Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Welcome back, everyone, to the Committee on Gentleman Housing. It's Tuesday, February 3, and we are now going to have committee discussion and markup of H757. That's the manufactured homes bill. Just to bring you up to speed, Cameron, we did have testimony with Chris Thiembia, who testified basically in support of the bill. Everyone, please tell me if I mischaracterize anything. And we also heard Laura Gorski, who is an attorney practicing in this area, doing a lot of about 20% of her title practice or real estate practice. She was basically supportive of the bill, but she generally felt, I think, well first of all, she felt that she noted this appearance of contradiction between 2603, which allowed either a bill of sale or a deed, 2604. I told her that we had 2,604 language addressing that issue. She also told us that basically she felt that still, and she's supportive of that definitely, she thinks that many low income tenants are going to want a personal loan and that personal loans could be gotten at a very competitive rate. She's now less than 6%, twenty years, fifteen years, etc. She did feel, I think, she felt that she reiterated what we've heard, that the conversion process was very people didn't understand it, purging conversion, it was expensive and nobody understood it. I told her we'd pretty much removed it. And she did have two interesting points. I don't know whether we're gonna wanna do anything about it. It's up to the committee whether we do. One was she mentioned that the 2020 Enhanced Life Estate Act, which allows homes, regular stick built homes, to be transferred to heirs via a life estate in some way, I've said more than I know already, that it doesn't apply to mobile homes. It's titled 27, Chapter six. I don't know if that's something we want to try to fix in this round, but I'm just alerting you to it. The other thing she said is that she did reiterate something we've heard in other testimony, that every place she goes, clerks tend to do it differently. What they record and where they report it. A lot of them do it separately in a separate notebook or a separate envelope, and she thinks that it would be really useful if we tried to give some sort of instruction to regularize the process so that we didn't have variations from town to town. I asked her whether she actually would propose language, or whether she wanted to create a process involving the town clerks so as to define what we should do and socialize it. She tended to prefer the latter, although if she came up with language, she'd say basically that they should record all the documents in the land records and not in some separate process. So that's just bringing you up to speed on what we heard.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: On the last for the record, Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Council, The last piece, if you're talking about and I was able to listen to some of what she said, not all of it. You, as a committee, She happens to be with me. My understanding is there is a comprehensive omnibus bill that is in the House government operations that is attempting to standardize and bring consistency to how land records are recorded. And so I understand her desire to want to bring some direction and consistency, if you will, in that. I would just highlight for you all that that may be a much larger, broader conversation that my understanding is house government operations is, I don't know if they're intending to have this session, but it'd be a much broader topic when you're talking about reporting records because it wouldn't just be these records, right? So what I can do is I believe, and I was trying to pull it up, just don't recall the bill number off the top of my head. Believe that that bill number may actually add some amendments to these sections. It really just identifies using some consistent language about recording in the land records and indexing in the general index. So it wouldn't really I don't know to what extent she would be looking for more guidance or information, but I can take a look at it and see about incorporating at least that piece over if it's introduced on its upper middle, if you all would like that. Yes?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Just very quickly thank you. Just very quickly, can you because in 2022, we passed the Modernization Act that required, I believe, at least

[Rep. Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: records to include

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: electronic versions or can be converted into electronic versions over some series of deadlines. Have no idea what those are or where we are in them, and I just wondered how that of the bill that you're talking about might fit in with that. When you're looking through all of that, would you mind?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You said this was in 2022? Yeah. And it was a modernization of Town land

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Records Modernization Act. Yep.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I can take a look and it would, if you want to talk to one of the attorneys in our office, I assume Tucker Anderson would be the best person to ask, but I can at least ask him, grab that, and take a look at what someone

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: who's I just wondered whether they knit together, that's all. And I do think it's worth just telling Tucker, what if we wanted to dovetail with what they're doing over in GovOps, add a little bit, or is that possible at this point? Okay. Yeah, I think, at a minimum, I guess I

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: would say it's right, may be worth a conversation with the members of that committee, I don't know to what extent they're intending to move that bill or not. It does say that bill is pretty comprehensive. I mean, it's amending. I worked on it a piece of it. And again, I was trying to pull up and see whether it actually amends some of these sections already. If it does, just grabbing those and incorporating them would be easy to do. My assumption is it would mean that bill would go to that committee at that point, possibility. I just don't know that bill touched on four or five different titles.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, my bias, just to say it, is I don't want to overcomplicate the path of this bill. This bill already is going to have to go, well, I'm not sure, does this have an appropriation in it? No. There's no appropriation in this bill, right? Recall, don't think so. Don't recall there being an appropriation. There he is.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: There is in the world.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So it doesn't have to go, and there's not a, well, it's going to have to go to ways and because of the tax provision. It doesn't have to go to approved. The storm water, it's going to have to go to environment. So, that's one reason I wanted to get it out of here when we could, if people are willing, because it's got a path, and I would like to avoid scuba ops having to take possession of it. So, I think, unless there's something we could do, and it's one thing we could, I could talk with the committee's permission, I could talk with the chair of go ops and just ask him, tell them what the issue is and see if they have any interest in addressing it in their bill and just leave it in their bill. Yeah. Or?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: If their bill gets through, we could amend it.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: If their bill gets through where?

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: If they take it off the wall and get Well, out of

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: then we'd have to take possession of it.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: No. Well, on the floor, you mean?

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: A floor and then

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a floor? Yeah, if it was friendly, yeah. Although presumably

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Well, we don't even know whether they're

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: gonna pick it up.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's a thing. Yeah. I gotta find

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's just so

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: it's all fly in the sky.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is it okay if I try to find out and report back? Yeah. Okay. I'll I'll just find out where we are on that. Go ahead. So we're talking about markup. How do you wanna proceed, sir? Go ahead with

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you. What I have, as of the last time we spoke, there were two pieces that I recall for amending the section in the limited equity cooperatives section to remove the reference of lender equity for office shall be treated as nonprofits. I got to reach out to the Secretary of State's office to talk with Mr. Hall again about implementing some language about cleaning up Secretary of State's office direction to accurately reflect how those organizations are structured in their system. I have to go in and I've already started to highlight or identify the areas where you wanted to narrow down from limited equity cooperative to ensure that we're only impacting manufactured home communities that are limited equity cooperatives. I believe there's two instances of doing that, where there's the rent limitation. My recollection in the LEC section where it's saying for these that are created after a certain date, that their ability to sublet those units would be based on a hardship. Would be limiting that to manufactured housing communities that are LECs and then the stormwater piece. The stormwater piece was all equity cooperatives. And so if you want to narrow that down, you have to make that amend. I believe the tax piece of the is already it's already limited there. So those are the two amendments that we've spoken about as a committee. And then I have some other changes that have been proposed that have come to me, Mr. Chair, via email. So I just need to review those. So other than that, if there's anything that you as a committee want to put on the record for amending or asking me to address, maybe the best thing.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Maybe what I should do is tell the committee the two or three items that have come up even as late as this weekend that I've given counsel to look at and think about and reflect back to us. They're pretty technical, but they're important. If you look at Can

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: we put up the sorry,

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: just so we can follow along, if you're going go into language in the video, would somebody be able to share the document?

