Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Might not hurt, but it's also a little sad.

[Speaker 1]: We're sad.

[Speaker 0]: Alright. Welcome back, to the House Environment Committee. We are going to hear from the Vermont Housing Conservation Coalition. Welcome.

[Speaker 2]: Hello, thanks for having us in today. I'm just doing a quick intro and then leaving. But my name is Lauren Oates. I'm with The Nature Conservancy, I'm here as the co chair, one of the co chairs of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition. We, as a coalition, have 60 plus member organizations representing both housing and conservation work across the state. We work together using Vermont Housing and Conservation Board funds to do important projects that benefit all of your communities across the state. We are here to advocate for full statutory share for VHCb, which hopefully this year is an easy ask. It is recommended in the governor's budget, so we're just asking for you all to sign on a dotted line effectively. I'm going to yield the floor. You're gonna hear from four great organizations, four or five really incredible projects across the state, and really grateful for the time to tell our stories today. Thanks. Can you just press the down or right arrow? Alright.

[Speaker 3]: Thank you very much.

[Speaker 4]: Hey. Hello. My name is John Benhammer with The Nature Conservancy, and I am the real estate transaction director there. And over the last thirty, almost thirty five years, I've had the opportunity, really the privilege, to apply for funding from BHCb to help support The Nature Conservancy meet our goals and our mission to protect the lands and waters on which all life depends. And I'm here today to speak to you about the latest project that we have with the HCB to protect more of what we call the North Pollard Hills ecosystem down in Pollitt, Vermont in Rutland County. The Nature Conservancy is an international nonprofit organization. We work in all 50 states and internationally. We use our science to find those critical places where for biodiversity conservation, aquatic conservation, and wildlife connectivity. We then work with willing landowners, only willing landowners, to conserve those areas for the future. We also work to conserve freshwater resources, and we work on policy issues as well. Our funding is mostly from private donors from Vermont. So at North Pollard Hills, we have, conserved over 1,600 acres now in eight transactions since 1998. We call this stitching the landscape together. We like that metaphor. And all you all the lands you see in the dark green are on this slide are have been conserved by the Nature Conservancy together with the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. Our conservation work at this site is aligned with act 59, and I quote, prioritizing ecological reserve areas to protect highest priority natural communities and maintain or restore old forests. So that's what we're doing here. While we engage in some forest and species management at some of our other natural areas, North Pollard Hills has intact natural communities and do not require the management interventions at this time. Here's our latest acquisition in the southwestern flanks of these mountains and hills. And the project is actually a partnership of it's minor partnership, but a small partnership with Vermont Land Trust because Vermont Land Trust is will be conserving the fields that are closer to the road, adding them to the property next door, which is Laughing Child Farm, which you've probably had their sweet potatoes before, the best sweet potatoes in Vermont. I think they're probably the only sweet potatoes in Vermont. Laughing Child Farm? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so now some pretty pictures. So this is the view from Haystack Mountain down onto the property and Route 30 in the background there. And we have a trail to the top of Haystack Mountain, and I encourage you to go visit there and hike up there. It's spectacular views, 270 degree views. Super major. Yeah. And then this is one of our rare natural communities on the North Pollard Hills Preserve. It's called dry oak woodland, very different from the rest of our forests in Vermont. It looks a bit like an oak savannah or an African savannah on a steep south facing slope. And it's home to several rare plant species and some animal species as well. Another rare natural community is this one, the dry oak hickory popcorn bean forest that provides food for everything from bears on down to chipmunks. It's, you know, highly productive for wildlife. And here is the breakdown of the sources

[Speaker 3]: and and costs for the project. And we're fortunate in Vermont that we

[Speaker 4]: have VHCV funds for conservation of these special places where wildlife can roam freely and people can hike and hunt and fish. And at the same time, we support the local economy by hiring appraisers, surveyors, attorneys, and ecologists to help us do our work. So I encourage you to fully support the governor's line item in his budget for BHCb, and thank you very much.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. I have a quick question about your dry oak natural communities and how you actively manage them.

