Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Everybody, good morning. Welcome to House Education on 01/07/2026. Have two rounds of testimony this morning. First, the report from the school construction advisory group. They were tasked with making some recommendations on if we move to larger districts, what to do about shared or do we deal with debt. But it's also an opportunity to sort of get an update from them as to their work in general, sort of next steps for them in the absence of state aid itself. And then we will move on to the report of the Commission on the Future of Public Education. And we've got plenty of time, so if people have questions, that's great. Go for it. So this morning, have two members of the advisory group on school construction aid. Gonna have them talk about their reports specifically, but also I think it would be great if the two of you wanted to just talk about sort of what is the ongoing work in the absence of money and just sort of any further thoughts you have as to sort of how we wrestle with the colossal need for school renovation in our state. But with that, I don't know if the two of you had a chance to talk and see who wants to lead the conversation, but happy to hear from you, and we could start talking specifically about the report itself if you'd like.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Sure.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome, and the floor is yours.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: I can probably kick things off to set the context, and I know David has some jumping off points from my presentation, if that works.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's great. David, you appear unmuted, but we cannot hear you. Yep. No problem. Michael, you're welcome to sort of kick things off on the report itself.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Okay. Great.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Introduce yourself

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: and Yeah.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Be great.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Nice to see everyone. Michael Gaughan, executive director of the Vermont Bond Bank. I'm apologies. I needed a bigger screen to see all of you, so I'm I'm looking at a screen that makes it look like I'm not looking at you directly. But welcome back. Another year, another chance to talk about school construction in Vermont, five years going in a row here. So this summer's work was the, you know, group, the advisory committee, I think it's called officially, was charged with coming up with some options for what to do with legacy debt in the event of school consolidation. This is, of course, something that we have dealt with previously with prior consolidations. As background on that, the way we handled it was we essentially changed the billing entity, the name of the entity that received the bills. As a matter of law, codified as well in the articles of agreement, the debt sort of followed the new consolidated district. That's kind of the precedent in which we entered into this. And so we haven't had much time to talk about anything else. This was really the work. As David and I talked about, I think an important point here is in the memo that was provided, we really laid out the options. Didn't really speak to the preference of any one of those options, but we can talk about that a little bit in the context of some of the background materials I'm about to share. So some of these are in the report, but I thought it helpful just to go over them quickly. Can folks see my screen?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, it's perfect. Thank you.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Okay, great. Okay, so you've probably seen this many times before. This is a history as the bond bank understands it of school construction bonds in Vermont, which, you know, are highly correlated with the school construction itself. This is only the bond bank for all of these slides, this is only the bond bank's data plus Burlington and Windham. If there are private bank loans with schools, we don't, know, that's not something we really know about other than occasionally seen in their audits, but for the most part, we think this, you know, is 90 plus percent of the picture of school bonds in the state. So as you see, there's obviously been an uptick in the last few years, no surprises, but we, you know, the story here is that all these schools that were built in the 70s are at the end of their useful life, and that's why it's such a hole to dig out of. We talked about this a little bit, and and David has some really well, actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna introduce this and probably just have David jump in here because I think it makes sense for him to speak to this. But one thing we spoke about was just the rate of construction inflation. You know, that bar in the middle, this is PPI, non residential construction goods. You know, folks can quibble about whether this is an appropriate index, but certainly it shows the level of cost escalation over the last six years. The bar in the middle there around 2020 is the COVID recession, and then you see it kind of jumps it's crazy, crazy high construction inflation. And so there's some consequences of this for how we think about existing school debt. So, David, this is your brilliant point, so I'll let you jump in on this.

[Unidentified committee member]: If you can.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: I was trying to dial it, I suppose.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Can you hear me? Yeah.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. We got an echo. Hold

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: on one second.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I we're okay.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: How about now?