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Just

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: want the bill up?

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, if you don't mind, just so you can scroll down to the parts that Where

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: is twenty six point zero three and four? Twenty

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: six zero four is on page three. Twenty six zero three is not so I can pull that section up. Okay.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Twenty six zero four and twenty six zero three.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Because we had talked

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: about changing the '24.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. Right. Okay. If you look at 2604, we don't have to put up 2603, but do you have a way of putting up the suggested amendment that Ed prepared, or do you want me to? I can just read it. It doesn't have to. What happened was, if you look at 2604 on page three, all we did with 2604, we took out references, it used to say substantially in the form and then they have the whole proposed deed in it. And the testimony we got was, Nobody uses this. It's a pain. Take it out. So we did. Gotta make it bigger. 2,603, which isn't in here, is the bill that you heard about, is the part that you heard about today

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: says, for mobile homes, for manufactured homes, here we go, 26.03. This is the one where pursuant to various bankers, including Chris DeLille, we left alone. You see where it says B, a mobile home that is intended to permanently sited.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: When you own that land? Owned

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: by the owner, it's financed as a residential real estate. Leased by the owner, may be financed. Okay, we left that alone, so that we could be able to The point that was made to us was that 2604 is somewhat contradictory to this because it implies that you have to do it by warranty deed. It's really here in B, so this is in 2604,

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we have Subdivision A which says that after 07/01/2008, if it's financed as real estate, then the dealer has to convey it via a debrief. And then in B, it talks about so here it says an owner of a mobile home shall upon financing or refinancing as residential real estate. And then here it's they have to issue either a warranty deed or a quitclaim deed. My understanding is that's the issue.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, what we've done, we received input where I'm just trying to pull it up, hold on a minute to modify 2604, to allow either a bill of sale or a warranty deed. That's all. There's two different people who have given us two draft languages and I forwarded both to counsel and he will look at it and evaluate it which he prefers and then bring it back to us. It's just bringing it's more flexibility. That's one change. I'm just summarizing what's happened. The other is the secretary. Remember the secretary of state was in here. Again, with really technical sort of hybrid of real estate and tax in saying, I am willing to go back and sort of right now right now since 2024, we have a new computer system and every time we register, newly register a limited equity co op mobile home community, it's registered that way. And we said, can you go back and sort of scrub the past where some communities are listed as for profit corporations? And he said, yes, we can do that, but we agreed that it would be voluntary because some communities somehow got non profit status and they might want to keep it. So, you're working on language to that effect, but there is a more substantive part, which is the reason that all of this matters, if at all, is because a whole bunch of state grants to mobile homes, mobile home parks or manufactured home parks, they

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: They dismiss you if you

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: are not they require proof that you are they require rather difficult proofs, which you can give, but a shortcut is if you're treated as a nonprofit, they just accept that. So I proposed language which I sent to counsel that essentially would say, it order the Secretary of State how the Secretary to change the way they register these things. It just said for all purposes of state grants or loans that are made to manufactured home communities, they should be treated as if they were registered as a non profit.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: In other words, if you're registered as a limited equity corporation, you should be treated the way that they currently somehow only treat non profit registrations.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And I sent it to, what's the guy's name, Josh? Jeremiah. Jeremiah, who testified here and he said, yeah, that would work. And so I sent it, after that I sent it to counsel. It just means, it just means, I'm trying to find the language, but go ahead. And Joe, did you wanna Gayle. Well,

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: I have two questions about the definition. On the first page, it should also distinguish mobile home community, LEC's, and it only says cooperative in the subject matter. Which are where? First page. What line? Line

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: five, line six, and line 13. An act relating to manufactured homes and limited equity cooperatives.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You're all the way up here in the section, which I would say is the subject pieces are for our internal office purposes. So it's not, that's something that we put in there to make sure that we can group like minded. Mean, it's for the public's consumption also. That's why

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: it has to distinguish that it's not just cooperatives or LACs, it's manufactured home communities that are organized as an LEC.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So there's no value or anything to do to change those subjects at this point. The subject is in reference to the bill as it's introduced. It is, again, it's for our purposes internally. It's for the public as well. So if a member of the public wanted to pull the bill up and say, well, what's this bill about? Instead of reading the whole bill, they can look at the subjects, they can look at the statement of purpose. That's why our office puts them in there. The subject doesn't go into statute. It doesn't move with the bill. And that's all I'm saying. It's like if you amend the bill, the subject comes out, the statement of purpose comes out as this committee amends it. And then as it moves into another committee, they'll never see that again.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: my other question is, when the mobile home is considered chattel property, personal property, it's almost impossible to get refinanced. That was the whole impetus of trying to make it consistent because they have to rely on grants and they have to rely on other subsidies to repair the home if it falls into disrepair because they can't get refinanced. So if we're just keeping it a bill of sale

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: or either or, yeah, That's still going to have that particular problem. Well, heard testimony today that personal property loans are available for either resale or for sale. From Gorski. Said she said that it didn't matter that that she said that 6.99% or 5.99% money was readily available for personal loans evidenced by a bill of sale for either purchasing a new home or for resale, purchasing a used home.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: But isn't that different than refinancing if you already own a home and you're trying to refinance to

