Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Welcome to the House Environment Committee. This afternoon, we have we're gonna continue testimony on s three twenty five, and we have Paul Costello joining us. Thank you

[Paul Costello]: for joining us. Thank you so much, madam chair, and it's an honor to be here. Appreciate the opportunity. I'm I'm an outsider to the building. I'm not close to 325. Was that is that the number? Excuse me. But deeply appreciate the work of the committee, wrestling with mental challenges to the future of Vermont. It's an honor to be here where you're diligently and effectively working to advance democracy in a very patriotic way, I think, for the future of Vermont with all the challenges that we face. I was the executive director of the Vermont Council on Rural Development for twenty two years. In that time, I think I probably managed more neutral facilitated community meetings than anyone in Vermont. One of the processes that we ran and I will give you a little bit of a description of some of that experience, but one of the processes we ran was the Council on the Future of Vermont, which we believed was the largest scale since the public values and priorities that's been done in the state of Vermont, certainly since the Cunan commission of 1980 or so. The Council on the Future of Vermont did a a deep evaluation of public values, asking people what we stood for as Vermonters, what were the core things that they wrestled within their community, and what were the the things that were most essential to preserve and protect as they look for the future of the state. The highest ranking value in that process after interviewing 5,000 people in a 113 different meetings around the state was the statement, I value the working landscape and its heritage. And we understood that to mean that they valued the land, and they also understood the heritage of stewardship by actively working individuals and businesses, farms, forest products businesses, and others who, have produced the landscape that as a state we love, as people we love together. And so the policy work that you are doing in this committee seem to me very much at the heart of that kind of work in finding the correct balance points that bridge us together as Vermonters and also sustain and steward the the land for the next generation. Again, So, it's an honor to be here and be part of that conversation. My experience is, we've run community visits around the state. We've produced over 100 of those now with the towns from Bennington and Rutland to Townell and Vernon, all across the state where we run facilitated public meetings that engage 100 to 500 people, looking at the future of the community. We have sessions on what's the vision for the future of this town. What are the challenges and opportunities? What are your good ideas to answer those challenges and opportunities? How do you prioritize those ideas? How do you take the priorities, turn them into the action plan? And we would do this with teams of 30 executive level state, federal, nonprofit officials that we would bring to these events, and then help them leverage resources to follow the community because it's the communities that lead to get things done, and the resources of the state and fed don't lead. They respond and support. So, again, I I love my job. It was the greatest job in Vermont. We also ran eight governor's retreats with governors of both parties. We're a neutral facilitator. We would run a retreat for an administration on what they could do to strengthen rural communities, how to advance broadband, how to advance, the working landscape for the future. We ran ten year long policy councils. We we built the first broadband council in the state of Vermont and took opinions from Vermonters, all around the state about what was necessary, what were the policies that would drive broadband implementation. And we worked in that arena facilitating processes, for over ten years and certainly worked closely with the legislature throughout that period of time. We built 20 summits on everything from broadband and working lands to community leadership and COVID response. We built the Council on the Future of Vermont, the largest scale analysis of public values. We, in the end, were asked to work with, To help manage the governor's efficiency commission and then to co chair the governor's Climate Action Council at the beginning of the climate efforts that the governor and this building were doing. At one point I was facilitating sessions of the climate action council and also facilitating sessions for the legislature in the climate, working group that you'd developed. As a nonpartisan facilitator, it's not my job to tell people what direction they should go or to steer try to steer public policy, but to be an expert listener, a person who, person in an organization that that digests, does cluster analysis of ideas, adds up ideas, presents them back for prioritization, and stays out of the politics of implementation. Praise, never condemn, never criticize, never think we know better than the political process that represents us as a democracy. So lot of experience in the arena of this kind of work, and I was asked to come in and share a couple reflections, and I'd much rather talk to you about what the situation at hand and and where you are in terms of thinking about the need for or benefits or even whether there's a use for public engagement around the the issues that you've been facing. But but first, you know, I sort of asked to share a few principles and thoughts about how engagement processes work just as some of my my reflections, and then I'm glad to talk about, what's on the table here. So the the first thing is the best kind of public engagement is is, based on the principle of neutrality. You can have an engagement that is a rally, a political you can have an engagement that is a reflection on particular ideas that you want information on. But the best engagement where people feel ownership is when they're asked at the beginning of a process, what do you stand for? What's your vision for the future? The facilitator in this kind of setting puts aside their own preconceptions and personal, social, and political beliefs to listen to every idea, and good engagement is about a deep listening process. It's about respect, that you respect every voice at the table. You