Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: We're live.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So this is the Senate Education Committee after a short break. We're switching gears once again and going back to the Act 73 follow-up bill. I have a And over the course of the week, we have a few superintendents coming in who offend through the merger of Lucius just to talk to us about what it's like, what happens when, what takes time, what's the complicated parts, and we'll talk about a little bit of sense of dollars that might be the solution, all those things that might have to happen that might cost money. And so with that, so why don't we introduce ourselves? You'll all know that's a little snootier with us today. So Senator Rutland District is on the screen. She's listening and will participate. She normally sits to your left right there. But next and next to Senator Rutland District is. That's the chief. That's

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Williams also from Maryland. Oh, okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And then Steven Heffernan from Addison Campus. Okay. Great. So for the record, introduce yourself and discuss a little bit about your background. Sure. Off we go.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Sure. My name is Jackie Wilson and I am, I was a superintendent, I'm retired. I've been retired for six years. So, I did work through the Act 46 process. So, and I know Senator Bongartz, somebody had talked a bit about that and described What I had to share about that process may be helpful to you, which you start to consider how you want to build this bill that you're looking for. Encouraging hopefully districts to further consolidate. I'm not sure if we were the largest, not largest, but we were certainly one of the most complex mergers in the So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you were a superintendent of

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: the I was superintendent. Yeah, RSU, Bennington. Bennington, I was supervising. Yeah. And we went from consolidating 11 boards to four boards. So, was, it ended up with, the largest one which is now called Taconic Ukraine and that was comprised of, right before that we did a red, so we did Bongartz Reds, put four towns together, and then they joined in with Taconic and Green. They became that merged Mountaintown Rebs, Dorset, Sunderland, Manchester and those towns merged together. Then we also had Pollard and Newport And oh, excuse me, the first one that was all sulfate and faltation. So, we went, it was a pretty complex process. We did the tough to Conic and Green first and then we came second. We started, it took us about a year. We started, we formed study committees and those study committees did, I would say, the lion's share of any of this work and my experience in the consolidation was definitely on the front end. So, we did a lot with community outreach. When I went and revisited, because I needed to revisit, it's been nine years since that happened and I have been out of the business for six. I went back and revisited that journey just looking through my old files and we had public forum on public forum. We did a lot of communication with our communities and we really did front load that process at the beginning.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And when you were me you mean there's working up to the vote. Working up I'm

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: working up to the vote. I find that was challenging. After the vote is it's kind of brain based. It's not really that part is not that part's when you're working with your central office and they're trying to you know, when I looked at, what did we spend? Because at that time it was there was 20 I think thousand on the front end for some work prior to the vote that you could access and we accessed that for communication support. We access that for some legal support for some consulting support and then on the back end is when you got the 150 if you met certain criteria that went to the supervisory And so that was also trying to think what did we all or we hired somebody to do communication work for that whatever was allowed for that legal work. So that money was used for that work afterwards. But I would say the front end was absolutely the one that was most challenging. And at the time, you know, I think and I don't think it's in this bill, I think the greatest lever what got our communities to buy into it and that that did have the homestead tax reduction And that was huge.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: See that again?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Act 46 allowed for, if you merged, if you met all the criteria for that merger, in year one there was a 10%, 10 reduction on the homestead debts. Year two was 8¢. Year three was 6. It went down by 2¢. So for five years the taxpayers got that tax benefit. Thinking back on it I do not I think the success of us success would have been very challenged if we didn't have that levering Because we had some of our smaller communities that were not really eager. We had one community that gave up some choice for middle school. Sunderland did that. We had some smaller communities that were very reluctant to lose that control. But they were facing some tax bills that were pretty extreme. So the fact that we could lay out for them here's what's going to happen to your tax rate, know, our best guess over the next five years, that's what sold and got them engaged.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So it wasn't just the reduction that they didn't solve because the tax rate was also affected by grouping together?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: The tax rate. Well, the tax rate, I mean, so so we're picking up some of that. I don't remember what their tax rate was, but it was kinda off the charts. For for those taxpayers, it's like, okay, we're gonna see 10¢ off tax rate. I don't understand where you just have to go down by 10¢ a share. That was a big lever. And it was the same situation for Holland and Rupert. That was a little more challenging and also Holland and Rupert and Union District. And same situation for that. So they

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: came in a few years later, right?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: They came in a couple years later. And our first both, I, we weren't successful our first time or successful the second time. But again, that that was where we spent a lot of our energy really really putting out to them. I mean, my finance had was project. This is what we believe the implication will be in their tax rate. And that kept the conversation going. So, was a big one.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Senator Rutland. Thank you. Sorry if you've already covered this, but the mergers, were they voluntary or were they under Act 46?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: They were Act 46, but they were voluntary. We came in there, well, we were voluntary.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: And how much time elapsed between the realization that there needed to be mergers and then the first vote and then the second two votes.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: It took us about a year.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Went

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: through all of that?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yeah. We started in '16, I think, was when we first brought our study committee together. Because again, if I remember correctly, if you did go voluntarily, it was more attractive, the offer, to do that. Our communities wanted to be if it was going to come down the pike, they will you know we tried to really emphasize it would be good to get out in front of that and you're going to reap some tax benefits from that. So it took us about a year to do that and we put up there was a committee put together of community members that were interested in participating and that they met regularly and we did at the time my boss I was when we first started I was assistant superintendent and my boss then became the secretary that did in French. So Dan was my boss at that time so we worked together and then he left and came up here and so I finished out the process before the vote then transitioned into it. But it took us about a year and with a lot and with you know every month something was happening It was pretty constant.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thank you. Senator Weeks. So the mergers were, you were merging districts, you weren't necessarily, you weren't even approaching the school, the individual facility question yet. You were taking leadership and governance, trying to create fewer number of districts. Is that

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: That's what was the correct, but we also, a great amount of care and time was given to building our articles of agreement because we wanted to position ourselves. Thank

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: you. It's in the other holy cow. Jeez.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: So throughout that year, I hope that you would save a great amount of time given to creating the Articles of Agreement, which would then dictate how that emerged that that new district was going to run. A lot of time and care was given to that because we very intentionally led a committee what they were going to bring forth to the voters. And it was a little bit tough for them to deal with, some of the communities, but we gave the power to the board to make those decisions about closing schools. So that's right spelled out in the agreement. There was a required, you have to hold an advisory vote and that just happened two of the schools this year finally closing in that district. And we did hold advisory vote votes and advisory votes went down in both communities as you would expect. The communities did not want to do that but move forward to close those two schools. And that's happening this year. So I think it's really important that you have someone who can help guide you to, or you have a good model, those articles of agreement because you don't want to set yourself up for trouble at the end of the day. So we spend a lot of time in here on that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And the workers for what it's worth is the board spent about eighteen months of hearings and discussions before voting for those individuals' communities.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Eighteen months. Yeah, not verbal talk, I'm digressing, which should be at some risk, because she's talking about, you're talking about the merger of the districts, I was talking about the vote to close the schools. Close the schools. And the work that the board did, even though they had the vote to do it, it's still in the real process. It's a one year preparation. Yeah. It's got fifteen month execution. From closing schools, yeah. Yeah, virtually. And again,