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: To do something.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. And you're saying you can't, you can get a purchase money mortgage, but you can't get a refinance.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: I I don't know what anybody's ever tried to do other than try to get refinanced.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's an issue we haven't dealt with, and I don't know if we can.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Just a usable personal property loan. They have a different loan.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So you agree? They can get they you'd have to get a personal property loan, I guess. However, the proposal by Eastrise and their attorney, and also by another witness, Horace, that I just mentioned to amend 2604, would, just at the end of my knowledge here, it would allow a real estate loan to be evidenced by either a bill of sale or a deed, which might help. For the information of the committee, what I sent, the language that I proposed to counsel to try to deal with the problem of grantors, state grantors who don't, you know, they only land under limited circumstances and you have all this stuff you have to prove. It's the testifier who is Joshua what's Joshua associated with? Jeremiah. CDI. CDI. CDI is said, the designation can make a difference when determining a co op eligibility for grant and low interest loans funding, given that funders sometimes use a state, secretary of state, nonprofit status as a proxy for certifying that the entity is a public purpose or public benefit, that it is non extractive ownership. So I proposed the following language, which I sent to counsel, and I'm not at I mean, this is just me at this point. It's the committee that has to decide this eventually, but this is what I sent to counsel. Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, mobile home community organized as a cooperative housing, safe corporation, limited equity cooperative, shall be treated for all purposes of eligibility for any grant or loan by a state agency or instrumentality of the state as if it were incorporated as a state nonprofit corporation for a public purpose and public benefit under the laws of the state. And this guy, Joshua Jeremiah Jeremiah said, yeah, that would work. Now, counsel will tell us whether, in addition to working, it's legal, eventually. I'm just trying to go through the things that have changed. To my knowledge, that proposal, the amendment of twenty six zero four, the secretary of state scrub, and the definition of limited equity co ops to mean organized as a manufactured home community, those are the four things that we've got.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What about S34? We talked about that verbally, mobile home lot rent. Oh right,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: but wait, first of all, yes?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Is it necessary to use the word Is there a way to avoid the use of the word chattel?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's not mentioned in the bill, sit down.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do you think it's historically related to slavery?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yes, and I think for, I I can only speak for myself, but I'm quite sure that I'm not the only person. But it is extremely jarring to me every single time I hear that word, and I can't really hear what hap what comes afterwards. And I wondered whether there was a way to avoid using that word, and codifying the use of that word.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I will make my best attempt to not use

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that word. Don't use it in here, but it's really I've got to tell you, it's like so many things I've never thought of until this instant in time, and I certainly think there's plenty of ways to talk about it. It's a personal loan. But it has been brought into this room many times in the last couple of weeks. And

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: so is blight, and yet we don't have to use the word blight either.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Is commonality ensued.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: There is one other that's right, which we have not dealt with here. The Senate bill, there is a Senate fund to this bill coming out of Senator Clarksons' committee. The Senate bill is a committee bill that has a grit all points there. One of the things in it is a provision which would limit increases in rent in a mobile home park annually to CPI plus 1%. Now, in discussions, so Senator Clarkson sent it over and said, would you be willing to put it in your bill? Because she recognizes that her bill is a little too, perhaps, is very omnibus. It has everything under the sun in it and she would like to reduce what's in it. So she asked if we would take this, just as a technicality, Gayle and I discussed it and realized that, first of all, it wouldn't work for limited equity co ops that are mobile home communities, because they are already, by their terms of the law and their own organizing documents, what do you call them, their articles of association, which have to be consistent with the law, limit increases to the amount of actual increases in cost plus 10%.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: And

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Gayle tells us that those increases are less than CPI plus 1%. Also, it would not apply to state owned because they are covered by other elements of state laws that bear with it. So, it would only apply to privately owned global home communities. And the question is, would you like to see that? And how do you feel about it? Yes. No.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I'll bring it up also when we talk about the landlord tenant bill, I have a concern about rent caps when the state continues to raise property increases, and if someone doesn't have a mortgage on a building, if that's paid off, these continuous property tax increases are their rent increases. So, I mean, if the rent cap is going to match the cap of whatever property tax increase, yeah, I'll support it, but I have concerns about property,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: or excuse me, about rent caps. What if we were to actually mirror what's required of limited equity co ops organized as mobile home, as manufactured home communities for the private sector, which would mean cost plus 10%. Whatever the costs are, they can pass them on plus 10% and no more.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So if that, just so I understand, so if somebody doesn't have a mortgage, property taxes increase 12%,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That would be considered a cost. Right, it would be the property taxes on their common property. Yes, absolutely. Well, you're the expert. What's considered as part of the cost of your annual your limited equity co op can increase its rent, and it can only increase if the amount of its actual costs go up, plus 10%, right? Not plus 10%. No, just your actual costs, I'm sorry.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Actual costs, the only way that it can go above that CPA, CPI, is if you have infrastructure and capital improvements needed, so it has to go above that. It doesn't typically happen and I just want to correct that. Most of the LEC's try to stay under, but when you have capital improvements and you may have to take out a loan that might increase it. But I'm not on just let's forget about the Senate bill for a minute. What's in this bill, the cap is so that There is no cap. When July, the manufactured home bill. The reason for a cap is because in limited equity cooperatives, typically there's no renting from a person who owns that home. But in our bill,

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: it's just the LEC's that this cap language is pertinent to. I'm saying I'm uncomfortable with expanding a cap to privatized communities. My concern that I just wanted to bring up. We have a cap and another bill, but I will bring items to the same thing. I wanted

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to bring that. That's why I'm asking to address your concern. Just wanted to rephrase, I understand your concern. I just want to have this out. I understand your concern is, wait a minute, why should we adopt an arbitrary cap of whatever? When costs go up, they go up. It could be property taxes, it could be capital needs, it could be, you know, whatever. My impression is that limited equity co ops live with exactly that. That is, they have to limit their increases to their actual increases in cost, and I'm wondering whether that would address your concern if we applied it beyond limited equity costs to anybody, saying you can't just increase the rent because you want to make more money because the market is higher.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: I misunderstood our conversation and I thought you meant only mobile home communities that were private. It would affect mobile home communities that were private.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Public are already covered by other law, and LEC's are covered, and so it would affect private. But I'm just wondering if we use the same test, which is cost.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: We're talking about a whole other bill right now though, we're talking about landlord tenant.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Forget landlord tenant, she was using

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: it for I'm the saying that I will also be saying that when we discuss that. I think we have Cameron who is in the room and might be very well prepared or have some insight on whether or not property taxes would be considered cost if that language was in there.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Senate language? Yeah, I can pull it up. It is S34, so currently there is a process where the owners of manufactured homes in a manufactured home community, they can contest if the mobile home lot rent is above a certain amount. So if it's above CPI plus 1%, then they can contest that. There's a mediation process. If they can't get through mediation, it can ultimately be brought into court. What this bill proposes to do is put a hard cap on it to say it cannot be above CPI plus 1%. As far as what the mobile home lot rent includes, I'll double check. I don't think there's a definition. But if the property taxes go up, I don't see why a mobile manufactured home community park owner wouldn't pass those on to the individuals living there via the allotment. I presume that's part of what the allotment is supposed to pay for. Yes,

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: yes. And that can only happen in the case of let's say the taxes went up so high. Which they have. Right, or there's capital improvements needed that it has to go above that cap, then you're permitted to. I mean, people that live in the community can appeal, it's called appeal, appeal it because their lot rent then would be going up. What's in my bill has to do with people who are renting. That's No, completely that's separate.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: The question is, should we put S34? In this bill. Yes. That section. I personally have concerns. Is that all I'm saying?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, and so I was attempting to address your concern by saying, what if we didn't adopt the language in S-thirty four, but we used the idea that the cost instead of a hard CPI plus one, it was that costs could only go up to reflect actual costs, and that includes taxes, it includes capital costs, it includes everything.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the only thing I'll jump in just to say for clarity purposes for the committee, the only thing that is specifically excluded from the lot lines, or I should say that can be charged separately is for infrastructure improvements on the park. There is in a previous section and I'm just trying to pull it up, the manufactured home community park owner is charging the lot rent, they can have a separate charge that's associated with infrastructure improvement that goes away after that is paid off. Right, if there's a bond or something like that, yeah. Just making sure you're all aware that would be something similar.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You know, I'm not surprised, I think that would have to be the case, because if you're going to issue bonds, then the community has to pay them off for however long the bonds are. And then Debbie, I'm sorry, you're first.