respect people who are difficult to listen to, and you respect people that you already agree with, recognizing that that the truth in any setting includes ideas like faces of a crystal from all those different kinds of people and all the different kinds of parties and that represent them together in a holistic way is your job as a facilitator. That you do this not in a sort of slapdash, let's have a let's have a good conversation. You do it with a serious amount of discipline. You are providing serious meeting management that's precise to the purpose that you're working on and fully transparent to to participants. You don't have a session where you're brainstorming about something. Everyone's just throwing out ideas when you've already got a platform that everyone's looking at. You you don't have a session on where people think they're making decisions on at the table about a particular direction their community is making when you're really just brainstorming and having an opening conversation about it. If you're not clear about where you are in the process and what the structure of the meeting is from the get go of each meeting, you lose the faith and trust of communities. And in this work, as in as in politics, trust is the most important capital you can hold. So for us as an organization and for us as facilitative, partners in all kinds of projects, trust was our always our foundation. Integrity, listening, telling the truth to everyone, and also hearing everything. That doesn't mean that everything is equal. You know, in any conversation, there's wheat and there's chat. And your job isn't to be the one to separate that, but you're contributing and adding up the voices so that things that are weak tend to rise to the top. And oftentimes we would be running a prioritization session after big input where we get, you know, we get a 100 pages of notes from a bunch of sessions and we would say, how do we bring back all the ideas we heard and and give the community or the participant partners that we have or particular stakeholders the ability to go through these these cluster analyzed ideas and evaluate which ones are the actual priorities for action, which ones are most important. Just a quick example, we're up in the town of Montgomery. They need you know, they start talking about the need to attract youth. They need to attract housing, and they recognize we don't have any sewer capacity, so we can't actually build any housing in our village center. That's got to be our priority. But someone else says, I think our priority should be we should work together to to manage our everyone who's growing marijuana. We could all do it in one place and we could take turns making sure that it's safe. So we say, okay, we'll put that up on the wall and and inevitably that idea didn't become a priority of the community as a whole. But we heard that person. That person had a voice and was a is it maybe an important person in that community, not for us to judge. So at any rate, we we manage a process of sorting and prioritization that helps people make move forward with practical action. So the the one of the most important things with this is that when you build a strong structure and you set up a discipline pattern for facilitation and you ask a set of questions, you you have to recuse yourself in faith to democracy. You have to you have to have a sense that, you know, there's goodwill here that that we're going to ask questions in a way that are going to look for positive directions. We're not gonna ask questions that just let people come like, you think about how a select board meeting works where people just come with their next problem, the next problem, the next problem till there's a plate full of problems that doesn't go away. What you wanna do is ask questions and facilitate a process that asks people what they're for. You know, where where do you want to go? What are the things that you think could be could drive your community forward? Let's build that list, and let's prioritize that list, and that list then becomes a ground for collective action within the community. So turning it away from just what you're against to what you're for is a fundamental of this. And then having faith that if you ask questions in the right way and you ask them to talk about what they aspire to and you ask them what they share as points of vision, you tend to get pretty good product out of people because, actually, most people want want to help their community, want to help the state of Vermont before. So the other thing is that if all content needs to be captured in a facilitated session, you have need to describe everything. You need to have it in the record so that people can read what they had to say, and then you have to do a cluster analysis of how things add up and then prioritize for action. But the one of the most fundamental questions in any kind of engagement is, you know, what are your goals? You know, why are you doing this engagement and what stage of the process? You know, sometimes we do a session around a project where people just wanted to build a vision sort of as a collective, foundation, a a consensus foundation for where process is going. And that's perfectly legitimate. Sometimes you're facilitating a brainstorming session to say, what are all the things we could do about this? Sometimes you're building a list of ideas towards action. So you're not just brainstorming. You're adding them up. You've got 10 things that you wanna look at as potential action plans to think about how you drive them forward. Sometimes you're prioritizing. Sometimes you're taking a prioritized list, and you're building a plan of action around each thing. Sometimes you've already you you already have an existing platform. You know where you're going, and you're having a meeting to review that and think about any additions or anything you should be thinking about as you're moving that report. But it it I guess where I'm going is it's really important to know where you are and the purpose of your meetings in advance so that that's fully transparent to everyone who comes and you're acting and driving the conversation in that way. You know, one example was probably fifteen years ago, a commissioner of education in Vermont before the before the commissioner was a secretary, developed by himself, a plan for, unified school districts throughout