Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unknown meeting host/clerk]: Anne Watson, we are live. This

[Sen. Anne Watson]: is Appropriations, January 21, I think. We're doing Budget Adjustment Act request, and we end up liquor and department of the grid lottery in, and so I'll let the commissioner introduce himself for the record, and maybe you just have one small thing as a bunch of adjustments?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes, two small things. Two small. Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Wendy Knight, Commissioner of the Department of Booker and Lottery. Great to be here, I appreciate you inviting me in. Two minor adjustments in the BAA on the transfers, sports wagering. We had initially projected in 2024 that we would end FY '26 with $7,600,000 in revenue, and we have adjusted that to reflect about a million dollar less, and that is 6,680,000.00 that we are projecting. Part of the reason is that, of course, when you're projecting that far in advance, we did not have the FY '25 actuals of sports wagering, and so once we saw that the revenues coming in were probably not going to amount to 7,600,000.0, we thought it was prudent to adjust that. And part of the reasoning is we had two NFL seasons, the 2024 and 2025, that resulted in players wagering on the favorites, and then the favorites end up winning a lot. And what happens there is, you have the handle, the total amount wagered, you have the winning payouts, so if your winning payouts are more, then your adjusted gross sports wagering revenue is going to be less. And that's what we have a revenue share with the operators. So because of that reason, we were seeing

[Sen. Anne Watson]: It's their handle minus the winnings, because the winnings collects the monitors, so they kind of deduct that from

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: the Correct.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: The stage they have. Correct. Because that's a percentage of that sum of the membership?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes, so we have a revenue share with the sports wagering operators ranging from 31 to 33%, so depending on how much comes from Spanduel or DraftKings or Fanatics, it shakes out to be about 31.5 on average percent, and if you have a lower adjusted gross sports wagering revenue, then obviously you get less money. Sports wagering offers get less money as well. So that was the rationale for adjusting that.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: And is that really the, I'm not saying really, but is that, how much of it is that adjustment is the other numbers of sport waging like the number of bets or the number of active players static?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Nope, the only number that matters in terms of the revenue is the adjusted gross sports wage rate.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Right, but I guess I'm just wondering.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: In general, how it's going? Yeah. Well, handle is up, so we have more money being wagered.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: But is that the same amount of people wagering more, or more people?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: You know, I can follow-up with that.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: When you do your 47%.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, I'm happy to do that. And we've seen, I mean, the number of users per month fluctuates. The number of users from out of state versus state fluctuates. In general, we have about 40 of the users, the active users in the Vermont sports wagering platforms come from out of state. So, they're people that are traveling here, they're vacationing here, they have second homes here, and while they're here, they're using the Vermont apps and they're wagering, and then we recoup that in terms of we get the revenue, not their home state. So that's added a lot to revenue for the sports wagering is the fact that we have a robust tourism economy.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Do you collect all the data or receive data on age or demographics?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes, we don't regularly report on that, but we do have that information from the operators. That's all information I can give you in terms of the breakdown. We generally see, know, out of state users, their average bet is higher, maybe it's $31 versus $25 but all that information I can give. Thank you. You're welcome. And we are on track to meet the revised estimate of $6,680,000 Again, it's cyclical. Now we're in the heavy season with NFL. Obviously the Super Bowl's coming up, then we'll have basketball, but once some of those sports wrap up for the season, then we see significant decrease in the total amount wagered and then the money being received. So April, May, June, excuse me, are much lower than November, December. No tennis, nobody's played. Yeah, people veterans on it. Yeah, that's actually a guy.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: They bet on the FC Green?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Bet on who?

[Sen. Anne Watson]: The Green, the soft team.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Oh, you're not allowed to wager in Vermont sports teams. Only if they are, oh, I'm sorry, I'm so approving my ignorance here. That's not a college team, is it?

