Vermont Legislature Senate Finance - 2026-02-03

Meetings

S.314 — Surcharge on posted Current Use (UVA) land (00:00:25)
Sponsor Sen. Terry Williams outlined a $1/acre surcharge on UVA-enrolled land posted against hunting, fishing, or trapping to support the Fish and Wildlife Fund, with Legislative Counsel reviewing legal and administrative issues and members discussing data gaps and potential exceptions.
Overview: Vermont Learning Collaborative (Regional BOCES) — Cost savings and services (00:33:12)
Executive Director Jill Graham and Superintendent Sherry Souza described the newly approved BOCES model, early cost savings in evaluations and professional development, lean staffing and funding structure, and answered questions about scaling, quality, and impacts on district budgets.
S.218 — Road Salt Reduction: Voluntary BMP Certification and Fee Report (01:03:58)
Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee) presented the voluntary applicator certification program and fee study modeled on New Hampshire, AOT and ANR testified on implementation costs, curriculum development, and contingency language, and the chair signaled intent to advance the bill soon.

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[Speaker 0]: Okay. We are live. We are live. This is Senate Finance. This is February 3, and we're gonna continue our walk through of bills and committee. I'm actually hoping we might hold a couple out this week. Because all of them keeps getting uncomfortable clothes. So this is S-three 14 and what we're doing is just asking the sponsor, just give us few sentences why you put the bill in and then counsel is gonna walk us through it.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: For the record, I'm Senator Terry Williams from Gulick District. And the background behind this bill is that I don't put bills in, I'm a constituent company, and they were a little upset because a neighbor came in, bought land next to them about 250 acres and carved out two acres for a homestead, built a house, and put a landing strip on it. And then they posted the rest of the land. So I said, well, you can't really prohibit people from you know, they bought the land and said land. So what would you what would you really like behind drugs involved with I think that they should at least, you know, very and they're right. Oh, by the way, they're in current view.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: So when they're in current view, she believes that I I think there's evidence that she's right there. Everybody that's not in her means pays a portion of that benefit that they that they get. So just to summarize what s three fourteen does, It places a small surcharge on land enrolled in Vermont's use value and price of current use program if the land is posted against hunting, fishing, or traffic. That would be under title 10. The surcharge of $1 per acre per year applies only to posted land that is receiving the tax benefit of current use of the congregation. That $1 just pulled it out. It could be if you have land that's in current uses less than 100 acres, could be a small fee imposed. They felt that maybe $1 surcharge. And what that will do, that money will go into a fund, Fish and Wildlife Fund. Land enrolled in the use value appraisal program receives a significant property tax reduction in exchange for providing public benefits such as working lands, conservation, wildlife habitat, and all bird recreation. So s three fourteen is based on the premise that landlords who restrict public access for hunting, fishing, or trapping should contribute modestly towards the public wildlife resources that they benefit from. And the revenue should support the Fish and Wildlife Department, which manages wildlife populations, access issues, hosting enforcement, and landowner sportsman conflicts under. Key provisions of $1 per acre surcharge of UVA rolled land that's posted against hunting, fishing, trapping. Money goes directly to the Fish and Wildlife Fund, not the general one. Applies only to posted land. Unposted land in UVA is unaffected. Landowners must verify posting status when we're only land. We we got a lot of back and forth on posting issues right now. So notify the state within thirty days if land becomes posted after enrollment. Failure to pay the surcharge means the land is no longer held until UVA treatment. What the bill does not do, it does not force landowners to open their land. It does not prohibit posting. It does not create a penalty or fine. It does not change trespass laws or landlord liability. And does not apply to land on its side, use value for pretty poor. Landowners retain property rights, including the right to post. The bill simply adjust the tax benefit if they do. That's what the bill does. And those are

[Speaker 0]: Okay. You gave us the reason. Excuse me? You said you gave us the reason that

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Right. Well and, know, the Department basically is funded by licensing. Right. I went and I talked to the chief warden and commissioner at the time. The bill was created when they said that based on a number of acres of land that's in current use and that is posted against Hawaiian fishing, that would probably bring in a significant amount of money that they could use to, know, their armored hand like everybody else is and staff that probably could put on an additional two gang wardens and equip them with vehicles and and allow them to better respond to trespass or hunting violations.

[Speaker 0]: What I'm wondering is who finally represents the landowners. Okay. Fish and Wildlife, Natural Resources in, probably the Sportsman's Association.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Husband and the cookers having her to go would be glad if she's.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. You can then they can do. Yep. We just I'm trying to figure out how I will find an owner of like that. So if anyone knows anyone, see if they'd be willing to talk to us or make sure they get a voice in the discussion. Can I ask a question? Yeah.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: So, just want to make

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: sure I understand this correctly. So, if somebody has land at 300 acres, let's just say, and they have it in the Hughes Valley value appraisal program which has requirements for what they can and can't do with their land if they're in it. And then they get the task benefit of being in the UVA program. If they also want to post that land, post all 300 acres, then they would have to pay a $1 per so they would have to pay a $300 fee.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Actually, what they would do is they get a significant amount of money for being in the use value program. But rather than paying, they would just get $1 per week or less than what they get.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, it would be reduced from their. So I

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: am and I used to be in current use of buying more. So I used to benefit my property of 300 acres. And it was about significant almost $3,000 savings in property that that would have been $3,000 less 300.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So you on your tax bill, it shows that your bill is reduced by $3,000 because of UVA?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: So that was a problem because I I bounced this off JFO when trying to get a fiscal note on it. First of all, property valuations are the ones that know what property is in current use.

[Speaker 0]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: They recommended that we get the town tax or

[Speaker 0]: the Yeah. The I'm I'm saying the town clerks are gonna get involved in this somehow. Yep. That

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: That's not they were not the ones I talked to didn't want to do.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It might be more straightforward to just have them pay a fee if you want. It's just and then you don't have to deal with all the Right. I mean, I'm not saying No. That I I wanna learn more before I figure out this, but the whole, like, back end mishigosh might come too confusing.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Well, that was the other the other point that the town that the AFL said. The tax department actually said, well, then we'll have the town courts collect the money and send it in each state.

[Speaker 0]: They don't collect money unless we pay them to do it. Right.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: They only collect well, we get $5 per fee for postage. Yeah. They do. So

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So we may have to give up a ruler this morning when we decide to go forward. Okay. Thank you. We'll have

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Thank you very much.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. The symptoms get to be very common. There we go.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: My name is Randy Chittenden, and I'm with the Office of Legislative Council, which started in November. This is my first time for the committee. Miss Pleasure Meets Wow. Most of you, some of you, Heather.

