Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: We are live.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Okay. Senate appropriations back to FY '27 budget request. We have building and development services. Office of Commissioner will introduce yourself and deputy commissioner on a record. Anything

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Okay.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Tell us about your budget.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Great. So good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be back. I'm Wanda Bonoille. I'm commissioner of buildings and general services. And I will let you introduce yourself, Emily.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Hi. I'm Emily Kisicki. I'm deputy director of Billings and General Services.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I'd like to Eric. Is That's my husband. Okay. Nice to work with him at the front.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: I know. Yeah.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: You know that. Okay. Yes.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I've had an opportunity, just a quick little story, Michael Bahowski and I met Emily, and she was working for the legislature as a staff person while she was transitioning with her, I think you're waiting to get your

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: was staying for the Vermont bar exam.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And Obi and I just, know, we made a great connection. So, Emily came and worked at BGS with Obi and did some really great special projects and some some needed work. And when I had the opportunity to come back to buildings and general services a little over a year ago, I ran into Emily at the, joint fiscal. I speak social. I said, oh my gosh. What are you doing? And so it's it's a wonderful relationship. We work really well together. We both have some history. We both have, you know, lots of ideas, and we're really split and conquer. And even when we talk about the budget, I think there's there's areas that Emily has really, invested in learning. She's really focused, and every deputy needs to understand HR. So that was her first real big task. But I always look at the deputy commissioner as the person who manages those day to day operational pieces. So I just wanted to express that and I'm very thankful, to have her here with me.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: And how long is it?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Will be, it was a year in December. And prior to that, I was at Department of Financial Regulation for a decade. And before that was done, she asked.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And you're supposed to say, and you're loving it, right? Right, I'm loving So, let's get going if we can and I have my notes. So, you have received from the agency the full detailed budget book. I have done a PowerPoint that I like to walk through to highlight and cover the items that I believe you're gonna ask. We know you may get into specific details. We can be available after or at some point if you wanna do follow ups, but I am now walking you through every up and down and every piece of the budget, okay?

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Because this, we don't have this.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: We sent it. We got it.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I just had the budget, maybe if I read it first. So,

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I just like to remind everyone that, you know, what is the purpose of VGS? And it's really providing essential resources and services to state government so they can, and our partners, and our visitors, so they can accomplish their mission. We really focus on quality service and customer satisfaction and, I think it's also important that I think some people always see buildings and general services. Would you like me to pause for a minute, Senator?

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I was just like, it's part

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: of that

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: thing, Sorry, I figured it out.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yes. I like to just point out that you know, like many people always see buildings and general services about the construction or the maintenance and the custodial piece. And that is the largest piece of this department, but we also we provide so many other services with postal print. You're going to hear about them in information centers and areas that sometimes people just don't connect with buildings and general services because I think hence the name Building General Services. Next slide, please. This is just in our budget book, there's detailed org charts. This is just a snapshot and I apologize our curator. So David Sheets, who's the curator, he's under he's with the bubbles where the legal, financial, and policy are. And this is just a snapshot because we have over 300 employees and org chart is very detailed. So, slide, please. These are just some key areas of focus that we have. I'm not going to read them to you because we're going to talk about them a little bit as I go through the slides, but it's in the slide. So, here we go. And I'm looking up there because I think you all are. So, this is our '27 proposed budget. We have the commissioner's office and six divisions. And within those divisions, there's multiple units serving key initiatives. There are three forty eight full time equivalent positions. As of December, we had 22 vacancies. Overall, the budget for buildings and general services, it's a 5.5% increase over 2026. When you get into the individual divisions,

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: you're

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: gonna see some higher numbers, but this is the overall increase. This is, you know, the visual pie chart of all of our funds, and I don't have to explain to you internal service and interdepartmental. This committee knows that as well as as we do. But I think I what I like about this is that 77% of our budget is internal service funds and the majority of that is for fee for space and for our operations and maintenance and management of the facilities.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: And the transportation fund is just for the total fleet?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Transportation, so this is for the centers, the information centers. So we get a portion of that transportation budget for the staffing and to help with some of those costs. And then, day to day operations is in our budget and maintenance, overall maintenance we take care of. Then when it becomes a significant replacement or major item, then we work with V Trans to get that money.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Is this just the ones on the interstate or all like any visitor center in New Mexico?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: It's all of them. So, we have, we'll get to the sheet. So, this is our contracted ones too. So, those costs, there's the contracts for Bennington and Williston, a piece of that is also in this because there are costs that we pay and services that they cover.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Like the one you used to have in Montpelier with that?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Was, know, that's a great question. I don't know if that was just in our operation cost commissioner's office because it was really the, it was the office of information centers and then we had just the staff that were in there on the bottom of

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Right, the since we brought it up, are

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: you going to open a new one in Montpelier? Know, I think