[Rep. Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: I can't support this at all. I mean, I just feel like there's no reason for it, because it's going to take a natural life anyway. If you have a private mobile home, manufactured home, park, community, then what are you going to price yourself out of having renters? You're not going to go that way, but you still need to have X amount of dollars, you need to pay all these other people that you have to pay? Mean, when you look at if you had to hire a plumber, for example, to do some work in there, if you've looked at their fees the last couple years, they've doubled, even tripled. So it's like, what are you going to start listing every single thing that they can I just feel like naturally it's an old workout, that you don't have to put all this language in here? I just see it as not necessary.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Tom, I believe the consumer price index does not necessarily include property taxes.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Doesn't.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: And it it it is so localized in Vermont depending on who's had appraised when and the common level of assessment. At one community's tax change and the next municipality's tax change can be incredibly different. So I think actual cost of anything, but to echo Debbie's concern, if it's a private, know, somebody raises their rents too much, they lose their rents. It does kind of self correct. Yes? I would just add that while

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: that is true, our role is to ensure that when it is the more vulnerable person that is priced out and making way now for families that could easily afford the hike.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: If the state is putting money in the game to keep it affordable, then it's reasonable to say that, okay, you need to, all the players need

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to be on the

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: same Right, so benefiting from any infrastructure, act, or whatnot, infrastructure benefits, you know, I

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: would be more comfortable. Other thoughts on this one issue? I mean, to put this in context, because we've got to close here and move on, All we're talking about today is what he should put into language for us to consider. And what I see is I see like three or four things we came up and then one which is generating disagreements inside the committee and it's what we do with this language in the Senate bill. Are there any other thoughts about the Senate bill that anyone wants to say?

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: The Senate bill, or is it?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The Senate bill which is being requested that we consider this vote. Okay. I think it is premature. I have some questions. I don't agree with some of what's said, but it doesn't matter.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Sorry, wait Marc. What Senate

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: bill?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This is a Senate bill that is Senator Clarksons' committee bill that has in it rent Their omnibus housing bill? Right. And it

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: I has did I did have an issue with that bill, but I don't know if now is the time to discuss it.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But it's not the only thing she's asking is whether we would take up the part of the bill that has rent that has rent limit rent increase

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: That's not the issue I had.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. Got it. Thanks. Increase limitations.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: There's another I just I wanna flag that there's another issue with that bill that there's something in it that I would like to discuss at some point.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, although I don't even know if the bill will get to us. Okay, so for now,

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: think we'll

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: see, I mean, we'll see, but for now, I don't think although I have questions of counsel and would like to continue discussing this, I

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: don't think there's enough of a consensus to ask you

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to draft anything. Sure. Okay. We now, he has his instructions, and he'll come back to us with a bill with revised language in it. Okay, yes?

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: I'd like to know how the committee feels about the definition. We have the definition of what a mobile home is, but we don't have the definition of what a mobile home arc is. The statutory definition. So that's clear in the bill, because that's what we're referring to when it has to do with Do

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a limited you equity cooperation mobile home community?

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: The definition of what a mobile home park is. That's

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So there's no there's nothing in the bill as it's currently drafted that amends or changes any law respective to a mobile home park. Understanding of what you all have asked is there are provisions in the bill that address limited equity cooperatives and you want to narrow that down to only impact limited equity cooperatives that are also manufactured home communities and that's part of what I got to draft up. Okay. Is that term which is what I think you're referring to? Yes. Yes, is, think that was the first thing you all asked me to change.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So thank you, thank you sir. Cameron, you have your work set out for you with respect to this bill I just can't wait for tomorrow afternoon. We are in fact discussing this bill. We have more testimony coming up and then at 01:20PM tomorrow no, that's a good part.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We'll do your business back on Hopefully

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: by then we'll be ready.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I hope you're ready for some side by side of

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: the car. I'm so excited. Going to be great.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: I'm actually very excited to see how you lit up a

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: song. And in fact, would you pass this down to him? This is a bill that somehow, probably by mistake, it deals with the same subject matter, and it was somehow put across the hall. Oh.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, it's a crime, so

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, it's the same thing. So as you put together your show, you might want to mention this.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Do you want to add this in your side by side?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's not before us, but it's six columns equal. The thing is, it's actually addressing an issue that I think our gulch should address.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Think bulge not fun, it's not gonna

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: make It's you bill number what, $7.28? This is $7.28. Yeah, I don't want to get into it now, we'll get into it tomorrow. Okay, you. Have a wonderful afternoon. Thank

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: you, Chittenden.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, yes, new language for this Friday morning. Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We are now going to have an update on the Village Trust initiative, which I hope includes what it is. Revealing my own ignorance. And we have two witnesses, Ben Doyle, who is president of the Preservation Trust, and Nicole Gratton, who is an administrator of the Village Trust Initiative. Why don't you guys come together and just pull up a chair there, so you can both testify? Ben, I think you've been here and you know the committee, but Nicole does not, so commencing with Gayle, would you introduce yourself to Nicole? Gayle Pezzo, Pitner of 20, Paul Chester.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: I'm Mary Howard and I represent Rutland City District 6.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Hi, I'm Elizabeth Burrows and I represent Windsor one, which is Heartland, West Windsor, and Windsor.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Hi, Saudia LaMont, Memorial Washington District.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Martin Holly and I represent Caledonia, Plainfield, and Marshfield.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Ashley Bartley, Fairfax and LeGuardia LaMont Dodd, six Town, City Of Essex Jackson.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Tom Charlton, Ophens Chester, Grafton, and Glendon.

[Rep. Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Debbie Dolgin, I represent St. Johnsbury, Conferton, and Kirby.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Paul Grattenden, I work for Preservation Trust in the

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: moment, lead the Village Trust Initiative.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Ben Doyle, President of Preservation Trust. It's nice to see many of you again. Thanks so much for having us, Representative Mihaly. We have a slideshow presentation. I can connect my computer or Great, sorry. Zoom link. Okay. Sorry.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Emily, do you want to introduce yourself?

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Sure. Emilie Krasnow, South Burlington Chittenden.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Sorry?