[Speaker 0]: So why don't we introduce ourselves? We can start with Senator Mattos.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I am currently working on a bill with Bradley, so Chris Mattos, nice to see you again, Bradley.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Hi, I saw you down the hall at Natural Resources, Senator Ruth Hardy.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I'm Senator Martine Larocque Gulick. I represent Chittenden Central and I live in Burlington. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

[Speaker 0]: I am in Cummings, Washington right here, And you drafted a bill for me, but we have not met. That's correct. And it was a posting bill. Yes. Yay. Me too. Hi,

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Ruben Matt. Nice to meet you. Tom Chittenden, our representative of the Southeast area of Chittenden County. Nice to meet you.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: And I'm Randy Brock. I represent Franklin County and Norwood Grand Isle County. Nice to meet you.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So what I will do is I will go through the contents of this bill and then raise some potential concerns that the bill raises that senator Williams did allude to in his overview, especially when it comes to calculating the funds. I did wanna give just a little bit of background on what we mean when we say posted, and in case the community is not familiar. So in Vermont, there is a state constitutional right to hunt, and in the in that same constitutional section, there is also the corresponding right to enclose your land from that. Right? And so individuals have the right to hunt on private property, but private landowners have a corresponding right to enclose their land from hunting to prevent that from happening if they don't want that to happen. And how hunters are excuse me. How property owners are supposed to do that is laid out in statute at 10 BSA fifty two zero one. And essentially it is posting some posters at certain intervals around the boundary of the property that are very clear and well maintained in accordance with Department of Fish and Wildlife Standards. And that's what we mean when we post the land against hunting and fishing. This is not no trespass, which is a criminal violation, and it's also a different statute. This is a more narrow subset of prohibiting specific activity on a person's property, and because of the constitutional right at issue, both it's a hunt and to impose the land, very specific requirements in which you do have. So that's the background on what we're talking about when we're talking about posting a. As senator as senator Williams said, this bill would require the current use advisory board when recommending values for eligible land for the tax year. Board should recommend that land posting against hunting, fishing, or trapping be subject to an annual surcharge of $1 per acre, and that bill would require the revenue from that surcharge to be deposited into the Fish and Wildlife Fund, ordinarily those might be deposited into, most commonly, the Education Fund, and so we divert those funds directly to the Fish and Wildlife Fund. The statute that we're discussing specifically is 32 VSA 3,754. This section establishes the duties of the board, and we're adding a section at the end here when recommending values for eligible land for the current tax year. Board should recommend that land posting against hunting, fishing, or trapping under 10 BSA fifty two zero one shall be subject to an annual surcharge of $1 per acre. Surcharge shall be deposited in the Fisher Wildlife Fund established pursuant to 10 BSA 40 fourseven. So the Fisher Wildlife have a special fund that they use to collect licenses, and that's the fund that they use. Some changes to the grammar here. And later on in the same chapter, we add a section about eligibility for enrollment in the land use appraisal program. And so this adds an eligibility requirement to the enrollment. So enrolled land that is posted against hunting, fishing, and trapping pursuant to 10BSA 5,201 should now be subject to an annual surcharge of $1 per acre. To maintain eligibility for the use value appraisal in the subchapter, landowner that posts their property shall certify in writing to the commissioner that the land is posted when applying for the program, so application. Sometimes a person might be enrolled in the use value appraisal program and change their mind and post later. If they do that, they have thirty days to notify and have that tax adjusted accordingly. And then this act shall take place on effective 01/01/2027, at the start of a new tax year. So that is the language of this bill. I could go into some potential concerns that would be worth while discussing if you type in our questions. Okay. And so under the Vermont constitution, there is the proportional contribution clause, which essentially the Supreme Court has interpreted as that taxes must be fairly and equitably applied to individuals, and for a person to challenge a tax or a fee, they need to establish that the fee arbitrarily stimulates similarly me, artists arbitrarily treats similarly situated taxpayers differently. And so the purpose of this bill, and if this bill were to continue, we would recommend amending it to add a purpose section, is to first address the intent and the purpose of the fee, and to make it clear that this fee even though the text of the statute makes it clear what the fee is going to, this fee is to offset enforcement costs or game wardens on open land. That said, there could be a potential challenge or or potential, maybe, testimony taken of individuals saying, well, what's the difference between enforcing posted land on current use enrolled property and on land that is not enrolled in current use? Is there a difference in cost? And and is the fee arbitrary in that way? That's a potential challenge. This bill is designed to be narrowly tailored to helping Fish and Wildlife enforce hosting requirements. That is a potential issue with with this bill. And the other potential issue is that, you know, as Senator Williams discussed, any time that we change how current use is calculated, how the funds are used, that can create some potential issues. And I know JFO would almost certainly like to testify in this bill about how to design, or how the inner work, or how the background workings of this bill would work, and it's a language that needs to change. I did meet with JFO to discuss this language in particular, and how when we discussed it, how we discussed it was as a surcharge. So it would be an add on to a person's tax bill. So it's essentially a different line item that funnels off into Fish and Wildlife. As senator Williams indicated earlier, it sounds like perhaps the folks at JFO think a different avenue is more efficient at this time. And and if a different avenue is more efficient at this time, I think the language of the the language of the bill would need to be adjusted to reflect what they think is best in terms of diverting the funds. So the main issue we want to avoid is having these funds get deposited into the education fund, because getting them out of the education fund and for this use would be difficult if not

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, but so I keep them there.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And there are legal challenges to using any fund in the education fund for purposes that aren't educational.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Yes, it is. Exactly.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so this bill is designed to try to avoid that, and it is worthwhile to discuss with JFO if they have subsequently had different ideas since we discussed the bill.

[Speaker 0]: And another Yeah. You've got some smaller, maybe not particularly wealthy people that have small parcels in not 300 or 3,000 in current use. And, yeah, those $30 for 30 acres isn't that bad. But I assume that nobody knows how many, if any, or I guess your neighbor, how many acres in current use are posted?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We don't have specific data on that.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And part of the issue is is that

[Speaker 0]: The town courts get the posting and Yeah. And according to my bill, you but you I guess, anyway, you have to renew that posting annually every two years annually. So what's in this year, if I just forget to go down and renew it with my town clerk, and right now it is from the day you a year from the day you post it. So if I have a jet on September that I need to go down, then that land isn't posted on the twenty fifth,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: which I think right now it's from January 1 for everybody.

[Speaker 0]: That's that's what my bill says.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If if if I may on on that piece. So there there actually is a lot of debate on this issue and what the rule is. And so what I will say is that the statute says posting annually. The practice has been as senator Cummings has described. You post on September 15. You get it until the following year, September 14, PM. Right? And, however, there has been informal direction, not formal room making, but informal direction from Fish and Wildlife saying that we consider it a calendar Mhmm. And the clerks have been confused as to what the what they should do. And so so no formal instruction either way at this time.

[Speaker 0]: So we get it. Maybe we need to attach that bill to this bill for clarity January 1 to January 1 just because otherwise you nobody really knows when land is posted, and there's no trespassing signs up behind my house that have been there since I moved in fifty years ago. As

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: long as they're updated.

[Speaker 0]: I assume they're not valid.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If I may? Yeah. For no trespass.

[Speaker 0]: That's a trespassing this is no hunting industry.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Yes. So they are they're related but distinct. And I I just wanna make sure because I know that there's a lot of these bills that are in this realm, and I just wanna make sure that no trespassing is is a criminal offense. It doesn't necessarily exclude people from hunting and fishing under Right. And that that is controversial side.

[Speaker 0]: So why would you if I didn't want people crimson through my backyard and right now, I don't want them shooting up there, so you'd like to put up a no hunting, fishing. And I didn't wanna pay the surcharge. I just posted on trespassing. You so

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I can. Right.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So posting is no trespassing. If you want someone to not fish, hunt, or trap on your land, may not be legally effective to exclude someone from your lands for purposes.

[Speaker 0]: The constitutional right.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is exactly right. And and that's why it's tricky. And I think that it's right for litigation because I think both sides have a colorable argument to say that no trespassing means hunting, fishing, and trapping.