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: I mean, I were ever, if I was at the position I was doing it again, I would be making sure you've attuning to those articles critical. And we also spent, the committee office spent a lot of time developing what's that board representation all look like.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, you're on your way to something. You didn't follow the stat. No, didn't follow default, which is fine, it's the default There's a default board construct

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: for the terms.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: No. Who's going to be on

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the board? There's a default with the ability of new district forming to deviate from

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: the default. Right.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You deviated from default.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: We deviated from the default because the default gives every community three board members and you know, and it would be huge. It becomes unyielding. So we did not

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: children's

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: do that. They had what was called members at large that are elected by the larger groups. They had to bring one for the children's children's

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Articles of green. I'm not a mayor, haven't been in that space. Can you just, 40,000? What's in the articles of all the

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Articles of green must follow everything counting and run. They spell out, they spell out if you close, you know, what the, this really spells out the governance of that board. If you're going to close a school, what's the process for that? What is your board comprised? Who's on your board? What are those terms of the board? If you want to sell property, how are you going to sell that property?

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Just a quick follow-up. Would it have been beneficial to have a generic set of terms or did you have a generic, do they offer a generic sentence?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Gee, at the time I believe there was a template given saying that you have to address all of these things.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Without a template? Without a real like.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Right and then within you have questions that you've had to answer and satisfy that you've answered those questions and that you have a plan. So the state provided that and then we had to go through those steps.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Who's they?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Of the committee. The committee had to go through those steps and make sure it was approved. And I remember we went back and forth. Mean, remember once the financial one probably Brad James looked at, you know, department that took a look at it. They had folks that would take a look at the state level that would take a look at articles of agreement to make sure we were in compliance and what the intent was for those. But eventually it's the voters that vote on those arguments of the convention. So they actually vote on that document and agree with everything that's in there.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So that being, I'm not familiar with the process of that research. It wasn't the last stick that was carrying. They carried the stick where there were some incentives to do that. I don't think Act 70 three's got a lot of incentives. I know a lot of districts are talking about, you know, the best way to benefit the municipalities if they do merge now. And they can talk if they can do that process, but I don't think that it's- How far into the process was it before you got the incentives to do it?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: That was light up right at the start.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Oh, okay.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: So if you go back and I revisited, because again, I haven't looked at the law in a long time, it's been nine years. So I went back and looked at the Act, at Act 46 and that was laid out from the very beginning. They clearly said it'd be $20,000 given as a, know to do the work at the front end so you could bring it to the voters and then it was $150,000 if it was you got a positive note that would go to the Supervisory Union but the big one was spelled right out in the law about the tax incentives. So when we say carrot and sticks that definitely as I said earlier the big carrot was for my community was the tax incentives. So

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: you understand our environment now. Yeah. I'm sure you've been tracking. Yeah. Associate people, General Bongartz. In retrospect, would you have preferred a voluntary versus forced merger and do you see any benefits to either side and from your experience in your perspective?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: I mean I had the luxury of being able to work through a voluntary process So I believe it was voluntary at that time. The carrots were so attractive that the community said we want to do this. And there was moaning out there. If you don't do something you're going to get what was somebody you know something's going to happen so let's control our own destiny. So the what was going to happen hadn't been identified but what had been certainly conveyed was that there is something that will happen if you don't.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay so now given what you know, you experienced, now you understand our environment, where would you go?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: I still think it was worth the voluntary approach because, the communities got to work that out of their system. I want, I want to, you know, they get to have the conversation. I want to also add though, I think it was easier for our communities than it may have maybe for some other communities. Our communities were used to feeding into, they were, we were only a K-eight system. They were used to feeding them to burn work. They were kind of used to that ecosystem of like, this is where all our kids are going. Now, I think it's far more complicated when you're looking at merging with you. There's more territorial feeling when you have multiple high schools. There really is. And so I think we had that advantage that people were kind of used to oh yeah well they're all going to end up there anyways in ninth grade. So let's see if we can really start to work through this together. To the committee's credit, they developed the motto and they still use it and they use it because they've all used norms at the start of every meeting. What drove them early on the HENRUS motto is All our kids are all our kids. So they really tried to instill that in all the work that they did. They tried to walk away from looking at geographic boundaries to what was best for children. And that was really helpful. On the other side of that as a superintendent I was on the trustees for BSA with fellow superintendents and there were challenges. I mean, it's hard sometimes to get communities to merge that. And sometimes if I were in their shoes, if I had a different scenario, I might wish that someone would say, We're just doing it. Know? Because it's too hard to get everybody to come along to get that.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You know, the governor's Yeah,

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: mean, Yeah, I think it could Yeah, a good little bit of that, I think. Yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And you believe if we set out, or a board set out a set of criteria well beforehand of what they're looking at, that that would help communities decide to look at their own situation and go, Wow, we are gonna get affected by this, so we should actively start engaging with other communities or schools. Do you think I that would

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: do, but I think the carrots are important. I mean, don't know that. Don't know where you are financially now. I don't know if it's even financially feasible to think about, okay, so a two year process this year, this year one if you voluntarily go down this path you're going to have some homestead tax incentives. If you miss that window you're not And we're gonna guard you. You know what I mean? It's kinda nice to have that, okay, I've got this window of time where I can make this work for my communities and there's gonna be so relevant to just do that. And if I don't do it, I don't know what's going to happen. Tax rates are still going to be sky high.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just a couple more questions I wanted to ask about is the portion about before and after. Sounds like the money that was allocated in the last time was in some ways lopsided because, as you said, most of the so let me back up for this a little bit. A district is Districts are looking to come together and they're working on the first half getting ready for the vote, frankly, why I talked about this, the voters want to know everything before they vote to approve it. So you really have to do everything at time. You need facilitator?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Legal support. Ended up, and I think that this person still works for me or she, we ended up hiring someone I think for like $20 a year some of our own budget too to do communication support because that was critical we just didn't have the capacity to do all of that PR.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So our source of meetings even as you this is as you're building up so Yeah. And there was only 10,000 allocated at that time.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: It was 20, I think.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: 20, okay. And was that enough?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yeah, mean it was enough to initially, but again I mean that was nine years ago. Don't worry about that. Yeah we'll think about it.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we'll have to think about inflation but that was enough to get you to the vote.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: That was enough to get us to the vote at that time and we're paying 8.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah okay and afterwards you got 150. Yeah. Was that actually also really a carrot or did you actually need the 150?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: No, we didn't. I don't know that that served so much as a carrot. I mean, that was helpful at the, you know, the supervisor union, that went to the supervisor union and they used that updated software because of course your new systems to get everybody in line. We had extra legal fees because we had multiple contracts from different schools and so we had to get all of those in alignment so we spent a couple of years getting contracts aligned so we had more legal, maybe more legal support. So you do need something after but I still think the front end, that's where all your work is happening. Okay,