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: There's people at Montpelier who would love that.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah, so I really want to say, I've had a wonder I've really worked well with Montpelier Live. We've had some great meetings, you know, working with Katie, actually the building that is currently on State Street, I don't know if they've talked about it. I had

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: It's vacant, correct?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Well, it's vacant, but there's a kiosk out there. So, we painted it, we cleaned it up, we changed the marketing, worked directly with Montpellier, with Katie Childs, and we created new signage and some scanning abilities to help promote Downtown Montpelier because people are still stopping there. So, while I understand there's not a building and there's not staff, understood the importance. And I know that they really appreciated it, instead of us because nothing was being done. So, at least if we've got this little outdoor kiosk and this visual thing, let's brighten it up and let's make it usable. I think it's important, and this is a generic statement, so I'm not not trying to find anything. All of you know, even from your communities, we are still at the administration. We've been working through the process with FEMA, putting in our application. We have to estimate everything and, you know, going through the application process and and they're coming back. So, no specific plans. Right? Because we're it's gonna depend

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: on Do I do it or not do it? That would be good.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Well, let's well, we may do it, but it may be it may look different. Right? Because depending on what comes as a result of the the offer and the final negotiation with FEMA is going to we have to look at the conflicts in full. And one of the things I just like to say, and I'm a little passionate about it because I I see the I see how people see these buildings are just sitting there. The flood was systems and basements, and it's the stuff you don't see. And I know some of you have all experienced it. So when you drive by the building, you go, why is it empty? Well, because there's nothing to support it. Right. And and and everything in Montpelier is just deep beneath the the ground on all of these facilities. So, again, a little patchy.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Where are we with, you know, can you give it up So, to

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: what I can tell you is I work very closely with Doug Farm and I have project managers that are on it and we work with Guidehouse and we're putting our estimates together. We've completed the majority of all of our applications, right, where we're looking at what the cost of the replacement value is. Those have been submitted to FEMA. They're doing requests for additional information so there's communication coming back and forth. I think Doug could come in and give you some specifics on where it is and I would prefer that he is. We hope that they're going to give us an offer at some point sooner than later so we can start negotiating.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: You have no idea when?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I think the anticipated goal is March, but I don't have the specifics on that.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: For starting negotiation or to get a response?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Submitted our, under Section four twenty eight, submitted an application and there was an extension granted, actually two, really to give FEMA time to process that application. It's it's taken quite a long time and there's quite a lot of information and work that has gone on behind the scenes. I want to compliment our BGS team who have been putting in a tremendous effort getting that together. So that's been submitted. We're going back and forth right now with some requests for information. The latest extension was through mid March, at which time that's the timeline for us to accept an offer from FEMA. So, we're expecting an offer before that is our anticipated timeline.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: It won't be like a total dollar number.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: That is our expectation. Once we get an offer, there would be some back and forth.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I think it's important though, and probably you've experienced this, that offer, the state has opportunity. Is it a four twenty eight? Is it building by building? It really depends. We don't have that information to truly go through it. I can't sit here today and say this is the way we're moving because we're still waiting. And then if we disagree, what does that process look like? And

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: It's been a while.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: Yeah. So thank you. So just to clarify, so are you this is the negotiations for potential buyout. Is this what No.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: No. This is the the cost to restore our functionality to our our operations within the Sure,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: and so with that, I mean, I'm recalling that in order to rebuild in Montpelier that there was at least a local ordinance about raising utilities above the flood level. And so, I mean, we mentioned we've

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: been talking about utilities being flooded. I assume you're waiting to do that work. Right. No, we have our buildings operating basically on either backup systems or temporary units. Of that's part and you probably, I think Doug Schmelik should come in and talk to you about the details, but I think you may be referring to the park and then we have flood mitigation. There's so many elements to this. So, we have done estimates of what it would be if you had to bring the building back to where it is and then certain codes and requirements apply and because it was flooded, you can't replace, you can't put the MVP system back in the basement, right? You have to, where are you gonna put it? What does it look like? So I think that's what you're Yes, referring absolutely, and that work's going on, and it's big. Yes, it's reimbursement for all

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: the costs extended to date part of that application, like all the money spent on getting the building open.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So Doug, this is what this, you know, I know that we have insurance money, we have tracking and there's other dollars and so I don't have the detail on that and Doug really should come in and talk about it.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah, and there's different categories for temporary costs, like when we had to relocate certain functions and to lease space, etcetera. So there's different categories of what we've expended to date, again, in recovery office.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And I'm not trying to not answer the question. You are. My my team this is what the the good partnership with Doug Farnham and, you know, and with BGS, my teams have been focusing on the engineering that design and moving those, getting that detail together while it has the oversight of moving some of the other pieces. Okay. Okay. Any questions on this? Okay, so if we can go to the next slide please. So just quickly, about visuals, our FY twenty six budget was 60,300,000.0 with all of the ups and downs and through what we did in building the '27 budget or the 5.5% increase, we're looking at a half of 63,500,000.0. The next slide, and I'm just going to highlight through the six divisions and the commissioner's office. I think