[Speaker 4]: Yeah. So at this point, we do not. They are fairly self sustaining because they they're south on South Basin slopes, and they are influenced by, you know, those conditions, the dry conditions. We don't know enough about disturbance history at those sites. There could have been fire impacts in those places. They kind of look like they've burned. But to my knowledge, I've not seen fire scars there. So it could be that lightning caused fires helped maintain those natural communities. Or it could be that fires from prehistorically, basically, fires that came up the Hudson River Valley from the Saratoga Sand Plains had some impact on these areas. We do not have fire management protocols here in Vermont for our lands, although we do have some fire adapted natural communities on our lands at this point. So that's something obviously for the future.

[Speaker 0]: But do you know how old they are?

[Speaker 4]: We do I do not. I'm sure there have been corings of the trees there, but I don't know how well they got. Thank you. Sure. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 1]: Do you want to move on?

[Speaker 0]: I do want to move on, but if we can ask at the end.

[Speaker 3]: Yeah.

[Speaker 1]: Morning. Last time I was here, there was a fox running by, and I think this must be the nicest committee room there is.

[Speaker 0]: We think so.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah. Probably wanna keep that a secret. But thank you all for having me here this morning. I'm Cindy Reed. I'm the director of real estate development at Cathedral Square. Cathedral Square is a nonprofit affordable housing senior housing provider working mainly in Northwest Vermont, hence, we also provide services. During my thirteen years with Cathedral Square, I've witnessed the need for affordable housing grow exponentially, and, also, I've seen and and witnessed the transformative impacts that housing with services has on people and and their dignity. And we currently have over 1,300 people on our wait list who need independent living and assisted living, And it's critical that we continue to invest in housing. And I love this day because we love the and in housing and conservation. We need each other to continue having a wonderful state. And it's critical that we keep funding the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. So I wanted to tell you about Reed Commons, which is a housing development we recently completed in the city of Saint Albans in September. It was a $19,000,000 project, and we accomplished, well, a lot of goals, but three major goals I wanted to tell you about today. One is transforming a former brownfield into a new neighborhood. Secondly, is creating 33 new permanently affordable homes for older adults. And three, we created our first fossil fuel free building, which is super energy efficient. So this is a site, and some of you may have heard of this. It was kind of a famous, Fonda lot in Saint Albans, major, environmental disaster. It had been a solo cup factory. We all know the red solo cups. Anyway, their inks and dyes did a number on this property. This is after it's been cleaned up. But location is really critical for where we build affordable housing, and this really fit the bill. It's half a mile from downtown. It's on an active bus line connecting people to goods and services, and it's very walkable. The city the site had been dormant since 2006 when Solo Cup closed its doors. The city purchased the site and over time invested millions of dollars in cleanup, acquiring the site demo cleanup, and then making it buildable ready. And so now the site contains the railroad dispatch center, which is the top little building on top, which is an amazing brain for, railroads. And then Reed Commons, which is now on that part of the site on the right. And then in the spring this year, construction will start on 87 units of market rate workforce housing. So let's see. That's and then the city has constructed a new street along this side. Am I making that beep? No. That's Okay. I'm sorry. Sorry. Said

[Speaker 0]: it's being called to the floor.

