, our overall, we're seeing a decline in our participant because participant numbers because of funding, but there's pockets within our initiatives or programs that are actually growing. And so this is one of them, and that's fun to celebrate. I'm sure others might glean other takeaways from that story, but I would close with reiterating our request. We fully recognize that, you know, the the budget landscape of 2026 is not the budget landscape of 2021. We know that the legislature has to make hard decisions, And it's within that context that we're suggesting that serve, learn, earn be one of the things that Vermont invested. Time and time again, we see young people coming into our programs really getting an enormous amount of empowerment and then leveraging that empowerment, if you will, to being really thoughtful, effective contributors to the workforce. We are having a 17% reduction in participants this year, that number, that percentage will increase if the funding doesn't increase. And that's that's not I don't share that with any ultimatum type of energy, but you all need to know the facts. Right? And that's that is the reality because over the past year, we've been able to cobble together funding in order to try to maintain as much of a program impact and presence as possible over time without funding. That's that bottom's gonna fall out a bit. And so as you all are contemplating your priorities, know that that's one of the things that's inevitable. And then the last thing I would offer is that, from my biased view, investment in serve, learn, earn, if we were just investing in the project's completion, that might be even be enough. So we do enormous amounts of work, for example, in the US Forest Service. So we're building buildings. We're doing flood relief. We're pulling invasive species. We're doing weatherization. All of that is a really valuable set of outcomes, but that's not the only set of outcomes. Another key outcome is the people who come out of our programs and are ready to contribute to the workforce. So there's the training and workforce readiness piece. There's also just the infrastructure and the project piece. So when you invest in serve learner, and you're really investing in multiple outcomes at the same time. Questions? Thoughts? For for any of us, really, I think. I mean, we're all here in the room. And I know commissioner Fitzgow is coming in shortly, but we'd happy to continue the conversation. Question. Yeah.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I'm not sure who it's for. AmeriCorps funding, how does that look today? What is that? What kind of changes or constraints or concerns?

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: I can speak to that for for PYCC. Jamie, you might speak to it for Audubon. VYCC historically has had two sources of AmeriCorps funding, one from the state service commission and then the other from other national block grants that we get through the core network. We've maintained our core network funding. That's actually gone up, here in Vermont. Sir, Vermont has invested in other priorities. So we've moved away from PYCC. We're hoping that's just for one year, but that's part of that bucket of funding that's been reduced.

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: Do we know if if if America has been funded at

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: Yes. But it's so unpredictable. And depending on the month, there's a there's a different message that comes out of the administration every every month. So but for now, we're looking good.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yep.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Do have anything you'd to ask?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I would have to check with

[Jamie Fidel (Director, Audubon Vermont)]: folks back at Autobahn. I think we've been able to maintain right now the positions we have, but we've made significant cuts in our junior technician program. Actually, that's not being funded right now at the moment, that's one of the results of sort of the funding decrease. But we've maintained a prioritization and working on AmeriCorps as best we can.

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: Resources co enrolled all of our youth build students as AmeriCorps members since 2004. We've had consistent, really important partnership with YouthBuild USA, YouthBuild International. They've been funded with the federal America and have supplemented that out. Our budget assumes that America will wrap up from that funding, will disappear. We also previously had funding from the state, and so Vermont, and we're no longer funded through that. So that's part of this whole collaborative, and resource has a 10,000,000 annual budget. 2025 budget had 2,000,000 government grants. 2026 budget has 1,000,000 in government grants. So 90% of our funding is not government grants. It's fee for service. It's sales and service from our reuse facilities. It's earned revenue from constructions. It's partnerships with about eight different high schools who pay, we keep their students enrolled. Otherwise, these folks who are otherwise headed to drop out, they finish their education through YouthBuild with us. The schools pay us for that. They don't cover the entire cost at all, but it's an important, they're leveraging. So we have just learned, even though we didn't budget for it, we did learn that the AmeriCorps program, there is a new competition, it just got released last week. We're gonna submit an application as part of a YouthBuild International proposal. Who knows? We're gonna pursue that, but I think it's pretty chancy.

[Rhoni Basden (Executive Director, Vermont Works for Women)]: We don't work with American women.