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: You have a total, or you have that on your first slide, The total, your total increase 5.5

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yep, that was on the first slide. Because each other slide we're going to give you the specifics ups or downs in those divisions. So, the commissioner's office, our recommended budget, proposed budget is 1,300,000.0. It's a decrease over FY '26. The purpose for the decrease is basically, I think all of you, we have a principal assistant position that's Eric, you all knew Eric Philcorn or some of you may have. Eric is working with Doug Farnham. His salary, a portion of it was being covered by the commissioner's office. We actually moved it to design and construction because the work is related again back to FEMA and the buildings. So, reflects, this is the biggest reason why we have the decrease in our budget. The next slide, please. This is the crosswalk that just shows you I just lost mine. I have to look at it this way. That is And if you don't need me to, I'm not going to walk you through this because our slide just summarizes this unless you

[Unidentified Committee Member]: have any specific questions. No, if there's anything you want to

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: highlight for us, it's added over.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So, one of the things I'm not sure why you asked for this, so we provided you the information in the bottom of the slide. The Joint Fiscal Office asked us to provide you our vacancy saving rates. So, this is included on this slide in the bottom. So, on '25, it was 23.8%. In '26, it was 19%. And currently, obviously, we have a decrease at zero. Will highlight It's not

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: on my slide.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Oh, I'm sorry. It's captured on the slides that appear, I'm not sure that it appears in the.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: '25, it was '23, and then it was 19, you're projecting zero. Yeah, because it's a decrease. Oh, this is a change in the vasectomy. So,

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: that's what we, so my understanding, I don't know why. So, just we were providing you the data. The Fiscal Office asked that we include the 26 and the 2526. We did that, but I also looked at 27.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: So, you're saying '27 will be the same as '26? No, it's actually decreased. 0% decrease, or it's decreasing to 0%?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: No, it is not a decrease to 0%.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: You said you

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: should go up.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yes. That was an error. The percentage is not accurate there.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Why don't we, we'll update that and get it back to you.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Because you don't want us to bring out our app. No.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: But in our crosswalk, so we're projecting essentially $28,000 worth of vacancy savings. We are fully staffed Yeah. By the commissioner's office.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: All right, because this is just the commissioner's office.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Right, and that vacancy savings is because of how we shifted home air and they also build the vacancy.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I think in general, overall house preparation from here too, wanted to know overall vacancy savings. Are you balancing your budget just by increasing your vacancy savings? No. I know you're not though, the time. But you probably wouldn't say that.

[Harley (Finance & Management, FSD)]: No, is. And you know what, and I

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: just wanna, I'll be really brief on this. I really not many people will say they enjoy the budget process. But we you know, in looking at BGS' budget and fee for space and and all of those transfer funds, we're working closely with Commissioner Gresham this past fall. We really went through every item saying, are we charging to the right accounts? Are we charging major maintenance that we get out of the capital bill? Are the right charges going to compete for space? And we've really started analyzing some of our programs. So we've made some changes in this proposed budget and we anticipate seeing, you know, more changes just going forward. And it doesn't mean that there's going be an overall savings. It's aligning the cost and what we do in programs to the appropriate program so we can so we can really, you know, analyze it. And, you know, when do we use especially since we get cash in the capital bill to support some of our major maintenance, should we cover some of those items instead of putting it into fee for space? Right? Because we pay for it directly, we put it in for space and then it gets populated amongst and distributed to everyone. It's been a good exercise. We've learned a lot last fall. Emily and I learned a lot. And it's just a continuing working relationship with them. And we did specifically take a close look at vacancy savings and whether those targets were consistent with our actual experience.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So that's some of where, again, deeper space, looked very closely at and that's also our largest staffing So, that's where we wanted to make sure, and that's where you'll look at the slide, there is an increase in that item. Again, part of that was making sure we were really targeting a realistic vacancy savings number.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: That will be the response to hospital patients. I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: have questions, but if you're still going on, I can hold my question. Actually, have to pop out at 02:30, so maybe I'll ask my question now. Sure, sure. That's good. So, realize this may be separate, but just gonna bring up

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. I'm very good. More than Indeed.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah. Well, you know, Emily and I sat there today saying, I bet I'm I'm sure they're gonna ask us about the auditor's report. Well, before you go to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: that, wait. What I would love to understand is where I can find energy numbers. Maybe that's in

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: the capital budget. Is that It's not energy division? Or energy used in BGS. So,

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: don't we do a follow-up with some stuff? Why don't we, so first of all, Emily has been taking the lead on the energy, with the energy program for me. She worked really closely with the auditor's office. So, she has an enormous amount of knowledge around this. I mean, I'm familiar with the report, but I think what we could do instead of trying to start targeting, if we could just reach out to you with some of those data points.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Absolutely, but also we do submit annual reports. I'm not sure if you've seen them, but I can share them with you. Do, our energy program has an annual report with those annual numbers on our projects, what we've done for our revolving funds and the program generally, so that would be a good starting point.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And we filed that, that's a legislative report that we have filed. I know I have a paper copy there, but we'll just send you the connection. Okay, we'll just connect up that.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: State Energy report that has some of the other information you don't have. We might wanna just pat them in and grill them about