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we have to move on to something, two more. Yeah.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So we ended another incentive could be that because I think there were some schools that got left out. You know if you work on it and get deal a first and the music stops Yeah. Everybody has a place to sit on it. Yeah. So and I know, you know, that's not a financial part of it, but it should give some incentive to some of these schools to make sure that they police entertain mergers beforehand.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yeah, yeah, whatever you can do, I think, to get folks to do that on their own. Just feels better and you have more time to be thoughtful about it. Yeah.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Just for clarification, was the 20,000 per district? No. It's 20,000 for the unit that's talking about murder, murder, and 150,000 is for the end result. Right.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: And you've got, and now, you know, think of it, you're probably, your ecosystems are even bigger now. So, if you're looking to create a bigger ecosystem, you probably need more money to make that happen.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's a difficult question. So did you end up being the superintendent of the eventual? Yeah. Good, that follow through is pretty important. So you dealt with the financials of the district Yeah. On behalf of the board, etcetera, In retrospect, was the decision to merge 14 into four or whatever the or whatever the end result was, was it financially successful? Absolutely. And how about can you can you can you, I don't know, provide any kind of texture about the academic experience for the kids?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: I think that especially in some of our schools, I can give an example for our school that the Dandy School, Carving Memorial. Very poor community, lots of challenges and every year the budget will go down. Every year. Just pretend. And once they were part of the larger whole it just really shifted everything. There was a far more positive attitude and everybody was voting for that. There was one budget. So now you have budgets that pass every year.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Right, but in the end, so not so much whether the budgets got passed but was it for the larger footprint of schools was it better financially? Like did it save anything?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yeah it did and so and it stabilized the tax rate. Okay. And so and I don't and you know I would and again since I've been there but it stabilized the tax rate. We used to have schools that were always encroaching on that penalty. We have that anymore so it absolutely did stabilize the tax rate. Yeah and I would say that it really brought some equity to some of our schools obviously working hard to make sure that we could provide programming that was similar because some of our schools didn't have a nurse all the time. Some of our schools the kids did not have music like our larger schools had. So there was a real commitment to looking at equity of opportunity for kids once they were one part of one school

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: district. Thanks.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yeah.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Absolutely. Thank you. Really helpful. Okay. Thank you.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Well, good luck. Yeah. Thanks.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So shifting gears. We're now skipping it. We're shifting to the. And we're starting with we have. So just to refresh everybody, we have the bill in front of us which would eliminate protesting the and then we've taken successfully, etcetera. We wanted to hear from some principals. If you're a principal, try it.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: I'm the superintendent.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Superintendent. Then a couple of principals. Yeah, superintendent, then a couple of principals just about the experience and just your take on what direction we should be going here. So the floor is yours and we're very interested in what you have to say. Thank you. We normally all introduced ourselves for checking.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Oh, yeah, we

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: do. We have Senator Ram Hinsdale watching, and she can participate when we've and has a luncheon And then?

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Not very good. She ain't from London Town.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Good afternoon, David Weeks, representing Rutland County. Seth Bongartz, Super Bennington District. Terry Williams, also representing Rutland County. Steve Heffernan, absolute county District. Okay. So, for the record, you are? For the record,

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: I am Katie Sutton and I am the superintendent at the Hartford School District. We serve students in three elementaries, Dothanbrook, White River, Onondichi, as well as Hartford Memorial Middle School, the Hartford High School, the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center, the Wilder School, and the Regional Resource Center. So, I'm gonna try to be as brief as I can to explain something that's really complex and that has certainly led to my focus. This is my second year as superintendent. Last year, I was interim superintendent, so I had to get up to speed pretty quickly on the PCD issue in our district because the first act that I needed to be a part of in the district as interim Superintendent was to relocate a number of our programs in our Career and Technical Center, and they remain relocated to this day. So, our Culinary Arts program had to be moved off campus after it was determined that the PCD levels in that learning space was above what's called, the state calls, the immediate action level. So, we had to relocate and repurpose and outfit an off campus location for our students, which included fitting commercial kitchen equipment and even digging a line for internet service. So it took a little while for us to get that program up to speed and in an ongoing way, those students are losing about ten hours of instructional time to this day based on transportation to that location. Ten hours a year or a month? A week. A week. Yes. So significant disruption to their learning. Two other health science programs had

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, remote)]: to

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: be relocated within the Career and Technical Center?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Ten hours? Oh, let's maybe say half an hour away or something.

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: Yeah, it's based on, since it's a regional program, the travel to and from that Okay,

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm sorry.

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: Additionally, we had to relocate two of our health science programs, which remain relocated within the facility. And the ongoing issue with that is we were about to expand our building trades program to add more students. So this ongoing issue has hindered our ability to grow our programming. And for those of you who are familiar, and sorry, a bit of a plug, but with Hartford Area Career Technical Center, we have very good reputation and we have waiting lists for our programs every year. So that's a big deal. We also had to relocate some office spaces within the technical center as well as the high school. And then if I fast forward to the start of this school year, because of the way the testing falls of the quarterly testing program, we got test results that came back right at the end of the summer and a week before we were opening school, that we had to relocate 12 of Bard classrooms in our high school because, again, we had elevated levels of airborne PCBs in what's called our B Wing, which is our academic wing of the school. So about a week before students are coming on board, we are shifting and pivoting and trying to locate spaces for learning, which also means our educators have to recreate learning spaces. We have to, again, message to our community and our students and our educators and families that these spaces are safe to occupy and that the health hazard is present, but we are vacating those implicated spaces. Mainly, aside from just having to constantly message to our community and keep them updated on, they ask us a variety of questions about the health risks that none of us obviously are experts in. So, we bring in the DEC and the Department of Health to host more office for families and students and we answer the questions the best as we can. Additionally, though, this comes at great cost and it's cost that right now, the state has funded in terms of our quarterly testing, which throughout a year is over 100,000 This year, it increased by 20%.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: $100,000 for employer schools or?

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: Just for the implicated schools. So this is our high school and our current career center. So that's about $120,000 this year, increased by 20% from last year. So those costs are continuing to increase. Additionally, obviously, there's the cost of relocating our culinary arts program. There's the cost of I mean, honestly, the human resource has been exceptional. As superintendent of the school, I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on this topic and my administrators have spent on this topic. My director of facilities, my director of finance, very expensive amateur PCP experts at this point. And what's challenging about this hazard in relation to others, like asbestos or lead, is that PCPs are chemicals, and so they behave in very erratic ways. So, for example, in the instance I described earlier in having to relocate our programming in the high school last fall, that was as a result of the timing of the testing, which PCBs are known for outgassing more during high temperatures and high humidity, and frankly, even which way the wind is blowing on that particular day, which obviously led to a significant disruption to learning for our students. What we're concerned about is the ongoing costs, knowing that the funding from the state is limited. We met with the Department of Environmental Conservation just this morning and they told us that for next year, the state will continue to incur the cost of testing. But beyond that, we don't know because it's not a part of any budget that we know of. And we're on the brink of having to make some really big decisions about what the district, through our school board, chooses to do in relation to the actual remediation and abatement of the hazard. Have you done any abatement or remediation? So, we have followed the Department of Environmental Conservation's guidance on that. So, for example, and I provided this in my testimony, we've been having air purifying units running nonstop in our culinary arts spaces, our former space for that program, and those levels have not moved beyond the immediate action level throughout that time period. There have also been piloting of some encapsulation in those spaces too, which has also not borne any fruit in regard to addressing the contaminants.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So how many years has your spool been tested and retested?