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: Other questions? I would add one thing, because I actually, it might have been your question about some, I think I cited that ninety percent of our youth post students are placed into employment and graduating, eighty one percent of our intensive trainees, that does mean that some nineteen percent, ten percent aren't successful. And I think that's important. If I can just give one quick story, because is part of the learning that we're teaching, we're giving these students doesn't always stick. And we had moved into a new building, Resource Day in Wilson, I don't know, seven years ago. Some mechanical problem called someone and they sent someone over, But I recognized this young man who showed up to do the work. And when he was wrapping up in his reportings, I sort of interviewed him on it. And sure enough, he was in youthful. And he said that the program saved his life. He had the kids now, he was really proud of being able to support them, but that he was just struggling and that youth build absolutely changed him. What's funny about that story is that when mentioned that to the program director, he said, Oh yeah, yeah, he didn't make it very long. He only lasted five months in the program and then we had to ask him to leave because he wasn't cutting anything, he was just not committed to it. And so we've talked him up as a failure, and yet, lo and behold, we find that this guy is telling us this program saved his life. I thought that was interesting. Here's to

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: more failures. I'm wondering if you want to hear from commissioner Fitzgall.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: We do, but I just want to make sure that he doesn't have any questions. Okay. Thank you very much.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Commissioner, if you would join.

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: Good morning. Ready to go? Okay. For the record, I'm Danielle Pitsko. I'm the commissioner of Forest, Parks and Recreation. I understand I'm here mainly for Borek grant, but also we'll touch on serve, learn, earn because we do have some funds that run through FPR's budget. I don't think you want the whole budget spiel. That would take us a while. So I will focus on those two areas and recognizing time, I'll do my best to keep us moving forward. I am going to pass it to one of my amazing colleagues, Poulfis, to really talk deeper about Borac Grant because she lives it and is mostly connected with it. I think everybody probably knows who FPR is, but I'll give you the quick elevator speech. We are forests. We keep our green mountains green, intact, healthy, and sustainably managed. Also supporting forest economy, which supports 14,000 jobs in the state and 2,100,000,000 in economic activity. We are state parks, bringing in nearly a million visitors every year, really providing affordable vacations and recreational opportunities that are accessible to families and places where they can meet and enjoy nature. And we are outdoor recreation, which provides 4.6% to our GDP in Vermont. So that means almost 5% of every dollar that comes into the state is outdoor recreation generated, which is amazing. They are not it's not just about the economic driver, but they provide important infrastructure for our well-being, mental health. They support local businesses and rural communities. When I think of FPR, I feel like it's part of the identity of Vermont. Love the service that we do for our brave little state. You just heard, I know, amazing stories about Serve, Learn, Earn. It's a fantastic program. I was talking to one of my colleagues just before coming in here, she's like, These job opportunities really are AI, not AI supplemented. These are really hands on work in Vermont. FPR is fortunate to be a partner. In last year's budget, so FY26, the General Assembly provided us with $5,000 in base dollars to support Serve Learner. That is maintained this year, so we do have $500,000 that will go to Serve Learn Earn. Last year, we also had an additional $250,000 of one time funds that we granted out. That grant for FY '26 was executed in August. Actually just we just got a bill yesterday. I know that they've already well on their way of moving through the FY '26 funds. At FPR, we really love this program. We use the program. We partner with them. A lot of work happens, particularly within our state parks. They think about all the infrastructure we have. We actually have $280,000,000 in infrastructure. People don't think about that. But all the lean tos, our pavilions, our trails, we work with the different partners that serve, learn, earn. We even had this year, the forestry crew took down over 700 high hazard trees for us. So really strong partnership we invest in, providing staffing to help oversee that and providing funding for some of the projects. Pause there on serve learning because I know you heard a lot, but happy to answer any questions about the program or related to our budget.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: A little question about the the the money issues. Yes. I I remember previous witnesses talked about I think there was 500,000 in the budget, and they were looking for a million. I'm just curious about how that 250,000

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: That was one time funds from last year. So last year, they really threw they got $750,000 that came through FPR. I should have probably put $7.50 there. And when we talk about our budget update, we kind of give the one time fund updates. So it was $750,000 that came through FY '26, 500,000 in base, and $250 in one time. The previous year, it was 2,000,000 in one time funds. And the year before that, I think it was 1.8 two three. And that was '25?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: '24. '24. And then

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: 2,000,000.