[Sen. Anne Watson (Member)]: the Well, is part of the plan is to invite you in, and we'll if we could talk more about it.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I'll be happy to come in and discuss it.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Thank you. Because I won't because I could give you a rough time about it, but I don't know. Was pretty concerned about why it's in the report. And we could we

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: could I I know it would sound like such a bureaucrat, but I'm just gonna say, I don't mind audit reports. Right? Because there are elements of that report we agreed to, and it was a finding for us, and some were new. Right? So that's okay. There are maybe some elements that interpretation, we didn't necessarily agree, but it's the auditor's prerogative to write that. So, we're not standing here saying, ah. Well, what I'll

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: say is there's a lot to be proud of for our energy program. Yeah. The of staff. And for the number of staff. But there's certainly areas where we can improve our processes, and that's exactly what the audit helps us do, which is to identify where we're falling short, where we can do better, and we'd love to also highlight some of our successes too. Because

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: we're talking about vacancy savings, I saw the report that you had one or two energy project managers

[Unidentified Committee Member]: with vacancy since '21, which

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: kind of gets to this vacancy savings. You trying to fill that position?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: They are, but can I just say, think I just want to say these are the positions that are actually in engineering, do energy on new construction and renovations? It's not the energy division that's doing the other.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Are coordinating. So they were part of the energy program. They were moved over to design and construction because we're trying to facilitate the good coordination between ongoing renovation or construction projects, how can we incorporate energy measures into the work that we're doing? So those positions have been very hard to fill, not an intentional effort to keep the vacancy going, but really that's been something that they've been actively trying to fill. I'm happy to report we just had someone start, I'm an energy program manager, project manager, where I met yesterday. We're really excited to have him on board, I think we're actively hiring that up, filling that other position as well. So we're really feeling good and optimistic that we're going to be able to increase our project counts based on filling those positions.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Just from my perspective, since Dan left and you made that change over to design and engineering programs compared to where it was, and maybe that's just a transition in a different staff. Dan was doing job. That's where he got coached and could go somewhere else. Think it's a great program that needs to be kind of being played out.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Know, really feeling like a historian today. I really appreciate what you just said because one of Emily's tasks when Ovi and I hired her was to create that program and we hired Dan Yeah. And to bring that along. So thank you for that connection.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And I think we can move on, but, like, you know, now that the program is over a decade old, and I think it's okay. I think the audit brings us a great opportunity to look at it. Where is it working? Where is it not? And what tweaks do we need to make?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So we're going to move, we'll move right along to design and construction. This is what used to be for engineering. This is a $5,200,000 budget in '27. It's a 6.5% increase from '26. And it is the traditional. You're going see most of our increases are related to insurance, POLAS and staffs. There's 26 full time equivalent, and we talked about their mission. They assist with planning, design, construction. They support the energy program. They support property management. The project managers support our operations and maintenance team when we're doing larger major maintenance projects. We've summarized the performance measures. I don't know if you need me to highlight those. Next slide, please. So, you're going to see that there's two crosswalks for this program. The majority of this is funded through general dollars. And we had a $1,100,000 budget last year. We're asking for $1,200,000 this year. And then if you go to the second crosswalk, we also track by capital bill. And this is the interdepartment, the transfer. So, there are projects that occur out there that are not were not budgeted through the capital bill or budgeted in our major maintenance and there's specific program needs that a department or an agency may need. And so we actually fund and support that through the interdepartment. They'll pay for the services and it goes in here. We do charge some of our staffing costs to that. Do you want to add anything to that, Emily? So the next slide is government business services. This is our division that has print, postal, federal state surplus, fleet management, and our information centers. So, and we're going to go by the units budget. So, the information center is 5.93 increase from '26 and these are the costs for status insurance and COLAs, but also our contracts, the majority is for the locations that are operated in improvements to the chambers. There's a cost of living in increase every year in the contract. So, that reflects that in our budget.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And just to champion, most of you are likely familiar with the information centers, but they really, they provide an important service to the traveling public. We're really proud of them. We get great feedback, but they're also really important for tourism purposes, sharing information about Vermont, but also promoting Vermont businesses. Some of the performance measures here, it doesn't change, but through our brochure program, but also usually you can go in and see kiosks that are highlighting like local artisans specific to the area. So it's really great if you're driving through, encourage you to stop in. Again, most of the centers are staffed by state employees, some are through partnerships with Chamber of Commerce, but it's a great program.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah, and I think, you know, and we're still, we've seen a little bit of increase from last year, but 3,000,000 visitors throughout the state. Do count.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: You're projecting it'd be for next, for '26.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: We're projecting an increase to 2,500,000 over 2.48 last year, I think we did see We a certainly saw a dip in COVID, right? So, we're slowly seeing those numbers pick back up, but we track that, we get a weekly report out on the numbers and we have comparisons that can be interesting to see, you know, week to week how it's changed, month to month, and then year to year.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: So that's '26 is a no, so this is still a projection of the numbers here did. Because we