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So, the slide deck is on our page.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Sorry, know, I'm former high school industry chair, I'm having that flashback to PowerPoint.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Nothing's new under the sun, it just used to be the slide projector didn't work.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: While I've got you sitting here, looking right. But

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: it's always the light bulbs.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Sorry.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: The light bulbs when you go.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Am I right? To like sit in

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the looking Are for reservation? Yes.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: By constitution, not of City 90

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: or that eighth in the province or Arkansas Society. That's division very historic preservation. So Laura Treatments, the state historic preservation.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: Thank you. Exclusively?

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: To be honest, worked, the last year worked on 155 projects and we've been around for forty years. So I bet we've worked on it, but I'm not familiar that we're currently working

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: on it.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: I know that that division is actively working on that because it's a state historic site.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Are we doing? Good. Just pulling it up now. Sorry.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Thanks so much for your patience. Great, so as I said before, my name's Ben Doyle, I'm the president of Preservation Trust Vermont. I have been before this committee before, really grateful to be here again. For just a quick reminder of who we are, Preservation Trust of Vermont is a nonprofit organization that's been around for almost fifty years. And our mission is to build community through preservation of historic buildings, villages, and mountains. Basically, help communities save the buildings that they love, places that are community gathering spaces, places that add to a sense of community in the town of Vermont. This is actually a map of where we worked in 2024. And you can see that we worked on three sixty two projects in 155 communities in lots of different ways. Of this is field work, meaning we get a call that says we have an old building in trouble. Can a field service representative like Nicole come down and tell us what to do with the building? It could be grants. We have a number of grants that we provide either through philanthropic funds, through family foundations, or often sub granting funds through the federal government, through the National Park Service or congressional directed spending awards. We also do special programs, including downtown advocacy work. Really, I think one of the things that's really exciting about working at PTV is that we don't show up in a community with a list of grants and loans. We say, what do you need? What do you want to do in your community and how can we help? And then we use whatever research point have or connections we have with other nonprofits or state agencies to try and help them do what they want to do. And today we're going to talk specifically about one kind of initiative that we're working on called the Build Trust Initiative. Nicole is the person who administers this program and will get in a lot more detail tied. But I thought I would start by just talking a little bit about how this initiative came to be. So this is a picture of the Albany General Store as it used to be. For those of you that are not familiar with Albany, it's a small farming community up in the Northeast Kingdom, about eight twenty people. It's pretty economically challenged, not too far from where Nicole lived

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and where I grew up.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: It's a pretty challenging place. And in 2013, this general store, which is really the business in Downtown Albany, burnt and was closed for at least five years. And I think the community immediately recognized a huge loss to their community in terms of vitality, economic activity, really a gathering place for people to come together. This is actually how I ended up working at the Preservation Trust. I used to work at USDA Rural Development, which a federally conceived of this economic development work. The previous director of the Preservation Trust called me up and said, there's this great general store in Albany. Somebody's gotta do something. He was twisting every arm under the sun to make it happen. And so we were able to provide some funding through USDA Rural Development. But this project is very typical of what the Preservation Trust does. We've worked on a lot of general store projects. And essentially what we see often is that a general store either is in danger of closing or will close because of market failures, that it's very difficult to compete in a retail environment in small town rural America. When you're competing against dollar stores and other kind of online shopping, all kinds of reasons. And when there's a loss of that retail environment, there's a real loss of community and sense of place. And so the model that we've developed over twenty years is called a community supported enterprise, which is where we work with the community to identify a general store in trouble or that is closed, help them form a nonprofit organization, what's called a community trust that can purchase the real estate. And because they're a five zero one(three), they're eligible for different grants and loans and products, tax credits, different things that can help restore the property and basically renovate it in a way that you can do it with minimal debt. And these kinds of stories are a lot like dairy farming, where there's really small margins, there's a lot of deferred maintenance. And then when it comes time for a generational turn, the next generation says, no way, I don't want to work eighty hours a week on something that needs this much money invested upfront. And so this becomes a market workaround where the nonprofit structure can own the real estate, and then that community trust doesn't run the store, they lease it to a private operator who wants to run a business but doesn't have the capital to run the real estate, that makes sense. And so you're able to offer it through a triple net lease, meaning they cover the taxes, the insurance and a basic maintenance rent, and it makes the business more viable than it would be otherwise. And so we've worked on over a dozen of these across Vermont, including Guilford, Putney, Albany, Elmore, East Callis, which I'll talk more about.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Have you worked in Orwell

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: at the Buxton store?

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: We're going to get to that. We have a slide on. Oh, yeah, yeah. I didn't know, I didn't know, it's in here. So we've been doing this for about twenty years, this kind of model. And one of the things well, let me continue the story of Albany. After about five years and a million dollars, this is what the Albany General Store looks like today. And it's really impressive for a community of this size to have a store like this that has prepared foods, that employs local kids doing running the counter, running the deli. It also has a community room where the community can come and gather. It's really now the kind of part of their community. And I should also say that the Albany Community Trust manages this real estate, but they've also done incredible work that they're working on a food pantry and back. They're taking on other kind of community projects. So what we saw was that in Vermont's smallest towns, the ability to do transformational economic development projects or community development projects was really limited. It's really the larger towns that have staff capacity that often pull down federal funding or can take advantage of the economic development programs in the state. And what we wanted to do was identify a new way of doing things that empowered local people.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Go ahead. Sorry, I probably should know that I answered to this. When you say smallest towns, do you only service towns with a specific number of residents?

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: No, thank you for that. We're across Vermont, every town in Vermont, everything from the film theater to the all time The general initiative that we're talking about today, the Village Trust Initiative is for communities for villages of 2,500 or fewer. But that's just one program that we run. We'll work with anybody who has the whole building.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Okay, perfect. I wanted to