the state. And when he presented it to a couple of people, they were kind of nervous, very nervous right out front. And they said, we we need to have a public dialogue about this. And so he went on the road and he did the public dialogue. The first couple of places he went with his public dialogue, people said, woah. Woah. We know you've got a plan in your back pocket, and you're they felt they were being deceived and that they were being pushed, and they reacted very negatively, and it stalled him right out in terms of implementing anything for for years. So it's all about, letting people know where you are, you're gathering ideas, or are you, you know, reflecting a platform where you wanna have public consideration? You know? And then there are political meetings where you're really having a rally around a particular idea, and you don't care if opponents come so much. It's it's for a particular purpose. That's not the kind of facilitation I'm used to, but, you know, there's all kinds of ways of doing this, and none of them are unfair or or wrong or anything, you just need to be really clear with people in advance about the structure that you're gonna use and how you're gonna manage it. So in terms of management, there's a few things that are really important. Based on your decision, in terms of your purpose of your meetings, you wanna think about your systematic invitation. Is this a stakeholder session? Are you having a session that is really designed around bringing together the political and organizational interests that pertain to the topic at hand? Or is this for the general public and you wanna invite as many people as you possibly can get together in in a room to have this big conversation among patriotic Vermonters altogether. And you need to decide that as part of your structure when you start because that's gonna help you think about, well, how many meetings do we need to have? Where should they be located? You know, if you're trying to cover Vermont and around a policy question, you probably need six to eight meetings in different parts of the state. You know, Franklin County, The Kingdom, the Brownsville, Bennington, Rutland, Springfield, or Montpelier. You know, you need to cover the state, make it so that no one's driving a 100 miles to get to a public meeting. If you're having a public meeting, you have to be dedicated. If you're serious about the the import of the meeting and you're taking public opinion for a hard purpose, you need to do a deep invitation. And that means you need to use every media resource online. You use front porch form. You use you use local press. You may get local leaders in the community to be your ambassadors to reach out to their community. You may get different legislators to help with that, but you use the media and all possible outreach sources so that it's a message that doesn't just go to the people who are already with you. In fact, when we're doing this work with the community and one of the issues is the future of the school, we say, yeah, why don't we build a list of people who you think of as opponents of the last school budget and and personally invite all of them? You know, how do we reach out to people who have differences from us, but are part, you know, conservatives and and and liberals and right right, left, and center who are part of this community and who are essential to us working together effectively in the future. So that process of invitation is really important. And the way you message the meeting is it's gotta be around that too. It's a fair, balanced center point with questions that can be answered multiple ways and that different people are gonna see in different ways, and that's what you want. So deep invitation, structure of meetings. You know, you there's lots of ways to structure these kinds of meetings. Part of it is around the discipline of having a facilitator who's strong enough to tell people to be quiet, who says, we've heard from you and we're gonna it's really important, really got your point, really great point you've made, really appreciate it. We need to go on to someone else and oftentimes as a facilitator, I'll choose someone I know and like and who talks too long and I'll say, alright, alright. I'll stop them and say, we wanna keep our remarks brief. So sorry to put you on the point, but, everyone, let's take note of this, that people should talk for a minute or less so that everyone in the hall has a chance to share a perspective. And so, like, being deliberate with humor and discipline to make sure that that the former select board chair or the former town manager doesn't take over the floor and tell you, we've done that before. We tried it 10 times. We've wasted basically, they take the heart and soul out of the conversation for most people in the room because they're the they're the old expert, and they prevent fresh voices from sharing new ideas, and they act like the only legitimate thing is the former people in power. And we need to nurture everyone's feeling of ownership of a meeting and common direction, common purpose. We're all in it together. Everyone's been heard, and now you leave a meeting inspired by a sense of your community, inspired by a sense of power and opportunity that you can work with your neighbors to get this stuff moved forward and done, And by a sense that, yeah, I I've been heard, and in fact, I've contributed to the answer. So the answers that are on the table are partly mine now. And that ownership is is essential to progress. Communities that do this work really well are the communities in Vermont that you see really thriving and driving work forward. So, You know, one of the things that you know, there's lots of times where you have a meeting that's essentially around a political question that needs to be answered or that has a body of information that everyone should know upfront. And sometimes the best way to run a meeting where you have that situation is to have a quick presentation upfront that shares the facts, and then you're done sharing facts. Otherwise, a meeting turns into a question and answer period, and nobody owns anything. And you look to those who have the answers, whether you're against them or for them, that's probably not gonna change over the course of the meeting because you aren't really getting a chance to express yourself. So, you know, it's it's a psychological