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Well, it's semi professional. A college player, but it's not a college player.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, uh-huh, great.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: But they're semi professional, so I don't know if you can bet on those.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: You can bet on Vermont College teams, so if they're not a Vermont College team, then I suppose you could wager on that, but we would have to, I'd have to get back to let you know. You can't, in Vermont, you can't bet

[Sen. Anne Watson]: on Vermont college teams. They play at the Vermont College, I mean the University Of Vermont Stadium.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: But they're not a college Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: There's lot of interest around.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: So I think there would be some vetting involved.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I will find out. Okay. Yes. Okay, any other questions on sports wagering? Alright, the next change in transfer is from the liquor control fund to the general fund. In 2024, when we originally had our projection, was $14,800,000 We've since revised it up to be 16,800,000.0. And part of that again is looking to see what the activity is as you get into FY '25. There's a couple of initiatives that are contributing to our optimism and increased sales relative to what we thought it would be when we originally came up with the projection. We are opening a couple of kiosk model stores. We have a few of them already. What a kiosk model is, it's a smaller store. It mostly has Vermont products and then the top 100 products. We are putting these in locations where they're tourists, so they don't compete with the traditional eight zero two Spirit store, which are larger. They are meant for walk in customers. They don't sell to licensees, and so we've implemented a couple of them in, ski resorts.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Are they like the eight zero two stores, or are they independently owned, or are you state owned?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Same, they're all the same. Eight zero two Spirit Store, the model we have with the state is that we contract with independently owned. Within that, we have different models of stores. So, have a beverage warehouse store, which is a much larger store. You have what we call a store within a store, so we might have an eight zero two Spirit store inside a grocery store.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Like thick mouths.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes, yes. And then you have your independent convenience store, you have general stores, and then you have what's called a kiosk model, which is, you know, if you go, the old Maple Fields up, off of Route 7, you know what I'm talking about, the travel center there?

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Berlin, yeah.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, Berlin. The easiest one. Yep. And there's one in Jericho, the Jolly store. Again, it's much smaller, maybe it's four to six shelves, fewer products, it's meant for walk in customers. So, strategy has been to open more of those in welcome centers, ski resorts, and areas where there are tourists. Again, so we have one that we opened in West Addison, so we're taking advantage of people that are coming over from New York State to go along Lake Champlain, with their second homes there, and then we'll be opening Leachie as well. And so that's proving to be really successful. The other thing we did is we have a cocktail rack program, which is where we're featuring a craft distillery, and we have these literally racks that have eight zero two Spirits, and we're featuring that brand with recipe cards, they get featured in eight zero two Spirits Magazine. We used to have 10 of those around the state, we've increased them to 15, so now we have 15 of those cocktail racks. And so that's proving to be a real successful program as well. It tends to highlight, as I mentioned, some of the craft distilleries, some of the smaller distilleries. We just featured Metcalf, which is a local distillery. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: And this is taking advantage of the change we made allowing pan

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: No. Cocktails? No. No. This is just an opportunity for us to do a feature of of a distillery. So we do it in So

[Sen. Anne Watson]: it's spirits,

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: not It's a bottle

[Steve Gomez, CFO, Agency of Natural Resources]: of cocktails.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Correct. Absolutely.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: It's called a cocktail wrap. It's called Go make the cocktail.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Correct. Yes. That's what the confusing part is. With the canned cocktails? Cocktails? We don't sell those. The department, eight zero two Spirits, No, that's the we moved that into the private sector. I see, I see. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Okay.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: So the cocktail rack program, to the chair's point, is you're featuring a bottle of bourbon, and then you're gonna have a recipe card that shows how you can use that bottle of bourbon at home, making your own fancy cocktails.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Mhmm.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: And that's proven well, it's doing quite well, because of the partnership we have with Angel Publishing, you get featured in the eight zero two Spirits Magazine, we have these cocktail recipes, we put it on social media, and so we've increased the number of those racks, the physical racks, from 10 to 15, and that's been helpful. We also have something called Flash Friday sale, and so a couple times a year we were doing a special sale, it was, you know, promoted at the last minute, meant for walk in customers, they'd get an email or social media saying, hey, today's flash sale Friday, whiskeys are on sale, and we, you know, every month or every other month or whatever, I think it was four times, we started four times a year. So every quarter we would pick a category, and then we would make the products seven fifty liters and more, it's 20% off. So that gets people into the store, not just to purchase that product that happens to be on sale, but while they're in there, we've seen the complete register sales go up. So they're obviously using that opportunity to save money on whatever category's on sale, but then they're buying other products. We have increased the frequency of those as well, so that's been helping. Again, you use your data to determine what's working, what's not working. We saw that this was really a successful program, so now we are offering these six times a year as opposed to four times