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Good. Yeah. That's great.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Okay. So oh, boy.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. A little bit.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: How about now? I

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: it's okay. And and don't don't forget to introduce yourself as well.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Yes. Yes. My name is. Oh. Oh. We I have an echo. Hold on. The So my I'm Dave Epstein. I'm an architect. I do a lot of work on schools. I've been very involved with school construction, aid, trying to get it resurrected over the last eight years. And so I bring a lot of both boots on the ground experience, but also

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: David, I'm gonna interrupt for just a second. The suggestion is you could turn the volume down on your computer.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Okay. Good. Good.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That might get rid of the echo.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: How's that?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Much better.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Okay. Can you hear me now?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes. Okay.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: So the average, you know, construction cost is escalating. You can see radically during COVID, and it's starting to abate a little bit. We've done several studies with several districts showing that bonding for a project in today's dollars saves a tremendous amount of money over the long haul versus trying to pay for it in through capital reserves. And and and, obviously, this points out the cost of inaction because of you know, every year you don't do any work, it it just continues to rise at a incredible pace. The 6,000,000,000 number that's been thrown around for deferred maintenance, you know, every year that goes by, that's $240,000,000 just to put that in perspective.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Yeah. And the other point David has made and maybe you can articulate is that with the rate of construction cost inflation, having debt on your books isn't necessarily a bad thing. A little bit depends on the vintage of that debt. But what that indicates that really that facility has had some investment that cannot be bought at the same level in today's dollars.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Yeah. I think we were you know, the the whole question we were posed almost had a a faulty premise, which was that bad debt was bad and other districts wouldn't wanna assume it, which is probably partially true. But as Michael points out, it could represent that a district has invested in their facilities. Now you have a known cost as opposed to an unknown cost. If you think about, you know, if you were, you know, in a commercial setting, if you were you were buying a bunch of buildings, if they were in good shape, you'd be more likely to wanna purchase those as opposed to once in poor shape.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: So I think that was a key point. That was kind of an moment in our discussions over the summer. So I just want to make sure that was yeah, we spent some time on that.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: By that, you mean, for example, Burlington's carrying a high level of debt, but at the same time, they have a brand new building that isn't going to be carrying the cost of a building that is past its useful life.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Precisely. Precisely. CVU is kind of textbook on this. They've done a really good job of investing facilities, passing relative to the size of the dish district, you know, modest bonds authorizations, but they've kept up on the plant, and it's in really good shape. So that's you know, on paper, they might look like they have a higher debt load, but they have a a much smaller deferred maintenance liability.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: And we've seen this there's a there's a I it's the Mount Abraham District who has budgeted significantly more than other districts because they were unable to pass the bond. And when we did a facility evaluations across that district, they they had, you know, substantially lower deferred maintenance across the board than other districts. That's not a case that's not a bonding situation, but it is an investment situation.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Thank you. Yeah. And and I mean, needless, I think what I mean, the last point here is that the rate of construction cost inflation is well above the cost of borrowing. And so that that drives a lot of these economics as well. So with regard to the actual amount of the Ed fund that's currently occupied by debt service, this is what it looks like over the next, you know, well, over the lifetime of existing debt. 2026 is a bit of an anomaly. There were these curious things after the Great Recession called qualified school construction bonds. And the way they work is you fund a sinking fund over time, and then there's a big principal payment at the end. So this is a little bit misleading because there is a sinking fund in the background for this. But, you know, generally, you know, just under $50,000,000 in debt service a year that's going towards bond repayments, which sounds like a big number until you consider the overall size of the Ed Fund, and this is like a drop in the bucket compared to the other costs. I think our median amount of budget that is occupied by debt service in our portfolio is less than 2%, which compares to national medians of over 5% for similarly sized school districts. So again, it's not telling you that you don't know, but the scale of debt in terms of the concerns of education finance in the state is relatively small, think, is what that really tells us.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think actually, there was something that I didn't realize, is that the level of debt out there in comparison to the whole cost of education is so minor, with the exception of a couple of anomalies like Burlington and Winooski and Colchester.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Right. But even school are even though they're they seem very large, I'd say that as a percentage of their budget, they're they're even a little bit below national medians, is which is interesting. So they seem really big to us, but it's just relative to the lack of investment everywhere else.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: And I think one of the things we we talked about in the committee, you know, that this whole you know, we spent a few months talking about this. It's a little bit of a red herring, but it's a you know, from a financial standpoint, but it's a emotional it could be an emotional issue as districts, you know, contemplate what it means to be together.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Yep. So then the next slide here is just a breakdown per county. I think it doesn't tell us anything we don't know, and I've got a better slide to speak to this in just a moment. This slide in particular I thought was pretty helpful. It shows the overall amount of debt per county concentrated, obviously, largely in Chittenden, also significant amounts in Franklin and Windsor, where more recent bonds have been able to be passed. It's obviously out of whack with the number with the sort of allocations of school aged children per per county because of Chittenden. Once you strip away the top 10 largest borrowers, though, I think the numbers become really interesting. You only have 72,000,000 of outstanding debt, which is very, very small, but does afford some opportunities to kind of win the piece, if you will, with regard to consolidation at a low dollar amount. We got into those in some of the options in the report. One thing that I thought was compelling to look at and we discussed is that the vintage of the debt matters. Kind of So extrapolating from David's point a little bit, yes, debt is very is not a bad thing necessarily. It indicates investment in plant, which means less deferred maintenance. But the year of the vintage of the debt is is also relevant because if it's a twenty year bond and you're in year 19 of that, that's less useful than something more recent. But generally, we have fairly fast amortization of our school bonds, and so there's not a lot of older debt. So as you consider, you know, as you consider potential options for dealing with legacy debt, the vintage of the debt, I think, is is material to the discussion because newer debt is more valuable than older debt as as depreciation occurs. So you see very little I mean, the consequence here is there's very little debt that is older than, say, thirteen years or so. And that's a lot of that is because, during the post great recession era, there were some, specific programs for school construction where the interest rate on the bonds is is, close to, is less than well, it's supposed to be less than 1%, but with sequestration, it ended up being just a hair more than 1%. And then I think this is the last slide, but this is also in your in the report is just the, you know, per school district. This is the amount of debt outstanding as we know it based upon the data we have, which, again, we think is pretty comprehensive, there may be some things that small amounts that we're missing. So that's kind of, you know, what I hope to share there. Again, the memo or the I keep going memo, but the report considers several options, not all of which we think are, know, would necessarily be recommended, but that sort of indicated in the pro if there's more pros for that option. I think the two that were compelling to me were well, three really that we thought were probably the most relevant were just status quo, which is that the new district assumes the old district's debt, which we obviously have precedent for. On the bond bank side, we're simply changing the name of the obligor on that debt and sending the bill somewhere else. Two is similar to what we've discussed over many sessions with regard to new school aid, providing some sort of subsidy based upon the amount of debt service that the district pays. So the debts, you know, again, the mechanism there to to prevent it being net tax supported debt for the state would be that the district pays the debt service, and then there's a reimbursement mechanism. This is what Rhode Island is used, and we've discussed many times in the past. And then finally, one option that I thought was kind of interesting was to just pick an absolute number of debt forgiveness. We discussed $5,000,000 in the report, And you wipe off you wipe away the debt of almost every single district other than those that have passed bonds in in recent times. I think the total cost would be 54,000,000, and all the 13 districts would have their debt burden completely eliminated. Very equitable. Might be a way to, you know, provide some incentives. In all of these cases, the key is not issuing state debt to defeat or to remove this debt. There are some tax complications with that that make it potentially more expensive. And it you know, as we've we've spoken about, the the bond bank can really be more efficient in leveraging the state's rating for the purposes of school construction debt than the state can be directly. So those were kind of some of the key points there. So I'll stop talking here and allow David or committee to ask questions. Michael,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: before starts, would you just remind us the term net state tax supported debt or the reverse of that or whatever, and why it matters?