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: So this is, the second year, but, we had test results just as I was coming on from the prior summer.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay. So I'm curious if the repeated tests, or do you view them as necessary now that you were two years ago, determine what the baseline was that you had a immediate action or whatever or the other action? Was the additional testing necessary? I mean, seems like expense where we could have tested another school didn't know if they do or don't have. Can you react to that?

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Sure,

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: I think the issue is that the behavior of these chemical contaminants is so erratic and they fluctuate so greatly depending upon seasonality. Get that. So, it could be, and it was, in fact, that those 12 classrooms that I was referring to earlier did not actually test above the immediate action level the last testing session, and then did. So we have to continue testing because we need to understand where the hazard is at any one moment.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And also, remediation is the

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: Correct. Kind of Yes.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Right, but, okay. Yeah, that's a whole different question. I'm just wondering, I'm worried about the retesting. You know, how much benefit there is to retesting. You know, some minor mitigation, okay, maybe that's grounds for it. But if we're testing and we test on environment which is most conducive to releasing PCBs, that would be like a good baseline to know if you do or don't have a problem. You know, if they tested in the middle of winter and, you know, it's colder and it's not windy that day, you know, etcetera, etcetera, then you could say, okay. Well, maybe those are suspect results, but I wonder why we would test then test again, then I was just kinda curious what that rationale is.

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: Think one of the issues, and this is in my understanding, and again, I do not purport to be an expert or a scientist by any means, is that because PCBs behave so differently,

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: decision

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: to do air sampling as a test instead of bulk sample material testing was, I think, different than what the EPA recommends. So, we have done bulk sample material testing as well. And so, we know that in some of the spaces that even do fluctuate in terms of the way in which we either vacate or remain in the spaces or put hourly limits as to how long we can use those spaces, we still know that maybe the source contaminant could be like caulking in a window, but it's leached into a cement block adjacent to it. That block may outgas at a lower level, but the hazard is still there and the caulking would out gas at a greater level because that's the source of contaminant. Again, I know so much about this, but I do at this point. So, I think that there is a logic to continue to test and couple that with looking at the bulk sampling material tests to determine which spaces we can occupy. But it's quite erratic.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So what's your advice for us? So, You've to bill, we have your situation.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You could talk about, I mean, across the board, what your advice to us is.

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: I mean, what I appreciate about H five forty two is it focuses funding on those of us who are like in the pipeline at this point. I can't speak to how other districts would react to this or what their plans may be. I've also noticed in my testimony that we chose, because we were kind of halfway through testing, When the testing program stopped, the state did not test one of our last facilities that was of the building age that was implicated. So we actually locally funded that test because we knew and we didn't want to be put in the position of saying, We don't know and we're not gonna find out. So we know which schools are implicated, and fortunately that last one wasn't. But we're about, and we're on the precipice of, really putting some dollars down on abatement and remediation. Those pilots with APUs were not successful. Those pilots with encapsulation were not successful. Our board feels strongly that we have to eliminate the detainants in order for these spaces to be safe. And so, you know, from our perspective, our board's perspective, we wanna make sure that the funding is there, because right now, it is tenuous. Met with

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: the The funding for the remediation.

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: Yes, exactly. So, we could continue to get funding even for the testing, but that funding would need to go on in perpetuity. It will not address the actual hazards, so eventually down the road, we're gonna want to do some renovating. We're gonna want to do some reconstruction and we have to add 12 to 13% right now, that's not counting inflation down the road, to the overall cost to abate and remediate those materials as we engage in those projects. So coming from the perspective of our community, they're incurring a greater tax bill forever.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So I think it was last session, it was a big push to stop PCB testing. And, you know, lot of schools were in favor of that, some weren't. What would your take be on? I

[Katie Sutton (Superintendent, Hartford School District)]: mean, I think it's hard for me to speak to other school about other districts who are maybe have some buildings that are in that situation and what I would do, You know? We are in this pipeline, and so we have this huge bill in front of us to figure out how we remediate this. And what we were told this morning, just this morning, from the Department of Environmental Conservation is, yes, your testing will be covered next year. We have no idea where the funding would come from for a a bathing and remediation, and we can make no guarantees about future testing. So I'm absolutely 100% speaking from my perspective based on the context that we're in in the Hartford School District. But I don't know how I would feel if I was a school or in a district where we had a number of schools that were of that age and were not tested right now.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You're in a different ball because now you know-

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Yes, exactly.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: The contamination's there, some- Right.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: It was almost like there was some that we're saying we don't, we don't want to know because we don't have to go through. But I'm not speaking for them either. Sure. The way I perceived it was, people were, some schools were a favorite in broadcasting at all. Because there's still, still a list of schools about the Sure. Testing. So

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: if you, if you, are you gonna stay in the room for a little while? Sure. Okay. Okay. Great. It's my follow-up question.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: I'm just going

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: to go next for minute. Got the Leon Church, the principal from Wilmington Elementary School and I have been to the school a few times and seen some of the remediation that's underway there. So I'm familiar with the school and but so Rebecca, you've heard the discussion. I know you've been on the screen for a while. And you know, you understand what's in the bill. So the question's kind of in front of us, but you've got the same issue of ongoing.

[Rebecca (Principal, Twin Valley Elementary School, Wilmington)]: Right.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I to hear the whole panoply of your thoughts about all of this.