[Speaker 0]: Means no one comes on.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And and that certainly might be the intent of the landowner, but in terms of legally affecting that, it is you know, perhaps there's a 51% chance that that it's not legally effective. No trespassing is not legally effective.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: If I

[Speaker 0]: have a stock pond on my land, I post no trespassing. Somebody could come on and fish for my trout?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Potentially. And and and it would become an issue because of no trespassing. It's a criminal Mhmm. A criminal statute. Yeah. And I don't have a statute in front of me right here, unfortunately. But so what a landowner might do in that situation is is contact the police saying there's someone's trespassing, and the police might remove try to remove that person because they're trespassing, and that person might say, I have the constitutional right to be here. I don't see lands posting. And then that becomes a a question mark over what the police would do and what are the landowners remedies if the police don't enforce the rules in the in the way the landowners like. And and it would be a tricky situation. I don't think that there's a clear answer.

[Speaker 0]: Might be better just to give him a fish. One

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: note, and then I have a question. There are multiple bills in our committee down the hall about Yeah. Postings. Yours and Center Mattos has one. There's enough. There are multiple. So something will probably happen. It's not your sheer that has brought up. It's because the Fish and Wildlife Department changed their stance on it. Yeah. With a different interpretation.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: It's the calendar year. January 1 is

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the Yeah.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: That used to be any time during the year. So so there are a lot of bills. So I'm assuming this will probably come to us because all most of those bills come with a fee, and so there'll be some kind of fee question. So, that maybe hold Maybe

[Speaker 0]: you should ask for this bill. I

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: don't know. I'm not the chair, so you can talk to But your seatmate about my question for you is about UVA, the use value, and maybe I don't know if you, if this is your area of drafting normally, but that program has some requirements to be able to, oh, things you need to do or not do with your land in order to be in it. Okay. Like you have. And then there's a new section that we just created a couple years ago for for, like, conservation purposes, I believe. There was some new change to it. So my my question is, is telling people that they happen to pay extra to post their land, is it possible that some of their requirements to be in VA may it may be necessary to post the land. I'm just thinking, like, if you're planting certain crops Mhmm. And you wanna post the land because you you have a late fall harvest and you don't want hunters trap traipsing through your land when you're trying to harvest your brussels sprouts or something. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out some scenario that maybe posting is a required a required thing you have to do in order to have your land be in current use. And so it would seem to me that it's potentially a conflict of the two requirements, but I don't know enough about current use requirements.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I think that that is a good issue to consider. It's definitely a good issue to consider testimony on in terms of the the requirements. What I will say is this bill in particular does not contemplate creating an exception for certain leases. So whether there's a conservation use, excuse me,

[Speaker 0]: you

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: know,

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: an agricultural use where you don't want someone coming through your property and things of that sort. So the if that is an exception that the committee would like to explore, think that that would require different language to create an exception for specific uses in the current use program to exempt them from the surcharge.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. Because and then it would also be they would pay I mean, right now, the fee for posting is, like, $5 a year. That's correct. So it's pretty minuscule, but they would have to pay that $5 plus potentially the 300 or whatever, however much acreage they had. So they would have

[Speaker 0]: paid two Plus going out and putting up all the shine.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. But everybody has to do that whether they're in use value or not. Yeah.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And if I may, the just a clarification on the fees, the $5 fee does go to the clerk's for purposes of processing. So that is a separate pot of money from the pot of money that it is contemplated here, just for clarity for the the committee. So There's a lot of moving pieces on a short three page bill. So but as as as we know, you know, sometimes small changes can have big effects both in terms of meaningfulness for constituents and in terms of different areas of law and, of course, our clients' preference. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. And we should there are many things you can't do in current use. And in some ways and we have no idea how much of that land is posted.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Okay. Sergeant Warren Williams from Rowland County, New York. I actually did talk to the tax people in my town who said, you know, can you tell me how many parcels in Holtley are in current use? He said, no, we can't. He said that comes from the tax department. They are the keeper of the information on how many people are actually in and they send us the the adjustment for the bill.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So your town clerk who may if she thinks the $5 covers the cost, go back through and be able to tell us which parcels of land are posted. Maybe not yeah. Exactly the dates at this point, but they can tell us that, but they can't so none of this the information does not reside reside in one place. It would take which makes it harder to do a cost benefit analysis. I mean, if 5% of the land is posted, isn't it worth going through setting up this system? If 75% of the land is posted, it might well be, but that's what we don't know.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And and if I may, on that point, I this was a topic of conversation with our colleagues at JFO, and and it it would be a town by town perhaps a town by town analysis of which land is posted and then cross referencing that current use, but they might have more information to share on that case and having done research.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Our next witnesses are showing up.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Does a person when a person's in current news, they don't have to they don't have to post the whole parcel. Do they can some people post some and not others? Or

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You mean posting against hunting, fishing, and trapping? Yes. Yes. So you don't necessarily have to post your entire property because around the the yeah. It's the the boundary of of what you want to enclose. And then how you actually do that, it's like every 400 feet you post a sign.

[Speaker 0]: Don't I own the farm behind me. I might put it in current use. The land directly behind my house, we haven't posted it in years, but we did, and many of the neighbors did because it is a steep slope and the you can't see that there are residential houses. In the city, can't use a rifle, but the farm is in Berlin. And so it's not rare to hear rifle shots going off while you've got children on the swing set in the backyard, I would see that if that land were current use, I would want to be able to post at least the acre to, I guess, bullets go a long way, but there have been bullets going through the yards just because of the topography, and you're wandering in up through those woods if you don't know that there are residential homes. So, it could get pretty touching. So, we do have people in the waiting room, and we are five minutes over. So we will take this up. Thank you.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Thank you, ma'am.

[Bethany Sargent (Agency of Natural Resources, Watershed Management Division)]: Thank you, Bradley.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you,

[Speaker 0]: We are going on That's Yep. Is not interesting. We're going on to. Wow. Yeah. We have with us Jill Graham and Sherry Sousa, and welcome. I have Jill on our agenda first. So Jill, just introduce yourself for the record and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and then assume we're trying to find out, I think, we're the money committee, BOCES have been recommended to us as a way to save a significant amount of money and get the cost of education down in this state. So we're kind of interested in how much money you save and how you save it and what impact that has on your school budgets. So the floor is yours.

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: You. Good afternoon. My name is Jill Graham. I have the pleasure of being the executive director for the Robot Learning Collaborative, which has been recently approved as the first board of Cooperative Educational Service Agency in the state. And my goal today is to share with you some early data that we have on our cost savings and then some nationwide data as well. I'm glad to be joined by Sherry Souza.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: And I'm Sherry Souza. I am one of the eight superintendents who have signed on to the Vermont Learning Collaboratives. This is my sixth year as a superintendent and my forty plus year in education. Jill is very subtle in her description. She brings vast experience from Massachusetts in terms of establishing Essence and has deep knowledge in terms of the working of this opportunity that could make a difference, I believe, in Vermont.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, and I'm going to assume that you two are working together, so the floor is yours.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: Thank you. So the Vermont Learning Collaborative, just to give you a kind of background of how we got here. I moved to Vermont thirty years ago. When I first came here, I had the opportunity to work with the Hartford Collaborative. So this modeling of how superintendents work together to meet the needs of students is not new to Vermont. In fact, collaboratives were all over the state and we were able to realize some significant benefits of working with the Hartford Collaborative as they set up programs within my district as I was first a special educator and then special ed director. So when I became a superintendent, I worked with the other superintendents from the Southeast Region who began to have conversations on how do we work better together to collaborate. So that work began more than seven years ago. In 2021, we came together and decided to work with K Solutions, new solutions K-twelve, to identify a feasibility study looking at needs assessments and looking for recommendations on how we might structure that organization here in Vermont. In 2023, we were we hired our first executive director director, and we relaunched our program to look more deeply into the regional educational services supports this organization could provide. In May 2025, we finalized our articles of agreement with great work with Jill and AOE staff. We received our second reading and was completed by the VTLC board. In July 2025, we moved those articles of agreement forward for ratification language to each of our eight current members. By 12/03/2025, we finalized that ratification agreement by those all eight of us, school boards and their superintendents, to submission to the agency of education for to become the Southeast Regional BOCES document. And then in July 7, July, I wish, January 7 this year, we received our approval memo from the Secretary of Education.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: So the timeline just helps to ground you to understand this has been really a long time coming, and that Okay, you've been

[Speaker 0]: doing something for quite some so it's taking you four years just to get organized and up and running.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: Right, and it was because of the legislation that was passed by house started in the House of Education and passed in the Senate that allowed us to move from this collaborative into a regional BOCES. So that really helped us move our work even further.