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Yeah. It's essentially the debt that's held by the state that is reviewed by the rating agencies. In 2017, the state issued I'm just going kind of give you the long story so you understand the context, and I'm going to stop sharing so it makes it lot easier. But 2017, the state issued a housing bond, which was great. It was an effort to sort of remove it from the state's balance sheet by using property transfer taxes that were given to Vermont Housing Finance Agency. And, you know, it was a it was a really good mechanism, but lo and behold, the rating agencies evaluated it as basically tax supported debt. That's that's what we're talking about here. And so despite all the mechanisms, it it was it was might as well have done it on a geo basis and saved a little bit money, to be to be honest. But so that that just means that we're we're cautious about any kind of mechanisms to support anything from the state, you know, through some sort of mechanism that might go to the school districts, in effect is the state paying debt service. So that's why it occurs on a reimbursement basis. You know, there's you could make an argument that the state should just pick up the tab on some of this. That might be okay for the new construction costs, but for defeasing or retiring the old debt, it does really become quite complicated because of, our underlying bonds have features on them that block early repayment. So you have to fund escrows, and there's some tax rules around that. Anyway so, a much cleaner way to do it is to is to have none to have money that's not raised from issuance of bonds, but but just an appropriation. But the next tax supported debt generally matters because the rating agencies review it as they review the state's rating. A really good state rating means the bond bank has a really good rating, and we have the ability to leverage more than the state can without any kind of material rating consequences because of the nature of the the credit enhancement we use.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Right, so in other words, you sort of piggyback on the state's bond rating for, I guess we call it local debt through the bond bank, but ultimately it is tax supported. It's just sort of done differently so that it doesn't appear as a direct obligation of the state government. It's sort of on a different set of books that uses the full faith and credit of the state?