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: make That's sure I really great. Thank you. So what we noticed after years of doing this work is that projects like this one are extremely challenging. This is a pro form a not for the Albany General Store, but for the East Callis General Store that representative Mihaly was deeply involved in and provided a lot of leadership on. What you'll see is that this project had 27 different funding sources. For a small town, a volunteer board to navigate 27 different funding sources, to weave that all together and manage the project is extremely challenging. They were able to do it in East Kalis because of exceptional leadership and expertise, but your average community in Vermont, it's not that easy. And so what we said is, look, we've been doing this for a long time. We've seen that this model works, but how do we do more of it? How do we accelerate it? And how do we leave capacity behind? How do we help people learn how to do these kinds of projects so that once they've renovated the general store, they can move on to the next one? I should also say, this is Okay, so now I'm getting to it. The Preservation Trustee of Vermont has had a really long and important relationship with Senator Leahy, who was deeply committed to downtown revitalization and historic preservation. And so as he was leaving office, he said, I really want you to think about something that will leave a lasting legacy. And we work very closely with Vermont Council on Rural Development, who you might know that they're a nonpartisan facilitator of public policy in Lamont. They help communities have conversations about who they want to be or what projects or priorities they want to look on. And then we've also worked closely with Lamont Community Foundation, is the state's largest philanthropic organization. The three organizations got together and said, how could we take this kind of work and do more of it, be more impactful and work collaboratively to do it? And in that sense, all of us doing the things that we do best so the Vermont Council can help a community vision what they wanna see happen in their community. Preservation Trust can help them use the building to achieve that vision. And the community foundation can help leverage philanthropic resources, both locally and regionally to help fund the vision. And so with that, and we asked Senator Leahy to support this through a congressionally directed spending award. And we were lucky enough to receive $10,000,000 to do this kind of work in 20 villages of 2,500 or fewer over the next seven years. And that's what we're here to talk about today, the Village Trust Initiative. And with that, I'm going turn it over to my colleague Nicole, who actually runs this program.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: So again, going give you the introduction. The Village Trust Initiative is the goal of supporting these 20 communities throughout the state of Vermont over the next few years. And the real piece is that building up of a local nonprofit that can usher these projects forward. The idea is that once you have a group that has decided what they want to do and they care deeply and they have a skill set that we're going to support them with, they can take on this first project with the hope that they can take on future projects that are going support their community. This is a picture of Irisburg, very close to where I live. Just a great example of a small village that has these basic infrastructure pieces. Many of them are dated, many of them need support and help. And that's kind of what we kind of stepped in to do. So, as Ben shared, this is a tri organization effort with PTV, the preservation pastor Vermont, Vermont Council on Mental Development, and the Vermont Community Foundation. And what we do is we start with people. I love that I work for PTD and our mission is to build community through historic preservation because without people you really can't make this happen. So my colleague, Hazza Habilin at BCRD, kind of leads up this community engagement effort to really get a heartbeat on the community. What is it that they're needing? What is it they're wanting? What is it they're hoping for? It's done in many different ways. It might be a pop up farmer's market on the Benson Village Green to kind of demonstrate there's a need for food here. It can be this young child in Woolkit writing down that he wants a playground behind the town offices, or it can be these two women in Greensboro Bend talking about the future of Greensboro Bend and the need for housing. All while that's happening of driving up community vision, we're supporting that group to become its own nonprofit. So, from filing with the secretary of state to building bylaws, getting an EIDN, filing with the federal government for a five zero one(three), all this behind the scenes work happens. At that point, we can start to look at the buildings themselves. And as Ben shared, a lot of them have incredible deferred maintenance. These are buildings that have stumbled along the way and these groups are looking to pick them up. So, PTV kind of steps in to say, What's happening in this building? What's happening with the water and wastewater? How is it doing structurally? What are you hoping to do here and can that use fit these buildings? We bring in environmental professionals to help us understand what's happening with lead, asbestos, PCBs, everything. So, we really call on a lot of partners to kind of help paint this picture of what we need to do and kind of revitalize this building and make it a new functional community gathering space in whatever way that the community decides. So, in 2024, we took on seven communities. It was Bloomberg, Wolcott, Greensboro Bend, West Fairley, Braintree, Benson, and Reading. Those are the dark blue ones. And then just this past fall, took on five more, which is Belvedere, New Haven, Orwell, Sharon, and Oh gosh, I'm missing one. Rupert is locked. So these are our 12 communities that we have so far. And again, in the next handful of years, we'll be taking on eight more to round out our 20 community program. And we are looking for many different things as we select these communities, but geographical spread is definitely a key component to make sure that we're reaching all of Vermont and not just focusing on one area.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So, a couple of questions. Yeah. By the way, the Yeah, I did spend three years of my life on this process. But I'm trying to, I want to drill down a little on exactly what the Village Trust Initiative would provide a community. In our case, what they said is so true, there's just no way in hell that almost any skill set would allow you to put together a funding stack that would work for these programs. So, the very first thing that we had to do was to get some sort of consultant on board who was a development consultant who really knew all the grants that were out there and what their limitations were and what their work was with Scourge. And that's, we got a ready grant from VACB to begin the process of paying for Liz. In other words, you sort of have to bootstrap your way into it. She got us our first grant, so then we were able to hire architects, engineers, you know, all these other people. So, of those things are you saying you would pay for?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: We pay for all of it. So, of the $10,000,000 that we have, we've set aside $6,000,000 for each community to use both for construction and for pre development soft costs. And then the other part is all the

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Did you say construction?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Implementation, yes.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So it's both pre development and construction. Though obviously you'd have a leverage, right?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Correct.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: And we'll show examples of that. But the way that I really like to think about this is my wife's a social worker and she talks about the idea of wraparound services.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, yes.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: That's what this is. It's for a small town that needs wraparound services. So we don't just show up and say, here's the grant, figure out how to use it. We show up and say, do you want to do with this building? Oh, you're going to need a wastewater analysis, you're going to need an architect, you're going to need an engineer, you're going to need an attorney. And by the way, we have all of those ready to go for you. So you don't have to look for them, we'll bring them to you, they're paid for, and it just accelerates everything. And I think actually, if I could just for one, I'll just give it one more second, I kind of buried the lead on why we're doing this. We're doing this because believe, like when Kevin Chew talks about 802,000 people coming, we believe in that at the Preservation Trust. Our goal is to preserve the future of Vermont, and we believe that that includes more people, and we believe that people will go to communities like Belvedere if they have a place to gather, meet their neighbors, feel like they're part of a community. If you go into a town that's just a bedroom community and there's no sense of connection, you're not going to get young families moving back, you're not going to have the same sense of community. And that's really what this is about, is saying there are wonderful things happening in Chittenden County and that's great, we want to support that, but we also want to see what economic development looks like in Monts' smallest towns and have people want to move there. And so that's kind of what this is about, is if you're in Cabot and you know that you can go to Harry's Hardware to buy hardware and get a beer, that's a motivator to put in.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do you also include organizational advice for the trust itself? That is for the organ, like how you find volunteers, what it takes to run a good meeting, all that stuff. Well, I can't think of any other way than to say I am one sort of doubter question. In other realms, I've seen a situation where a wonderful set of things happens, and then people try to turn it into a program, and it's not so wonderful anymore, because the reason the wonderful thing happened, because people took the initiative and it was really hard. And so, in order to make it work, they had

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: to kill

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: themselves. And so, it self selects the really great stories. Whereas if you turn it into a program, aren't you worried that you'll make it too easy with your wraparound services and you'll get groups that aren't so great?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Such a form of job security. No, I do think that the work that we're doing is showing, and I think this has been a big work that the Rural Development is doing, with that board structure. If you only have a board of three people and all that work falls on the three, yes, you're going to get a self selection of the groups that can rise up and fight through. But with this program, we're really showing that you need a group that focuses on the building. You need a committee that's focusing on community engagement. You need a building that's focusing on the capital campaign. And within that, you're starting to diversify the amount of work that any one person is holding with the hope and the goal of having the whole thing rise up. I think some