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: Start from '21. 01/2008 01/25,

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: 2.8,

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: 2.3, two. And that was all at one time.

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: Yep.

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: And then last year, 500 base and $2.51 time.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: And what we're asking for this year is a million in the base.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Approximately 10, or just the 1,000,000?

[Brett Knott (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps)]: Yeah. Well, we're open tomorrow.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: In

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: this year's FY twenty seven budget, we have the 500,000 in our base for served learners. So that's currently the current state.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Is there a reason that the one time funds were reduced?

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: I think overall, the status of the state budget and where to put funds has been tight. We have, I think in the Agency of Natural Resources, only one one time fund, and that's for VOREC this year.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Do we have numbers for how many folks have served through the program through restoration? I'm sure they do. It's about 21.

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: I just pulled these numbers that you see in front of on the screen from they send us a biannual report. And so this is just from July to the end of the calendar year. And I would say they probably these numbers are lower than traditional based on funding. But still a major impact. I can go to Boris next, if that's appropriate. Okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Commissioner, you just want to be sure you kind of oversee the grant that goes to serve, learn, learn, and you've been satisfied with what they're doing, how they're doing, results that we're getting, the return on investment.

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: Yes, it's a fantastic partnership. We don't just grant out to them, we actually have an annual partnership meeting and talk about opportunities, how its current state and what we can be looking at going forward. They provide fantastic metrics, and we actually even have a shared position between VYC, the Served Learner, and FPR, just to make sure things are moving forward solidly together. So we think we're very satisfied with the outcomes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Quick question. Is there any intentional connection

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: between

[Unidentified Committee Member]: grants and utilizing some of the, for example, the serve learner programs or the trail building or things like that? Is there any kind of intentional

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: goal? Claire could probably answer this better because she understands the grant makeup. I would expect that some of our grantees would reach out to Serve, Learn, Earn for using their services on projects, particularly with trail building. I know in state parks this year, they did ADA accessible trails for us and any kind of structure as well with the different capacities and habitat work too.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So then the department will contract with program to do some of those?

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: Yes. We have in our agreement with them to work with them. And additional work beyond we have a lot of state land, we work with organizations as well. So it's pretty broad, our work with them. Okay. So in the governor's recommended budget budget this year, I mentioned there is a onetime recommended funding for Vorak community grants. We like to think of these as really proven statewide impact. It's a high demand, high return program. These are really locally driven projects, and we like to think of them as revenue generating projects, recognizing outdoor recreation brings so much economic activity into the state. They leverage a lot of partnerships, work a lot with municipalities, nonprofit organizations, regional organizations, and local businesses. It's sort of a full suite of partners working together. Since the beginning of Borac, we've funded 85 projects in all 14 counties. When Claire comes up, she's going to go over a few examples of those projects. You can sort of see how they they look like at the start of conception, what they look like on the ground and the outcomes. 2025 was the last grant round that we offered. We did not have funding last year, but we put out over $6,000,000 in grants in 2025, we had $13,000,000 in unmet requests in 70 projects. That just tells me that communities are ready, our partners are ready, and there's a lot of unmet opportunity out there for this project. I'm really pleased at how our organization administers these grants. We spent a lot of time on upstream component of it, really working with communities and making sure they have clear guidance. I think we only have 29 grants open right now, and that's after giving out over $6,000,000 in 2025. So high demand, proven results, local impact, revenue generating program for state. And I realized in the past, having $6,000,000 was a lot. I think $500,000 still keeps momentum going and moving us forward. This is where I would pass I'm gonna pass it to Claire who can kinda go deep in, but I'll be in the room if you have any other, like, budgetary questions.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you, Kirk. Herb, commissioner. Okay.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Sorry. So those dots, you had different colors.

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: What what are the dots the colors represent? Years.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. These are the years. Okay. Yeah.