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: It's not using the full faith and credit, and that's why it's not. I mean, it's kind of an interesting nuance with the statewide education fund and statewide property tax, but that hasn't been an issue to date. It is a peculiar nuance. Probably is less important if we move to a foundation formula, which is more consistent with other states. But I think the takeaway message is just like if we've got $6,000,000,000 in need, that amount of debt is kind of a material consequence on the state's rating given all the other capital needs in the state. But through the bond bank, we think we can be more efficient on a comparative basis with with leveraging the state's rating.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Representative Quimby?

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member)]: I just want to make sure I heard correctly, if I understood it correctly. You say a $5,000,000 appropriation rather than a bond would wipe out virtually all of the bond debt that the school's having? Is it not?

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: A little bit I

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member)]: didn't quite catch that.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Yeah, yeah. We describe it in the report. If you said, okay, we're going to eliminate up to $5,000,000 of debt for every single district in the state. Oh, for each The total appropriation you would need would be, I think I'm going off memory here. I think 54,000,000.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member)]: Okay. That makes

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: It would eliminate any outstanding debt for all but 13 districts in the state.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member)]: Okay. Thank you. That cleared it

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: up.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Any other questions on some of this? Yeah, go ahead.

[Unidentified committee member]: This is not, I just was curious about this. In looking at the first slide, the historical bond issuance activity, I know obviously that the nineteen seventy one spike was because that was when we were consolidating all the schools and building the new schools. What happened in the mid-90s that spiked in and back down?

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: I don't know. Okay.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: There was a, you know, there was a building, boom during the first consolidation of the union high schools in the late sixties, early seventies. And then there was actually a population spike in the early nineties. And and, you you know, so there's quite a bit of construction in that during that period to accommodate the the population spike.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Absolutely. And and right after that population spike, the reverse happened. Mean, aggressively.

[Unidentified committee member]: I was just curious about It was population. Enrollment.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: We see a lot of buildings that were built in the sixties with additions in the nineties and haven't had any work since then.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, would you all sort of mind talking about the future work of the advisory group, if any, especially in the sort of absence of any state funding for school construction?

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Can talk to that a little bit. Michael and I actually did meet yesterday to have a little pregame, meeting, but the we're gonna be asked to, put some flesh on the bones of the the framework for school construction aid that was in Act 73. But what we were talking about was that there's really, you know, the school construction aid program should be a program that implements state policy, you know, on right now, I think it's gonna be a challenge to put together a school construction day program if we don't know what policy levers we're trying to move. And so I think we're gonna need direction, whether it's from this committee or the agency of education, know, is it newer and fewer as Rhode Island likes to say, or is it, you know, class sizes, certain school sizes, certain, you know, regional, you know, there's been talk about regional comprehensive high schools. Because school construction aid is a, you know, as you know, it's a great carrot to move move districts in the direction that, you know, that is aligned with state policy. But I think as a committee, we need to know what that state policy is to be effective.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So for example, if we were to say the state policy is that we wanna only focus on comprehensive larger comprehensive high schools, that gives you the direction you need to sort of build out program.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Exactly. So that's the next step for us, I believe, is to start working on the framework that is in act 73 and start, like, okay, what are the incentives for because it it suggests a 20% contribution and then up to 40% based on different priorities. What are those priorities? How do they work? How do how