[Rebecca (Principal, Twin Valley Elementary School, Wilmington)]: All right. Thank you all for inviting me this afternoon. Can you hear me all right? Okay. So yes, I am from Twin Valley Elementary School. I've been the proud principal here for about seventeen years. We have currently 170 students in grades pre K through five. Preschool provides an additional nuance, I'll let you know, for PCBs because the levels that are allowed for students under the age of kindergarten are much more complex than K through six, which is also different through six through twelfth and for adults. We have different levels depending on our age groups. We definitely recognize the importance of monitoring and making sure our students and our staff are safe. That is always the number one goal for us as school leaders. But what's really clear, as Katie has already mentioned, is that without commitment financially, the work that we are faced with is untenable. So we are currently wrapping up year two of remediation here. We have a nine phase process. We have completed three phases and currently we're planning our fourth phase. And this phase alone is estimated at about $2,000,000 As you heard earlier, we also have an annual testing amount of $150,000 for quarterly air testing. And the thing I would like to point out here is that our school is the first to enter the clutches of the EPA, which I will say is no easy task. We are definitely caught up in federal law that is outdated from allowances for schools to be doing this type of testing. And they refer to us as accidental offenders. EPA monitors materials, the state of Vermont monitors air. So not only are we on the hook for quarterly air sampling, we are also on the hook for material sampling to our federal government as well as our state government underneath this law. I don't think anyone fully understood the implications when this law was written that it would mean long standing commitment to the federal government, which requires lawyers, paperwork, and consistent monitoring until all materials in a building are removed. So currently in our school, we've been through processes such as carbon filters, we've installed exhaust fans, we've gone through chemical treatments, we've done full removal, and we also have encapsulation. The encapsulation means materials are on this property and for the lifetime of this building, the EPA will be monitoring the school site. If the error results drop to a reasonable level, which is not very high, the EPA may move us to bi annual testing or yearly, but at the current levels that we're at and through this process, it is quarterly. Those costs this year are 150,000, but as previously mentioned, they will continue to go up. Beyond the financial impact, which is significant, and remember, we are only at phase four of a nine phase process, it is ongoing and at times feels relentless. There is an incredible impact to teaching and learning. And one thing we learned during COVID was the emotional impact on students, families, and staff to not have full access to their buildings or to their learning environments. So for us, what this has meant at our school is the closing of our gym, our library, our office wing, our nurse's office, our speech offices. And throughout the years, we've had to do different things to account for those moves like bus over 100 students weekly to another gym for PE class. We have a guidance counselor's office who has been in a closet in another part of our building. We have sealed off hallways and passages and have found alternative routes to move through our building. We have been in and out of closures, but are constantly reminded of the risks that it takes to be in this building because every time we air test, we have to publicly post those results and we have to offer meetings to our public. If not in the form of written communication, we often invite the DEC and the Department of Health to help our communities and staff understand the results that we're dealing with. As previously mentioned, PCBs are quite elusive. They're not predictable. There's a lot of variance in testing. We have had million dollar projects give us error results that are higher than when we started. But over time, when we look at results over two years, we are seeing a reduction slowly, but not without significant impact. I think for me, most devastating part of the work is losing our ability to come together as a community, to not be able to host graduations, concerts, circus events, any activity that could bring our whole community to one place is missing. And to me, that's the heart of a school, and that is the greatest impact for me. I would say that in closing, as long as we're in remediation, we're able to keep our spaces open. But please know that until all PCBs are removed from this site for the life of this building because of encapsulation, we are on the hook to that annual testing to the EPA. And currently, we are also on the hook to the state of Vermont. I appreciate the commitment to maintain funding to the schools that are currently in the pipeline, but that money is quickly fading away. And you all know there's a competition amongst our supervisory unions to grab as much money as we can as quickly as we can with our projects. So we have our consultants working around the clock. We finished a project in February, and now we're getting ready for some summer work because we fear that the money will disappear, and there's no way a community like mine can sustain, let alone the annual costs, the next phases of our remediation. So my recommendation is to not move forward with testing unless there's a financial support for all schools entering the process and know that the process is at times many decades worth of a commitment. I'm happy to entertain any questions you all might have.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No questions but that was compelling testimony. So, I just want you to know that and yeah, I think we have a, you need, you continue to need financial support in order to keep doing what you're required to do. So we've gotten that. Thank you. Yeah.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, remote)]: Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, remote)]: You're welcome.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Good to see you. And you're welcome to stay home, course.

[Rebecca (Principal, Twin Valley Elementary School, Wilmington)]: I plan on

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it. Okay.

[Jackie Wilson (Retired Superintendent, Southwest VT/Benn. area)]: Thank you.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. And next we have Chris Young. So introduce yourself for the record.