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: Hi, everyone. As commissioner Fischco said, my name is Claire Popis. I serve as the recreation program manager for the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation. I'm really excited to be here with you this morning because, the recreation program includes both the BORAC program, the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative, and our recreation grants team. And so this is a chance to tell you how our team works together to support communities across the state in building out their outdoor recreation economies. So, yes, the the dots on the screen are the different years. Last year was our largest, with the green ones the 6 point is the 6,500,000.0 that we put out last year. But these grants really come from the communities. The ideas are execution is from the communities. And so I wanted to go through some of the really great projects that we've been able to support across the state and kind of the types of projects that this grant program is supporting. So one, in Wadsfield, which is known, right, as an as an outdoor recreation community, longtime support from the alpine ski industry. But what they saw was that they needed to bring people into their downtowns and create a four season, outdoor recreation economy. And so what we supported was building out a recreation hub in the downtown area, as well as making it accessible from the existing recreation infrastructure, like the Mad River Path and the mountain bike trails that have been developed. And so we both funded the hub and some of the bridges and trail enhancements to get there to really bring people who are visiting Wakesfield into the downtown where the businesses are so they can directly bike, walk, and ski to those places. Another smaller grant was in Danville, which had this really exciting opportunity that combined outdoor recreation and cultural value with updating the historic train station, which is right next to the LBRT because the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail obviously railroad. And they got many different grants from from many places, but what was able to do is provide a smaller amount, but to make it so that the the train station, it has ADA accessibility, including in its bathroom, which we know is actually a really important thing for people who are out there recreating. And so they are building out a place for a business right in this train station, as well as figuring out how to get people from there into the little downtown of Danville. Another thing that these grants have been able to do is to really catalyze further investment in outdoor recreation and outdoor recreation economies. So way up in the northern part of the state in Newport, they've actually gotten two Boret grants. They got one of our early grants and then one in our latest grant round. And what they've been able to do is really work through the partnerships with the nonprofits and the downtown organization in Newport and really build those partnerships to figure out what do we need to make this beautiful downtown. Newport is so lucky to be right on the lake and to really use that to bring more people in. And that has allowed them to now qualify and get federal EPA funding for what's called the Recreation Economies for Rural Communities program to really continue to build out that support. Similarly, in Bradford, we invested some of our last round in planning. And so Bradford was able to invest in a park master plan and has now been able to use that plan to go for another federal funding source to actually build out that park to increase accessibility and the use of the park. And then finally, the other another really big part of what board funds have done is, like, allow communities to really invest rather than some of our other outdoor recreation grants are fairly small, and so you have to do it piece by piece by piece. And down in Wilmington, we were able to give funding to, start like, put a big jump, at least, in redeveloping the Hoothoot And Whistle Rail Trail that goes right to their downtown. And that has like, because of his its historic infrastructure, really needed that investment to get it going. So those are just a few examples. I'm happy to answer more questions about other board grants if you have them. But one of the things that we're really proud of with this program is that it has grown and that we've really been able to adapt to what the community needs and what they've told us. So as these grants have gotten bigger and that we've had this great opportunity in the last couple rounds to really put out a big grant round, we developed new ways of supporting the outdoor recreation economy. And so in our last grant round, that very large one, the 6,300,000.0, we had four tracks. And those tracks were project development, like I mentioned, that grant in Bradford allowed for planning. Implementation, so the projects that really put something on the ground or create programming that is actively engaged with the community. Outdoor equity, because we know that access to the outdoors hasn't been equitable historically, and we want to support projects that make sure that everyone feels welcome in the outdoors. And then finally, we had a flood recovery track as well, which hopefully they won't meet again. But it was helpful to support the places, particularly in outdoor recreation, that FEMA didn't cover because a lot of our outdoor recreation infrastructure is actually on private land, and so we were able to support fixing some of that infrastructure that wasn't being supported through FEMA. As commissioner Fitz Fitzgow said, there's a huge unmet need. People are communities are excited about this. Outdoor recreation meets economic needs. It meets wellness needs, and it meets environmental needs. And it comes all together, and people are excited to build out these opportunities in their communities. So we had over $13,000,000 in unfunded projects in our last round. As you can see, 70 of those projects, they were large, large dollar projects overall that we weren't we're unfortunately unable to fund. And the thing, as a grantor, you get a wide range of quality because some people are ready and some people aren't ready when you put out a grant round. And I think one of the things that we've been able to successfully do in our other grant programs that are more regular is help those communities that weren't quite ready at that other round to be ready for the next round. And we have annual or biannual grants. And this has been we have all these projects. They were good projects. They just weren't quite there yet. And so I expect if we're able to run another round, that it will be quite popular and we'll be able to fund some of those unfunded projects. My last slide is just I wanted to As I mentioned, we've been working on being really adaptive in our granting, and there's a few things that we have now that we haven't had before. One is called Move Forward Together Vermont, which is our statewide vision for outdoor recreation and the outdoor recreation economy. And our goal is to promote healthy and vibrant communities through outdoor recreation. We have two objectives that run through our entire plan, which are climate resilience and equity and priority actions in stewardship, wellness, and economic development. This was based this was based in two years of planning input from over 2,000 Vermonters. And what this means is that we really know what people's priorities are. So we can be really strategic with with funding on our next round of the board grants. In addition to that, we've been able to secure land and water conservation funds from the National Park Service to build out the administration of these grants. We now have three people working across all of our grant programs, So we have much more support for communities than we ever have before. And we also understand how all these grants work together better than we ever have before. So we can be much more strategic as well in identifying the gaps in funding opportunities across the outdoor recreation spectrum of opportunities. And so then we can be really strategic with, hopefully, this next round of funding. So we're really excited to be able to take these as well as all of the what all the stuff that we've learned from the last four rounds and really build out another support for communities to build their outdoor recreation economies and, support people getting outside, whether they're visitors, people from the communities, and the businesses that support them as well. Oh, I'm sorry. Last thing is, next year is ten year anniversary of WORTH, the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative. And so we're also excited to celebrate that. And the best way to celebrate is with our communities across the state helping to support them. Do you have any questions for me or for Commissioner Pitska? Yeah.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Just really quick. Emily Carris, Windham, Halifax. You were talking about grant readiness for some of our organizations. Is there anything that shines out as the biggest concern for grant leaders?