[Sen. Anne Watson]: a year. And is this a change in the trend? Because I think a lot of times you've been in here we've talked about a declining, and I've just also read in the media that Vermonters and Marathon are drinking in Drinking up. But is this just like, is this a change in the trend, or are we just changing in our definition of

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: what happened? Yeah, so what I'm speaking about now is just the revised revenue projections. Right. You're right, and what we've been talking about over the last three years or so is that, in general, the revenues from the sale of alcohol have been going down and they will continue to go down. This year, we're projecting another 2% decline. And various reasons for that. Some of it is that people are indeed more health conscious and they're drinking less, or they're drinking more intentionally. Legalized cannabis has impacted revenue. People are choosing their different choices of products to consume.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: The revenue doesn't matter if it's sold by you, by 08/2002, or beer in the retail market, the revenue generally just isn't. Or alcohol and bar. I know it's paid differently. Yeah, yeah, It all comes back to stay at the same percent.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Correct. No, it doesn't all come back to stay at the same percent. So right now, I'm just speaking about the revenue that's generated from the department for the sale of spirits. I will say that in general, across the country, sale of alcohol, whether it's beer, wine, cider, even the ready to drink cocktails, spirits are all down, And so we're trending about two or 3% less. You see in other states and nationally, it's about 10%, okay? And so in the control states, for example, in November, our decrease was 2% year over year. The other control states saw almost a 6% decline. We are

[Sen. Anne Watson]: doing a little bit And what else you had in the non control states?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I'm just giving you that revenue from the control states. But in general, all across the country, revenues are down. A part of it is Canada not purchasing across the country. Canada not purchasing US. Yeah, there's a number of reasons. Are the one with those weight loss drugs that we keep hearing about. People, that diminishes your appetite for alcohol and food. So, that's playing a factor. Inflation, people have less disposable money. Some say that with the advent, again, of cannabis, but sports wagering, people have different competing activities they want to spend their money on.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: So when you come back for your 27, it would be interesting maybe to see, maybe there's a table, maybe you already got it, to feel like how the different

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I have that. I gave it to you last year and I have an update for you with Okay. That I was So the department is the liquor control fund, right? And so the revenue we brought in from the sale of spirits that we gave to the general fund was about $20,000,000. And that comes from the one time transfer that we do, it comes from the 5% excise tax that we collect at the point of sale, it comes from the excise tax from the spirits manufacturers when they sell bottles at their farmers markets or their tasting rooms, and then it comes from the sales and use tax that we collect at the register. I'll write all this Correct. Out for So, then we have other revenue. So, we have fines and violations, we have licensing fees, and the money we collect through the rare spirits rattle. That's $20

[Sen. Anne Watson]: That's a restaurants and bars are all even different than that.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: No?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Then you have come to the tax department for the sale of alcohol, and that's where you get into the alcohol component, the rooms and meals tax, that's collected at the restaurants and the bars and the hotels.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Don't you sell them the liquor?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, of course. The only way you'd buy alcohol in the state of Vermont is you have

[Sen. Anne Watson]: to purchase the rest. Other revenue coming from that restaurants, but then also there's the canals and rooms.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yes. So, sales at the bars and restaurants, that's 27,400,000.0. Just from the alcohol component of the rooms and meals tax. So you can see, they generates a lot more money when the alcohol is sold at an on premise licensee. Which is why we've been focusing a lot of initiatives on that on premise licensee. Then, you have the malt and vines beverage, and that's what the tax department collects, and that's a gallonage. That's when the manufacturers of malt and vines and cider, they paid the state.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I remember.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: And that's 6.9