[Chris Young (Principal, North Country Union High School)]: Yes my name is Chris Young. I am the proud principal of North Country Union High School. This is my seventh year at North Country in my twenty fourth as a principal in the Northeast Kingdom Of Vermont. So you're gonna hear a lot of similarities with what you just heard from Rebecca. I do have maybe some new information regarding what next steps look like at North Country as we're ways down path of what it would cost to mitigate or remove. I'm happy to share those with you, but I would if if pleases you, I'd like to tell you a little bit about our story with PCBs. It is, like I said, similar, but there's some some uniqueness to it as well. So my my in July '24, I was on vacation with my family when we got a call from the Department of Environmental Conservation that our most recent test results weren't good. And as in not good, I mean, like you can't use your building not good. And this was our fifth round of testing, each of which included some form of mitigation such as installing air filters, opening windows, closing windows, seem to go back and forth on a lot of that. None of it seemed to do much good, since we were over a year into the process, and the results seemed to be getting worse. As we heard at at the beginning, this was also our first experience with testing, for air quality when it was hot outside, and it turns out that when it is hot, the heat warms the building, which makes PCBs more active, which raises the levels. This was the first time that we raised the question with the Department of Health regarding whether we can use an average test result over time rather than a one time test result to make such a monumental decision about whether or not students can actually be in your building for education. At that time, we're told by the Department of Health that a one time exposure was enough of a risk to limit the use of our facility, and I'll come back to that later. So with the power of the law behind them, the DEC, DOH, and AOE worked with us to plan for the fall. One of the initial suggestions was that we simply go remote, which Superintendent Collins and I, and you'll hear from her tomorrow, and I rejected out of hand due to the massive detrimental impact we saw from COVID and still see today. Our rallying cry became on time and in person, and since we didn't have a Macy's to house our over 700 students, we turned to ways that we could bring mobile classrooms onto our campus and create a schedule that moves students in and out of these spaces as well as the few that were actually usable in our career center in a different section of our building. After conducting the engineering studies and working with multiple vendors, we got a multi million dollar price tag for the mobile classrooms, and that's what we learned from our state partners that this was more money than the state could afford. Then we pivoted, and this was certainly well publicized on local news channels, to massive wedding tents. We rented six wedding tents and erected them around our campus so that we could have our students on our campus and in person. To get to that point, and to the point made earlier around the resource of time, this required weekly meetings with the state agencies, weekly meetings with agency commissioners and secretaries, weekly site based team meetings with our folks, facilities, our association, our supervisory union folks, and much, much more. And we are super thankful for the attention support that we got from AOE and DEC. They didn't want to be in this situation any more than we did, and they did their absolute best to support what we feel was a poorly planned public policy. Now, to keep in mind, all of this work was conducted between July and August for a August return to school. Neither I nor any of my administrative team, including our assistants and our custodial crew did anything but focus on PCBs, which meant rethinking everything about what we thought we were going to come back to to what we're actually going to come back to. When we finally got back, the real work of preparing for tents on our campus began. This included running electrical conduit throughout our grounds, arranging Wi Fi in tents, building floors because the tents arrived without floors, putting up drywall in the tents, wiring them for electricity, meeting with fire marshals to determine what type of heating units would be there, arranging bus schedules to satellite room locations, moving furniture out of the building and eventually back into the building, building walkways so that it would be ADA compliant, creating a new bell schedule because it takes more time to walk when you're having kids go outside. All of these things were happening in real time between July and August. Miraculously, we created a safe space for students to come back to. We did have to delay the start of the year by a week to prepare, so there's a massive loss of learning time there. And it wasn't perfect. Tents were too cold in the morning or too hot in the afternoon. If it rained, was too loud to hear. Only sheetrock walls separated classrooms, so discussion was at a minimum and seat work at a premium. Security needed to be enhanced considering we had students outside for most of the day. Students new to the school never got a proper orientation, had difficulty adjusting. It was very difficult to provide as much administrative supervision over the campus as we needed, and we needed to create all new school wide expectations kind of on the fly here. Somehow we made it work. Students were happy to be in person, staff stepped up and were true heroes to really allay all the anxiety that was there. Our school board was supportive, our community was supportive, and while I wish I could say that once we got started, things were great, everyone knows that as soon as you start school in August, you start worrying about when snow's gonna fly. That's when we returned to the concept of reacting to a single set of test results. Understanding that snow was gonna start in October, I try not to be cynical, but it wasn't surprising to me that by October, we had shifted the policy to actually consider average test results over time instead of a singular test result. I can only hope that this was well thought out, not just a consequence of literally not having any other option for North Country students and staff. And to be completely honest, it still makes me a little angry to think of how much time and money was wasted when we reacted to one set of test results in July and how much better off we would have been if we'd been allowed to use the average then. Regardless, water into the bridge, we were allowed back in and began undoing all the work that went into our tent city and restarting school in October. So this might be the new information for you folks. Needless to say, it's been personally and professionally draining, excuse me, and more importantly, it's impacted my ability to do my job with my staff, creating a safe and healthy environment for kids. And while I would love to wash my hands of PCBs, no pun intended, they are with us forever, as you heard from Rebecca. And until we can demolish or rebuild the school, this is where I hope the work of the legislation lies. We recently received the draft of our corrective action plan, which is our options for either removing or remediating PCBs, we have three options. The first is to remove PCBs with hand tools, meaning getting in there with grinders and just like having at it. That is approximately going to be $21,000,000 We could remove PCBs with machinery similarly, but with more machinery, and that would be $16,000,000, or we could demolish our building, which would be approximately $12,000,000. Now if we were to go with options one or two, that is not the end of the cost. Our consultants have projected out what the 30 year monitoring cost would be, which is about $12,000,000. And so either way, we are in it for for millions of dollars more to get rid of PCBs on our campus. The rebuilding or excuse me, the demolishing sounds great, except that when we demolish, we don't have a school to move back into. So I urge you through this legislation to take the lead with the legislature and to take responsibility for this legislation. It has caused irreparable social and emotional and academic and financial damage to our students and staff, and we simply just can't get that time back. I do hope that this responsibility at a minimum is continuing to fund the mitigation remediation and monitoring costs for our school, as well as for other schools like Twin Valley. And what I asked from the committee, and this is a big one, is that you, and when you have the opportunity and probably isn't through this legislation, but it will come up around school funding infrastructure costs around the state that someone steps up and tries to make our school whole by finding ways to restart the state support for school facilities, because really that is the only way that our school is going to be made whole as a result of having to go through the PCBs. So like Rebecca, I'm happy to entertain any questions that you have and I appreciate the work that you do supporting our communities.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And so just what is your position about the bill calls for just stopping testing altogether? We're looking at an alternative to that which would be be based more on better planning for a future. So, what's your what's your advice to us on that school work? Whether we shouldn't but you know, about half the schools have been tested. Half that, you're obviously the half that has. And so what's your suggestion for us for that question? I

[Chris Young (Principal, North Country Union High School)]: would highly encourage you to cease the testing program until and unless there is serious thought to how it's gonna be funded, if and when PCBs are found and that it is not based on a reactionary stance. Heard the reference earlier to asbestos and lead. They are apples and oranges, but the thing with that asbestos and lead test is we all know what to expect. We all know how to implement those. We know how to work with those so that we don't have to close entire buildings. An abatement plan, we can work with that. The PCB legislation contained no thought along those lines as to how this was going to be rolled out so that it was not impacting student learning to the effect, to the impact that it had. So I would suggest not doing any more testing until there's a lot more thought put into the financial and implementation plan.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are you fully, are you back in the entire school at this point?

[Chris Young (Principal, North Country Union High School)]: We are, we are, we do face quarterly testing as you've heard from others. We worry that, I mean, it's going to get warm again. And we worry what happens if we get another high reading in July. The readings in the past, I think the last one we had was February. I think we had one room, is at our career center, is unusable. We can work around that. It becomes incredibly difficult to work around an entire wing that is not inevitable as a result of high test results.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Any other? Thanks thanks to all of you for coming in. It's really helpful. For us to hear. Keep in touch as we figure out how to how to go forward with this one.

[Chris Young (Principal, North Country Union High School)]: Alright. Thank you very much. Thanks.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you, Rudy. Okay, quick, more shifting appears to the last item on our agenda for the day. Which off of,

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: yeah. Oh, who's this guy?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No trouble now. So we have, if you recall, I know you all recall, we have the collective awareness about whether when to it's initially presented, we're be dealing about a different possibility, dollars 15,000,000 for a better higher classification. Trust fund funding the arena. So

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: you're here with I'm here trying to square the. So as you know, the $15,000,000 proposal was a governor of the Board of Representatives. Oh, I'm sorry. Senator Phil Barut, and I am representing Chippen Central here from my role as someone else's appropriations committee. So this is an amendment I've proposed in the appropriations of the budget. So originally, UVM had a proposal where they were requesting $20,000,000 for the state of the project. They worked with the governor's team, and they eventually moved that number to 15. And the place where they got the money from was a big windfall last year to the higher end trust fund. So it was $26,000,000. So what what they did effectively in the governor's budget is move 15 of the 26 to the stadium project and then 11 to the higher interest. And as somebody who was once a trustee on the higher the press fund or the senate, I can tell you that there are years when there's not money that's dropping in because people do estate planning, and you don't get those windfalls. But if you have somebody who's fabulously wealthy and they don't do estate planning, where it sneaks up on them, we wind up with a $26,000,000 chunk. So the house didn't put anything for the stage rail project, and they replaced the governor's 15,000,000 with a study that treasurer would do on is is there a way to fund project life? So I started trying to think about is there a way to accomplish most of what the governor wants and also please the house enough? So what you see in front of you does this. It keeps the $15,000,000 number. It moves the 15,000,000 down to 12,000,000 for the stadium project. It then takes the remaining 3, and it uses 2,320,000.00 for free immunity grants, which go out to needy students at Vermont State University system. And then it takes $600,000 of the 15,000,000 to complete shovel ready designs for, as you'll see, the McClellan Fall Housing Transformation Project on the Johnson campus. And if you haven't had any introduction to that, it's it's a very, very exciting proposal that they're gonna do on land that's already currently a parking lot. So it will be easy for them to convert it into a housing project. It would benefit not only students, but people in the Johnson area who are not students, families, etcetera. So that's where the 15,000,000 goes. But then if you turn to the second page, you'll see that this involves the cannabis revenues that we're currently getting. We get them from two places, sales tax and excise tax. The sales tax is permanently deeded to after school programs. And then of the excise tax, 30% now goes to substance misuse prevention. So, Senator Lyons pioneered that. She's very protective of that. This does not touch that at all. What it says is 20% of the remaining 70 will now feed directly into the higher ed trust fund, and that will be portioned out every year for, UVM, Vermont State University, and. And, that formula, which is currently in statute, will guide the distribution of this. So in effect, what happens is of the $26,000,000 windfall that we had this year, 15 would be pulled out for these purposes. But because of this excise tax case, in three years that would be repaid to the trust fund, and then going forward, it would be between 4 and $5,000,000 of new revenue every year for the trust fund. So it becomes, if you think about it in the ten year brain, it becomes something that would put an additional probably $25,000,000 into the trust fund once the 15 is paid back. So in other words, what I've tried to do is balance everybody's interest so that the stadium project gets built, higher interest fund actually winds up into three years with the money paid back and then getting an accrual of a lot more money. And Vermont State University gets Freedom of Immunity grants for community kids and that housing project, the Johnson campus gets built. For Johnson, for the Freedom