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: That's a really good question. Think that are some of the programs that were put into place through the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board that helps people write grants were very helpful. Blanking on what that acronym is. Is that the Ready Program? The Ready Program. Thank you. But what we really did see is that people that the planning really is helpful. So that's why we added that track. We actually also added a planning track to our recreational trails program, which is a federal funding source through the Federal Highway Administration, because we saw how successful it was to fund planning, because there's a lot involved in planning for whether it's environmental natural resource concerns, whether it's community concerns, engaging the community in what they want to see in their downtowns and how to connect their downtowns to their natural resources. And so I think having that and then allowing the people who did the planning to then have an opportunity to implement those funds is really helpful. And then sorry, the last thing I would say. The state grants are a lot easier to administer and to get than the federal funds. We have one the Land and Water Conservation Fund is a pretty hard program for communities to get. And I think being able to have a state program that is a little bit more flexible, it's more based on community need, Stats communities up to then be able to apply for those federal funds. And we've seen that through this program.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm gonna be able to Vince here, and maybe it has to do with the state federal stuff. There was a chart that showed quite a bit of money in terms of grants out.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Can't remember exactly what it was. This one? The prior one.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: This one. Yeah, yeah. But you're asking for $500,000

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: Yeah, there's $500,000 in

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: the budget for So one

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm just curious how the $500,000 is I think you had $6,000,000 Oh,

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: this was our former grant round. That was a one time allocation for these grants. So that was 2023. Are the grants that we have given.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So it's $500,000 down. Yes.

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: I mean, obviously, those 2022 and 2023 funds were the one time Hyper funds. Yes. And so we would never expect that. But that's why I wanted to emphasize that we can be strategic with these funds because of the better information we have now. Questions?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I know again, you know, we're asking for one time dollars again, but they're a detriment to one time funding all the time that people don't, people that are looking at the grants may not want to put anything together because they don't know if the money's there. Opposed to having something in base funding that we can count on year after year, we know it will be there, that would help communities.

[Danielle Fitzko (Commissioner, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: I'm happy to take that one. I think you're spot on that the reality is in base funding, it was there. People could plan like, I'm not ready this year, but I can get ready next year. One time fund is one time funds. You may see people just not being ready, not putting in great applications, or just missed opportunities. So sustainable funding does allow for planning and people can cast on that more. I think that's the reality.