dynamic that goes on in a meeting like this. It's I've I've sometimes thought of myself as more of a counselor than than just a listener. You often say when no one speaks, you say, you know, I'm just like a counselor. I can stand up here all night, and everyone laughs, and then they start talking. So let's see. So answering back is sometimes not a good idea. Sometimes it's better to just take it as all input and then evaluate it in a dispassionate way later rather than trying to get into a debate or argument in front of the public or set up some people as the people who know and make other people feel like they're not the ones that are on the inside. So, you know, as I think about about how to structure, the other thing I think about is the questions you ask. You you really don't wanna have a meeting that's just about complaining. You know, you don't wanna engage the public to tell you what's wrong. I want you the public to tell you what they are for. So, how do you do that? You you ask questions that instead of dividing the group into those who are for a platform or against the platform, you ask questions that are the next level off. You know, like, you could ask, you know, what are what are our points of vision and values around the future of Vermont's landscape and the people and enterprises that are its stewards. You know? And that lets everyone have something to say, but it it doesn't predict what they're gonna say. And it also allows you to sort, but it doesn't turn people into supporters and opponents of a particular platform to work. The other one other kinds of questions. And often, I find that actually three questions are really useful. It's really nice to have a rhythm to it and say, okay. We got that. We're gonna come back to you see on your page, the next question is this. So let's save that and come back with with more on that from you. I really appreciate your point. But you build a rhythm that goes from something that's somewhat visionary to something that's very practical. Like, what are your practical ideas about how to drive this work forward? What are the practical things that you think if there was legislation about this topic, what are the ideas you think should be considered in that legislation? We're not making any decisions here tonight. We're just getting ideas on the table, everybody. And the legislature's gotta do what the legislature's gotta do. That's a political process. They have their work. But what our job is just to throw as many ideas out to to give them, you know, a banquet of thought that they can they can play with as they're working their way forward. And then you you might ask people in a third question based on they've already talked about their visions for the future, and they've already talked about their ideas to enhance and drive public policy in this particular arena. And the third thing you might ask is something more like, you know, are there principles or priorities in this? Are there clear things that of everything we've heard from everybody that you think stand out as as fundamental to the way this issue is approached in the future. And it gives a slightly different aspect to how people can respond, and I'm just using these as examples. Usually, when you're working in this kind of way, you are working with a partner organization that's got that you where you have an agenda, a larger agenda that you're working from, and you're asking for opinion about something that you wanna be driving forward one way or another. So so you invent those questions in a sort of rhythm way that leaves everyone feeling, well, that was a great meeting, or they're standing, you see a meeting where the meeting's over and everyone's standing around talking because they still have more to say. They're excited. They're engaged, and they feel like, wow. Something's happening here. And you really like to leave people with that sense, and then you respond to them. So you set you send transcripts back to everyone who signed in with their email address. You stay in touch with them. Here's here's where this has gone in terms of the statewide platform that's come from this. And you build partners that may come from both sides of the aisle, may come from rich and poor, from really across, the Vermont constituencies. You know, until that so, like, as I think about where you are, I don't really know, if there's you know, I I understand that the that you're you're looking at eliminating parts of one eighty one that that don't have consensus out of the building or in the building and that you're looking at potential for next stage. And I guess as I would think about this, I'd be I'd be interested about, you know, what kind of facilitation might what kind of public engagement might be useful? What are the kinds of questions that you are left with? And what does it contribute to in terms of a direction? Is there another stage of work that you would look to fulfill? And if if not, you know, part of part of me is very cautious about engaging the public when you're not sure what you you want. Because otherwise, you're just stirring up. And and and if the public comes and contributes and feels like nothing comes of it, it's dispiriting to them or they get a negative perception. So, you know, I'm not here as an advocate. I'm not close to the the political work that you folks have been doing, and and I don't have any recommendations on where you should proceed. And so I'm sorry I've gone so long, doctor, going through some of these details of how things work, in advance of knowing fully where you are. But that's what I have to share, and I'd be glad to think through or talk with you about your either questions or perspectives on on ways that public engagement could be useful in your in your current circumstances. Thank you.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you. That was great. I guess I'm kind of left with a question that may be too big. But have you thought about how the role of this legislature fits into the public discourse? And I know that you've demonstrated and told us about the depth and breadth of your experience, and you've worked for the legislature, maybe it would help to kind of hone in on how that happened or where the process, the previous engagement that you've mentioned happened, or just how yeah. Just your thoughts on where the legislature fits into the public process.