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of the work that we're

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: doing is for long term longevity.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: And these projects, this program is not a panacea. These projects, we're bringing, I think, pretty fantastic resources to the table, to Senator Leahy's vision and tenoracity. It's a leg up, right? It's a helping hand, but it's not the, these folks have enormous work to do and years of work ahead of them, it's extremely, extremely challenging. And do you want to breeze through some of these examples so they can see the kind of projects in action? So this

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: is bulk it, and they were featured in our annual report. So I picked pictures that really just kind of showed you the people. These are four women that were at the photo shoot. The Wolf Gates Train Depot is there. You can see the kiosk that's right along the Little Oil Valley Rail Trail. Behind on the other side of them would be where the town offices are. And then behind that is kind of where the schoolhouse is. But this is a community that has been thinking about this project since 2012. I actually spoke with Caitlin Corkins at the division and she's like, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad this is finally moving along. This is a community that has been thinking and planning, and they've done municipal planning grants to help move them along. And they've really needed this big effort to coalesce their community to bring this forth. So, with Vermont Council on Rural Development in June, they held their first community engagement effort. And so, there's the trained people in the back, again, the schoolhouses over to the left, and so there's the town offices. And this was one of my favorite events that we had. People poured out of the woodwork for this. They got enough pizza for maybe 50 and they had to go back two times. There's no way people showed up. We walked out with a great day, but I think this just speaks to the desire of our communities to have places that they can gather and that they want those things in their spaces. This picture is in here just to show you the multi generational aspect of these projects. You have everyone from school children writing down what they hope to see in their community to two longtime friends at the front enjoying food and talking about what they hope

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: for their community. Oops, it's

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: just another program. I'll show it. So this is the Margaret Vermont Council on Rural Development. So they put forth all of these questions to gather really good input from community members. So here they were asking questions about what you think you would like to do here, what are things that your community is missing or needing, what would you like to see augmented. So, people weigh in and that all guides the design of what we hope to do in their buildings. This is the Gilman Middle School located in Lunenburg, Vermont. And I just want to share a few statistics about Gilman. So is Gilman? Here's the big building. So the white building is the oldest part. It was built in 1923. The gymnasium was added on in 1950. And then the newest wing of the building where our child care center head start program runs, was built in 1993. Gilman is an unincorporated village within the town of Willoughbord. The median household income there is 45,000. The poverty rate in Gittleman is anywhere between 2445%, with the rest of Essex County coming in around 14% and the rest of Vermont coming in around nine percent or 10%. So, this is a community that has been on decline for a very long time with the closing of the paper mill. It's really quite stagnated and this is the project that this community has selected to kind of revitalize and bring forth some new life. So the goal here is to have the white old school house become four housing units. The gymnasium, we just got cleared that people can go in it, that the PCBs are okay. So they're going to be hosting different events. They put out an application to have pickleball materials come. So, they're going be holding pickleball things. But this is one of the largest leading places in all of Essex County. And this community can now be using it for the gingerbread bazaar or the maple fest that they have. They hope to retain the childcare space at the back of the building, and then there's additional spaces for other community use. This is Reading, Vermont, and this is the Reading's Range. It's also called the Little Hall or the Little Universalist Hall. Interestingly, this building was moved here in 1902. It actually was in South Reading before it got put here. And Brian Edwards, an architect that we worked with, he went in and did a conditions assessment and said, it's kind of like a pretty ho building except for this grand ball up on the 2nd Floor. You see Brian Kelly and Jack Harsh here from Reading, and these are two members of their community trust that are looking to revitalize this building. They hope to use the Ground Floor as gathering space and like a little kitchenette kind of thing, they can have community dinners and then have other art functions upstairs. This community is really interesting because they have the Hall Art Foundation, and so they've been able to make some really interesting partnerships to this project. Yes.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I live right next door in Brownsville. And so are you familiar with this project?

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Are you familiar with Reddit?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Yes, I'm working in Reddit right now.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Okay, so what would make this different from the recent restoration of the writing town hall? I guess, because they look and the functions that you're describing are almost completely identical and they are really close to each other. So why?

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Why? Good question. Why?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: So, this group is definitely taking those things into consideration. So, the town hall is there. Unfortunately, the upstairs is not accessible at all.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: This wouldn't be either. Courtney, know you're just

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Yep. So, they're gonna be working to make it accessible so that there would be a lift so that people could be getting up into this space. But they're thinking very conscientiously about not pulling away from other resources in this community. So, if Robinson Hall above town Hall is the better space to have a big movie night or something like that, this group did not wanna step on those toes. And that's why they're thinking of this actually being more aligned with arts of like the Hall Art Foundation type thing. Maybe having this be like an artist in residence studio, but they're definitely thinking about the other buildings in their village to make sure that they're not duplicating in a very small place.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: And just out of curiosity, is that the Reading Forward people? Like the Reading in the Future or whatever it's called?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: No, this is the Reading Community Trust and the future is Reading. A group that they are partnering with. I think

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: that that group is more focused on community events. Okay, thank you.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: So there it is from the outside, you know, exploring. We love good fixer uppers. I definitely wanted to put in one that was a church because throughout Vermont we have churches that are transitioning or have completely transitioned into something different. So this is the Sharon Congregational Church and they are actually partnering with the congregation. There's still a congregation there to start to use this building in new ways. So, before PTV and the Village Trust Initiative came around, they actually daylighted these back windows. So, these are no longer opaque. They're just white, clear. So, that when you go in, it doesn't feel as sanctuary esque. It's more of just like big, bright space. So, the congregation has really been amenable to reusing their spaces for other things while still maintaining their own. A big challenge in lots of our churches is accessibility. And so, this is actually an accessible entrance where it's a paved walkway from a parking lot that comes up. But as you can see, there's many different thresholds, different floor heights, narrow doorways, really tight spaces. So, this group is really looking to make sure that anyone can get into this building and use what they have. This is a very vibrant group. I have no doubt that they will have things happening all the time. We just need make sure people pay. And then last but not least is the Orwell General Store. So this is one of our newer projects and it is a project. We have a report on this building and the engineer that went in said the only thing that is interesting historically about this building is that it is old. So, that just gives you a little snippet of labor work