[Speaker 1]: Okay. This the city installed a new street on the left side of that site, which has a big wide lane on the side for bikes and pedestrians that it will eventually connect to the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail, which we're really excited about. And then a little bit about the housing. We fully occupied this 33 unit building pretty much right when it was built. It's a mix of one and two bedroom apartments with a range of rents. We serve below 30% of median income up to 80% of median income, so it's a nice range of incomes. We always build with community spaces to bring people together for wellness programming and socialization. We have a it's really service enriched. We have our on-site Sash program, which some of you may have heard about support and services at home, which is a care coordination program supporting aging in place. We have an on-site mental health clinician, which is a wonderful partnership with the local mental health provider, and it really reduces stigma for residents that we serve. And we also have housing retention services and our housing incentive program to help support folks that are coming from homelessness so that they can be successful in their housing. Really exciting. We actually of the 33 households we served, 11 came from homeownership, seven came from homelessness, and everyone in between, and 70% were from Stelvins. So we really targeted well there. And then thirdly, this building is fossil fuel free, which was our first geothermal, which is part of why we have 19 funding sources, which was really did a number on our brains. But, anyway, it's it's a it's a geothermal HVAC system, eight wells, 700 feet deep each, which we needed for the the heating loop, uses the stable temperature of the earth, which is around 50 degrees to heat help heat cool the building. That's as simple as I can make it. I you know, good thing we had really good mechanical engineer. We also invest a lot in a robust building envelope, air sealing insulation, triple pane windows to conserve the energy to begin with, and then we were able to put a nice rooftop solar array because we had a wide open roof with no compressors. So a lot of nice real estate for solar to help, mitigate our electric usage. So so just to wrap up, it was a very complicated, project in terms of funding. The investment tax credit helped pay, raised $1,200,000 for the geothermal. Otherwise, it would have been cost prohibitive to do that kind of system even though the life cycle cost was was the best. VHCb early funder, they believed in this project due to its goals. They provided over 30% of the funding and helped leverage 13,000,000 more in funding, and it's permanently affordable. So an investment in this housing now stays for generations. We will continue to serve generations of people with this upfront investment. And this is one of our residents who came from homelessness. She'd spent her life in the health care field. She recently does not need her oxygen anymore, which I think speaks a lot to how health can improve when you have stable housing with services and community. So we ask for your support to fully fund VHCb in the governor's budget, 37,600,000.0. And I say this, but it's really true, and we see it every day. The affordable housing we build with services, it helps people not just survive, but really helps them thrive. And you can see people walk taller. So thank you so much for this opportunity and for your support. Did anyone have questions? I know we're tight time frame.

[Speaker 0]: You all know more about your the time than I do, but I guess that that's a great story. Thank you for sharing it. The additional housing that's going to be built, market rate workforce housing, how do you what does that mean, and how do you assure that it's for folks who are actually gonna live live and work here?

[Speaker 1]: Right. And that's this that's a project of the city, so we we don't have anything to do with that project. I know they're in discussions with the HFA about their financing and who they're targeting. It's it's a tough time right now for everyone with costs and trying to deliver rents. So we're hoping that they will build this this summer, and I'm not entirely sure all the ins and outs of that particular project because it is city driven.

[Speaker 0]: And I have to ask, is it named after you?

[Speaker 5]: Yes.

[Speaker 1]: Our our CEO and board named the project for me for my career with Cathedral's Career Developing Properties. It's a little funny to be presenting that, it's a huge honor.

[Speaker 0]: It is. Great. Yeah. Congratulations. Read that. Yeah. Congratulations.

[Speaker 1]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Alright. Who's next?

[Speaker 1]: That's me.

[Speaker 0]: One in, but you can both come in.