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: Okay. So previously we were established as a private nonprofit agency, but now as an approved educational service agency, which is the umbrella term that I like to use, regardless of whether we're called a BOCES or a CISA, now we are able to participate more fully with our regional stakeholders. For example, as a recognized state entity, we now have greater ability to pursue some broader and more expansive programming for our members across all domains that include instruction, operations, special education, professional development, as well as educator preparation programming. We're currently investigating cooperative purchasing opportunities for our region that include curriculum resources and high quality on demand para professional training that will provide significant savings for our members. One of the largest implications now as an educational service agency is that we are eligible to apply for state and federal grants as a regional entity on behalf of our members and also as a grant administrator on behalf of our members. This has some really nice implications to be able to provide some support regionally where one supervisory union or district may not be eligible for one particular grant, but as a whole together, we may. Finally, our hiring capacity is expanded as eligible staff would now be able to access the teacher retirement benefits through the state, which gives us greater flexibility to hire directly when that's appropriate and useful for our membership. In the interest of time, I am going to just move past these two slides, which talk about our mission and talk about our programming so that we can get into some of our early data. But I do want to just pause here for a moment and underscore that educational service agencies provide the opportunity for voice from their stakeholders through regular needs assessments and ongoing conversations with their stakeholders group. So these annual assessments, these regular conversations really drive the services and supports that we can develop or that should be considered in the future. And educational service agencies provide choice. So from the portfolio of services that an agency develops, any district or supervisory union can determine and select which services are most valuable and useful for them to purchase. And that will look different from supervisory union to supervisory union or district to district.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: I just want to underscore Jill's point here that self determination is critical. Your superintendents are the ones that are closest to the needs of each school and communities and are able to really identify individually and then as a group, how do we focus the work that's happening? So it's very responsive from professional development to hiring needs to how do we move the work forward in terms of equity as student experiences. So we as superintendents have that opportunity to clarify our needs and then choose how we move forward. It's very important.

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: And so here is an overview of some of the data that we have collected. Again, we formally relaunched in 2023, and our initial services began early in 2024. So last spring in 2025, we conducted our first cost analysis of our services versus those of non BOCES providers that are used by our members. Across each of these service domains, our early data has demonstrated the capacity for cost savings. I'll give you the example of staffing. So supervisory unions and districts are able to access a full time position or a per diem position or a part time position, which can save them staffing costs. If they don't need that full time FTE, they can purchase the amount of service that is necessary to fulfill their needs. Across evaluations and services, we have saved our member supervisory unions and districts anywhere from 20% to over 50% on evaluation services. We can provide those in a very timely and efficient way to ensure compliance with special education timelines. Over the last year, we have provided district consultation that's been focused on strengthening supervisory union programs for high risk students, thus helping to build capacity to reduce out of district placements and really strengthening the internal capacity to support those students. So use of us compared to a non VTLC provider has saved up to 62% for supervisory unions and districts who have accessed that service. And across the domain of professional development, we have realized a savings of up to 66% for our members who have used our services compared to individually hosting those events within their own SUs. And I have two case studies that I'd like to share with you from our data. The first is around professional development. So on the left hand side, we presume a conference that is occurring either perhaps in Burlington or the Boston area. The conference fee is probably a very conservative number, but there are other ancillary costs that a district subsumes when an educator attends a conference that is outside of their town. You're now paying maggots, you're paying for a hotel, you're paying for a substitute for that educator. When you look at our professional development, our conference fees are less and our membership receives a discount for any purchase, any services that they purchase through us. Those services, those conferences are local, so therefore they are saving on transportation. And we are able to really provide expertise locally within the region at a reduced rate. I think I'd like to highlight most recently, we offered a legal toolkit series for the region and we invited others around the state as well. It's notable the topic was updated special education case law and impacts on practice. It had almost 50 attendees, including nine members of the agency of education. And our feedback that we received was really very strong and very positive. And it's underscored the need for this type of training around the state. The next example is our evaluation services. And on the left hand side assumes evaluations that are provided by a private clinic, which is often used by our members. On the right hand side is a listing of our BOCES evaluation services. And there's savings across each area. To use us as an academic evaluation provider, our districts have saved approximately 46%. Using us as a provider for an autism eval for a student ranges anywhere from almost forty percent to over fifty percent. Psychoeducation evaluations, we provide the savings of between 3336%. For speech and language evaluations, we're able to provide a savings of over 20%, almost 25%.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: You have a question?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yes. Thank you, Jill. Sorry to interrupt, but I'm trying to understand how these savings are working. Is it because your evaluators are BOCES employees, or is it because you're getting a group rate or how is it possible to get the savings?

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: It's our pricing structure. So our pricing structure, we are able to offer competitive rates for our services And we are also able to be very responsive to our members. So instead of going on a waiting list for six months to wait for a specialized evaluation, our providers are able to jump in and provide those evaluations in a really responsive and timely way.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So are they your employees or are they consultants working with you?

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: The evaluators? Yep, we have a team of several per diem right now, evaluators who are providing these services for us.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: And the other part of it is there's no overhead. So we don't have an office. The evaluators are going to the individual schools and providing the evaluation. So many of these private clinics have a building, they have offices, they have administrative assistants. So our program is very lean. We don't have an admin assistant. We have one director, we have one other employee and some part time. So we're very lean, much more cost effective.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Got it. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Still not clear. These evaluators work for you on a per diem basis? Yes. I'm assuming you're not using that five days a week every week. Correct. So where are they otherwise? Is it that they work with the clinics but because you have several schools can offer them more business than any one school, you get a better deal?

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: No, our per diem employees are often currently employed in other educational entities, and they provide these services outside of their work hours.

[Speaker 0]: Other educational entities, meaning?

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: They may be employed in other public schools. They may be employed by another educational agency and they're working for us per diem. We have started our service portfolio in a very calculated way so that it can be sustainable and also financially beneficial for our members. So we don't have full time evaluators right now because we're building that service and the demand has been building. So right now we have two years of data, and this year we're showing actually an increased demand in those evaluation service requests. And so we added to our per diem employee staff. But again, the demand is not full time yet. So as a result, we are not hiring full time staff, which helps us to manage our costs.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, but when the demand is there, is to hire full time staff.

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: That is our goal, to have a team of evaluators and a team of specialists that our members can then access as needed to purchase the services that they need.

[Speaker 0]: Where does your money come from?

[Bethany Sargent (Agency of Natural Resources, Watershed Management Division)]: I beg your pardon?