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Better than north. Yes. Yeah, so do we have any actually state run?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: No. Not like not like New Hampshire.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: We don't have any?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: None. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Zero. It's it seemed to be more beneficial for us not having those in paying rent or whatever else and employees to work here versus putting them out to the independent.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, and that's, we thank you. I appreciate that. I think that's a good model. We have no monthly contract with independently owned. In fact, we just have a marketing campaign that talks about when you shop at an American Spirit store, these are independently owned businesses. You're supporting that homeowner, not homeowners, the business owner. I looked at you and I said, home. Was saying something, Well, you don't pretend to listen. Boom. So they're locally owned businesses. They're business owners, and you're supporting that business. You're supporting that family. A lot of these are family owned. You're supporting that community, and so we talk about the benefit of shopping at an eight zero two Spare store. So they're not state run and owned, for example, New Hampshire or Pennsylvania, that are also controlled states.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Yeah, compliment you on your advertising, you've done this year about that. Think that's Yeah.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: We're featuring three the generations, for example, in South Euro, and I think that resonates with our mom. So I will send you that, because I know you're interested in that.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Yeah,

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: yeah. Point is, we make almost, well, FY24 is about 60,000,000 or more, and if you add up the total, I think it's another 50, it's 54,000,000 in FY25, so you can see that it's more than double what we're bringing in from the sale of spirits directly or fines or licensees, you have more than double that come from other sources of taxation from California.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: And Massachusetts is a control state, due to the work order both New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Massachusetts is not a control state, and New York is not a control state. Maine is a control state, New Hampshire is a control state.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I guess, but is Massachusetts like us?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: No, they just license establishments to sell alcohol. The difference in Massachusetts It's

[Sen. Anne Watson]: all packaged, the ones I'm

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, packaged stores. That's same in New Hampshire, or not in New Hampshire, New York. And so, they're called licensed state. Basically, I used to own a craft beer store in New York, and you apply. It's pretty rigorous, it isn't like, just because it's a licensed state, isn't enforcement or regulations. Massachusetts has that as well. In some of those states, the license stays with the location, and that's why it gets really competitive in New York, for example, because you have a liquor license that's very valuable financially, and if you're selling your business, you know, people wanna keep that license with that location. Right. And here in Vermont, we don't transfer licenses. If you you apply for a license, it's this location. It's this business. It's this,

[Sen. Anne Watson]: you know, owners. Do you give them any kind of guarantee that you won't open another $8.00 2 with an No. Incurred

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: No. This is a capitalist society.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: So you you could you see could open one across the street.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: No. Well, we wouldn't do that. Right? We well, Well, what we do is

[Sen. Anne Watson]: So that would be good for you, or us.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, we use data, again, to make decisions, and so we look at where there might be a gap in coverage, and where there might not be an eight zero Spirit store. There's no promises that that eight zero two Spirit store in a certain town has a monopoly. If there are circumstances that warrant us opening a kiosk store, or putting that up a bid, or opening a store five miles away, then we would consider doing that. Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Great. Thank you for that. That's good explanation

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: you for the I think you asked me to talk about the potential revenue from Digital Lottery. Did you want me to talk about that or no?

[Sen. Anne Watson]: It's not in the VA. You can wait to Okay.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I will wait.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Such an address, unless you wanted to, but at

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: least No. I need to wait. Yeah. Okay? Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Thank Any other questions? I do wanna know what intentional drinking is.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Intentional?

[Sen. Anne Watson]: You said that they said you've been People

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: are being more intentional about drinking?