[Paul Costello]: It's a it's a good question. You know, we've we've engaged with the legislature regularly. When when I was first hired in 2000, there was no broadband committee in the state of Vermont, and we went to Doug Rutland, who was the lieutenant governor, and talked to committee chairs from several committees who recognized the importance of broadband but didn't really have we there was no platform thinking going on. And they asked us to to help develop ideas and bring ideas to legislative committees, and so we did that. Most often, the VCRD, board, and certainly the work that we do with communities where we invite legislators to participate, has always been deliberately a step away from political alliances, left or right, and and way we have a we had a firewall in between us and, electoral politics, so we would never comment on candidates. I never made a political contribution or attended a a candidate event for twenty two years because of our our sense that how important that distance was. We would not allow legislators on our board. We recognize there's, like this is a community level process. It's it contributes to and it helps to build a authorizing environment as often people use the word authorizing environment for political action. But we didn't wanna criticize or be position to think that any of this was superior to the work that goes on in this building. So we would do we did the climate economy study, and and pulled together a, you know, 800 person climate partnership of people who looked at instead of looking at the the tragedy of climate change and its its its dire implications, we we said, how are we going to respond effectively as a state? In in terms of responding to climate change, but also to the world competition for creative, and adaptive economic development strategies that are actually going to win the next stage of global competition. So let's think of it in terms of that. How do you win in global competition by answering climate change rather than just than than the work that many others are doing? And to do that, we didn't do it as an advocacy organization like VNRC or VPERG. That's never been our role. But instead, we pulled together leading experts from the, economic development world, from key businesses like Beta Technologies and others who are in their infancy to say, what is the platform of action that could be successful? And then we would bring those kinds of reports to the governor and to the legislature with with recommendations for action that we would champion, but never, you know, never criticized because the political process had its own way of digesting this work, and it wasn't our job. We weren't an advocacy organization. And so I I kind of still am in that setting. And so, you know, if I was invited by Bernie Sanders to help facilitate a town meeting event, I would have said no. We never did that. Much much as he may have had a good agenda at the time, it wasn't our our goal. So, yeah, you know, I'm not here looking for work for one thing, and it may be that the committee itself would want to run hearings in some way. It it's hard when you look around the table to say, who's the politically neutral group to manage and lead a conversation like this in Vermont today? I I'm not sure. You know, I've I've talked to a lot of people about the the goals of 20 by 30 for conservation and 20 by or with 30 by thirty and fifty by 50. And and you say, gosh. Someone should be bringing together all the partners that are engaged in that work to help them internally build plans for how they're gonna work effectively together at scale. And and then you think about education reform or health care, and you say, steps back and in a disinterested way shares you know, frames out and listens to the people and brings back a set of potential opportunities, for legislators to think through that could advance this issue to the next level? And in some ways, VCRD took that role for good for good or ill. You know, maybe we were imperfect, but we tried, and we did it with good intentions, good heart. And, also, we always were able to connect with brilliant people. So when we ask someone to serve on that climate action commission or on a a commission on, COVID response, they would always say yes. And we they would know that it would be well managed and that their inputs would be consolidated and it would be practical and that it would also listen to the people and that we weren't going to be involved in the advocacy. So there's there's many ways to do this. And, you know, it's the other thing I'd say as an outsider, you know, it's it's, challenging to think about how you do public engagement from legislative seats in an election year where you're going to be doing some of that in the electoral cycle and in the way you meet with your constituencies. And that's that's natural to the democratic process, but it's it's separate from the way that we would engage in in the past. Maybe there's ways to do it, but that would be separate from the kinds of things that I know about.