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: Where does your money come from? So currently we are fee for service. So the services that we offer are based on typically an hourly rate. And then the agency right now, because we are young, is currently funded by a membership rate or a membership fee that is determined by the average daily membership for each of the supervisory unions. And they each pay a percentage of our base administrative fees. Okay.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: So that means that when I have an emergency situation such as a director of finance who is out for medical for surgery, I can call Jill and say, Jill, can you find me a part time person who can cover? And within two days, had a licensed director of finance covering for my department. So I never had a time without in my district without a director of finance. It means that if I have an evaluation and my current full time school psychologist doesn't have the capacity for four more evaluations, I call Jill and she is able to locate that service. And I don't have to wait six months, which means that I'm out of special ed compliance, which could land me in a lawsuit. So there are many other benefits besides the financial that having Jill and paying that membership fee. I call her my nine one one. When I have a situation that I can't handle as a superintendent and as a highly trained special educator, Jill's my first call. And that's priceless. You you it's amazing.

[Speaker 0]: A few minutes, Bob.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Thanks, madam chair.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Our next set of witnesses is arriving.

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: Okay. Is it okay to move on? I'd like to try to give you some quick examples nationwide as those education service agencies have been in existence for decades, most of them going back to the 1950s. And I know that you heard from Doctor. Joan Wade last week, therefore you have some foundational knowledge of educational service agencies. Really quickly, I'm actually going to move to Ohio first. Ohio, their educational service agencies go back to the early 1900s and they have some pretty significant data on their return on investment. So you can see they have 51 educational service agencies across the state. And last year in 2024, they provided over $2,000,000,000 in services. They saved Ohio schools collectively almost 100,000,000 as compared to the cost of purchasing or developing those services themselves. The other important statistic I want to share with you here is that their service agency expenditures, 94% of those were direct to their schools and not overhead. This slide here also demonstrates cost savings that Ohio realize their members, and this goes back to 2016. They provide this data annually, and you can see the average percentage of savings since 2016 ranges from 32% to up to 42% for their members across the state. They also have procured significant grant allocations for their members around the state as well. This is an example from Nebraska. What I'd like to highlight here down at the bottom, they have a really strong statewide cooperative purchasing program and their data indicates that they have delivered over a million dollars worth of savings to their members through cooperative purchasing.

[Speaker 0]: And we're talking purchasing of services, not pencils?

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: It could be both. So it could be services or it could be hard tangible goods.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And can I assume since 48 other states are on a foundation formula that these schools are all on a foundation formula with a set amount per student to spend?

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: So every I

[Speaker 0]: think Pardon? I said Wisconsin is the only other state that doesn't do a foundation formula, so I'm assuming that these other states have some form of foundation formula for their funding.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: They can all probably spend over the foundation if they want to. They can.

[Speaker 0]: They might know what, they may not know what foundation. Okay, we'll keep going.

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: I think Doctor. Wade spoke to this last week, but educational service agencies are funded differently depending upon the state. The foundation formula piece, I can't necessarily speak to for all of these different states, but I can tell you that there are funding mechanisms for their educational service agencies do look different. This slide speaks to programming. So this is out of Massachusetts. This is Shore Collaborative, which is just north of the Boston area. This data is from twenty twenty four-twenty five, and it really demonstrates the savings for special education programming. The light blue indicates what their tuition is, and the dark blue indicates the tuition within an independent school. So by their members using their programs, their students are one in a lesser restrictive setting, and two, they're realizing anywhere from 24 to 40% savings compared to specialized programs. And lastly, this data is really compelling to me and it's very interesting. It's also from Massachusetts. It's from South Shore Collaborative, South Of Boston. This data is also from their annual report. This is also about cooperative purchasing, but it shows the power of cooperative purchasing to benefit not only public schools, but also their municipalities. In this particular collaborative, they have a joint purchasing program for natural gas as well as electricity. When you look at this data, it's really interesting and quite compelling to see not only are Plymouth Public Schools and Scituate schools and Norwell schools benefiting, but so are their municipalities. And I I really think that that's really interesting data. I want to be respectful of your time. It is 02:30. This last article is from John Bass, and I did ask that it be copied out to you so that you have the opportunity to read it. But it really does a nice job just summarizing what educational service agencies provide, what their underpinnings are when it comes to efficiency, strengthening capacity, scaling priorities by the state if there's opportunities for partnership there. And so I just want to thank you for your time and the opportunity to talk about the work that we have done so far. We really stand ready to support the replication of this work to other regions in the state who are interested by sharing our experience, sharing our templates, and sharing our connections.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: Thank you so much.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Senator, thank you. Thank you both for your presentation. I know we're running out of time, so I'll try to make it quick. I have two questions. One, and Sherry, this might be for you. One of the arguments, sort of against this program right now is that, it's been around for a while. Why aren't there more of them? So if you could speak to why that is, that would be helpful.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: So there was a collaborative structure back in the 90s. Really we're focused on special education and really we're based in individual districts. So Hartford School District sponsored the Hartford Collaborative. They were managing the costs. They were focusing the work. So what's different with the structure that we have with the BOCES, there are eight superintendents or SUs, SDs. We all share on the board. We all share in the development of our articles of agreement or construction. It is a very different and the kinds of things that we can address are really based on individual needs. So from applying for grants, that's radically different than what the collaborators were doing, looking at professional development broadly, not just to special education, looking for new opportunities. So for example, and I'm bringing that to Jill this week, how can we collaborate on artificial intelligence and working with Dartmouth College? So it is much more extensive in its capacity to meet individual supervisory and district needs.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Thank you for that. My other question was, I've seen your presentation before and I thought I remember there used to be a slide that spoke to quality and that you've actually seen quality improvements with your cooperative education services. Is that, did you purposely take that out or just curious?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: We had a long time, but I think that's really important. So even though, you know, we are one of the most efficient in terms of special education, identifying students, moving them off IEPs, meeting student needs in our district, We really know that we have to continue to review and grow. And so Jill, while here last year, interviewed our teachers, interviewed our families, observed all the programs, and it did a full program analysis from our pre K to high school program, made recommendations for growth, professional development, so that we continue to thrive in providing special education services.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: Thank you. Great. At

[Speaker 0]: some point, it would be helpful for us to see does being in the BOCES have any impact on your cost per student? Is are the districts within your BOCES seeing a decrease in the cost per student or in their overall budgeting compared, you know, that would be helpful because that's kind of the gum that we're under.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: And I can speak too for our district because we are part of the collaborative and now part of the and previously part of partial collaborative, we have greatly reduced our expenses in special education because of we have one student in an alternative day program and three that are in residential because they're medically fragile. That is significantly lower than any district because we're meeting the needs of students in our community. One out of district placement can range anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 annually. And so because we've contained the number of students out of district and met needs within our district, deep special education programs, highly trained special educators, we have kept our special ed numbers and I know that's reflected by the agency of education. Our special ed costs have been contained. And our hope is in working with Jill, that can be replicated in other SU's SD's and our other eight members.

[Speaker 0]: That's been a goal for a long time, so congratulations.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: And it's the best thing for students. I know it's cost efficient and we know the research shows if you can keep students in your schools, in their communities, highest likelihood that they will eventually move off an individual education plan and will graduate from high school. So it is a win win for students, families, as well as cost efficiencies.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, thank you very much. This has Thank been very

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: you for inviting us.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, thank

[Jill Graham (Executive Director, Vermont Learning Collaborative/first regional BOCES)]: you for the time, take care.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Committee, In our condition of being buried, we're now going on. We have done land posting, cooperative buying in schools, and now we are going on to salt reduction on our roads. And I think there is a very limited sanction in here. There's a study to study what fees should be charged.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: That is correct, madam chair. It's a fee report.