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: that needs to happen here.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: But this is a beloved part of Orwell. If you haven't had one of their sandwiches back in the day, they were very, very good. When we came into town, we were met with this very warm reception. They had probably 50 people on their village green. The historical society had displays at the back and they had this wonderful potluck. And I actually looked back, but this community does this quite a bit. They really do gather. The reason that we picked the Orwell general store is something that Ben coined the vitality potion. General stores are the heart of many of our communities. They have those small, frequent, informal interactions that really keep people connected. And so the oral general store will probably be a very phased project given its needs, but it's a place that the community is really going be rattling around to make sure it's easier.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: I appreciate it. Thanks, Simon, if that's all right. And so I just want to like, going back to the very beginning of how we're thinking of this program working, there's not enough money, That's a lot of money. It's not enough money to do all of these projects. It's really when we think about projects, typically we think about a three legged stool that is local philanthropic funding, state funding, things like the tax credit program, which is enormously important, and then federal funding, whether that's Northern Borders Regional Commission, USDA rural development, special, congratulation directed spending. But this is what we see as the different legs of the stool. And we envision the Bill of Trust initiative, really, we're talking about a million dollar project, that this comes in at 25 to 30%, one leg of the stool, but it's a lot better than 27 different funding sources. It's again, really trying to accelerate and say, here's confidence in this program and this project that then attracts and aggregates other funding. And I think we'll actually might be back in a few weeks for VHCV Day to talk about the really important role that VHCV has played in a number of these projects, but that's just kind of like one example of another leg of the stool where it comes in. And with that, I think we just really wanted to share this with you because of the important work that you're doing for rural Vermont. Just to say, as my predecessor always used to say that this kind of work preservation or community development is a real team sport. And we're just one part of a team and really appreciate all the work that you do to help facilitate this kind of work for her overall mom, which is really

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so needed for the future.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: I am so happy that you have taken on the Buxton store. My husband grew up in Orwell and his dad was the country doctor. His house, I believe, was the second house, the white one. Can't remember if

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: it was the blue one

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: or the white one in the photo. And I remember the first time I went to Orwell, I'm a city girl, I'm from Connecticut, and my husband showed me, he said to me, Do you want to go to the mall? And I said, Sure.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: We go to And the

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: here's the bank, and here's the

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: sign that says, The Bank.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: The school that he went

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: to was across the street. The post office is right there. Think there may

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: have been a little gas station.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: I wish I had met your husband. Oh my god. They had anything and everything. We purchased, my father-in-law had a camp at Lake Sunrise and was the doctor for the Boy Scout camp. And we purchased his camp, and when a neighbor of mine was coming to visit us, we had given her directions, but she stopped in Buxton's and she said to the owner there, Do you know where the Howards live? And he said, Oh yeah. And he told her, he said, Actually, they were in this morning. They bought steaks, hot dogs. Their granddaughter served in the House of Representatives. And they sold to out of staters. The out of staters sold to the son. And when we heard that they were closing, we were upset, really upset. My son called the granddaughter to say, How can we help? What can we do? And I found out that a number of the residents got together because they just couldn't see this store closing. I mean, it just was an amazing place, and the people in Orwell couldn't be, they just couldn't be any nicer. So I'm so happy to hear that. When will it be done? It

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: really depends on the success of the capital campaign, but we'll see.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Oh, Okay. Thank you so much.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yes. And so you have eight more pots open, but they have to be in a kind of scattershot,

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: right? Goal is to have a project in every county.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Just one in every county? Well,

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: yeah,

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: not necessarily.

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Memorial has two, we have both Volcan and Belvedere right now, so there are counties that

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: will have more than one.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Questions? Well, first of all, yes, You

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: had a picture of a church in your information here. I've heard it's very difficult to remodel a church, and I'm thinking particularly of a Catholic church, they have the high ceilings and stained glass windows. Is that true?

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Yeah, I think maybe I had said this last time I was here, but sometimes when I go to church, often sit there thinking, how do you turn this into a portable house? That's a big challenge, but It's very it is very challenging. I will say, actually, the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance, which is our kind of counterpart in New Hampshire, they actually put out a really great book on with different architectural designs of what could it look like. I mean, to be honest, from a true preservation point of view, you really want to preserve the expanse of the sanctuary, but the reality is we have a lot of churches with dwindling congregations. The New Hampshire Preservation Alliance has done some really great work showing architectural designs of the kind of vernacular that we have in Vermont of what could it look like to split those into potential housing units. Certainly the larger churches are more challenging. There's a really great example of a Catholic church in Concord, New Hampshire, one of those really large ones that was turned into condominiums, but not particularly affordable, like a higher end market rate housing, is which a long way of saying it's possible, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Because we have a church that has been empty for few years, and they did take what was school and made it into beautiful, beautiful, affordable housing.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: You're talking about Lincoln?

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: Yes, I am. That's a fantastic place.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Yes, I toured that building, it's really, really nice. And the location is great. Joe's donuts right there, I mean, it's great. But I was told that in a church you have to take down the stained glass windows. I don't know where you put them, but as part

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: of the renovation or whatever, you Well, church is, typically the Catholic church is a process of desanctification, which includes removal of any kind of religious iconography, actually stained glass.

[Rep. Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: But you know about a Mac being

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: a person. Thank you. To each one of the properties, do you

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: keep childcare in mind? I noticed the first one you

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: showed us. Yes, so again, we're definitely going into communities to ask what do they want, and in New England we're giving them they were very clear that the childcare needs to be

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: a part of project and looks like

[Nicole Gratton (Village Trust Initiative Administrator, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: to be maintained. In Sharon, we're just starting off. Orwell's a journey story, but other communities, if there is a desire to have that, then we will be working with them to make that possible. Belvidere is a former school, not very old, 1993, but it's outfitted to have young people in there. It's got a nice little short little everything. So that can be the size that child care is a fitting piece for them that we can support them.

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: I really want to be cognizant of your time that at the

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: end of day you've had a long one,

[Ben Doyle (President, Preservation Trust of Vermont)]: but really so grateful for your leadership and if there's anything that we can do to support kind of your communities, people just call us and say we have

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: an old building in trouble, so feel free to do that.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Where were you when I needed you? Just in a different form. Thank you very much. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Ladies and gentlemen on the committee, tomorrow is a big day. I apologize in advance for the fact that we have overlapping bills. It's just part of what's going on that we can't just do one bill at a time. Tomorrow, the Department of Housing and Community Development is coming before us to talk about what they're doing, be it their budget, then they're also going to testify on seven seventy five, that is the world finance piece. We're going to switch back to manufactured homes and take Tomorrow, home the best of yes?

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I thought you said

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: you were going move until Friday because you knew I wasn't going be in service. Oh,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: great. And then we're going to begin the process of introducing or talking about the bills that are before us on landlord tenant. Saudia and Debbie will be presenting, and then we're going to have counsel walk us through a comparison of the bills that are before us, sort of by subject area, all in one day before the 03:30 Floor. It's a big day, it starts at 09:00.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Shall I be red orphans at lady? No.