[Representative Chittenden (first name uncertain)]: Other

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: questions? Representative Austin. Yep.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Did you were you involved in the futures report, the futures project report? We did

[Paul Costello]: the council on the future of Vermont, and then, we we built this process called propositions propositions for the future of Vermont, which we started before COVID, and it kinda ran into the COVID law. And, basically, the governor asked us if we would share the commission for community the community side of COVID response, and we, we devoted all our staff time for two years to that to to just communicating, building, coalitions, and connecting people at the community leadership level who are answering COVID challenges in their towns, and and then, ultimately, nonprofits and executive level folks in state government, to help coordinate what they were doing without any top down power to to do that.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: So where does data and science come into this? That's one question. And then the other one is when you're looking at public input, how do you know the trends? Do they really jump out that you can see that in this whole conversation a lot of people are kind of saying the same thing in different ways?

[Paul Costello]: It's a great quest well, that's a great questions, both of them. So when we would evaluate we take a a topic like broadband, we do an analysis of existing where broadband is rolled out, where it hasn't rolled out, what are the market impediments in those areas. So we would do that that data research, and often we would contract with an external partner. Sometimes the Department of Geography at UVM, the Center for Rural Studies at UVM, other partners, and we'd raised money to both pay ourselves and to pay contractors to do that kind of work. The other side was about this.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I guess what I'm asking about science is like people just being on a planning commission, people come up with great ideas, but their ideas, when you look at the reports, if you read the reports that you would on planning commission, the public might not, but you realize it's like, either this is gonna cost way too much money or it's just their ideas are not gonna work. So that's what I'm kind of asking. How do you know, take input from people and then where they won't feel like you weren't really listening because the data doesn't support, you know?

[Paul Costello]: Well, it's a great question. And there's times where that that's just, that's true. And not only the data, but people give, they share their ideas, and their ideas really aren't connected very closely connected to what the majority of people in that community seem to want. In in some processes, like the Council on the Future of Vermont, we did massive polling. We we contracted and spent a fair amount of money to to you know, we we first would would we held probably 20 meetings with people around the state to say, what are Vermont values now in in in this stage of our state? And then after we'd heard over and over the same ones, we added up what we'd heard, and then we took polling results on those to to identify which ones were actually the great majority of Vermonters supported. And and we built our our internal framework based on that.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Chittenden.

[Representative Chittenden (first name uncertain)]: Thanks, Paul. This is wonderful to hear about and somewhat close to your work at certain times and really appreciate how unique the CRD is in the landscape. I'm curious about your thoughts after a couple decades in this about sort of majority rules. And so when you're doing that kind of cluster analysis, you're or or surveys, you know, you're really looking at what does the majority say? And just wondering how you balance that with the needs of particular groups of people that are often in the minority, or how you balance ideas with values. Well, I'm guessing guess I'm getting ahead of myself on imagining that what you need to do is focus more on values than concrete ideas of things to do when you're trying to look at how things might impact or have unintended consequences on really important populations that are often in minority?

[Paul Costello]: That's a great question and a complex one as you must be wrestling with it here all the time. When you're working with community, partly, it starts with invitation to make sure that you're not just bringing together the well off people who are have always set the agenda. And so you do a really deep process. We actually have an like, if we're doing community engagement at scale, we have a steering committee of 30 folks that we identify going place to place, you know, who who would best represent some of the low income community. What about this neighborhood? Do we have people of color in this community that should be on so there's a deep process that you evaluate as long as well as business leaders and someone from the select board and others so that you have a balanced group that's framing the questions with you. It's not just you as outsiders saying, well, here's what the questions should be for your community. Here's what we're gonna call your process and all that. But, yeah, inevitably, the the majority of people in that come are driving towards their you know, they've had a values conversation, and often it includes, in in many, many communities, we'll have a diversity, equity, and inclusion question one form or another about the future of the economy. How do we spur justice in the work that we do as a community and so forth? So that usually has happened pretty thoroughly as there's then selecting priority ideas that come from the list. Often those ideas are around you know, they they range from building a communication strategy so that all the working groups in town are part of the same working network, and we know each other. Two, water and sewer plant, housing development, community, day care center, whatever it is. And and so it's inevitable that there's a constant tension around that. And then there are minority ideas where we have seen people, before there's a prioritization process, say, hey, what the heck? We don't need this process to decide. We're just going to do this, and you'll have five or six people go out and say, we're going to build an arts council in Cabot, or we're going to build a daycare center in Prasbury. We already know now, and they just do it. So it's not like there's power over in any way in this kind of a process. It's sort of like identifies communities of the willing and and yet there's not a, like, a top down, structure that that says, you know, for a small group, we didn't have the capacity to say, and so what what is it that you folks want? And and so I don't know exactly how that how you deal with that. You have to just constantly be working to do your best.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Morris. Thank you.