[Speaker 0]: I'd like to get this bill out of your ear ASAP because there isn't much to do.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: So left me a meeting.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: So

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: for the record, my name is Jared Parker with the Lake Champlain Committee. Thank you for the time, Madame Chair. In the interest of time, I can be as brief or likely as folks would like me to be. At least two of your committee members have seen this maybe three times. A third committee member has seen us on one side, believe it not.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: There's two members around the

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Lake Champlain Citizens Advisory Committee. So, knowledge, and then of course there are two wonderful folks from the agencies following me. So maybe I'll just go through this with a brief have just

[Speaker 0]: got forty minutes.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. So again, my name is Jared Carpenter, Lake Champlain Committee. This is a sort of a general presentation on S-two 18, AKA the Salt Bill. Just briefly, as you all know, salt use has been increasing for DIC This to treat is

[Speaker 0]: salt, plain salt. It's not for state and local taxes, it's not, you know, it's in sodium fluoride.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Actually I believe it was last year and the year before the Ways and Means had had good fun with the other SALT folks and telling them that SALT was on the agenda. People that I never spend time in a room with showed up. So no, this is sodium chloride, this is the stuff that they put on the roads, the sidewalks, excessively here in Montpelier and in other areas. And actually I believe tomorrow the league is up in house transportation talking about how folks are having problems finding sapiens, because if you saw the recent storms, there were some municipalities I saw on the news even down in Pennsylvania were having problems finding salt. So perhaps if they start entering the voluntary program to use less salt, there would be more salt to go around. But, So excessive use of rose salt has negative impacts on infrastructure, public health, and water quality. A lot of times that folks focus on with the increase of salinity in our waters because of the excessive salt. You hear about aquatic biota impacts to fish, to invertebrates. One thing that does not get enough focus on is the corrosion of public and private drinking water systems. When there's too much salinity in groundwater or surface water and it gets into wastewater and into private wells, it starts corroding the insides of that heavy metals and that increases the copper, the lead, and the other metals in drinking water. This is what happened in Flint, Michigan. It took me a little while to figure it out, was increased salinity of the waters from excessive use of road salt was causing the moist water infrastructure system to bleed trace metals into their drinking water. And this can happen into well water as well, studies have shown, from drinking water in private wells, and people often don't know about it. So yes, this is important for the environment, yes, this is important for aquatic biota, but this is also really important for public health, so we start reducing salt use on our roadways and sidewalks. This little squiggly chart is all the tributaries going into Lake Champlain and showing by and large increases of salt insulinity over the years. Yeah. So to address this, Act two eighteen addresses the impacts of sodium chloride on the infrastructure of water quality by reducing salt application on roads and other impervious surfaces without compromising public safety. Right now, as folks know when they walk out here, you do not need to crunch them with salt in order for it to be effective on our roads and our site loss. You can use less and still achieve the public safety. And yes, it's going

[Speaker 0]: It's to get amazing the about this. We'll get back in here.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Yeah, it gets everywhere. The bill has four main components. It establishes best management practices to resolve application, sets certification programs for commercial and municipal applicators. There's a study on salt storage facilities and proximity to waters. Folks might recommend that once upon a time in the as introduced, the former as introduced, as you noted, madam chair. This is the second time around as introduced. There was a mandate to cover all star salt storage facilities by any date certain within a 100 yards of surface water and then other dates. Know, further out, there were concerns that the costs that this is going to impose on municipalities. Instead, this is a study to look into how much this is going to cost and how many salt storage sheds are taught. Think it just covers commercial and municipal, excuse me, I think it just covers municipal. It is hard to figure out everybody out there has a salt pile, so covering every pile of salt is difficult, but the study is going to do the best that it can. PMPs, this is a voluntary education program, I can't say that enough, folks, this is not required for applicators that they'll establish best management practices and administrative requirements. This is a model, New Hampshire has their Green Snow Pro program, which has been up and running for ten years now. And basically, it'd be a model that we could lift and drop into Vermont. It's been in place for ten years. In 2013, there were 35 applicators from 22 companies that received certification. In 2025, they certified over 700 applicators from 175 companies on a voluntary program. So this is something that has been discussions of just reaching out for large part to New Hampshire and incorporating their program. There's also talks if you use both programs in both states, you could have reciprocal certification. So somebody who lives, say, you know, down in the Norwich area, but also buys and buys in Hanover, could do one program and could get both sides without having to do it twice and pay it twice. Obviously it has to be something working on in the future but there were thoughts. There are going to be two programs. One is going to be run by the DEC, one is going be run by the agency Transportation for either commercial applicators or municipal applicators. I my the folks after me will discuss this briefly, so I will not get into it. It's the same VNPs, it's the same certification program, it's just one education program for commercial and one for municipal for municipal to be part of their current Vermont Locum Roads curriculum that is already out there for municipal for municipal crews and towns on other topics and so just people operate it in. This is a voluntary program, so you need incentives, you need carrots, and that is the liability protection through affirmative defense that Mike O'Grady talked about, savings for purchase of less salt, and for municipalities would also help with compliance for water quality standards that could mean less future costs for cleanup of specific waters in the future. This is the study I mentioned for solid and solid mix of the sand facilities, pretty relatively straightforward. The affirmative defense, I won't get into it a lot. The judiciary committee did spend a fair amount of time. This is not the initial language that was in the bill. Judiciary did change it, so it's now an affirmative defense, which means a burden shift. You could still get sued, but this acts as a shield. If you can show that you were following the program, were following the MPAs, you took all your records and everything like that, this is your liability protection for a commercial applicator, and also municipal protection as well. I will try going into the whole municipal protection that you asked about, Madam Chair, that might cover, but it's not something you know a lot about. Liability for country. And this is the reporter. Report on proposed fees to pay for the program. It's gonna be interesting because it's gonna be a bit of a sweet spot in terms of what the fees are gonna be. We don't want the fees to be too much in a voluntary program where people aren't gonna participate, but at the same time, the goal is for it to pay for the commercial advocator portion of this. I think there will have to be some balance in there. The general funds and fees in the beginning, because you want people to participate and you don't want them scare away. And my understanding is the Vermont Local Roads and Home grant doesn't charge a fee. So that will have to be, there's gonna be a bit of a balance in all of this, but New Hampshire's fees are, I don't have to be

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in front of me, but I think they're about $100 or $150

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: an applicator or something along those lines, and they try not to be terribly expensive, but obviously you're going to need volume to help pay for this. So there's going be a bit of a sweet spot when this report comes back and the committee starts to discuss. That might be a good time to hear from New Hampshire, Minnesota, how did they find there's a bunch of Wisconsin programs And in the I'm gonna take a deep breath because that is the end of my program. This is the Naga, the North Branch, right? Down there. Another pet peeve of mine is people plowing the snow into the, on top of the river, but it's-

[Speaker 0]: Well, the city used to do it.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: It's like somebody still does it. Yeah, that's one of each other.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Yeah. I get it, there's not a lot of places to put it in Montpelier, but it made for an interesting picture. This is from the School Street Bridge.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Literally piling the salt into the

[Speaker 0]: The city used to dump dump trucks into the dam. There was a large deposit that broke loose and took out the railroad bridge in the ninety two flood, which is when we stopped dumping.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Now it all goes under the interchange Yeah,

[Speaker 0]: our, I think it's out by the pool and The old stump dome. Yeah, it's probably not as that is Your wrapped in application.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: That is my rather hurried presentation. Thank you all so very much. Folks have questions. Know some of you

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: have So I could have

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: printed this off to Senator Barbies. Is a

[Speaker 0]: study by the agency of transportation. Who's doing the study? Agency of Natural Resources. Natural Resources are what you should charge for fee, so the cost, try to find that balance. Okay.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Yes, ma'am.