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: of Immunity grants, it's a one time infusion? Yes. And is that does that go into an endowment there or does it just get used? No.

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: It gets used. Okay. So, you know, it it they have a formula and we've been funding those Freedom of Community Grants since COVID.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think since and this would be written now that prevent immunity ran would otherwise be a reversal from adoption. I would

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: have to look. Yep. But it's a substantial increase. Yep. For it. And wouldn't say this on the floor, but I'll say it in committee. I believe the House Committee discussed appropriations, discussed Freedom and Unity grants as something if they were thinking about this for UVM, they might think about that for for Boston University.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Questions? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: kind of paraphrase, the compromise here is it's kind of a cannabis replenishment, replenishment from the cannabis Excess. Excess taxes back into the higher ed fund to recognize the immediate expenditure in support of the state.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. With a couple of other

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: And then to keep keep that revenue stream going. So this produces much more revenue overall for the Higher Ed Trust Fund. It also gets the stadium built and those other needs met.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: So if it's not just funding the the arena, but also the McClellan mall housing and adding on this ongoing replenishment, is there a concern that this will just turn into a fund capital projects for higher ed rather than grant programs?

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: Well, I think personally, I can only speak for myself, I acknowledge this as a one time thing. So in other words, huge windfall of money went in. We have an otherwise tight budget year. So those projects might go begging and and not get billed in in another year. But since we have that windfall and we do have the possibility of paying back with excise tax money, that's what I'm proposing. What I would just stress is that 50% of the revenue from the excise tax will still go, which is about 15,000,000, will still go to the bottom line of the general and that will continue to fund lots of other things. That revenue, the cannabis revenue by the way, been growing. We don't know how long it will continue to grow. I think we're probably near the but I will say it's outperformed expectations by at least 50%. So to the question, I don't think, if I were gonna be here, I wouldn't support further East Stab Road, but you can't find a future legislature and they might decide at some point to do something else, Exercise tax or after school.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: And will the 50% or the 20% have any impact on the after school program? No. That's that's the sales tax. So this doesn't touch that. This is

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: the excise tax. And 30% of the excise tax that currently funds substance misuse prevention programs doesn't touch that and it's under alliance never allowed any such exemption.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So what does it touch? Where is that 20% coming from?

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: Well, so it would otherwise drop to the bottom line of the general fund. Okay. So if the Appropriations Committee passes it, you put it into the budget, it's the committee's way of saying that we'll absorb that and we think this is worth the use of evidence.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And I don't know the answer to this. The Higher Ed Trust Fund, does it distribute money to scholarships based on interest only or based on There's a formula.

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: It has to be 125% over some threshold. Don't have a corpus, I think. And so it's every year there's some and some years there's a significant amount. But when I was on there, it was usually like, you know, the disbursements were like 700,000 to each beneficiary, something like that. But since there was such a big windfall this past year, it'll be significantly more than that. And then, you know, all of this is designed to support University, CCV, etcetera, making it affordable and making it in many cases, CCV, if your family makes under 85,000, you go from screening. And so, all of that would be supporting those animals.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: One more if we could. One. So, the the Johnson Vermont. Is it repurposing the dorm or is

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it rebuilding or what? It's not a dorm. So right right now, there's

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: a parking lot and it's an impervious surface. Oh, wow. It's so instead of having to get permits for to put in an impervious surface, it's going the other way. It's taking out the the parking lot and situating a building and landscaping on on that. So they are at the stage now where they've got concept drawings and they've got an architect. What they want are shovel ready plans, which originally they thought would cost 1,000,000. Now they've narrowed it to 600,000.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Just as a follow-up, several of our state university campuses are going for kind of challenging their level of use. Mhmm. And I'm just wondering if instead of building new buildings, if they had looked at repurposing some of these buildings, which they're already are already constructed Yeah. Need a renovation to make them They have.

[Senator Phil Baruth (Chittenden Central, Appropriations)]: The utility of a new Yeah. And and I've been talking to the chancellor about this for some years. They have been doing all kinds of reporting and analysis on their current footprint. So I know that I think on the Linden campus, there's a dorm they wanna demolish and take down because it needs too much deferred maintenance. But this is a new project, and what they're looking to do is scale this up. So if it works here, they're planning more of these projects on their other campuses. The key to it is that it's not a door. These are apartments that people from town could rent, especially families because they're meant for families and graduates. And the idea would be that at the Johnson campus, they're moving some of the services up away from the flooding zone. And so the town offices are going up and other services, goods and services are coming up. So this is an attempt to fit in with that, create a new kind of residential space there that also has some destination things there. You know, municipal offices, the town hall, that kind of stuff. So, it envisions getting rid of the artificial line between campus and the town and they would sort of be merging as a way to deal with Yeah. So, I'll just say one more thing, mister chair, that is I I have I put this on the table and Senate appropriations. I did in a meeting with the governor run this by him. He didn't I won't say he supported it. He didn't seem to have any problems with it. So, my hope is to present it as a compromise proposal that the House of the Governor and the Senate can all agree. And that's my view.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Any other questions? That's great. Thank you. Okay. And I will leave the copies, and thank you very much. Okay. Bye bye. That's a lot of chicken and Good talking Good talking about this.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Still thinking. We don't need to

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: make a decision for my grandpa. But Yeah. Think we ought to sleep on it, but I'm total surprised. I didn't, out of the chancellor's briefing, I didn't pull out the fact that this is a new construction versus, you know, I'm a little hesitant about new construction on the campuses, which we're not quite sure where they're going. But that's that's my first reaction is, wow, we're gonna build new stuff. I'm not sure if it's really owned by the university or owned by the town. Yeah. That's my first reaction as well. Didn't know we were doing that.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: I'll just say briefly, mean, the more I think about it, you know, the more of an opportunity I see to expand who we're inviting to Vermont to get an education, younger folks who were trying to attract to the state to keep, you know, to stay in the state, to set up rooms, and so on. And I think that if we were to use this substantial windfall to even more so expand freedom and unity grants. As much as we can, we'll see more people coming to The States and likely the percentage of them staying in The States. Then I also worry about the precedent that gets established for using it for capital projects moving forward. So it's and again, like I said last time, I don't think that having a marina is a bad idea in Burlington, and I also don't think that focusing, or lending some assistance to housing for a campus, and I don't think that's a bad idea either, but, you know, be blunt, I would say we should read the room and younger folks who are looking at a melting affordability crisis when they see broader opportunities in access to grants to go to school and remodel because of this fortunate wind problem, I think that is a much better approach to take rather than building an arena in Burlington using a fund that is meant to support low income students to get an education.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I'm not quite sure if you're agreeing with the use of the excise, cannabis excise tax to actually do this funding, or if you're simply saying that any effect on the higher Ed Fund trust is a no go.