[Representative Chittenden (first name uncertain)]: Are you ready? Yeah. I

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: think.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Paul, thanks for the discussion. And and mine's gonna be relative. We have a couple of bills before s three twenty five, just the act one eighty one review. H nine fifty five, which is education. We spoke to education a little while ago. It seems like the the baby buggy is heading down the road, and we public trust has been lost somewhere, and the wheels are starting to fall off the the buggy. How through the process, what recommendations or thoughts do you have? And maybe you alluded that earlier in your discussion, but how do we start to put them together, putting the baby buggy wheels back on and gaining back public trust?

[Paul Costello]: It's a great question, and it's sort of the question of our country. You know? It's the it's the question, how do we overcome the divisiveness and the fact that the Internet and the memes and the way that everyone has an instant judgment on everything because they've seen a flash on it ten seconds online, and everyone's given permission to be their worst selves in public. All those things have put us in a situation where the first things people say about any idea are negative. And and that we have built you know, maybe the fifties was a booster ish society. We're a neg we're a negating society. I think that that's the fundamental challenge to us as citizens to overcome that like, patriotism isn't just winning a war. It's winning, it's winning each other. It's winning the democracy back. So in this in this setting, I guess my question would be, you know, as you think about the purpose of public engagement, there may be some things where you've come through a political process and then political decision's over, and you don't really need to take public engagement time around, around something that's passed, that that you really it would depend to me on what's your next agenda. You know, what's your aspiration? And if the aspiration is one where you wanna really look at the future of the the the larger bill of one eighty one and say, what are the other things we should do to enhance and support the the the areas that are most important for us to preserve and protect in the future of Vermont? Or, you know, like, what's the question that you would ask that you would wanna engage the public on that you know you're gonna be working on and that would provide fodder to you in advance of framing before you have a framework. One of the things I often feel is that nobody buys an imposed vision. If they're involved in thinking with you and putting their points of vision together, then it becomes their vision too. And you it doesn't need to be our politics. You know? It's more like everyone can be in it. And the more we do that sort of exercise, the better our muscles are for it and the more the public feels engaged in advance. And I think that can undermine some of the negativity. I think education you know, I think I'm I was involved with this with a circle of legislators when the first consolidation bill was produced, what, fifteen years ago, twelve years ago, where, the speaker of the house was looking to save money, and the plan was that saving money would be most effective if done with consolidation. And so framing a consolidation platform would be the answer to some of the fundamental long term challenges of the the budget impasse that we had even then. I'm not for or against consolidation. You know, when I think as a facilitator, I think, well, what works best? And let's have that conversation. At that time, a house bill was developed, and there was a lot of talk about the need for a much deeper public conversation in advance. And, you know, when I look at the the issue of of budgets and governance, I'm sorry to say this, but I think that it's like you look you're you're told to look for the diamond ring that your wife lost underneath the lamppost because that's what you know. Where she lost it in the backyard in the woods. Right? But you look under the lamppost of governance and budget because that's the primary responsibility you have towards outcomes, and that's what you have to drive to is having a successful budget passage that sets the state in motion for the next round of work. But the problem is something like education. Vermonters needed a conversation around the vision and values that we uphold in a democracy for the future of every child and every community in the state? And what are the changes in education that we're going through now that could open new opportunities for kids to understand the global learning opportunities that are there. You know? If the kids can learn Chinese online now, you know, how do we open that world? How do we think about the appropriate curriculum for kids in the future? And then how do we think about how we effectively do that work and produce those kinds of opportunities for all kids? What does the model of a school system look like in that context? What's it gonna cost? And how do we budget for it? Right? So that conversation just started at the wrong end. And there was a group there was a movement in the legislature that that tried to turn that over. They actually wanted VCR to do. I don't know that we were sophisticated enough to do that kind of thing at the kind of scale that was required, but it never happened. And so, you know, from the outside, you see the same conversation struggling in a very similar way, and you say, you know, are we answering this long term values question in a way that activates Vermonters to feel they're all on the same page and they understand the value proposition of the outcome plan that the legislature's produced. Right? Because nobody's ever built, tied it all together. We're not really saying we're gonna you know, we may be improving maybe improving curriculum. We may be doing this. We may be saving money. We're doing this in so rural Vermont. How do they feel? They feel done to. And they they feel talked down to, and they felt like their teachers aren't respected and their school boards aren't respected. And it's nobody's intent to be that way. There's no one to but you can't deny that people feel that way. Right? So it puts you in a in an ongoing conundrum even though everyone's working with the best of intentions. And so, I'm not sure, and you you are much closer to this in a much better place to judge the the the meaning and value of, of an engagement process today based on where you are, or on the future of education based on your faith in the current trajectory of education work. But I I I've seen towns transform themselves. I've seen public policy advance in striking new ways because of of good facilitated processes. And I I think we can do better, and I think that I think there's there's there's ways to do this sort of stuff. You know? And none of that is in any way saying that I don't have just the utmost respect for the work that the legislature and governor, everybody who who's playing a part in our system of divided government. You know, from the inside, it looks like the senate's against the house and the governor's against both and all that. But thank god. Thank god we have that kind of a structure where there's a balance of power and you're thinking together. In the end, you'd come to fairly good outcomes. And and maybe that as Madison and others designed constitutions, that was their hope was good, balanced government rather than the utopian solutions process. So, anyway, we just