[Speaker 0]: Fee being set in this. No money being appropriated. No. We're gonna try to hopefully get some money

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: in the budget, but that'll be a separate process. There's no money in this bill and there's no

[Speaker 0]: fee in this bill. Okay. So maybe next year.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Alright. This will be well, the thought is this is gonna be take a year or two to stand up, and then other thing, you know, we'll do a certification process, something that could be thought about in a budget process over the course of a year or two, if not all of us.

[Speaker 0]: I took my car through the car wash to get the ice out of the wheel. Oh, real else? Yeah, they're still in there. I mean, there's been that much, there's hard, salted, sanded slime on the roads, which then freezes. Yeah. And There it's been

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: have been studies done by AAA, I might have the numbers in here somewhere, on the amount of cars people have lost currently due to the amount of corrosion or lot of salt that's obviously significant.

[Speaker 0]: That's where people go south to buy these cars. So,

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: Iowa.

[Speaker 0]: That's, Ms. Puffleton is set somewhere on the impact of the lifespan of the car. Set? Thank you, committee.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Thank you, Madam Chair. Next.

[Speaker 0]: Dana Morris. Hello, everybody. Hello.

[Dana Morris (Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: For the record, my name is Dana Morris. I'm the Director Administration at the Agency of Transportation. I don't have slides to share with you today, and have a little bit of dialogue on the fiscal impacts of SW18 for the agency. So, as was referenced earlier, we administer the Vermont Mobile Roads program, and we offer a lot of municipal training applications. So, we have three or four different courses we currently offer to municipalities around winter maintenance and salt management, and approximately 70 to 80 municipal employees participate in those annually. We typically offer four classes per year at a maximum 20 seats per class. So, just to kind

[Sen. Terry Williams (Rutland District)]: of put a little bit

[Dana Morris (Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: of perspective around our current environment, our Vermont Local Roads program is supported by two full time employees right now. We offer more than just salt management and maintenance training. There's leadership training, there's other heavy operator equipment training, numerous other approaches that these two staff members either deliver themselves or we contract for services to have qualified trainers, and they're going provide the training that's offered to municipalities if you don't have a qualified trainer to do that. Thinking about the context within S-two 18, in concept, the bill and the intent of a bill is something that the agency supports. The delivery and the implementation of the bill is something that we currently do not have budgeted. It's not in our governor's recommend. We don't have the resources in either funding or personnel to support this. So, from that practical standpoint, it's going to be very difficult for us to implement in place. Regardless of the outcome of the bill, we will still offer those initial classes that we talked about, because there may be municipalities that do not opt in to the best management practice training. So, we still do want to offer the current curriculum of salt management and winter maintenance activities. So, there could be a blend if folks do not decide that they want to take the new curriculum that's developed. So, how does that impact us, and what potential do we see down the road? As far as training, if we take the number of two fifty six pounds and say an average of more employees per town, there may be some municipalities that have significantly higher number of municipal road crew members, and then in case some only have one or two. So, using that average of four, let's say we offer the two fifty six pounds, you end up with about 1,000 employees, municipal employees, may be seeking training. So, that's about 10 times as many as we currently offer. So, putting that in perspective with our two employees and the funding that we have available for us right now, the numbers just don't add up for us. So, with that in mind, we would, in order to implement this, the Agency of Transportation anticipates separate from Agency of Natural Resources, that we would need the equivalent of one full Bend employee and approximately $200,000 per year to deliver the training. How does that break down, and how does that compare to our current budget? So, Vermont Local Roads currently has just under a $500,000 per year budget. It's broken down about 75% federal, 25% state. It can range from eightytwenty, depending on the year.

[Bethany Sargent (Agency of Natural Resources, Watershed Management Division)]: So, that increase is $280,000

[Dana Morris (Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: in federal funds and about $70,000 in state match or transportation fund match. That's pulling away from progress. So, these are federal dollars that come from Federal Highway Administration. We've been pulling up project delivery to implement this program. We've already announced that through our budget process that the agency will be experiencing another reduction in force, from two in the last six months. So, to put additional pressures on staff that is rightsized right now feels very difficult and unpalatable for the agency at this time. So, I can talk a little bit more about what we see the future looking like, but I'll pause there and see if there's any questions, because that's generally the gist of why I'm here.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So the agency of natural resources is going to do the study about what the fee should be. If it isn't in the bill as written, is it also studying covering the cost? The fee should cover the cost, right? And that would be the cost to AOT to hire the person and?

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah, so Chair Carpenter, Lake Chittenden Planning Committee. The fee that's a division in the report is to, for the commercial applicators, the fee was not to cover payments by the municipalities because the municipal employees get this for free. So that, therefore, it was always envisioned that there would have to be general fund money for the agency of transportation for that $200,000 in the one FTE once it gets there. It's gonna take a while to stand up the program, and then once it can be incorporated, it is gonna cost money. That's not to say the fee report couldn't be modified to see

[Speaker 0]: Well, I think when the fee order to be valid, when the fee report comes back, it should say, these are the fees and, oh, by the way, you're either gonna have to raise the fees to double the 200,000, which will be higher than that.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Well, madam

[Speaker 0]: we get to it with inflation. I mean, so you get a full financial picture of what this will cost.

[Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Madam Chair, something I didn't mention is the bill two eighteen does have contingency language in it, that it does not require the agencies to implement the program unless there is money available to do so, and that was specifically put in. So, if money isn't available either through the fees or through the budget, then the agency of transportation is not required, it's not mandated to implement it. The bill is very specific on that. This is something that I know this body has been unfunded mandate, so to speak, has been very sensitive about. Us.

[Speaker 0]: Especially the agency transportation, we all get into that from the Ed Fund, but that is also a concern of this committee. Yes, ma'am. Even though we understand where it's going and what the need is over there, so.

[Dana Morris (Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: If I may add one more thing, thank you for reminding me that we do not charge our municipalities for the services that we offer. This has been a really great partnership and something that Vermont Local Roads prides themselves on, is being able to provide this service to a municipality. It's one more way that we can provide support, and build that connection with those that, you know, our roads connect. They go through the municipalities around the entire state, and that would be something that we would like to be able to continue to deliver.

[Speaker 0]: So, you will be doing this training for municipalities. Is that the thought?

[Dana Morris (Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: The thought is that the curriculum that's developed by ANR, as currently written in the bill, would be delivered by a consultant or a buyer party if we have training available. We are thinking we would use something similar to what's offered to the commercial salt applicators, if it needs to be modified for municipalities, I'm not an expert in salt management, so I'll refrain from that, but we would deliver that through our current program. Which is through local roads.

[Speaker 0]: Not local roads. But you have never charged Correct. Through local roads, which is going to mean for you to charge a fee for this in local roads will be a precedent setting and maybe not overly well received. It would be a new development. Precedent setting. Okay.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent; Vermont Learning Collaborative member)]: Thank you. The

[Dana Morris (Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: bill has the municipal salt application portion. Section four of the bill doesn't take effect until 11/01/2027. That's when they're you're supposed to the the agencies work together to identify the changes to the curriculum, so it is.

[Speaker 0]: Next fiscal year.