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: No, think, I mean, I'm definitely not opposed to having to excise tax going in there for the future sustenance of grants, but I don't think that it should be used for capital projects. I hope both of the organizations are able to find funding. I hope those projects get finished, but the fund itself, I don't think we should establish the precedent of using it for captive projects.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I I bought the the order of compromise but that was very insightful on how he was trying to solve the problem that we're all trying to wrestle with and how we do fund that stating. So, I I actually like the idea I I do and I I do agree with, you know, one in encouraging visitors, which is I think why this stadium is one of the reasons why it's proposed is to to track and create an environment that's beneficial to Vermont. But I again, the Freedom and Unity Scholarships, I agree. That's a great concept. Again, introduce folks to Vermont and and it's a higher education system. Although I still do have a problem with the Freedom and Unity scholarship, which is just kind of, you know, the to me, it's sort of a free fall as opposed to being a targeted program for Vermont's labor needs. That that's my only rub on the whole whole planet.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, remote)]: That open. Can I

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah? Go ahead.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, remote)]: Yeah. I mean, I'm almost home, and I didn't wanna try finding the raise hand button in the rain. So so I hope people are okay that I interjected. You know, I'm not I I do bleed green and gold, but I'm not just trying to defend a quote unquote arena for UVM or for Burlington. I do just want to make sure we're, you know, there are probably those who would wish to correct the record on sort of what's all at play here. So number one, you UVM, right? We could go into the long history of how the state has not funded its state university at the level it would need to to pay fully for Vermont students to attend. But it's always been the practice that the overall amount we give to UVM annually, half goes to directly to supporting students, Vermont students to attend. So that turned into a commitment that under, I think, dollars 100,000 of income, you are covered tuition. And then a quarter goes to generally ag and land related because we're a land grant college opportunities, and a quarter goes to medical because that's a huge benefit for the state that we have students graduating from a premier medical institution and staying here. UVM covers what is contemplated in green and gold in its base appropriation every year. So that's one thing. Two, I was on the task force with Tom Cheney the last time we really worked to envision the facilities. And frankly, nothing has changed since then on campus. And this might be neither here nor there for folks, but it is not just an arena. We don't have NCAA level facilities, locker rooms, swimming, etcetera, on and on. But also, we have a tiny fitness center and health and well-being facility that is vastly oversubscribed. Plus we had a falling down outdoor recreation outing clubhouse, as people may have known it informally, that was no longer suitable for people to enter. So it is not necessarily just an arena, but a full recreation, fitness, wellness facility, probably including for the community in addition to this arena that will serve hopefully to bring a lot of economic value into the state. Just have to do my UVM Go Cats piece of that so that we're making sure we're talking about the same thing. I don't expect to change any minds, but I did want to correct the record.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we're talk more tomorrow, but my take on this when I heard it this morning, actually last night, was as somebody who has really come to love for the notion of the fund, the Higher Education Trust Fund, it's a good deal. It's kind of like a loan. I view it as a loan that gets paid back in three years, but then we get an additional $5,000,000 a year for it going forward. I think we're gonna be setting up the fund. And I think that for me, I don't think it sets a precedent insofar as it's a, well, I view it as a loan and the loans get paid back quickly with real benefits. So I don't know, I come down the other side of even somebody from the same perspective of thinking that trust fund is really important. So it should be opposite to fruition for, in some ways, same underlying. So I

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: guess my response to that though is, you're having, you know, two different capital projects based on this amendment, two different campuses, and presumably we're not going to see $26,000,000 windfalls on a regular basis. But, you know, and so let's say we incorporate the excise tax into paying it back, but you're also going to likely see other organizations coming in and saying, we get a couple million for this project or that project, and so what will the trade off be between what is now a fund for capital projects and low income students? You know, how much money will be What will it take away from the low income students years down the road, is what I'm saying, if there are multiple other capital project requests coming into the higher ed fund. That's my other concern.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Guess the only response to that is they'd have to come up with a mechanism for paying it back. In this case, we have a mechanism for paying it back. That's from the

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Kansas law, not the school.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. Exactly. But yeah. So I don't know. I I kinda look at it as we're getting both things we wanted. But, you know, can't argue the can argue you know, they can only partially forgive. Our our our our our our our points. So because that's a word we wanna come down on. So The other thing we have to deal with is the what we're gonna do about the celiac disease room here. The request for the core foundation to move from the '20 the 33, thirty, thirty three, three, I'm cleaning up the third. And to 25, 25, 25, 25. I will say, Rebecca, I apologize for not talking to you about this ahead of time.

[Senator Terry Williams (Clerk)]: There's a third option. It's a 25, 25, 50.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. Allow them to determine where from the 51. Yes. No. That that's right. There is. I am I have and I'll just say this for my part only. We've kind of reached the conclusion that we should leave a little this year. It's it's more complicated than we have realized, but it would require a lot of testimony to figure out and make sure we're doing the right thing when we're from a real base of knowledge. That's just me. I would my suggestion is that we don't don't take any action on this issue.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, remote)]: Can I just say because I'm about to walk into my house and see my kids and we'll probably lose you? Is this the last conversation for today?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yes. Go ahead. Okay. If we're gonna do anything with the Appropriations Committee we gotta let them know what we're doing pretty soon here because they're hoping to be Right. I

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member, remote)]: don't think it's enough money to have a long drawn out discussion on changing everything, you know, this this late in the session. I think it's like if we were if we were talking about more money, I think there would it would be a more consequential conversation, but it's a lot of upheaval to a delicately tuned system that probably the juice isn't worth a squeeze. So that's my 2¢, and I hope you all have a nice Tuesday.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Do I hear a lot of attention for Barron's?

[Senator Nader Hashim (Member)]: Ideally. Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's been a long day. We'll maybe try to pick this up for first thing tomorrow. We'll clean. So we have both things to decide. Right? We've got the got the request from Senator Ruth and we have this one. If we're gonna have any impact, we're have it now. So, first thing tomorrow. Okay.