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Chittenden. Virginia.

[Representative Chittenden (first name uncertain)]: I know we wanna wrap up, so just a really quick question. So I think you've covered this a little bit, but maybe not specifically. I'm presuming that a really good, well facilitated process comes up with different ideas that often work better than when that doesn't exist. And I guess I'm just curious, in your experience, is that part of the outcome not just better trust and buy in, but actually better functional solutions?

[Paul Costello]: I I'd say I'd say yes. But I'd say, you know, if you look at, it's like you look at a town and what they're struggling with, you you can kinda guess there's two or three things that you already sort of know that would benefit. But the amazing thing is how there'll be a couple of things you never would have thought of and how they surprise you and how they inspire you and how they come from people you know, we're in Johnson doing this work, and there's this guy who's very difficult for people to listen to. He's a he's cranky. He's probably cranky all the time in town. By the end of our sessions, we were exhausted, but I can just imagine this like, But he was he kept batting on the wall of housing, and people got to where they didn't wanna hear it. And in the end, we managed him so that he didn't dominate meetings. And when people came around to prioritize what was gonna be good for their community, they identified working together to develop a housing, new housing for low income folks in the village center as a core priority. And they did it because the issue was depersonalized. They heard him, and they recognized a certain truth, and they made decisions on what the community should stand for or and they built it. They renewed a bunch of housing in the downtown that are that are show show places of of good neighborhood development right in the downtown, and and it was inspiring to see. The other thing that lots of communities will and I'm you know, this is community scale, not legislative scale, but lots of communities wrestle with stuff like you know, we have we have the the veterans group that meets, and it has its own invitation list. We have an arts group. We have our municipal government with all its connections, and they have their own circle of people who pay attention. We have the college up on the hill and we have the high school and all these different groups have their own email lists, their own invitation lists. And at one meeting we had this kid get up and say, you know, I I look around and I just think we live in our bubbles as a community, and we're we're becoming communities within the community, and the whole town doesn't get together for anything. And it was just such a wise thing for a 14 year old kid to say. And everyone said, well, let's let's do something about that, and they decided to build a communications committee. And the communications committee sat down, and it was great because they have a college radio station. They have a newspaper. They have all these different communications. And they got together, they said, we don't wanna just communicate about communicating. Let's do something that unites all of our vehicles of communication to be one community, and let's build events that we then celebrate and use all our invitation lists together. So they started a Thursday night live on the green in in town, and they they had hip hop dancing with kids from school. One week, they had a country music from the from the the veterans group. The next week they had theater from the arts community and they all invited everyone and it became the thing that the families would go down with their picnic picnic baskets and seniors would go and kids would go and it everyone went and it bridged in practice and you say, what's that worth? Like, that doesn't drive the economy but if you're looking at the future of Vermont, you're looking at the competition, the global climate competition to attract creative youth. Creative young people are gonna drive. They're gonna be the enterprise leaders of our future. And so all that stuff is infinitely value. The other thing that's valuable is anyone who goes to any town, they wanna have a sense if your town is is confident, is growing, is got a sense of optimism and hope, or if it's flat. If it's flat, they're gonna be looking at it in competition with towns that they think are dinos and because they want that for their children. So, you know, Vermont has to do what it is within its power, and it's not all just it's not all just economic developments.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So sorry to preach. Thank

[Paul Costello]: you for having me.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That was that was great. Thank you. Members, let's take a five minute break. I know