[Dana Morris (Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. Next fiscal year. And I totally hear you and appreciate that you don't charge a fee to municipalities right now, but I wonder if there are well, first of all, I'm I'm curious. The the the increase in cost because you already you already do training for municipalities. Yes. And so the increase in cost is you think more municipalities are going to take up or more municipal employees are going to want to do the training. So, you're going to have more people to train. Is that sort of the cost that you're imagining, the 200,000? We made an assumption that an average of four municipal employees per municipality may want to take the training. And, you know, the service delivery is going to be cost service delivery, whether two people take it or whether 10 people take it or whether a thousand people take it, we're still going to have a contract to have the con the training available. Okay. So, it's not class schedule. It's not about the number of people taking it. It's about the cost implementing the curriculum. I see. Okay. But that is kind of a one time deal. Like, you you put it into your program and then it's I think of an annual increased cost. It wouldn't be a one time payment to develop the curriculum if you have consultant delivering the curriculum every year. I don't think AOT can deliver the curriculum because you guys already do it. We had extensive testimony in the Natural Resources Committee about how AOT and NOR drivers and snow management employees already use these best practices. So, it seems logical that if you are already using these best practices, not me personally, I know you're Not me. But the agencies are already using these practices that they could use them to train municipal employees. It it doesn't make sense to me that it's gonna cost that much more annually. Once you've got the curriculum developed between the two agencies and then you just add it, so it's maybe an extra x number of hours in your training done by the agent. And right now, the agency of transportation does this training, correct, to your own employees? We use some consultants. We use some consultants. Yes. But it doesn't it's agents. It seems to me kind of I I really like to see that broken down. It seems that seems like a very high number as an annual cost that this would be $200,000 extra a year. That seems crazy to me. Also, I would think that the municipalities may be interested in this because it would save them money. Right now, several towns in my area can't even get salt because and when they do get it, it's really expensive. So, maybe learning how to use less salt would be helpful to the towns and it might even be worth it for them to pay a one time fee to learn how to do it so that they can save money down the road. No pun intended. But so I I'm I'm I'm a little skeptical of your numbers. I'm sure you if if you have more details you could show them. That would be helpful. Because it doesn't seem like it needs to be that expensive. Sure. So, with our current programs, we have two staff that are fully on capacity. So, adding an additional program to manage, to deliver, to track, to establish reporting on, to work with ANR on requires additional personnel unless we stop doing something that we're doing right now, which is really not feasible given the requirements of the Vermont Local Roads program and how we deliver, the training that we deliver. The new employee onboarding program for municipalities. Everything that we developed is in response to what the municipalities are asking for. We partner, bless you, with both other and local it's an LTAPs, the local technical assistance program, so I'll use that acronym. We partner with other LTAPs across the country to be able to deliver training. We might leverage some of their consultants, and based on the conversations that we've had with other LTAPs, to implement another curriculum is approximately 150,000 to $200,000 to build a curriculum and deliver it with consulting services on an annual basis. So, if we were to not divest of another function of the Local Votes program, and we wanted to simply add this to that. The number I put forward, 200,000, assumes that the cost will grow over time by the time we implement this, and 150 is probably a little bit low. That said, we haven't fully vetted what this curriculum is going to look like, and that could change over time. But the best information that I have right now is that AOT estimates one FTE and $200,000 annually. And until we have more information on what the curriculum looks like, whether it is something that we could leverage internal resources for, what we would need to contract for, I wouldn't be comfortable with giving you any other numbers. Okay, so we are forewarned, and it sounds like the bill takes into account that unless

[Speaker 0]: something changes, AOT will need additional money in order to put this Auricilum. If we can't find that money, then nothing happens until we do. I understand. I understand. Okay. Okay. Other questions? No. I'm gonna try and get you, like, five minute brief between the next steps and witnesses. I've got one more. Moving us along here as quickly as I can. Here we go. We've Bethany Sargent from the police watershed management. Hi.

[Bethany Sargent (Agency of Natural Resources, Watershed Management Division)]: My name is Bethany Sergeant. I am the manager of the Monitoring and Assessment Program at Watershed Management Division. I don't have slides for you today, knowing we're short on time, but wanted to just highlight some of the observations that we've had in terms of the increasing chloride levels in our streams. That's my area of expertise. So we've done extensive monitoring statewide and recognize that there's an increasing level of chloride in our lakes and in our streams. Some of those streams have chloride concentrations that exceed our water quality standards, so those are our rules that we need to comport with to ensure that we're protecting our aquatic life in our streams and our other values like swimming, fishing, boating, etcetera, for our surface waters. So because of that, we support this program overall, it fills a gap that we have in our ability to reduce chloride concentrations in our waters to reduce the application of chloride. Most of the waters where we're seeing those exceedances, those excursions above water quality standards are in our most heavily developed areas, so in our MS4 community, so the municipals separate storm sewer community, and we are able to implement through those permits, requiring optimization of salt use, but there are not a lot of tools to get at the commercial application of salt. And so this program, which as others have mentioned, has been established in New Hampshire and other states to incentivize voluntary certification to reduce chloride use on the landscape. One of the areas in terms of this committee's jurisdiction, so it does require fee report, The way that we would see implementing this bill would be, it would require some one time funds, so I estimated $200,000 to stand up the curriculum. One of the changes in this bill relative to what was proposed last year is that it does require the agency to develop the BMPs and the requirements of the certification program through Gulick. And so that would be the initial process that would be led by the Agency of Natural Resources to do the rule development, go through the rule making process. The actual curriculum development based on those BMPs, and the development of the database to track those that are certified and the certification requirement would be one time funds that would be contracted. It would require one FTE given the workload associated with administering the program. So we've estimated the $150,000 to support that one FTE. The fee report I envision would be recommendations on the fee to charge for those participating in the program, but it also would address what is the administrative burden of that program. How much does it cost? How much can be offset by fees? The bill does give the agency discretion to implement it either through staff, through contract, or some combination of the two. As others have mentioned previously, it is contingent on appropriation, the implementation of it, all except for the report on municipal salt storage. So, the fee report is also contingent on appropriation.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Can I just ask the question? Based on the testimony we just got about AOT's role. The the fee report doesn't ask you to recommend a fee for the municipal program.

[Bethany Sargent (Agency of Natural Resources, Watershed Management Division)]: But It doesn't distinguish between It's the for a fee for the certification program. So, as

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: you're reading it, there, you could recommend a fee for the municipal program.

[Bethany Sargent (Agency of Natural Resources, Watershed Management Division)]: I think it would be part of that, I think it would be part of the discussion to determine what would be our recommendation. Would obviously, discussion with agency of transportation on that would go into that recommendation.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And it will come back to us for approval of the fee, and it will go to appropriations My for

[Bethany Sargent (Agency of Natural Resources, Watershed Management Division)]: understanding in speaking with those who manage the program in New Hampshire is that the fees charged largely pay for the cost of implementing the program, but they do need to provide some additional support for it. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't pay for itself, and that's ten years in, so there would be some initial, you know, lead up to getting to that point, assuming there's the same level of interest, which

[Speaker 0]: there would be. There's also a cost to doing nothing. Absolutely. Just don't know what that is yet, but probably more. Okay. Any questions, committee? Thank you. I know a lot of work, it hasn't come to this committee, but a lot of work has gone into this over the last couple of years. You all. I anticipate putting this on for a vote maybe Thursday. I see if you've tried to vote a bunch of things out unless there's something somebody somebody wants to hear from or thinks we need to hear from us. Not too often we vote out of fee without a fee. Okay. I think we can get this one moving. And I know we will deal with AOT and your money needs before this thing gets put into action. So the committee, I'm gonna give you a five minute break. I'm being very generous today.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Thank you so much. Our next guest didn't move back

[Speaker 0]: to

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