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: are they

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: measured? How do you make them measurable? All that. I think, you know, we'll have to I I think it's gonna be a challenge without state policy guidelines to work towards.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes. That could be restated in many contexts. Yes.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Yeah. And I think from my perspective, we're obviously concerned about cost overall and and the debt service burden. And I feel like for the most part, we spent the last five years sort of figuring that out. There's not going to be a lot of new discussion that hasn't been part of prior reports from our perspective. So that means, like I talked about before, it's going to be we would recommend debt service reimbursement, which we've talked about. We've also talked about the bond bank or some other entity serving as a fiscal agent to mechanically monitor who's paid debt service and then reimburse the right school and move the money at the right times. And you know, not investing money. I mean, the one area where I think the bond bank gets away from just the mechanics of the thing is looking at these FCI scores and making sure that we are not that we're doing things efficiently. We're not trying to renovate schools because of sentimental value that are that are well above their, you know, FCI scores of 65, 70% or above, and that we're really fully considering new construction as a more cost effective option. So I think those are the three things that we're focused on. And as David says, the sort of incentive mechanisms are need to be driven by overall policy and and and frankly, aren't not exactly in the middle for the bond bank. Those are programmatic questions more so. I

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: wanted to mention that in regards to our report, and I think Michael touched on this, we listed five options, but it was really for the purposes of outlining, trying to iterate all the different options and they are not equal and some of them we would recommend. The committee was reluctant to make a recommendation because they they were concerned about unintended consequences without seeing what the district maps looked like. For example, one of the concerns expressed was if a wealthier district that had debt was merged, redistricted with a less wealthy community, and they were having to assume that debt. Now that was a concern expressed, but I think one thing we all agreed on was that if you were in if you were taking advantage of that asset, if you benefited from that asset that might be part of the debt load, then you need to be you need to participate in helping pay for it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. Understood. I I think that just your report this morning kind of gives me a different view of the negativity of debt that perhaps is not such a bad thing, given that it reflects a more valuable asset. And so as I think about what you're telling me is if, for example, South Burlington merged with Burlington and sent all their high school kids to Burlington High School, one could say they really should assume that debt because they are now taking advantage of that asset.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Exactly. I think one sort of issue too is in one of the options, there's this debt subsidy repayment approach similar to Rhode Island. I I think one of the things that will have to be tackled with the school construction aid program is retroactive subsidies. Yeah. Does Burlington or Winooski or Colchester get a subsidized payment on their debt even though they started did the work before the school construction aid program. Because one of the things, you know, as an architect, what I what I see around the state is that I see a lot of districts sitting on the sidelines waiting, for for two reasons. One is they don't wanna they don't wanna do anything until they can get some kind of state construction aid. And two, you know, this, and I know this has been a constant conversation is the per pupil's capital construction now counts towards the per pupil spending and they're, they're afraid of hitting, the penalty zone. Yes. They're, you know, having conversations yesterday with the district about saying, well, we can only afford to do this much work because we don't wanna go into, the excess spending threshold. So there's some you know, and it may be intentional because legislature may want to have everybody wait until there is a program, but but what we're seeing is there's there's this hesitancy to move forward with investments right now, which is only raising the ticket price

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Whole thing the longer they wait. We have a one one project. I won't name the project. We started ten years ago with this group and they needed 20,000,000 worth of work on their high school. That that same exact scope of work is $80,000,000 today. And that's the cost of waiting. So that's a concern, I think, you know, that I think is worth considering as you navigate this particular subject.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. I it spills over into not just bonded indebtedness, but so many other things that a lot of schools are sitting on the sidelines waiting for us to take action. Yeah, appreciate that comment.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Yeah, I might add a outside the box comment as well, just on this subject. So, and I've spoken about this before and pushed for it to be included in the task force report from two years ago. But, you know, we just had a discussion about 54,000,000 eliminating the debt service or the debt burden for all but 13 districts. But in my mind, the challenge here is is never going to be the for the reasons David has articulated, but it's really going to be what happens with that community asset. And I know it's outside of the scope of this committee to some degree, but it truly is social infrastructure that matters for that community. And so 54,000,000 towards renovation and reuse of those facilities for some sort of adapted use housing, whatever, think would be as valuable, probably more valuable than eliminating debt and a good investment for the state. We care about that, you know, because we lend to all the municipalities as well. And so we want to see thriving municipalities even if their long time school changes locations. So I, you know, not to be forgotten this conversation is it's quite interdisciplinary.

[Rep. Beth Quimby (Member)]: Thanks.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Anybody else, any other questions, comments? If not, thank you both very much for your time this morning and for the report and the recommendations. It's really helpful.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Great, nice to see everyone. Talk soon.

[Dave (David) Epstein (Architect)]: Thank you. Thank Take care.

[Michael Gaughan (Executive Director, Vermont Bond Bank)]: Alright. Sounds good.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Alright, folks. We could call ourselves on break till 10:30 for our next