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: heard from the

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Economist that visitors were down on the northern section from Canadians. Did you see that? Well, you know what?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I know we'll ask. We we can look at

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the data. The follow-up. That's report at places like Auburn down 30%. Yeah. And they said the further you got away the hoarders, the better it got. The only information center, I think, in their report that was out of

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Was Bennington, and Guilford is still, I think, our busiest just because of where it's located. Just to build up what the deputy was saying, we work so closely with marketing to align with ACCD some of those elements. And it is a great way to showcase.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: So,

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: next slide. Again, this is the crosswalk, I think we can just move on unless you have any specific questions. Next slide, please. So, the next is our postal. This is we run a postal service. It's centralized postal services for all state government. We, you know, and we do deliveries and pickups specifically in Montclair and Waterbury. Those are our largest. The post office delivers. We redistribute. In some of the areas, it vary. When maybe you get to Bennington or something like that, the US Postal is going in and picking up and delivering directly there or like a Springfield State Office Building.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Shouldn't you take over all postal delivery?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I'd like

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: your 100% done. I get a lot of constituents that are complaining about this.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah. Go ahead, Anne.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Just to share, I mean, our postal services unit is sharing concerns with us about unreliable mail delivery for state for state government. So there's days where they even get no mail for all the state government, and then days where there's big deliveries. And this is really problematic because there's a lot of mail that state government sends that is crucial to get out on time. So it's becoming a growing concern of the Biden

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Fed. And

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And the direction has been, you know, working with some of the departments that again have those critical mail pieces is to file

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: complaints with USPS. And, you know, and I just, you know,

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I was just having

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: a moment where I think about, you know, some of these divisions that we have. We don't keep coming in and asking for more and more positions. It's pretty much been flatlined for years on the positions, which goes to why it increases insurance, COLAs, but they have a great operation. And anytime you want to visit, these people are so proud of what they do and they're very, very consistent and they're there every day. Next slide, and we'll go right past the crosswalks and go to the next. So within government business, we also have a print shop. So the print shop is physically located with postal And there actually is a cohesiveness in some of the work that they do, but there are 11 FTEs there. We do all of the transactional data printing, for Department of Motor Vehicles and Tax and Labor. So, checks, when we used to do checks, all of DMV's registrations, all of those renewals, all of the tax data, all of the w twos for for state government.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Is that also in Middlesex for?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah. Yeah. And they're actually all in the same space. So, these are really critical to state government. So, they're sending files now. They're secured. And then we actually print their seal, then they go into

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: the mail

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: deliver. That's a big piece of really what we do. Your legislative printing during the session, whatever you need, and over time you reduce that. But I remember when we used to have three shifts to do the House and Senate journals on the calendar because we only did it by paper. And they used to be tagged. You'd say, get it down. This is. So, you know, but you're not seeing a significant change here. It's really a budget to keep operations moving forward. Emily, is there anything you'd like to add? No. The next one, Emily, I'm gonna let you do fleet. Sure. Because you've been working with them so closely.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yes. So the Fleet Management Services unit within Government Business and Services, their sort of headquarters is right here in Montpelier, near the Department of Labor. Again, here you're really just seeing an increase in insurance steps and COLAs, small but mighty team that manages almost six fifty vehicles, 60% of those are alternative fuel vehicles. 47 are daily motor pools, so it's essentially like a rental agency for state operations. If you're going out on the Governor's Capitol for a day, you you can take that vehicle out for the day. And really the goal, again, is to achieve cost and fuel savings for the state

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: instead. And the percentage of the utilization is a total trip, what percentage was used by the motor pool engine?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: That's like how frequently those are being taken out. And so there's motor pools

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: 54% of the time? Like, is that percentage of?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Like, if you have 10 vehicles in your pool, at least 50, you know, five cars around on the

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: road at a given time.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: At any time during the worst day, I think. Yeah.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Think ideally it would be higher. So, I think right now, we're thinking about ways that we can communicate, again, the fleet program, encourage folks to be using that instead of their personal vehicles. That

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: they're required to.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: There is a policy that Yeah, that they Employees should be using fleet vehicles first if they're available. And then there's different reimbursement rates depending on whether a vehicle was reasonably available or not when you take your personal car. But it's a great program. We want to do some outreach about it to remind everybody about the motor pool. And then the other ones are the predominant function of Fleet is to essentially have permanent lease vehicles for agencies and departments. I mean, there's many that have sort of on the road services a lot like an agency of agriculture in the summer. You know,