[Speaker 3]: Good morning, madam chair, members of the committee. I'm, my name is for the record, I'm my name is Paul Silo. I live in Hardwick. I'm a former house member and founding trustee and current board member of the Northern Rivers Land Trust. NRLT's mission is to support landowners to conserve and protect their ecologically important and working lands at the headwaters of Vermont's Winooski, Lemoyle, and Black Rivers for the benefit of future generations. NRLT has conserved more than 2,000 acres, in in and around Hardwick during its twenty year history. We accept and hold in perpetuity easement donations from landowners who choose to conserve their properties. I'm here today, like everybody else, to urge you, to support full funding of the Vermont Housing Conservation Board, which is critical to our work. I wanna focus specifically today about one aspect of our work, town forests, and the Buffalo Mountain Town Forest project in Hardwick specifically. We're in the middle of that project now. While town forests have been around officially for more than a century in Vermont, we're seeing renewed interest in them recently. NRLT worked with the Trust for Public Land, BHCB, and the town of Wolcott on the 735, on the 735 Wolcott Town Forest, which became reality in in September 2024. NRLT co holds the easement on that property with the HCB. So this photo is Buffalo Mountain in Hardwick. Its summit, which overlooks Hardwick Village, is the second highest point in town at 1,550 feet and is within easy walking distance of the village, Hardwick Schools, and the Memorial Valley Rail Trail. Since it is so close to the village, it's taken on an iconic presence in town. Several businesses have Buffalo Mountain in their names. There's been interest in town in conserving the mountain for more than a decade. A bit about town forests. Investing in town forests brings social, ecological, and economic benefits to communities. Town forests bring together community members by providing a convenient, beautiful, and fun place to meet friends for an outing, and community input is key to decisions about how a town forest is used. The forest provides a natural laboratory for schoolchildren as well as ready access to recreation. Conserving Buffalo Mountain will protect drinking water by re reducing runoff into the Lemoyle River, which flows into Lake Champlain. Protecting the flood plain on either side of the river and the wetlands on the mountainside will increase flood resiliency in Hardwick, mitigating the flood risk that has impacted so many towns in Vermont. And there are economic benefits. Timber harvest or sugaring can provide direct income to the town supporting municipal budgets as many towns face rising costs associated with health care, flooding, and road maintenance. But but hiking and mountain biking also stimulate the local economy. Economic activity resulting from outdoor recreation makes up about 2,100,000,000 or 4.8% of Vermont's gross domestic product, making Vermont second in the country behind only Hawaii for the highest contribution to state GDP. So here's what Buffalo Mountain looks like on the map. On the left, the orange lines surround the 329 acre proposed town forest. You can see the property extends from Route 15 in the Moyle River on the north end at the top of the map all the way to the summit of Buffalo Mountain on the south end and right up to the edge of Hardwick's Village Center on the in the East. The map on the right was produced as part of the ecological ecological study completed last year that shows the locations of rare plants in notable natural communities. I'm not expecting you to actually see the where those are on the map, but just to get the idea. This photo from an overlook about halfway up the mountain looking Northeast show shows clearly how close the mountain is to Hardwick Village and why this is a special, project for the community. The Town Forest connects to the Lemoyle Valley Rail Trail shown on the right side of this photo. Which further connects to the existing Hardwick Trails on the Hazen Union School property. The road shown on the left is a class four road used by snowmobiles and ATVs. Local business owners. And the left being here. Local business owners in Hardwick have noticed upticks in their business since the construction of the Lemoyle Valley Rail Trail, allowing them to offer more local employment and entice young people to grow professionally in Vermont rather than leave to find jobs. Expanding trail access off the rail trail onto Buffalo Mountain will make Hardwick more of a recreation destination and bring tourism dollars into the community. Buffalo Mountain has several streams that drain down the mountain into the Lemoyle River as well as several acres of wetlands and frontage on both sides of the Lemoyle River. Protecting the those streams and wetlands limits erosion into the river and residential areas and provides room for floodwaters to be soaked up and stored during periods of heavy rain, limiting flood risk in Hardwick and downstream. Many state and local organization organizations and businesses have been outspoken in their support for this project. In conclusion, Buffalo Mountain is important to the Hardwick community, and creating this 329 acre forest ensures that it will remain accessible to residents and non nonresidents for generations to come, helping to make the Harvard community a desirable place to live and raise a family. So, again, VHCV makes projects like this possible. So I'd be happy to answer any questions about this, but just trying to keep this brief if you do a sense of what this is about.

[Speaker 0]: Hey. Thank you for that presentation. How how much did this expansion of the Town Forest cost?

[Speaker 3]: Well, we're we're in the middle of it. So but the budget cost of the project is about $800,000. The, the actual sale to the owner, we have a option agreement in place, and the actual price paid to the owner is 530,000. So the other project costs are related to the due diligence and all the work staff work that has to go into making a project like this happen.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Speaker 1]: Representative. What's the process for beginning a town force?

[Speaker 3]: It's a great question. I actually didn't know the answer to that question until I started working with the Trust for Public Land and on the Walcott project. So I actually would ask Hannah to answer that question about the process.