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: And I think how I had mentioned, that we do support communities that don't get the grants. We write every community an email saying what the ranking committee said about their grant and how they could improve it. And so if there's not a chance to improve it, But obviously, the one time funds are also really helpful.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: It's not saying that they're bad, but I think if communities aren't quite ready, if they know that there's more funding coming the next year, that they're more apt to put more work into whatever they need to do to get them across finish line, opposed to, well, we don't know if there's gonna be money. Why should we put the time and effort into it? Anything else? Thank you. Commissioner, thank you very much.

[Kate Gluckman (Director of Development & Communication, Vermont Works for Women)]: For having us.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Any members, if you have to if I take a little break, go ahead. Make sure we have six here.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: How do you do that?

[Jamie Fidel (Director, Audubon Vermont)]: How are you?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Same. Morning. Good morning. Thanks joining us today. Thanks.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: Thanks for inviting me. I do have a few handouts. Know Megan sent around a PDF. Thank you for that, Megan. Just put those there if anybody wants a paper copy. I am Andy Jullo. I am the executive director for the Lake Champlain Islands Economic Development Corporation and also serve as the president of the regional development corporations as of now. We'll be handing that over to Erica Hoffman Keys from the White River Valley in July. Yeah. Thanks for having me here. It's been about a year since I've been in this committee. I think a lot of you were new then. How's everybody doing? Great. Coming up on a break? You guys still here? You all still look happy to be here. It's good. So we don't have any we didn't ask for any specific programs in the budget this year. We didn't ask for an increase in our base funding. So I think we just touch on a couple items in the budget that we feel are important or a couple things that we feel might be worth some reconsideration of putting back in. We did have the SPTAE, that Small Business Technical Assistance Exchange program, last year. We proposed that. You were kind enough to put it in your letter to appropriations. It didn't quite get past the conference committee at that point, so we didn't ask for that this year. We feel it's fallen off. It's been a couple of years. We've kind of lost momentum on that, so we didn't ask for that. But I do want to touch on a few things, the first being veggie, and I promise I will bring this around to an appropriation and keep it on the budget. I think we'll probably be talking a little bit more about veggie in the second half of this session. Several of you were at the Vepcie retreat as well. It's a program that works really well where it works, and I think that we feel that all of us kind of feel it's a very narrow set where it works. It's not as many companies as we would like to see. It does provide good paying jobs, 60 to $70,000 annually, depending on how you take the band. It's a lot of companies in Chittenden County, as you see when you start to look at plot where those grants are, but that is revenue that we all benefit from. I'm in Grand Isle County. A lot of my residents work in Chittenden County, work companies even though they're not a big part of it. A lot of companies like Beta and New Harbor and Lawson's and Bar Hill, OnLogic, we've been electric. That's our foundational companies for Vermont. We really need those jobs here all over the state. I know for us, and the RDCs, when we go around and we talk to businesses, and that's a lot of what we do. We're supposed to visit 40 to 60 businesses a year and just interface and see what their issues are make it clear what the programs available to them are. Veggie is one of the two tools that we have from the state in our toolbox. The other is Vermont training program. We have other options from other organizations to offer, and a lot of what we do is connect one business that might have something they can offer to another that has a need. So we do a lot of that in those businesses, but there's not a lot to offer from the state except through those tools, and Veggie is a key part of what we can talk to businesses about as we go around the state. We certainly know it doesn't reach all businesses. It doesn't work for smaller businesses. It doesn't work for medium businesses. And what we call medium businesses in Vermont, most of the country calls small businesses. And it doesn't necessarily get out as far as we want. It it tends to be in those major metro areas. It doesn't get out into a lot of counties. I have never had a veggie application in Grand Isle County. I probably never will where I am. But we we talked a lot about the retreat, about how easy it would be what we would like it to do and how easy it would be to break it if we tried to stretch it to be too many things. I felt like we had some consensus around the idea that where it works, it works. Where it doesn't work, maybe we need other solutions and other programs to fill those gaps. And I thought we had a really good conversation. We've had a couple of years where we pushed it, the sunset out one year or two years, and we've been in the cycle where I think we've hoped that when we come back, we'll have better solutions for it. We just really haven't done that. I don't know if the RDCs have tried. I know you've tried. The Pepsi's tried. We're not economists. We're not deep economic thinkers, and we also don't have a lot of time. We're all kind of busy doing the things that we do. At the retreat, we had some consultants there that had been spending some time thinking about what other states are doing and presented some of that. We felt that that conversation would really be worth continuing. Having dedicated consultants who can spend that time to think about what are other states doing, what is Vermont doing, where is there an intersection of good ideas, and propose some solutions so that when we come back to the next session, then we have some solutions on the table to think about