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: they're out in the field and so they're using state vehicles through the fleet for that purpose. And we actually did submit a report which I just want to make note because the fleet report, the usage, doesn't have that broken down. I mean, AHS DCF is a huge customer of ours and, you know, because they're out working with their clients, right? I think that's, another one.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: This is fleet separate from the fleet run by

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: AOT? Yes. Yeah, there's actually specific statute that separated the two. So we do help them buy, I don't remember the history, but there was a reason that they managed theirs differently. But their vehicles in the May, some of their vehicles aren't that are not part of their fleet that maintains the roads and the bridges and does plowing actually come through us.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Our fleet are passenger vehicles, whereas specialized vehicles, public safety vehicles.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah, don't do that already separately. In

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: transportation, few years ago, passed a requirement on I can't remember if it's on AMG's fleet or on VGS's fleet revolve on electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles, that's a certain percentage. Do you know if your fleet is part of that?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Well, don't know if it's, we'll look into it, but we have 60% right now, we have alternative fuel and

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: we do have a breakdown. Have EV's too.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: That includes hybrids. Yeah, if you could send me that then. Sure. Yeah. It's all energy.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah. Any other questions about fleet management? So, we'll go to surplus property, state and federal. This is the quiet little program that is very nimble, but actually provides some pretty large services. So, the state surplus and the federal, it's where we collect all of the property that is being disposed of and that we try to resell it or we make it available to the general public if the state doesn't have use for it, but it is also distributed to municipalities and I think that's important too. We've really built off on that. And through the state program, we've helped communities get used snow plows or road graders. It's it's three really, FTEs. But one of the but it's also sort of a cross units. They're all tasked with different things. They oversee and help manage the auction. People don't realize that.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: They also take any confiscated items from the PSA at the airport. We

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: actually just a delivery of sharks from airport.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: People love the sharks.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah, there's a fresh delivery out there. Everyone has a lunch. Yeah,

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: probably already got there at 6AM.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: They probably have a list of who to call. Right?

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: They probably they go there right on the day that the delivery must be open up. Yeah. It's a way you can get switchblades.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: That little baby Swiss Army Knives. So, you know, they're really customer focused and it's a state and federal program. I don't have anything else I think to add here. Do you, Emily? I do not. And then the next one is the Office of Purchasing and Contracting. So, this is a 10.3% increase in the budget overall. The increase is insurance status COLAs and alignment of internal service funds for existing positions. And that is in, I don't believe we'll have BT Buys which was the large contracted procurement project that we put in place. It's really this budget. Is in place? It is in place. We are moving into O and M. It is an IT project that has taken several years and I know you have all heard about that. Are, O and M has some additional small deliverables that we need to bring in to continue to make the system, I think, better. So, it is there, it is functioning. But there is still, as we went through testing and as we rolled out, there's some areas

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: about how well it's think it's Maybe it's getting better

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: No, this is what I would say. The system has the capacity to meet the needs of the state and what departments do. When the program was rolled out, there may have been prior to me business decisions to delay some of those opportunities in the system. So, we've reset in the last year and we have a plan for the next three years going forward to bring that in. So there have been some levels of frustration, Senator Humphrey. I mean, it's true and there's some pieces that we need to finish or we need to bring forward and finish. And this year is there's a there's and this is really important to agencies and departments. There's a piece of purchase orders that has to connect the vision. And that's what we need to accomplish before we close out at the end of the year. Vision is still our financial record for the state and will always be. BT Buys is a system that connects the world of contracting and purchasing, which we're required to do to vision. So we are more transparent, we are more efficient, and it's not paper based. This alignment with ISF, this

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: is like the purchasing and contracting has increased their internal service fund to the other parts of BGS or to ADS or something. It seems like all the other ones had insurance, that's a COLA, so I'm assuming this 10.3% increase, that's the main idea, is that

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yes. Yeah, so my understanding, and I'm looking at Harley, our partner from FSD, was that for several of the positions in OPC, they were funded on the back end with an

[Harley (Finance & Management, FSD)]: ER access receipt. IDT previously. And now they're moving to the vision fund to align with the fact that it's

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: a service that should be

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: They have to do access and receive support?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: No. But we have two programs that you're gonna see there was an increase where we've changed where we were doing it at the I I love the description at the back end.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So the positions were there, the cost was there, but we did it through I think if you could explain, you know, it's up front, we're being more transparent saying, here's the budget, here's the cost.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Correcting what you were paying for. Yeah. And

[Harley (Finance & Management, FSD)]: moving those BT guys' expenditures to the Vision Fund is gonna make more sense versus having the separate IDT, everybody paying for it that way. They're paying for it through the Vision Fund. Finance management uses for their Vision

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Will there be a The Vision Fund include for Mount Vizier, or Mount Vizier will have their own ISF.