[Speaker 6]: Hi, everyone. I'm Hannah Redmond from Trust it's like, I could sustain. Hannah Redmond, Trust for Public Land. I'm working with Paul and everyone else at Northern Rivers Land Trust on Buffalo Mountain. So the process for a new town or community forest, it looks a little different for every town, just like all local government things do. But usually there's either an interest in some concept of conservation, whether that's residents say, we really need more recreation or we want some timber revenue flowing to our budget, or there's a property that comes on the market and people say, that would be really interesting to be part of our local lands portfolio. In the case of Buffalo Mountain, it's a little bit of both. Like Paul was saying, Buffalo Mountain is really important to the community. And then the property just came on the market this winter. Once that happens, once there's community interest, it's ultimately a question for either the select board or the voters, depending on the municipal charter. The select board or the voters need to approve the town forest becoming town property, the town making that acquisition. And then you need to find the funding. And then the really unique piece, is that it's local residents who form the concept of the town forest. So in this case, and in many cases, there'll be a steering committee that's formed of local residents who will come together and solicit public input and decide what's gonna happen out there. Will there be trails? Will there be sugaring? Will there be camping? Will there be horses? And they form the vision. Thank you. Thank you again.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah.

[Speaker 1]: It

[Speaker 0]: takes a second.

[Speaker 5]: It looks like they're on the right

[Speaker 4]: hand side. Oh, don't have slides?

[Speaker 6]: And that's me. You're the last one.

[Speaker 5]: Am I the last one? And are you running out of time?

[Speaker 0]: We have till noon.

[Speaker 5]: Thanks. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me, and I'm sorry that we were late to come here. My name is Hannah Rutger. I'm the chair of the board of Bull Creek Common Lands, and my colleague, Deborah Clark, is also here. She's our board secretary. We're an all volunteer land trust based in the Bull Creek Watershed in Southern Vermont, which I will share a little bit more about for you. We're also grateful recipients of VHCb funding, and I'm gonna share this Bull Creek Headwaters project with you that we completed just in November 2025. This first slide shows the actual headwaters pond of the Bull Creek Watershed, and it's a six acre pond with lots of beavers that live in there among other forms of life. It's one of seven distinct wetland complexes on the property, 20 acres in total of headwater wetlands that we've conserved there.