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: how do

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: we reach the more rural areas? How do we reach the smaller businesses? I understand there was originally a request for about 60,000 in there to continue that work in the original budget. It didn't make it. We would just like to suggest that we consider putting some money back in to consider professional economic consulting to come up with better ways to incentivize growth in Vermont. On Brownfields. So this is the can I borrow your hand out? Because I

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: gave This my

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: is the handout that I gave. No money for Brownfields. And we we just wanna make you folks aware that there has been kind of a slow on ramp to new standards for lead, arsenic, and PAHs, and that kicked in last November. So it started in 2017. There was some guidance developed in 2020. In last November twenty twenty five, so this will be our first building season, if I could turn your attention to the last couple pages there, the lead and arsenic thresholds and the PAH thresholds got significantly stricter. So as we start to build this season, we're going to have more development sites hitting the need for cleanup. So it's a difficult year. There's no money in the original budget, the governor's budget for ground fields. Very difficult year for that to to roll off. We've made, as a state, a lot of investments here. We've contributed up to $2,000,000,000 in the next ten years towards CHIP, 40,000,000 to DHCB, 4,000,000 to VHIP, 2,000,000 to MHIP. We put a lot of money into housing. If we have sites that have had lead paint that has been flaking off for for years, those are gonna need some cleanup. And as you collect money for your stack, if you hit cleanup and you don't have money in your stack for that cleanup, that can stop a project. Yes? The

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: change in the lead and arsenic numbers is with limits. Is that state or federal change?

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: It is a state change. And I think we've hit this with a couple of public projects. Almost all public projects have hit this because you're you're building them in a village or a downtown, and there's been lots of development there. Maybe there was an auto dealership in the past or just a building with lead paint that's been been flaking for a while. We hit with the South Hero Meeting House. We have a restoration project. All the money is in place, and, of course, there was lead from the the paint there. We were able to use brownfield money to overcome that and and keep rolling. The yellow barn in Greensboro Bend is another example, hit a significant cleanup hurdle. Brownfield money was able to come in and and backfill that. So we've created exemptions in our in our downtowns and our villages to build. That's where the contamination is. And so if we don't have brownfield money to clean that up, we're gonna create some spots where redevelopment is gonna become really difficult, and it's gonna work against the funding that we've put in place to to do all that. Questions

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: there? Yeah. I'm sorry.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You know how these standards compare to other states around us? They don't.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: And lastly, I see you have a task force looking at economic development or proposing that over the summer. Not sure if that's an appropriation or whether it's gonna be a voluntary task force.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: All the way downstairs.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: It's in the oh, okay. Oh, it's in the senate. Okay. It's coming this way. Do you want me to should I comment on that, or should I wait?

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: Or

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think you can wait. We'll bring them in the the next half of the session.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: Okay. I can come back.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yep. Yeah. Okay.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: So those are the two things that we had just to bring your attention at this point. Happy to entertain questions. I know it's not a while. We'll get you back on schedule, which is nice.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. On schedule.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: There you go.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We're efficient.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: The RDCs.

[Clare Polfus (Recreation Program Manager, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation)]: It's trying to butter, so it's

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: like Right.

[Tom Longstreth (Executive Director, ReSOURCE)]: Yeah. I

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: can imagine. Appreciate your time.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Andy, thank you very much.

[Andy Jullo (Executive Director, Lake Champlain Islands EDC; President, VT Regional Development Corporations)]: Oh, you're welcome.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So next, the RPC's are coming in at eleven. We can break now and come back here to eleven sharp in the wall of water.