[Harley (Finance & Management, FSD)]: As far as I understand it, it's gonna combine into that ISF so that it's Vision Fund, VTHR, and VQVIS. And

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And I said there's gonna be one other program that's the same that we'll we'll get to.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Okay.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So moving right along, we're almost done. Right? I'm gonna

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: have to like do property management. So, planning and property management, I would say this is another example of a small but mighty team. This group really handles space for the state, not constructing it, but planning around it, property space moves, helping to support agencies and departments on what they need within their space, as well as managing our leases.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: And

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: also, the energy program is officially housed within planning and property management.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: But the positions are in engineering?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: No. Two or Two project managers are within engineering. Five are in the energy office, and that includes two sort of energy program generalists, and then three who are specific to the MRRC program, the Municipal Energy Resilience Program,

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: and those are limited service. Within Planning and Property?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So those are the five that are within Planning and Property Management. Planning and Property Management, just some of the highlights. Again, 89 leases, so that's what agencies and apartments are in. Privately owned space, so Planning and Property Management essentially asks access to a leasing agent. We also create they create and maintain the space book. This is a I can leave a copy for the committee if you'd like. This is really an inventory of state property, whether owned, leased, or land holdings. So this is a a tool that we use to key off our billing for paper space and pilot payments to municipalities. So it's a really important document. It gives you all the information about, you know, the property that the state owns and leases. So this is a I like to promote this at every opportunity.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I assume institutions have a copy.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yes. Yes.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: And senator Norris. Yes. Funny you should bring that up. We're well, can send it to Ruth just left. We, judiciary, are we're wondering today if there's a bill that we're looking at is how many buildings that the state of Vermont actually own, lease, procure? Is that all in there right there?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Oh, yes, sir. So right in the front there's a summary.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: State owned, 234 leased, eight eighty nine leases. There's also 50 tower leases for like

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: These include, like, your little information centers, your on the state park beaches where they got their little

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Well, so in this book and this is something that we added this year after conversations with institutions, there's two sections. One is from ANR. So property that Emily was just summary summarizing is what's under BGS. But we did build into this book an inventory that was provided to us by the agency of transportation of all of their land holdings and building holdings and ANR. We don't summarize that. And

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And the ACCD, they've got historic preservation properties and military. So

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: this and and

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: ANR has a lot of that as well. So just this year, we brought back a previous practice of including all state inventory.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I'm interested in in

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Well, there you go. Worse. You're very much.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I I can't attorney. No.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: It's yours. No. It's it's it's yours. But the summary that Emily was just referring to, that is the summary of property under the control of BGS. And I think that's what's really important is AOT controls buildings and lands, ACCD, ANR, and buildings and general service.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Can you explain that, that's your second ballpoint, about the change in the timing?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: That's similar to exactly what we were just talking about with OPC, so instead of essentially on the back end covering those physicians, it's putting them on

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: the So it's like a one time just to correct that. Yeah. We have an increase this year.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I appreciate you pointing that out because we'll modify this I think to be

[Unidentified Committee Member]: a little more consistent when we

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: get to the house. But remember I said there's two programs we did this in and those are the biggest increases. So property management and OPC. Any other questions here? So, fee for space. If you remember when we started out and looked at the pie chart, this is 77% of our budget. This is the largest. It's $41,000,000 5.3% increase. And we're highlighting in this the increase in cost of utilities and services for maintaining state buildings and properties. When I started out, I talked about the work with Commissioner Gresham where we really started getting in. Emily and I was looking at these budgets and really understanding what is in there. And so I think that fee for space typically we do an excess receipt at the end of the year, particularly for this program. One of the trends that we're seeing and that to my understanding, haven't really adjusted to over time. There's been a significant increase in our utilities, electricity, cost of heat, oil and water because And I think a great example is, and what has been shared with me is that, you know, as we have buildings shut down, there was still a base that communities expected to get from the water and the sewer, which supports their budgets. So, while we were using less, we were also seeing an increase As you know, we saw that gap. So, we're really working closely with finance to identify how to close that gap, how do we get back on alignment. But that's pretty much the main reason for some of this. Also, and security. Our security division is highlighted, paid out of this program as well. And we get some capital bill money for security for some of those small improvements, but we also, you know, oversees the COOP plan. Security does threat assessment. Security works throughout the state with all of our agencies and departments if there are incidences or if they need special needs. Go ahead.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah, environmental health as So, if there's a complaint about air quality or something along those lines, that's that team that responds to it. We have some talented folks who work on that. Uniformed officers in certain locations like Montpelier who provide in person safety presence to help state employees and visitors, as well as a 20 call line. Again, if someone's in their office late at night and they feel like they need an escort, something along those lines, that's available to them. All of

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: our alarm systems, all of our fire systems, they're bad jobs. And

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: And you see this percentage of time, which doesn't seem all that great, particularly on the maintenance status, does those are the time that you drove it, you predicted when it would be?