[Speaker 1]: Okay. And This is

[Speaker 5]: just another view of the same pond. And so the project was ended up being three separate parcels that we pulled back together, contiguous parcels, 341 acres in total. And I'll just share a little bit about our project budget and VHCb's contribution to it. The total project budget was $950,000. VHCb contributed $315,000, which was split between Coal Creek Common Lands in our acquisition costs and some associated costs and also to Vermont Land Trust who now holds a conservation easement on the whole property. Another $355,000 was leveraged bargain sales and donated land, so land that we acquired below its market value. And then the other about a third of the budget was funded by additional funders and private donations. So this is to give you context of did we jump ahead too much? Now it's synced. It wasn't. Okay. This is this is a watershed map of the state, and we're kind of working in the watershed context. So the Bull Creek is a tributary of the Saksons River, which flows into the Connecticut River. And this whole area is it's it's part of the TNC Southern Greens to Whites focal area. This block of land that we're working in, it checks all of the highest priority boxes in Vermont conservation design. And there's several state and federally listed rare and endangered species and likely more that we haven't discovered yet there. So this is zooming in to the specific watershed and the map of the the land that we're working with, and you can see sort of where it is. It takes up quite a lot of land area in the headwaters, and all of the the blue and green marks on the map are the are the wetlands that we're talking about. I'll just point out that the trail also where we have the map up. So in the Southwest area, this Turtle Lot Trail is a section of trail that we'll be building that actually connects an old town road that went through from the town of Athens, the town of Townsend that doesn't exist as a road anymore, but people do use it recreationally. And our trail will help them get around one of the beaver ponds that has flooded the actual old road bad and and head out to the other to the other town. And I'll just point out too that the green so the the pink outline is the headwaters project. The green outline is the Athens Community forest that Bull Creek Common Lands conserved in 2022, I think. So I'll I'll kinda focus on this Bull Creek Watershed headwaters and along the the creek proper. So there's lots of impact, and it's just been this amazing ripple effect. Once Bull Creek Common Lands was able to I mean, even as we started this project, getting the support from local townspeople who have basically had access to this land for generations due to generous landowners that didn't post their property. And there was quite a lot of concern, especially with one parcel that was having a a big house lot cleared, which I think I can kind of like a head to maybe well, it's a couple slides away. So there was there was a of community support to keep this land accessible for hunting, for wandering, just to know that it's there and they weren't going to bump into posted signs out in the woods where they didn't used to be. So this is just a section of the trail that the town road trail. And one of one of our trail users are moose, for sure, and and deer as well and other animals. But this is gonna be about a half a mile section of new trail that connects the the two old town roads. And this I'll just this is this is what I was starting to talk about with the with the house lot that had been cleared on one of the parcels before we purchased it. So but I think the the more important point maybe to make with this is that, like, we did potentially avert a house from being built. We don't know what might have happened there, but this is, I think, land that is in like, it's in the town plan as resource protection area. There's no zoning in the town. It wouldn't have been a house that anyone local would have been able to afford. And what we've seen on other adjacent parcels of this size that have been purchased is that the, you know, the posted signs go up and people really lose access to these areas that they've had like, that they know really well for generations. So we are aligning with the the town plan, the statewide land use objectives by protecting areas in this in this Headwaters region. And so we've also gotten this amazing opportunity through owning the land to engage the community in some restoration activities. This is a bunch of people standing around looking at a ditch that was created from runoff on an old logging road that had been a logging operation had left without creating water bars, and a lot of the topsoil was flowing down the Bull Creek. And we were, with the help of NRCS, able to engage a lot of local folks, both excavators and volunteers, to come in and put in water bars on two and a half miles, I think it was, of forest roads that were actively eroding into the creek and really hurting the water quality. And this was actually work that we were able to start before we owned the property through a contract with a conservation buyer who was holding the land for us. And this is what the house lot actually looks like after one season of being let to grow, and we're protecting some trees to make sure that there's some native hardwoods that get a good head start to grow back in as a buffer on the headwaters pond, which you can just see this is during the drought last fall. So the pond is low, but you can just see the pond in the corner there, and this would have been the view had someone built a house there. And in one of the other wetlands, this is a beaver trail in one of the other wetlands. So we know that these areas are sponges and will really help hold floodwaters and have a positive impact on all the downstream communities that, like, have been impacted, like everybody in Vermont has been impacted over the last several years. We're also able to protect a pretty unique historic area, like, complex a family complex of settlers, homesteaders who were in this area who persisted for a hundred years, who were from France, who were amazing stone builders. There's a Vermont State Archaeological site now designated at the main homestead, and this is picture of one of the wells that's on the property. And this is like, the the Turtle O family is the name has persisted on this land even though the family has been gone since the eighteen eighties, but locals refer to this as the Turtle Lot lot. And it took me a while to figure out what they were talking about, but the Turtle O family had three separate homesteads along the road, which are now seller holes, but they were teamsters and built walls that looked like giants built them.

[Speaker 1]: This

[Speaker 5]: keeps getting out of sync with what I'm looking at, but okay. So I think this is, like, what really gets the board members going is just protecting this intrinsic value of all of the amazing beings of all life forms that live on the land. You know, rare and common, they all really have a part and a right to exist and do what they do in their interactions with ecosystems. And they also just add so much joy to everybody who comes across a fen with blooming rose begonia orchids in it out in the middle of the woods, you know, or bird's nest or countless other amazing encounters. So this is this is just some testimonies from local voices that we did in some outreach, you know, people who appreciate the work that we're doing and appreciate the land and are expressing what they what they love about the land. I'll just leave that up for you to read, and I'm happy to happy to take any questions. And thank you so much for your time.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you for your work. And I just wanna you're a you're a volunteer with this organization.

[Speaker 5]: I'm a volunteer. Yes. Yeah. We're all

[Speaker 0]: impressive. Thank you. Members have questions for any of the presenters?

[Speaker 1]: I just want to say something about Essex. What is that?

[Speaker 6]: Sarita. I just want to

[Speaker 1]: say how grateful I am, not only for the work you do, but from the testimony we've heard from everybody. Real I I think the whole committee just feels very grateful for the work you do. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for your work. And we are glad that the full funding has been come is coming to us in the budget, and can't speak for the whole committee, but I suspect we'll we'll do our best to support

[Speaker 1]: that. Thank you so much.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you very much. Thank you.

[Speaker 3]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: That's a wrap for Friday. Have a great weekend, and we'll adjourn for the weekend now.