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Yeah. Does that mean they're going Tonight? To We're drinking. I'm Or When I drink, I'm always intending to do it. I never do it accidentally.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I think, you know, someone

[Sen. Anne Watson]: You can break my mistake.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Or if I have it, maybe you might have it.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: So if you're intentionally being more careful then.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, I think you're just being, I guess, intentional, meaning I'm going to have a glass of wine tonight. I'm going to meet with friends on Friday.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Or I'm only gonna drink one glass of ice.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Correct. Or I'm not gonna drink for the month of February. Or I'm gonna have beer when I have tacos, and I'm gonna drink vodka when I have caviar. That would be

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I would be drinking much vodka.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: See what the effect that makes for the caviar looks like.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Commissioner, have you seen the dry January, our sales lower in any? No.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I don't have the January.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I just went over the years. It seems like dry January has been a thing for the last

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: I five think, though, also, you have to understand that people have spent a lot of money, and they've been, you know, over the holidays, so maybe it's just like, oh, I'm gonna, like, be on a financial diet and exercise regimen.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I assume it's always a down year.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah. Of course. January. But I'd have to see it's hard to dissect what's from dry January or damp January or just people are tired of spending money.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Yeah, and they drank so much during December's event. Think of it.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: And they spend a lot of

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I'm talking from the person.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: You sound like confetti.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Okay. Well, thank you.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: You're very welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: We're off mute. In fact, inspector Warren didn't do nothing.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: She she really went down the barrel to get Oh god. Yeah. They were desperate. Moved out desperate.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Secretary, you can introduce yourself. I know you don't have a lot in the VA, but

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: We do not.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I you would have to give you an opportunity to go over it just so we're not.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Thank you. I appreciate that. For that record, I'm Julie Warren, the Secretary of Natural Resources. I am endeavoring to join the Zoom so I can share a few slides. We do have just two BAA pieces, but also thought I would share a little bit of updated information on our ARPA appropriations. I know Dun Farm had provided information as of September 30, but we made a lot of progress over the last couple months. Also, it's sounding all I about your computer got it. Sorry about that. But also wanted to just provide that information as well. So, and I'm joined today by Charles Martin, who's the Deputy Secretary at ANR, and Steve Gomez, who is our CFO.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Just the three items.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Two items.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Then use review board. That's not us.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: That's right.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: So it's just fish and wildlife and FPR.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Right. Okay. So

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: I thought I would start with fish and wildlife. And this budget adjustment request is sort of rounding out the statewide law enforcement RFR that was initiated back in I think July 2024. This was looking across not just game wardens, but state troopers and liquor lottery and DMV enforcement, and resulted in a two pay rate increase for most of our wardens and then a one pay grade increase for the major within the game warden force. We did receive an appropriation for the FY '25 impact and so this is for the FY '26 impact because the final RFR wasn't approved until April.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: So it just didn't really happen too late for us to include it even. Yeah, had this with the troopers too. I thought we'd have done that, but I guess we knew about it, but we didn't know if they

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: actually We

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: didn't know, correct. So originally I think the classification panel approved a one pay grade increase and it was appealed and that was when certain things came apart.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: This doesn't have anything to do with the ability to retire at a certain age or anything. This is just pay grade. Correct.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Just showing where this sits in our budget development form all under personnel services. And then the other request we have is around cost for wildland firefighting. So this past calendar year, Vermont experienced 84 wildland fires. They burned a relatively small amount of acreage, but also a wildly fire danger was very high throughout much of the summer and early fall. Vermont had, as you may recall, above normal or fatter above normal temperatures and severe drought conditions actually formed across much of the state. And so, we had staff on call for about two and a half months straight during that period, as well as these call outs. We have about $100,000 in the VA request to cover overtime costs. We did end up utilizing The US Forest Service helicopter that was stationed in Manchester, New Hampshire to fight one fire in Williston and did call in some Green Mountain National Forest crews. And just a little bit of facts and figures, our Wildland Fire team is just three full time firefighters. These are folks that have significant training and are actually able to serve as incident commanders if a larger fire develops. There is a considerable number of Vermont firefighters that have received training in wildland fire, and there are also 22 FPR employees that are considered red carded, maybe they are eligible to fight these fires as well, but it's really these three core staff that No,

[Sen. Anne Watson]: the ones that you put on call or do you put Correct. Better ones?