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I get that. I have to go ahead. That's there, yes.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: It's only that other better than me, and it's was completed on time, but but then I just on time is that you gotta pick the date, and it's only meant half the time.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah. And this this blends into conversations around our engineering position and our overall major maintenance and preventative maintenance, and where do they fall within people's base budget versus their capital budget if it's a larger repair. And so our district facilities managers in each of our districts will have a running list of deferred maintenance and preventative maintenance that needs to occur. And those get prioritized by them and then funnel up through a conversation with that division's leadership as well as construction, the engineering team leadership about what we can fund in a given year.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: And that's really where it comes down to, is it a major maintenance item or is it a fee for space item?

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Is it a lack of a good enough funding? But also because of the lack of funding though.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Lack of it can be something else that comes up. So if you have a preventative maintenance item, and then you have an emergency that comes up somewhere else that you have to address, and that's where the attention and the funding goes. And so that's something that we view regularly. As you can see, our target is to increase that. So to go from a number that is relatively low to get better on top of that preventative maintenance. That helps protect our

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: But I appreciate you giving us multiple years, though.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: I think this is one of the other areas of working with the administration, but also with institutions. I will share with you, there wasn't a quick spend on some of the major maintenance money and moving these through. And I think part of it is because there was over a year of just trying to stabilize the systems within Montfullier. That became the priority. And so, we really again spending time, Emily and I, our directors for the first time this year, we presented in house institutions that we've been having these big carry forwards, maybe 30% of our major maintenance. We have less than $2,000,000 this year left in our budget major maintenance to get us to July 1. So, we've shifted, we're working with our district facility managers, we've identified, you know, it is a major maintenance, we need to spend it, and that's where we're doing the movement also between fee for space. So thank you. Do you have any further questions from us?

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: I do not.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Well, we have a few follow-up items that we will be back in touch with you And pretty otherwise, we're happy to answer any additional questions you may have.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Quick question on the fixing the buildings up for folks who are returning from remote work. And does that put a dent in your budget or did you plan for that upfront?

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: So it didn't impact our budget. Certainly it did take some staffing focus specifically in planning property management like those are the folks who are meeting on the ground agencies and departments who might need to, maybe there's some furniture upgrade or something that they need to talk through. So that person's staffing time has gone, but our budget didn't change as result. I just want

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: to say I got job money from like Department of Health that money is

[Unidentified Committee Member]: going But to to

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: go pay, lease a new also, think, and this is something that I'm honored to work with such good people. The buildings all were open and they were being operated at some at a minimum, but our maintenance teams were still doing their deferred maintenance, still addressing them. So, when we moved to coming back, buildings were in pretty good shape. Know, they were good and above. So, I think that's why we're not seeing a huge increase because we had major deferred maintenance or we weren't cleaning them. Our staff were still going through it. One person was on a floor in a building, the custodians were still cleaning it. They're public buildings. We were still cleaning the bathrooms. And I'm proud that they were doing that and taking good pride because we moved them in and those have been very low, small items.

[Emily Kisicki, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Yeah, and so again, for us operationally, it wasn't a shift for our department. We have a largely in person presence as it is. And then we just keep doing what we always do. And again, had to flex up in a few areas to support those agencies and departments who, you know, were coming back from a more remote foster. Thank you.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Commissioner, last question to try to get you in trouble. Which is a better department, DMV or VGS? Fire it up there.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: No, don't mess up. You know, my heart's always been with education, right? That's where my journey started. I love DMD, but you all were so good to me. I I had support from the administration, but also from this legislative body and it was a great time at DMV. We really led with some changes and you funded it and you encouraged it and you supported it. And so what a great time and opportunity for anyone in my position to be able to experience that. So that's always gonna be, you know, a part of me. Bgs is iscom bgs is BGS is a place where I really was mentored and had an opportunity You worked there for how long before? Twenty almost, I don't I don't know, sixteen, twenty years. So I went over in 1999. Tom Torty hired me because we moved the capital bill from the administration to BGS because it's about most of our work. So I was the principal assistant, and I left in 2016. Ginny, that's very well.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Wish you a great

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: political I I know. Great things here. Yeah. That's And and, you know, so each I feel very blessed. I mean, I talk to Emily about it all the time. You know? I just you know? I I truly and I'm not just saying this. I have worked with some phenomenal, brilliant people. You know, my journey in exempt employment started with governor Howard Dean. I have watched shifts. I have gone through changes, policies, the very interesting agencies to be in. I mean, school construction at the height.

[Unidentified Senator (Chair)]: Right. The FBGS had things, or they had their own programs. You were

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: Well, then they no. But it

[Unidentified Committee Member]: was school construction was education. Right.

[Wanda Minoli, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services]: You know? And then see, Tom didn't want me to I was getting all the capital money, so he said, well, I gotta stop her from doing that. I'll offer her a job. Just But to see so many programs evolve. I think about the information centers and how those came under our jurisdiction. There's a lot of wonderful history and it was a partnership. Thank you. Well, we