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Yeah, so I'm curious if we ended up using the fire apparatus that we had in the budget last year.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: It is on order, but we have not taken delivery of it.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Okay. And then 84 wildland fires. I'm just not recalling what the number of wildland fires was last year. This is my question is this is up from? I think it's a pretty Oh, it's a level.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Okay. Well, it it is up, but not up. Okay. Charles, I don't know if you know that number off the top of your head.

[Charles Martin, Deputy Secretary, Agency of Natural Resources]: I don't know last year's, but you're correct that it's like a mild trend up, which is kinda offset by there was, like, a horrendous drought here in 2016 with a big fire. So it kinda skews the decade old plot back.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Got you.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: If you had a graph over like wildfire, the number of fires, the number of acres over the last five, ten years, that would Yeah, be interesting to produce

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: that was insane. We compiled

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: that information, so happy to share.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: And

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: then the other slides in our deck really just are focused on ARPA. As you may recall, ANR received about $190,000,000 worth of appropriations of those ARPA funds. I would say the through line through most of what's listed there is water infrastructure, whether it's storm water, wastewater, combined sewer overflows, drinking water. One exception, or the couple of exceptions are down towards the bottom of the state parks connectivity work, state parks major maintenance, and urban forestry. The numbers indicated in these tables in terms of September 30 were the totals that Doug shared previously, Doug Barnum shared previously, and just wanted to make clear that we've made real progress in the last three months of calendar twenty five and are now down to just below $6,000,000 of unencumbered or unexpended ARPA appropriations, which is about 3% of the total, and we believe we are on track to fully expand the funds by the relative deadlines, whether it's ARPA or here in Jack Watson.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: That's good, yeah. Because on his data, your wastewater water project are highlighted as the one area of concern, but even more like if something goes wrong with the project, if that did happen, you feel confident.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: No. They they continue to move forward. I mean, these these are big, complicated infrastructure projects, and these are really compressed timelines. So it's not unexpected. They're sort of towards the the end of period of performance, and it's something we've been paying real careful with.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: I think

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: that was it for my slides. So if there are questions, happy to answer them, but also just to reflect the incredible work of the team getting these dollars out and on the ground and invested in really.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Was kind of my question, is everything, it doesn't look about that slide, but is everything obligated currently?

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: We have 5,800,000.0 that is currently unexpended on comfort, meaning it hasn't been obligated to our project.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: What's the deadline on that obligating vehicle?

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: So for the ARPA dollars, I think that the deadline is passed, but in reality, that 2,600,000.0 we're using to fund cost overruns on some of the projects we've already funded.

[Steve Gomez, CFO, Agency of Natural Resources]: Yes. For the record, Steve Gomez, CFO at ANR. So with the unexpended unencumbered money, so for example, we have, like, a three acre project and it comes under budget, that money comes back to the bottom line. Oh. Then knowing we'll have cost overruns at other places, those dollars will be reapplied. There's also a small amount that are, administrative withholdings. So if there's, like, waiting for, like, a project to reach, like, compliance point or, you know, like, some sort of check off, then the funds can be dispersed. So it's all in motion just kind of right now, it's not technically from an accounting standpoint, extended our encumbered.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: And is that is your administrative expenses part of that, or that that is income considered encumbered? Are you using a pay stub?

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: We are using some of these dollars to pay stubs.

[Steve Gomez, CFO, Agency of Natural Resources]: Yeah, so that would fall under there's probably I'd have to double check, I think a portion of would be part of that administrative without piece.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: So so just to build on that. So there's no new projects that can be added at this point. It's just cost of rents for previously approved or encumbered projects.

[Julie Moore, Secretary of Natural Resources]: Yeah. Unless something went wrong and a a project just failed to move forward or advance and those dollars were returned right now, they are all committed to projects that we anticipate will move forward by the difference.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Pretty straightforward. Thank you for coming in and explaining it.

[Wendy Knight, Commissioner, Department of Liquor and Lottery]: You're welcome.

[Sen. Anne Watson]: Do see any other questions?